Starry Sky Jun registered for the Chengdu Marathon in September 2021 and booked a flight and hotel from Ctrip. Because the game starts at the Sands Site Museum, even book tickets for the first day of your visit online.
As a result, due to the impact of the epidemic, the marathon was postponed and eventually cancelled. 2021 became the first year since Starry Sky Jun began to run a marathon without a race, and the grand goal of 100 horses in my heart was instantly bottomless.
What is even more depressing is that because the tickets are discounted tickets, the refund fee is calculated according to the full ticket, and the refund fee that finally arrives is far less than the refund fee.
Who collected the refund fee?
Ctrip.
Open Ctrip's financial report and find that in the case of the basic nest of the tourism industry, Ctrip achieved revenue of 15.3 billion yuan in the first three quarters.
How much is the refund fee?
1. Ctrip's assets and liabilities
Recently, the platform economy has been mentioned a lot, mainly based on anti-monopoly and other situations.
As the largest three-party booking platform for business travel, Ctrip also has the drawbacks of the platform economy, looking for a balance between scale expansion and anti-monopoly.
Most platform companies are asset-light operations, and the core productivity is people. However, Ctrip's assets are very heavy, with total assets exceeding 200 billion.
In contrast, meituan's total assets are more than 200 billion yuan, is the size and volume of the two similar?
Meituan's asset composition is very high-quality, with only investment and financial management of 70 billion yuan, cash and equivalents of 50.9 billion.
What are Ctrip's assets?
Nearly $60 billion in goodwill, more than $43 billion in long-term investments, and $37 billion in short-term investments...
This seems to be a company with investment as its main business, not like a company engaged in a physical business.
Second, the gross profit margin of "water injection"
By carefully studying the company's balance sheet, it can be found that Ctrip is essentially a "light" asset company. This type of enterprise has one thing in common: the gross profit margin is relatively high.
Even in 2020, when the epidemic is serious, the company's gross profit margin still reached a staggering 78%, and such an excellent indicator even exceeded Wuliangye.
However, Ctrip's gross profit margin is very confusing.
Taking the composition of the income statement in 2020 as an example, the company's annual revenue is 18.3 billion, the operating cost is only 4 billion, and the company's gross profit has reached a staggering 14.3 billion.
Revenue recovered to 56% of 2019, and in the third quarter, Ctrip and merchants helped platform users cancel more than 25.2 billion yuan of orders, reaching 80% of the peak of the unsubscribe tide at the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in early 2020.
It seems that the refund fee charged is indeed not cheap.
It's easy to make money lying down, right? However, it is not so simple, the company's R & D expenses of 7.7 billion, marketing expenses of 4.4 billion, management expenses of 3.6 billion ...
Affected by the three fees, the company's operating profit loss was 1.4 billion.
In other words, the company's ultra-high gross profit margin cannot cover the three expenses at all.
Why is this happening?
This is because the cost of some Internet companies is processed by expense.
For example, the salary of workshop workers in manufacturing enterprises is included in the cost, while the salary of Ctrip's code farmers is included in the research and development expenses.
Many students study hard, do not go to vocational high school, and strive to go to college, just to get the salary in the future not into the cost (manufacturing costs), but into the management costs (administrative management), or into the research and development costs (technology research and development), and the worst can also enter the sales expenses (sales staff).
For Ctrip, the platform is a very important production tool, which requires a large number of code farmers to support operation and maintenance, which is included in the research and development costs; at the same time, the platform invests a lot of marketing expenses (search engine drainage, major APP drainage) in order to engage in activities.
It can be said that without these marketing investments, it is impossible to have so many users to book tickets.
Of course, Starry Sky Jun is not saying that this kind of accounting is not standardized enough, on the contrary, this kind of accounting is very standardized, in line with accounting standards, and also reflects the different characteristics of different industries.
We can see the essence through the phenomenon: the three fees are far higher than the cost of the company, the gross profit margin is not as good as it really is, but "modified" by the characteristics of the industry.
Third, equity investment profit and loss, profit reservoir?
Generally speaking, there is a strong correlation between the operating profit of a listed company and the net profit attributable to the mother. According to the calculation formula of the income statement, the operating profit is deducted from the investment income, the difference between the income and expenditure of the other business, and the income tax, etc., and the net profit attributable to the mother is derived.
Under normal circumstances, these items do not change much, so in most cases there will be no significant difference between operating profit and attributable net profit.
Source: Flush iFind, Cartography: Poetry and Starry Sky
The relationship between Ctrip's operating profit and net profit attributable to the mother is relatively outrageous, and there is basically no law, what is the reason for this?
It turns out that the company's equity investment income fluctuates very largely and irregularly.
This shows that the return on the company's investment is extremely unstable, considering that Ctrip has invested in a large number of unlisted companies, many investment income may not be accurately calculated, and this part of the profit and loss has become a "reservoir" of profits.
For example, the company lost 4.2 billion yuan in the third quarter of 2020, and the equity investment income alone was -2 billion.
By the third quarter of 2021, there was another 200 million yuan of equity investment income.
Seems to have a lot of arbitrariness.
As we all know, a considerable number of listed companies often have performance modification or even fraud, so what about non-listed companies?
It can be seen that the company's reservoir is uncontrollable, and the company's real performance is seriously affected by equity investment income.
Fourth, core competitiveness
Xingkong Jun likes to run and ride, and recently commuted to ride the METUAN Mobike.
When Wang Xing acquired Mobike, Xingkong Jun had been thinking about Wang Xing's words: Good chess players usually know and accept that they are also pawns in a larger chess game.
Mobike, which will certainly not be profitable, what is the significance for the US group?
An excellent chess piece.
Because when Starry Sky Jun saw Mobike pull out his mobile phone, he unconsciously opened the METUAN.
Meituan's open rate and activity have risen sharply, and the possibility of users using Meituan to order meals, hotels, and flowers has greatly increased.
The input cost of Mobike is much smaller than the sales cost of the same traffic.
When Meituan began to develop hotel tickets, what did Ctrip use to build a moat?
The vast majority of consumers who book tickets are not loyal users, there are no more than two types, one is where cheap to buy, and the other is where convenient to buy.
What are the costs for Ctrip's customers to turn to Meituan?
0 cost.
Is Ctrip a must in addition to booking tickets? No.
In addition to booking tickets, is Meituan a must? For many young people, yes.
Dimensionality reduction strikes are the most deadly.