#长文创作激励计划#
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Recently, the official held a press conference on "promoting high-quality development". Among them, the official expects that during the summer of this year, the national electricity load will also grow rapidly, and the highest load is expected to increase by more than 100 million kilowatts year-on-year.
In the context of increasing demand for electricity, power stocks have naturally received great attention from investors, especially the hydropower sector. Taking last month's data as an example, the growth rate of hydropower generation has accelerated significantly, with the flow of many large hydropower stations (such as the Three Gorges, Longtan, Ertan and other power stations) increasing year-on-year, and the industrial hydropower above the designated size increased by 38.6%, and the growth rate was 17.6% faster than that in April.
In the capital market, the stock prices of hydropower players are also rising, such as Yangtze River Power (600900) has been breaking through new highs recently, and the stock price has refreshed the historical record for 13 trading days in the past month.
Changes in the Yangtze Power share price
As if everything is heralding, is the hydropower sector going to bloom again and usher in a second spring? The author will take you to find out today.
First, behind the pressure on performance
If we open up the big track of hydropower, you will find that its industrial chain covers a number of key links, including from to.
Hydropower industry chain
A typical feature of the hydropower industry is "watching the sky and eating". Judging from the performance of listed companies, due to the dry water in many places last year, the performance of players was generally under pressure.
In the first half of last year, for example, the lack of water storage in the mainland's major reservoirs and the continued low precipitation in the first half of the year led to a year-on-year decrease in hydropower generation from power plants above designated size by more than 22%. Although the precipitation situation improved in the second half of the year, the overall situation of the whole year was still down by 5.6% year-on-year in the hydropower generation capacity of power plants above designated size.
The reduction in power generation is directly transmitted to player performance. Taking Guiguan Power (600236), a subsidiary of Datang Group, as an example, the company's operating income and net profit attributable to the parent company decreased by 24% and 61.8% year-on-year respectively. If you analyze it in depth, you will find that most of the hydropower stations of Guiguan Power are in the Hongshui River basin of the Panjiang River in Nanpanjiang, Guangxi. Unfortunately, the amount of water here is more than 50% drier than the average of previous years.
Coincidentally, the performance of Qianyuan Power (002039) also fell sharply, with revenue and net profit attributable to the parent company falling by more than 20%. However, when an industry is under pressure, there are generally some players who can emerge and become "sweet and sweet" in the eyes of investors. For example, Yangtze River Power (600900), the absolute leader in the hydropower field, has achieved contrarian growth in 2023 compared with the year-on-year decline in revenue and net profit for two consecutive years in 2021 and 2022.
Yangtze River Power's dividends
One of the reasons behind this is that the Baihetan Hydropower Station has been fully operational, and the power generation capacity of the plant in 2023 has increased by 43% year-on-year. And another reason for its popularity in the capital market is its high dividend (more than 20 consecutive dividends), and the highest dividend rate is even close to 95%.
2. Look for growth momentum
From the perspective of national industrial policy, hydropower, which is in line with the general trend of low-carbon energy development, is still officially recognized and supported. Moreover, the biggest difference with thermal power is that hydropower is basically dependent on the weather, and is not subject to coal suppliers upstream of thermal power (who often speculate on coal prices).
The price of hydropower is mainly based on national pricing, and the degree of marketization is not high. However, there is one thing that is the biggest advantage of hydropower, and that is the problem of consumption. Generally speaking, as long as the power grid on the mainland has sufficient load capacity, hydropower is basically "generated as much as it is used", and there is never any need to worry about the problem of no market.
If we look to the future, capacity growth is a very critical factor for performance growth. As far as the author knows, the production capacity release time of different players is not the same. For example, Huaneng Hydropower (600025) has about 2.5 million kilowatts of installed capacity to be put into operation during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, and nearly 10 million kilowatts of installed capacity to be put into operation during the 16th Five-Year Plan, mainly including the Tibet hydropower station in the upper reaches of the Lancang River.
Huaneng Hydropower has been put into operation
For Yangtze Power, there is currently no new hydropower station put into operation, and the future growth of installed hydropower capacity will mainly depend on capacity expansion. For example, Gezhouba and Xiangjiaba power stations can increase their capacity by more than 2.6 million kilowatts by expanding their capacity, which can also promote the growth of performance to a certain extent.
3. Depreciation is the key factor
For the performance of players, in addition to the production and transformation just discussed, another important factor is the amount of water. The amount of water coming in different regions is not the same, for example, the water coming from the Lancang River during the dry season this year is about 5% dry for many years, and the current Lancang River basin is in the middle of the river.
On the cost side, in fact, the depreciation of mechanical and electrical equipment is expected to greatly increase profits. Because more than 60% of the operating costs of hydropower are. Because the service life of a hydropower station will be greater than its depreciation life, depreciation expiration is actually a good thing for players.
According to the prediction of professional institutions, taking Yangtze River Power as an example, the depreciation of machinery and equipment of some units of the Three Gorges Power Station during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period will expire, which will bring about 1.7 billion yuan of depreciation decline.
Note: This article does not constitute any investment advice. The stock market is risky, and you need to be cautious when entering the market. There is no harm in buying and selling.