Minsheng Securities: China Unicom's operational performance has shown stable and robust growth, maintaining a "buy" rating.

Minsheng Securities research report points out that China Unicom achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of 6.349 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%. The company's operating performance is steadily growing, and the business structure continues to be optimized. The company has built a high-quality data set with multiple sources of integration, created a multi-mode symbiotic meta-scene model, and the initial effects of the commercial application of artificial intelligence at scale have emerged, creating hundreds of intelligent entities. In addition, international business revenue reached 6.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11%; the proportion of revenue from strategic emerging industries increased to 86%, promoting the company's high-quality development. The company has decided to distribute a dividend of 0.11 yuan per share in mid-2025, a year-on-year increase of 16%. Considering the company's rapid dividend growth, the improvement of traditional business operating efficiency, and the continuous improvement of profitability, as well as the good development prospects of the computing business under the background of the development of the AI industry. It is expected that the company's net profit attributable to shareholders will be 10.1 billion yuan, 11.3 billion yuan, and 12.6 billion yuan in 2025/2026/2027 respectively, corresponding to PEs of 17x/15x/13x. Maintain a "recommended" rating.