On December 15, Red Star Capital Bureau learned that iQiyi announced that it would update the gold VIP membership subscription price from 0:00 on December 16. It is understood that the increase is mainly for monthly and seasonal cards, with an increase of between 9% and 20%.
iQIYI said on the official Weibo: "We will update the subscription price of iQIYI Gold VIP members from 0:00 on December 16. At the same time, we will provide one year of maintenance of the original price service for users who have previously purchased and have not yet cancelled the iQIYI Gold VIP member continuous monthly/season/annual subscription service. As for the reason for the price increase, iQiyi replied to the media that the subscription price of the video platform has been low, and this phenomenon has affected the healthy development of the industry.
On December 1, some media reported that iQiyi was laying off employees, and the proportion of layoffs was between 20% and 40%. On the same day, the Red Star Capital Bureau called iQiyi's headquarters, but the staff who answered the phone said that for the layoffs, it is recommended to pay attention to the official channels in the follow-up, and the official information shall prevail.
iQiyi's financial report released a few days ago shows that in the third quarter of 2021, its revenue was 7.589 billion yuan and a net loss of 1.707 billion yuan. As of the close of trading on December 14, EST, iQiyi's stock price fell 3.50% to $4.69 per share, with a total market value of $3.702 billion, down about 90% from its high in May 2018.
Red Star News reporter Yu Yao Qiang Ya Milling
Edited by Tao Yueyang
Related reading: Behind iQIYI's layoffs: six years of financing of 50 billion, but the money is not enough
Recently, many reports show that iQiyi is undergoing a round of major layoffs, with a layoff ratio of about 20% to 40%. Among the layoffs, the middle level (director level) has been laid off more, and there are also employees with longer division age, older age and higher salaries, who are also laid off.
iQiyi has been in a state of loss almost since its inception. iQIYI's 2020 financial report shows that from 2018 to 2020, iQIYI lost 9.1 billion yuan, 10.3 billion yuan and 7 billion yuan respectively, and the third quarter of this year's financial report showed that the net loss in the first three quarters of this year was 4.4 billion yuan. In other words, in less than four years, iQiyi has lost nearly 30.8 billion yuan.
When the 2020 financial report was announced, iQiyi's cash flow from operating activities was already negative. In the third quarter of 2021, iQIYI's cash flow from operating activities was -2.081 billion yuan, once again expanding from the same period last year. To make matters worse, on November 30, iQIYI announced that it would repurchase a convertible bond originally scheduled to mature in 2023 in advance, and if the repurchase amount of the convertible bond was repaid in full, then iQIYI's current cash on the book was only about 2.5 billion yuan.
Compared with the operating expenses of 1.929 billion yuan announced in the third quarterly report, it means that iQiyi can only barely support its employees for one more quarter, and it will enter the cash exhaustion.
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