The Zhitong Finance App learned that Nomura released a research report saying that the rating for China Unicom (00762) was upgraded from “neutral” to “buy,” the service revenue forecast for the 2023-2025 fiscal year was slightly raised by 1% to 2%, the profit forecast was raised by 0 to 4%, and the target price was raised from HK$5.4 to HK$5.7.

The bank expects the company to achieve higher service revenue and profit growth than the industry average in the fourth quarter of last year, mainly due to the steady growth of core businesses and the recovery of emerging businesses such as cloud computing. Due to Unicom's one-time depreciation costs of RMB 2.35 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, the bank expects Unicom's service revenue to increase 5% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2023, and profit to increase 36% year-on-year. Since Chen Zhongyue was appointed chairman in December 2023, the bank believes Unicom may speed up implementation in strategic growth areas such as big data and artificial intelligence.