On August 9th, according to Financial Associated Press (Editor Feng Yi), Hong Kong's telecommunication stocks collectively fell, and due to the impact of slowing industry revenue growth, market expectations for medium-term performance in this sector further weakened.

As of press time, China Unicom (00762.HK) and China Telecom (00728.HK) both fell more than 4%, China Mobile (00941.HK) fell more than 1%, China Comservice (00552.HK) and Citi Telecom (01883.HK) followed the decline.

According to recent news, China Mobile announced half-year revenue of 546.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.0%, while net income was 80.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%.

As the leader of the telecommunications industry, China Mobile's interim revenue and net income only increased by a single digit, directly causing worries for the market regarding a slowdown in industry growth.

Research from HSBC indicated that China Mobile's revenue for the first half of the year was 1.7% lower than expected. Among them, the reason for the decline in mobile ARPU was that the value of new customers was relatively low and data usage had decreased. At the same time, due to the current challenging macro environment, growth in the data and information and communications technology (DICT) business has slowed down.

In addition, China Mobile Chairman Yang Jie also stated at the mid-term performance briefing that the company's revenue growth in the first half of the year slowed down, mainly due to factors such as insufficient demand and transformation, upgrade, and adjustment. Traditional communication needs have become saturated, and new potential information service demands need to be further explored and stimulated. The cultivation of new AI momentum will also take time.

Note: The cumulative growth rate of telecom service revenue and total volume of telecom service in H1.

According to data published earlier by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the first half of 2024, cumulative telecom service revenue reached 894.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3%, which is 1.5 percentage points lower than the growth rate in the first quarter.

Of particular concern is that from the situation in June this year, total telecom service revenue was 154.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2.9 billion yuan, and the year-on-year growth rate has already shown negative growth.

This means that the issue of slowing growth in the communications industry may further increase, and operators in the second half of the year may face greater downward pressure.

Lyon, the international investment bank, has released its research report stating that due to government and corporate cutting IT expenditures under weak economic conditions, the performance of Chinese telecommunications stocks in the first half of this year will be weaker, and the growth of total service revenue will slow to 3% to 4%.

However, judging from China Mobile's signal of a slowdown in the growth of its industrial internet income in the first half of the year, Lyon expects that the relevant revenue growth of China Telecom and China Unicom will also slow to single digits.