[Special Stock] Roborobo Expected to Benefit from Reopening... Increased Interest in Samsung Truly Dedicated to Robots

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyungsoo] Roborobo is showing strong performance. As reopening-related stocks attract attention in the domestic stock market, interest in Roborobo has also increased. News that Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong is fostering the robot business as a core future business of Samsung appears to have influenced investor sentiment.

As of 11:27 AM on the 23rd, Roborobo is trading at 8,380 KRW, up 6.75% from the previous day.

Roborobo started its business in 2000 as a specialized developer of cleaning robots and security robots. Since 2005, it has developed educational robot products and entered the domestic educational robot and intelligent robot business sectors. It distributes educational products using robots as a medium, centered on its flagship product, RoboKit. Its self-developed GUI programming tool, 'ROGIC,' is recognized for its value as educational robot software. It has secured a sales network with about 20 regional distributors, around 60 subordinate educational institutes, and a total of approximately 20,000 students. In 2016, it signed a long-term 10-year supply contract with a Chinese company and secured a sales infrastructure there.

Due to the decrease in offline education demand caused by the spread of COVID-19, overall sales have declined since 2019. Roborobo is quickly responding to the rapidly changing market environment by launching LearningOn, a non-face-to-face interactive after-school education program, hosting online robot competitions, releasing products related to AI education commercialization, and diversifying sales. Along with strategic partnerships to build an educational robot ecosystem, it continues investments in future growth areas such as artificial intelligence, metaverse, online platforms, and autonomous driving, leading trends in the robot industry.

In the third quarter of last year, sales increased by 57.3% compared to the same period the previous year, and the deficit size decreased. It explained that profitability improved compared to the previous quarter as after-school operations, which had been suspended due to COVID-19, gradually normalized.

Meanwhile, a media outlet reported that the size of Samsung Electronics' robot business team has grown more than tenfold in one year. Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong announced in August last year that he would invest 240 trillion KRW over the next three years in new areas including robots, system semiconductors, bio, next-generation communications, and AI. There are expectations that Samsung Electronics will strengthen its competitiveness through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) related to the robot new business.

The faster the robot market grows, the larger the education market using robots can become. Demand to increase familiarity with robots from an early age may also rise.