Wen /DoNews Autumn
Editor/Yang Bocheng
Meituan once again ushered in the highlight moment of soaring market value.
recently, meituan released its financial report for the second quarter of 2121 and its semi-annual results. According to the financial report, the revenue of Meituan in the second quarter was 24.7 billion yuan, higher than the market expectation of 23.386 billion yuan, up 8.9% year-on-year; The company achieved an operating profit of 2.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 95.5%; The adjusted net profit was 2.72 billion yuan, up 82% year-on-year.
On the whole, thanks to the effective control of the domestic epidemic and the gradual recovery of the consumer market, the data of revenue and net profit of Meituan are much better than that of the previous quarter. With this eye-catching achievement that exceeded market expectations, Meituan also received corresponding feedback in the financial market.
As of August 24th, Meituan's share price once rose by 11.28% to HK$ 271, and its total market value officially broke through the US$ 211 billion mark (HK$ 1.56 trillion), making it the fourth largest market value company in Hong Kong stocks, after Ali, Tencent and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
it is worth mentioning that after the first quarter financial report was released in late may this year, Meituan has just crossed the threshold of $111 billion market value. In other words, it took only three months for Meituan to turn losses into profits and double its market value.
However, it is not difficult to find out through the financial report that behind this brilliant achievement, the three main businesses of Meituan, namely, food and beverage take-out, wine tour at the store and new business, are also facing bottlenecks, difficulties and challenges in different degrees in their respective fields, and it is also a hidden worry that cannot be ignored that how its helm Wang Xing grasps the direction of the troika and makes it work together to the maximum.
It is difficult to break through the bottleneck of take-away business
All along, major take-away platforms at home and abroad are generally faced with two major problems in the industry: the profit model is too single due to excessive reliance on commission income, and the self-built distribution team leads to high distribution costs.
According to the financial report, although the take-away business of Meituan has picked up, it seems that it has made little progress in overcoming the above two difficulties.
The financial report shows that Meituan's food and beverage take-out revenue in the second quarter was 14.5 billion yuan, up by 13.2% year-on-year; Among them, the commission income was 12.7 billion yuan, accounting for 88% of the total take-away income. By comparing the data of Meituan's annual report in 2118 and 2119, it can be calculated that the commission of its takeaway income accounted for 94% and 87% respectively in the previous two years.
although this proportion shows a slight downward trend, it is undeniable that commission income is still the main source of take-away revenue of Meituan. However, this profit model of extracting the commission from merchants' orders can easily lead to the contradiction between the platform and merchants, and once caused the US Mission to fall into the forefront.
In mid-April, 33 catering associations in Guangdong Province jointly issued a document denouncing the US group's take-out, saying that they charged too much commission, and the commission of new merchants was as high as 26%, which exceeded the limit of enterprises. Moreover, the platform involves the overlord clause, which strongly requires merchants to agree to harsh terms such as "exclusive cooperation" and involves unfair competition.
in the face of accusations from many parties, although the official of Meituan personally clarified that "the real figures are far below the rumors", the joint "crusade" of major businesses has exposed the disadvantages of the single profit model of Meituan's take-away commission income.
In the future, if Meituan still forcibly raises the commission rate, it will inevitably arouse the resentment of merchants and intensify the contradiction with them; If the current rate is maintained, it is not difficult to imagine that the day when the commission income of the US group will hit the ceiling will not be far away.
Another revenue source of Meituan's take-out, online marketing service for merchants, seems to be a new revenue growth point.
The data shows that from April to June, the online marketing business income of Meituan Takeaway was 1.8 billion yuan, up 62.2% year-on-year. However, it is also pointed out in the financial report that the growth of this sector is mainly due to the increasing demand for online traffic by merchants during the resumption of take-away business, and it is not certain whether this trend will become normal in the future.
to take a step back, although the online marketing service revenue has achieved rapid growth in this quarter, it only accounts for 1.2% of the total take-out revenue, and it is unrealistic to expect it to catch up with the commission income and become the main revenue source of the take-out business of Meituan.
The popularity of the "commission door" has not faded, and the high delivery cost has also become a major "stubborn disease" for the US group's takeaway.
according to the financial report, in the second quarter, the total expenditure of the US delegation was 23.9 billion yuan, of which the cost of catering take-away riders was 11 billion yuan, accounting for more than 41% of the total expenditure. At the same time, it should not be underestimated that this cost accounts for almost 71% of the US group's take-away revenue and 81% of the commission income.
Such high delivery cost is directly related to the asset-oriented mode of the self-built delivery team of Meituan Takeaway.
in order to seize the take-away market share, meituan started to build its own distribution team in 2115. In the process of changing the business model from light to heavy, the cost paid to take-away riders has also increased.
Regarding how to solve this problem, Wang Xing said in the conference call after the release of the financial report that in addition to continuously optimizing the order allocation algorithm, the company has been studying automatic distribution in the past few years, hoping to improve the distribution efficiency and reduce the distribution cost. But at the same time, he also admitted that "this is not something that will happen in the near future, and it will take time."
in addition to the two internal difficulties, the joint pursuit of external rivals also makes the US group's takeaway dare not take it lightly.
In August 2117, when I was hungry, I bought Baidu Takeaway with a total price of * * * 811 million dollars. A year later, it was taken over by Alibaba and Ant Financial. Only two months later, when I was hungry, I merged with word of mouth, in order to * * * take a takeaway with the industry leader Meituan.
In the past two years, due to the release of the synergistic effect with Ali Ecology, hungry people have also ushered in opportunities for rapid growth.
The day before Meituan released its financial report, the financial report data released by Alibaba Group showed that as of June 31th, the number of registered businesses that were hungry had increased by 31% year-on-year, and only Alipay brought 45% new consumers for food and beverage takeout. In the same period, Ali's local life service income was 7 billion yuan, up 1.5% year-on-year, higher than the growth rate of 8.9% of Meituan.
it is not difficult to see that although it occupies most of the country in the take-away market, it is not easy for the US group to take the lead in take-away due to the pressure of internal and external troubles.
The business of arrival and wine tour needs to be revived urgently
With the effective control of the domestic epidemic, the take-away business of Meituan has gradually recovered, but its arrival and wine tour have not recovered from the impact of the epidemic.
according to the financial report data, in the second quarter, Meituan's revenue from the store arrival and wine travel business was 4.5 billion yuan, down by 13.4% year-on-year; The business achieved an operating profit of 1.9 billion yuan, down 1.2% year-on-year. In addition, the number of domestic hotel nights consumed on the platform during this period was 78 million, down by 17% year-on-year.
Despite the decline in revenue and profit, the store and wine travel business still provided the most profit for the whole company with the smallest revenue ratio, and became a well-deserved "cash cow" among the three major businesses of Meituan.
it is worth noting that in the first quarter, which was most seriously affected by the epidemic, although the store-arrival and wine-traveling businesses suffered the most-the revenue dropped by over 31% and the profit dropped by nearly 61%, it was the only one of the three major businesses of Meituan that brought profits.
It can be seen that accelerating the recovery of the store and wine travel business has become the key to improving the profitability of Meituan.
To this end, Meituan launched the concept of "Peace of Mind Consumption Festival" in more than 61 cities across the country, and cooperated with the local government to issue electronic coupons to consumers, hoping to stimulate consumption to drive the growth of its store-to-store business.
In terms of wine travel business, Meituan has also made frequent efforts, not only launching the plans of "staying at ease" and "traveling at ease", but also trying to realize the growth of hotel business by enhancing cooperation with high-star hotels.
On July 28th, Meituan launched a new hotel pre-sale product "Super Group Purchase"-you can stay in a five-star hotel at a price as low as 51%, but this is not the first time Meituan has tried a high-star hotel.
As early as April 2119, Meituan released the project of "Hotel +X", hoping to help Gaoxing Hotel improve the digitalization and online level of non-accommodation products such as in-store catering and wedding banquet, so as to realize the business bundling of the two.
for meituan, which cut into the market with low-star hotels, it is one of the most effective ways to seize the resources of high-star hotels with higher profit margins in order to realize the recovery of its hotel business as soon as possible. After all, high star represents high customer unit price, and high customer unit price represents high commission.
However, this series of operations by Meituan in Gaoxing Hotel has moved the "cheese" of OTA giant Ctrip. As the big brother in the online travel industry for many years, Ctrip has been firmly grasping more than 51% of the high-star hotel resources in the market, and it is not easy for Meituan to "grab food" in this market.
first of all, it's too late for the US delegation to enter the game.
The popularity of live travel began at the end of February when the epidemic was the most serious. At that time, the entire hotel industry suffered a huge blow, and it was urgent to help it withdraw funds through pre-sale.
nowadays, with the gradual recovery of the whole market, the popularity of pre-sale products has gradually weakened. Many hotel practitioners said that they are reducing the number of pre-sale products and gradually increasing the price of pre-sale products. The US Mission, which announced its entry five months late, has basically missed this slogan.
secondly, Ctrip's leading position is hard to shake.
on July 29th, Ctrip released "2121 Ctrip BOSS Live Big Data Report", which showed the report card during the epidemic: in the past four months, Ctrip has accumulated GMV of over 1 billion yuan in more than 41 live broadcasts, bringing goods to more than one million high-star hotels for one thousand nights.
Ctrip's brilliant achievements are inseparable from its absolute right to speak in the high-star hotel market. Over the years, high-star hotels and Ctrip have formed a close relationship of mutual achievement and interdependence, and it will be difficult for Meituan, which started as a low-cost hotel, to break this situation.
In addition, the entry of Flying Pig makes the battle for the high-star hotel market more intense.
during the period of 618 this year, the BOSS group of thousands of hotels in 111 cities across the country flew live pigs, and there was another uninvited guest in the high-star hotel market. For the US Mission, whose strength is relatively weak, with the spoiler of the flying pig, its chances of winning in the battle for high-star hotels are a little less.
Not only that, Feizhu has been staring at the low-end hotel market of Meituan for the past two years, focusing on young brands and technology, and confronting Meituan, which also focuses on young users, in the wine travel business.
How far is the recovery of Meituan's store arrival and wine tour business, by attracting users to the store through huge subsidies, seizing Ctrip's market share in the field of high-star hotels, and competing with Feizhu for young users in the low-end market?
The profit problem of new business
The profit bottleneck of take-away business is difficult to break through, and the business of arrival and wine travel has not fully recovered. Under the double blow, the development of new business has given the Meituan a surprise.
the financial report shows that in the second quarter, Meituan's new business revenue was 5.6 billion yuan, up 22% year-on-year, much higher than the revenue growth rate of the other two businesses. In the first quarter of the worst epidemic, this business also achieved contrarian growth with a growth rate of 4.9%, becoming the only business segment of Meituan that achieved growth in the quarter.
through combing, it is found that Meituan's new business mainly includes three sections: local retail business represented by Meituan's flash shopping, fresh retail business represented by Meituan's grocery shopping, Meituan's optimization and food daquan, and the last section is bicycle and motorcycle business.
unlike the take-away and wine-traveling businesses, the local retail and fresh retail businesses of Meituan ushered in a small climax of user growth and capital overweight during the epidemic period due to two major reasons: the shift of users' consumption habits from offline to online and the acceleration of online services by traditional merchants.
Among them, Meituan, which adopts the self-operated mode, has developed the fastest, with an income increase of nearly four times. At present, in addition to Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities, Meituan continues to explore new cities and has officially settled in Guangzhou.
of course, the rapid growth of these two businesses is also inseparable from Meituan's huge user base and efficient distribution network.
in addition to the active layout in the fields of fresh food and local retail, Meituan continues to increase its investment in bicycles and motorcycles. This quarter, Meituan launched about 1.5 million new bicycles to replace old ones, and invested nearly 311,111 motorcycles.
In this regard, Wang Xing said at the analyst meeting that * * * enjoys the high-frequency consumption scene of motorcycle business, which contains huge market opportunities, and its more efficient average turnover rate will bring better unit economic benefits, which also proves the possibility of its independent profitability in the short term.
With the increasing investment in new business, the requirement of profit has become the biggest problem that Meituan has to face in new business.
however, according to the data, the operating loss of Meituan's new business increased by 7.1% from 1.4 billion yuan in the first quarter to 1.5 billion yuan in the second quarter. Despite the rapid growth in revenue, Meituan's new business still failed to escape the fate of losses.
In addition, the numerous competitors in local and fresh retail fields is another difficult problem faced by Meituan in addition to the profit requirements in its new business.
first, the local retail sector.
In April this year, Tmall Supermarket was upgraded to the same city retail business group, and the new retail business of Hungry, which was originally a local life service company, was integrated into this business group; In the same month, JD.COM established Dashang Super Omni-channel Business Group, integrating the original JD.COM Supermarket, Consumer Goods Division, New Channel Division, 7FRESH and Store 1.
Compared with the above two rivals, Meituan Flash Shopping, which was launched in July 2118, has the advantages of huge traffic pool and powerful instant delivery system, but at the same time, its disadvantages are also obvious-it will lack the grasp of the supply chain by docking many scattered businesses with light assets model.
followed by the field of fresh retail.
although meituan has a wide range of layouts in this field, including a complete list of dishes that take the light asset route, and a self-operated meituan to buy vegetables, in first-tier cities such as Beishangguang, it has a baby elephant sitting in the front row, and in the sinking market, meituan has sent a meituan to choose the best, but in the face of its relatively mature rivals, such as Boxma Xiansheng and Daily Youxian, its advantages in the layout of the whole fresh retail industry are not enough to make it compete with each other.
Nevertheless, Wang Xing appeared confident at the analyst meeting. "This is a very competitive market, but the US Mission has never been afraid of competition. In the past few years, we have achieved a leading position in food distribution, and online fresh products are the market we will win next. "