According to Zhitong Finance APP, Zhongtai Securities released a research report initiating coverage of DC HOLDINGS (00861) with a "BUY" rating. The firm forecasts the company's revenue for 2025-2027 at 18.644/20.806/23.326 billion yuan respectively, with net profit attributable to shareholders at 226/424/564 million yuan respectively. The firm is optimistic about the company's current revenue growth and profitability improvement trends being gradually established. The "AI+Big Data" capabilities empowering supply chain and other scenarios have achieved good implementation with positive practical application effects. Future overseas business is also expected to achieve rapid scalable replication and implementation, with valuation levels having room for upward premium. Zhongtai Securities' main viewpoints are as follows:

Focusing on "DataxAI" core, continuously promoting industrial digital intelligence upgrading and commercial value reconstruction

25H1 operational and financial quality significantly improved, performance improvement trend gradually established

DC HOLDINGS was established in 2000 and listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2001. The company is a high-tech enterprise that empowers core scenarios with proprietary innovative big data fusion technology. Since 2018, the company has embarked on a digital transformation journey, focusing on the DataxAI strategic direction to continuously promote industrial digital intelligence upgrading and commercial value reconstruction, empowering high-quality development of the real economy.

Currently, the company focuses on the "DataxAI" core, building a multi-business collaborative ecosystem, forming a business system primarily consisting of three major businesses: big data products and solutions, software and operational services, and information innovation and traditional services.

Financially, the company's revenue growth has been under slight pressure in recent years. 2024 revenue was 16.657 billion yuan, down 8.9% year-on-year. However, the company's business structure has been continuously optimized in recent years, with the revenue proportion of big data products and solutions business with higher gross margins gradually increasing. Combined with the company's significant cost reduction and expense control effects, the company's net profit attributable to shareholders in 2024 was -254 million yuan, a substantial reduction in losses compared to 2023.

Meanwhile, since 2021, the company's operating cash flow has maintained good positive inflows, demonstrating good collection management capabilities and providing continuous financial support for the company's development. In 25H1, the company achieved revenue of 7.865 billion yuan, up 12.1% year-on-year, with net profit attributable to shareholders of 15 million yuan, up 40.7% year-on-year. The trend of performance stabilization and bottom improvement has been further consolidated.

Smart supply chain welcomes golden development period, AI development drives enterprise digital transformation

With the continued growth of the global economy and China's sustained high-speed development, the supply chain management service industry continues to expand. The Chinese supply chain management service market is expected to exceed 250 billion yuan in 2025. Supply chain digital intelligence development is also accelerating, with emerging technologies such as IoT, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and blockchain being deeply applied in digital intelligent supply chains. Currently, the penetration rate of IoT, AI and other technologies has exceeded 60%, greatly improving supply chain efficiency and intelligence levels.

Currently, the overall maturity of the smart supply chain industry is still in the transition stage from primary to intermediate levels, but leading enterprises have achieved remarkable innovative practical results, continuously leading the industry direction.

In enterprise management, under the wave of large model development, AI develops in multiple dimensions, helping enterprise management achieve digital transformation. Whether in optimizing decision-making systems, reconstructing enterprise processes, or deeply reshaping customer-side value dimensions, from experience to operations building new ecosystems, AI has begun to show its considerable energy. Currently, AI applications in global enterprises have moved from early exploration to widespread implementation, with a practical orientation as enterprises shift from AI pilots to large-scale application deployment, with very rapid scalable development.

Leveraging ecosystem synergy and value creation multiplier effects, building a new paradigm of "Technology + Scenario + Ecosystem"

1) Scenario side: Based on over twenty years of industry scenario cultivation experience, the company has built core competitive advantages of "scenario cognition - technology deconstruction - value closed loop" in multiple fields including smart supply chain, fintech, government and enterprise digitization, and chain hotels, deeply cultivating scenarios to build core competitiveness.

2) Technology side: The company relies on independent R&D capabilities and industry-academia-research innovation models to establish leading technological advantages and deeply integrates technology with industry solutions to empower customers in achieving lean supply chain management. The company relies on full-stack technical capabilities of "AI infrastructure + data intelligence platform + AI applications and industry solutions" to empower digital transformation of real industries, forming an end-to-end service system covering consulting planning, product and solution delivery, operations and maintenance, helping customers deeply integrate data assets with business needs, drive intelligence with data, continuously optimize and innovate processes, thereby opening up the path for enterprise and government customer digital intelligence transformation and AI applications, making data create value.

3) Ecosystem side: The company is committed to building an open innovation ecosystem platform, deeply integrating multi-dimensional resources of "government-industry-academia-research-application" to construct an innovation ecosystem of technological synergy, scenario co-creation, and industrial linkage. The platform's core value lies in opening data capability foundation and AI tool chains, lowering AI innovation thresholds, and driving scalable implementation of digital intelligence upgrades.

Deep accumulation empowers Chinese enterprises going global

In the wave of Chinese enterprises going global in 2024, the company leverages years of overseas supply chain service experience, accompanying Chinese enterprise customers such as Huawei, Honor, ZTE, BYD and others in going global, providing customers with end-to-end one-stop supply chain operational services and digital intelligence services including international and domestic transportation, overseas and domestic warehousing, import and export, cross-border e-commerce, cross-border live streaming and other services, and providing replicable paradigm references for Chinese enterprises going global and transformation.