The profits of industrial enterprises failed to continue the improvement trend. From January to November, the profits of Industrial Enterprises above designated size increased by 38% year-on-year, with an average growth rate of 18.9% in two years, down 0.8 percentage points from the previous value. In November, the profit increased by 9% year-on-year, down 15.6 percentage points from the previous month, and the average growth rate in the two years fell by 14.2 percentage points to 12.2%. The slowdown in profit growth of industrial enterprises in November was mainly driven by the policy of “ensuring supply and stabilizing price” and the slowdown in profit growth of upstream industries under the background of falling commodity prices. In addition, the recovery of industrial enterprises’ costs and the extension of the recovery period of accounts receivable have eroded profits to a certain extent: the costs and expenses per 100 yuan of operating revenue have risen by 0.02 and 0.01 yuan to 83.72 and 8.4 yuan respectively compared with the previous month, and the average recovery period of accounts receivable has increased by 0.1 days to 51.7 days compared with the previous month.
Profits of state-owned and private industrial enterprises both weakened. From January to November, the profit of private industrial enterprises increased by 27.9% year-on-year, down 2.6 percentage points from the previous month, and the average growth rate in the two years decreased by 0.8 percentage points to 14.1% from the previous value. High cost pressure is still the main factor affecting the slowdown of profit growth of private enterprises. Although PPI fell in November, it is still at a high level. State owned enterprises are important undertakers of the policy of “ensuring supply and stabilizing price”. Therefore, the profit growth of state-owned enterprises slowed down, with a year-on-year increase of 65.8%, down 8.6 percentage points from the previous month, and the average growth rate in the two years decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 25.6% from the previous value.
The profit growth rate of the upstream industry fell, and the profit differentiation with the middle and downstream industries eased. From January to November, judging from the average growth rate of two years, the profit growth rate of 19 of the 41 major industrial industries increased compared with the previous month, but the structure improved compared with the previous month, the proportion of middle and downstream industries increased, and the profit differentiation between upstream and middle and downstream industries eased in the short term. In terms of three categories, the profit growth of mining industry under “ensuring supply and stabilizing price” slowed down. The profit from January to November increased by 185.7% year-on-year, but the growth rate narrowed by 8.9 percentage points compared with the previous month. The profit of mining industry in November fell by 32 percentage points to 248.4% compared with October; The impact of high cost pressure on the manufacturing industry continues, the repair of manufacturing profits further slows down, and the cumulative year-on-year growth rate from January to November is 4.5 percentage points lower than the previous value; The cost pressure has a great impact on the production and supply of electricity, heat, gas and water, with a cumulative year-on-year decrease of 28.2%, further 8.5 percentage points lower than the previous value. Specifically, the current commodity prices have dropped, but they are still at a high level in recent years. In particular, although the coal price has decreased significantly month on month, it is still much higher than that in the same period. Therefore, the cumulative and two-year average growth rate of the coal industry is still higher than the previous value. From January to November, the same and two-year average growth rate of the coal industry profit are 2.22 times and 56.1% respectively, Compared with the previous value, it increased by 12.6 and 3.4 percentage points respectively; However, the average growth rate of upstream industries such as oil and gas exploitation, ferrous metal exploitation and ferrous metal processing industry in the past two years has slowed down compared with the previous value. Under the background that coal prices remained high in the same period, the profit decline of power and heat production and supply industry continued to expand, expanding by 9.6 percentage points to 38.6% compared with the previous value. Under the background of the continuous recovery of consumer goods prices and the stabilization of consumption, the profit of consumer goods manufacturing industry in November increased by 13.6% year-on-year, 10.0 percentage points higher than that of the previous month. Under the background of the easing of cost pressure and supply chain pressure, the profit growth of the equipment manufacturing industry turned from decline to rise, with a year-on-year increase of 0.8% in November and an increase of 8.3 percentage points over the previous month. Especially affected by the improvement of chip supply, the year-on-year decline of the profit of the automotive industry was significantly narrowed by 22.1 percentage points to – 6.4% over the previous month. It is worth mentioning that, driven by the rescue policies for small and medium-sized enterprises, the profits of private enterprises and small and micro enterprises increased by 12.9% and 15.9% respectively year-on-year, both higher than the average profit growth rate of Industrial Enterprises above designated size.
The steady growth policy and the easing of supply chain pressure may support the profit recovery of industrial enterprises. We still need to pay attention to the constraints of weakening consumer end and high cost pressure. In November, the profit growth of industrial enterprises failed to continue the previous improvement trend, but the differentiation of profit structure was curbed to a certain extent. In the follow-up, the factors supporting and hindering the repair of enterprise profits coexist in the future. From the supporting factors, the steady growth policy at the end of the year and the beginning of next year may form a certain support for industries such as raw materials and equipment manufacturing; The relief of the epidemic in some countries will help ease the pressure on the global supply chain. Therefore, it may promote the production of automobile and high-tech industries, and then promote the profit recovery of such industries. In terms of drag factors, the consumer recovery under the influence of the epidemic is not stable, and the consumer side is still facing the impact of the epidemic and the slowdown of income growth. Due to the limited cost transfer capacity, the profit recovery of the consumer goods industry is restricted, or it will be difficult to support the demand for upstream products; The effect of “ensuring supply and stabilizing price” is mainly aimed at coal, an energy material with high self-sufficiency rate in China, but it has limited effect on energy such as oil and gas. In particular, the recent sharp rise in natural gas prices will superimpose the demand for clean energy in enterprise transformation under the background of “double carbon”, which may restrict the profit restoration of relevant industries. Overall, under the background of the coexistence of current constraints and supporting factors, the profit growth of industrial enterprises will slow down under the high base in 2022, but the overall situation will remain relatively stable.
