(Original title: The 5G penetration rate of the three major operators continues to increase, and the digital economy polishes the background of performance)
On the evening of May 21, the three major telecom operators all disclosed their main operating data or customer data announcements in April.
The announcement shows that the number of 5G package customers of China Mobile has reached 699 million, and the penetration rate of 5G users has reached 70%. 72%; the number of China Unicom’s “big connection” users has reached 909 million, and the number of 5G industry virtual private network service customers has reached 4,818.
The growth of the digital economy sector drives the valuation repair
The improvement of user data reflects the steady growth of performance. In the first quarter of 2023, the three major operators achieved a total operating income of about 477.7 billion yuan, and achieved a net profit of about 38.3 billion yuan attributable to the parent company, continuing the steady growth since last year. 10%.
Judging from the quarterly reports released by the three major operators, the operators are actively providing services for the digital transformation of various industries, and the revenue of industrial digital business has achieved rapid growth.
In the first quarter, China Mobile promoted the scale expansion of “network + cloud + DICT” in an integrated manner, promoted the quality and increase of the basic business of government and enterprises, replicated and promoted mature industry applications in scale, continued to optimize and expand the scale of mobile cloud, and maintained a strong growth momentum in the government and enterprise market During the period, the DICT business revenue was 29.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.9%.
China Telecom also seizes the opportunity of deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, continues to improve the level of computing power, and is driven by integrated cloud, integrated AI, integrated security, and integrated platforms to provide comprehensive intelligent information services that meet the needs of industry customers and give full play to E-surfing Cloud’s market competitiveness continues to create “5G + industry application” benchmark projects, and promotes the rapid development of the second growth curve. In the first quarter, the industrial digital business revenue reached 34.971 billion yuan, an increase of 18.9% year-on-year.
In the first quarter, China Unicom’s industrial Internet business realized revenue of 22.389 billion yuan, accounting for 26.0% of the main business revenue, an increase of 2.1 percentage points year-on-year. As the two major business segments of Unicom Industrial Internet, “Unicom Cloud” maintained good growth, achieving revenue of 12.79 billion yuan, an increase of 40% over the same period last year; big data achieved revenue of 1.498 billion yuan, an increase of 54.2% over the same period last year.
The rapid growth of the digital economy sector of the three major operators has driven valuation restoration. According to statistics from Wind Information, since November 21 last year, the stock prices of China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom have increased by 40.73%, 34.50%, and 50.13% this year, respectively, and Hong Kong stock prices have also risen.
Industry analysts said that behind the continuous rise in stock prices is the rapid growth of the digital economy sector, including the company’s cloud business. Digital transformation capabilities based on communication technology are becoming an important factor for operators to get rid of the “pipeline” trend and win back. The key to the dominance of the digital industry.
“At present, the three major operators, as state-owned enterprises with high dividends, low valuations, and occupying important national basic industries, are ushering in a revaluation.” Industry analysts said.
Constantly increase in computing power, AI and large models
Under the wave of ChatGPT, operators are also constantly increasing their computing power, AI and large models. On April 18, the China Mobile Communications Federation, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, China Radio and Television and other units jointly initiated the establishment of the GPT Industry Alliance, planning to jointly explore the mechanism and engineering path of the emergence of intelligence, and invent and support the emergence of intelligent business value And the technical structure of circulation, etc.
With the expansion of capitalization scenarios of data elements, operators with a large amount of data resources are expected to monetize massive data into real money and create new growth points for performance.
In the first quarter of this year, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom achieved operating income of 250.746 billion yuan, 129.753 billion yuan, and 97.222 billion yuan, respectively, an increase of 10.31%, 9.43%, and 9.21% year-on-year, respectively, and achieved net profits of 28.067 billion yuan and 97.222 billion yuan respectively. 7.984 billion yuan and 2.266 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.53%, 10.53%, and 11.56% respectively, and continued to maintain a growth rate of around 10%.
Behind the performance growth of the three major telecom operators is the company’s continuous and stable capital expenditure investment to build a stable, high-speed, and high-coverage communication network.
In 2022, the capital expenditure of the three major telecom operators will total 351.9 billion yuan, driving the development of upstream communication equipment, network construction and construction services, and downstream data application services. For example, due to the network construction needs of the three major telecom operators in 2022, the total domestic optical cable demand is about 260 million core kilometers, a year-on-year increase of more than 7%, and the price has improved significantly compared with 2021, resulting in the performance of optical fiber and cable manufacturers such as YOFC. The performance is equally impressive.