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The new trend of | ECO
In the end, as rumors said, Debon sold jd.com, and the total valuation of the acquisition was about 13.5 billion yuan. Cui Weixing, the actual controller of Debon shares, could cash out nearly 4 billion yuan in the transaction.
Before the suspension, according to the 2021 annual performance pre-reduction announcement disclosed by Debon Shares, its net profit in 2021 was pre-reduced by 378 million yuan to 491 million yuan year-on-year, a decrease of 67%-87%, and the net profit deducted from non-attributable to the mother will be reduced to about -160 million yuan to -273 million yuan.
In fact, debon's crisis has already emerged in 2019, its express business has shrunk, and its express delivery business has been "attacked by the enemy". With the continuous decline of its own profitability, the huge functional system has exposed more and more problems, and the former "king of less than one burden" finally has to rely on "selling himself" to solve the dilemma.
This transaction is also another large-scale acquisition of the express logistics industry after Jitu's 6.8 billion yuan acquisition of Best's domestic express delivery business. Jitu is the "royal" express delivery of the small e-commerce giant Pinduoduo. Nowadays, byte-based Douyin e-commerce is also accelerating self-construction or investment in logistics.
Throughout the industry, e-commerce is reshaping the pattern of China's logistics industry.
The end of the "Ready Player One"
"They all say that the years are not spared, but I have not bypassed the years, and Debon Logistics has not bypassed the years." This is a sentence said by founder Cui Weixing when Debon was listed in 2018.
Debon's era is also the era of Cui Weixing. Founded in 1996, Debon was once the "number one player" in the domestic express market.
Cui Weixing, a native of Shandong, is a special presence among the founders of many logistics groups, and he was admitted to the Accounting Department of Xiamen University with the second place in the whole school. In 1996, Cui Weixing created the predecessor of Debon, "Cui-style Freight", in 1998, under the tide of state-owned enterprise restructuring, Cui Weixing contracted the operation right of the freight department of the old cadres of China Southern Airlines for 1 year, and innovatively launched a new logistics model of "air transport and large tickets", which laid a solid foundation for his future career take-off and also brought him the first bucket of gold.
In 2000, Guangzhou Debon Logistics Service Co., Ltd. was established, specializing in air freight agency business, and Debon began to go to Shenzhen, Zhuhai and even the whole of South China. In 2004, Debon pioneered the "truck flight" business, relying on the significant advantages of "air speed and automobile transportation price", and quickly occupied the high-end market of LTL logistics. In 2009, Cui Weixing moved the debon headquarters to Shanghai, and the business also moved from south China to the whole country. The following year, Debon's operating income exceeded 2.6 billion yuan, sitting on the throne of the king of domestic LTL logistics.
Stimulated by the rapid development of the e-commerce market, debon made a strategic transformation in 2013: highlighting large-scale express delivery from LTL fast operation, and successively introduced investors such as Sequoia Capital, CDH Investment, and CICC Capital in 2014.
In 2018, Debon Logistics officially changed its name to Debon Express, fully focused on the large-scale express delivery market, and shouted out the slogan of "let the world have no difficult express delivery". In the following three years, according to the financial report, the proportion of Debon's express business gradually declined, until 2020, the express delivery business accounted for more than 60% of its total revenue.
But that's where the crisis lurks.
In 2016, SF, Yuantong, Yunda and Shentong were listed on A-share backdoor listings, and Zhongtong also successfully went to the United States for IPO. Debon, which submitted listing materials in 2015, finally slowed down a step, landing on the capital market in 2018, and the scale of fundraising was far lower than that of competitors.
Even with the rapid development of the e-commerce market, the "price war" competition in the express delivery market can be described as white-hot in recent years, and most of the market share has been firmly in the hands of several traditional strongmen, as a latecomer, Debon wants to win is not easy.
Whether it is market capitalization, revenue, business volume data, debon has not changed the industry status of latecomers after listing. In terms of operating income, among the eight express delivery listed companies, in terms of the annual data of 2020, SF's business ranked first, with a revenue of 110.508 billion yuan, followed by YTO Express with 34.907 billion yuan, Yunda shares with 31.663 billion yuan, ZTO Express with 21.9 billion yuan, and Debon with only 16.662 billion yuan. In terms of market share, among the eight express delivery listed companies, Debon ranked at the bottom with 0.68%, further down from 0.88% in 2018.
With the strategic tilt, the LTL business, which once made Debon the most proud, was also attacked. In the past, there was an old rival Aneng Logistics listing attack, and then there were competitors who joined forces to grab the "cake". From 2017 to 2020, Debon's express business shrank year after year. In 2020, SF Express replaced Debon with revenue of 12.45 billion yuan and sat in the top spot of the domestic LTL track.
In 2015, Debon Express settled in Cainiao to provide large-scale logistics services under 30 kilograms for Tmall Taobao, but the different routes did not turn the situation around Debon. In May 2020, Debon also introduced Yunda of the rookie family as a strategic shareholder, but in the following more than a year, there has been no obvious and substantial progress in the business cooperation between Yunda and Debon.
Today, Debon's market value has shrunk by nearly 60% compared with 30 billion yuan when it was first listed. According to the performance forecast, 2021 will be the worst year for Debon's performance.
In fact, in 2019, the express delivery industry has already fallen a number of companies, such as Express, Guotong, Quanfeng and Rufengda, last year, The Daily Express was shut down, and Yimi Tick and Best Express were successively acquired. Selling yourself may be the best way out for Debon.
The express delivery industry entered the oligarchic competition
Previously, according to 36Kr news, some analysts believe that Debon has contacted a lot of acquirers before and after, even including Ali and SF, and finally held hands with JD.com, and one reason may be that behind JD.com and Debon, there is a common investor Sequoia Capital.
By the end of 2021, JD Logistics will manage the storage area (including cloud warehouses) of 24 million square meters, and the number of managed warehouses will exceed 3,000 (including 1,700 cloud warehouses). Deppon is one of the leading LTL freight enterprises in the direct operation mode, with an efficient and stable national logistics network. As of 2021H1, Debon Logistics has 7,285 directly operated outlets, 2,668 partner outlets, 143 distribution centers, 15,524 self-operated vehicles, 2,057 trunk transportation lines and 63,700 delivery personnel of various employment modes.
Although the future integration and development of the two sides still needs to be tested. But the basic disk of JD Logistics will undoubtedly be larger.
Huachuang Securities released a research report commenting that the acquisition indicates that the mainland trillion express market has entered an accelerated integration period, and the concentration of industry leaders may increase rapidly in the next 3-5 years.
According to ai media consulting data, in January 2021, the market shares of SF Holdings, Yunda Shares, Yuantong Express and Shentong Express were 10.64%, 16.33%, 14.94% and 9.93% respectively.
According to the financial report of the first half of 2021, the logistics business volume of SF Express reached 3.655 billion votes, an increase of 81.3% year-on-year, much higher than the industry growth of 22.1%, and SF's market share also increased from 8% at the end of last year to nearly 11%, surpassing Shentong.
SF firmly grasps the high-end market of express delivery, focuses on direct operation, and through decades of continuous investment, has created a heavy asset network of "skynet + ground network + information network", and has become an independent force in the express delivery industry.
In contrast, another major force group in the express delivery industry, "Tongda System", in addition to the industry leader Zhongtong achieved a slight increase in market share, the market share of Yunda and Yuantong basically did not change last year, and Baishi and Shentong both showed negative growth. But on the whole, ali rookie, which is backed by the "Tongda system", is already the invisible overlord of China's express delivery industry.
Since investing in Best in 2008, Alibaba has been increasing its positions in "four links and one reach". On the evening of April 29, 2020, Yunda Express released its latest annual report, Alibaba has become one of its shareholders, with a shareholding ratio of 2%, and "four links and one reach" have realized cooperation with Alibaba.
If you do not consider the new strong hands such as Jitu, the mainland's express logistics industry has basically formed an oligarchic pattern represented by the Rookie system, Jingdong Logistics, and SF.
The ultimate PK for e-commerce logistics
Now, in the upstream of the entire express delivery industry, the figure of e-commerce has become everywhere.
The huge Ali rookie of the camp, the Jingdong logistics that has rejuvenated the second spring, the soaring Pinduoduo "royal" pole rabbit, and the douyin e-commerce logistics, the e-commerce giants are deeply wrapped in the development of the logistics industry.
As the highest-valued platform logistics service provider in the industry, Cainiao carries business flow upwards and serves logistics and passenger flow downwards, which is an extremely important part of Ali's huge ecosystem. In 2013, from birth, Alibaba bound the "three links and one reach" (Shentong, Yuantong, Zhongtong, Yunda) to the rookie with a 1% equity ratio.
After its establishment, it has received multiple financings, and Ali has formed an absolute control over cainiao by continuously increasing investment, while reversing investment in the "Tongda system" to form an interest binding. According to public information, Ali's equity in "four links and one reach" is: 33% of Best, 22.5% of Yuantong, 25% of Shentong, 8.7% of Zhongtong and 2% of Yunda.
Cainiao was born in Ali, and its strategic layout also serves Ali, and the expansion direction of Ali's core business has always guided The strategic layout of Cainiao. Up to now, Cainiao has formed three logistics networks of international retail, regional retail and same-city retail relying on Ali's global layout.
It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of the establishment of the earliest rookie, SF was also one of its initiating shareholders, holding 1% of the shares, but in 2017, because of data interface problems, SF and Ali broke up. Until 2018, the Tongda Department also withdrew from the equity of SF's "Fengchao Technology" and joined the embrace of the rookie department "Zhejiang Yizhan". Complete the "two alternatives" between SF and Cainiao.
Self-built logistics once made JD.com question that its assets were too heavy, but its strategic significance to the entire JD Group is self-evident. After holding Debon, a series of strategic expansions of JD Logistics will also enter a test period, and whether it can reverse losses and get a larger external customer market have yet to be tested.
The new giants in e-commerce, Pinduoduo and Douyin, have not shown weakness, and have focused on logistics in the past two years.
There is no direct investment relationship between Jitu and Pinduoduo, and the reason why Jitu is classified into the Camp of Pinduoduo is that the founders and teams of Jitu are associated with OPPO, and Duan Yongping, a key figure behind OPPO, happens to be an angel investor of Pinduoduo. Jitu has been defaulted by the industry as the "royal" logistics of Pinduoduo.
Polar rabbit originated in Southeast Asia and only entered the domestic market in 2018. Although it did not break into Ali's camp, but backed by Pinduoduo, as well as Suning Tesco, Mushroom Street, Dangdang.
Since having a pole rabbit, Pinduoduo has also tried to launch a "surprise attack" on rookies: in February 2021, "Duoduo Buy Vegetables" announced its entry into the express terminal collection business.
On October 29, 2021, Best Group transferred its domestic express delivery business to Jitu Express for 6.8 billion yuan. The industry has also exploded that the integration process between Jitu Express and Best Express is not as smooth as imagined. But in any case, in the express delivery industry, "Pinduoduo + Pole Rabbit" already has a place, and can start a game with Cainiao, JD.com, and SF.
Another small e-commerce giant that is not willing to be left behind is Douyin, and for ByteDance, "copying homework" is a very ready-made path.
According to the "Late Post" report, the GMV of Douyin e-commerce in 2020 exceeded 500 billion yuan, and the GMV target of Douyin e-commerce in 2021 is one trillion yuan, and Douyin Small Shop is expected to bear 40% of it. Logistics problems have become an important "bottleneck" in the development of Douyin e-commerce, and its official data shows that the problem of delivery service at the end of the express delivery service in the express delivery complaint and the return of express delivery reasons in the douyin e-commerce accounted for more than 50%.
At the beginning of this year, there were media reports that Douyin e-commerce opened a test express delivery service "Yinzunda" to provide door-to-door delivery and other services. At present, the supported express delivery companies are Zhongtong, Yuantong, Yunda, and the rest of the express delivery is still being connected.
On the other hand, a series of actions show that Douyin may also learn from JD.com and build its own logistics. In 2021, Douyin e-commerce has introduced a number of people responsible for logistics and supply chain, and then established a number of logistics supply chain companies, and ByteDance has also invested in three logistics robot companies: Jiazhi Technology, Future Robot, and Syrius Juxing.
How to take the logistics road of Douyin e-commerce, 2022 or more clear, and how it will stir up the express delivery market also depends on the development of Douyin e-commerce. But logistics, ByteDance will inevitably settle.
As Ai Media Consulting analysts believe: "Express logistics is an important infrastructure for the smooth operation of the e-commerce system, and with the improvement of online retail penetration in the future, logistics will become the key to e-commerce platform competition." ”