A number of data are gratifying. Household appliance consumption during the Spring Festival holiday ushers in a "good start"

Shopping malls, market fairs, and preparing for the New Year, the strong New Year flavor finally returned.

As expected, household appliance consumption is enjoying a "good start"

Under the superposition of the "homecoming tide" of the Spring Festival and the local consumption stimulus policies, the household appliance consumption market has significantly warmed up.

According to the 2023 Spring Festival consumption data of Suning E-shop, during the Spring Festival holiday, the order volume of home appliances exchanged for new ones in stores nationwide increased by three times year-on-year, the sales volume of large-capacity smart refrigerators increased by 115% year-on-year, and the sales volume of large-screen televisions above 75 inches increased by 216% month-on-month. Intelligent cleaning appliances that can liberate hands are also popular. Sales of sweeping robots, floor washers, dishwashers and other products in Suning E-shop increased by 119% year on year. In addition, the sales of health appliances, including water purifiers, sterilizing refrigerators, and disinfection cabinets, increased by 154%, the sales of projectors increased by 126%, and the sales of kitchen household appliances, such as air fryers, barbecues, electric steamers, and steamers, increased by 145%. At the same time, during the Spring Festival holiday this year, there was a cold wave, and the temperature in many parts of the country plunged to below zero. The sales of cold-resistant and thermal insulation equipment in stores experienced a round of growth. The sales of heaters, oil heaters, skirting heaters, etc. increased by 315% year-on-year, and the sales of air conditioners increased by 215% month-on-month.

JD's consumption data for the 2023 Spring Festival holiday is also encouraging. According to the data, mobile communication, household appliances and medical care are the top 3 categories with an increase in turnover during the Spring Festival. Specifically, the turnover of JD Home Floor Washer during the New Year's Festival increased by 150% year-on-year, the turnover of ultra-thin flat-embedded refrigerator exceeded 160% year-on-year, and the turnover of bass wall-breaker exceeded 5 times year-on-year. At the same time, the turnover of life services, mobile phone security services, home appliance maintenance, battery replacement and computer installation during the Spring Festival increased by 302%, 296%, 83%, 57% and 53% respectively year on year.

In addition, "pet customs" are popular in the Spring Festival market. Alibaba's 2023 Spring Festival "warm" consumption report shows that during this year's "New Year's Day", the number of cat bag searches in Tmall Supermarket soared by 60% month-on-month, and the sales of pet New Year's Eve meal increased by 20% year-on-year. Other young people who can't "carry cats" also use hard technology to escort their pet during the Spring Festival. In the week before the Spring Festival, the search volume of intelligent cat litter pots, drinking machines and monitoring equipment increased by 50 times.

Consumption recovery superimposes on real estate recovery, and the household appliance industry may face an outbreak in 2023

The research report of Deppon Securities pointed out that the optimization of domestic epidemic prevention measures has promoted the gradual recovery of offline passenger flow, and it is expected that the consumption of household appliances in the domestic market will also be boosted, especially for the categories with high proportion of offline stores and strong installation attributes. In addition, the real estate policy has been relaxed recently. Although it will take time to ease the fundamentals, the market expectation has been improved.

As we all know, home appliances, as the post-cycle of real estate, are closely related to real estate. In the last round of real estate regulation, various restrictive policies such as "purchase restriction, sale restriction, loan restriction and price restriction" were introduced frequently. Since 2022, many cities in China have gradually cancelled these restrictive policies, reduced down payment and loan interest rates, and even some cities have directly given various housing subsidies, and real estate has also shown a recovery trend. Statistics show that in the week of January 15, nearly 28000 commercial housing units were sold in 30 large and medium-sized cities, up about 16% from the first week of this year. Among them, the first-tier, second-tier and third-tier cities had a month-on-month increase of about 15% - 17%. Anxin Securities believes that the improvement of the real estate policy and the recovery after the epidemic will effectively boost the demand of the kitchen and white electricity industries. In the long run, the housing market transactions are expected to return to normal, the real estate sales are expected to gradually warm up, and the demand for household appliances is expected to return to steady growth. In addition, the optimization of epidemic prevention and the recovery of offline passenger flow not only help to increase sales, but also help to promote the sales of high-end and complete sets of products.

The Spring Festival holiday is an important node to stimulate domestic demand and activate consumption potential. The upsurge in consumption during the Spring Festival has played an important "confidence catalyst" role in boosting consumption in 2023. It is worth mentioning that many international investment institutions, such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, have recently raised their forecasts of China's economic growth in 2023. According to Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao, JPMorgan Chase has raised its forecast for China's economic growth from 4% to 4.3%, Goldman Sachs has raised it from 4.8% to 5.2%, and Morgan Stanley, the most optimistic, expects China's economy to grow 5.7% this year. The research report released by BlackRock, an internationally renowned asset management company, predicts that China's GDP growth may reach 6% in 2023.

The year 2023 is the first year to implement the strategic deployment of the "Twentieth National Congress" of the Communist Party of China, and also the key year to implement the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan". Under the general trend of promoting economic growth, household appliances closely related to the lives of the people will inevitably usher in an explosive period in this round of growth. We expect that household appliances will open more possibilities in 2023.