What happened: the company released its third quarter report in 2023. In the first three quarters of 2023, revenue reached 692 million yuan, an increase of 16.24 percent over the same period last year, and a net profit of 114 million yuan, an increase of 6.72 percent over the same period last year.
Main points of investment
The performance grew steadily and the expenses were well controlled during the period: revenue in the first three quarters of 2023 was 692 million yuan, an increase of 16.24% over the same period last year, and the net profit was 114 million yuan, an increase of 6.72% over the same period last year.
In a single quarter, Q3 achieved revenue of 442 million yuan in 2023, an increase of 26.62% over the same period last year, and net profit of 75 million yuan, an increase of 3.79% over the same period last year. In terms of profit indicators, the gross profit margin in the first three quarters of 2023 was 38.73%, down 3.33pct from the same period last year, and the net profit rate of sales was 16.50%, down 1.46pct from the same period last year; the expense rate during the period was 16.26%, down 5.86pct from the same period last year, and the expenses were well controlled during the period.
With abundant orders on hand, the release of production capacity with the promotion of investment projects is expected to accelerate: as of September 2023, accounts payable were 579 million yuan, an increase of 60.88% over the end of the previous year, and prepaid accounts were 22 million yuan, an increase of 56.52% over the end of last year. The inventory was 704 million yuan, an increase of 40.01% over the end of last year, mainly due to the influence of changes in business model and form of orders, increased demand for spare machines for lease orders and delivery orders, and increased reserve capacity for orders, indicating strong demand from downstream customers of the company. the company has plenty of orders. Directional fund-raising is used for UAV industrialization project and UAV system research project. with the continuous progress of the investment project, the company's core technology of UAV will be further strengthened and broken through, and the industrialization capability of UAV will be further improved. production capacity is expected to be released quickly.
Downstream demand is strong, the company's business demand is expected to grow steadily: the company takes inertial technology as the core, deep ploughing industry for nearly 20 years, and currently has three business sectors with intelligent unmanned system as the core: information perception, satellite communications and unmanned system. The company deeply ploughs the field of unmanned equipment manufacturing and unmanned system trial training, and has become the leading enterprise in the domestic trial training field. with the continuous promotion and deepening of the actual combat and normalization of military training, the blue army equipment market demand is exuberant. The business demand of the unmanned system plate is expected to increase steadily. In the field of information perception, supporting business with unmanned system products, with the rapid development of unmanned system business, is expected to maintain stable growth; benefiting from the high demeanor of the satellite communications industry, the company's "moving ZTO Express" system has high potential demand in both military and civilian fields.
Profit forecast and investment rating: the company's performance is in line with expectations. Based on the company's leading position in the field of unmanned target aircraft, we adjust our previous forecast for the company's net profit from 2023 to 2025. The net profit is estimated to be 3.070.23 / 4.050.44 / 5.06 (- 0.38) million respectively, corresponding to PE of 19-14-11, respectively, maintaining the "buy" rating.
Risk tips: 1) downstream demand is lower than expected; 2) fundraising project construction is not as expected; 3) R & D is not as expected.