Bangladesh on cusp of industrial revolution, HSBC says in Bangladesh Market Insights 2021

[UKBengali]

I am not sure what's more reliable: ''plenty of videos'' or their very own annual report. For now I would go with the latter.

And I don't think exports of $600K to God-knows-where is even worth mentioning, but anyway...

You can find a better source than ''videos'' to substantiate your claims.

See my previous post that has been edited to include revenue figures.

In last fiscal they grew their exports 8 times to 14 million US dollars. Exports are finally taking off in a big way.

India has nothing that can touch this company - best electronics company probably in the developing world right now.

 

[UKBengali]

@SMX 3.0

So given up as unable to argue with raw revenue data I see?

Like I say come back when any Indian company is cleared to export TVs and smartphones to the West.

Quality is so crap it will of course never happen.

 

[SMX 3.0]

See my previous post that has been edited to include revenue figures.

In last fiscal they grew their exports 8 times to 14 million US dollars. Exports are finally taking off in a big way.

India has nothing that can touch this company - best electronics company probably in the developing world right now.

Their revenue last FY was $480 million- let's see how it will nearly double this FY.

The rally in the December quarter was led by sales of refrigerator and air conditioner, which account for about 80 per cent of Walton’s profit.

Sales of the two appliances soared 31.2 per cent to Tk 804.9 crore in the second quarter of the 2020-21 financial year, which runs from July to June, as customers finally loosened their purse strings after months of austerity measures.

Walton stages a stunning recovery in final quarter of 2020

Pent-up demand for its two core products, refrigerator and air conditioner, led the recovery

www.dhakatribune.com

~600 & ~800 crore revenue for Q1 & Q2 from products from which 80% of their revenue comes from. So they'll cross $500 million this year if they are lucky.

That is if they don't cook the books. More on that later. You want me to go there?

best electronics company probably in the developing world right now.

''Best electronics company probably in the developing world'' needs to spend more than $350K on R&D annually... lol.

Like I say come back when any Indian company is cleared to export TVs and smartphones to the West.

The only thing more pathetic than Walton's R&D expenditure is their $1.6 million export figure. Enjoy your 1 million revenue while we export electronics worth billions.

 

[UKBengali]

Their revenue last FY was $480 million- let's see how it will nearly double this FY.

The rally in the December quarter was led by sales of refrigerator and air conditioner, which account for about 80 per cent of Walton’s profit.

Sales of the two appliances soared 31.2 per cent to Tk 804.9 crore in the second quarter of the 2020-21 financial year, which runs from July to June, as customers finally loosened their purse strings after months of austerity measures.

~600 & ~800 crore revenue for Q1 & Q2 from products from which 80% of their revenue comes from. So they'll cross $500 million this year if they are lucky.

Walton stages a stunning recovery in final quarter of 2020

Pent-up demand for its two core products, refrigerator and air conditioner, led the recovery

www.dhakatribune.com

That is if they don't cook the books. More on that later

''Best electronics company probably in the developing world'' needs to spend more than $1 million on R&D lol.

Dude your information on Walton is years out of date.

Just Google 2021 Walton Revenue and you will now see they are over 800 million US dollars in revenue.

It is a publicly listed company and so they have to be totally transparent with their financials.

You will now feel silly after those silly “ha ha” responses to my previous posts.

Pathetic and you are now on my ignore list.

 

[SMX 3.0]

Dude your information on Walton is years out of date.

Walton's Annual report 2019-20 is out of date? They haven't published the AR for this FY yet.

Dhaka Tribune article dated February 2021 about their quarterly earnings is out of date?

I am quoting from their Annual Reports, Einstein. Can you find me a better source?

And yes, even their Annual report has something fishy going on. Your own media has called out that. Please do your own research.

 

[UKBengali]

I think a certain permanently banned Tamil may be back with a new handle.



Style and prose seems to be very similar.

 

[SMX 3.0]

I think a certain permanently banned Tamil may be back with a new handle.

Style and prose seems to be very similar.

Do you have any phobia towards South Indians?

I have posted data from Walton's own sources. Please find me a source on the patents they filed, please.

 

[Pak Nationalist]

One tidbit from me. All light industries depend on component inputs. All smart parts in your smartphone, which amount to far more than ICs require very expensive plants to produce. Even a tiny 1 cent vibrator inside needs a freaking expensive equipment to make.

So far, I know of only few smartphone component makers in Bangladesh. There is one Taiwanese microlens maker for smartphones, and 1 precision molding company that is just starting. BRB tried to make connectors, and such things.

Even in Vietnam, there are very few makers, most of which are Taiwanese chasing Apple relocation.

After working in electronics for almost 10 years, I can say 90% of the process is dumb stupid, and can be done in a shed in Africa. The remaining 9% is progressively harder. And for the remaining 1% you can spend your whole life on, and not achieve anything.

For coming future, I don't see much of the supply chain coming to BD. I myself explored the topic of what it takes to setup a factory with investment project subsidy, and honestly, it made me to scratch my head. It's easier in Vietnam, you just bribe the biggest party member in the province, and your road is open. In BD, I think, people don't want your money, even this way. Most other nations will kill for such easy investor money that BD has.

I see the most likely way to go will be for existing Bangladeshi large industrial groups to use their own capital to do everything themselves. It will be slow, and painful, and very likely you will see Vietnam overtaking you while they do so.

If I may ask, have you had any experiences with Pakistan's investment policy?

 

[Bilal9]

Btw Bilal bhai

Do you think there is a role for NGOs like BRAC, to bridge our skills shortages? In the last 50 years, the challenge was to get enough kids to be able to read. But now they need to learn, as opposed to memorizing stuff by heart. We need critical thinkers and future innovators.

In the past, it was the NGOs that did a lot of the hard work when it came to illiteracy eradication, family planning, health, etc. Bangladesh as a state had very few resources, which was sort of a blessing in disguise. It prompted our NGOs to come up with fairly innovative social engineering policies, which were implemented from a grass-roots level, as opposed to some top-down dictate. As much as I know, Bangladesh is fairly unique at that.

I think BRAC already has several ongoing schemes aimed at better access to skills development. But we need many more.

BRAC et al should start to think about reconfiguring their operations for the next stage of Bangladesh's development. We face new challenges now. Just surviving isn't good enough. We need to strive.

I think I posted on this subject already on this thread. What BRAC and Grameen can do is fund vocational schools for welders, forging shops and sheet metal workers for skills development purposes and also fund small shops themselves for equipment purchase and seed funding, similar to how they seed funded livestock purchase for single-mother women in villages on peer recognition/trust basis.

The problem and challenge is repayment rate is probably going to be slightly lower as women are inherently better credit risks compared to men. Peer vetting and selection needs to be way stronger for loan recipients of these small loans, the loan amount also needs to be very small initially, spread among say a dozen people in an industrial cluster of similar trades so they can 'borrow' from a tool collective or use one collectively.

Even rich people are huge loan defaulters here in Bangladesh, forget about poor people.

 

[X-ray Papa]

@SMX 3.0

So given up as unable to argue with raw revenue data I see?

Like I say come back when any Indian company is cleared to export TVs and smartphones to the West.

Quality is so crap it will of course never happen.

Mate, he's a Indian what do you expect?

 

[Bilal9]

Actually there is a lot of R&D in Walton.

Engineers are conducting research of the next-gen Quantum Dot Plus tech.

Last I heard 28 patents for LED TVs were awaiting approval.

BD companies may not be large enough to create brand new technology but they have reached the level where they can improve the pre-existing technology.

Walton designs and manufacturers it’s own 4K LED panel. I am sure that no Indian company does the same.

No Indian company comes anywhere close to Walton in the TV sector right now.

I don't know if it is a worthwhile endeavor trying to convince someone from India (who I bet hasn't been to Bangladesh) that Walton is great, which I'm pretty sure it is, compared to what was in Bangladesh industrial scenario before.

The fact that it takes the likes of Samsung and LG to invest $700 million for a display fab in India (with a market eight times larger than Bangladesh) and not companies like Videocon or Voltas, is telling in itself.

There are at least a dozen companies that haver already committed that type of money in Bangabandhu 30,000 acre SEZ North of Chittagong and they are local ones.

That Walton invested at such an early stage in manufacturing aircon and household refrigerator compressors is also telling, when only a few companies in India may make those (Kirloskar? Voltas?). Walton is one of seven companies in Asia that makes household refrigerator compressors. This company's sights are set on much loftier goals.

Walton's own screens are used not only in their TV's and cellphones, but also their "Tamarind" Laptops and their Android Tablets (which they have supplied OEM to at least one brand in the US, along with their cellphones). This is well known.

Walton cracks German market exporting LED TVs

Bangladeshi electronics giant Walton is seeing its footprint grow in the lucrative EU market for LED televisions, particularly in Germany.

unb.com.bd

Walton goes to USA

American market vital for us to become a global brand, says Golam Murshed, the managing director of Walton Hi-Tech Industries

www.dhakatribune.com

Walton to export ‘Made in Bangladesh’ tagged smartphones to US

Walton started manufacturing mobile phones in 2017

www.dhakatribune.com

And there is no point in this comparison exercise. As far as I know (I could be wrong) ...

• Investments in India are for supplying the large markets within India for 1.4 Billion people, while Bangladesh manufacturers have started exports from the get-go and are geared for exports. Bangladesh supplies most of the market with locally manufactured white goods and appliances, imports are not really needed.
• Market for TV's and refrigerators in Bangladesh are very different from that of India, the preference is for larger screen sizes above 40 inches, not 32 inch TV's.
• Bangladeshi Refrigerators need to have much larger freezer compartments to store meat, that is not the case in India.
• Refrigerator displacement in Bangladesh averages around 550 to 700 liters, that in India averages 200~300 liters.
• Indian appliances have found no market here in Bangladesh in the last forty years (Godrej, Videocon et al).
• Appliances made in Bangladesh are lately being supplied to OEMs in India. TV's and refrigerators AFAIK, but more types of products may be supplied in the future.

 

[Bilal9]

Walton's Annual report 2019-20 is out of date? They haven't published the AR for this FY yet.

Dhaka Tribune article dated February 2021 about their quarterly earnings is out of date?

I am quoting from their Annual Reports, Einstein. Can you find me a better source?

And yes, even their Annual report has something fishy going on. Your own media has called out that. Please do your own research.

Companies in the subcontinent all do fishy things with their books.

But not at the scale of UB Group or Sahara Parivar.

 

[Bilal9]

India's ~$24 billion mobile phone manufacturing sector.

Bhai - majority of this Indian sector is companies like Micromax and Karbonn screwing together cellphone sub-assemblies from China. and then slapping their Indian brand-name on a sticker on the casing. Those companies are a dime-a-dozen in Bangladesh too. There are about a dozen cellphone assemblers supplying the local market that I know of.

Where is the Indian FAB that would make a SOC like Qualcomm to power Indian cellphones?

For a nation/market of 1.4 Billion people, it is 'Afsoos ka baat'. Especially when you do have the homegrown talent to do that.

 

[Bilal9]

By the way - here is an older video (2018) of how Walton digital inverter compressors are made (ignore the cheesy music).

The factory is all based on German machines and is highly automated. They also supply compressor parts (crankshafts, pistons) to German compressor manufacturer OEMs.

Walton to export compressor components to Europe

Local electronics giant Walton has inked a long-term business agreement with German based global renowned household compressor manufacturer Secop-Gmbh’ to export locally produced compressor components

www.businessinsiderbd.com

Bangladesh: Walton signs agreement with German firm Sicop GmbH for export – Tech Observer

Gerald Kober, Procurement Director of Sicop Group, and Edward Kim, President of Walton International Business Unit (IBU), signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organizations

techobserver.in

I don't know if Indian compressor manufacturers use this type of automation. Maybe they do, if you can post a video we will all be better informed.

By the way Walton refrigerator compressors are guaranteed for ten years from date of purchase.

Here is a general corporate video

 

[Paul2]

If I may ask, have you had any experiences with Pakistan's investment policy?

I in fact went much further. You can find my posts from around 2018 about how I went along with a company which tried to build a drinking water supply business in 2017.

Investment programs, and top level policy are all fine, as everywhere where countries try to attract foreign investors.

It's a complete despair when federal level jurisdiction ends, and local politicians/regulations start, and you need to do first actions on the ground.

A UK Pakistani who lured me into the business was in total despair when it was his first time encountering an attitude "You need some permit for this, but I don't know how you get it, or even from whom. That's how it's written in the code. Sorry" from Lahore government people.