AIGC is leading the way, commercialization is beginning to take shape
Go Out and Ask was founded in 2012, with generative AI and voice interaction technology as the core, providing AIGC solutions, AI enterprise solutions, smart devices and other accessories. According to Insight Consulting, the company's market share in the NLP sector in 2022 in terms of revenue was 1.4%, ranking third, and in terms of revenue, the company's AIGC market share was 9.0%, ranking first. The company's revenue grew steadily in 2020-2022, with a slight increase of 1.49% to 510 million yuan in 2023, and AIGC's revenue share increased to 23.19%, reaching 120 million yuan, an increase of 195% over the previous year. The company has achieved a positive adjusted net profit since 2022. The adjusted net profit for 2022 and 2023 was 110 million yuan and 0.2 billion yuan respectively. As the share of AIGC business with higher gross margins increases, profitability is expected to further increase.
The AIGC application explosion period is approaching, and the company is expected to seize the opportunity
According to Insight Consulting, China's AIGC market will grow from 100 million yuan in 2020 to 400 million yuan in 2022. By 2027, the market size is expected to reach 32.6 billion yuan, with a CAGR of 136.3%, and the total potential market volume including downstream applications will exceed 100 billion yuan in 2027. As an emerging market, the current pattern is highly uncertain. China has launched more than 300 large models in the training or testing stage. We believe that going out and asking as a company that started the AIGC business earlier is expected to take advantage of the application layer's first-mover advantage and seize market opportunities. At the same time, AIGC can also effectively empower the company's other two business AI enterprise solutions and intelligent devices.
With the “sequential monkey” model as the core, the AI flywheel effect is beginning to appear and ask questions using the big model “sequential monkey” as a technical basis to help users generate content such as short videos, social media posts, and marketing materials for different application scenarios. Currently, the AIGC solution to ask questions has attracted about 865,000 cumulative paying users, and has generated more than 1 million payments since the solution was launched. According to SuperClue's December 2023 ranking, the sequential monkey ranked 8th in the Chinese model, surpassing GPT-3.5 Turbo. Although there is still a gap from GPT-4, the sequential monkey, as a smaller model, is expected to make rapid breakthroughs in commercial application and profitability.
Profit forecasting and investment advice
The company has a significant first-mover advantage in AIGC applications, and the flywheel effect is expected to continue under the rapid growth of the industry space. It is expected that AIGC related services will support the company's rapid growth in performance, and the improvement of AIGC's capabilities is also expected to have a synergy effect with the other two business lines. We expect the company's revenue for 2024-2026 to be $6.3/7.9/1.02 billion, with net profit attributable to mother of -$0.06/0.04/0.39 billion, and earnings per share of $0.00/0.00/0.03, corresponding to the closing price of HK$3.68 on April 24, 2024, and PS of 7.88/6.28/4.88X (HKD/RMB exchange rate 0.9057:1), respectively. Based on our profit forecast, the company's market sales rate for 2024-2025 is lower than the average of comparable companies. We are optimistic about its rapid growth in scale, covered for the first time, and given a “gain” rating.
Risk warning
AIGC customer churn risk; AI regulatory risk; increased industry competition.