Shen Ming: Recently, the financial data of national industrial enterprises in the first quarter, the economic operation of various places, and the profitability of listed companies have been released. Today, experts are asked to interpret the highlights of these data and the changes reflected.

Recently, the financial data of industrial enterprises released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in March 2019, the total profit of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 13.9% year-on-year, and the growth rate rebounded sharply from January to February (from January to February, it decreased by 14.0%). %). From January to March, the accumulated profit decreased by 3.3% year-on-year, and the decline was 10.7 percentage points lower than that in January-February.

Zhu Hong, senior statistician of the Industry Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that from the data point of view, the industrial profit growth rate in March rose sharply. Production and sales growth accelerated, prices stabilized and rebounded, and industrial profit growth rebounded significantly. In March, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 8.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate accelerated by 3.2 percentage points from January to February. The operating income of industrial enterprises increased by 13.7% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 10.4 percentage points higher than that of January-February.

Zhu Hong said that the profits of key industries such as automobile, petroleum processing, steel and chemical industries have obviously recovered. In March, due to factors such as price cuts and new model listings, automobile production and sales rebounded. The profit of automobile manufacturing industry increased by 1.0% year-on-year, which reversed the year-on-year profit of 42.0% in January-February. Due to the rebound in industrial product prices, The profit of petroleum processing, steel and chemical industry decreased by 13.9%, 15.2% and 3.2% respectively. The decline was sharply narrowed by 56.5 percentage points, 43.8 percentage points and 24.0 percentage points from January to February. The above four industries collectively affected the growth rate of profits of all industrial enterprises above designated size by 12.8 percentage points from January to February. In addition, the pulling effect of the downward adjustment of the VAT rate, the impact of the wrong month of the Spring Festival, the low base of the same period and the increase in investment income have also increased the profit growth rate to a certain extent.

Huang Wentao, co-head of the research and development department of CITIC Securities and the chief analyst of macro-receipt, said yesterday that overall, production, prices and profit margins rebounded to support the first-quarter profit growth. In particular, the growth rate of industrial added value of 8.5% in March was higher than that of the same month from 2015 to 2018. It can be seen that the unexpected increase in industrial added value is mainly due to the strong margin of production in March. This is also consistent with the year-on-year performance of the power generation volume and accumulated data. However, it should be noted that the low base effect brought about by the misplacement of the Spring Festival holiday is an important factor in the improvement of industrial production and demand in March. In addition, since April 1st, the policy of lowering the VAT rate has been officially implemented, which has led to the incentive for enterprises to speed up production and stocking in order to increase the deduction. These factors have all supported the recovery of corporate profits to some extent. After May 1st, the reduction of the rate of payment of social security rates will also benefit the growth of corporate profits. However, the sustainability of these supporting factors needs to be observed.

Zhu Qibing, chief macro analyst of BOC International Securities, said yesterday that the profit growth rate of industrial enterprises in March was 13.9%, a significant rebound. From the second half of 2018 to the beginning of 2019, the profits of industrial enterprises continued to operate at low levels. In March, affected by the resumption of work, the operating rate of industrial enterprises rebounded and production was strong, driving the profits of industrial enterprises to rise. The growth rate of PPI is better than market expectations and has a positive impact on the profits of industrial enterprises. In terms of demand, infrastructure and real estate investment were strong in March, export growth was better than expected, and industrial enterprises' demand picked up, supporting the growth of profit growth. From the perspective of the industry, the industry's profits are highly differentiated, and the profit growth of infrastructure and consumer-related industries is relatively high. As infrastructure continues to increase, infrastructure-related industries still have better fundamentals.