Incident: The company recently released its 2023 annual report and the first quarter report of 2024. In 2023, we achieved revenue of 1,542 billion yuan, YoY +5.96%; net profit to mother of 123 million yuan, YoY +4.65%; gross profit margin of 28.98%, +0.14pct year over year; EBITDA of 1,051 million yuan, YoY +2.83%. In 2024Q1, we achieved revenue of 381 million yuan, YoY +2.51%; net profit to mother of 36 million yuan, YoY +1.91%; gross profit margin of 27.20%, -2.18pct year on year.
Comment: The gradual power-up of operating cabinets drives steady growth in performance. By business, in 2023, the company's IDC service revenue was 1,525 billion yuan, YoY +5.02%, gross profit margin 29.03%, up 0.16pct year on year; IDC solution business revenue was 0.1 billion yuan, YoY +304.49%, gross profit margin 17.25%, up 4.37pct year on year; cloud sales revenue was 5.4987 million yuan, YoY +1943.06%, gross profit margin 39.24%, up 26.75pct year on year. By region, in addition to the impact of natural disasters and changes in electricity billing models in the Beijing region, revenue growth was steady in 2023, mainly due to increased customer demand and increased electricity efficiency in cabinets. On the cost side, the company's sales/management/R&D/finance expenses in 2023 were 0.03/0.69/0.74/132 million yuan, respectively, YoY +1.61%/+2.14%/+8.63%/-15.62%, respectively.
Third-party IDC's leading enterprise, the steady expansion of scale has enabled the development of the AIGC industry. Data Port is China's leading third-party IDC service. According to the “China Third-Party Data Center Service Provider Analysis Report (2023)”, it ranks among the top three in the industry in terms of overall scale, capacity building, and green and low carbon.
On the industry side, the release of big AI models spawned a surge in demand for computing power. In the AIGC era, IDC vendors, as underlying computing power infrastructure service providers, fully benefited from the explosion of demand. In 2023, six departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the “Action Plan for the High-Quality Development of Computing Power Infrastructure”, which proposed that the computing power scale will exceed 300 EFLOPS in 2025, accounting for 35% of intelligent computing power. More than 60% of Chinese companies plan to deploy generative artificial intelligence within the next 12 to 24 months, according to Gartner's 2024 CIO and technology executives survey. The company is constructing and operating a total of 35 data centers. By the end of 2023, the number of IT megawatts operating reached 371 MW, which translates into about 74,200 5KW standard cabinets, which can support the computing power of 20 billion operations per second for major customers and continue to empower the development of the AIGC industry.
Profit forecast: Data Port China's leading third-party IDC company is optimistic that the company will benefit from the wave of AI-driven intelligent computing center construction and achieve steady and continuous growth in performance. It is expected to achieve revenue of 16.32/17.38/1,863 billion yuan in 2024-2026, and net profit of 1.50/1.81/214 million yuan, corresponding to EPS of 0.33/0.39/0.47 yuan. This is the first coverage, giving it a “buy” rating.
Risk warning: High customer concentration and increased market competition.