Zhongxin Jingwei March 23 , 2021 -- Before the market hours on March 23, BOSS Direct Employment (NASDAQ:BZ) released its unaudited financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021. According to the financial report, BOSS Direct Employment achieved revenue of 1.09 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2021, an increase of 69.1% year-on-year, exceeding market expectations. Under non-GAAP, the Company achieved profitability for the third consecutive quarter in the fourth quarter, with an adjusted net profit of RMB349 million.
Throughout 2021, the effectiveness of the BOSS direct employment business model has been strongly verified. In 2021, it achieved revenue of 4.26 billion yuan, an increase of 119.0% year-on-year. The calculated cash receipts for the whole year were 5.017 billion yuan, up 98.3% year-on-year. Under non-GAAP, it achieved an adjusted net profit of 853 million yuan for the whole year, compared with 2020. At the end of 2021, the company's free cash flow was 1.38 billion, up 436% year-on-year.
Since the second half of 2021, the company has suspended new users due to network security reviews. Under special circumstances, the stickiness and recognition of the platform by the old users can be fully verified. According to the full-year report, the average number of monthly active users (MAUs) of the platform for the whole year was 27.1 million, up 37% year-on-year.
"Employment priority is one of the three major macroeconomic regulation and control policies of the state. The significance of work is not only to settle down and support the family, but also to achieve an important way to achieve human development. Combining technology, knowledge and scientific research, and efficiently docking talents and positions, is conducive to achieving rapid employment, full employment, high-quality employment and stable employment. This is the duty of job recruitment service agencies, and it is also the value of our company's existence", Zhao Peng, founder, chairman and CEO of BOSS Direct Recruitment, said, "The company will continue to increase technical investment, strengthen core capacity building, and do a good job search and recruitment service for the society, job seekers and enterprises." ”
Stable revenue level Steady growth of technology investment
In the fourth quarter, BOSS direct employment achieved revenue of 1.09 billion yuan, an increase of 69.1% year-on-year, of which 99% came from online recruitment services. Calculated cash receipts during the reporting period were $1,170 million, up 24% year-on-year.
For the 12 months ended December 31, 2021, BOSS directly hired approximately 4 million paying corporate customers, unchanged from the previous quarter.
In the third quarter of 2021, in order to support the industry and ensure the employment of the population, BOSS Direct Employment took the initiative to implement price reduction and free strategies for some positions in 13 industries such as education and training, service industry, covering 35 cities across the country. In the fourth quarter of 2021, this strategy continued, with many positions in education, services, and real estate changing from fees to free, while the prices of some positions were also reduced.
BOSS direct recruitment pointed out that with the further changes in the supply and demand of talents, some industries have a trend of increasing investment in recruitment. In 2021, the overall investment of Internet technology, manufacturing, and financial industry companies in the platform has increased, reflecting the long-term growth potential of the BOSS direct recruitment model and China's online recruitment.
In the fourth quarter, BOSS's direct marketing and sales expenditure was 373 million yuan. The annual marketing and sales expenditure for 2021 was 1.943 billion yuan. In the fourth quarter, BOSS's direct employment R&D expenditure reached 199 million yuan, and since the disclosure of financial report data, it has maintained a year-on-year upward trend. In 2021, R&D expenditure reached 822 million yuan, an increase of 60.1% year-on-year.
It is worth noting that with the increase in the investment in BOSS direct recruitment technology, the user stickiness driven by the bilateral network effect of intelligent matching and job search continues to appear. For the full year of 2021, marketing and sales expenses decreased by 24 percentage points as a percentage point to revenue. At the same time, since the suspension of new users in July, BOSS direct recruitment has continued to maintain its position as the largest recruitment platform in China in terms of MAU calculations. According to the full-year report, the average number of monthly active users (MAUs) of the platform for the whole year was 27.1 million, up 37% year-on-year.
In the fourth quarter, boss direct employment general and administrative expenses were 119 million yuan, reaching 1.991 billion yuan in 2021, up 150% year-on-year. The increase in related expenses was mainly due to the equity incentive plan for key employees. Zhao Peng, founder, chairman and CEO of BOSS Direct Employment, has said that he wants to share the dividends of the company's development with more employees. It is understood that BOSS directly employs employees who hold the company's shares, which currently accounts for about 30% of the total number of employees.
The comprehensive report of investment institutions' positions shows that in the fourth quarter of 2021, 56 institutions opened positions and directly hired BOSSes. These include Jinrui Fund, Bridgewater, Swiss National Bank and so on. Boss's direct employment of total holdings also increased to 103.
Increased penetration Rate Promote the fair distribution of attention in the job recruitment market
The annual report shows that BOSS direct employment has further increased in the penetration rate of geography and industry.
At the same time, the platform's coverage rate of County-level administrative units in China exceeded 98%. Since the epidemic, the number of jobs in the fields of e-commerce, logistics and warehousing, and life service industries in the county has increased, absorbing a large number of laborers. In addition, the demand for new jobs on the platform for the whole year of 2021 increased by 30% year-on-year.
In 2021, BOSS direct employment will continue to promote the fair distribution of resources between job seekers and recruiters from the perspective of technology, operation and product, and support recruiters and job seekers who are at a relatively competitive disadvantage in the market to obtain more opportunities. Key user groups such as job seekers and small and medium-sized micro enterprises in underdeveloped areas have benefited from it.
In 2021, the number of job releases in poverty alleviation areas will increase by 20%, and the number of communications between recruiters and job seekers in poverty alleviation areas will exceed 12 million times in 2021. Small and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households with a scale of less than 20 people in the company will increase significantly in the number of positions released on the BOSS direct employment in 2021, providing 1 employment opportunity for the society every 2.5 seconds on average.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made online recruitment the norm. In 2021, 1,218 smes with less than 500 companies opened nearly 2,000 recruitment live broadcasts on boss direct recruitment for free. For a whole year, except for weekends and statutory holidays, smes and small and medium-sized enterprises recruited in the live broadcast room almost every day.
On the BOSS direct employment platform, the micro, small and medium-sized enterprise group provides a large number of employment opportunities for job seekers.
In an experiment conducted in the fourth quarter, the intelligent matching system recommended relevant job seekers in first-tier cities to relevant industries in third- and fourth-tier cities according to job seekers' expectations. In the end, the catering industry in fourth-tier cities increased by 40% and the security/housekeeping/maintenance industry in third-tier cities increased by 26%.
In addition, in the field of technical talents with strong natural competitiveness of large enterprises, the fair-oriented intelligent matching system has further enhanced the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Platform data shows that the number of technical jobs for small and medium-sized enterprises will exceed 2 million in the second half of 2021 and continue to maintain this order of magnitude, and the number of small and medium-sized enterprises accounting for more than 50% of technical jobs has reached 220,000. The number of "specialized, specialized and new" enterprises covered by the platform has increased to 3745, the number of job releases has risen by 50%, and more than one million double chats have been generated in the spring recruitment season.
Driverless brain provider Smart Walker will have 40% of new employees from boss direct hires in 2021.
Improve user privacy protection measures and promote the construction of industry infrastructure
In the current stage of Internet development, data security and individual user privacy protection have become the key propositions for the growth of Internet companies. Throughout 2021, BOSS direct employment combined with laws, regulations and regulatory requirements, benchmarked the high standards of the Internet industry, continued to increase investment, and strengthened data security and privacy protection.
In 2021, BOSS Direct Recruitment will continue to iterate the platform's privacy and security protection strategy, warning and restricting recruiters who have irregular behavior, and severely cracking down on the behavior of demanding the privacy of job seekers.
In November 2021, BOSS directly established the "Personal Information Protection Team" to optimize products and develop functions in terms of privacy rule publicity, user convenient access, and user information self-management. In addition, BOSS direct employment has also added a personal information protection hotline to provide users with consulting services related to personal information protection. In addition, in order to facilitate elderly users, BOSS Direct Employment has also added a manual direct customer service line for elderly users.
In 2021, BOSS Direct Recruitment will continue to increase investment in job seeker security protection, enterprise and recruitment information review, and cooperate with relevant law enforcement agencies to combat illegal and criminal acts involving job recruitment from the source.
BOSS directly hired offline security audit team members "Iron Wall" to do enterprise verification.
In the fourth quarter, the BOSS direct recruitment platform disposed of nearly 140,000 illegal enterprise accounts, and the types of account violations that were disposed of were mainly concentrated in the enrollment and charging behaviors in the name of recruitment. Throughout the year, BOSS directly hired 34 clues to public security organs in various places to deliver 34 clues of illegal crimes, cooperated with the police to smash 9 gang crimes that infringed on the job search and recruitment ecology, and arrested 75 criminal suspects.
By the end of 2021, boss directly hired offline security audit team has covered 50 cities, combined with the online audit system, the team has the ability to verify more than 100,000 enterprise addresses per month, come to the door within two hours of emergency, and verify the authenticity of addresses and employers for more than 90% of the enterprise end traffic. For reports of false identities, bad companies and other types of reports, 100% manual review is achieved.
In the field of blue-collar recruitment with a high incidence of job fraud, governance and guidance behaviors such as false job warning, offline on-site inspection, and regular intermediary selection are carried out at the same time. In the fourth quarter, the weekly number of reported cases of blue-collar job seeker users on the platform fell by nearly 30%.
The person in charge of BOSS direct employment safety said, "For a long time, job search safety and information truth have been a problem that plagues all relevant parties in the job recruitment market, and all parties work together to solve this problem, which has long-term value for the industry and the company's future." In the future, the company will continue to increase investment in relevant aspects to create a cleaner, safer and healthier job recruitment environment for job seekers, recruiters and society. (Zhongxin Jingwei APP)