"58 in the same city, a magical site." This advertising slogan, perhaps most netizens are not unfamiliar with it.
Red Star Capital Bureau noted that in 2005, Yao Jinbo founded 58.com to locate the local life classification information website; then the business continued to refine the real estate, recruitment, second-hand goods trading and other sectors; at the end of 2011, 58.com registered users exceeded 100 million; in 2013, 58.com (WUBA.US) landed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The rise of 58.com is inseparable from the huge information density brought about by the initial dividends of the Internet. The essence of 58.com's business is to earn the value of information through high-density matchmaking transactions.
The financial report shows that the gross profit margin of 58.5% in fiscal 2019 is 88.5%, which is definitely a high gross profit margin industry in the Internet industry; on the other hand, the high gross profit margin behind 58 tongcheng has long been hidden in the crisis. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, promoting information from extensive to refined, the traffic order originally established by 58.com has also been continuously dispersed and broken. The financial report shows that since 2015, the revenue growth rate of 58.com has begun to slow down. From 80.7% revenue growth in 2014, it fell to 18.6% in 2019.
In September 2020, 58.com was delisted on the NASDAQ.
When 58 Tongcheng was privatized, Yao Jinbo publicly stated: "After the entire company returned, I upgraded the company's organizational structure, from a horizontal classification information platform to a platform for 3 or 5 vertical industrial Internets, independently able to go to the capital market, have an independent management team, and take root deep enough in each industry." ”
After the delisting of 58.com, it may no longer be "magical", but Yao Jinbo's "new plan" is steadily progressing in difficulty after the delisting of 58.com.
58 Tongcheng's freight platform fast dog taxi Picture according to ICphoto
(i)
58 The same city was split, what calculation did Yao Jinbo play?
2015 was a turning point for 58 cities. That year, 58.com began to "jump wildly" on the road of expansion.
In March 2015, 58.com officially announced the acquisition of Anchor Group, with a transaction amount of 267 million US dollars; in April 2015, 58.com announced that the company's strategic shareholding in the classified information website Rush.com; in May 2015, 58.com announced the acquisition of China Talents Network; in August 2015, it increased the capital of Left Bai to hold 70% of the shares, and then unified the external operation of "58 Automobile".
Yao Jinbo said in an interview that year that there is a set of mutual support and optimization systems between the companies invested and acquired by the 58 catch-up market, hoping to form an ecosystem around the 58 catch-up.
Subsequently, 58.com began to subdivide the business territory, and split from "large and complete" to "small and specialized" businesses in different sectors to operate independently.
In addition to the "bought" business, 58 Tongcheng spun off 7 independent businesses, namely Swan to Home (formerly 58 to home), Fast Dog Taxi (formerly 58 Express), Transfer, Doumi Part-time, 58 Tongcheng University, and Many Cars.
The 58 cities with subdivided business are vertically involved in many fields, and now they have its "one acre and three points" in real estate, recruitment, automobiles, second-hand commodities, freight and other fields.
Looking at it again, after the delisting of 58 Tongcheng, Yao Jinbo's "big moves" are indeed very frequent. In 2021 alone, 58.com led its business to three sprint IPOs.
But the road to listing seems to be more difficult than imagined.
In April 2021, 58.com's business unit "Anjuke" submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; in October of the same year, according to the information disclosed on the official website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the IPO prospectus submitted by Anjuke in early April had been "invalid", and the relevant application materials were no longer supported for reading or downloading.
In July 2021, 58.com's Swan Home officially submitted a prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for listing on the New York Stock Exchange; however, a few days later, a number of media reported that Swan Home had suspended its IPO plan to the United States; Swan Home replied that it was "steadily advancing in accordance with relevant laws and policy requirements." Obviously, the road to listing to the home of the swan is once again hindered.
In August 2021, 58.com's freight platform Kuaigou Taxi launched a listing sprint to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; on 6 February 2022, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that Kuaigou Taxi passed the listing hearing; this may be the latest step towards capital after the delisting of 58.com.
From delisting to splitting the business and listing independently, from "large and complete" to "small and specialized", can 58 Cities, which seems to have walked down the "holy altar", once again get the "support vote" of the capital market? Is the fast dog taxi that is now expected to be expected really prepared?
(ii)
At the financial report level, fast dog taxi is still "losing money and making money"
Same-city freight, which can be defined as large-weight transportation logistics within the same city, has long been gathered in the domestic market, such as Lala, Manbang, Didi and other players.
From the latest post-hearing information, it is not difficult to see that the challenges and pressures of wanting to impact the first share of the same city freight fast dog taxi are actually not small.
1. Revenue growth is slow and faces continuous losses
According to the prospectus, from 2018 to the first three quarters of 2021, the revenue of fast dog taxi was 453 million yuan, 548 million yuan, 530 million yuan and 473 million yuan, respectively; from these figures, it can be seen that the revenue growth trend of fast dog taxi is not obvious.
In addition, fast dog taxi is mired in losses. From 2018 to the first three quarters of 2021, the net loss of Fast Dog With Car was 1.071 billion yuan, 184 million yuan, 658 million yuan and 393 million yuan, respectively, with a cumulative loss of more than 2.3 billion yuan.
The reason for the continuous loss, from the perspective of cost structure, the most important thing is all kinds of marketing expenditures.
According to the prospectus, the sales and marketing expenses of Fast Dog Taxi from 2018 to the first three quarters of 2021 were 524 million yuan, 296 million yuan, 195 million yuan and 231 million yuan, accounting for 115.7%, 54%, 36.7% and 48.9% of the revenue of the year, respectively. In the first three quarters of 2021, sales and marketing expenses surged again.
Source: Prospectus
In order to promote the brand and attract users and drivers, the road to burning money for fast dog taxis may still not stop; in addition, considering the business investment plan, fast dog taxi is expected to continue to generate losses at least in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
2. The platform activity is declining
According to the prospectus, between May and November 2021, the average number of monthly active users of fast dog taxi Chinese mainland dropped from 569,500 to 483,600 in the same period last year, a direct decrease of 85,900.
The average monthly number of consignment orders fell from 2,147,700 to 1,951,700, and the number of orders fell by 196,000. In addition, the total amount of transactions shrank by about $35.7 million.
The reason for this situation, on the one hand, stems from the intensification of competition in the logistics market in the same city, but on the other hand, it is also due to the problem of fast dog taxi itself.
On the one hand, before the fast dog taxi through the burning strategy to attract users to join in a short period of time, the data shows that in 2018, the expenditure on subsidies and promotions and advertisers reached 290 million yuan, accounting for 64% of the total revenue alone. In recent years, the marketing expenses of fast dog taxi have been reduced, and the phenomenon of user departure has naturally appeared in fast dog taxi, which has not yet had user stickiness.
On the other hand, in order to improve profitability, Fast Dog Taxi is also constantly increasing the commission rate of the Chinese mainland market. In the first three quarters of 2021, the commission rate of Chinese mainland reached 11.7%, compared with 9.3% in the same period last year. From 2018 to 2020, the commission rate increased from 5.8% to 9.8%. That is to say, the increasing commission rate of fast dog taxi is bound to lead to the loss of a large number of drivers on the platform, thereby reducing the activity of the entire platform.
To sum up, the current basic disk of fast dog taxi is not stable, the company is caught in the dilemma of offense and defense, and it may be difficult to stop the bleeding from the fundamental level.
(iii)
At the market level, the external problems of fast dog taxis are difficult to solve
According to the data of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in 2020, the top 5 domestic same-city freight players accounted for 67.5% of the total scale of the same-city freight platform, of which fast dog taxi accounted for 5.5%, ranking second; however, the second-ranked fast dog taxi, the market situation is not optimistic.
1. The competition in the industry is unprecedentedly fierce
In the above data, although fast dog taxi ranks second, the gap between it and the first is very large. In 2020, the proportion of the lalala market ranked first, with a share of 54.7%, almost ten times that of fast dogs.
The market position of Fast Dog Taxi has not seen an advantage, but in addition to the old rival Lala, Fast Dog Taxi also has to compete with new players who have "money and traffic".
At present, didi Freight, JD.com, SF, Manbang, Meituan and other giants have successively joined the same city freight track, and the price war, technology war and traffic war have been upgraded. Among them, Didi Freight took the lead in adopting a subsidy strategy to expand wildly, and the price war made a comeback. In June 2020, after Didi Freight went online, its daily order volume has exceeded 90,000 after only 5 months. In April 2021, Didi's freight business has covered 19 core cities, and the share of some cities exceeds 50%.
Today's fast dog taxi will definitely be in a long-term battle, which makes the "poor strength" of the second person face more uncertainty.
2. Regulatory policies are becoming more stringent
Most of the truck drivers on platforms such as Fast Dog Driver are "independent contractors", which means that most of the vehicles are privately owned. In February 2021, due to the user's jumping car incident in the cargo lala, the entire freight industry in the same city was involved in a storm of public opinion.
Recently, truck drivers have concentrated on reflecting that the Internet road freight platform arbitrarily adjusts the pricing rules, increases membership fees, induces vicious low-price competition, over-limit and overload illegal transportation, etc., suspected of infringing on the legitimate rights and interests of employees, causing general dissatisfaction among truck drivers and widespread concern in society.
Just before the fast dog taxi passed the hearing, on January 22, 2022, the Office of the Inter-ministerial Joint Conference on the Coordinated Supervision of New Transportation Formats just interviewed the fast dog taxi, and reminded the four online ride-hailing platform companies, including fast dog taxi, to effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of truck drivers and online ride-hailing drivers.
On December 24, 2021, at the press conference of the State Council New Office, Cai Tuanjie, director of the Department of Transport Services of the Ministry of Transport, said that the next step is to urge platform enterprises to disclose pricing rules to the public, reasonably set the percentage or membership fee cap and publicly release, and display the percentage of each order in real time on the driver's side.
Under strict management, there is still more uncertainty about whether it will affect the gross profit margin of fast dog taxi, thereby bringing a huge impact on the business.
brief summary
Since the delisting of 58 Tongcheng, it has never hidden its ambitions; but every track today is not so smooth, such as fast dog taxis, recruitment industry, housing industry and so on. The "curve to put out the fire" strategy may still have to be painstaking.
Red Star News reporter Yu Yao Liu Mi
Edited by Yang Cheng
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