Since the closure and management of the epidemic in Shanghai, in order to buy a fresh vegetable, the white-collar workers in Modu will inject the energy of the "inner volume" in the office building into various fresh platforms and grocery shopping software.
In a widely circulated "Shanghai Food Grabbing Raiders", someone concluded: "The box horse grabs the dishes at 6:55 to enter, constantly refreshing." Ding-Dong enters at 6:00 and is likely to succeed within 30 minutes. Meituan grabbed the dish at 0 o'clock and stuck in. "Shanghainese who are busy grabbing food have to set several alarm clocks on their mobile phones.
However, it is not so much that Shanghainese are grabbing vegetables as they are robbing "people". Through some news reports, we can see that the overall supply of Shanghai dishes is very sufficient, and the bottleneck is the high shortage of transportation capacity.
From the beginning of the difficulty of buying vegetables in Wuhan in 2020, to the recent Shanghai citizens getting up early to "grab vegetables", the difficulty of supplying materials in the epidemic area has appeared in many places. The epidemic is a cut to observe the life service e-commerce, which is not only facing the challenges of insufficient transportation capacity, tight supply, and rising costs caused by the epidemic, but also objectively undertakes the "dividends" brought about by the surge in single volume and the rise in unit prices.
On March 25, Meituan released its 2021 annual financial report. In the process of effectively coordinating the prevention and control of the epidemic and social and economic development in various places, the company's business continued to achieve steady growth in 2021, with annual revenue of 179.1 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), an increase of 56% year-on-year. Among them, Meituan takeaway achieved revenue of 96.3 billion yuan.
During the same period, the cost of Meituan's takeaway riders was 68.2 billion yuan, an increase of 38.3% over the previous year, accounting for 71% of Meituan's total takeaway revenue and 38.08% of Meituan's total revenue.
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Under the epidemic situation, people's livelihood protection and supply "do not close"
"In 2021, despite the impact of the epidemic, we still overcome difficulties and strive to provide hundreds of millions of consumers with safe and convenient life services, help merchants use digital means to expand online operations, and help more entrepreneurs and employees achieve stable income."
Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan, said, "We are more and more aware that China's economy is a surging sea, and Meituan will unswervingly fulfill its platform responsibilities, unswervingly increase investment in science and technology, unswervingly continue to expand its business, focus on the 'retail + technology' strategy, deepen the Chinese market, and create more value for businesses, users, riders and other ecological partners." ”
This is not a rhetoric, but written in the anti-epidemic practice of the Meituan people - the transportation capacity is tight, and how to send as many dishes as possible has become the primary problem.
At present, there are about 5.27 million Meituan riders. The financial report shows that the delivery service fees charged to merchants and consumers still cannot cover the cost of orders delivered by Meituan.
Meituan Grocery revealed that due to the control of the epidemic, the demand for daily necessities by local consumers in Shanghai has increased sharply, such as vegetables, rice and flour grains and oils, which have become a concentration point of demand. In this regard, the current inventory of goods at the relevant sites of Meituan Grocery has doubled, and the frequency of delivery vehicles and delivery has been increased, and the current inventory is sufficient and the supply is stable.
Behind the word "stability" is inseparable from the efforts of each insurance worker.
As a member of the Meituan group to buy vegetables and fight against the epidemic, someone can sleep in the car for a week, responsible for the processing of vegetables in various places every day, and be busy until late at night.
In order to reduce the adverse impact of the epidemic on small and medium-sized businesses and hedge the pressure of rent, raw materials, labor and other costs, Meituan Takeaway has also launched a rate transparency policy on the merchant side, benefiting the majority of small and medium-sized businesses on the platform with a more transparent and clearer cost structure, helping small and medium-sized businesses to open source and reduce expenditure, and will strive to achieve national coverage in 2022.
At the same time, under the guidance of relevant state departments, Meituan Takeaway officially released six specific support measures on March 1, including commission concessions for small and medium-sized merchants in high-risk areas and difficulties in the epidemic, improving the online operation capabilities of small merchants, and providing takeaway smart hardware, etc., from the aspects of cost reduction and income increase, to help small and medium-sized merchants who are affected by the epidemic and are in trouble. This series of measures has also been recognized and supported by relevant departments and is being accelerated in various places.
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Deeply trapped in the three-way "balance" dilemma
Under the epidemic, the value of takeaway platforms has been highlighted. But back to daily life, the takeaway platform has to face a problem.
In the field of economics, the balance between the free flow of capital, the independence of monetary policy and the stability of the exchange rate is called the impossible triangle, because problems on either side will lead to crises.
This "impossible triangle" of "three difficult to balance" has also been found to exist in all walks of life, such as the content industry, "big hit, scale, sustainable" is difficult to balance; in the energy field, "clean, stable and cheap" is also difficult to balance; in the investment field, "high yield, low risk, liquidity" is also an "impossible triangle".
For companies with platform economies as their business model, the situation is similar.
On March 25, Meituan released its fourth quarter and full year financial reports as of December 31, 2021, revealing two "impossible triangles" it faces as a platform: the difficulty of balancing the different interests of riders, users and merchants, and the problem of achieving profitability, scale and social value as an enterprise.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Meituan's revenue was RMB49.5 billion, up 30.6% year-on-year, with an adjusted net loss of RMB3.936 billion, compared to an adjusted net loss of RMB1.437 billion in the same period last year. For the whole year of 2021, Meituan's revenue was 179.13 billion yuan, an increase of 56% year-on-year. Adjusted net loss was RMB15.6 billion, compared to net income of RMB3.12 billion in the same period last year.
It can be seen that meituan's model of serving e-commerce is actually taking the scale as space, and the space is large enough to allow merchants, riders, and users to share dividends, which is also one of the unique positive externalities created by meituan's strong social attributes.
However, while the US group encounters the test of the "impossible triangle" externally, it also faces the challenge of the "impossible triangle" internally, that is, the different interests of the rider, the user and the merchant are difficult to balance.
The interests of the three parties are not only difficult to satisfy at the same time, but even the interests between them are conflicting to a certain extent: for example, if the merchant wants to make more money, it is bound to require the user to pay more expenses; the rider needs to make more money, then the cost may be transferred to the merchant and the user; and if the user is not willing to pay, the merchant and the rider will not earn money.
Taking this year as an example, the cost of riders reached 68.2 billion yuan a year, which is a solid expenditure item, and even accounts for nearly 70% of the entire takeaway revenue.
Meituan's takeaway business, according to the delivery model to see the revenue, is actually divided into order income delivered by Meituan and order income that does not use Meituan's transportation capacity delivery.
According to the latest financial report data, the delivery service revenue is from the order part of Meituan's delivery, which is more than 50 billion yuan; while the cost of Meituan's delivery, mainly the cost of riders, is nearly 68 billion. Based on 67% of the total takeaway orders, that is, the orders delivered by Meituan, it is about 9 billion orders.
Counting down, the part delivered by Meituan, that is, the takeaway delivered by Meituan's transportation capacity, is indeed a loss of 1 yuan per order. Therefore, Wang Xing mentioned on the conference call that the order part of Meituan's delivery is still losing money, which is what he means.
As a platform, Meituan can link the three parties, allocate resources reasonably, and has been trying to coordinate the interests of the three parties to a certain extent.
In terms of horizontal comparison, on the revenue side, the net profits disclosed by Ali, JD.com, Pinduoduo and Meituan in their latest quarterly financial reports were 44.624 billion yuan, 3.6 billion yuan, 6.62 billion yuan and -3.94 billion yuan, respectively. In terms of operating profit margin behind the data, Ali is 3%, JD.com is 1.4%, Pinduoduo is 25%, and Meituan is in a state of loss.
Taking commission income as an example, the volume of commissions in e-commerce shops is much higher than that of service e-commerce companies such as catering, and Ali's commission and advertising revenue add up to more than 300 billion yuan, while Meituan only has less than 90 billion yuan.
With the gradual disappearance of online dividends, Internet companies have begun to "cross-border" to find a new way out. As a result, e-commerce, as one of the hottest tracks, has become the direction that various companies are competing for.
However, as more and more players enter the game, the competition in the e-commerce track has become more and more intense. Meituan has also begun to explore the field of physical e-commerce, and has also made sufficient efforts in the layout of physical e-commerce business.
Repeated outbreaks of the epidemic and weak consumer markets have made business not easy to do. Wang Xing has become one of the few "contrarian investors" in the Internet circle: in less than a year, Meituan has expanded its enrollment by about 55,000 people and added a net investment of about 30 billion yuan – which has also allowed Meituan to enter a loss cycle once in several years.
At present, what lies in front of Wang Xing and Meituan is a crucial year.
In the community e-commerce market, Meituan needs to complete deep ploughing under the premise of maintaining the existing market advantages, on the one hand, to optimize profitability, on the other hand, to improve the "efficiency of consumption scene conversion". In the takeaway market, Meituan needs to further bear the pressure brought about by factors such as high raw material prices, the continuation of the epidemic and the weak consumer market under the thin profit model, and continue to optimize the cost and profit model based on this.
Author: Heavy rain
Typography: And ripples