As of June 21, the wave information, which fell by 5.42%, seems to be showing signs of correction after the continued rage.
Previously, from June 18 ~ June 20, Inspur Information continued to rise, and its stock price rose by more than 20% in just 3 trading days.
Before the stock price fell back, Inspur announced on the 20th that the company's recent operating conditions and internal and external operating environment have not undergone major changes, but there is a risk of decline in the operating performance in the first half of the year compared with the same period of the previous year.
In fact, as the leader of AI servers, Inspur's stock price once soared with the AI concept boom, according to choice data, since the beginning of this year, its stock price range has risen by 185.69%. Behind the rising stock price, the performance "answer" of Inspur Information is relatively weak, and some executives have reduced their holdings at high prices.
Industry insiders began to worry that the tide receded, has AI concept stocks seen a naked swimming trend?
The AI boom is hard to stop
Image source: Inspur Information Bulletin
On June 20, Inspur Information announced that due to factors such as the change in the rhythm of customer demand for general-purpose servers and the tight supply of global GPUs and related professional chips, the company's half-year operating performance is at risk of decline compared with the same period of the previous year.
In fact, Inspur's performance decline in the first half of the year has early signs. Financial report data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Inspur Information achieved operating income of 9.4 billion yuan, down 45.59% from the same period of the previous year, and the net profit was 210 million yuan, down 37.04% from the same period last year.
The decline in performance began to show signs last year. In 2022, the company's annual revenue will be 69.5 billion yuan, a slight increase of 3.7% year-on-year; The net profit was 2.08 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.88%. In 2017~2020, the total operating income of Inspur Information has maintained a high growth trend, with revenue growth rates of 101.21%, 84.17%, 10.04%, 22.04% and 6.36% respectively.
For the reasons for the decline in performance, industry insiders told First Finance and Economics that the current demand for Inspur server market is not good overall. Research institute TrendForce recently lowered its forecast for global server shipments this year to 13.835 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 2.85%. In the first quarter of 2023, due to the impact of off-season effects and terminal inventory corrections, global server shipments decreased by 15.9% sequentially. Inspur's 2022 annual report shows that servers and components account for 99.17% of operating revenue. Many people in the industry believe that the decrease in server market demand is a key factor in the failure of Inspur Information's performance.
The AI sector, which once made Inspur's stock price soar, seems to be difficult to "stand alone". TrendForce reports that AI servers still account for less than 10% of the total market, and the growth of demand for this part is unable to reverse the overall weakness of the market. Inspur Information also said in its previous reply to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange concern letter that there are still many risks in the field of AI servers, such as with the development of artificial intelligence algorithms and applications, the industry's demand for artificial intelligence computing power is increasing rapidly, more and more domestic and foreign hardware manufacturers have begun to deploy artificial intelligence servers, market competition has gradually intensified, product homogenization is serious, and the risk of gross profit reduction has also increased. In addition, although technological breakthroughs such as large-scale language models and AIGCs may have a driving effect on the sales of artificial intelligence computing power products, there is still great uncertainty from technological breakthroughs to the actual realization of large-scale applications, and there is a risk that downstream customer needs and the company's market expansion will not be as expected.
Shenzhen Stock Connect has become an important driver of stock pricesAlthough both revenue and profit failed, it did not affect the stock price of Inspur Information, and the stock price of ChatGPT Dongfeng soared. According to Choice data, Inspur's stock price has risen by up to 185.69% this year. After the failure of the first quarter, Inspur Information is still rising sharply, from 34.10 yuan (the lowest point on May 15) to 66.22 yuan (the highest point on June 20), and the stock price has nearly doubled in just about one month.
Behind this, there are no lack of traces of financial speculation. According to the data of the Dragon and Tiger List, as of June 21, in the last 30 days, the largest purchase of the stock was dedicated to Shenzhen Stock Connect, with an amount of 1.257 billion yuan, followed by the business departments where the floating capital gathered, such as Guoyuan Securities Shanghai Jiangsu Road Securities Business Department and BOC Securities Dalian Jinma Road Business Department, which bought 398 million yuan and 250 million yuan respectively. Among them, many funds buy low and sell high in a single day, and frequent short-term transactions.
According to the data of the Dragon and Tiger List, buying one and selling one seat on June 19 were exclusive to Shenzhen Stock Connect, buying 332 million yuan and selling 224 million yuan in a single day. On June 20, Shenzhen Stock Connect once again bought 1.258 billion yuan and sold 1.146 billion yuan. The first financial reporter combed and found that since the beginning of this year, the wave information has appeared on the Dragon and Tiger List about 11 times, and the Shenzhen Stock Connect has appeared simultaneously many times.
While a large amount of money poured in, Inspur Information has also been deeply bound to popular concepts such as ChatGPT and AI many times. In fact, as a hot stock of AI concept, the industry generally believes that Inspur Information does have certain strength. Previously, the company was mainly engaged in servers and components, including AI servers. According to public data, in the global AI server market in the first half of 2021, Inspur ranked first with a market share of 20%.
Inspur Information has not yet clearly announced the specific order growth under the AI boom. However, since February this year, Inspur has repeatedly responded to questions related to AI and ChatGPT on the investor interactive platform, and emphasized the positive impact of AI on the company's business. On May 18, Inspur replied to investors that the demand for AI servers in the market has increased significantly compared with the same period, and the company will give full play to its leading advantages in products and supply chain to fully meet customer supply needs. On the same day, another investor responded that "the proportion of the company's AI server overall business is increasing".
In terms of ChatGPT, the company said many times as early as early February that the company has laid out and continued R&D investment in the AIGC track from the aspects of underlying computing power, middle-layer large model algorithm capabilities and upper-layer industry applications, and has repeatedly introduced the giant model "Source 1.0" and its industry applications.
The first financial reporter noticed that before and after the above statement, the stock price of Inspur Information fluctuated. For example, after responding to AI server-related questions many times on May 18, its stock price bid farewell to the 3-week volatile downward trend and began to enter the rising range, and then rose 2.6% in the following week (May 19~May 25), and continued to rise in early June.
While the stock price reached a new high, some company executives began to reduce their holdings. The company disclosed on June 15 that executives Wu Long, Gong Weifeng and Huang Jiaming plan to reduce their holdings of the company's shares through centralized bidding transactions with a total of no more than 164,176 shares, accounting for 0.0112% of the company's total share capital.