Career International(SZ:300662) Haitong Securities·2024-06-03 00:31Investment Rating - The investment rating for the company is "Outperform the Market" and is maintained [2]. Core Views - The company has shown improvements in efficiency and quality since the second half of 2023, with a focus on the recovery of the recruitment market. In Q1 2024, the company reported a revenue of 2.64 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.3%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 40 million yuan, up 22.1% year-on-year [4][20]. - The company emphasizes technology empowerment and lean operations, having trained an industry-level pre-trained language model for recruitment, which has shown excellent performance in evaluations. The number of clients reached over 36,800, a year-on-year increase of 43.4% [5][20]. - The company is expected to benefit from the cyclical recovery of the human resources industry, with projected net profits for 2024-2026 of 275 million yuan, 337 million yuan, and 442 million yuan, respectively, reflecting year-on-year growth rates of 37.0%, 22.6%, and 31.2% [20][21]. Financial Performance - In 2023, the company reported total revenue of 9.78 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%, and a net profit of 201 million yuan, a decrease of 31.0% year-on-year. The gross profit margin was 7.3%, down 2.4 percentage points [4][21]. - The company forecasts total revenue for 2024 to be 12.05 billion yuan, with a projected gross profit margin of 8.2% [21]. - The earnings per share (EPS) for 2024 is estimated at 1.40 yuan, with a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 15.69 [7][21]. Market Position and Growth - The company has successfully recommended 14,600 mid-to-high-end management and professional technical personnel to domestic and foreign clients, with a total of 383,400 flexible staffing personnel dispatched [19]. - The flexible staffing business has shown a growth of 11.7% in 2023, with a significant increase in the number of operational recruitment positions [19][20]. - The company is positioned as a leading player in the A-share human resources sector, with a reasonable valuation range for 2024 estimated between 23.80 and 28.00 yuan based on a P/E ratio of 17-20 times [20].