SF is the fourth listed company: SF is listed in the same city, and the "running errands" business has not yet stopped losses

On December 14, SF Tongcheng, whose main business is instant logistics, was officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with a global public offering of about 131 million shares priced at HK$16.42 per share and about HK$2.031 billion. This is also the fourth listed company under SF Group, including SF Holdings, SF RealTory and Kerry Logistics, which has just completed the acquisition, and this is only five years after the backdoor listing of its core industry, SF Holdings. As of the close of trading on December 4, SF Tongcheng finally closed at HK$14.9, down 9.26%, with a total market value of HK$13.9 billion.

It is still not profitable

According to the relevant information in an internal letter released by Sun Haijin, CEO of SF Tongcheng on the 14th, SF Tongcheng completed the first CLS (City Logistic System) system order in May 2016, obtained the first external financing in March 2019, and began to operate independently, and released the independent brand "SF Tongcheng Express" in October of the same year and established the vision of being a third-party platform.

According to the prospectus data previously released by SF Tongcheng, in the first five months of this year, SF Tongcheng's revenue was 3.046 billion yuan, and the total number of orders was 514 million, an increase of 151.2% year-on-year. As of May 31, SF had 147,500 active customers, 4,513,400 active customers and 340,700 active riders. In terms of revenue, SF Tongcheng increased from 993 million yuan in 2018 to 2.107 billion yuan in 2019 and 4.843 billion yuan in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 120.8%. Revenue as of the end of May 2021 has also reached 3.046 billion yuan, and it is clear that it will continue to maintain a high growth trend.

But even so, SF Tongcheng has not yet achieved a profit, with net profits of -328 million yuan, -470 million yuan, -758 million yuan and -353 million yuan in the same period, with a cumulative loss of 1.909 billion yuan. It is not difficult to understand why it suffered a break on the first day of listing, falling by more than 10% at one point.

However, as a new business model that has emerged with technological progress and market demand, there is obviously a huge market imagination space in the real-time logistics market. Especially in the development of the mobile Internet has been quite mature, based on the more refined development of geographic information application services, and driven by the demand for takeaway, e-commerce and other needs, real-time logistics as a new business model that is more decentralized than the traditional logistics business and has higher requirements for timeliness, the demand is being rapidly released.

At present, with the development of the industry and the implantation of more new technologies, real-time logistics has been expanded from the earliest definition of the direct end-to-end delivery of goods without warehousing and transit, and the delivery time is within two hours to the distribution service based on data, through real-time global scheduling to match real-time demand and real-time transportation capacity.

From the earliest takeaway-based development, to the gradual expansion to express terminal distribution and new retail and other fields, the instant logistics industry has also changed from less than 800 million in 2014 to a scale of more than 30 billion this year, according to iResearch's report forecast, it is expected to increase to 79.5 billion by 2025.

It is not difficult to understand why Taobao China, a subsidiary of Alibaba, which also "tore its face" with SF Group in the field of terminal distribution in previous years, became one of the cornerstone investors of SF's landing in the capital market in the same city, and internationally renowned investment institutions including Goldman Sachs Group, New Hope, Legend Capital, CITIC Capital, BAI and other internationally renowned investment institutions also invested in shares before the IPO.

Instant logistics track melee

According to SF Tongcheng, its listing and fundraising will be mainly used to expand the service coverage, including scene coverage and geographical coverage, as well as expand the capacity pool, to provide funds for potential strategic acquisitions that SF Tongcheng may find from time to time and to invest in the middle and upper reaches of the industry value chain, so as to supplement and expand the business operations of SF Tongcheng, for marketing and brand promotion, for operating funds and general corporate purposes.

Among the enterprises that carry out real-time logistics services in China, SF Tongcheng is not an early entrant, in fact, including flash delivery, Dada, Hummingbird and life service enterprises including Meituan have cut into it earlier from their different business areas. Among these competitors, FlashSend, as an earlier enterprise in China and focusing on real-time logistics business, has carried out business in more than 200 cities in China and served more than 100 million people. Dada began to enter the real-time logistics business on the basis of jd.com's businesses, including e-commerce and logistics. Hummingbird and Meituan are based on the takeaway business that established their advantages earlier, and gradually expanded to "running errands" related services, which can be said to be competitive compared with SF in the same city.

To this end, SF Tongcheng also has a more sober understanding, as Sun Haijin said in the open letter, "This listing only means that SF Tongcheng has only graduated from the sixth grade of primary school, and what greets us is junior high school, high school, university, etc. In the real-time logistics, there is a farther road waiting for us to conquer." ”

At present, SF Tongcheng proposes to provide "all categories, full time, full distance, all scenarios" services to meet the needs of rich and diverse and endless application scenarios, through professional and customized ready-to-use service matrix, to achieve full coverage of four major scenarios: catering takeaway (meals, drinks), same city retail (supermarket fresh, flowers and cakes, medicine), near-field e-commerce (clothing, beauty, 3C), near-field services (personal errands, corporate services).

It is worth noting that SF Tongcheng has repeatedly emphasized its "independent third-party positioning" on many occasions and said that it will adhere to "neutrality, openness and win-win cooperation". In the prospectus, SF Tongcheng also classified competitors according to the real-time delivery service platform and third-party real-time delivery service platform under the centralized platform, according to this division, SF Tongcheng has become the largest independent third-party real-time delivery service platform in China with an 11% market share of the third-party platform.

However, in the competition of the real-time logistics market, whether it is subordinate to the centralized platform or an independent third party, most of the market space it competes for is actually in the same dimensional space, and there are many overlaps and crossovers, so in the end, it is still necessary for the platform to have sufficient strength in terms of product strength and service, which is obviously enough experience for SF Holdings, which has established a good brand image in the traditional express delivery business, but for the same city business that also bears the "SF" signboard, You still need to continue to prove yourself through time.

Responsible Editor: Huang Xingli Editor-in-Chief: Han Feng