Yesterday evening, Stone Technology released the 2021 annual performance express announcement. According to the financial report, the revenue of Stone Technology in 2021 was 5.837 billion yuan, an increase of 28.84% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the parent owner after deducting non-recurring gains and losses was 1.189 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.52%.
Overall, stone technology in 2021 overall revenue growth slowed down, net profit for the first time negative growth.
In this regard, Stone Technology said in the financial report that this is due to the epidemic and other factors leading to global capacity tension, there are more container lag, ship jumping, poor transportation cycle, etc., which has caused a certain negative impact on the company's revenue growth rate.
It is worth mentioning that stone technology also issued an announcement on the same day of the shareholder and director supervisor Gao share reduction plan, the announcement shows that the reduction plan involves Jinmi, Ding Di, Gao Rong, Qiming and the company's executives Wan Yunpeng, Wang Xuan, Sun Jia and other 8 shareholders, a total reduction of no more than 10.75% of the company's shares.
Through the penetration of tianyan checking equity, the actual controller behind Jinmi is Lei Jun.
This inevitably leads to speculation from the outside world that Lei Jun and other executives of Stone Technology have reduced their holdings when the 2021 annual performance express is released and are not optimistic about Stone Technology.
As of press time, stone technology stock fell 3.39% to 649 yuan / share, with a market value of 43.357 billion. This is compared with the market value approaching the 100 billion mark in June last year.
"A-share big white horse" becomes "skinny camel"
Looking back in the past, stone technology was once Lei Jun's "favorite".
In 2015, Xiaomi-controlled Tianjin Jinmi appeared among the capital increasers of Stone Technology; in 2016, Shunwei appeared in the list of transferees of equity transfer, accounting for 0.3% of the shares. It can be said that Stone Technology is a full-fledged xiaomi ecological chain enterprise.
Previously, Chang Jing, CEO of Stone Technology, said in public that Xiaomi gave support to Stone Technology, including supply chain, ID design, product definition, etc., and he frankly said that "without the support of Xiaomi's ecological chain, we can't go today."
Relying on Xiaomi, Stone Technology has realized the dream of listing in only 6 years from the establishment of the company, and has become a white horse of A-shares, and the stock price once soared to 1400 yuan / share, which is rare in the field of small household appliances. Investors in the secondary market affectionately call Stone Technology "sweeping the ground".
Under the outlet of AI, new consumption, Internet of Things, etc., Stone Technology started from the OEM for Xiaomi sweeping robots, with high research and development, heavy algorithm investment, with its lidar + positioning algorithm, motion control module and other technologies, effectively realized the sweeping robot to accurately follow the route planned by the navigation algorithm, and solved the robot's obstacle avoidance ability.
A change in consumers' prejudices against sweeping robots "artificial mental retardation" and "adult toys", gradually out of the circle, gradually buy explosive. According to the prospectus of Stone Technology, in the first half of 2019, Stone Technology achieved the market share of its products in the LDS global planning online market ranking first in China.
However, with the "rising star" of the cleaning smart home appliance category becoming more and more intensive in the past two years, the head players of the layout sweeping robots such as Coworth, Tim Ke, Cloud Whale, and Hunting are becoming the fierce enemies of Stone Technology, and their market share is gradually diluted.
According to the latest data from Aowei Cloud Network, in November 2021, Stone Technology's retail share in the sweeping robot online market has reached 16.6%, and there is still a big gap from the leading Coworth (47.6%), lagging behind Cloud Whale (19.8%), but has surpassed its former owner Xiaomi. That is to say, stone technology in the existing domestic market share, quintcing in the third position.
It is worth mentioning that the industry's second cloud whale was established in October 2016, later than Stone Technology, and has received six rounds of financing, and Sequoia, Hillhouse and Byte are all important investment institutions.
The "same disciple" of Stone Technology is pursued, and it only entered the field of vacuum cleaners in 2019, but the sales in the second year exceeded 2 billion, which is not fierce. In October 2021, As a dark horse in the industry, Chaoqian completed a series C financing of 3.6 billion yuan, refreshing the industry financing record. In contrast, the pursuit of wireless handheld vacuum cleaners started, the current category has covered the intelligent scrubbing machine, sweeping and washing and drying integrated sweeping robot, compared to the single product line of stone technology, its imagination space is larger.
In addition, the industry boss Coworth incarnated as the "golden father", and acquired the head brand Tianke, which specializes in intelligent scrubbers, to make up for the lack of high-end cleaning products.
Squeezed by competitors, Stone Technology sought a second path: going to sea. At present, Stone Technology's business in overseas markets accounts for nearly 80%.
But as Stone Technology said, the strategy of going to sea has just begun, and it has collided head-on with the epidemic. Under the epidemic, the cost and uncertainty of exports have greatly increased, making Stone Technology fall into a passive situation.
This can also be seen from the financial report of Stone Technology.
In 2020 and 2019, the net profit growth rate of Stone Technology was 75% and 155%, respectively, and by 2021, the net profit of Stone Technology was 1.402 billion yuan, an increase of only 2.4% year-on-year.
The sharp decline in net profit also reflects the fading of the light of Stone Technology's once "A-share white horse".
Among them, in addition to facing the enemy head-on, the stones also had internal strategic differences.
The stone was milletized, and Lei Jun abandoned the stone
Stone technology can develop rapidly in the early stage, which is inseparable from Xiaomi's Internet of Things ecology.
At that time, Stone Technology relied on the ready-made channel support of Xiaomi's ecological chain and was not worried about traffic and potential consumer problems, which allowed Stone Technology to concentrate on research and development in the early stage.
However, Stone Technology does not want to just become Xiaomi's foundry, which is consistent with the ideas of many science and technology innovation enterprises in Xiaomi's ecological chain enterprises, so Stone Technology is also independently developing its own brand while doing OEM work for Mijia's intelligent sweeping robot.
Stone Technology began to expand its brand business in 2017 and took the "de-milletization" route, and from 2017 to 2020, the sales of Stone Technology's own brand products accounted for 9.63%, 51.08%, 66.41% and 90.72% of the total revenue, respectively.
It is reported that in the first half of 2021, the proportion of sales of Stone Technology's own brand products increased to 98.23%, and it has almost completely achieved "de-milletization".
This means that Stone Technology has become an independent company, but with it the increase in marketing costs.
In March last year, Stone Technology official Xuan Xiaozhan became the brand spokesperson. The financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2021, the marketing expenses of Stone Technology reached 513 million, and the marketing rate was 13.40%, an increase of 39.4% over the same period last year.
Stone Technology official explanation: The company continues to increase the publicity and promotion of its own brand, tried star endorsement and achieved good results. However, there are still consumers who think that relying on technology and products to go out of the circle is better than using the star effect, and do not support technology companies to burn money to invite traffic star marketing.
The increase in marketing expenses also reflects some of the sequelae of Stone Technology's "de-milletization".
And Lei Jun took the lead in reducing the stock of Stone Technology this time, which also made investors in the secondary market associate Fifi.
Betting on building cars will become the second growth curve?
In fact, Chang Jing, the founder of Stone Technology, not only wants to get rid of the old owner Lei Jun, but also to compete with Lei Jun and join the new force of car building.
According to 36Kr, Changjing's car-making project Luoke Automobile has completed a financing of US$100 million by the end of 2021, led by Tencent Group, and investment institution Sequoia has also participated in the investment.
According to sources, Tencent, as the leader, invested more than $50 million in this round of financing. But this round of financing is only the beginning for the car-making field that burns money and super fast.
It is understood that Luoke Automobile is conducting a new round of financing at a valuation of $2 billion. If the progress goes well, Chang Jing and Lei Jun will compete in this round of competition.
A fact is that car manufacturing is becoming a new breakthrough for Internet technology companies.
But the reality in front of us is that new domestic car-making forces such as Wei Xiaoli have begun to occupy the market scale and user mentality; traditional car companies such as BYD account for a relatively large market share of new energy vehicles; and latecomers include Huawei, Xiaomi and other more powerful technology companies.
As a start-up in the field of smart home appliances, the biggest advantage of Stone Technology is the AI-based algorithm and research and development technology. However, there is a huge gap in the technology between building sweeping robots and cars, and if cars are built, Stone Technology is bound to further invest in new talents in the field of research and development.
Secondly, car building is a long-term investment with slow returns on burning money, and in the short term, it will not directly bring obvious benefits to stone technology, nor can it form the second growth curve of stone technology in the short term.
Stone Technology's choice to build cars at a time when revenue growth is slowing down and profits are declining is undoubtedly a big challenge.
(Source|.) AI Blue Media Collection Author| Yang Lei)