Haitong Int'l released research reports, stating that Kunlun Energy (00135) achieved revenue of 92.922 billion yuan in H1 2024, a 10.5% year-on-year increase; pre-tax profit of 7.249 billion yuan, a 6.74% year-on-year increase; net income attributable to parent company of 3.305 billion yuan, a 2.6% year-on-year increase; the company plans to distribute dividends for the first time at 16.41 yuan per share, with a payout ratio of 43%, and aims to further increase the payout ratio to 45% in 2025.

The bank continued to point out that in H1 2024, the company's gas sales volume was 26.438 billion cubic meters, a 10.6% year-on-year increase. Among them, retail gas volume/wholesale gas volume increased by 10.3%/11.0% year-on-year to 16.302/10.136 billion cubic meters. The retail gas volume for industrial and commercial/residential/cNG stations increased by 16.8%/5.5%/-34.6% to 13.265/2.091/0.947 billion cubic meters respectively. It is worth noting that the company's sales structure continued to optimize, with the proportion of gas sales to industrial and commercial users increasing by 4.6 percentage points year-on-year, mainly benefiting from the growth of "three new" industrial users (new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaic products). In terms of users, the company added 0.449 million new users during the reporting period, bringing the total number of users to 16.053 million households, further solidifying its leading position in the terminal market.

Looking ahead to 2024, the bank believes that the macroeconomic and industry environment still face challenges, but based on the continuous optimization of the company's sales structure and relatively stable overall operation, the bank maintains the company's main revenue for FY24-26 at 189.98/202.59/215.16 billion yuan respectively. The corresponding net income attributable to the parent company is 5.666/6.077/6.497 billion yuan, with a target price of 8.11 HKD per share, maintaining an "outperform the market" rating.