Robotics Stocks Stir Ahead of CES

Robotics Soars 177.91% in One Month

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] Ahead of the opening of ‘CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2022’ on the 5th (local time), the rise of domestic robot stocks is becoming prominent.

Since the 1st of last month until the day before, the return on investment for Robotis, a specialized robot solution company, reached 177.91%. Robotis was the first in Korea to pass the autonomous driving robot regulatory sandbox in 2019 and developed the outdoor delivery robot ‘Ilgaemi’ and the indoor delivery robot ‘Jipgaemi’. The stock price surged further last month following news that the company obtained a patent for autonomous route generation by robots.

Stock prices of other robot manufacturers also showed strong performance. During the same period, Roborobo surged 175%, while Yujin Robot (106%), Everybot (106%), and SP Systems (104%) rose steadily. Last month, Samsung Electronics, followed by Hyundai Motor Group and LG Electronics, actively expressed their commitment to the robot business, which served as momentum. All three companies are unveiling advanced technologies with robots as a key theme at CES, further boosting stock prices. Samsung Electronics will introduce the interaction robot ‘Samsung Bot I’ for the first time at this CES, LG Electronics will showcase products integrating 5G and AI such as LG CLOi Guide and Subbot, and indoor/outdoor integrated delivery robots following last year, and Hyundai Motor announced a vision to expand the future mobility industry based on robots into ‘Metamobility,’ where the boundary between virtual reality and reality is blurred.

The market expects the robot industry to establish itself as a promising theme this year. Global asset manager BlackRock mentioned focusing on automotive robots in its mega trend report released early last month, and U.S.-listed ETF manager Global X presented robots as a promising theme. Recently, the robot industry has been prominent not only in the autonomous driving industry based on artificial intelligence (AI) but also in home, industrial, logistics, defense, and healthcare sectors. Demand for robots to increase productivity is also rising due to global supply chain disruptions. According to Hyundai Motor Group’s statistics, the global robot market size is currently about 60 trillion KRW and is expected to continue its high growth with an average annual growth rate of 32% until 2025.

Currently, ways to invest in the robot sector domestically include direct investment in Korean companies engaged in related businesses or direct investment in ETFs listed overseas. Experts say that since large companies’ entry into the robot market has just begun, careful selection is essential when making direct investments. Tae-hyun Seol, a researcher at DB Financial Investment, said, "When approaching individual stocks, it is necessary to further check how much robots account for in each business area and what the growth potential is."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.