Production/Daily Financial Report

On May 25th, Inspur Information (000977. SZ) announced that the board of directors of the company nominated Wang Endong as a candidate for non-independent director of the eighth board of directors of the company. According to public information, from 20 17 to 10, Wang Endong resigned as the vice chairman, director, general manager and CEO of Inspur Information, and currently serves as the executive president and chief scientist of Inspur Group. What investors are concerned about is why Wang Endong returned to Inspur Information and what it can bring to the company.

It is worth mentioning that on May 22nd, Inspur Information announced the resignation of its chairman, Zhang Lei. Zhang Lei, who served as the chairman of Inspur Information for nearly 9 years, suddenly left his post, which also attracted the attention of the market.

According to the daily financial report, during Zhang Lei's tenure as chairman, the revenue scale of Inspur Information kept growing, but from 20 17, the revenue growth rate of Inspur Information began to decline. At the same time, Inspur information is subject to people in upstream suppliers and downstream clients, lacking bargaining power, and its gross profit margin has remained at a low level.

Wang Endong's choice to "return" to the wave information at this time has attracted much attention, and whether it can turn the tide or even promote the company's asset restructuring has become the focus of market attention.

Zhang Lei's whereabouts became a mystery, and his inventory was still high.

On May 22nd, Inspur Information announced that Zhang Lei, the chairman of the board of directors, applied to resign as the chairman of the company due to work reasons, and will no longer hold any position in the company after his resignation. Zhang Lei does not hold shares in the company. Before the new chairman of the company is elected, Peng Zhen, vice chairman and general manager of the company, will perform the duties of chairman.

As for the reasons and whereabouts of Zhang Lei, the former chairman, the Daily Financial Report sent a letter asking, but as of press time, no relevant reply was received. According to public information, Zhang Lei was born in 1963. He has served as director of information consulting department of Shenyang Securities Exchange Center of People's Bank of China, deputy director of Shenyang Securities Regulatory Bureau, director and deputy general manager of Inspur Information, secretary of the board of directors, director and CEO of Inspur International Co., Ltd., and has served as chairman, legal representative and consultant of Inspur Information since 20 12.

During his tenure as chairman, Zhang Lei has made great contributions, and the revenue scale of Inspur Information has always maintained a positive growth. However, from 20 17, the revenue growth rate of inspur information began to decline.

The data shows that from 20 18 to 2020, Inspur Information achieved revenue of 4694 1 100 million yuan, 51653 million yuan and 63.038 billion yuan respectively, with growth rates of 84. 17% and10 respectively.

While the revenue growth rate is gradually slowing down, the daily financial report notes that the accounts receivable and inventory of Inspur Information are increasing. The data shows that at the end of the first quarter of 2018-202/kloc-0, the balance of accounts receivable of Inspur Information was 4.963 billion yuan, 10049 billion yuan, 8.207 billion yuan and 9.359 billion yuan respectively; The inventory balance is 82 17 billion yuan, 8.568 billion yuan,/kloc-0.0943 billion yuan and/kloc-0.2/kloc-0.7 billion yuan respectively.

With the expansion of business scale, it is normal for accounts receivable and inventory to increase moderately, but for Inspur Information, due to the rapid upgrading of electronic products and the great uncertainty of prices, it is very common to reduce prices over time. The more inspur information inventory, the greater the risk of bearing the loss of price decline. Previously, Goer shares (00224 1. SZ), an OEM for Apple, is thunderous because of its high inventory.

The pain of "brothers" who have no "core" in name only is unforgettable.

Inspur Information was founded in 1998 and landed in A shares in 2000. Its main business is computers and software, electronic products and other communication equipment. The controlling shareholder of Inspur Information is Inspur Group Co., Ltd., with a shareholding ratio of 36. 12%, and the actual controller is Shandong SASAC.

With "China" as the background, and the company's product server is an important part of national information security, the operating performance of Inspur Information has soared. In 20 16, the operating income of inspur information exceeded10 billion yuan. 20 10 1.2 1%, reaching 25.488 billion yuan, the highest growth rate in the world, and achieving the five-year goal of "sprinting to the top three in the world" three years ahead of schedule. In 20 18, the revenue was 4,694,438+0 billion yuan, and by 20 19, it had exceeded 50 billion yuan.

According to the global general server market data released by market research institute Gatner in the first quarter of 2020, Inspur ranked third in the world with a market share of 9.6%, with a year-on-year growth rate of 10.6%, becoming the only manufacturer in the world to achieve double-digit growth. In the China market, Inspur ranks first with a market share of 37.6%, surpassing the sum of the second and third places (Xinhua Sanhe Huawei respectively).

Inspur information has become the "first brother" of China server. But "heartbreaking" is that as one of the largest server manufacturers in the world, Inspur information is in the hands of others in the most critical and core technology-chip. It is understood that at present, the largest product shipped by Inspur is x86 server, and the x86 CPU chip mainly comes from Intel.

According to the research of Daily Financial Report, Inspur Information can't produce CPU chips, and seems to have no motivation for R&D and innovation. The data shows that the company's current R&D investment only accounts for 5% of revenue, which is significantly lower than other head technology companies. For the technology industry with rapid technology iteration, the lack of R&D investment means insufficient stamina and limited future development momentum. Inspur information seems to be entering a vicious situation in which the core technology is highly dependent on other companies, and the status of "one brother" is unsustainable.

Gross profit margin continued to decline. Where is the information road of Inspur?

The dependence of core technology on big customers means that Inspur information is easily controlled by people. In 2020, Intel's temporary suspension of production provided Inspur information with a "challenge", exposing the major hidden danger that Inspur information suppliers were highly concentrated in European and American manufacturers, and even revealed their own weaknesses. The supply security of inspur information is like the sword of Damocles hanging overhead, which is in danger of falling at any time.

The data shows that from 20 17 to 20 19, the purchase amounts of the top five suppliers of inspur information were14381000,000 yuan, 28.346 billion yuan and 291060,000 yuan, accounting for 58.80% respectively. Among them, Intel is its largest supplier. In the same period, Inspur Information purchased from Intel 7.323 billion yuan, 654.38+0.457 billion yuan and 654.38+0.789 billion yuan, respectively, accounting for 29.94%, 30.5 1% and 37.53% of the total purchase amount, and the purchase amount and proportion are increasing. The high concentration of buyers makes Inspur information have almost no bargaining power in the face of upstream supply chain manufacturers.

This trend is still increasing. Inspur information did not disclose the detailed information of suppliers in the 2020 annual report, but Inspur information is highly dependent on the top five suppliers. In 2020, the purchase amount of Inspur Information from the top five suppliers was 3810.30 billion yuan, accounting for 65.54%, 4.5 percentage points higher than that in 20 19.

The downstream customers of Inspur are mainly the government, large and medium-sized enterprise groups and so on. And they get orders through large-scale project bidding, and the income of the top five customers remains between 30% and 40%. The high concentration of large customers also shows that Inspur's information bargaining power is not strong and its performance is very uncertain.

Inspur information is subject to upstream suppliers and downstream customers, which shows that it lacks bargaining power. Even though its market share and income look very glamorous on the surface, it actually hides huge risks.

This can be seen from its gross profit margin. From 20 18 to 2020, the gross profit margin of Inspur Information was 10.96%, 1 1.77% and1.53% respectively, and the gross profit margin of Inspur Information was only half of that of ten years ago. In 2020, the net profit rate of Inspur Information is only 2.39%, while Zhongke Shuguang (6030 19. SH) in the same industry is 8.73%. The information gap of Inspur is huge.

Now, with the "return" of Wang Endong, CEO and chief scientist of Inspur Group, and the election of the new chairman, I wonder if Inspur Information can solve the "coreless pain".