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Yangtze Business Daily News● Yangtze Business Daily reporter Shen Yourong

As the old growth drivers are changing, China Mobile (600941.SH, 00941.HK), a global leading communications and information services company, continues to see growth in its operating performance.

On the evening of August 8, China Mobile released its 2024 semi-annual report. In the first half of the year, the company achieved operating income of 546.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.0%. Among them, the "Second Curve" digital transformation revenue reached 147.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.0%. The company achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company (hereinafter referred to as "net profit") of 80.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%, and an average daily profit of approximately 440 million yuan. The company's profitability continues to maintain the leading level of international first-class operators.

China Mobile said that its full-year capital expenditure will be controlled within the 173 billion yuan guided at the beginning of the year, and the proportion of operating income will be reduced to below 20%.

A reporter from the Yangtze Business Daily noted that China Mobile's personal market business remained stable, with the number of mobile users exceeding 1 billion, a net increase of 9.26 million.

At the same time, China Mobile continues to actively distribute cash dividends to shareholders. The total amount planned to be distributed in the medium term is approximately 51 billion yuan, with a dividend rate of 63.62%.

As of the close of August 8, China Mobile's A-share market value was approximately 2.23 trillion yuan, ranking first among A-shares.

Mobile customers exceed 1 billion

China Mobile delivered a mid-term report that met market expectations.

According to the latest semi-annual report, in the first half of this year, China Mobile achieved operating income of 546.744 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.0%. Among them, the main business income was about 463.589 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.5%. Net profit was 80.201 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%. Based on this calculation, the company earned about 440 million yuan per day.

From 2021 to 2023, the company's mid-term operating income and net profit both increased year-on-year. In the first half of 2024, the company continued the momentum of double growth.

In terms of operating income, China Mobile's main business income was 463.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.5%. The company's "second curve" digital transformation income was 147.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.0%, accounting for 31.7% of the main business income, an increase of 2.4 percentage points over the same period last year.

From the market perspective, China Mobile's personal market remained stable, with personal market revenue reaching 255.2 billion yuan; mobile customers exceeded 1 billion, with a net increase of 9.26 million, of which 5G network customers reached 514 million, with a net increase of 49 million, and a penetration rate of 51.4%. The household market revenue reached 69.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.5%; the number of household broadband customers reached 272 million, with a net increase of 8.48 million, leading the industry in scale, and the penetration rate of gigabit household broadband customers was 33.5%, an increase of 3.5 percentage points from the end of 2023. The government and enterprise market revenue was 112 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%; the number of government and enterprise customers reached 30.38 million, with a net increase of 2.01 million. The share of winning bids in the open bidding market reached 18.4%, leading the industry. Mobile Cloud anchored the goal of "first-class cloud service provider" and gave full play to the advantages of "five integrations" (network integration, data integration, intelligence integration, edge integration, and security integration), with revenue reaching 50.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.3%. 5G vertical industry applications remain at the forefront, with more than 40,000 5G industry commercial cases signed cumulatively. To V Internet of Vehicles market size breakthrough, Internet of Vehicles front-end connections increased by 7.29 million, cumulatively reaching 57.91 million; 5G+Beidou high-precision positioning calls reached 1.7 trillion times. Emerging market revenue reached 26.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.2%.

In the first half of 2024, China Mobile's operating income growth rate slowed down year-on-year.

On August 8, China Mobile held a mid-term performance briefing for 2024. Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, said at the meeting that the growth rate of revenue has slowed down compared with previous years, mainly due to the conduction effect brought about by many changes in the external environment, such as insufficient effective demand in the domestic economy and the cultivation of new quality productivity is still in the transition period from old to new momentum.

Yang Jie said: "At the same time, the company has entered a new stage of transformation and upgrading, so it still needs time to adjust, cultivate and improve. The information service market has also shown some new changes. Traditional communication demand has become saturated, and new potential information service demand needs to be further explored and stimulated. The traditional revenue growth momentum has weakened, and it will take time to cultivate the new AI momentum."

Transforming from “+AI” to “AI+”

As the world enters the AI ​​era, China Mobile is fully embracing AI.

China Mobile said that the company is accelerating the transformation from "+AI" to "AI+", injecting vigorous momentum into high-quality development.

The company established the "Jiutian" Artificial Intelligence Research Institute and formed an AI core team of 2,000 people; strengthened the construction of new artificial intelligence infrastructure, the Hohhot Super-Scale Intelligent Computing Center was put into operation, and the Harbin Super-Scale Intelligent Computing Center started construction. The company released a full-stack autonomous and controllable 100 billion multi-modal large model, and simultaneously launched 200 billion multi-modal large model training and 1 trillion large model technology pre-research; created an artificial intelligence industry ecosystem, actively built the Jiutian ecological convergence platform, opened large model training bases, evaluation bases, and industrial innovation bases, and provided the whole society with one-stop industrial integration services such as model training and promotion, AI+native application incubation, etc.

China Mobile's "AI+" application innovation is progressing steadily. In the government and enterprise market, we focus on building an "AI+DICT" product system, release the COMPASS16 capability system, and take the lead in the industry to provide integrated services covering networks, computing power, models, tools, and applications; accelerate the realization of AI capabilities, and successfully win a bid for a large central enterprise AI project to achieve a major breakthrough. In the public market, the company builds an AI product family, creates AI innovative functions, focuses on AI+new communications, and accelerates the development of new AI products such as home robots. In the first half of the year, the company's "AI product" customers totaled 110 million households.

China Mobile accelerates innovation breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. The company released the "Jiutian" artificial intelligence base, which consists of a 10,000-card-level intelligent computing cluster, a 100-billion-capacity multi-modal large model, and an ecological platform that brings together hundreds of major elements. It is committed to tackling the "1+N" 100-billion-capacity parameter communication large model, and deploying high-performance industry large models for 40 sub-sectors such as network, customer service, medical care, government affairs, industry, transportation, and finance through the "self-research + ecology" approach.

In the first half of the year, the company has released 17 self-developed Jiutian industry big models, accumulated 450 AI capabilities, and enabled nearly 1,000 industry applications. Jiutian Basic Big Model became the first central enterprise R&D big model to obtain the national "Generative Artificial Intelligence Service Registration" and "Domestic Deep Synthesis Service Algorithm Registration" dual registrations, and obtained the highest level A certificate for security evaluation by the China Software Evaluation Center.

Related to this, China Mobile has actively invested in research and development. In the first half of this year, the company's research and development expenses were 11.971 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 40.59%.

China Mobile continues its tradition of active cash dividends. By mid-2024, the company plans to pay out a cash dividend of 51.027 billion yuan, with a dividend payout ratio of 63.62%.

Since its listing on the A-share market in 2021, China Mobile has achieved a cumulative net profit of 453.363 billion yuan and distributed a total of 272.879 billion yuan in cash dividends. The dividend rate since its listing has been 60.19% and the dividend financing ratio has been 524.96%.

In the secondary market, China Mobile's performance in A-shares was generally stable. As of the close of August 8, the company's market value was approximately 2.23 trillion yuan, ranking first among A-shares.

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