Volume and price have risen sharply, and profits have maintained an upward trend. In 2023, the company achieved operating income of 293.403 billion yuan, +8.54% year on year; net profit to mother of 21.119 billion yuan, +5.38% year over year; net profit after deduction of 21.617 billion yuan, +10.68% year on year. Among them, Q4 achieved operating income of 68.395 billion yuan, +3.41% year over month, -9.16% month on month; net profit to mother of 4.954 billion yuan, +46.8% year on month, -15.49% month on month; net profit after deducting back to mother of 6.499 billion yuan, +77.63% year over month.
Mining copper and gold production reached record highs. In 2023, the company achieved mineral copper production of 1.01 million tons, +11% over the same period. It became the only copper mining company in China that broke the one million mark, and it is also the fastest growing large-scale copper mining company in the world in recent years. Achieved 67.7 tons of mineral gold production, +20% year over year; mineral zinc (lead) production of 467,000 tons, +3% year over year; and mineral silver production of 412 tons, +4% year over year. The company plans to produce 111 and 1.17 million tons of mineral copper, 73.5 and 90 tons of mineral gold, and 2.5 and 120,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent in 2024 and 25, respectively. Production of main products will continue to increase significantly in the future.
Many projects are progressing in an orderly manner, and the growth of leading mining companies can still be expected. The company's main mineral copper and gold resources and production capacity are leading in China, the top ten in the world, and ranked fifth in the world in terms of copper production in 2023.
At the same time, multiple incremental projects are progressing in parallel and in an orderly manner to create the company's sustainable growth. On the copper side, the three major bases of Congolese Gold, Tibet, and Serbia are implementing large-scale production expansion and technical improvement plans, and existing projects are expected to add more than 500,000 tons of production capacity within the next 3-5 years; on the gold side, the company has formed a number of major gold mines in Central Asia, South America, Oceania, and China to boost the annual increase in gold production; the company strongly lays out new energy minerals such as lithium, forming the “Two Lakes and Two Mines” lithium asset layout, and holds the largest single molybdenum deposit in the world.
Investment advice: The company is a leader in the global mining industry. Resource mergers and acquisition+independent exploration help the company continue to expand its gold, copper and lithium resource reserves. The construction and expansion of multiple mining projects will support the company's main product capacity and output to maintain the growth trend in the next three years, while also having a leading low-cost competitive advantage. The company is expected to achieve operating income of 3454.09/3819.93/405.565 billion yuan in 2024-2026, net profit to mother of 250.72/326.32/36.903 billion yuan, respectively, and corresponding EPS of 0.95/1.24/1.40, respectively. Maintain the company's “buy” rating.
Risk warning: The price of the main product has dropped sharply, and the construction progress of the project falls short of expectations.