JW CaiXun | bocom intl issued a research report stating that enn energy's core profit in the first half of the year decreased by 16.6% year-on-year to 3.26 billion yuan, in line with the bank's expectations. The company's diversified energy and smart home business achieved year-on-year growth of 17% and 23% in gross profit in the first half of the year respectively, reaching 1.07 billion yuan and 1.4 billion yuan, surpassing the gross profit of 0.82 billion yuan during the interconnection project period.
The bank expects that the proportion of interconnection project in the company's gross profit structure will decrease to 14% and 13% in 2024 and 2025 respectively, while the proportion of diversified energy and smart home business divisions will increase to a total of 37% and 40%, improving the stability of the company's profit structure.
The bank has raised its profit forecast for the company in 2024, 2025, and 2026 by 0.2%, 1.5%, and 2.3% respectively, to reflect the better-than-expected sales gas gross profit and gross profit growth of the smart home division. It is expected that the company's overall core profit in 2024 will still decline by 9.8% year-on-year due to last year's LNG trading, but it will recover to a year-on-year growth of 10.6% and 10.0% in 2025 and 2026 respectively. The bank still uses a forecast PE ratio of 9 times for 2025 as the valuation standard, and has raised the target price to HKD 65.1 (previously HKD 64.1). As the company's current profit structure has stabilized and next year's profit growth has better visibility, the bank believes that this mid-year report can support the company's valuation improvement and has upgraded the rating to buy.