It's too early to look down on the coal industry

At present, clean energy is highly respected. Coal, as one of the traditional energy sources, has become a sunset industry in many people's eyes in recent years due to serious pollution, declining consumption and non-renewable factors. Whether the coal industry is a sunset industry or not? Is there any investment value for coal enterprises?

First of all, it needs to be clear whether an industry belongs to one of the criteria of sunset industry, whether it is possible to be completely replaced, and whether there is sufficient market demand.

Although China has been vigorously advocating the development of clean energy, it can not be ignored that China's energy structure still has the characteristics of "rich coal, poor oil and less gas". The external dependence of oil and natural gas has increased from 57.5% and 21% in 2011 to 69.8% and 45.3% in 2018, respectively. National resource endowment determines that the energy structure dominated by coal will not change in the short term. In recent years, China has also been actively implementing clean production, clean utilization and clean transformation of coal in order to realize the vision of rational utilization of coal and converting coal into clean energy.

The State Energy Administration said that in 2019, the proportion of coal consumption in total energy consumption in China will drop to 58.5%, with the target of 59% in 2018. Coal consumption still accounts for the absolute majority of the total energy consumption. At the same time, it is worth noting that although the proportion of coal consumption has decreased slightly, the total energy consumption still keeps an annual growth rate of more than 2%, which shows that the absolute demand for coal still keeps a certain growth. From 2016 to 2018, with the smooth implementation of the supply-side reform and the spontaneous merger and reorganization of the coal industry, the predicament of excess capacity accumulated for many years in China's coal industry has been effectively alleviated. A large number of coal mines with long-term losses and poor safety foundation have withdrawn, and the concentration of the coal industry has been greatly improved. According to the data of

, from 2016 to 2018, China's coal industry eliminated 290 million tons of backward production capacity, 250 million tons and 270 million tons, totally completed the elimination of 810 million tons, two years ahead of schedule to achieve the "13th Five-Year Plan" coal industry production target.

According to the 2008 financial report, the top five listed companies in the coal mining industry of Wind CITIC accounted for more than 70% of the total revenue of 26 listed companies in the industry. In terms of profit, the top five listed companies accounted for more than 81% of the total net profit in the industry in 2018, while the net profit of one Shenhua company in China accounted for nearly 52% of the total profit in the industry. It can be said that although the prosperity of the coal industry has peaked, the overall downward trend will be relatively relaxed.

Through the reform and development in recent years, China's coal industry has basically got rid of the characteristics of small, scattered and chaotic before, and started to enter a new stage of operation of group operation, optimization of industrial layout and substantial improvement of production efficiency and efficiency. The centralized advantages of leading enterprises will be more prominent.

China Shenhua, as the industry leader, is also the undisputed "dividend-sharing king". Since its listing in 2007, the company has maintained a stable dividend policy. As of 2018, the company has achieved 11 cash dividends, totaling 191.537 billion yuan, with an average dividend rate of 44.63%. In 2018, the company announced that it would distribute a cash dividend of 0.88 yuan per share (including tax) based on 1989 billion shares of total equity, totaling 17.503 billion yuan, with a dividend distribution rate of 39.9%.