Serenity: Automotive and Robotics Supply Chains are Converging, Germany's Schaeffler Poised for Pricing Reassessment

BlockBeats News, June 28th, Serenity published an analysis on the "Integration of Automobile and Robot Supply Chain," using Germany's Schaeffler (market value of about €74.7 billion) as a typical case. Schaeffler has partnered with 45 humanoid robot companies, with products covering core components such as bearings, gearboxes, sensors/ECUs, actuators, and power electronics, estimated to account for approximately 50% of a humanoid robot's bill of materials, aiming to secure a 10% market share in this field. However, the company's forecast for robot-related revenue by 2030 is only at the level of a few billion euros, far below Musk's optimistic market expectations. Serenity believes this is a classic case of "sandbagging forecast," significantly underestimated. Serenity also pointed out other targets worth noting, such as Nabtesco focusing on joint reducers, and Sany Intelligent Control supplying parts to Tesla's Optimus.

Regarding investment logic, Serenity believes that these traditional automotive parts companies are currently undervalued due to the drag from the automotive business. Humanoid robots and AI in automobiles will become important growth vectors, with the recent mention by the Chairman of TSMC that AI in cars is a growth vector. However, a key premise is that downstream killer applications and leaders, such as ChatGPT or Anthropic, need to emerge to truly drive the entire upstream supply chain ecosystem. Currently, the robot business accounts for only about 1% of these companies' total revenue, and the market short term still focuses on immediate bottlenecks such as memory and MLCC.

Serenity predicts that as humanoid robots evolve along different architectural paths, there will be "surprising supply chain bottleneck delights" similar to HBM or MLCC in the future, bringing pricing power and revaluation opportunities to companies that position themselves early. The time point after 2027 may become a significant catalyst.