Announcement summary: The company released the 2023 annual report and the 2024 quarterly report. In 2023, it achieved revenue of 1.09 billion yuan, up 17.13% year on year, net profit of 0.72 billion yuan, up 5.33% year on year, net profit after deducting 76 million yuan, up 12.27% year on year; 2024Q1 revenue of 331 million yuan, up 42.04% year on year, net profit from mother of 0.25 million yuan, up 25.2% year on year, net profit after deducting year 22 million yuan, up 12.54% year on year.
Revenue and profit have been expanding steadily, and repurchases have shown confidence in development. The company's 23Q4 revenue in a single quarter was 312 million yuan, up 20.56% year on year, up 8.67% month on month, net profit to mother was 6.2529 million yuan, down 35.97% year on year, net profit after deducting net profit of 13.363 million yuan, up 17.44% year on year, and annual non-current asset disposal loss of 6.8396 million yuan. By sector, the revenue of automotive products was 709 million yuan, an increase of 6 million yuan over the previous year.
36%, mobile phone products amounted to 266 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.55%. Energy storage products were put into production, achieving revenue of 3.8325 million yuan and mold fixture revenue of 16 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 19.14%. The annual comprehensive gross profit margin was 26.42%, up 0.68pct year on year, and the gross margin for automobiles/mobile phones/mold jigs was 32.27%/19.66%/26.29%, up 5.85/5.41/9.7pct, and the gross profit margin for energy storage products was 10.56%. The cost ratio for the period was 16.7%, a slight increase of 0.81 pct year on year, and the net profit margin was 6.61%, down 0.74 pct year on year. 2024Q1's revenue and profit hit a new high in a single quarter, with a gross profit margin of 22.78%, down 4.61 pcts year on year. It is expected to be mainly affected by the product structure. The cost ratio for the period is 15.3%, down 2.79 pct year on year, net interest rate 7.6%, and 1.02 pct year on year. Profitability is expected to improve as business structure optimization and scale effects become apparent. The company recently announced a repurchase plan. The company plans to use 30 million to 50 million yuan to repurchase about 2,624,700 shares to be used for employee stock ownership plans or equity incentives, accounting for 0.61%-1.02% of the total share capital. The repurchase price is no more than 11.43 yuan/share. The company announced the executive holdings increase plan in February. The chairman and general manager plans to increase their holdings by 3 million to 5 million yuan. The director and deputy general manager plans to increase their holdings by a total of 10 million to 20 million yuan. In conjunction with the previously released 2023 equity incentive plan, the company's I am confident of my medium- to long-term stable development.
Expand production capacity of new energy connectors and increase research and development to help upgrade products. According to the latest announcement, due to reasonable savings in capital raised, the original production capacity plan is expected to invest less than the initial plan. The company plans to adjust the total investment of the “NEV Connector Project” and the amount of capital to be raised in the fixed increase project from 400 million yuan to 250 million yuan. At the same time, it also plans to stop implementing Dongtai's “New Energy Vehicle Connector Research and Development Center Project”. Of the remaining capital raised, 180 million yuan will be invested in the new “Green Intelligent Manufacturing Base” project, and 35 million yuan will be invested in the new Shanghai. “Enterprise R&D Center Upgrading and Renovation Project”. After the adjustment, the investment scale of the green intelligent manufacturing base project increased to 500 million yuan, reaching an estimated annual production capacity of 20 million (sets) of new energy connectors. The construction of the project will help meet the needs of customers in downstream automotive, photovoltaic energy storage and other industries, cooperate with existing production bases in Hunan, cover South China and central China, meet customer needs for new products, increase the NEV market share of the company's products, reduce product costs, and enhance economic efficiency. At the same time, on the basis of expanding existing business, the technology and management advantages accumulated over many years can be extended to create new business growth points. The company adheres to R&D innovation. The professional R&D team covers product design, mold design, process engineering and other fields, and has the ability to simultaneously develop new products with foreign automakers and automotive electronic module integrators. In 2023, R&D investment was 66 million yuan, an increase of 16.98% over the previous year, accounting for 6.03% of revenue.
Accelerate industrial layout and broaden downstream applications. The company grasps automotive electrification and intelligent development trends and global supply chain restructuring opportunities in the auto parts industry, focusing on the automotive connector field, continuously improving the overall solution product layout for electronic and electrical architecture connectors such as millimeter wave radar modules, lidar modules, domain controller systems, autonomous driving systems, intelligent cockpit systems, electronic control systems, etc., and has developed more than 2000 automotive connectors and component products, thousands of sets of automotive molds, and has developed various types of high-voltage high-current connectors, high-definition high-speed high-frequency connectors and other products in the field of new connectors. Customers cover major domestic and foreign auto parts manufacturers such as Valeo, Magna, Cosda, BYD, Ningde Era, Honeycomb Electric Drive, Huichuan Technology, Joyson Electronics, and Marelli. The terminals are used in Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, GM, Ford, SAIC, FAW, BYD, Great Wall, Geely, Tesla, Changan, Cyrus, Ideal, and Xiaomi. The company plans to cooperate with universities on the central architecture and application of multi-domain backbone networks with TSN as the backbone of Ethernet, which is expected to expand the intelligent layout of automobiles. While continuing to promote the application of NEV connectors, we are actively developing and applying connectors for energy storage, optical modules, data centers, robots, etc. In 2023, the new products developed by the company in the fields of energy storage and hydrogen energy batteries have passed testing and certification, and some products have been sold, and the layout in various fields is progressing smoothly.
Investment suggestion: Aimu Co., Ltd. is a leading domestic supplier of automotive connectors. It has established a first-mover advantage. Customers cover the world's mainstream auto parts suppliers, fully benefiting from the boom in the industry and the broad space for domestic replacement. Taking into account short-term downstream demand and industry competition factors, we will adjust the company's profit forecast. The net profit forecast for 2024-2026 is expected to be 127 million/182 million/257 million yuan, respectively (the original 24-25 forecast value was 242 million/339 million yuan), EPS They are 0.30 yuan/0.43 yuan/0.60 yuan respectively, and the corresponding PE is 25X/17X/12X, which is at a relatively low level in history. Combined, the company's performance growth rate is expected to pick up and maintain the “buy” rating.
Risk warning: risk of rising prices of major raw materials; risk of downstream demand falling short of expectations; risk of technology iteration; risk of increased competition in the NEV industry; risk of untimely research information updates.