English

By Yin Lei

Over 70 percent of A-share firms expect to see positive business performances for the first half of 2018, an analysis by the Economic Information Daily showed on Tuesday.

As of Monday, 1,281 A-share companies had publicized their mid-year performance forecast, of which 72.1 percent expect to see unchanged or higher profits, or turn losses into gains, as statistics from the financial data provider Wind showed.

An estimate by the Guosen Securities Co., Ltd. put the profit growth of all the A-share firms at 17 percent based on the economic and industrial data available up to the end of May. Non-financial businesses may enjoy an increase of 29.8 percent in their profits, with industrial enterprises likely to see a higher rise of 38.8 percent.

The most significant gainers are predicted to be those in the cyclical industries of steel, mining and chemicals, which may keep up their strong profitability registered in 2017 when they pressed ahead with the supply-side structural reform.

In the steel sector, for example, several companies already posted their second-quarter profit forecasts, which can be annualized at a growth of 200 percent to 300 percent. Other steel mills are expected to report higher growths soon.

The situation at the ChiNext board, where China's growth enterprises trade their stocks, was polarized across different sectors, a study by the BOC International (China) Limited found.

As of last weekend, over 99 percent of companies at the ChiNext board had released their performance forecasts for the past six months.

All the cyclical sectors may see higher profit growths, with steel and construction companies witnessing a growth of over 100 percent. The consumption sector is expecting a stable performance and the auto sector making profits at a rate 33 percent slower than before.

The real estate firms could experience an overall growth of 20 percent while securities dealers may see a gloomy picture.

The overall profit growth at the ChiNext board, calculated by the median value of the companies' forecasts, was estimated to stand at 20.4 percent, roughly the same as the 20.5 percent rate last year.