According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, natural gas production reached a record high, and imports maintained a relatively rapid growth rate. In March, industrial natural gas production was 21.6 billion cubic meters, up 4.5% year on year, and the growth rate was 1.4 percentage points slower than in January-February; the average daily output was 700 million cubic meters. The import of natural gas was 10.76 million tons, an increase of 22.0% over the previous year.

From January to March, industrial natural gas production was 63.2 billion cubic meters, an increase of 5.2% over the previous year.

Imports of natural gas amounted to 32.79 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 22.8%.

As a utility sector, gas stocks have always had the advantage of stable cash flow and high dividends.

According to Guoxin Securities statistics, as of April 7, the average cash dividend ratio and dividend ratio in the gas sector ranked first among A-share public environmental protection companies that have disclosed their 2023 dividend plans, at 51.37% and 3.68%, respectively.

Looking at the natural gas industry chain, the upstream gas sector is highly concentrated. Mining and supply are basically monopolized by “three barrels of oil”. Leading companies with resource advantages and a perfect upstream and downstream industrial chain layout are worth paying attention to.

Natural gas-related companies:

Xinao Energy (02688): The current growth focus has changed to non-LNG trading business. Among them, Pan-Energy's business revenue increased by 32.5% to 14.513 billion yuan, and gross profit accounted for 13.2% of the company's total gross profit. The “Pan-Energy Microgrid” model was launched to integrate source network storage, involving various fields such as clean energy, distributed energy storage, and intelligent services; Smart Home's business revenue was 3.702 billion yuan, up 18.9% year on year, gross profit reached 2,517 billion yuan, an increase of 21.1% year on year, and the cost side showed an improvement trend, thanks to the accumulation of a high-viscosity customer base in the urban fuel industry.

Kunlun Energy (00135): As of June 30, 2023, 89.2% of the company's LPG upstream resources came from CNPC, the majority shareholder. The company's main revenue sources are natural gas sales business (accounting for about 80%) and LPG sales business. Although it also has LNG processing, storage and transportation, exploration and production operations. The former currently has two receiving stations in Tangshan and Jiangsu, while the latter explores and exploits crude oil and natural gas in the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Sultanate of Oman, etc., but the revenue scale of the two is still small.

China Resources Gas (01193): CICC believes that last year's results fell short of market expectations. The management indicated that this year's gas sales volume increased by 6 to 8% year-on-year, with a gross margin of more than 0.52 yuan per party. Considering that the company's gas projects in Chengdu/Fuzhou and other cities have recently obtained price adjustment documents, LNG spot prices have remained low, and they believe that the company's gross margin repair situation may exceed management guidelines.

Beijing Holdings (00392): In 2023, Beijing Holdings's revenue was 82.31 billion yuan, of which Beijing Gas's revenue was 61.47 billion yuan, an increase of 2.7% over the previous year, accounting for 74.7% of total revenue. However, profit fell nearly 11% during the year to 4,563 billion yuan. Beijing Gas's consolidated gas sales volume in 2023 was 24 billion cubic meters. Among them, pipeline gas sales in Beijing increased 1.7% year-on-year to 18.1 billion cubic meters due to factors such as early heating. The foreign port city sells 2 billion cubic meters of gas, distributes 2.3 billion cubic meters of LNG, and distributes 1.6 billion cubic meters of LNG in international trade.