Autohome, the world's most visited automotive vertical website, was exposed to news of massive layoffs.
On December 29, a number of users broke the news on a workplace social platform that Autohome (02518. HK;ATHM.US) recently suddenly laid off as many as 600 people, accounting for about 10%-20% of the total number of employees, and the layoffs were very rapid, "talk about conditions in the morning, leave directly in the afternoon, and handovers are not used."
In response to the layoffs, Autohome responded to the outside world that 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. Red Star Capital Bureau noted that if you count the 3905 employees in Autohome's 2020 financial report, the layoffs will not exceed 200 people.
On December 30, a former autohome employee, who did not want to be named, told Red Star Capital that Autohome was indeed laying off employees, "laying off 30% in the new car division and 10% in the used car division." In addition, he also revealed that the autohome layoffs or due to business bottlenecks, do not need so many people.
Behind the exposure of layoffs, Autohome is also facing the dilemma of executive turmoil, falling stock prices, and falling revenue. The motor home, known as the "men's back garden", is facing internal and external troubles.
Autohome was exposed to lay off 600 people, which the company denied
Insiders: 30% layoffs in the new car division, 10% in used cars
On December 29, a number of users broke the news on a workplace social platform that Autohome had suddenly laid off employees in recent days, with as many as 600 people, accounting for about 10%-20% of the overall proportion. Some users also revealed that the compensation scheme is divided into "N+2 and N+1+1.8". The whistleblower also said that the layoffs were very rapid, "talk on the same day, go on the same day", "talk about conditions in the morning, leave directly in the afternoon, and the handover is not used." ”
According to the China Fund News, Autohome responded to the media in response to the layoffs: "There is no large-scale layoff, 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." Red Star Capital Noted that if you count the 3905 employees in Autohome's 2020 financial report, the layoffs will not exceed 200.
On December 30, a person familiar with the matter, who did not want to be named, told Red Star Capital that Autohome was indeed laying off employees. The person familiar with the matter, a former employee of Autohome, kept in touch with colleagues who still work at Autohome, and allegedly said: "Old colleagues said that the new car division layed off 30% of employees, and the used car division laid off 10% of employees." In addition, he also revealed that the autohome layoffs or due to business bottlenecks, do not need so many people.
Known as the "Men's Backyard", The Auto Home was founded in 2005 by Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal Auto.
According to public information, Autohome was positioned as an online service platform for auto consumers in the early days, and then transformed from a content-based vertical company to a data- and technology-driven automotive platform. At present, it mainly provides services for automobile consumers, automobile manufacturers and dealers, with the number of daily active users exceeding 43 million and the total number of users exceeding 100 million.
In December 2013, Li xiang led Autohome to successfully list on the NASDAQ in the United States. After two years of listing, founder Li wanted to gradually fade out of Autohome. In July 2016, Autohome's months-long equity battle was officially settled, and Ping An Group officially took over Autohome as the largest shareholder and appointed Lu Min as the chairman and CEO of Autohome.
In March this year, Autohome returned to Hong Kong to list, the fourth Internet company to list in Hong Kong and the United States after Alibaba, JD.com and NetEase.
A car home in distress
Executive turmoil, stock prices falling, and revenues falling
Behind the exposed layoffs is the dilemma of turmoil in autohome executives, falling stock prices, and double declines in revenue.
Since 2021, Autohome has undergone several executive adjustments. In January this year, Lu Min, the company's former chairman and CEO, retired and was replaced by Long Quan, former deputy general manager of Ping An Property & Casualty. In May, Autohome Co-President Zhang Jingyu announced that he had left for personal reasons and subsequently joined Huaren Express as Chief Digital Officer. In July, Chief Financial Officer Zou Jun resigned for other personal reasons. In October, Autohome announced the resignation of Chief Technology Officer Wang Xiao for personal reasons. It can be said that in just one year, the core executives of Autohome have been replaced.
At the same time, autohome's performance in the capital market is not satisfactory, and Hong Kong stocks and US stocks both fell. As of the close of trading on 30 December 2021, Autohome's Hong Kong stock price slipped to HK$54.25 per share, a drop of nearly 70% compared to the opening price of HK$181 per share. Since its listing, the stock market value of Autohome Port has shrunk by HK$62.4 billion.
Its U.S. stock price fell all the way from $146.67 in February 2021, and as of December 29, Autohome was trading at $26.13 per share, down more than 70%, and currently has a market capitalization of $3.328 billion.
A month ago, Autohome announced its third quarter report for 2021, with net revenue of RMB1,763.8 million, down 23.8% year-on-year, and net profit of RMB521.7 million, down 38.4% year-on-year.
From a business point of view, in the third quarter of 2021, Autohome media revenue was 443 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 53.19%; clue service business revenue was 768 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 8.6%. Online marketing and other revenue was the only business to grow, at $561 million, an increase of approximately 2.5% year-on-year.
Some market voices said that this is the worst financial report that Ping An has harvested since taking over the Autohome in 2016. From this point of view, this layoff may be expected.
Competitor squeezes and advertising revenue peaks
Autohomes may have been left behind
In addition to internal worries, what bothers the auto home is also "external troubles".
E-car network and understand the car emperor is a strong competitor of Autohome, behind the two stands Tencent and ByteDance two major Internet giants, in the traffic and content side of the support, Autohome to obtain resources are far less than the two.
According to a third-party data company Aurora Report, in the third quarter of 2021, the autohome system added 9.2 million new users, far lower than the 13.877 million that understands the car emperor system, and less than half compared with the 25.381 million in the easy car series.
Since 2019, the traffic dilemma of the auto home has become more and more obvious. In August 2019, Lu Min, CEO of Autohome, released a set of brilliant user data: the average daily visit of the whole site exceeded 1 billion, the daily active users of mini programs exceeded 3 million, the daily active users of mobile terminals exceeded 37.8 million, and the installed capacity of APP reached 430 million...
But shortly thereafter, the daily active user data of the Autohome APP began to decline continuously. QM agency data show that the number of daily active users of the Autohome APP has fallen for 12 consecutive months since November 2019, of which 8 months have fallen by more than 10% year-on-year, and individual months have fallen by more than 30%.
In addition, according to Aurora's "2021 Q2 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report", among the mainstream automotive information apps, the E-car application has the brightest performance. In Q2 this year, the number of active users increased rapidly compared with the same period last year, with an average MAU of 31.773 million, an increase of 57.2% year-on-year, ranking first in the industry since Q4 2020.
The master of the headline system is also not to be underestimated. According to data, since October 2019, The number of dealer accounts launched on the Chedi platform has approached 25,000. In September 2020, The Company announced that the cumulative number of users had exceeded 240 million. In contrast, Autohome did not start to lay out video and live broadcast business until 2020.
According to the third-party agency QuestMobile report, in the distribution of advertising media of the TOP 10 new models in 2020, EasyCar accounted for 22.2% of the share, Autohome accounted for 17% of the share, and today's headlines ranked third with a share of 15.1%.
In addition to Easy Car and Understand Car Emperor, there are also batches of automotive vertical media that have come one after another to impact the market. On the other hand, with the rise of short videos, many automotive short videos have emerged from the media, and as opinion leaders in the automotive industry, they also want to share a piece of the pie here.
However, from the background of the industry, the advertising of automobile brands has been saturated. A person from an automotive vertical Internet platform told Red Star Capital Bureau: "China's passenger car market has declined for the first time in 20 years, and the ceiling of this industry has arrived. Autohome advertising is still the first echelon, but regardless of Byte, Autohome, Tencent, the advertising budget for the automotive industry is basically saturated and has not grown much."
Red Star News reporter Yu Yao Qiang Ya Milling
Edited by Tao Yueyang
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