Robotics stocks are still in recovery - they haven't reached 2007 levels yet, and the outlook for 2012 is, at best, minimal upward growth.
Frank Tobe of the Robot Report has posted his analysis of robotics stock performance in 2011 on his blog, and as you can see from the graph above, things are still struggling for the industry. Here are a few of his key takeways:
- Robotic industrials are still down 28% from their 2007 highs and did poorer than the Dow Jones Industrial Average which is also down 8.5% from 2007.
- Service robotic stocks are down 15% from 2007 while the NASDAQ is down just 2.5% -- better than the industrials, and showing signs of steady improvement, but still hasn't regained their 2007 highs.
- Industrials took a big fall from their 2007 highs with the doubly whammy of the collapse of auto sales and bankruptcies of auto companies. 2009 saw hesitation and some gains, and then a small rise in the latter part of 2010 was blown away with the Japanese disasters, Thailand floods and EU economic turmoil. Thus industrial robot stocks are still down 28% even though business is good.
- The few publicly-traded service robotics companies fall into three main sectors: medical, defense/security and a mixture of academic and consumer niche products. Medical robotic stocks are booming; defense/security stocks are holding steady; and the remainder are all over the place.
Tobe's outlook for 2012 is "bouts of sharp volatility but minimal upward growth." That seems about right to me, too. I think that, the overall robotics industry is going to suffer more from a global economic downturn because those downturns are inevitably going to put downward pressure on wages. Until the global economy as a whole recovers, the desire to save on labor costs by investing in robotics is, I think, not going to bring a lot of pressure to bear on investment. Obviously, not all sectors of robotics are based on replacing human labor, but a big enough chunk of it is that I think it's going to take awhile for the business of robots to really boom.
You can read Tobe's whole report here.
