In October 2023, corporate profit in China’s industrial sector increased 2.7% year-on-year, Xinhua Network, reported on the 27th.
Based on data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on the same day, the media reported that the gross profit of industrial companies reached 703.4 billion yuan in October.
The growth slowed sharply from 11.9% in September and 17.2% in August, but increased for the third consecutive month.
Industrial enterprise profit statistics are prepared for large companies with annual sales of more than 20 million yuan in their main business.
“For the third month, industrial companies’ profits have exceeded the previous year, indicating that high input costs, overproduction capacity and sluggish demand have passed the worst period of squeezing profits,” a local economist noted.
However, the Economist said, “The rapidly reduced profits show that companies are still very sensitive to input costs,” adding, “The slowdown in profit growth compared to the previous year is due to a rebound in energy prices.”
Prolonged instability in China’s real estate sector, local government debt risks, weak domestic and foreign demand, and geopolitical tensions are putting pressure on investor sentiment, hurting corporate profits.
The cumulative industrial enterprise profit from January to October was 6.1154 trillion yuan, down 9.0% from the same period last year. Rather than a 9.0% decline from January to September, it was reduced by 1.2 percentage points.
The January-October profit in the electricity and heating, gas, water production and supply sectors jumped 40.0% to 586.46 billion yuan.
Mining fell 19.7% to 1.11425 trillion yuan, while manufacturing fell 8.5% to 4.414.71 trillion yuan.
The profit for the January-October period was 2.31 trillion yuan, down 9.9 percent for state-owned companies, down 7.0 percent for equity firms 4.49 trillion yuan, down 10.2 percent for foreign-funded companies including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and 1.6851 trillion yuan, down 1.9 percent for private companies.
