Text | Lee Woo Yin
Edit | Shi Zhiliang
On December 29, it was exposed on a social platform that Autohome (02518. HK) initiated company-wide layoffs, accounting for 10% to 20% of the total. On the same day, all the departed employees have compensation, and there are two ways of compensation: N+2, N+1+1.8, including year-end bonus compensation. There are also self-media that the scale of layoffs is more than the number of people spreading news on the Internet. Because autohome has the triple attributes of automobile, media and Internet, this news continues to spread across circles. Near noon, CaijingQiche saw the same screenshots and reviews in multiple groups.
According to Caijingqiche( Caijingqiche) from the relevant people of the auto home, there is no large-scale layoffs, and the overall personnel optimization range is less than 5%, which belongs to the normal business structure and the optimization of the assessment personnel at the end of the year.
Autohome is the world's largest auto consumption and service website, with more than 43 million daily active users and more than 400,000 Nissan consumer leads. Listed on the main board of The Hong Kong stock market in March this year, it became the fourth Chinese-listed Internet company in China to complete listing in Hong Kong and the United States after Alibaba, JD.com and NetEase.
Behind the above-mentioned personnel adjustment, Autohome is reconstructing the organizational system based on new strategies and businesses. In the past year, with the strategic iteration and the change of coaching points, Autohome is trying to revitalize itself. But this requires the approval of the relevant parties and the capital market.
Tough 2021
Since the beginning of this year, the management of Autohome has changed frequently. In January, Lu Min, the chairman of Autohome for about four years, retired, and Long Quan, an executive of the Ping An Department, took over; in May, co-president Zhang Jingyu resigned for personal reasons; in July, Zou Jun, financial director of Autohome, resigned for personal reasons; in October, Autohome CTO Wang Xiao and director Liu Dong resigned for other personal reasons.
Source IC
At the same time, autohome is under pressure in the capital market. As of press time, Autohome (02518. HK) fell to HK$54.3 per share since its listing, down nearly 70% from HK$181 per share, while Autohome (ATHM.N), which is similar to the trend, closed at US$27.12 per share.
According to autohome's third quarter report of fiscal 2021, net revenue was 1.7638 billion yuan, a decrease of 23.8% year-on-year; net profit attributable to Autohome was 522 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 38.4%. This is also another quarter of net revenue and net profit decline after 2021Q2, and it is also the worst financial report after Ping An joined Autohome in 2016.
From the perspective of main business, in the third quarter, Autohome media revenue fell by 53.3% year-on-year again after a year-on-year decline of 35.6% in the second quarter; clue revenue fell by 8.5% year-on-year again after a year-on-year decline of 11.5% in the second quarter. In 2020, the revenue of these two businesses decreased by 5.4% and 2.35% year-on-year, respectively.
The overall user scale of the automotive content platform remains at about 100 million, after the mobile Internet enters the stock stage in 2019, the automotive content platform has also entered a state of fluctuating growth, and the auto marketing business opportunities and clues come from users, so covering the user scale is the basis for the automotive content platform to provide various types of marketing services.
The data shows that autohome still has advantages. Analysys data shows that from the first quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2021, from the mobile terminal data, Autohome has maintained a leading position in quarterly average active users and average daily active users, while EasyCar and Zhichedi are behind. It is worth noting that in the first half of 2021, the average user activity and the quarterly average daily activity, the data of Chedi is close to and surpasses that of Yiche.com, and the momentum is fierce. In terms of lead data and connection rate, Autohome is the first.
Autohome, Yiche, and Chedi, it seems that behind the three auto media, there are three forces of Ping An, Tencent and Toutiao. In this battle of traffic and user stickiness, the above three automotive content platforms are facing a new competitor, that is, the automakers themselves. From using 4S stores to engage in car clubs, to self-built Apps to retain car owners and convert them into fans, to beginning to get involved in the concept of "meta-universe", more and more car companies have begun to attach importance to the user's asset, and strive to keep users online while building direct channels in order to understand users more accurately and improve products.
According to the official introduction, the registered users of the Lynk & Co App have reached 1.577 million, and the daily active users are about 130,000. Lin Jie, senior vice president of Geely Automobile Group and general manager of Lynk & Co Automobile Sales Company, told Caijing Automobile (ID: caijingqiche) that we have also done statistics on the referral rate, and of the 560,000 cars sold, 60,000 cars are introduced by old customers. ”
In addition to the role of fans when selling cars with tap water, they can also be fed back to the production end. "The communication between users and us is direct and decentralized." Mei Songlin, vice president of strategic operations of WM Motor, vice president of strategic operations of WM Motors, told Caijing Automobile (ID: caijingqiche) that one of the models of WM Motor can be deeply customized to nearly 1500 different cars.
In addition to placing orders, each platform will also understand the needs of users based on the relevant information they browse online. At a deeper level, it is that all car companies regard user operation as one of the starting points for their own comprehensive digitalization, and regard users as one of the core assets.
A senior analyst of a domestic brokerage familiar with Autohome expressed doubts about Caijingqiche (ID: caijingqiche), in the future, auto factories will spend a lot of money to build their own App to operate their own user base, and the users of traditional portals will gradually decrease, which will make the data of the auto content platform become a passive water.
Change the coaching point and iterate the strategy
Efforts have yet to be recognized
In the face of challenges, the auto home has also been adjusted.
From a number of people close to the auto home, Caijing Automobile (ID: caijingqiche) exclusively learned that in this personnel adjustment, the optimized objects are in addition to the performance appraisal personnel, most of them are some of the commercial promotion personnel in the previous emerging business line. Autohome hopes to use the above adjustment to centralize the function of commercial promotion. On the one hand, it reduces the impact of commercialization on the user experience; on the other hand, it integrates and enhances the product competitiveness of OEMs and distributors.
In the industry's view, as the leader of the PC side, in the era of mobile Internet, in the face of the headline system that understands the car emperor and the user operation platform built by the car company, it is difficult for the car home to simply copy the past path - with the help of the traditional traffic dividend to monetize, has been making some moves.
Prior to this, Autohome not only broke the division of the traditional large company and formed a large middle office system; it also created a digital system to be embedded in the underlying system of automobile factories and dealers. It also played artificial "festival-making", and cooperated with Hunan Satellite TV, which focuses on youth and entertainment, to hold three Spring Festival Galas in the automotive industry, and to seize the user's mind by catching up with the big set.
For Autohome, it needs to let the market confirm that it is not a solid online vertical market leader.
In September this year, at the Autohome 2021 Investor Open Day, Long Quan, chairman and CEO of Autohome, proposed a new company strategy called "ecology". Specifically, with the help of the advantages of the two major platforms of Autohome and Ping An, we will provide comprehensive services to end consumers, OEMs, and automotive entities including dealers. At the same time, Longquan proposed to build the strongest auto media influence in China, to influence 50% of new car sales in China, and to pursue three major goals, such as more diversified revenue.
There is in and out. In October this year, Yang Song, former deputy general manager of Ford China's Ford brand passenger car business unit, joined Autohome as vice president of the company and general manager of the oem business unit, fully responsible for the company's main engine plant business; in November, Wu Jiang, former general manager of OPPO Internet service system video business, joined the company and served as senior vice president, at which time, Wu Jiang will be fully responsible for the C-end business of Autohome. Since then, Autohome has continued to reconstruct the organization based on the two major business grasps of toB and toC.
From the perspective of resume, Wu Jiang is one of the earliest user growth experts in China, with experience in the whole process of user growth, user retention, user activity and commercialization. Yang Song has served as a senior management company in Dongfeng Nissan, North American Nissan, Borgward Automobile and other auto companies, with experience in automobile marketing and enterprise management, which helps Autohome better understand the market and customer needs.
An industry observer, who did not want to be named, told Caijingqiche that recruiting talents from outside has gradually broken the tradition of flying in from safety, and in a more complex market environment, auto homes must do the same.
In the past six months, around the company's senior management of the coaching point, the traditional giant Autohome is trying to revitalize a new life, but this needs the recognition of relevant parties and the capital market.