The company's revenue for the quarter was $20.13 billion (+ 17% compared with the same period last year), and its net profit was $640 million (+ 62% compared with the same period last year). It continued to maintain high growth, with net profit growing by more than 50% for the sixth consecutive quarter compared with the same period last year. Steady progress towards the goal of doubling net profit margins and R & D investment within three years. Looking forward to the whole year of 2022, we expect that commercial PC demand is expected to remain strong in the short term, offsetting to a large extent the decline in personal PC demand; the recovery of global cloud manufacturer capex and the recovery of traditional enterprise market demand will continue to support the strong performance of servers and other businesses; at the same time, the company's share of service revenue is expected to continue to increase, and promote the company's overall profit margin to continue to improve.
We continue to maintain our target price of HK $14 per share and our "buy" rating.
Performance: both income and profitability set a record. Q3 achieved revenue of $20.13 billion (+ 17% compared with the same period last year), net profit of $640 million (+ 62% compared with the same period last year), cash flow of operating activities of $606 million (year-on-year-69%) and gross profit margin of 16.8% (+ 0.5pct). The proportion of revenue from more profitable solution services business continued to increase, and hardware product portfolio optimization was the main driving force. In terms of expense rate, the company's sales expense rate in this quarter is 5.0%, which is basically the same as that of the same period last year, and the management expense rate is 3.6% (- 1.4pcts).
3) the company's R & D expenditure rate was 2.7% (+ 0.4pct) in the quarter, and the company also said that it would continue to increase R & D investment and strive to double R & D expenditure within 3 years.
Smart devices: commercial PC demand remains strong. Q3 revenue in the company's smart device business in fiscal 2022 rose 16% year-on-year to $17.61 billion, of which revenue from non-PC businesses accounted for 18.7% (+ 1pct); operating profit rose 21% year-on-year to $1.35 billion, and operating profit margin rose to 7.7% year-on-year, an all-time high. According to IDC, 2021Q4 shipped 96.25 million PC units worldwide (+ 1.0% compared with the same period last year), Lenovo shipped 21.7 million units of PC worldwide (- 3.3% compared with the same period last year), and the global market share was 23.4% (- 1.0pct).
At the same time, driven by digital transformation, commercial PC performs well. The above high-end trend has led to the benefit of high value-added market segments, resulting in a 25% increase in revenue from workstations, ThinkPad X1, ThinkBook and game product families compared with the same period last year. PC turnover of workstations and games increased by 40% and 27%, respectively.
As a result, the 2021Q4PC portfolio achieved high ASP and profitability, and the ASP of PC products increased by 18.2% year-on-year. In non-PC business, 2021Q4 grew 22% year-on-year, smartphone business revenue increased 46% year-on-year, and operating profit reached an all-time high. The business turnover of intelligent collaboration solutions has increased by 96% compared with the same period last year, and the performance has almost doubled.
Infrastructure: the server business has turned a profit for the first time. Q3 revenue of the company's infrastructure business rose 19% year-on-year to $1.93 billion in fiscal 2022, and operating profit increased by $28 million to $17 million, turning a profit for the first time since the acquisition of IBM x86. Operating profit margin increased by 1.6 percentage points year-on-year to 0.9%, mainly due to improved profitability of cloud service providers (CSP) and small and medium-sized enterprises (ESMB), with revenue growth of 38% and 7%, respectively. 1) in terms of cloud services, during the reporting period, the ODM+ business model has been expanded from servers to storage, water cooling, more advanced system design and multiple platforms, and its profitability has also been increasing. 2) on the enterprise side, the company has further increased its market share in a number of high-growth products, such as servers, storage, software and services, and continues to maintain its position as the second largest supplier in the global mainstream storage market. at the same time, it continues to expand its business scope in hybrid cloud solutions. 3) We judge that the recovery of global cloud vendors CAPEX and the recovery of market demand for traditional enterprises will support the short-term performance of this part of the company's business; in the medium to long term, the enhancement of solution and design capabilities and the continuous strengthening of cooperation with cloud vendors are expected to rapidly increase the company's relative share in this field and achieve sustained and rapid growth.
Programme services business: continued high growth. Q3 revenue of the company's solution services business in fiscal 2022 grew 25 per cent year-on-year to $1.5 billion, of which IT support services grew 21 per cent year-on-year, intelligent operation and maintenance services grew 50 per cent, smart solutions grew 23 per cent, operating profit rose 44 per cent to $330 million, and operating profit margin increased 2.9pcts to 22.2 per cent. At the same time, the company's booking revenue and deferred revenue increased by 25% Mur26% compared with the same period last year, and the stability and predictability of revenue were significantly enhanced. Looking to the future, we believe that: 1) IT support services will continue to benefit from the continuous growth of market stock hardware equipment and the gradual increase of service density and added value; 2) Intelligent operation and maintenance business to provide enterprise users with IT equipment batch rental and maintenance services, strong equipment side capabilities, perfect service mechanism and so on constitute the company's core competitiveness. 3) due to the broad space of industrial digitization, the company's end-to-end service capabilities and industry experience, the company is expected to continue to share this blue ocean market.
Risk factors: global macroeconomic growth is less than expected; upstream raw material prices fluctuate sharply; market competition continues to aggravate risks; the company's new business development is not as expected.
Investment suggestion: with the help of outstanding capabilities in technology research and development, supply chain management and channel & service, the company is comprehensively promoting the transformation from equipment delivery to intelligent solutions. Taking into account the strong demand for the company's commercial PC and the first turnaround in the server business, we raised the company's operating income forecast for the fiscal year 2022-2024 to $714,85.5 billion (the original forecast was $727,81.6 billion), with corresponding growth rates of 18%, 10% and 9%, respectively. The forecast of return net profit for the fiscal year 2022-2024 was raised to US $1.98 billion, respectively (the original forecast was US $16.7 billion, respectively), with corresponding growth rates of 68%, 27% and 24%, respectively. With reference to the valuation of the global comparable hardware company and the company's own medium-term growth, we maintain our target price of HK $14 per share and our "buy" rating.