Where is the US Troika going?

Editor/Yang Bocheng

The US Mission once again ushered in the high-light moment of soaring market value.

Recently, Meituan released its financial report for the second quarter of 2020 and its semi-annual results. The financial report shows that Meituan's revenue 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 realized an operating profit of 26,543.8+0.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 95.5%; The adjusted net profit was 2.72 billion yuan, up 82% year-on-year.

Overall, 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 brilliant achievement beyond market expectations, Meituan has also received corresponding feedback in the financial market.

As of August 24th, Meituan's share price once rose by 10.28% to HK$ 270, and its total market value officially broke through the US$ 200 billion mark (10.56 trillion HK$), making it the fourth largest market value company in Hong Kong, second only to Ali, Tencent and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

It is worth mentioning that after the release of the first quarter financial report in late May this year, Meituan has just crossed the threshold of a market value of 100 billion US dollars. In other words, it took only three months for Meituan to turn losses into profits and double its market value.

However, through the financial report, it is not difficult to find that behind this brilliant achievement, Meituan's three main businesses, namely, food and beverage take-out, in-store wine tour and new business, are also facing bottlenecks, difficulties and challenges to varying degrees in their respective fields. How to master the direction of the troika and make it work together to the maximum extent is also a hidden worry that cannot be ignored behind the highlights of Meituan.

The bottleneck of take-away business is difficult to break through.

All along, major take-away platforms at home and abroad have generally faced two major industry problems: excessive reliance on commission income leads to a single profit model, and self-built distribution teams lead to high distribution costs.

Judging from the financial report, although the take-away business of Meituan has picked up, it seems that little progress has been made in overcoming the above two difficulties.

According to the financial report, the food and beverage take-away income of Meituan in the second quarter was 65.438+0.45 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 654.38+03.2%; Among them, the commission income was 654.38+0.27 billion yuan, accounting for 88% of the total takeaway income. Comparing the annual report data of Meituan 20 18 and 20 19, it can be calculated that the commission ratio of its take-away income in the first two years was 94% and 87% respectively.

Although this proportion shows a slight downward trend, it is undeniable that commission income is still the main source of take-away income of the US Mission. However, this profit model of extracting commissions from merchants' orders can easily lead to the contradiction between the platform and merchants, which 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 the commission it charged was too high, and the commission of new merchants was as high as 26%, which exceeded the upper limit of enterprises. Moreover, the platform involves the overlord clause, and strongly requires merchants to agree to harsh terms such as "exclusive cooperation", which involves unfair competition.

In the face of many accusations, although the official of Meituan personally clarified that "the real figures are far below the rumors", the joint "crusade" of major merchants has exposed the disadvantages of the single profit model of Meituan's takeaway 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 Mission hits the ceiling is not far away.

Another income source of Meituan's take-out, online marketing service for merchants, seems to be regarded as its new income growth point.

The data shows that from April to June, the online marketing business income of Meituan takeaway was 654.38+08 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62.2%. However, the financial report also pointed out that the growth of this sector is mainly due to the increasing demand for online traffic during the recovery of take-away business, and it is uncertain whether this trend will become the norm 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 12% of the total take-away revenue. It is unrealistic to expect it to catch up with commission income and become the main source of income for the take-away 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, the total expenditure of the US delegation in the second quarter was 23.9 billion yuan, of which the cost of food and beverage take-away riders was 654.38+0 billion yuan, accounting for more than 40% of the total expenditure. At the same time, it should not be underestimated that this fee accounts for almost 70% of the US group's takeaway income and 80% of the commission income.

Such a high delivery cost is directly related to the heavy asset model 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 on 20 15. In the process of changing the business model from light to heavy, the cost paid to takeaway riders has also increased.

Regarding how to solve this problem, Wang Xing said in a conference call after the release of the financial report that in addition to constantly optimizing the order allocation algorithm, the company has been studying automatic distribution in the past few years, hoping to improve distribution efficiency and reduce distribution costs. 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, in addition to the internal dilemma, the joint pursuit of external opponents has also made the US group take out.

2065438+August 2007, Hungry bought Baidu Takeaway for a total price of * * * 800 million dollars. A year later, it was taken over by Alibaba and Ant Financial. It's only been two months, and when I was hungry, I merged with Word of Mouth to make takeout with Meituan, the industry leader.

In the past two years, due to the release of ecological synergy with Ali, hungry has also ushered in an opportunity for rapid growth.

The day before Meituan released its financial report, the financial report data released by Alibaba Group showed that as of June 30, the number of registered businesses that were hungry increased by 30% year-on-year, and Alipay alone brought 45% new consumers for food and beverage takeout. In the same period, Ali's local living service income was 7 1.0 1 billion yuan, up 15% year-on-year, higher than the growth rate of 8.9% of Meituan.

It is not difficult to see that although it occupies more than half of the country in the take-away market, due to the pressure of internal and external troubles, the road to the king of the US group's take-away is not easy.

The business of arriving at the store and wine travel is in urgent need of recovery.

With the effective control of the domestic epidemic, Meituan's take-out business 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, the revenue of Meituan's arrival and wine travel business was 4.5 billion yuan, down13.4% year-on-year; The operating profit of this business was1900 million yuan, down 12% year-on-year. In addition, the number of domestic hotel nights spent on the platform during this period was 78 million, down 17% year-on-year.

Despite the decline in revenue and profits, the wine-and-wine travel business still provides the most profits for the whole company with the smallest proportion of revenue, and has become a well-deserved "cash cow" among the three main businesses of Meituan.

It is worth noting that in the first quarter, which was most seriously affected by the epidemic, although the in-store and wine travel businesses suffered the most-revenue fell by over 30% and profits fell by nearly 60%, it was the only business that brought profits among the three major businesses of Meituan.

It can be seen that accelerating the recovery of stores 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 60 cities across the country, and cooperated with the local government to issue electronic coupons to consumers, hoping to promote the growth of its store-to-store business by stimulating consumption.

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 achieve the growth of hotel business by strengthening 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 50%, but this is not the first time Meituan has tried a high-star hotel.

As early as 2065438+April 2009, Meituan released the "Hotel +X" project, hoping to realize the business bundling of high-star hotels by helping it improve the digitalization and online level of non-accommodation products such as in-store catering and wedding banquets.

It is one of the most effective ways for Meituan to seize the resources of high-star hotels with higher profit margin in order to realize the recovery of their hotel business as soon as possible. After all, the star height means high customer unit price, and high customer unit price means high commission.

However, this series of operations of Meituan Gaoxing Hotel has moved the "cheese" of OTA giant Ctrip. Ctrip, as the big brother in the online travel industry for many years, has always firmly grasped more than 50% of the high-star hotel resources in the market, and it is not easy for the US Mission to "grab food" in this market.

First of all, it is too late for the US delegation to enter the game.

The popularity of live travel broadcast began at the end of February, when the epidemic was the most serious. At that time, the whole 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 employees 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 "2020 Ctrip Boss Live Big Data Report", showing the report card during the epidemic: in the past four months, Ctrip has accumulated GMV over 1, 654,380+billion yuan in more than 40 live broadcasts, bringing goods to more than one million nights for 1000 high-star hotels.

The reason why Ctrip can achieve such brilliant results is 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 pigs makes the battle for the high-star hotel market more intense.

During the period of June18 this year, thousands of hotel bosses from all over the country flew live pigs, and another uninvited guest came to the high-star hotel market. For the relatively weak Meituan, 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, in the past two years, Feizhu has been staring at the low-end hotel market of Meituan, focusing on young brands and technologies, and confronting Meituan, which also focuses on young users, in the wine travel business.

Attract users to the store through huge subsidies, seize the market share of Ctrip in the field of high-star hotels, and compete with Zhu Fei for young users in the low-end market. How far is the road to recovery of Meituan's stores and wine travel business?

Profitability of new business

It is difficult to break through the profit bottleneck of take-away business, and the business of arrival and wine travel has not fully recovered. Under the double blow, the development of new business gave Meituan a surprise.

The financial report shows that in the second quarter, Meituan's new business revenue was 5.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22%, much higher than the revenue growth rate of the other two businesses. In the first quarter of the worst epidemic, the business also achieved contrarian growth with a growth rate of 4.9%, becoming the only business segment of Meituan that achieved quarterly growth.

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 gourmet daquan, and the last section is bicycle and motorcycle business.

Different from the blow to take-away and wine travel business, Meituan's local retail and fresh retail business ushered in a small climax of user growth and capital overweight during the epidemic, for two reasons: the shift of user 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 the fastest development, achieving nearly four times the income growth. 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 has continued to increase investment in bicycles and motorcycles. In this quarter, Meituan put in about 6.5438+0.5 million new bicycles to replace old bicycles and invested nearly 300,000 motorcycles.

In this regard, Wang Xing said at the analyst meeting that the high-frequency consumption scene of * * * enjoying motorcycle business 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 profit in the short term.

With the increasing investment in new business, the demand for profits has become the biggest problem that Meituan has to face in new business.

However, the data shows that the operating loss of Meituan's new business increased from 654.38+04 billion yuan in the first quarter to 654.38+05 billion yuan in the second quarter, an increase of 7.0%. Despite the rapid growth of revenue, the new business of Meituan has not escaped the fate of losses.

In addition, the numerous competitors in the local and fresh retail fields are another difficult problem faced by Meituan in addition to the profit requirements in its new business.

The first is the local retail industry.

In April this year, Tmall Supermarket was upgraded to a retail business group in the same city. Hungry, which originally belonged to a local life service company, integrated its new retail business into the business group; In the same month, JD.COM established Dashang Super Omni-channel Business Group, integrating the former 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 on July 20 18, has the advantages of huge traffic pool and powerful real-time delivery system, but at the same time it has obvious disadvantages-docking many scattered businesses with light asset mode, which will lead to its lack of grasp of the supply chain.

Followed by the field of fresh retail.

Although Meituan has a wide range of layouts in this field, including a complete range of dishes that take the light asset route and a self-operated mode for Meituan to buy food, in first-tier cities such as Beishangguang, it has elephants sitting in the array, while in the sinking market, Meituan sent Meituan to select the best. However, in the face of its relatively mature rivals, such as Boxma Xiansheng and Daily Youxian, Meituan's layout advantage in the whole fresh retail industry is not enough to make them compete with each other.

Nevertheless, Wang Xing appeared confident at the analyst meeting. "This is a very competitive market, but the US Mission is never 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. "