The Value Growth Potential Of Tuya Smart (02391.HK/TUYA.US)

Abstract: Ecological Deduction From The Perspective Of The Bass Diffusion Model

How much can a company change in four years? Tuya Smart (hereinafter referred to as "Tuya") has shown us its answer.

Tuya helps customers achieve device intelligence more efficiently to make them more competitive. It even crosses into a broader field of spatial intelligence and creates a smart solution cloud platform for "PaaS+SaaS+smart devices including Cube Cloud", through which Tuya develops its own intelligent business for global giants.

This is not only a technological leap, but also an ecological evolution.

On May 21st, Tuya released its first quarter report, achieving Non-GAAP profitability for the first time in the first quarter. The company has entered the next phase of slope climbing in spite of various twists and turns.

01 In the new stage, Tuya’s Q1 report presents multiple highlights

There are four key points in this financial report:

1. The performance of revenue and profit can be summarized as: revenue beating expectations, off-season reaching new highs

In 2024 Q1, Tuya achieved a total revenue of $61.7 million, a year-on-year increase of 29.9%, exceeding market expectations. In terms of profitability, Tuya has posted stable profits for four consecutive quarters, with non-GAAP net profit increasing to $12.3 million during the reporting period. Although the first quarter is usually the off-season for revenue, Tuya still made impressive performance, fully confirming its strong profitability.

2. High-speed growth followed with high-quality growth

Tuya's financial indicators have been improved in an all-round way. In Q1, the company's gross profit margin reached a new high of 47.8%; Operating net cash flow significantly improved month on month to $14.5 million; The cash on hand is nearly 1 billion US dollars.

3. The largest business sector experiences a comprehensive recovery

The IoT PaaS business holds a crucial position in the overall revenue of Tuya, accounting for over 70%, making it undoubtedly the company's largest and most core business segment. In Q1, IoT PaaS revenue was $45.6 million, a year-on-year increase of 35.7%, and its dollar-based net expansion rate increased to 116% year-on-year.

"This growth is partly due to the recovery of overseas consumer electronics demand and the steady increase in global demand for intelligence. Also, it is due to our increasing market share, major competitors clearing out during the industry downturn cycle from 2022 to 2023, and more top brands shifting from in-house IoT to our platform. We also continue to drive innovation through new product development, helping our brand customers quickly launch new smart products.," said Jerry Wang, Founder and CEO of Tuya Smart.

4. Good results in business upgrading

The company will integrate generative AI, embedded, cloud software and other capabilities into Smart Solution. The revenue of this sector increased by 37% year-on-year to $7.5 million during the reporting period.

The impressive opening performance of Tuya in the first quarter financial report is self-evident, which not only foreshadows the high landscape of 2024 for the whole year, but may also mark the beginning of Tuya entering the next era of the intelligent world together with new technologies such as AI.

At this moment, it is necessary to re-examine the value and growth potential of Tuya.

02 Resonance of three major factors from the perspective of the Bass model

There are multiple theoretical frameworks for evaluating the innovation and commercial value of technology companies. Among them, the Bass Model has become a key tool for measuring the value growth of tech companies.

Technology products often features distinct innovation diffusion, and the Bass model precisely depicts the behavior of innovators and imitators, vividly demonstrating the complete process of high-tech products from initial acceptance to widespread adoption.

The Bass Diffusion Model reveals the dynamic mechanism of market diffusion by deeply analyzing the behavior of innovators and imitators. Its key parameters - market potential (M), imitation coefficient (q), and innovation coefficient (p) - provide us with in-depth market insights.

The outstanding performance of Tuya is a model of the synergistic effect of these three factors.

Market potential (M): Breaking boundaries

Focusing on the trillion-level market size

Market potential (M) represents the potential sales volume or total demand, in other words, it indicates the market cap that the product may reach.

Tuya is rapidly expanding its business boundaries to a new stage.

Device intelligence is a key pivot for the early development of the company. As the global leading cloud platform service provider, Tuyawith its IoT PaaS service, helps enterprises achieve efficient upgrading of product intelligence. In the IoT market dominated by giants, Tuya has occupied a considerable market share through this fulcrum.

The continuous progress of technology and changes in market demand have enabled Tuya to constantly break through its own boundaries. Since four years ago, the company has moved from single device intelligence to a new field of spatial intelligence. Nowadays, Tuya focuses on intelligent management and optimization of the entire environment and scene, expanding its business scope to include spatial intelligence in industries such as apartment hotels, community parks, transportation, and energy, as well as further crossing into a smart solution cloud platform that includes “PaaS+SaaS+smart devices, including Cube Cloud”.

The vast variety of application scenarios has driven the growth of the TAM by tens of times, which is a crucial transformation, marking the company's entry into a broader market in a new stage of development, and laying the foundation for its value growth.

In addition to the positive impact of market potential, the behavior of innovators and imitators affects market penetration rate. The behavior of these two factors is described by the innovation coefficient “p” and the imitation coefficient “q”.

Innovation coefficient (p): Embracing AI

Continuously promoting innovation and helping developers "upgrade"

A higher innovation coefficient p-value means that the product or technology has strong appeal and can quickly attract innovators.

Compared to the imitation coefficient, the innovation coefficient reflects more on the ecological and "siphon" effects of innovation, and the acquisition of this part of customers essentially relies on the attractiveness brought by the strong innovation.

Tuya, a tech-driven company, fully embraced generative AI in early 2023. The layout around the AI field is becoming an important highlight for it to open up greater market potential and create greater commercial value in the future.

The natural technological genes enable Tuya to fully explore and utilize AI technology to continuously drive innovation. In particular, based on the company's cloud platform technology genes and a vast intelligent hardware ecosystem, Tuya is also fully investing in the research and development of generative AI, and continuously exploring development opportunities in areas such as device intelligence, spatial intelligence, and smart solutions.

Among them, in the direction of spatial intelligence, Tuya incorporates its AI capabilities into the daily management of spatial scenes, enabling users to obtain generative AI device functions and management experiences, AI-driven intelligent scene experiences, or scene analysis and linkage scheme recommendations.

The Smart Solution of Tuya can be said to be a microcosm of its innovation strategy in the AI era. It not only reflects the technological depth of the company in AI and AIGC, embedded operating systems, cloud software and other fields, but also demonstrates its ability to integrate these technologies to create greater customer value.

For instance, Tuya greatly enriches the user interaction experience and improves operational efficiency by integrating AIGC-enabled speech recognition technology in devices such as smart central control systems, smartwatches, and smart light strips. This intelligent interaction method enables users to achieve more precise and convenient home control, leading a new trend in smart home life.

Meanwhile, in the field of pet devices, Tuya utilizes technologies such as GenAI to deeply analyze the behavior patterns of pets, customize personalized toys and games for pet owners, and create interactive sound and visual effects. These innovations not only bring more entertainment and happiness to pets, but also deepen the emotional bond between pets and their owners, providing pet owners with a richer and more loving product experience.

It is worth noting that Tuya launched its own AI model, Cube AI, at the Global Developer Summit on May 29th. Thanks to the vast scale of intelligent devices in its global ecosystem, Tuya can generate through AI optimal energy conservation and emission reduction strategies based on specific scene requirements according to real-time energy consumption in space, providing customers and users with leading AI technology product value in the field of spatial intelligence.

Through these specific application examples, it is not difficult to see that Tuya transforms the advantages of AI technology into practical value for customers and users. This not only truly empowers the improvement of customer core competitiveness, but also further strengthens customer loyalty and satisfaction with the Tuya Smart brand.

In the wave driven by AI technology, Tuya not only improves its own innovation efficiency, but also greatly facilitates developers to adopt and apply its products and services, helping developers improve their development capabilities and efficiently produce competitive products. In the meantime, this further accelerates the widespread application and popularization of innovative technologies. In this process, the Tuya Cloud Developer Platform played a core role, inspiring the vitality of a diverse intelligent ecosystem that includes brand owners, original equipment manufacturers, partners, and end-users.

As a global cloud platform service provider, Tuya is committed to integrating AI technology into the core of the development process, bringing developers the most avant-garde, convenient, and efficient development experience. Developers can enter the development process and generate UI interfaces through simple dialogue interactions through AIGC capabilities, or check problem logs and return code suggestions through AI.

In addition, AI will also help developers analyze the strengths and weaknesses of user feedback and product features, in order to facilitate product improvement, iteration, and innovation. As of the end of the first quarter, the number of registered developers on the Tuya platform has exceeded one million.

The continuous iteration of AI capabilities on the developer platform allows Tuya to help developers interact and communicate extensively between smart devices, providing a fertile ground for technological innovation. This AI ecosystem not only accelerates the evolution and iteration of technology, but also injects innovative vitality into the entire industry, leading the industry towards more efficient and intelligent development.

Imitation coefficient (q): Building high customer stickiness

Connecting the global service network

The innovation coefficient p mainly affects the initial stage of the diffusion process, which is the introduction period of new products or technologies, while the imitation coefficient q plays a greater role in the later stage of the diffusion process, promoting the dissemination of products or technologies to a wider consumer group.

A higher q value reflects the recognition of customers who have received products and services, and customer stickiness can be considered an important reference. Furthermore, the scalability and usability of products and services can help them gain more customer acceptance.

Through the construction of a smart solution cloud platform for PaaS+SaaS+smart devices, including Cube Cloud, Tuya has created a series of benchmark cases, laying the foundation for its high imitation coefficient. By leveraging the positive word-of-mouth of existing customers, it has also attracted more potential customers to start using its products and services.

As Jerry Wang, Founder and CEO of Tuya Smart, mentioned in this earnings conference call, the company has observed a group of new developers and brand customers growing vigorously on the cloud platform. Among them are Chinese e-commerce companies venturing overseas, which now possess stronger R&D and branding capabilities compared to four or five years ago. Additionally, well-known brands in North America, India, and Europe are growing steadily under a more localization-focused service model. The robust foundation of both new and existing customers enabled the company's growth rate to surpass the industry average.

Here, let's take the cooperation case with French company Xanlite as a specific example to see how the company can develop a high "imitation coefficient".

The cooperation between Tuya and Xanlite began with the intelligent upgrade of lighting products. As early as 2018, the two sides had jointly launched the smart home brand KOZii, which has since become one of the top smart home brands in France. Xanlite actively responds to France's energy-saving policies, and has begun to engage in energy transformation related businesses.

In May of this year, the cooperation between the two sides marked a new milestone. At the China Zhejiang-France High-Tech Industry Innovation Cooperation Matchmaking Conference held in Paris, the two sides officially signed a cooperation agreement to jointly promote a new path of smart home energy conservation. In this collaboration, Tuya will utilize cutting-edge technologies such as GenAI and cloud computing to accelerate the implementation of smart home solutions in France and even Europe with Xanlite, bringing more efficient and green smart living experiences to families.

From the initial collaboration on lighting products to the integration of advanced energy-saving kits and smart home systems, it is not difficult to see the significant achievements of Tuya in meeting customer needs, providing sustained value, and deepening cooperation relationships. This not only reflects the company's outstanding performance in customer stickiness, but also demonstrates its ability to empower strategic transformation and continuous innovation at different stages of enterprise development.

In fact, the cooperation experience with Xanlite in France also provides an opportunity for them to further expand their local cooperation network. In 2019, Tuya also established a partnership with French industrial pioneer Schneider Electric. This collaboration focuses on the development of the Wiser smart home automation platform, aiming to integrate the technological advantages of both parties and jointly promote innovation and application of smart home solutions.

In the same year, Tuya also reached a deep cooperation with the well-known European lighting company CALEX at the CIIE. Prior to this, Tuya had also helped CALEX's lighting products cover mainstream retail channels in about 6 countries in Western Europe.

Through this series of collaborations, Tuya not only strengthens its technological strength in the field of smart homes, but also leverages the brand influence and market position of its partners to further expand its influence in the European and even global markets.

In fact, the cooperation cases of Tuya are not limited to specific regions, but span multiple countries and regions, which continues to enhance the market expansion opportunities for its products and services.

The cooperation project with Schneider Electric was subsequently implemented in markets such as Asia Pacific, Australia, and Europe. For example, the cooperation with TCL in various home appliance categories has successfully brought smart devices to TCL's customers in dozens of countries.

It can be said that through a series of global collaborations, Tuya has continuously expanded its market influence, and also leveraged the market position and user base of its partners to enhance the credibility of the brand, effectively promoting the market diffusion of products and services.

As mentioned in the financial report, the company's continuous overseas expansion and a more balanced global business landscape have made its business more resilient and opportunities compared than three years ago. "We are able to keenly perceive and capture the intelligent new trends in various regions around the world, better serving Tuya’s global customers and Chinese manufacturing enterprises' overseas expansion."

03 Conclusion

From the perspective of the Bass model, it is not difficult to see the significant value growth potential of Tuya Smart. It can be said that the expansion of market size (M), the technological leadership of innovation coefficient (p), and the construction of customer stickiness of imitation coefficient (q) jointly build the cornerstone of the company's sustained growth.

As technology continues to advance and market demand expands, Tuya, with its robust innovation capabilities and global presence, is emerging as a crucial force in driving the development of the intelligent era.