First of all, in my opinion, the theme of Meituan's earnings data for the quarter is one: accelerating "help real", and Meituan's revenue structure is changing. 2021 Q2, Meituan's revenue was 43.759 billion yuan, compared with 24.722 billion yuan in the same period last year, up 77% year-on-year. Revenue from takeout was 23.125 billion yuan, up 59% year-on-year; from stores, hotels and travel, 8.602 billion yuan, up 89.3% year-on-year; and from new business and others, 12.032 billion yuan, up 113.6% year-on-year. Judging from the growth of the three businesses, if nothing else, new business will become Meituan's biggest source of revenue in the next two years.
Retail business is the core of Meituan's new business. Retail is composed of Meituan grocery shopping in urban areas, Meituan flash sales where everything can be brought to your home, and community retailing, which serves audiences in different areas with different fulfillment methods. This is not the same as the old business of Meituan service e-commerce to help the real economy, belongs to the category of physical e-commerce, is the Meituan continue to deep "help real" performance. The so-called "help", is the United States Mission accelerated to help the local living expenses service economy, now also deep help a wider range of the real economy, into the commodity retail, supply chain and other physical areas of service to the real economy, physical e-commerce.
From the Meituan historical data, the number of active users of Meituan in 2018 is 400 million, 2019 is 450 million, and the first half of June 30, 2020 is 457 million. That is to say, in 2019 and the first half of 2020, this is the first question of the outside world for Meituan, whether the flow of service e-commerce has peaked?
But this quarter's data says it all. Meituan's active user base in Q2 through June 30, 2021 was 628 million, compared with 457 million a year earlier, a 37.4% increase. But it's worth noting that the incremental increase in users was thought to be the only bright spot in the quarter, when in fact Meituan's number of transactions per user for annual transactions also increased, suggesting that older users' reliance on Meituan and stickiness to the platform is also strengthening.
Let's look at, again, regulation and Meituan. Unlike previous earnings reports, of course, almost all major Internet platform companies have had one **** same topic in recent earnings reports as well as analyst meetings, and that is regulation.
Strictly speaking, the regulatory fines, which have been widely reported in the media, are just routine risk disclosures without reference, and the first thing that should be clear is that a series of regulatory measures around the Internet and corrective mechanisms for the past will greatly benefit the Internet's sustained and long-term healthy development. This is also why Wang Xing will emphasize in the analyst meeting, "regulatory changes for the sustainable development of the Internet industry and orderly growth is good, but also help to promote fair competition and healthy development of the industry".
Regulation for Meituan, the most important should be the labor protection of takeaway riders. On the eve of the release of Meituan's earnings report, July 26, by the General Administration of Market Supervision, the State Internet Information Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Commerce, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions jointly issued the "on the implementation of the responsibility of the network catering platform to effectively safeguard the rights and interests of takeaway delivery workers of the guiding opinions" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). The introduction of the Opinions is undoubtedly a confidence boost for Meituan, which means that the external environment and policies tend to fall into place.
Meituan responded that after the issuance of the Opinions, the company set up a special working group to study the guidance provided in the document against each article, and to investigate and improve itself, Meituan also set up a takeaway rider service department under the guidance of the government departments in July, and according to the different forms of cooperation, to study the way of social security that is more in line with the characteristics of this group of laborers and the interests of the group of riders.
In a sense, Meituan's core competitiveness is built on millions of riders. According to data, in the first half of 2021, the average daily active riders on the Meituan platform exceeded 1 million, and the riders active on the Meituan platform are not only the foundation of Meituan's takeaway delivery service, but also the "flow" support for active cities to take root in the streets. In fact, Meituan flash sale, Meituan grocery shopping and other new business exploration and development, but also through the way to make a bigger cake to ease the supply and demand relationship between Meituan and riders.
The implementation of occupational injury protection according to the Opinion is the first step of Meituan to protect the rights and interests of the riders, in addition to the certainty of the bottom of the pocket protection, as well as, some more attempts. In November last year, Meituan takeaway launched the "boat plan", in the last two months of 2020 held 53 riders forum, collected covering delivery mechanism, complaint mechanism and other 43 focus issues, but also one after another introduced improvement measures.
The existence of the market is "beautiful because of the group", and beauty is essentially a process of continuous progress.
At the end of the article, we will discuss the social value of the enterprise from the financial reports and cases of Meituan. The strengthening of regulation of the Internet is not a surprise, but if you think about it rationally and calmly, you will find that the color of regulation is actually "long-termism". This is undoubtedly good for technology companies that insist on long-termism.
Changes in the external environment have also made more and more tech companies realize that they are not isolated, and that they need to be in closer contact with the environment, society and government. The social responsibility of the Internet platform is obviously to solve the social employment. From the example of Meituan, the rise of takeaway has given birth to the new profession of takeaway riders, and Meituan has solved millions of jobs. But solving employment is only the first step for Internet platforms to fulfill their social responsibility. In terms of safeguarding workers' rights and interests, there is still a lot of room for exploration and optimization, whether it's for Meituan or other companies such as SF and SITO.
Employees have said that Wang Xing has been thinking for a whole year about the corporate mission of Meituan, which is to "help people eat better and live better", and many people will think that this may be for publicity reasons. We are always accustomed to tools, entrances, platforms, market capitalization, profitability and other concepts to measure the value of a company, but the value of a company ultimately depends on how many people you serve, and how much value you create for these people.
Similarly, many people believe that corporate social responsibility, these are the "icing on the cake" of things, used to brand publicity to decorate the lintel. But now it seems that corporate social responsibility, how companies deal with the environment, society and government, is increasingly important and will become the core competitiveness of the Internet platform.
Our perception of business competition and Internet platforms should also be updated from this moment on. The original valuation of the Internet platform, which is the cognitive inertia of the industrial era, is to look at the scale and the entrance behind the scale, the level of profitability. An established fact is that with the strengthening of Internet regulation and industry norms, China's Internet will completely bid farewell to Apple, Microsoft, Tencent and other "profiteering" mode, the control of asset returns and the increase in the proportion of labor income, is inevitable. Then in the future, the whole industry will be maintained at a relatively reasonable level of profitability under the line. Of course many mature companies are actually maintained in the 5%-10% net profit range.
China and the United States Internet companies, such as Amazon and Meituan, are two relatively special existence. Amazon has maintained a limited low profit range for a long time, in the initial stage of the company, and will even deliberately lose money, it is not that it does not have the ability to make a profit, on the contrary, this kind of low-profit mode of operation, is precisely the way to maintain its competitive advantage - both can force the business operation to continuously improve efficiency or investment in scientific and technological research and development, but also can build its Moat. Business organizations in the industrial era were more willing to obtain the profits of the moment, but in the new stage, enterprises need to live in the future, more sustainable organization and operation. This is also the enterprise's social value creation, more and more important reason - from a more macroscopic and long-term perspective, to build a more friendly organization operations, deal with the real public **** relationship.
But do good, no questions asked. Should be the long-termism that a good public company should adhere to in the current era of compliance and triple-distribution.