The rumors were finally confirmed. On December 3, Didi announced that after careful study, the company will start the delisting work on the New York Stock Exchange and start preparations for listing in Hong Kong.
This confirms the rumors that Didi may be delisted in the US stock market in some media reports on November 26. It is reported that Didi's delisting price in the US stock is locked at $14/ADS, which is basically consistent with its IPO price on the New York Stock Exchange on June 30 this year, when 317 million ADS shares were issued, 10% more than the original plan of 288 million shares, and the financing scale was 4.438 billion US dollars.
This brief announcement made previous investors feel mixed. In fact, the announcement of the delisting of the US stock market is real, and the preparation for the listing of Hong Kong stocks is virtual, full of unknowns, and can only give concepts, and it is difficult to give a timetable.
Since its low-key listing in the United States, Didi has ended more than five months of hard work in the US capital market. During those five-month period, Didi's share peaked at $16.92 per share and fell as low as $7.16, and at the close of $7.8 on December 2, Didi's stock price fell 44%, almost to the waist.
Didi's round of US stock journey, only on the landing of the capital market, it cost a lot of money, which is still in the loss period of Didi is undoubtedly a heavy burden and price, but also let the international investment banks make a lot of money.
In fact, didi, as a travel unicorn with 493 million active users, ignored the warning of the regulatory authorities to suspend the listing and went to the United States to launch a surprise listing, mainly from the pressure of investors to liquidate. Didi before the listing, from 2012 a total of 23 rounds of nearly 25 billion US dollars of financing, after the longest nearly ten years of investment, the investor itself has a strong demand to cash out, after all, the general VC, PE fund survival period of about seven years, coupled with Didi since the deer travel market, has been taking a brutal money-burning expansion model, has always been in a state of loss, traffic realization cycle is too long, which makes Didi must land on the capital market as soon as possible, for the early stage of strategic investors to provide effective exit channels.
However, Didi's long-standing business model of burning money to buy traffic has the characteristics of typical capital disorderly expansion. A large number of subsidies to burn money and merge with peers are hoping to quickly monopolize the online ride-hailing travel market with the help of capital, accumulate users, and then monetize traffic. This means that although Didi Chuxing has greatly improved people's travel convenience and reduced the cost of travel time in technology, it is still a typical traffic economy in terms of business model, and its commercial value is to continuously improve the matching sales volume of the travel market and reduce the cost of travel services through technology and other means, and its real benefits should also come from this part.
Unfortunately, compared with providing low-cost technology and service support for consumer travel, earning information matching and technical service fees, it is easier and faster to realize the realization mode through the monopoly of travel traffic, but this has obvious capital disorderly expansion, such as in reality, people use Didi online ride-hailing services and traditional taxi services, and do not enjoy the reduction of travel costs. Recently, the Ministry of Communications and eight other ministries and commissions issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Employees in New Forms of Transportation", which put forward guiding opinions on the distribution and proportion of income between the platform and employees, indicating that if Didi uses the traffic economy, it will no longer be easy to establish the platform revenue on the main way of sharing the labor income of online ride-hailing drivers.
This may also be one of the important reasons why investors are eager for Didi to go public quickly in order to exit safely, because if the traditional traffic economy model, with the improvement of digital economy legislation, exposes the risk of disorderly expansion of capital, Didi will become a pure technical support and information matching transaction service company, and its expected high market valuation will become a mirror.
This has been shown from Didi's financial situation, its own growth and market conditions. Therefore, even if Didi returns to Hong Kong stocks, if it can't find an effective new business model, it may not be easy to gain the recognition of the market.
Specifically: First, Didi's financial position and growth are relatively weak compared to global mobility giant Uber. Although Uber has 90 million annual active users, less than a fraction of Didi's 493 million users, Uber's GTV is 370 billion yuan, significantly higher than Didi's 214.6 billion yuan. Didi's EBITB margins from 2018 to 2020 were -0.21%, 2.6% and 3.0%, respectively, compared to 17%, 19% and 19% for Uber.
And Uber's calculation of operating income is net basis (deduction of driver income and subsidy part, passenger subsidy calculated by cost), while Didi's calculation method is gross basis (deduction of passenger subsidy part, driver income and subsidy is calculated by cost), because of the different calculation methods, Didi's operating income itself has a high estimate. Based on Didi's domestic revenue of 133.645 billion yuan in 2020, if it is calculated in the net basis method, Didi's domestic revenue will be adjusted to 28.35 billion yuan, significantly lower than Uber's revenue of 11.139 billion US dollars. Didi's user contribution value is significantly lower than Uber's.
It can be seen that from the valuation of the general price-to-sales ratio of Internet companies, the current valuation of Didi's stocks in the United States is basically close to that of Uber, and the price-to-sales ratio is about 7 times. Moreover, Didi's revenue source is mainly travel revenue, accounting for more than 90%, while Uber's travel revenue accounts for more than half of the operating income, reflecting Didi's single profit model, or has not yet found a stable profit model.
Obviously, the performance of Didi's US stocks in the past five months, its low valuation is not mainly affected by policy factors, but more importantly, it is a growth problem. This means that if Didi is listed on The Hong Kong stock market, it will be a question as whether its valuation will be accepted by the market as it is today's Meituan.
Second, Didi is facing the dilemma of non-performing digital assets. Didi's attack on the travel market has always followed the model of spending money to buy traffic, with the characteristics of typical capital disorderly expansion. The 493 million users that Didi currently captures are mainly obtained by investors with $25 billion in investment; however, because Didi has been locked into the user's psychological account as a travel service, it is not easy for Didi to import traffic into other consumption scenarios, because after nearly a decade of development, users have solidified the use of Didi's scenes, and they will not use Didi to buy other products, nor will they manage money and shop on Didi.
It is not easy to dig deep into the ability to realize travel. At present, the average annual travel cost of China's online ride-hailing users is about 1700 yuan, which is converted into about 140 yuan per month, and in the current economic situation and the user's income situation, it is undoubtedly not easy to increase the user's travel cost.
Therefore, in the future, Didi's return to the Hong Kong stock market, in order to gain the favor of investors, it is necessary to revitalize its precipitated massive users and avoid the non-performing of its digital assets.
Finally, Didi's business model may need to be further refined. With the continuous improvement of the digital property rights system, platform companies such as Didi will face new business model adjustments, which have used to burn money to obtain users, attribute the data of users' activities on their platforms to their own, and then monetize users and digital assets, which will need to make necessary adjustments. That is, with the improvement of the digital property rights system, after the user's data property rights are reasonably confirmed, it will be difficult for the platform to use user data for free, the traffic monetization methods and means of platform enterprises such as Didi will have to be adjusted, and the platform enterprises will gradually return to technical support services, digital asset transaction matching services and other fields. This will lead to changes in the market valuation of platform companies such as Didi, which in turn will affect their market valuations.
In short, whether it is Didi's low-key listing in the United States five months ago, or the launch of delisting in the United States and the launch of Hong Kong stock listing, Didi is trying to land on the capital market by all means, which is a systematic ebb after the barbaric growth of capital, and it is also a painful lesson for the disorderly expansion of capital.
Liu Xiaozhong (Financial Commentator) Editor Chen Li Proofreader Lu Qian