通信行业半年报：边际向好，蓄势待发

Investment Rating - The communication industry is rated as "Buy" with a positive outlook for the next 12 months [2][34]. Core Insights - The communication industry showed improved operational margins in Q2, with expectations for continued recovery in the second half of the year. The industry achieved revenue of 1.29 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.93%, and a net profit of 127.4 billion yuan, up 7.41% year-on-year. Excluding the three major operators, other companies reported revenue of 277.3 billion yuan, a growth of 7.73%, and a net profit of 19.3 billion yuan, up 14.87% year-on-year [6][16]. - The telecom operators' revenue and profit growth are expected to stabilize in the second half of the year, despite a decline in growth rates due to external macro challenges. The data center sector, particularly leading optical module companies, is expected to continue high growth driven by increased capital expenditures from overseas tech giants [6][16]. - The report suggests maintaining an overweight position in telecom operators and optical modules for long-term investment, driven by stable operations and high dividends for telecom operators, and high demand in the data communication market due to AI for optical modules [6][16]. Summary by Sections 1. Core Insights - The communication industry is expected to maintain a positive trend in the second half of the year, with companies adapting to complex external environments [6]. - The data center sector is experiencing a recovery, supported by domestic and international demand, particularly in AI [6][16]. - The satellite internet sector is seeing some demand increase but faces pricing pressures [6][16]. 2. Market Review - The communication sector underperformed the broader market, with a decline of 0.50% compared to a 0.17% drop in the CSI 300 index [7][8]. - Year-to-date, the communication sector has seen a decline of 5%, outperforming the ChiNext index by 14.7% [8]. 3. Industry Data Update - As of the end of 2023, China has built 3.377 million 5G base stations, a net increase of 1.065 million from the previous year, representing 29.1% of total mobile base stations [16]. - In July 2024, domestic smartphone shipments reached 24.204 million units, with 5G smartphones accounting for 85.3% of total shipments [17]. - The number of 5G users reached 528 million by July 2024, with significant growth in the IoT sector, which now has 2.547 billion users [19][20]. 4. Recent News - IDC has raised its forecast for global smartphone shipments in 2024 to 1.2 billion units, driven by demand for affordable Android devices and the integration of generative AI in high-end products [25][26]. - The largest AI computing center in China has been launched, capable of performing 690 exaflops of floating-point operations per second, supporting the training of trillion-parameter models [29].