This is a belated financial report interpretation, because Meituan released its 2021 Q2 financial report on the evening of August 30. Since then, the media, especially social networks, have focused too much on Wang Xing’s " The interpretation of "Tongfuyu" and Meituan Gene ignores the financial report itself, the numerical differences therein, and Meituan's positive responses and measures to supervision and policies disclosed in it. This article will start from the analysis of financial report data, extend to the impact of macro-level supervision on Meituan, and finally make some small discussions around corporate social value.

First of all, in my opinion, Meituan’s financial report data for this quarter has one theme: accelerating “assistance”, and Meituan’s revenue structure is changing. In Q2 of 2021, Meituan’s revenue was 43.759 billion yuan, compared with 24.722 billion yuan in the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of 77%. Specifically, the revenue from food delivery in this quarter was 23.125 billion, a year-on-year increase of 59%, and in-store, hotel and tourism revenue was 8.602 billion. , a year-on-year increase of 89.3, new business and others 12.032 billion, a year-on-year increase of 113.6. Judging from the growth of the three businesses, if nothing unexpected happens, the new business will become Meituan’s largest source of income in the next two years.

Retail business is the core of Meituan’s new business. Retailing consists of Meituan’s grocery shopping in urban areas, Meituan’s flash sales where “everything can be delivered to your home”, and community retail. It uses different fulfillment methods to serve audiences in different regions. This is different from Meituan’s old line of serving e-commerce to help the real economy. It belongs to the category of physical e-commerce and is a manifestation of Meituan’s continued in-depth “helping real economy”. The so-called "help" means that Meituan accelerates its efforts to help the local living expenses service economy. Now it is also deeply assisting the broader real economy, entering the real fields such as commodity retail and supply chain to serve the real economy, and real e-commerce.

From the historical data of Meituan, the number of active users of Meituan in 2018 was 400 million, in 2019 it was 450 million, and in the first half of June 30, 2020, it was 457 million. In other words, in 2019 and the first half of 2020, this is the first question that the outside world has about Meituan. Has the traffic of service e-commerce companies peaked?

But this quarter’s numbers speak for themselves. Meituan's number of active users in Q2 as of June 30, 2021 was 628 million, compared with 457 million in the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of 37.4. However, it is worth mentioning that everyone thinks that the increase in users is the only bright spot of this quarter. In fact, the number of transactions per capita of Meituan’s annual transaction users is also increasing. This also shows that old users rely on Meituan and the platform. The stickiness is also increasing.

Let’s look at supervision and Meituan. Different from previous financial reports, of course, almost all important Internet platform companies have a common topic in their recent financial reports and analyst meetings, and that is supervision.

Strictly speaking, the regulatory fines widely reported in the media are just routine risk disclosures and have no reference significance. First of all, it must be clear that the series of regulatory measures surrounding the Internet and the past error correction mechanisms have no impact on the Internet. Sustained and long-term healthy development goes a long way. This is why Wang Xinghui emphasized at the analyst meeting that "regulatory changes are good for the sustainable development and orderly growth of the Internet industry, and will also help promote fair competition and the healthy development of the industry."

For Meituan, the most important thing in supervision should be the labor protection of delivery riders. On the eve of the release of Meituan’s financial report, on July 26, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Commerce, and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions jointly issued the “On Implementing the Implementation of Online Catering” Guiding Opinions on Platform Responsibilities to Effectively Protect the Rights and Interests of Takeaway Delivery Workers” (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”). The issuance of the "Opinions" is undoubtedly a confidence boost for Meituan, which means that the external environment and policies tend to be implemented.

Meituan responded that after the issuance of the "Opinions", the company established a special working group to study the guidance put forward in the document one by one, self-examine and correct one by one, and Meituan also worked with government departments Under the guidance, the Food Delivery Rider Service Department was established in July to study social security methods that are more in line with the characteristics and interests of the rider labor group based on different forms of cooperation.

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. Riders active on the Meituan platform are not only the foundation of Meituan’s takeout delivery service, but also the “traffic” support that activates the streets of various cities. In fact, the exploration and development of new businesses such as Meituan flash sales and Meituan grocery shopping can also ease and bridge the supply and demand relationship between Meituan and riders by making the pie bigger.

Implementing occupational injury protection in accordance with the "Opinions" is the first step for Meituan to protect the rights and interests of riders. In addition, there are also certain guarantees and more attempts. In November last year, Meituan Waimai launched the "Same Boat Plan" and held 53 rider talks in the last two months of 2020, collecting 43 focus issues covering food delivery mechanisms, complaint mechanisms, etc., and also successively introduced improvement measures. .

The existence of the market is "beautiful because of unity", and beauty is essentially a process of continuous improvement.

At the end of the article, we will make some small discussions on corporate social value from Meituan’s financial reports and cases. The strengthening of supervision is not unexpected for the Internet. If you think rationally and calmly, you will find that the background of the regulations is actually "long-termism." This is undoubtedly good for technology companies that adhere to long-termism.

Changes in the external environment have also made more and more technology companies realize that enterprises do not exist in isolation and need to have more friendly and close ties with the environment, society, government, etc. The social responsibility of the Internet platform is obviously to solve social employment. Taking the example of Meituan, the rise of food delivery has given birth to a new profession of food delivery rider, and Meituan has created millions of jobs. However, solving employment problems is only the first step for Internet platforms to fulfill their social responsibilities. In terms of protecting the rights and interests of workers, whether it is Meituan or others such as SF Express and Sitongyida, there is still a lot of room for exploration and optimization.

Employees once said that Wang Xing had been thinking about Meituan’s corporate mission of “helping everyone eat better and live better” for a whole year. Many people would think that this might be for publicity. Consider, in fact, this is true. Everyone is always used to measuring the value of a company using concepts such as tools, portals, platforms, market value, and profitability. However, the value of a company ultimately depends on how many people it serves and how much value it creates for these people.

Similarly, many people think that corporate social responsibility is the "icing on the cake" and is used to decorate the lintel for brand promotion. But now it seems that corporate social responsibility, how companies handle the relationship with the environment, society and the government, is becoming more and more important, and will become the core competitiveness of Internet platforms.

Our understanding of business competition and Internet platforms should also start to be updated from now on. It turns out that our valuation of Internet platforms is based on the cognitive inertia of the industrial era. It depends on the scale and the entrance and profitability levels behind the scale. It is an established fact that with the strengthening of Internet supervision and industry standardization, China's Internet will completely bid farewell to the "profiteering" models such as Apple, Microsoft, and Tencent. The control of asset returns and the increase in the proportion of labor income are inevitable. In the future, the entire industry will remain at a relatively reasonable profit level. Of course, many mature companies actually maintain a net profit range of 5-10.

Among Chinese and American Internet companies, such as Amazon and Meituan, they are two relatively special entities.

Amazon has maintained a limited low-profit range for a long time. In the initial stage of the company, it even deliberately lost money. This is not because it has no ability to make profits. On the contrary, this low-profit operating model is precisely the way to maintain its competitive advantage. —It can not only force enterprises to continuously improve their operation efficiency or invest in technological research and development, but also build their moats. Business organizations in the industrial era are more willing to obtain current profits. In the new stage, companies need more sustainable organizations and operations to live in the future. This is also the reason why corporate social value creation has become increasingly important - from a more macro and long-term perspective, to build a friendlier organizational operation and to handle real public-private relations.

But do good deeds and don’t ask about your future. It should be the long-termism that a good public enterprise should adhere to in the current era of compliance and three allocations.