Goldman Sachs: China Listed Companies' Q2 Earnings Growth Hits Five-Year High, AI Profits Concentrating in Semiconductors
nashnova research
Goldman Sachs data covering ~6,800 Chinese listed companies shows Q2 earnings up 24% year-on-year — the strongest single quarter in five years. But growth is heavily concentrated in semiconductors and financials while consumption keeps shrinking, making structural divergence the real signal.
Where did the 24% growth come from?
Q2 earnings rose +24% YoY, up sharply from 6% in Q1 and above Goldman's own top-down forecast. H1 net profit grew 14% YoY; revenue grew 6% — both well ahead of real GDP growth.
This means → the headline number is not broad-based prosperity. A handful of high-growth sectors are pulling the average up.
Private enterprises posted +36% profit growth; the "New China" basket hit +62%. SOEs managed only +18%; the "Old China" basket just +10%. Put simply = the stars of this cycle are private tech companies, not traditional state firms.
Which sectors are making money — and which are bleeding?
Top performers: IT (+142%), insurance (+140%), materials (+78%), brokerages (+58%), energy (+52%). The STAR Market saw profits surge +102%; ChiNext +44%.
Consumption remains under pressure: food & beverage -50% (dragged by agriculture), retail -20%, autos -14%. Consumer-sector revenue grew just 2–4%, signaling still-weak household demand.
This reflects a rare "fire and ice" split in Chinese corporate earnings — hard tech and financials are booming while consumption and property are contracting. The aggregate net margin rose from 7.6% to 8.2%, yet real estate revenue fell -21% YoY with margins still negative.
Who is actually capturing AI profits?
Semiconductor earnings surged roughly 150% quarter-on-quarter to $23 billion in Q2, accounting for 42% of China's total AI profit pool — up from just 25% in Q1 and 9% for all of 2025.
Memory chips — the chips that temporarily store data, consumed in massive quantities during AI training and inference — are the core driver. China's leading memory firms now capture 13% of global memory profits, with margins reaching 71%.
In plain terms = across the AI value chain, the companies making real money are chip makers, not model builders. China's AI model layer is still loss-making; value creation is overwhelmingly concentrated in hardware.
Beyond semiconductors, which AI segments are expanding?
China's power sector now holds 42% of global AI-related power profits (~$12 billion). This means → the electricity hunger of AI compute is pushing profits upstream to power generation.
AI infrastructure — servers, networking gear, and other physical facilities that keep AI running — saw earnings recover to $8 billion, a 19% global share.
Yet China's overall semiconductor margin stands at 20%, still behind the U.S. (35%) and other regions (43%). This reflects rapid volume growth in Chinese AI hardware, but a persistent gap in per-unit profitability.
Have internet companies bottomed out?
The nine major internet firms Goldman tracks — Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Baidu, Meituan, JD, PDD, NetEase, Trip.com — posted -13% YoY earnings in Q2, worse than the -8% consensus estimate.
But consensus is turning optimistic: Q3 is expected at +17%, Q4 at +25%, and Q1 2027 could reach +43%. The recovery thesis rests on easing food-delivery subsidy wars, AI and cloud monetization kicking in, and steady e-commerce cash generation.
In plain terms = internet profits are passing through the toughest stretch, but if the subsidy war cools and AI revenue materializes, the rebound is already being priced in by the market.
What does this mean for investors?
A-share shareholder returns are strengthening: over 870 companies announced interim dividends totaling RMB 740 billion; over 1,270 announced buyback plans worth more than RMB 230 billion, with roughly 70% structured as share cancellations — directly reducing share count and boosting per-share value.
Hong Kong tells the opposite story: internet firms are burning cash on subsidies and AI capex. Alibaba just completed the largest share placement in Hong Kong history. MSCI China ex-financials net issuance has flipped from EPS-accretive to EPS-dilutive.
This means → Goldman maintains its overweight A-shares, neutral offshore China stance. The key test for H2: whether earnings growth can spread from hard tech into weaker sectors like consumption — if it cannot, the market's structural divergence will only deepen.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。