Unity(U.N)从游戏引擎到工业设计引擎的破圈，做元宇时代的“卖铲人”

Unity（U.N） Equity Research·Company Research·Software development 1 / 27 东吴证券（香港） 请务必阅读正文之后的免责声明部分 [Table_Main] The breakthrough from game engine to industrial design engine encourages Unity to become the "shovel seller" in the metaverse Outperform（Initiation） Forecast & Valuation 2021A 2022E 2023E 2024E Revenue (USD mn) 1,111 1,500 2,040 2,706 Growth (YoY %) 44% 35% 36% 33% Net profit (USD mn) -533 -536 -429 -243 Growth (YoY %) 89% 1% -20% -43% Adjusted EPS (USD) -1.81 -1.82 -1.46 -0.83 P/E (X) - - - - Investment Thesis ◼ Unity's game engine subscription business will continue to grow rapidly, due to the accelerating trend of game engine platformization and the increasing market share of mobile games. ① From the perspective of cost performance, there will be fewer and fewer cases for game companies to develop engines for a certain game exclusively, which is a benefit to Unity, a platform game engine company. ② The increasing market share of mobile games is a boon to Unity who is more favored by mobile game developers since it’s easy to use and supports cross-platform. Given these situations, we expect the company's revenue growth from game engine subscription to be over 20%. ◼ The Unity engine has begun to expand its use in non-game fields like film and television, animation, automobile, construction and industry due to its excellent 3D rendering capabilities, which is expected to further boost its subscription business for the second time. The drawback of professional software in construction industry is its incapability of realizing real-time 3D interaction. Embedding Unity's real-time rendering and interaction technology into professional software can not only improve the efficiency of design and collaboration but also display better to customers. ◼ Operate Solutions provide the company with stable cash flow and support long-term growth of its engine business. We believe that Unity's advertising business will contribute to its engine business growth relying on the following three core advantages: ① Strong association with developers through game engine business ensures terminal data flow coverage. ② Unity has unique data acquisition advantage despite the Apple IDFA privacy policy. ③ High synergy of its advertising business and engine business and cross-selling opportunities among customers provides customers with a complete closed-loop service. ◼ Earnings Forecast & Rating：We believe that the adoption of real-time 3D technology will change the way people interact with digital contents and entertainment (only 2% of virtual world contents is 3D currently). As a creation platform of 3D virtual world, Unity plays the role of "shovel seller" in the Metaverse, and has great potentials in the fields of engine subscription, operation promotion and extended reality (XR). Unity is expected to gain higher profit in operation and promotion of the virtual world in addition to SAAS revenue of engine. We assign 25X PS ratio and a target mark