However, regardless of whether this layoff storm is the "big layoff" mentioned by netizens, or the "normal organizational structure adjustment and optimization" responded by Autohome, it is an indisputable fact that today's Autohome has fallen into difficulties.
Judging from the performance of the secondary market, in the US stock market, as of the close of trading on January 5, Autohome closed at $31.4 per share, down about 80% from the high point at the beginning of 2021.
The performance of the Hong Kong stock market is also not optimistic. In March this year, Autohome landed on the Hong Kong stock market, closing at HK$180 per share on its first day, with a total market capitalization of HK$90.872 billion. As of the close of Hong Kong stocks on January 6, autohome closed at HK$61.95 per share, with a market value of HK$31.557 billion and a market value of about HK$60 billion.
Red Star Capital also noted that some investment banks have also begun to look down on Autohome. In July 2021, Morgan Stanley analysts downgraded autohome ratings from high to flat, lowering its price target from $106 to $50. In August 2021, Bank of America downgraded Autohome from buy by two notches to outperforming the broader market.
The market value has shrunk seriously, the market has begun to decline, what is the trapping of today's auto home?
(i)
Woe not a one-way street of 2021
1. Frequent changes in management
Autohome was founded in June 2005, with the help of the TRAFFIC OUTLET of the PC era, the website has ranked first in the country in 3 years, and the founder Li Xiang has also been at the helm of Autohome for a long time.
In 2015, Li wanted to gradually fade out of the auto home. In July 2016, Ping An became its largest shareholder and began to formally take over Autohome, and the helmsman of Autohome was replaced by Lu Min.
In 2021, autohome executives changed very frequently.
In January 2021, Lu Min, the chairman of Autohome for about 4 years, retired, and Long Quan, an executive of the Ping An Department, took over; in May 2021, co-president Zhang Jingyu resigned for personal reasons; in July 2021, Zou Jun, financial director of Autohome, resigned for personal reasons; in October 2021, Wang Xiao, CTO of Autohome, and Liu Dong, director of Autohome, resigned for other personal reasons.
Frequent changes in executives have aroused a lot of suspicion from the outside world and added a lot of uncertainty to the auto home. Investors and employees will more or less question the future development direction and management ability of Autohome.
2, a significant decline in performance
Judging from the financial report data, the revenue and net profit of the auto home in 2021 have shrunk significantly, and the operating conditions are also not optimistic.
According to the company's financial report, in the first three quarters of 2021, the revenue of Autohome was 1.842 billion yuan, 1.938 billion yuan and 1.764 billion yuan, respectively; the revenue growth rate was 19.07%, -16.22% and -23.83% year-on-year, and the Q2 revenue fell sharply year-on-year, and continued the downward trend in Q3.
Source: Company earnings
By business, Autohome's revenue consists of three segments, namely media services, promotional services and online sales, among others.
Looking back at Autohome's revenue structure for the whole year in 2020, media services and promotion services are its main sources of revenue, accounting for nearly 80% of total revenue.
However, in 2021, There is a significant lack of competitiveness in the two major business segments of Autohome's media services and promotion services.
The media services business mainly refers to advertising revenue, while advertising revenue has shrunk significantly in 2021, the contribution of this business to total revenue has also begun to decline, and in the third quarter of 2021, the media services business revenue as a proportion of total revenue fell to 24.6%.
Promotion services mainly refer to the lead sales revenue, in 2021, the business has become the largest head of auto home revenue, but the revenue growth rate is still two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the development is also not optimistic.
Judging from the net profit of Autohome, in 2021, due to the continuous sharp decline in revenue, it is difficult for the expense level to continue to squeeze the space, and its net profit shows a sharp shrinkage trend, and the decline is becoming more and more obvious. According to the financial report, autohome's net profit in 2021Q3 fell by 41.08% year-on-year.
On the one hand, the changing management "disturbs the military", and on the other hand, the sharply reduced performance has made the ability of Autohome to make money questions. The 2021 year of the auto home can be said to be a disaster.
(ii)
Competitors with their own traffic
At present, the domestic auto vertical head platform is mainly auto home, easy car, and car emperor. Behind these three auto platforms, there are three major forces of Ping An, Tencent and Toutiao. However, compared with Tencent and Toutiao, Ping An is significantly less competitive in terms of traffic.
1. EasyCar and Tencent behind it
Founded by Li Bin in 2000, eCar was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010 and was once known as the "first stock of the Chinese automotive industry to be listed in the United States". After several years of losses, eCar was privatized and delisted in November 2020, and a consortium of buyers led by Tencent acquired a US$1.1 billion merger to become the controlling shareholder.
For Tencent, the acquisition of e-car is a key step in building its own car landscape. Tencent immediately launched the "Tengyi Plan" to open Up Tencent's traffic and scenes to E-Car, so that its content, products and marketing capabilities of the automotive vertical category have been geometrically amplified.
Facts have proved that joining the Tencent ecosystem has indeed pressed the "shortcut key" for the development of e-car.
In November 2021, Zhang Xu'an, CEO of Ecar, said in a high-profile manner at the "2021 China Auto Dealer Summit Forum Cloud Summit" that eCar's model words, boutique car content, original car videos, and owner services widely appeared in Tencent's car-related content and service scenarios such as WeChat Search, Gongge, Video Number, Tencent News, QQ Browser, Tencent Watchpoint, etc. In the past 12 months, eCar has reached 300 million pan-car users in the Tencent ecosystem.
In addition, from the perspective of the number of APP users on various platforms, Aurora data shows that the 2020Q4 E-Car MAU (monthly active number) surpassed Autohome to win the first position in the industry, and then continued to sit in the first position.
At the same time, compared with the new users in each quarter, the e-car series still maintains a strong user growth trend, with 25.38 million new users in the third quarter of 2021, significantly ahead of competitors. The number of new users in Autohome was the lowest of the three major platforms in the first three quarters of 2021.
Source: Aurora 2021 Q3 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report
2, understand the car emperor and the headline system behind it
Compared with Auto Home and Easy Car, Che Di is an absolute novice. In August 2017, today's headlines will be independent of the car channel, understand the car emperor APP was officially launched, but under the blessing of ByteDance's powerful algorithm and traffic, understand the car emperor growth very rapidly.
In addition, in terms of content, Chedi has invested a lot in creator support, user subsidies, and marketing promotion. For example, the creation plan released by Chedi in 2018 announced that it would invest 500 million yuan to create 100 columns to make up for the lack of high-quality content.
A set of combination punches down, in the field of short video, live broadcast, understand the advantages of chedi more and more obvious. For example, in 2021, The Car Emperor launched the "618 Car Unlimited Store" Car Purchase Festival, relying on the 5 major platforms of the Car Emperor, Douyin, Today's Headlines, Watermelon Video, and Douyin Volcano Edition, the cumulative number of viewers in the dealer live broadcast room for 10 days was 24.15 million+, the cumulative number of visits was 27.66 million+, and the total number of dealers' broadcasts exceeded 36,000 times.
(iii)
The "more than worth the loss" of the auto home
Autohome started with forums in its early years, and all content was user-centric. The auto home is now in trouble, in addition to the fierce competitors, from the perspective of the auto home itself, it boils down to the community ecological imbalance caused by the over-exploitation of traffic in the later stage, and the chain reaction after the community ecological imbalance.
1. Early stage: excessive traffic mining, community ecology imbalance
After Ping An took over, Autohome actually ushered in its own brief highlight moment, such as the company's revenue in 2016 increased by 72.10% year-on-year to 5.96 billion yuan; in 2017, the net profit increased by 63.01% year-on-year to 2 billion yuan.
However, the excellent results at that time also laid many hidden dangers for the motor home.
Ping An, which took over Autohome, has continuously mined the value of traffic under the premise of taking profit first, making Autohome fail to keep the premise of user-oriented. With the decline in the quality of content, the community ecology of the auto home has been seriously damaged.
For example, in the depth of traffic, the most direct embodiment is reflected in the advertising level, with the continuous emergence of hard and soft, auto homes have begun to be called "car trust homes" and "advertising homes" by many people.
The decline in content quality and word-of-mouth has affected the advertising willingness of the main engine factory, and also affected the quantity and quality of the clue business, making the auto home fall into its own woven "cage".
In addition, it is worth mentioning that when the automotive industry entered the cold winter in 2019, Autohome insisted on increasing the price of membership fees, triggering large-scale collective protests by dealers, and several large dealer groups such as Zhongsheng, Huge, and Yuntong boycotted.
Excessive consumption of traffic, radical monetization strategies, and "enemies everywhere" in consumers, dealers, and OEMs. After a short period of glory, the auto home faces irreparable losses in the future.
Ma Gang, former vice president of Autohome, once wrote: "The most precious and core things of Autohome will quickly dilute and disappear, its values, sense of mission, cohesion, its corporate ethics and code of conduct... All will be blown away like dust in the fierce winds of capital without a trace. ”
2, the later stage: aiming at new consumer groups, but the market has changed
Today's auto home is trying to regain the traffic that was once not cherished by itself. In 2020, in order to break the traffic bottleneck, Autohome has made more diversified attempts in content and products.
In terms of content, on the basis of the original, Autohome began to strengthen its video, live broadcast and other businesses, supplemented by a series of activities that entered the campus, hoping to obtain new consumer groups in the Z era. Public information shows that in February 2020, Autohome launched hundreds of KOL live broadcasts in the "Big Coffee Live Broadcast Month" activity.
On August 18, 2020, the "818 Global Auto Night" jointly created by Autohome and Hunan Satellite TV came to an end, and the party invited young traffic stars such as Wang Yibo and Huang Zitao.
The desire to catch up is visible, but whether it is short videos or live broadcasts, the response of autohomes is not fast enough. In addition, some data show that the current proportion of users under the age of 30 in The autohome is only about 30%.
Young consumer groups are the mainstream consumers in the future automotive field, but if they want to seize the new consumer groups, the competitiveness of the auto home is insufficient, and it is too late.
brief summary
Internally, Autohome executives change frequently, their performance has shrunk seriously, and their reputation influence has been declining; externally, the two major competitors have the "big tree" of "money and resources" behind them. Under the internal and external troubles, the auto home has fallen into an embattled situation.
Red Star News reporter Yu Yao Liu Mi
Edited by Yu Dongmei
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