Latest news with #constructionmachinery
CNA
26-05-2025
- Business
- CNA
Commentary: Chinese EV trucks will build the cities of the future
SYDNEY: If you think the world is starting to get used to surging sales of Chinese-made electric cars, the next wave of exports is going to be bigger, and more powerful. That's because the construction machinery giants that grew fat off the country's property bubble are looking for new markets to offset the downturn at home. Combined with looming electrification, the effects could be quite as dramatic as the other Made-in-China export booms which have so troubled trading partners. Consider Sany Heavy Industry. In 2020, 83 per cent of its business was selling excavators, cranes, concrete mixers and the like to domestic developers. In the space of just four years, China's property crash has caused its turnover in that market to shrink by two-thirds. Overseas markets now account for more than 60 per cent of revenue. It's hoping to raise US$1.5 billion via a Hong Kong initial public offering to help it double international sales to 100 billion yuan (US$14 billion), the South China Morning Post reported this month. Sany isn't alone. Its local rivals XCMG Construction Machinery, Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology, and Guangxi LiuGong Machinery are all facing the same collapse of activity on the home front, where housing starts in the first four months of 2025 fell to their lowest level since 2003. That's left dismal returns on all the assets they built to service a market that's since disappeared – below 5 per cent, less than half what Caterpillar manages and well below the 7.7 per cent at Komatsu. EXPORTS AND ELECTRIFICATION The best way out of this problem is to find export markets to get the production lines for all those diggers, dozers, lifters and trucks humming again. Zoomlion's international sales have followed Sany's in becoming the largest element of its revenue, and XCMG and LiuGong aren't far behind. There's plenty of work to go around. In the Persian Gulf, governments are using the windfall from the oil boom of the early 2020s to build a swath of major infrastructure projects, from the Middle East's first Walt Disney theme park in Abu Dhabi to a new international airport in Riyadh and a US$22 billion five-year infrastructure plan for Qatar. Construction markets are also booming across South and Southeast Asia and in parts of Africa. China's export market share in major categories of work vehicles has soared in recent years. As with passenger cars, electrification offers a potent route for further disruption. Batteries are often considered an ill fit for construction machinery, which has extreme power needs that diesel is particularly well-placed to deliver. But that's changing as lithium-ion cell-makers build cheaper and longer-lasting power packs that can often keep running as long as an eight-hour work day, according to IDTechX, a consultancy. Electric construction equipment sales will grow at 21 per cent annually up to 2044, when they'll hit US$126 billion, IDTechX predicted last year. Chinese manufacturers have an advantage here. Local battery-makers CATL and BYD are market leaders in LFP, the cathode chemistry that's likely to be best-suited to site vehicles, thanks to its stability and low costs. Already, local construction machinery manufacturers produce about two-thirds of the electric bucket loader models on the market. RAISING THE DRAWBRIDGE INSTEAD OF COMPETING Circumspect governments should be looking at ways to outcompete this shift. Instead, they're raising the drawbridge. The European Union last month set tariffs as high as 67 per cent on Chinese construction machinery, while the UK has more recently imposed duties of more than 30 per cent on excavators made by Sany, Liugong and XCMG. The Indian joint venture between Tata Motors and Hitachi Construction Machinery last year called on New Delhi to raise levies against imported Chinese products, saying they'd already grabbed 22 per cent of the market. Things are even worse in the US, where the Trump administration is busy unpicking the heavy-duty vehicle emission standards introduced by former President Joe Biden. That removes much of the incentive for US-exposed manufacturers such as Caterpillar, Komatsu, Volvo and Deere & Co to innovate and compete with the coming onslaught. Work vehicles have tended to fly below the radar in discussions of urban emissions, but their vast size and power requirements give them a disproportionate share of engine pollution. China's 10 million construction machines emit more particulates than its 417 million road vehicles, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. With low-emission zones spreading across cities worldwide and older diesel vehicles increasingly restricted on the roads of major cities such as London, Paris and Madrid, construction machinery is increasingly going to find itself in the crosshairs as one of the biggest contributors to urban pollution.
Bloomberg
25-05-2025
- Automotive
- Bloomberg
Chinese EV Trucks Will Build the Cities of the Future
If you think the world is starting to get used to surging sales of Chinese-made electric cars, the next wave of exports is going to be bigger, and more powerful. That's because the construction machinery giants that grew fat off the country's property bubble are looking for new markets to offset the downturn at home. Combined with looming electrification, the effects could be quite as dramatic as the other Made-in-China export booms which have so troubled trading partners.
Globe and Mail
13-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Empowering New Industrialization, XCMG Machinery's 2024 Annual Report Highlights High-Quality Development
XUZHOU, China , May 13, 2025 /CNW/ -- XCMG Machinery ("XCMG", SHE:000425), a global leader in construction machinery, has published its 2024 Annual Report, showing strong performance with net profit attributable to shareholders reaching CNY 5.976 billion ( USD 821.866 million ), a 12.2 percent increase year-on-year. The total revenue remains stable at CNY 91.66 billion ( USD 12.61 billion ). XCMG continues to maintain a leading position in China's construction machinery industry. Its non-deductible net profit reached CNY 5.762 billion ( USD 792,435 million ), up 28.14% year-on-year. The group's gross profit margin and net profit margin show continuous improvement with a significant increase in operating cash flow of 60.18 percent year-on-year to reach CNY 5.720 billion ( USD 786,660 million ). The net sales margin also increased by 0.89 percent year-on-year to 6.53 percent in 2024. The proportion of overseas revenue has continued to grow. In 2024, the overseas revenue reached CNY 41.687 billion ( USD 5.73 billion ), marking a 12 percent increase year-on-year and accounting for 45.48 percent of the total revenue. XCMG's R&D investment is up 11.1 percent in 2024 with an investment of about CNY 5.6 billion ( USD 772.8 million ), which accounts for 6.11 percent of the revenue. By the end of 2024, the company has 7,619 R&D staff, an increase of 12.13 percent. Throughout the year, it added more than 1,600 new authorized patents, over 750 of which are patents for invention. High-quality development and long-term returns on value investment Showing resilient growth, 2024 was a year of breakthrough for XCMG, with accelerated development of intelligent transformation, digitalization and networked operation and stable growth showing high-quality development momentum. XCMG is taking the lead to drive transformation and unswervingly take the new industrialization path powered by AI, accelerating innovative, high-quality development with its own characteristics. XCMG HANYUN especially focuses on the three major sectors of intelligent manufacturing, internet of vehicles and unmanned applications scenarios leveraging HANYUN OS and AI technologies as the core. With high-quality development and sustainable performance as the foundation of success, XCMG shares the fruits of development with investors through cash dividends, share buybacks and more, showing confidence through the increase of shareholding by the major shareholders, shareholding by employees and equity incentives. In 2024 , XCMG's cash dividends remained at CNY 2.127 billion ( USD 292,521 million ). The Company will continue to advance its share repurchase program, the initiative including to allocate no less than CNY 1.8 billion ( USD 247,550 million ) for equity incentives and employee stock ownership plans, while dedicating a minimum of CNY 300 million ( USD 41.258 million ) to share cancellation through repurchases. XCMG continues the growth trend in the first quarter of 2025 reporting an operating income of CNY 26.815 billion ( USD 3.69 billion ), an increase of 10.92 percent year-on-year; net profit of CNY 2.022 billion ( USD 278,081 million ), a year-on-year increase of 26.37 percent; deducted non-net profit of CNY 2.007 billion ( USD 276,018 million ), a year-on-year increase of 36.88 percent, and operating cash flow was up nearly 2.6 times.
