The development of the leading third-party advertising technology platform is accelerating under the opportunity of the industry. As a global technology platform, the company is committed to promoting global business growth in the digital age. The company's core business Mintegral platform is the world's leading third-party advertising technology platform. According to the 14th edition of AppsFlyer "Advertising platform Comprehensive performance report", Mintegral is the top four of iOS and Android in the second half of 2021, and the only Chinese platform among the top five. At the same time, we attended more than 690 lists covering many categories, realizing the completeness of "quantity and quality". With the gradual disappearance of China's traffic dividend, going out to sea has become a trend. According to Amazon Cloud Technology, small and medium-sized enterprises account for 65% of the enterprises planning to go to sea. Compared with the head enterprises, these small and medium-sized enterprises lack the strength to quickly promote their products in the world. Therefore, there is an urgent need for one-stop marketing and cash-out platform, which is the company's strength. In this context, the company's revenue CAGR reached 24.62% in 2017-2021, including 755 million yuan in 2021, an increase of 46.36% over the same period last year.
Self-research + M & A, adhere to the long-term strategy of building SaaS tools ecology. In 2019, the company put forward the strategy of "SaaS tool ecology". In April 2021, the company announced plans to acquire hot cloud data, the industry's leading mobile advertising performance monitoring and data analysis platform. In September 2021, the company officially launched the one-stop intelligent marketing solution "Thermal engine" in conjunction with Hot Cloud data. At the same time, the company also introduced Zhu Xiaoqiang, the former BABA display advertising technology and head of AI algorithm platform, which provided a strong help for the company to speed up its entry into the To B SaaS track.
In the future, the company will continue to build SaaS tool ecology through independent research and development and strategic acquisition.
In the long run, the strategic flywheel formed by the construction of the SaaS tool matrix will promote the growth of the company's business and enhance the company's competitive advantage. We believe that the company has officially cut into the to B SaaS track, and in the future, with the company's continued efforts, SaaS business is expected to become a new growth pole of the company.
Pay close attention to the pain points of the industry, cloud and AI business can be expected in the future. According to Flexera's 2022 Cloud Computing status report, 59% of respondents plan to focus on optimizing cloud costs in 2022. It can be said that industry pain points are closely related to cloud costs. In this context, the company launched SpotMax, a comprehensive cloud cost optimization solution, which has two major functions: (1) to help enterprise cloud platforms scale and dynamically match their computing power on demand; and (2) to automatically select the most cost-effective Spot instance resources to ensure stability while greatly reducing costs. The company's MaxCloud can also improve cloud efficiency and human efficiency, and further reduce cloud costs. In terms of AI business, the company's EnginePlus aims to become the Databricks blessed by the Chinese version of AI, crossing the gap between explosive data growth and intelligent processing, building a new generation of infrastructure system to help customers digitalize transformation and intelligent upgrading. We believe that the company's cloud products can effectively solve the pain points of the industry, while AI products are in line with today's intelligent trend, and the future needs of the company's cloud and AI business may continue to release.
Profit forecast and investment advice: we believe that the company's third-party advertising platform has a large leading edge, at the same time, the company's SaaS strategy is making good progress, the cloud and AI business prospects are broad, the company may further open up the market space in the future. We expect the company to have a 2022-2023 EPS of US $0.03, respectively, and give the 2022 dynamic PS 12 times, corresponding to a target price of HK $8.32, with an "better than market" rating for first-time coverage.
Risk Tip: the company's business promotion is not as expected, industry policy risk.