Summary of events: on August 14, the company released its semi-annual report of 2023, with operating income of 339 million yuan in the first half of the year, an increase of 7.5% over the same period last year, a net profit of 32 million yuan, a decrease of 45.2% over the same period last year, and a net profit of 20 million yuan after deduction, down 41.4% from the same period last year. From the perspective of Q2 single quarter, the operating income was 184 million yuan, an increase of 5.5 percent over the same period last year, an increase of 18.6 percent over the previous year, and a net profit of 16 million yuan, a decrease of 53.6 percent and an increase of 4.7 percent over the same period last year.
The fluctuation of downstream demand and increased investment in research and development of new products and new processes have led to short-term pressure on performance: in the first half of the year, revenue increased by 7.5%, but net profit decreased by 45.2%. The main influencing factors include: 1) the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has a certain impact on the company's overseas business; 2) the market demand for downstream optical communications and data centers fluctuated and decreased to a certain extent in the first half of the year. 3) the demand of the downstream industrial laser industry is insufficient, and the domestic market competition is fierce, the price of fiber laser devices is lower than the same period last year; 4) the company continues to increase investment in R & D of new products and new processes, such as thin film lithium niobate high-speed modulator chips and devices, self-driving car lidar light source modules, etc., and R & D costs increase by 17.94 million yuan compared with the same period last year, an increase of 39.7%. From the perspective of product structure, the revenue of optical fiber laser devices business was 212 million yuan, an increase of 25.2% over the same period last year, but fierce competition in the industry led to a drop in gross profit margin (7.0pct) and revenue from optical communication devices (94 million yuan), down 2.4% from the same period last year. However, gross profit margin increased by 8.9pct over the same period last year, mainly due to the increase in the proportion of products with high gross profit margin in the product structure.
Lithium niobate field strength is outstanding, the future is promising: lithium niobate field company has a world-class technical team and mastered core technologies including chip design, chip manufacturing, packaging and testing. It is currently one of the three leading companies in the industrialization and scale of ultra-high-speed modulator chips and modules. At present, the company is focusing on the development of 800Gbps and above thin film lithium niobate coherent and incoherent modulator products, and will take advantage of the development opportunities of lithium niobate series of high-speed optical modulator chips and devices in the fields of communication, data center, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, sensing and other fields to fully open the future growth space.
The Thailand Light Bank production base project has been actively promoted and the production capacity layout has been continuously optimized: on June 8, 2023, the company issued the "2023 Summary Stock issuance Plan to specific objects", which intends to raise no more than 280 million yuan for the "Thailand Light Bank production Base Project" and "supplementary working capital". It will increase the production capacity of optical communication devices and laser light source modules by purchasing land and building new production lines. After reaching production, it can produce 2.84 million pieces of optical communication devices and laser light source modules per year. According to the latest announcement issued by the company on August 14, the current project has been actively promoted, the purchase of land and above-ground buildings has been completed and the ownership certificate has been obtained, and the notice of BOI preferential policy resolution approved by Thailand Investment Committee (BOI) has been obtained.
Investment advice: taking into account the downstream demand fluctuations, the overall still needs to be further improved, we downgrade the profit forecast, the company's 2023-2025 net profit is expected to be 1.10x162x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x27x, corresponding to the PE multiple of 99ppm / 68x47x. As a domestic scarce supplier of lithium niobate chips and devices, the company is expected to fully benefit from the large market space, digital communication and other emerging application scenarios brought by thin film lithium niobate in the future, as well as the opportunity to improve the competition pattern brought by domestic substitution. Maintain the recommended rating.
Risk hint: the demand for fiber laser and optical communications is lower than expected, and the progress of lithium niobate business is not as expected.