2023 and 1Q24 results are in line with our expectations

The company announced its 2023 and 1Q24 results: in 2023, the company achieved operating income of 1.51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.7%; realized net profit to mother of 200 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 10.4%; net profit after deducting non-return to mother was 160 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 16.6%. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the company achieved revenue of 420 million yuan, an increase of 28.5% year on year; realized net profit of 40 million yuan, an increase of 13.4% year on year; net profit after deducting non-return to mother was 0.3 billion yuan, an increase of 28.7% year on year. During the 1Q24 period, the company achieved revenue of 340 million yuan, an increase of 3.4% year on year, net profit of about 44 million yuan, up 8.6% year on year, and deducted non-net profit of about 37 million yuan, an increase of 23.5% year on year. The overall performance was in line with our expectations.

Development trends

The steady development of PLC drives the business to a high growth rate and a stable market position. In 2023, the company's programmable logic controllers/drive systems/human-machine interfaces/intelligent devices achieved revenue of 5.4/7.3/1.8/0.4 billion yuan respectively, an increase of 4.8%/22.7%/-3.4%/+54.5% year-on-year. According to MIR data, the company's small PLC market share in 2023 was about 7.5%, ranking second in the market, and the servo business ranked third in the market with a market share of about 3.0%. Overall, the company continues to introduce new products. On the one hand, the control layer has successively launched new products such as the XS/XC/XD series and actively promoted the expansion of medium-sized PLC and other products; on the other hand, the driving layer company launched high-performance servos such as DS5L2\ DS5C2, and stepper products have also ushered in breakthroughs in sales scale, thereby continuously strengthening competitiveness in various industries such as 3C, printing and dyeing, and building materials.

Profitability has gradually improved over the past two quarters, and overall cost control has been stable. During the 4Q23 and 1Q24 period, the company's gross margin was about 41.3%/39.0%, up 1.5ppt/7.6ppt year on year, and the net margin was about 10.6%/10.5%, up 1.3 ppt/0.4ppt year on year. In 2023, the company's sales/management/R&D expenses rate was about 9.4%/4.6%/9.8%, respectively, with a year-on-year change of 1.1 ppt/-0.1 ppt. We believe that as the company continues to strengthen marketing and sales network construction for major terminal customers, and at the same time, the overall sales cost rate and R&D cost rate have increased year-on-year in the new product and sex industry, but overall control is still relatively stable.

Profit forecasting and valuation

Due to increased cost investment, we lowered 2024 net profit by 8.5% to 237 million yuan, and also introduced net profit of 2025 of 289 million yuan. The current stock price corresponds to the 2024/25 price-earnings ratio of 17.4/14.3x price-earnings ratio. Maintaining an outperforming industry rating, due to the lower profit forecast, we simultaneously lowered our target price by 11% to the target price of 40 yuan, which corresponds to the 2024/25 price-earnings ratio of about 23.7x/19.5x. Compared with the current stock price, there is still room for 36.3% increase.

risks

Downstream demand falls short of expectations, and industry competition intensifies