Made by Qi Chao. Com "see column"
For every three servers installed in China, 1 server comes from Inspur Information. According to IDC data, the market share of Inspur servers continued to grow in 20021year, rising from the third place in the world in 2020 to the second place, keeping the first place in the domestic server market.
In recent years, with the acceleration of digitalization, the server sales of Inspur Information have also shown explosive growth. However, in the face of fierce industry competition and powerful upstream and downstream giants in the industrial chain, Inspur Information not only lacks obvious bargaining power, but also is wary of the risk of failure in the supply of key components. As a result, the accounts receivable and inventory of Inspur Information increased significantly, which led to its increasing financial risks.
Therefore, in the case of fierce competition in the industry, Inspur Information is doing high-tech business, but it is profitable by selling land.
Industry competition is fierce and profitability is weak.
Since 20 15, the market scale of the server industry has also shown a rapid growth trend, benefiting from the explosion of mobile internet traffic brought about by the large-scale promotion of smart phones around the world. During this period, not only a large number of leading cloud service vendors were born, but also the concentration of the global server industry increased rapidly. Inspur information, as one of the best, fully enjoyed the industry dividend.
However, with the peak of Internet mobile industry traffic, the global server market began to appear the phenomenon of oversupply. According to IDC data, in 2020, the global server sales revenue was $9 1.0 1 billion, up by 4.26% year-on-year, but the shipment volume was1.2 million units, down by 4.6% year-on-year.
Especially after 20 19, affected by the epidemic, the world economy slowed down sharply, and the weak macro-economy delayed the plans of enterprises to go to the cloud, which also led to the reduction of capital expenditure of cloud service providers such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Huawei Cloud. At the same time of economic slowdown, coupled with the peak internet traffic, there is a certain phenomenon of oversupply in the domestic server industry, which leads to more intense competition in the industry.
As can be seen from the above figure, the gross profit margin of Inspur Information has been below 65,438+06% for a long time from 2065,438+05 to 2020, and it has shown a gradual downward trend in recent years. Even its sales gross profit margin has been below 65,438+02% every year since 2065,438+07. Although the gross profit margin of Inspur Information has started to increase in the past two years, the increase is quite small, even less than 1 percentage point, which can only be achieved with the rapid growth of the industry. The gross profit margin is at a low level for a long time, which also poses a great challenge to the sustainable profitability of Inspur Information.
Inspur information not only has a low gross profit margin for a long time, but also has a net interest rate of less than 3% for many years, which is unimaginable for a high-tech enterprise.
As can be seen from the above figure, the net interest rate of Inspur Information began to decline year by year from 20 15, and it didn't bottom out until 20 19, but the increase was still small. As of 202 1, the net interest rate of Q3 tidal information is only 2.93%, which is far less than 4.42% in 20 15.
Inspur information's gross profit margin has been at a low level for many years, while its net profit margin has improved, but it is still at the bottom, and this has been achieved under the situation that the demand of the server industry has increased greatly. It can be seen that the server industry where Inspur Information is located is fiercely competitive, and its net profit margin and gross profit margin are at a low level for a long time, which also shows that its profitability is weak.
Accounts receivable and inventory are high, and financial risks are high.
In recent years, with the expansion of Inspur's information income scale, its accounts receivable scale has also continued to grow. Because the customers in the upstream and downstream industrial chains of Inspur Information are giants, their bargaining power is relatively weak, which also makes the company's revenue and inventory larger, occupying the company's larger cash flow, leading to its financial risks gradually expanding.
Inspur information 202 1 annual report shows that as of 202 1, 12 and 3 1, the book balance of the company's inventory was 23.3 billion, an increase of about1200 million, with a growth rate of 100.93%.
What is even more worrying is that the accounts receivable of Inspur Information account for 25.9% of the total assets, the book value of its inventory accounts for 48.48% of the total assets, and accounts receivable and inventory account for 74.38% of the total assets, which shows that most of the company's assets exist in the form of inventory and income, which undoubtedly increases the risk of inventory depreciation and asset value loss.
Inspur Information Annual Report shows that its accounts receivable 1 year accounted for 96.7%, and its downstream customers are mostly large Internet companies, state-owned enterprises and government departments. Where the probability of bad debts is low. However, due to its long settlement cycle, it takes up more cash flow of the company, which leads to an increase in the company's financial expenses.
Compared with the risk of accounts receivable, the inventory risk of Inspur Information deserves more attention.
Inspur information 202 1 annual report shows that its inventory has increased significantly year-on-year, and the proportion of inventory in total assets has increased to 48.48%. Once the prices of raw materials such as chips fall in the future, the risk of falling inventory will profoundly affect the company's net profit. To this end, Inspur Information 2026,5438+0 accrued 965,438+0,684, and 330 yuan's inventory depreciation reserve, knowing that its annual profit in 2026,5438+0 was 2 billion, and a single inventory depreciation provision accounted for 45% of the net profit. If chip prices fall at a high level in the future, the impact on Inspur information will be immeasurable.
At present, in order to cope with the short-term problems of global chips, Inspur Information has strengthened its inventory reserves, and the company's accounts receivable and inventory amount have continued to grow. As of the fourth quarter of 20021,the value of accounts receivable and inventory of inspur information increased greatly, which occupied a lot of cash flow of the company. According to the 20021annual report, the cash flow of inspur information was-2.693 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 174.8%.
The decrease of cash flow, the sharp increase of accounts receivable and the explosion of inventory will increase the financial risk of Inspur Information day by day.
Lack of long-term bargaining power
It is understood that from 20 15 to 2020, the R&D investment of Inspur Information will increase from 525 million yuan to 2.534 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 37%. Although the amount seems to have increased substantially, from the perspective of the proportion of R&D investment in total revenue, it has remained at around 4% for many years. As a high-tech enterprise, this ratio seems to be insufficient.
We should know that in 20021year, Huawei's R&D investment was142.7 billion yuan, accounting for 22.4% of the total revenue. However, comparing Inspur Information with Huawei is a bit overwhelming, but nearly half of science and technology innovation board enterprises invested as much as 12% in R&D last year, and even Inspur Information's competitor Zhongke Shuguang invested as much as 8.99%, more than Inspur Information.
Compared with other high-tech enterprises, the proportion of R&D investment is indeed a bit insufficient, which leads to its "two-headed anger" in the industrial chain and lack of long-term bargaining power.
At the same time, the high concentration of raw material suppliers in the upstream of Inspur Information also makes the company's bargaining power weak. However, the monopoly of American and Korean companies in the field of chips has a long history, which leads to a large market share of a few companies, making it impossible for companies to reduce costs through diversified suppliers.
It is understood that the cost of the three core components of Inspur Information accounts for nearly 80% of the total server cost, and the market share of these major manufacturers is in a monopoly position. At the same time, the overall strength of domestic manufacturers can not be compared with that of foreign leaders, which also leads to the lack of bargaining power of Inspur Information.
The supply chain is risky.
In recent years, the United States has begun to intensify its attack on China. For the information wave that core components need to be purchased from American, Japanese and Korean companies, this means that its supply chain is very risky.
It is understood that Inspur Information is in the middle of the server industry chain, and it needs to purchase core components such as CPU, memory and hard disk from upstream suppliers, and then design, assemble and test according to the needs of downstream customers. However, the manufacturers of these core components are basically enterprises of the United States, Japan and South Korea. If the United States imposes sanctions on the company, it will have a serious adverse impact on the company.
At present, these core components are irreplaceable by domestic products, and even in other countries, there are almost no substitutes. From the perspective of industry concentration, the manufacturers of chips, storage and other hardware devices are basically Intel, NVIDIA, Samsung and other enterprises, which are basically in a quasi-monopoly state. Once geopolitical risks increase or Sino-US relations become tense, the raw materials of Inspur Information will face the risk of supply failure.
This is not an alarmist. Huawei was once banned from importing high-end chips by the United States, and its mobile phone business was greatly reduced. ZTE is also facing years of lawsuits due to US sanctions. Therefore, core raw materials are highly dependent on imported wave information. Once sino-us relations are tense, they will face the risk of no raw materials.
Therefore, in the case that the core raw materials need to be imported from abroad, the supply chain risk of Inspur Information is worthy of vigilance.
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Under the digital wave, the demand for servers will show a geometric growth trend in the future. Undoubtedly, Inspur Information, as the first server market share in China, will fully benefit from the industry dividend. However, due to the outsourcing of its core components and weak bargaining power in the industrial chain, these factors will also become the key factors restricting the company's growth.
If Inspur Information really wants to grow into a world-class high-tech company, the first thing to do is to change its position in the industrial chain, and at the same time, to derive from the upstream industrial chain, and strive to master the key component technologies in its own hands, or to achieve self-control through cooperative research and development with domestic enterprises.
Only in this way can we change the embarrassing situation that Inspur Information is now doing high-tech business, but it is making a profit by selling land.