Incidents:
On the evening of August 15, Dongfang Cable released its 2024 semi-annual report. 2024H1 achieved net profit of 0.644 billion yuan to mother, an increase of 4.38% over the previous year. 2024Q2 achieved net profit of 0.381 billion yuan to mother, an increase of 5.54% year over year.
Investment highlights:
2024H1 performance exceeded market expectations. Hailu Resonance 2024H1's submarine cable business revenue was 1.485 billion yuan, down 10.33% year on year and up 33.78% month on month. Due to the delivery of Guangdong Electric Qingzhou 1 and 2 500kV projects in 2023H1, the base is high, so although there was a slight year-on-year decline, it still slightly exceeded market expectations. 2024H1's land cable business revenue was 2.294 billion yuan, up 25.91% year over year. Among them, the South Grid and the State Grid won a lot of bids, and mainly medium and high pressure, the gross margin remained at around 10%. Taken together, the company's 2024H1 submarine cable and land cable revenue all showed strong performance.
Ongoing orders are back on the rise. Overseas large orders were the first to land as of August 12, 2024. The company's on-hand orders for submarine cables were 2.949 billion yuan, and offshore engineering orders were 1.433 billion yuan. Among them, the company won the 1.8 billion yuan overseas order from Inch Cape Offshore during the reporting period, driving the company's current order amount back to an upward trend. According to our tracking statistics, the number of newly approved domestic Haifeng projects increased dramatically in 2024. By the end of July, the number of approved projects to be tendered reached more than 22GW, an increase of about 140% over the previous year. We expect these projects to enter the bidding stage one after another in the next 1-2 years. In addition, we expect that tenders for high-volume 500kV and flexible projects will be launched, and the company's ongoing orders will further increase dramatically, which will support performance growth in the next two years.
We continue to focus on recommending that Dongfang Cable's new orders will continue to grow in the next year, that a large number of domestic projects will continue to be tendered, and that the company's flexible and 500kV large-scale project orders are expected to continue to land.
Profit forecast and investment rating Considering the return of the company's active order amounts in 2024, and the steady delivery of Hailufeng orders, we raised the company's profit forecast. We expect the company to achieve revenue of 8.8, 10.2, and 11.8 billion yuan in 2024, 2025, and 2026, respectively, and is expected to achieve net profit of 1.346, 1.784, and 2.144 billion yuan, corresponding to current stock prices of 23.35x, 17.61x, and 14.65x, respectively. Considering that it began in 2024, domestic ocean wind approval accelerated, and the company successfully opened up overseas markets and received orders from Inch Cape Offshore and SSE, which provided room for long-term growth, and the company's PE valuation was still at a medium level, so the “buy” rating was maintained.
Risks suggest that the domestic offshore wind power construction process falls short of expectations; domestic maritime use policies fall short of expectations; the company's new orders fall short of expectations; rising copper prices are squeezing profitability due to rising costs; and progress in obtaining overseas orders falls short of expectations.