Key points of investment:
Performance reviews
The company announced its 2023 & 2024Q1 results announcement, achieving revenue of 72.25 billion yuan, +79.5% year on year, net profit of 9.44 billion yuan, +162.7% year on year; net profit without return to mother of 9.22 billion yuan, +172.2% year on year; of which 23Q4 net profit attributable to mother was 2.22 billion yuan, +44.6% year on year; net profit without return to mother was 2.14 billion yuan, +44.3% year on year; 24Q1 achieved revenue of 12.61 billion yuan, +0.26% year over year, net profit to mother of 20.96 billion yuan Compared to +39.1%; net profit not attributable to mother was 2.08 billion yuan, +42.8% year-on-year.
The inverter sector achieved a sharp rise in volume profit in '23, and is expected to maintain Gaozeng's 23 inverter shipments of 130 GW, +69%, maintaining the leading position in the industry. Among them, 23Q4 shipments exceeded 45 GW, over 70% year on year; gross profit margin of 37.93% (4.7pct increase year on year), which increased profitability significantly, mainly due to continued scale effects. Among them, manufacturing costs, procurement costs, etc. all declined to a certain extent; 24Q1's inverter shipments were about 29 GW, compared with +37% compared to the same period. Overseas accounts for a relatively high factor, we The gross margin is expected to be about 40%, up from Q4; we expect the company to ship about 170GW of inverters in '24, about 30% compared to the same period, and profitability is expected to remain relatively stable.
High profits in the energy storage sector continue to exceed expectations. Shipments in 24 are expected to double the company's energy storage shipments in '23, +36%; profitability increased by leaps and bounds, with gross margin increasing by 14.3 pcts to 37.5% year on year, mainly due to strong demand in overseas energy storage markets and higher profit levels in the US, Europe, etc.; the company's 24Q1 energy storage business revenue is slightly lower than the same period last year, mainly due to the low season in Q1 and delays in revenue confirmation for individual projects; we expect the company's energy storage shipments to double by about 21 GWh compared to the same period last year. I want Incremental markets include the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Among them, demand for large reserves has been strong in the European market for 24 years.
The new energy investment and development business achieved a high increase, benefiting from upstream price cuts and an increase in profit levels. The company's new energy investment and development business achieved revenue of 24.7 billion yuan, +113% year-on-year, mainly due to the company's accelerated transformation to distributed household business, and the annual installed capacity of household photovoltaic development increased by 200%; benefiting from the price reduction of upstream raw materials, the profitability of the development business improved markedly, and the gross margin increased from 12% to 16%.
Profit forecasting and investment advice
Considering industry competition factors, we expect the company's net profit from 2024-2026 to be 108/128/14.7 billion yuan (the value was 122/155 billion yuan 24-25 years ago), and the current stock price is 13.3/11.2/9.8 times PE. Considering that the company is a leader in integrating global photovoltaic inverters and large-scale storage systems, the share of overseas revenue continues to rise, and the scale effect is gradually strengthening, which is expected to highlight Alpha in industry competition. We gave the company 20 times PE in 2024, corresponding to a target price of 145.56 yuan, to maintain the purchase rating.
Risk warning
Demand fell short of expectations, overseas trade frictions escalated, industry competition was fierce, and performance fell short of expectations.