The Historical Meteorology of Meituan

The e-commerce industry has started a "financial report rain".

Coincides with the earnings season. Recently, service e-commerce represents Meituan, and entity e-commerce representatives Pinduoduo, Ali and JD.COM have successively released Q 1 financial reports.

Compared with the first quarter of last year, the growth rate of Ali, JD.COM and Pinduoduo, both of which are physical e-commerce companies, and Meituan, which is a service e-commerce, is very high, which is much higher than the growth rate of 20 19 in the same period.

Vertically, compared with the first quarter of last year, the growth rate of Ali, JD.COM and Pinduoduo, both of which are physical e-commerce companies, and Meituan, which is a service e-commerce, is very high, which is much higher than the growth rate of 20 19 in the same period. This is another example of China's economic recovery and consumption rebound, which is of great benefit to the whole e-commerce industry.

Horizontally, each company's financial report reflects the company's operating conditions in a certain period, while the horizontal comparison of multiple companies reflects the industry trends and the differences in business models behind them.

At first glance, there are all leopards, and a drop of water looks at the sea.

By analyzing several financial reports, Xiaowei saw the deep differences in the business model behind it, and these underlying logics are also one of the main basis for us to judge its future development trend.

The profit per takeaway is 0.38 yuan.

The core deviation behind commission and service fee

In the field of communication, there is a famous Sapir-Wolf hypothesis. Simply put, it is our language that shapes (determines) our thinking mode in some way. There is a very famous popular example of this hypothesis: if Aristotle speaks Chinese, his philosophical logic must be different.

The interesting thing about this hypothesis is that we always think that language is a tool to express our thoughts, but we don't think that language in turn affects our way of thinking. English learners may realize that the writing logic between English and Chinese is quite different, and the thinking modes in Europe, America and China are also different.

Platforms all have commissions, but they are called differently. Meituan calls for commission, while JD.COM and Taobao may charge for service. In fact, the meaning is the same, but the commission sounds like taking, and the service fee sounds more like paying.

In recent years, the impression of high commission is easy to make people feel that the US Mission is "profiteering". But is this really the case?

Alibaba's operating profit in the first quarter reached 65.438+00.565 billion yuan after deducting anti-monopoly fines, earning a "small goal" every day; JD。 COM's net profit in the first quarter was 3.6 billion; Although Pinduoduo is losing money, its gross profit is as high as11400 million, with a gross profit margin of 52%. According to the financial report, although the gross profit margin of Meituan in the first quarter increased compared with the same period of last year, it was only 19.4%, only 1/3 in Pinduoduo.

Meituan's takeaway operation has been nearly 8 years. Since 20 19, the gross profit margin has increased, with an average profit of 0.38 yuan, less than 4 cents. So on the whole, we can find that Meituan is not only not profiteering, but even seems to be somewhat weak compared with the profitability of other e-commerce platforms.

In 2020, the total take-out revenue of Meituan was 66.3 billion yuan, including commission income of 58.6 billion yuan, fees paid to riders of 48.7 billion yuan, and the cost of riders accounted for 83% of the commission income. In other words, more than 80% of the commission becomes the rider's salary.

The physical e-commerce platform does not charge commissions, but other fixed costs are also real business costs. For example, Tmall's annual software service fee, Taobao's Wangpu usage fee, and other miscellaneous technical service fees. Therefore, in summary, the fixed fees paid by merchants to the platform are actually quite a lot. If service-oriented e-commerce charges merchants "packaging" fees, then the charging mode of physical e-commerce can be said to be "varied".

On the other hand, from the perspective of income other than commission.

The profit models of Taobao and Tmall include advertising revenue, transaction commission, annual service fee, technical support fee and so on. Although Meituan has released the signal of changing from commission income to advertising marketing, commission still accounts for most of the total income.

It can be seen that the cost structure of physical e-commerce companies such as Taobao and Tmall is relatively simple, and diversified revenue models can help them share traffic costs and increase revenue. The service e-commerce companies such as Meituan are different, and their income mainly depends on commissions. In terms of performance cost, distance, labor, time, weather, traffic and other factors need to be considered, and the factors affecting the cost are more complicated.

Back to the underlying logic

* * * Enjoy the economic model and release greater social value.

* * * The essence of enjoying the economy is to revitalize the stock.

Meituan is essentially a local life service e-commerce, a trading and service matching platform in the field of local life services, and enjoys an economic platform, that is, merchants provide various life services to connect with consumers, and the platform is only a connection function. This is how the core business of Meituan operates.

In 2020, although the growth rate of the overall market scale of the * * * enjoyment economy slowed down obviously under the impact of the epidemic, the new formats and models represented by the * * * enjoyment economy showed great resilience and development potential, which played an important role in ensuring the supply of people's livelihood, promoting the resumption of work and production, expanding consumption and boosting domestic demand. It is predicted that the average annual growth rate of China's * * * enjoyment economy will remain above 10% in the next five years.

Small wifi found that this time, Meituan still showed strong business operations, explosive user growth and rapid new business.

In the first quarter of this year, Meituan's revenue increased by 12 1% year-on-year, including new businesses such as community group buying, grocery shopping and flash shopping, with a growth rate of137%; Trading users exceeded 570 million, with 58.7 million new users in a single season, setting a historical record; The number of merchants reached 765,438+million, which is also the highest in history. These new businesses are also an extension of Meituan's "* * * economic model" in other fields.

With the development and progress of artificial intelligence, VR, blockchain and Internet of Things technology, the imagination of enjoying the economy in the future has been further broadened. Al technology has been tried in travel, medical care, logistics and other industries, such as driverless cars and drone distribution. In the Internet of Things era, the Internet of Everything will usher in a new situation of economic development and bring greater value to human life.

"Help everyone eat better and live better" is not only the promise of Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan, but also his commitment to society as an entrepreneur.

In the past few days, Wang Xing has converted 57310.9 million A shares into B shares and transferred them to Wang Xing Foundation, which will be used exclusively to promote public welfare undertakings such as education and scientific research. On the same day, Wang Xing Foundation transferred 9.354 million B shares to an independent third party for charitable purposes.

According to estimates, the stock market value of 573 1.9 million is about 65.438+0.762 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the stock market value of 9.354 million is about 2.875 billion Hong Kong dollars.

From individuals to enterprises, Meituan is releasing greater value.

For Meituan, it is now in the deep-water period of the second stage of commercial transformation, with great commercial prospects.

On the one hand, the diversification of service products means that there are many categories that can be expanded in the future, and there are also many categories with large market scale, such as food, clothing, housing and transportation.

On the other hand, the stock market still has great growth potential. Overall, Internet products are still in the stock age, and users in first-and second-tier cities that can be reached have already reached them. The local service format can just reach the third-and fourth-tier or even lower-tier markets, which can positively promote the main business from all angles.

In the deep water area of the second half of the mobile Internet, the number of data users of Meituan Q 1 this quarter increased by nearly 60 million, surpassing the industry and the number of merchants reached a new high. This shows that the growth of service e-commerce has not yet peaked.

The main engine of Meituan's growth comes from the "tip of the iceberg" under the new business, which is enough to see the acceleration of the development of local service formats.

Willing to bear high losses and determined to accumulate strength to develop new business. Whether for Meituan enterprises themselves or for the public, the formats of these local services have long-term value.

Persisting in long-termism, focusing on the core and being patient are exactly what Meituan is good at and has been doing.

The story of Meituan continues.

Author: heavy rain

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