Serenity: The automotive and robotics supply chains are converging, and Germany's Schaeffler, positioned in core components, may face a pricing revaluation.

Mars Finance News: On June 28, Serenity released an analysis on “Whether the Automotive and Robotics Supply Chains Are Integrated,” using Germany’s Schaeffler (market cap of about €7.47 billion) as a typical case. Schaeffler has established partnerships with 45 humanoid robot companies. Its products cover core components such as bearings, gearboxes, sensors/ECUs, actuators, and power electronics. It is estimated that these could account for about 50% of a humanoid robot’s bill of materials, and the company aims to capture a 10% market share in this sector. However, the company’s forecast for robot-related revenue in 2030 is only at the level of a few hundred million euros, far below Musk’s optimistic expectations for the market. Serenity believes this is a typical “sandbag-style forecast,” and it is clearly underestimated. Serenity also points out other notable targets worth paying attention to, such as Nabtesco, which focuses on joint reducers, and Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which supplies components for Tesla’s Optimus.

In terms of investment logic, Serenity believes that these traditional auto parts companies are currently trading at valuations that are too low due to drag from their auto businesses. Humanoid robots and AI vehicles will become important growth vectors. TSMC’s chairman has also recently mentioned that AI vehicles are a growth vector. But the key prerequisite is that downstream needs to emerge with killer applications and leaders similar to ChatGPT or Anthropic, so that the entire upstream supply chain ecosystem can be truly driven. At present, the robotics business accounts for only about 1% of these companies’ total revenue, and in the short term the market still focuses on immediate bottlenecks such as memory and MLCCs. Serenity judges that as different architectural routes for humanoid robots evolve, the future will bring “unexpected supply chain bottleneck surprises” similar to HBM or MLCCs—creating pricing power and opportunities for revaluation for companies that move early. In terms of timing, after 2027 could become a clear catalyst.