Last year's profit increased by 70% the market value was slashed, "tide play the first stock" bubble Mart does not talk about the blind box?

Text | Cheng Liang, a weekly magazine of Finance and Economics

Edit | Yang Jie

On the evening of April 28, "Bubble Mart" suddenly landed on Weibo's hot search. One of the popular Microblogs complained that due to the temporary failure of the background of the Bubble Mart Mini Program, in order to "grab the baby", the card was completed, and it could not be paid and could not be refreshed to buy again. This has also caused many netizens to directly call out "Can Bubble Mart lose my card?" ”

On the morning of April 29, Bubble Mart customer service commented that the user feedback of the prop card problem has been repaired overnight, if there is no result after the use of the prop card or after the use of the situation can not be purchased, such prop card will be returned, the user can view in the card coupon pack.

It is understood that the card is the display card in the bubble Mart box machine, and its main function is to directly know what kind of "baby" there is in the specific location. In the "baby circle", using a card to buy a blind box is considered a formal entry, and some bloggers even said, "Playing through the card is equivalent to more than 50% of people, which is a process of saving money and addiction." ”

It should be noted that April 28 is the day when bubble Mart's popular new MEGA Collector's Collection 400% SPACE MOLLY x Cherry Pills and SKULLPANDA x Adams' cooperative blind box were launched. As of 14:00 on April 29, the official price of 1299 yuan MEGA Treasure Series 400% SPACE MOLLY x Cherry Pills has been sold out, and the number of "Bubble Mart" Weibo topics has reached 290 million times and the number of discussions has reached 163,000 times.

Not long ago, Bubble Mart just released the first quarter of 2022 and the annual report of 2021, the data shows that in the first quarter of 2022, the company's overall retail revenue increased by 65% to 70% year-on-year; in 2021, the company's total revenue was 4.491 billion yuan, an increase of 78.7% year-on-year, and the adjusted net profit was 1.002 billion yuan, an increase of 69.6% year-on-year.

It can be seen that in the first fiscal year since the IPO, Bubble Mart handed over a good report card, and even if there is no "blind box" between the lines of the new financial report, the new product release of its popular IP still attracts wave after wave of "baby friends" flocking to it. However, the patience of the capital market for the "tide playing the first stock" seems to be insufficient.

After the afternoon of March 28, after Bubble Mart announced its 2021 annual results, its stock price fell in response, and finally closed at 31 yuan / share, a decline of 6.06%. As of the close of trading on April 29, the total market value of Bubble Mart was HK$50.699 billion, which was almost cut from the hk$100 billion when it was just listed.

The question of weak revenue and single IP is broken?

According to the financial report, the total revenue of Bubble Mart in 2021 was 4.491 billion yuan, the total revenue in 2020 was 2.513 billion yuan, and the total income in 2019 was 1.683 billion yuan. However, compared with the revenue growth rate of 225% in 2020, its revenue growth rate in 2021 has slowed to 78%.

It can be seen that although the revenue of Bubble Mart is increasing year by year, its growth rate is declining rapidly. Moreover, judging from the gross profit margin and adjusted net interest rate, the speed of making money is also slowing down. The data shows that in 2021, its gross profit margin fell by 2 percentage points year-on-year to 61.4%, and the adjusted net profit margin fell by 5.6 percentage points year-on-year to 22.3%.

In this regard, Yang Jingbing, financial director of Bubble Mart, said at the performance exchange meeting that the decline in gross profit margin is mainly due to the company's improvement in the process quality of products, more refined design, more complex process, and the increase in raw material costs in 2021.

Wang Ning, the founder of Bubble Mart, has emphasized the concept of tide play IP and weakened the blind box in many public occasions, and said, "Bubble Mart has today's achievements only because of the carrier of the blind box." The core element of the rapid growth of Bubble Mart is the IP itself. In the company's 2021 annual report, the word blind box can no longer be found, only "tide play" and "IP".

For Bubble Mart, whether it can create a hot IP in a short period of time will become a key chip to win the favor of consumers and investors, and it is imminent to create the next Molly.

At present, Bubble Mart has expanded from the original Molly and Pucky to the seven main image IPs of Molly, Pucky, SKULLPANDA, Dimoo, Bunny, Little Sweet Bean and The Monsters. In the 2021 annual report, SKULLPANDA and Dimo revenue accounted for 13.3% and 12.6% of total revenue, respectively, ranking second and third, and molly, which ranked first and accounted for 15.7%.

In 2020, SKULLPANDA accounted for only 1.6% of revenue, and Molly and Dimo, ranked first and second, accounted for 14.2% and 12.5% of revenue, respectively. To some extent, Bubble Mart proved its ability to hold multiple head image IP at the same time.

However, Molly, SKULLPANDA, Dimoo, the three major image IP are all acquired by the company, and their respective revenues exceeded 500 million yuan last year. In contrast, the company's internal design team newly developed small sweet bean image IP revenue of 161.5 million yuan, it is a lot "weak".

The increase in new IP has boosted the company's overall revenue, but the life cycle of the head old IP is also being squeezed. It is reported that Molly's revenue growth rate has shown a downward fluctuation, and Pucky's revenue has also experienced negative growth in 2021.

However, for the development of IP, Bubble Mart also seems to have long been more inclined to produce rapid iteration of image IP as the focus, and even the slogan of "do China's Disney" shouted earlier has also been changed to "Do the World's Bubble Mart". Wang Ning once said in a conversation with Black Ant Capital, "Now young people's time is fragmented. MOLLY IPs like molly lower the bar for time, one minute, you know if you like it or not... With the change of the times, it is no longer like Disney to do a very high-quality content first, and then give birth to an IP for everyone to see. ”

IP channels grasp with both hands, and "big baby" and going to sea become the center of gravity

For the "first share of tide play" bubble mart, in addition to constantly telling the story of new IP, it is necessary to maintain the position of industry leader, after all, there are more and more competitive players among the domestic tide play industry, such as local 52Toys, TOPTOY, and international brands Funko, Bandai, etc.

In the past six months, Bubble Mart itself has also been caught in many storms. In December last year, the company was fined 200,000 yuan by the Chaoyang District Market Supervision Bureau of Beijing for false propaganda in the Blind Box of Skull Panda series of long socks. At the beginning of this year, its joint DIMO blind box package launched with KFC triggered consumers to over-buy, which was criticized by the China Consumer Association. Subsequently, the company was fined by the Tianjin Municipal and Hangzhou Municipal Market Supervision Bureau for unreasonable prize rules.

In this regard, Wang Ning said bluntly at the performance exchange meeting that supervision helps to promote the healthier development of the industry, and at present, there are fewer companies that can compete with Bubble Mart, and the growth of the company is to a certain extent faster than the growth of the entire industry. "In fact, this industry is an IP-based, content-based industry, with a relatively high threshold, which is also our very core value." Second, our channels are relatively rich, whether online or offline is the focus of our development. ”

According to the financial report data, bubble mart opened 106 new offline stores in China last year, and 288 offline stores have been opened by the end of 2021. Online, in 2021, the revenue of the mini program Bubble Mart self-developed and designed on the WeChat platform was 898 million yuan, an increase of 92.6% year-on-year, and the revenue of Jingdong and Tmall flagship stores increased by 296.0% and 47.5% respectively; in the first quarter of 2022, the revenue of the box pumping machine increased by 115% to 120% year-on-year; the e-commerce platform and other online platforms increased by 65% to 70% year-on-year.

According to Sed, co-founder of Bubble Mart, in 2022, the optimization of online, the company will still focus on WeChat Mini Programs, Tmall and JD.com, while accelerating the development of live broadcast platforms such as Douyin, and the upgraded Mini Programs will also be used as a tool for online and offline channels.

In addition, Si De stressed, "Overseas is also the direction of key development in 2022, we will continue to accelerate the expansion of overseas channels, including the expansion of offline stores and the development of e-commerce business, but also will further improve the construction of overseas business talent echelon, optimize overseas business information system and supply chain system." ”

It is reported that in 2022, Bubble Mart plans to open 40 to 50 stores in different regions overseas. Since the first quarter of this year, Bubble Mart has opened its first stores in both the UK and New Zealand. Up to now, Bubble Mart has opened more than ten stores overseas, and will continue to promote the transformation of overseas business from TO B to DTC in the future.

It is worth mentioning that the Bubble Mart MEGA "Big Baby" series, which is regarded as a relay transition from IP toys to art collection, has also begun to be highlighted by Bubble Mart. Sid said that in 2021, Bubble Mart sold a total of 9 1000% MEGA products, each of which is about a few thousand, attracting more than 8.7 million fans to participate in the lottery purchase, and finally the MEGA product line contributed a total of 184 million yuan in revenue.

"MEGA is a new product line that we are very main this year, and it is expected that this year will have several times the sales growth compared to last year, and we plan to launch more IP to MEGA's product line, almost two or three MEGA products per month." Bubble Mart International Business President Wen Deyi said.