Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The Hong Kong market is playing a more and more important role in connecting the mainland and overseas, expanding the ecological circle of new economy companies, and constantly improving the interconnection mechanism.

As the new IT leader in the Hong Kong stock market, Lenovo Group enjoys the advantages of international capital attention and pricing power of plate themes. at the same time, as the standard of Hong Kong stocks, it is also supported by the liquidity of southward funds. With the strengthening of the interconnection mechanism between the mainland and Hong Kong, the improvement in the liquidity of Hong Kong stocks, including Lenovo Group, will also bring more benefits.

Of course, all this is based on a sound basic disk. Over the past few years, Lenovo's performance has improved steadily and its share price has performed well. In recent years, under the trend of big data and artificial intelligence technology, Lenovo Group has continuously deepened its intelligent transformation strategy from a hardware product company to a service-oriented 3s full-stack full-cycle service provider.

A few days ago, after the release of Lenovo Group's financial results, a number of leading international and domestic securities firms, including UBS, CICC, Anxin International, Haitong International and so on, have issued bullish research reports one after another, which is an expression of recognition for the transformation of Lenovo's service business and an affirmation of its full-stack intelligence-driven long-term growth strategy.

Performance growth benefits artificial intelligence, international banks are bullish one after another

Two weeks ago, Lenovo released the results announcement for the first quarter of 2023. According to the financial report, as of June 30, 2023, Lenovo Group had achieved 90.3 billion yuan in revenue and 1.33 billion yuan in net profit.

Specifically, after overcoming the industry-wide challenge of digesting inventory, Lenovo's IDG smart device business with PC as the core still ranks first in the world in terms of PC share, while non-PC businesses such as ISG infrastructure solutions business and SSG solution services business further consolidate the engine of diversified growth, and the share of related revenue in its overall revenue has increased to 41.4 per cent.

Credit Suisse, a big international bank, published a research report pointing out that management expects the supply and demand of the personal computer market to return to normal, improve in the second half of the year, and shipments are estimated to have a single-digit growth next year. Artificial intelligence computer demand to support market growth will further accelerate in 2025. With growing value propositions, operating margins will be better than pre-epidemic levels.

The bank upgraded Lenovo's rating to "outperform" from "neutral" to "outperform" in the 2024-2025 fiscal year, and raised its target price from HK $7.10 to HK $9.50. It is believed that the company will be one of the main beneficiaries of artificial intelligence development.

Based on the commercial PC and AI layout prospects of Lenovo Group, Hong Kong brokerage Anxin International reported covering Lenovo Group for the first time and gave a "buy" rating to the target price of HK $10.20.

Pacific Securities Research News pointed out that the proportion of Lenovo Group's software and services business continues to increase, pulling up the overall gross profit margin, the smart device business group market is expected to be at an inflection point, and the company's high-performance computing business is growing rapidly. The company is expected to maintain its buy rating with EPS of $0.13,0.14 and $0.16 respectively for the year FY2024-FY2026.

China International Capital Corporation research newspaper pointed out that Lenovo Group AI PC products are expected to lead a new round of PC replacement wave in the future. The bank said that Lenovo's ISG infrastructure solutions business actively embraced the AI wave and was optimistic that it would achieve sustainable growth in the AI wave with its comprehensive AI product portfolio and stable partnership with the world's leading CSP customers. Based on this, China International Capital Corporation gave Lenovo a "outperform industry" rating.

Anxin International believes that Lenovo Group SSG solution service business performance for the gradual increase in service penetration, the future will be a strong profitability to promote the overall profitability.

In addition, including Zheshang Securities, Haitong International and other well-known securities firms at home and abroad, have also issued research reports, giving Lenovo Group "buy" or "outperform the market" rating.

There are natural signs of agency ratings, as evidenced by Lenovo's latest earnings data.

The latest financial report of Lenovo Group shows that the core of SSG solution service business is the "everything service" improvement service, which is particularly eye-catching, which is the embodiment of Lenovo Group's service-led transformation. According to the financial report, SSG's revenue rose 18% year-on-year, operating profit increased 10% year-on-year, and operating profit margin reached 21%.

At the same time, Lenovo Group storage, software, services and other key products have achieved strong growth, including 120% growth in storage business, ranking fourth in the world in market share; software and services revenue has increased by 50% and 11% respectively; high-performance server business has achieved 45% growth; and the emerging AI hardware infrastructure business has achieved triple-digit growth compared with the same period last year, ranking third in the world.

The intelligent transformation is beginning to bear fruit, with full-stack intelligence driving long-term growth.

The general concern of investment and research institutions is not only a positive evaluation of Lenovo's service-oriented transformation, but also an affirmation of its anchoring AI-driven long-term growth, full-stack intelligent strategy.

Global economic growth is uncertain and demand in the consumer electronics industry is weak. Open source securities research report pointed out that FY2024Q1 Lenovo Group PC channel inventory clean-up smoothly, channel inventory returned to a healthy level, terminal sales and terminal activation trend gradually consistent, the bottom position of the industry is basically confirmed, the follow-up revenue and profit end ring is more certain than the improvement trend.

According to the bank's research paper, the company plans to release AIPC with end-edge large model reasoning capability in 2024, equipped with NPU to improve computing power and reduce power consumption, and more AIPC product releases in 2025 are expected to drive a new replacement cycle. Maintain Lenovo's "buy" rating. The bank believes that Lenovo is still the core target of the AI PC+AI server and is expected to continue to benefit from the opportunities of the AI industry chain.

In fact, with forward-looking strategic thinking and with the support of the new IT technology architecture, Lenovo Group has actively embraced the AI development opportunities in the new computing era and realized the sustainable and healthy development of its business.

With the continuous integration of AI technology into various industries, AI-related industrial chain also ushered in broad opportunities for development. As a practitioner and enabler of intelligent transformation, Lenovo Group has created rich solutions in health care, education, transportation, energy, finance and other fields, and has helped more than 200 large and medium-sized enterprises to embark on the road of intelligent transformation.

Specifically, Lenovo's IDG smart device business leads the revolution in personal computing and promotes the transformation from PC to AI PC, making the latter a disruptive mixture of terminal, edge computing and cloud technology, fully meeting the needs of new generative AI workloads.

SSG Solutions Services business widely uses AI technology in its product portfolio, including AI device intelligence, spanning AI customer service, and AI enhanced vertical industry solutions.

The ISG Infrastructure Solutions business continues to deepen the layout of the artificial intelligence infrastructure, providing a rich AI portfolio and a powerful family of AI servers. In order to accelerate the deployment of AI, Lenovo will invest an additional 7 billion yuan in the next three years to expand the product portfolio of ISG infrastructure solutions and provide one-stop data support and solutions from pocket to cloud.

Driven by cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, the digital and intelligent changes in various industries are being accelerated. Under the guidance of its own intelligent strategic transformation, Lenovo Group launched AI, stabilized the performance basic market, and pried the new momentum of growth. At the same time, Lenovo Group has also contributed to the intelligent transformation of Qianhang Baiye with the help of "Puhui" arithmetic.

As the world's leading ICT technology enterprise and intelligent full-stack solution and service provider, Lenovo Group, with its powerful computing genes formed over the past decades, continues to increase the layout and innovation of the computing industry chain through the new IT technology framework covering all elements of "end-edge-cloud-network-intelligence", so as to meet the development opportunities under the tide of AI, and is bound to obtain liquidity support from the capital market!

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