Repeatedly folding the capital market, The Himalaya only has a story?

Image source @ Visual China

Wen | Pai Finance, the author is | Chen Qingzhi, and the editor is | Pai Gongzi

Online audio leader Himalaya, the road to listing is blurred again.

But the story belongs to the story, the reality returns to reality, 10 years of entrepreneurship, 9 rounds of financing, the valuation of 30 billion yuan of Himalaya, has never kicked the door of the capital market. Exactly, when also? Fate also?

01, half flame and half seawater

Online audio isn't the ideal track for Buffett to say has a long slope, but the Himalayas are the absolute leader.

Excellent user data naturally brings rapid growth in revenue. According to the prospectus, in the three financial years of 2018, 2019 and 2020 and the first half of 2021, The operating income of Himalaya was 1.481 billion yuan, 2.698 billion yuan, 4.076 billion yuan and 2.514 billion yuan, respectively.

However, according to the view of Insight Consulting, even with such rapid growth, Himalaya still has a considerable space for development. According to the China Insight Consulting Survey, the average monthly active users of mobile terminals in the online audio industry will be 186 million in 2020, and the monthly active users of the Internet of Things and in-vehicles will be 0.65 billion, while the two figures are expected to be 470 million and 423 million by 2025, respectively.

But the flip side of Himalayas' fiery earnings and business outlook is the icy waters.

Even so, the quality of this data is debatable. According to the prospectus, of the 262 million users in the first half of 2021, 151 million were For the Internet of Things and other open platforms, such as Xiaodu smart speakers, Himalaya has successfully become its content provider, but at the same time, Xiaodu is also open to other online audio apps, and the situation in the in-vehicle market is similar.

That is to say, although users install and use Himalaya, smart speakers, car markets, etc. do not rely on independent APP, Himalaya is more like the role of content service providers, there is no Himalaya, these smart devices still have other tools to fill the pit.

According to the 2021 H1 financial report, Himalaya has 262 million users, with an average user listening time of up to 146 minutes, accounting for about 70.9% of the total listening time of mobile users of all online audio platforms in China, and the market share is undisputed. However, in 2018 this data is 123 minutes, in 2020 it is 141 minutes, that is, under the crazy marketing investment, although users have grown, but the slowdown in the growth of user listening time has become an indisputable fact.

Therefore, as far as the current situation of Himalaya's operation is concerned, it seems to have fallen into the strange circle of increasing expenditure, increasing revenue and increasing users, but only not increasing profits, and key data such as user growth rate and user use time have touched the ceiling, and further forward can only pay more costs.

02. Where did the profits go?

Revenue has grown high year by year, and users and listening time have not seen a recession, but Himalaya has accumulated losses of more than 2.3 billion yuan in three and a half years. The reason, founder Yu Jianjun and co-CEO Chen Xiaoyu of course know it. But the giants and competitors are in front of them, in order to prepare enough ammunition, Yu Jianjun's attitude has to turn around, from the beginning of the "denial of three consecutive" listings, to the body began to be honest.

On closer inspection, the Himalayas' losses seem to have been engraved in the genes from the beginning.

Yu Jianjun, a native of Pucheng, Fujian Province, also inherited the characteristics of Fujian people who "love to fight to win", and has begun to start a business during his studies at Xi'an Jiaotong University, and it is a continuous business, during his master's degree, he did an entrepreneurial project called "Simulated China". Since then, he has founded the Jetto software, the street view map "City Bar City8", and the virtual world project "The World There".

Among them, the establishment of the "World There" project, obtained 20 million angel funds from Dai Zhikang, the helmsman of Zendai Company, and after two years of running out of money, Yu Jianjun found that he had gone in the wrong direction of entrepreneurship, the company's 80-person team, and finally only 7 people were left. However, Yu Jianjun and Chen Xiaoyu did not get depressed, but came up with the idea of creating a Himalaya FM, and then "cheekily" went to Dai Zhikang, and an executive present even scolded him for "cheating money again.".

Of course, the most important thing about an audio startup project is still the content. After investigating the audio industry at that time, Yu Jianjun directly put almost all the categories of content on the market on the platform, and eventually formed 19 categories including audio novels, music, and training seminars.

Soon after the launch of the Himalaya mobile terminal in 2013, the number of fans quickly exceeded 10 million.

Based on the Himalayas, the proportion of listening time spent on total listening time increased: PGC increased from 5.2% in 2018 to 15% in 2020, PUGC slightly increased from 29.8% in 2018 to 33.1% in 2020, and UGC decreased from 65% in 2018 to 51.9% in 2020.

So many IP purchases, naturally need a lot of real money and silver. The prospectus shows that Himalaya's revenue sharing expense was 462 million yuan in 2018, accounting for 31.2% of operating costs, 31.7% in 2020 and 26.4% in the first half of 2021.

What makes Himalaya even more uncomfortable is that the sales of audio premium albums are completely insufficient. According to industry insiders, a paid album can sell 100,000 copies is already a "super hit", and there is no one that sells millions of copies, which is obviously not the same as the video program with hundreds of billions of views.

Therefore, Himalaya, which cannot survive by advertising, has once again come to an embarrassing situation - a huge investment in IP can not bring more income, and the reduction of investment will undoubtedly fall into the encirclement of low-quality UGC content, the platform style and income will not be guaranteed, and it is difficult to decide where to go.

03、 Where is the way out?

Although PGC content is both loved and hated, it is still the main source of revenue for the Himalayas.

No matter from which point of view, It is difficult for Himalaya to change the status quo of content, as a platform, it must maintain ecological stability and prosperity with free content, while at the same time having enough paid content to ensure revenue, such a balance is obviously difficult to grasp. The direct consequence of this status quo is that the quality of content is uneven, the proportion of paid content is low, and it is difficult for Himalaya to achieve revenue increase.

However, it seems that the potential is not small, but the comparison between Himalaya and Spotify is still not large. In the European and American markets, self-driving is the main way of commuting, and family cooking is also a daily life, so as early as the radio period, the radio station market was extremely developed, and until now there are still tens of thousands of private radio stations operating.

From radio to digital audio podcasts, the user experience is an improvement, and a smooth transition has been achieved in the European and American markets.

But in China, public transportation is still the most important means of transportation, cooking is even more low-frequency for fast-paced young people, and audio users actually don't have a lot of usage scenarios. On the other hand, the sudden rise of short videos has also allowed the public to skip the audio era from the graphic era and directly enter the video era.

As a result, users have no consumption habits for audio content, and Himalayas can only educate users from scratch. However, while educating and charging, it is obvious that it cannot win the favor of users. Therefore, in recent years, the popularity of "knowledge payment" has decreased, the "in line" of the fruit shell has not worked, AndteDance has also closed its knowledge payment products "study well", and "getting things" is not as beautiful as imagined.

In fact, in addition to the content, Himalaya has also tried to make a difference in smart speakers, but fast forward and fast out has not stirred up much waves, but currently relies more on third-party smart hardware products. This does not bode well for its own user stickiness.

Among them, Tencent Music attacked the city with a product matrix: launched Cool Me Listening, acquired lazy listening books, and added a podcast level entrance to the QQ Music APP; NetEase Cloud Music launched the "Sound Theater" column and increased the "podcast" entrance; ByteDance and Kuaishou, which are known for their short videos, launched the Tomato Listening APP and Kayak APP respectively; and the two-dimensional audio community Cat Ear FM, which was wholly acquired by Station B for 1 billion yuan.

But how many opportunities and time can such a "dream" that is difficult to make a profit have?