① The company rarely announced a 24-year performance outlook and proposed a net profit target of 1.5 billion yuan for A-shares; ② This is the first 24-year performance outlook announcement for A-shares. The company's move surprised the market; ③ The performance target stems from employee stock ownership plans many years ago, and there is a suspicion that it is new wine in old bottles.
Finance Association, January 24 (Reporter Luo Yichen) This evening, the pre-increase announcement issued by Jiufeng Energy (605090.SH) was particularly remarkable. In addition to the normal disclosure of 2023 profit forecast data, the company also announced its 2024 performance outlook, which is expected to achieve net profit of no less than 1.5 billion yuan.
An inquiry from the Financial Services Association revealed that this is the first A-share performance outlook announcement for 2024. Prior to that, only Artes (688472.SH) disclosed an announcement called the controlling shareholder's 2024 operating outlook. The reason was that the shareholder Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ) is a US listed company, and there are differences in accounting standards between the two places, but its disclosure was limited to data such as estimated component shipments in 2024, and did not involve profit expectations.
The practice of Jiufeng Energy directly announcing performance forecasts this time is quite rare. The Financial Services Association reporter interviewed two senior directors and secretaries. They all responded that they were very surprised. “It is rare indeed, but it is a voluntary disclosure, so you can do it if you want to.” “I don't understand. Generally, forecasting results is more about explaining the reason for the formation of performance. It involves forecasting performance for the next year, and can also provide accurate data. This is very difficult from an operational point of view.”
In fact, this is not the first time that the above performance data has been published. The data comes from the employee stock ownership plan released by the company in 2022. It is mentioned that the company-level performance assessment indicators are net profit due to mother of not less than 950 million yuan, 1.2 billion yuan (or the cumulative total of not less than 2.15 billion yuan in 2024), and 1.5 billion yuan (or not less than 3.65 billion yuan in the year 2022), respectively.
In other words, the company “packaged” the performance assessment indicators from many years ago into the 2024 performance outlook to announce it, and there was no similar operation in its 2022 performance forecast. As for the reason behind this, the CFA reporter noticed that when the company was recently surveyed by institutions, it was asked several times “How to achieve the goal of 1.5 billion yuan in net profit returning to mother in 2024?” Judging from the contents of the minutes, the agency said, “How can the company stabilize clean energy profits?” You must be skeptical.
Perhaps in response to questions, the company's announcement was not entirely “new wine in old bottles”. It also split the profit target of 1.5 billion yuan mentioned above, making it clear that the clean energy business, energy service business, and specialty gas business are expected to achieve net profits of 960 million yuan, 470 million yuan, and 70 million yuan respectively, while also explaining specific improvement measures.
In the recent year of 2023, Jiufeng Energy's performance increased. Net profit is expected to be 1.30 billion yuan to 1.33 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of 19.27% to 22.03% over the previous year. This performance is in line with the forecast targets of many brokerage firm research reports. According to reports, due to falling gas prices and growing demand from end users such as industry, gas power plants, etc., the company's LNG (including PNG) sales achieved a relatively rapid year-on-year increase, driving the company's LNG performance to improve steadily.