And who else, in the use of Meitu show show
What is the market capitalization of a company with a monthly active population of 230 million? Station B has a monthly active income of 230 million, an annual revenue of 19.4 billion, and a market value of nearly 70 billion yuan; Xiaohongshu's monthly active life reaches 200 million, with advertising revenue of several billion yuan and a valuation of 100 billion. Meitu, which has a monthly active income of 230 million, has an annual revenue of 1.666 billion yuan and a market value of less than 4 billion.
More than a decade ago, when Meitu's flagship product Meitu Xiuxiu was launched, through "becoming beautiful", Meitu found the password for traffic, and in 2013, the mobile terminal users exceeded 100 million. In 2016, Meitu was listed, and the market value was once close to 100 billion, comparable to Tencent and Baidu, but the listing was not profitable for many years, and Meitu seemed to have lost its position.
Nowadays, smart phones come with beauty effects, short video platform special effects are gratifying, in the era of filters everywhere, Meitu Xiuxiu similar products butter cameras were acquired by Baidu, and the face is included in the byte system, and its opponents are more and more, and the strength is strong. In this context, Meitu has repeatedly failed to transform, still has not given up, and claims to combine beauty, medical beauty and other tracks to do corporate services, how much imagination space can be? Where will Meitu Xiuxiu go in the future?
It is difficult to make a profit after listing
In 2008, in the era when smart phones were not yet popular, Meitu launched the Meitu Show, which gained a wave of loyal users through functions such as portrait beauty and skin whitening. In 2013, Meitu Xiuxiu's mobile users exceeded 100 million, and began to expand its business, launching products such as beauty cameras and Meitu stickers that focus on "becoming beautiful". In the same year, Meitu released the first Meitu mobile phone with high-level camera function, when the front camera pixel reached 8 million, and the iPhone of the same period was only 1.2 million pixels, and the phone sold well as soon as it was sold.
In 2016, Meitu Xiuxiu ushered in the highlight moment, listing in Hong Kong to raise 600 million US dollars, with a market value of more than 4.6 billion US dollars, becoming the largest Internet IPO in Hong Kong after Tencent, and its market value was close to 100 billion Hong Kong dollars in March of the following year.
According to the financial report, from 2016 to 2021, Meitu's revenue was 1.57 billion, 4.5275 billion, 2.791 billion, 977.9 million, 1.194 billion and 1.666 billion, and from 2016 to 2019, the adjusted losses were 540 million, 114 million, 1.052 billion and 109.8 million, respectively, and in 2020, Meitu achieved its first profit since the company's inception, and achieved a profit of 60.9 million yuan after adjustment in 2020. In 2021, it will achieve a profit of 85.07 million yuan after adjustment.
Meitu's user data is still huge today, but its operational shortcomings are difficult to ignore. Meitu's revenue fell 37.8% in 2018, and in 2019, its revenue fell sharply again, and has not had a big improvement since then.
Zhang Shule, a senior observer of the Internet, believes that Meitu was in the mobile Internet dividend period before its listing, and it can grow rapidly, and once it does not find a business direction or a general technical content, it is easy to be replaced and copied.
In terms of revenue, Meitu mainly relies on online advertising, VIP subscriptions and influence SaaS (software as a service), Internet value-added services, IMS (Talent Content Marketing Solutions) and others, of which the largest source of revenue is online advertising business, with revenue reaching 770 million yuan, accounting for 46%. Total revenue from VIP subscription and video SaaS business reached RMB519.5 million, up 146.9% year-on-year. As of December 2021, Meitu has approximately 4 million VIP members. In response to China News Weekly, Meitu further acquired and controlled Meitu in December 2021, and at present, Meitu has provided ERP SaaS solutions for more than 11,500 cosmetics stores in more than 250 cities in China.
In 2017, Cai Wensheng, chairman of Meitu, said that the Internet makes money by three ways: games, advertising and e-commerce, when he said that Meitu can do it in addition to games. However, advertising revenue cannot support its large market, and other businesses do not have great bright spots at present, and the scale is limited.
Meitu's bigger problem may come from the declining monthly active users, in 2021, the total number of monthly active users of Meitu is 230 million, down 11.6% in the same period, in addition to Meitu Xiuxiu maintaining a certain monthly active data, beauty cameras and other products are declining. Meitu Xiuxiu said that the reason for the decline in monthly activity is the natural loss of users in the Indian market after India banned Chinese applications. At present, the impact is gradually weakening and has no impact on revenue.
Analysys think tank once analyzed that Meitu lacks irreplaceability. Zhang Shule pointed out that Meitu is a tool product, the number of users is relatively rich, the scale is huge, but the problem is that the activity is relatively low, the frequency of use is not high, and the user time is limited, "just like the U disk, it will not be used again after emergency use."
Trick transformation is difficult to save itself
In fact, Meitu has been trying to solve the problem, and has transformed many times after listing, but it has not ended.
Meitu started with P-charts, and then launched products such as beauty cameras and Meitu stickers, but these "beauty- and" matrix businesses are currently silent. A senior person engaged in animation IP told China News Weekly that two or three years ago, he cooperated closely with Meitu, had several sets of IP stickers, and had more than 10 million stickers downloaded and used, but in recent years, Meitu's personnel have changed too quickly, and related businesses cannot be further communicated and contacted.
The above-mentioned person pointed out, "not only Meitu, B612, daily P chart and other P chart APP have stopped a lot in recent years, when there was a traffic dividend before, you can rush a wave of traffic and attention, now the traffic declines, many difficult to monetize business has been silently cut, the entire map retouching software industry has suffered some setbacks."
Meitu cross-border hardware has been placed high hopes, in 2013 released its first mobile phone Meitu Kiss, when the benchmark selfie artifact Casio, is a 3G mobile phone, front and rear cameras reached 8 million pixels, priced at 2199 yuan. The mobile phone triggered a wave of consumption boom, and sales rose 10 times a year. The main users of Meitu's mobile phones are women, and many limited co-brand models attract countless attention and trigger pursuit. Between 2015 and 2017, Meitu's mobile phone business has grown.
However, in 2018, Meitu's mobile phone business has become a "burden", the total revenue has fallen sharply, and mobile phone sales have no longer grown, with a loss of 500 million yuan, directly pulling the loss after listing to a record high. In November 2018, Meitu signed a partnership with Xiaomi, in which the two companies will jointly develop smartphones, but the development generation will not be completed. At this point, Meitu no longer produces mobile phones.
Success also becomes beautiful, and failure also becomes beautiful. Zhang Shule analyzed that the one-click Meitu function of the smart phone solves the needs of the user Meitu, providing some simple templates and filters to meet the user, most people do not need too many complex Meitu functions.
Yuan Bo, a senior communications engineer, told China News Weekly that Meitu first rose on the computer side, and because PS was too complicated, Meitu Xiuxiu had the opportunity to rise. However, the development of smart phones has simplified the functions of beauty, and Meitu has been snubbed. Fundamentally, in the years of industrial iteration, Meitu did not seize the opportunity.
With the popularization of 4G, the opportunity for short videos was also captured by Meitu, which was launched in May 2014, and in January 2015, the number of users reached 100 million, and the well-known Internet celebrity Li Ziqi started in Meipai. But soon, in the competition with Douyin and Kuaishou, Meitu lost.
The latest data shows that the number of users of short video platforms has exceeded 934 million, accounting for 90% of the total number of netizens. The above-mentioned IP practitioners believe that the rise of short video platforms, especially their own special effects, has a great impact on the entire Meitu market.
Zhang Shule pointed out that in addition to smartphones seizing some of Meitu's users and market share, short video platforms such as Douyin have also cut some users with their own filters and editing tools. In addition, the short video platform itself also provides content elements such as music, and these copyrights and related supporting capabilities make Meitu unattainable.
In addition, Meitu has also tried to do social networking, with the intention of bringing traffic into the community model, modeled on the Little Red Book to carry out grass planting. At that time, Wu Xinhong, CEO of Meitu, said that with "becoming beautiful" as the fulcrum, it would create a "consumer community" and eventually transition to a "lifestyle community", but it did not develop and deepen.
In this regard, Zhang Shule believes that as a tool, the experience it brings to users does not have a social mind, and there is no strong business logic to support Meitu to do business other than tools, and the accumulation and precipitation are insufficient.
After the "coin speculation" is over, how will the story be told?
At the same time, some of Meitu's cross-border transformations of "not doing business" are unexpected.
With the arrival of the cryptocurrency wave, Meitu poured into the "coin speculation" army.
With "coin speculation", Meitu has received a lot of attention, and the dominant person is Cai Wensheng. In 2016, Meitu's listed stock price soared, and Cai Wensheng became the richest man in Xiamen. In 2018, Cai Wensheng's attention and investment in cryptocurrencies began to attract public attention frequently. At this point, Meitu officially began a major "side business" - cryptocurrencies.
Cai Wensheng has publicly stated that Meitu is the first Hong Kong listed company to purchase BTC digital currency. In 2021, Meitu has purchased cryptocurrencies several times, and the financial report shows that as of December 31, 2021, the fair value of Ether and Bitcoin purchased by Meitu is about $117.3 million and $45.1 million, respectively, with a cost of $100 million, resulting in a floating profit of about $62.4 million.
Industry insiders said that since the popularity of cryptocurrencies, many companies have entered the market like Meitu, trying to find a point of interest growth, behind which it is difficult to find profit space for taking money to do the company's business, so it is better to gamble on the market of cryptocurrencies. But this is a helpless move, not a long-term solution.
For Meitu, 230 million monthly active users are still an advantage. Zhang Shule said that as a tool product, increasing the frequency of use and extending the retention time is a breakthrough path. In addition, the combination of application "capabilities" and customized services through tools also has the opportunity to be tapped, but the effect is difficult to say.
Years of technology accumulation of Meitu and Beauty, so that Meitu is no longer only staring at C-end business. With the development of AI and other technologies, Meitu has developed technical solutions for work scenarios and cooperated with beauty industry entities such as beauty. Meitu's VIP membership subscription and total revenue from the image SaaS business has increased significantly for two consecutive years, behind which is Meitu's attempt and landing of B-end services.
According to the financial report, Meitu invested 540 million yuan in research and development in 2021, an increase of 35% year-on-year, and cooperated with many universities. Meitu responded that it is deeply engaged in imaging products, based on the image SaaS strategy, and continues to invest in research and development of algorithms such as computer vision, machine learning and augmented reality.
According to iResearch data, the overall market size of China's SaaS in 2020 will be about 53.8 billion yuan, an increase of 48.7% year-on-year, and the development of various sub-tracks will gradually mature, and it is expected that the market will maintain a compound growth rate of 34% in the next three years. However, can the B-end business, which currently has a revenue of only a few hundred million yuan, support Meitu's imagination?
Zhang Shule pointed out that in the case that the downward trend of monthly activity is difficult to reverse, strengthening the customization ability as a tool and using AI and other technologies to cooperate with enterprises or studios can form a business ability with a high unit price. But he believes that service companies may do thousands of poster business at once, then this kind of cooperation will have bargaining power, but many companies with strong AI strength, such as SenseTime, may actually have stronger visual effect capabilities, and Meitu can only rely on the ability to repair maps to undertake business, and the development space is unpredictable.
"At present, many companies have the ability to rely on AI technology for personalized services, which cannot be regarded as a great advantage, but can only say that the pain points of the industry where Meitu is located are understood, and Meitu needs to find its own unique business capabilities", Yuan Bo concluded, "If Meitu continues to focus only on retouching and does not have a grip to develop real technical capabilities, it will still face the dilemma of transformation failure."