Wen | AI Finance and Economics Agency Shao Lanjie
Editor| Chen Fang
In the past two days, six walnuts and Chengde Lulu have successively announced the 2020 financial report, the performance is very dismal, excluding the impact of the epidemic, these two national plant milk brands rely on a single product to fight the world, has been obviously insufficient stamina. This is in contrast to the popularity of plant-based, Swedish oat milk brand otaly submitted a prospectus in the United States, and domestic plant protein brands focusing on oat milk are also highly sought after by capital.
Walnut milk and almond milk are not easy to sell
On April 26, yangyuan shares, the parent company of six walnuts, announced financial reports, and a number of performance indicators were declining.
The data shows that in 2020, the operating income of Yangyuan shares was 4.427 billion yuan, down 40.65% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was 1.578 billion yuan, down 41.46% year-on-year; the deducted non-net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was 1.102 billion yuan, down 50.78% year-on-year; and the net cash flow from operating activities was 1.081 billion yuan, down 35.34% year-on-year.
Yangyuan shares explained that the company's product sales peak season is concentrated in the Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival, on the one hand, the spring festival in 2020 ahead of schedule led to a shortening of the product sales cycle; on the other hand, affected by the epidemic, consumers reduced or even cancelled dinners and visits to relatives and friends, resulting in a decline in market demand for the company's products, resulting in a year-on-year decline in sales revenue during the reporting period.
Although there are special epidemic reasons in 2020, the decline in the income of Yangyuan shares began as early as a few years ago. Since landing on the capital market in 2018, in the past three years, the company's revenue has declined year after year, following 8.144 billion yuan, 7.459 billion yuan and 4.427 billion yuan, and net profit of 2.837 billion yuan, 2.695 billion yuan and 1.578 billion yuan, respectively.
At the same time, the performance of Chengde Lulu, which is the main product of almond dew, is not good. In 2020, Chengde Lulu achieved revenue of 1.861 billion yuan, down 17.50% year-on-year; net profit attributable to the mother was 432 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.03%. Almond dew is still a pillar product, with revenue of 1.847 billion yuan in 2020, accounting for 99.47%, which is more than 400 million yuan less than the same period in 2019.
Oat milk becomes a new favorite
The decline in the performance of Yangyuan shares and Chengde Lulu is related to their single product structure on the one hand; on the other hand, it is also related to the impact of new products.
In the case of poor sales of walnut milk and almond dew markets, oat milk has developed rapidly. Swedish oat milk company Oatly was only valued at $2 billion last July, and in February this year Oatly's valuation has risen to $10 billion, and a listing application was filed on the NASDAQ exchange a few days ago.
Domestic capital is also betting on the field of oat milk, in September last year, the domestic oat milk brand "Wheat Oye" obtained tens of millions of angel round financing; in October of the same year, the plant protein drink brand oatoat received tens of millions of Pre-A round of financing after its establishment 5 months later, with a total of tens of millions of yuan in financing for the two rounds; at the end of December, Grain Planet completed millions of dollars of angel round financing; in February this year, the plant milk brand Daily Box received millions of yuan of angel round financing. In addition, large FMCG companies Danone, Vitasoy and Yili have also begun to develop and introduce new products in the field of plant protein.
Different from the traditional plant-based beverages, innovative brands focus on the concept of health and environmental protection, aimed at young people, based on this, their marketing and channels also have a completely different way of playing.
In 2020, Oatly's full-year sales were $420 million, almost double that of 2019, with Sales in the Asia-Pacific region accounting for 12.8%. It is worth noting that Oatly's online sales in China accounted for 21% in 2020, which is also the highest proportion of all its markets.
In fact, the oat milk startup brands in the past two years have all started from online channels, which is completely different from the traditional plant protein milk such as six walnuts relying on layers of distribution system, and the logic behind it is to target young people.
According to the "2020 Plant Protein Beverage Innovation Trend" released by Tmall, the sales growth rate of the plant protein beverage market in 2020 far exceeds that of other beverage categories, of which the sales growth rate exceeds 900%. This category is basically a new brand.
However, Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng believes that plant protein drinks in 2013 to 2016 in the peak period, epitaxial development momentum is obvious, these years have been in a period of stabilization and recession, but the industry has a lot of new entrepreneurs to enter, so it looks hot, but in fact, the market as a whole did not increase much share, but the new brand took away the market share of traditional brands.
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