China Unicom’s 2023 Annual Report is released! Net profit continues to increase by double digits, and network investment shows an inflection point.
On the evening of March 19th, the 2023 performance report was disclosed.
In 2023, the operating income reached 372.6 billion yuan, up 5.0% year-on-year, and the net profit returned to the mother reached 8.2 billion yuan, up 12% year-on-year, achieving double-digit increase for seven consecutive years; The return on net assets reached 5.1%, achieving a good level in recent years; The capital expenditure is 73.9 billion yuan, and the network investment shows an inflection point.
Over the past year, we have focused on the coordinated development of the two main businesses, successfully achieved effective improvement in quality and reasonable growth in quantity, and laid a solid foundation for long-term development. Behind this is always solidly promoting the deepening of the strategic system, focusing on both scale growth and value enhancement.
Responsible for the main business, fruitful business performance has reached a new high.
In recent years, with the promotion of national policies,Data application promotion, etc., the number of Internet users continues to expand.,It has promoted emerging forms such as artificial intelligence and big data to continuously empower the development of traditional industries.,The continuous emergence of industrial digital integration application results has promoted the continuous release of data traffic market demand. As a leading enterprise in the field of communication, it has ushered in broad development opportunities.
Under the wave of digital economy development,Actively embrace the strategic opportunities brought by the same frequency resonance between Chinese modernization and the new generation of digital revolution.In 2023, innovation and transformation will continue to deepen. The business of computing network and intelligence realized a revenue of 75.2 billion yuan, which brought more than half of the new income to the company.
Among them, "Unicom Cloud" business continued to grow steadily, achieving a revenue of 51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41.6%. The sales of cloud resources exceeded one million cores, a year-on-year increase of 186%, and the coverage of cloud resources has exceeded 230 cities. In 2023, innovations were made in technological innovation and ecological co-construction, the level of independent research and development was further improved, and the dual-engine bases of "virtualization" and "cloud native" were continuously optimized. More than 3,300 sets of self-developed operating system CULinux2.2 were deployed.
With the empowerment of 5G technology, the large-scale development of digital intelligence applications has also achieved remarkable results. There are 30,000 application projects in the 5G industry, covering 71 categories of the national economy, serving over 8,500 customers of 5G private networks, and forming a leading edge in key industries such as industrial Internet, digital government and car networking.
In the 2024 work conference, it was pointed out that it is necessary to solidly promote high-level security. In the past year, we focused on key directions such as network security, data security and information security, and strengthened the strategic business layout of big security. Not only did it build the first digital security operation center for super-large cities in China for customers, but it also landed more than 50 benchmark projects, and actively promoted open cooperation in security ecology, supporting the growth of network security income by 120% year-on-year.
Today, the industry share of data services has exceeded 50% for five consecutive years, leading the industry. With the rapid development of the network intelligence service, the network communication service has also made steady progress.
In 2023, the revenue of networked communication business was 244.6 billion yuan, and the scale of connection was further expanded, with more than 1 billion networked communication users, an increase of about 140 million compared with the end of 2022. Among them, the number of mobile users reached 333 million. In 2023, the net increase of users increased by 90% year-on-year, and the penetration rate of 5G package users also increased by 12 percentage points to 78% compared with last year. The "basic disk" was further consolidated.
Scientific and technological innovation speeds up and the dividend level reaches a record high.
This year’s government work report not only clearly puts forward "vigorously developing the digital economy", but also puts forward clear requirements for "accelerating the development of new quality productive forces" and "promoting industrial innovation with scientific and technological innovation". As one of the three major operators, it is timely and timely to develop new quality productivity.
It is said that the field of artificial intelligence has become an important strategic direction. The company is accelerating the layout of emerging industries of artificial intelligence, combining its advantages in computing network infrastructure, rich business scenarios and extensive customer contacts, and making efforts to create a large model development and application paradigm with Unicom characteristics. At the Mobile World Congress, the "Yuanjing" large model system was launched, and multi-parameter versions were arranged according to different functional requirements to promote the large model to better empower the real economy application scenarios. Relevant achievements were selected as "Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology Award", and the innovation ability was further enhanced.
At the same time, it is emphasized that the overall layout of satellite communication will be further accelerated in the later period, and the industrialization and systematic development of integrated communication between heaven and earth will be actively promoted.
In 2023, we will actively promote key core technology research, focus on promoting industrial innovation with scientific and technological innovation, and continuously enhance core competitiveness. During the year, 2,287 patents were granted, up 37% year-on-year, and attention was paid to the construction of scientific and technological innovation talents, whose proportion reached 40%. Standing at a new starting point, scientific and technological innovation has been further intensified, and it has actively become a national strategic scientific and technological force and a "vanguard" for developing new quality productive forces.
With the arrival of the computing power era, the long-term prospects of the company are further optimistic by investors. It also actively gives back to the trust and support of investors. The annual report shows that in 2023, the final dividend per share will be 0.0524 yuan (including tax), together with the already distributed interim dividend of 0.0796 yuan per share, and the total annual dividend per share will be 0.132 yuan, up 21.1% year-on-year, significantly higher than the growth of basic earnings per share of 11.5%, and the cash dividend level will reach a record high.
Talking about the key work in 2024, Chairman Chen Zhongyue said that he would persist in striving for progress while maintaining stability, and thoroughly implement the five strategies of strengthening enterprises through science and technology, talents, reform, digital intelligence and brand, and thoroughly implement the nine key action plans of networking communication development, computer network integration development, digital intelligence application development, internationalization development, big data innovation, artificial intelligence innovation, new digital infrastructure, high-quality service and network information security, and accelerate to become. We are confident that we will continue to maintain steady growth in operating income and double-digit growth in total profits.