Summary of the publishing industry in 2023 and the first quarter of 2024: steady growth of the industry focuses on the "platform value" of local state-owned enterprises
Introduction to this report:
In 2023, the publishing industry will maintain a steady growth, and the dividend will increase. After reducing the impact of tax, the business performance of 2024Q1 will remain stable. It is suggested to focus on local state-owned publishing companies with rich cash and deep channel capacity.
Summary:
2023 Annual Report: steady growth, increased dividend. In 2023, the total revenue of A-share listed companies in the publishing industry will increase by 3.4% year on year. 19 companies are growing, and the net profit attributable to the parent company will increase by 29% year on year. There are 12 companies whose growth rate exceeds 30%; Compared with the same period last year, 19 publishing companies in the 2023 annual report have increased the dividend scale, mainly local state-owned publishing companies. From the perspective of space, most of the 18 local state-owned publishing companies still have less than 60% of the dividend ratio, and 12 have less than 50%. There is still room for improvement.
Without considering the impact of tax, the 24Q1 profit of the publishing industry increased slightly year on year. The first quarter report of 2024 shows that the total net profit attributable to the parent company of 21 state-owned publishing companies decreased by 23.4% year on year, mainly because the state-owned publishing companies began to face the impact of income tax, and most of them have not started to adopt appropriate preferential policies in this quarter. We can find that the real situation of the total pre tax profits restored to the business situation, The total pre tax profit of 21 state-owned publishing companies in the publishing industry increased by 2.5% year on year, of which 12 companies increased year on year. Most companies did not see a significant decline, but the tax adjustment affected the net profit attributable to the parent company.
Pay attention to high-quality local state-owned enterprises with rich cash and deep channels. 18 local state-owned enterprises are an important part of publishing listed companies, accounting for a large proportion of both profits and market value. These companies have steady cash flow, rich cash reserves in hand, and unique channel advantages and solid basic business in their regions. Looking forward to 2024, we believe that we can screen companies with cost performance ratio from two perspectives: 1) companies with rich cash, high dividend yield, and can support dividend distribution and M&A expectations, some of which have cash accounts for more than 50% of the market value, and from the perspective of comprehensive dividend ratio improvement space and current dividend ratio, Phoenix Media Six companies, including Changjiang Media, have great expectations; 2) Companies that rely on their own channel advantages to actively expand other business types, at least 12 local publishing companies are actively expanding new businesses such as smart education, after-school services, and research.
The publishing industry is growing steadily and the overall qualification of the industry companies is good, which can be screened from three main lines: 1) Local publishing companies with large "cash market value" ratio and high dividend rate benefit from Chinese Media, Xinhua Wenxuan, Phoenix Media, Central South Media and Shandong Publishing; 2) Publishing companies that actively develop new business directions will benefit from the target city media, Anhui New Media, Southern Media, Times Publishing and Zhongyuan Media; 3) Professional publishing and public publishing companies with unique publishing characteristics recommend CITIC Publishing, and benefit from China Science and Communication, Century Tianhong, and Rongxin Culture.
Risk tip: the risk of industrial demand slowing down, and AI technology landing is not as expected.
