Gree far outspends others on R&D, Livzon second

Sixteen listed Zhuhai companies increased R&D investment while two showed slight decreases last year, according to annual reports recently released by 20 of them. 

Annual reports of 20 Zhuhai firms last year [Chart by Feng Lu / China Daily]

Four invested over 10 percent of total revenue in research and development. As for the proportion of research staff among the total number of employees, 16 companies exceeded 10 percent and two surpassed 50 percent. 

Gree Electric Appliances leads the list for largest amount of R&D investment. Although the specific value was not revealed, the company disclosed that it is the only enterprise in the domestic household appliance industry to invest in scientific research without a monetary ceiling, with 4 billion yuan ($580 million) annually in recent years. Gree has 7,729 research personnel, 10.79 percent of the total employee roster. Due to this large team, Gree has obtained over 27,000 technical patents with 10,000 for inventions. 

Next on the list is Livzon Group, a leader in the bio-pharmaceutical industry. In 2016, it spent about 474.78 million yuan ($69 million) on scientific research, an increase of 26.37 percent over the year before and 6.2 percent of its annual revenue. Guangdong VTR Bio-Tech Co Ltd in the same industry showed the largest year-on-year growth in research and development expenditures. 

Allwinner Technology processor panels [Photo courtesy digi.163.com]

The four enterprises with more than 10 percent of R&D investment in price-to-sales ratio were Allwinner Technology, YGsoft, DingLi Communications, and SGSG Science & Technology with proportions of R&D investment reaching 26.34 percent, 22.17 percent, 11.8 percent, and 11.58 percent respectively. 

A strong performer in the integrated circuit industry, Allwinner Technology has developed rapidly in recent years, which had much to do with a large R&D investment. Last year, the company invested 329.82 million yuan ($47.8 million) in research, increasing by 34.08 percent year-on-year. Its net profit rose by 16.2 percent to 148.7 million yuan ($21.6 million).  

Moreover, Allwinner Technology imported high-end technology research experts via recruitment and selection on a global scale. By the end of 2016, its research staff occupied 76.78 percent of the total, topping the listed companies in the city. 

The company will emphasize technological research on high-definition intelligent video processing, machine vision, analog devices, wireless network communication, system integration, and low-power design. It will expand software services and integrate resources to serve R&D projects with core technologies and competitiveness, especially artificial intelligence foundation platforms in intelligent voice portal and video analysis. To achieve this, the company will establish an artificial intelligence R&D center to do pre-research, its yearly report states.