Incidents. On April 27, the company released its 2023 annual report and 2024 quarterly report. In 2023, the company achieved revenue of 854 million yuan, an increase of 3.02% over the previous year, and realized net profit of 235 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 15.64%. In the first quarter of 2024, the company achieved revenue of 216 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.74%; realized net profit to mother of 455.597 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.85%.
Adhere to the “2+2” business strategy, focus on emerging and high-end markets, and drive steady revenue growth. The company will continue to optimize the product structure in 2023, continue to promote informatization and automation, and improve the company's production efficiency.
The company's revenue for the full year of 2023 was 854 million yuan, up 3.02% year on year, and the revenue level reached a record high.
From a business split perspective, due to the rapid growth in high-end microscope sales, sales revenue in 2023 reached 414 million yuan, an increase of 15.76% over the previous year; revenue from the optical component business fell 6.59% due to inventory removal from customers related to the bar code scanning business. On the cost side, the company continued to maintain a high investment in R&D. In 2023, expenses were 91.7628 million yuan, an increase of 15.58% year on year, R&D expenses increased 1.17 pct year on year; sales/management expenses increased 20.51/6.84% year on year. In the first quarter of 2024, the company achieved revenue of 216 million yuan, an increase of 14.74% year on year, and a year-on-year increase of 27.09% after deducting non-net profit. The performance trend continues to improve.
The company continues to develop and innovate products in the fields of high-end microscopes, medical optics, etc., and is committed to speeding up the domestic substitution process.
Accelerate product upgrading and innovation, and promote the steady development of the company's performance. 1) In the field of microscopes, the company accelerated the NEXCOPE series product upgrade in 2023, which can now meet most of the needs of high-end optical microscopes in life science, scientific research and medical treatment, industrial testing, teaching, etc. The company's high-end optical microscope brand NEXCOPE series product revenue increased from 4 million yuan in 2018 to nearly 140 million yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of over 100%; 2) Barcode scanning business: Since Q3 2023, the bar code scanning business has been growing positively quarterly, and the business will resume at an accelerated pace in 2024. At the same time, the company received orders for bar code scanning giants Zebra and Honeywell modules, and will gradually increase product market share in the second half of 2024; 3) Vehicle lidar business: the company actively grasps automotive lidar industry opportunities, maintains deep cooperative relationships with well-known domestic and foreign companies in the lidar field such as Hesai, Tudatong, Valeo, Innoviz, etc., and obtained fixed points for Hesai's standard lidar components and fixed optical points for Tudatong 905 nm lidar components; 4) Company 10x -Stable mass production of 100x full set of achromatic objectives and endoscopic lenses. Four-channel filters with a depth of OD>6 have been tested and can be supplied in batches, and R&D and mass production and sales of NA1.49 large numerical aperture objectives have been completed. It is currently the only domestic enterprise commercializing this level of optical objective lenses. We believe that with the improvement of the company's business structure and continued investment in R&D to develop high-end microscopes and medical optics, the company's performance may steadily improve.
Profit forecast and investment rating: We predict that the company's net profit for 2024-2026 will be 3.09/3.96/528 million yuan, and the current stock price corresponding to PE is 26/21/15 times, respectively. As the company continues to expand the high-end optical microscope market and accelerate the upgrading of medical optical technology, future performance is expected to grow rapidly and maintain a “buy” rating.
Risk warning: risk of technological innovation, risk of exchange rate fluctuations, risk of changes in the international trade environment, risk of market expansion with new production capacity, market demand falling short of expectations.