Autohome released its 2021 annual report: deep ploughing technology platform, innovative business continues to grow

On April 26, 2022, Autohome, China's leading online service platform for auto consumers (NYSE: ATHM; HKEx Code: 2518) announced its 2021 annual report, the company's total revenue for the full year of 2021 was RMB7.24 billion, the adjusted net profit for the whole year was RMB2.58 billion, and the adjusted net profit margin was 35.7%, maintaining a high level.

In terms of new business performance such as data business, thanks to the continuous research and development of technology and digital products for a long time, the annual new business revenue increased by 11.6% year-on-year, accounting for 30.9% from 23.2% in 2020.

The annual report shows that in the past year, the new crown epidemic has had a negative impact on automobile sales, and the number of automobile production and sales has declined due to the impact of epidemic control and suspension of work and production. The second is that the advertising budget of automaker advertisers has decreased due to the continued shortage of chips around the world and rising raw material prices.

However, with the appointment of Long Quan, chairman and CEO of Autohome, Autohome has still made breakthroughs in many aspects in the past year: not only successfully re-listed in Hong Kong, but also established a "double ecology" strategy with Ping An Group, while absorbing a number of senior management talents in the whole industry to create the second curve of the company's performance growth.

C-end continues to innovate content forms and enrich the content ecology

Autohome adheres to the "three more" strategy of more people, more gameplay, and more scenes, focuses on the layout of video-based and youthful content, promotes the expansion of user groups through diversified and high-quality content ecology, and firmly occupies a leading position in the automotive vertical media industry.

In 2021, Autohome actively embraced the fresh content and gameplay of the mobile Internet era, created 84 video blockbuster IP throughout the year, and did a lot of cross-border linkage to break the circle, including many brave explorations with platforms such as B Station, Kuaishou, Zhihu, and Sing Bar. At the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, Autohome pioneered the innovative mode of a new live broadcast scene and an immersive experience of online exhibition visits, creating a new way of playing and new scenes for auto show live broadcasting.

At the same time, the company pays attention to offline operation, and has held brand activities such as performance car carnival and youth creative competition to popularize and promote automobile culture and enhance the brand awareness of young users. In addition, Autohome has also launched the largest car model library, motorcycle model library and modified car model library and 3D modification tools in the whole network to fully meet the needs of users and extend the life cycle of user car services.

Increase investment in data technology product research and development to empower users and customers

As a technology company based on big data technology, Autohome's technology and infrastructure are critical to its success. The company's system architecture follows a user-centric strategy and has developed a powerful and scalable technology platform driven by AI, big data, and cloud technologies.

In the face of customers' digital transformation needs, Autohome gives full play to its technical advantages, focusing on polishing product quality and improving product effects and services. By the end of 2021, Autohome has an experienced product and development team of 1,536 engineers.

In 2021, through the research and development and application of AI and 3D technology capabilities, Autohome will successively sell a series of innovative digital products such as brand private domain operation and VI pin crown artifact. At the OEM end, relying on the advantages in artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, etc., it has launched a series of innovative digital products such as Chezhi Cloud, Auto Think Tank, Brand Private Domain Operation, VI PinGuan Artifact and so on. Intelligent Listing 3.0 product technology and content system double upgrade to help customers accurately deliver.

On the dealer side, through the digital marketing solution of 3 modules and 12 products, it continues to provide value-added services to help dealers improve their business level and achieve the purpose of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. In the whole year of 2021, the average number of products used by digital dealers per merchant reached 3.59, an increase of 18% year-on-year.

Build a C2B2C model to promote the digital transformation of the used car industry

In 2021, Autohome completed the holding of the second-hand car online auction platform Tiantianpai, autohome, together with Ping An and Tiantianpai, through the opening of the industrial chain of information, operation and transaction, with the strategy of light assets and platform, to carry out online and offline closed-loop trading services of used car C2B2C.

Compared with other used car platforms in China, Autohome has three outstanding advantages: traffic, standards and finance. Car source is the cornerstone of the second-hand car business, auto home monthly active users of nearly 70 million, and the user stickiness is large, with the country's highest quality used car replacement needs of the group. In this case, the data model of Autohome accurately matches the buyer and seller, and realizes the double improvement of the quantity and quality of the car source clues.

In response to this pain point, Ping An Property & Casualty and Autohome have created a good faith certification system, and built a detection cloud, car history cloud and inspection liability insurance to strengthen the transparency of vehicle conditions, establish industry standards, and solve the problem of information asymmetry. Finally, in terms of finance, Autohome systematically builds a credit reporting system for the second-hand car market by providing car business loan services to rely on Ping An's profound financial services and risk control capabilities.

Autohome's advantages in the fields of traffic, data and technology, as well as the layout of the automotive aftermarket, have become the core elements of the development of the used car business. On top of the existing measures, Autohome used cars will continue to accelerate the layout of the whole industry chain, create a fully digital system for the circulation of used cars, realize commodity standardization, process transparency, and establish a new model that empowers the digital transformation of the used car industry.

Tap the needs of new energy vehicle companies to provide overall solutions

In recent years, China's new energy vehicles have ushered in explosive growth, auto home in the face of industry demand, the first to set up a new energy business department, on the basis of providing rebranding and channel promotion of the overall solution, in-depth exploration of the deep needs of car companies, to user operations, innovative transaction models and other aspects of in-depth development.

In 2021, Autohome upgraded the "E-commerce Hub" series of products to provide new energy manufacturers with an overall solution from brand to effect, helping new energy vehicle companies quickly occupy the minds of users, expand sales, and achieve double harvest of product efficiency. Throughout last year, Autohome established cooperation with 22 mainstream new energy brands, and the revenue from new energy brands increased by 128% year-on-year, accounting for 60% of the vertical media market of major new power brands.

In the future, Autohome will continue to expand the new energy business position, and through media upgrades, channel innovation, user operations and other measures, to create a new energy vertical media platform with the largest traffic and a new energy car selection and car purchase platform with the largest transaction volume.

Strengthen the linkage with Ping An Group to build a full-network vehicle ecological platform

Looking back at 2021, although the automotive industry as a whole is greatly affected by chip shortages and rising raw material prices, Autohome can still maintain a healthy business level, with a net profit margin of 35.7%, and the company also actively returns the support of shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. At the end of 2021, Autohome's cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments totaled RMB20.8 billion.

In the past year, the user traffic of autohome has also ushered in steady growth. According to QM statistics, in December 2021, the daily active users of the autohome mobile terminal were 46.9 million, an increase of 11.4% year-on-year, exceeding the sum of the second and third places.

According to the Aurora Big Data Report, Autohome continues to maintain the first user penetration rate in the automotive information industry, and is the preferred platform for users to see, buy and use cars, of which high-end users who use mobile phones of more than 5,000 yuan account for 37%, far exceeding the industry average.

Looking forward to 2022, the auto-home car ecosystem will continue to be fully integrated into Ping An Group's vehicle ecology, dig deep into the advantages of both sides, and build a moat of "no one has me": through the high degree of coordination between the two organizations, jointly build a huge offline team and outlets unique in Internet companies, link Ping An's huge high-value customer base and more than 140 million car owners, and create the only vehicle ecological full-link platform on the whole network.