CITIC Securities: Intelligent Computing Drives Transformation, Data Center Industry Welcomes a New Round of Golden Development Period

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, Guotai Junan released a research report stating that if we refer to the capital expenditure plans of ByteDance, Alibaba-W (09988), and Tencent Holdings (00700) and assess the prosperity of AI investments, it is expected that the capital expenditure of leading domestic internet companies will remain high over the next three years, which is expected to bring at least 7GW of new IT power demand. However, the existing third-party IDC reserve capacity is less than 5GW, providing ample development space for related enterprises. Therefore, it is recommended to pay attention to: GUANGDONG AOFEI DATA TECHNOLOGY (300738.SZ), sinnet (300383.SZ), AtHub (603881.SH), and to focus on: Range Technology (300442.SZ).

Guotai Junan's main viewpoints are as follows:

From the demand side, AI has become the core driving force for the growth of computing power scale.

According to the "Comprehensive Computing Power Evaluation Report" by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, by the end of 2023, the total global computing power scale will reach 910 EFLOPS (FP32), with China's intelligent computing scale growing by over 70% year-on-year, showing strong growth momentum. The core IT power demand of global data centers is expected to increase from 49GW in 2023 to 96GW in 2026, with the power demand driven by newly built intelligent computing centers accounting for 85% of the increment. Overseas cloud vendors such as Amazon, Google, META, and Microsoft continue to increase capital expenditure in Q1 2025 and maintain an optimistic outlook for the entire year of 2025, with substantial funds being invested in AI and technology upgrades. Domestic internet companies are also entering an accelerated investment phase in AI, with giants like Alibaba and Tencent increasing their investments in cloud services and AI infrastructure, and the user base of ByteDance's products experiencing significant growth, indicating huge capital expenditure potential. Meanwhile, operators' capital expenditure on computing power is also continuously increasing.

In terms of order scale, ByteDance leads the demand growth for large bases.

In 2024, the number of intelligent computing center construction projects in China is rapidly increasing, with over 500 projects at different construction stages nationwide. The order scale of third-party IDC is about 2.5GW, with ByteDance's demand accounting for approximately 2GW. The development of intelligent computing is driving data centers towards high density and high efficiency, with the average rack power globally continuously increasing. Domestic Ulanqab and overseas Southeast Asia have become hotspots for data center development. Ulanqab has vigorously developed the big data industry since 2013, signing contracts for over 1.1 million racks, with considerable computing power operation scale; the data center market in Southeast Asia is experiencing explosive growth, and the "SJB Corridor" is expected to become one of the largest data center markets in the world, with Johor attracting numerous international giants due to its advantages.

From the market environment perspective, supply and demand are recovering, prices are stabilizing, and with continuous growth in demand, price increases are expected.

The domestic data center market has gradually optimized its supply and demand structure after initial adjustments, stabilizing prices. An upward price trend has already appeared in overseas data centers, and as AI increases the demand for intelligent computing data centers, the supply and demand of the global data center market will further balance, with rental prices expected to rebound.

Risk Warning: Risks of Sino-U.S. trade friction, government and industry investment progress lower than expected, and industry demand lower than expected