Text/Spades and the Sword
The annual earnings season may be one of the very few moments when the filmmakers can return to the spotlight – which is undoubtedly very embarrassing for it, which has been crowned as the "first stock of Hong Kong stock live broadcast". Of course, after experiencing the crisis of the net profit plunge in 2018-2019, Yingke has begun a series of transformations including social networking, which has given investors some confidence. Judging from the recent financial reports, this once-old live broadcast platform seems to have indeed figured out the direction on the road of transformation.
On March 27, Yingke released its annual results announcement for the year ended December 31, 2021, and in summary, several of its financial figures recorded significant growth. Throughout 2021, Yingke generated revenue of 9.176 billion yuan, an increase of 85.4% over the revenue of 4.95 billion yuan in 2020, and gross profit increased by 176.1% to 3.305 billion yuan; in terms of profit, Yingke's adjusted net profit for the whole year reached 467 million yuan, compared with 221 million yuan last year. In other words, Yingke's net profit has more than doubled in one year.
In the financial report, Yingke attributed the name of "hero" to social products. According to the data released by Yingke, its social product revenue has reached 5.744 billion yuan in 2021, accounting for 62.6% of the total revenue, compared with the total revenue of "innovative products" including social products in 2020, which is only 2.07 billion yuan, and now how much it has changed, you can see at a glance.
Social has been the main business of Yingke since 2019. At that time, Yingke launched a number of "interactive + social" applications, and products such as voice dating platform sound bubbles, dimensional interest community StarStar, and map dating platform 22 were all born in this period. At the end of October of that year, Yingke acquired the young interest social app Jimu for 85 million US dollars, trying to use personal interests as a starting point to cut into the Z generation social circle.
According to the data released by Yingke, its App users are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, and the Z generation group after 95 accounts for nearly 80%. Although Yingke did not disclose the specific data of the product in the annual report, as far as the 2020 annual report is concerned, the app's annual revenue has reached nearly 100 million yuan.
Jimu App
On the other hand, Yingke's monetization ability is also growing steadily, which is another reason for its financial situation. In 2021, the average revenue per user of Yingke reached 17.9 yuan / month, an increase of 58.4% over the same period in 2020.
Before 2020, the live broadcast business used to be the main backbone of the revenue of yingke, but today, its status is not so important, and even faintly shows signs of marginalization. In 2019, yingke's live broadcast value-added service revenue is still 3.176 billion yuan, and in the 2021 financial report, the live product revenue is only 2.563 billion yuan, accounting for only 27.9%.
As mentioned earlier, the reason why Yingke has made efforts to socialize is precisely because the "self-reserved land" of live broadcasting is no longer fertile.
In the past, the way of burning money to invite stars to settle in and draining the flow of the film was tried and tested, and the typical example is that Liu Tao, Jiang Xin, Fu Yuanhui and others were broadcast in the film, and the number of onlookers once exceeded 10 million. It is precisely with these seemingly beautiful data that Yingke can repeatedly win the favor of capital, so that it finally won the throne of "the first share of Hong Kong stock live broadcasting".
However, the good times are not long, the outbreak of the "Thousand Broadcast War" has plunged the live broadcast track into the quagmire of excessive competition, and the difficulty and cost of obtaining customers on major platforms have risen sharply, and this trend has not ended until today. Taking Yingke as an example, the money spent on the anchor share in 2021 was as high as 5.203 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 66% year-on-year, accounting for nearly 60% of the total expenditure of the current period; the "publicity and advertising expenditure" also increased to 2.168 billion yuan, an increase of 217% over the same period last year of 683 million yuan.
But live streaming still has its value: the ability to monetize. In the early years, when the live broadcasting industry was just emerging, live broadcasting was the main way for live broadcast platforms to monetize, and now there is also a new form of live streaming with goods to support a blue sky. In recent years, Yingke has also tried in the field of live streaming with goods, such as opening up channels for youzan stores and other measures. In the long run, if the live broadcast of Yingke can also ensure a certain degree of monetization ability, then it is still of significance to Yingke as a whole.
It is worth noting that for the first time, Yingke listed the revenue of blind date products separately in the annual report. Although the proportion of this revenue is not high - the annual revenue is 614 million yuan, accounting for 6.7% of the total revenue, on the other hand, it also means that Yingke's exploration of new areas has achieved short-term success. As for the long-term, I am afraid that it will have to wait for the market to test.
Specifically, Yingke mainly relies on the "Opposite Edge" App in the segment of blind date, which is launched in 2019 and focuses on online dating; in addition, Yingke also made a transformation of its other love product" "Super Like" App in 2021, positioning it as a single Club linked online and offline. At present, it has opened "super like" stores in Beijing and other places.
At present, the domestic marriage and dating market is just in its infancy, and there is still a lot of room for development. According to Analysys's "2020 Online Dating Industry Annual Comprehensive Analysis" report, as of 2019, the domestic Internet dating market size was 5.59 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5% year-on-year, and it is expected to continue to expand in the next few years. With the offline layout + focus on the Z generation, the screener can distance themselves from traditional marriage agencies and online dating platforms at the same time to achieve their own uniqueness.
However, while making more and more money and laying out faster and faster, there seems to be some problems with the basic disk of Yingke's users.
One sign is that in terms of monthly active user data growth, the results of yingke are not so significant. In 2020, its monthly active users grew by 22% year-on-year, and only increased by 17.4% in 2021, with a total monthly active users of 42.802 million; if compared with the monthly active users in the first half of last year, the problem is more obvious - you know, there are 46.428 million monthly active users in the first half of last year, which means that its monthly active users have declined in the second half of last year.
For Yingke, this may be just a small pain in the transformation and upgrading, harmless. But for an Internet company, the ability to monetize is certainly the focus of today's capital, but this does not mean that user growth is not important, after all, only companies that can retain users are good companies. In the next six months, can Yingke strike a balance between radical reform layout and steady user growth? Youniu Finance will continue to pay attention.