As China's largest ride-hailing giant, Didi is facing unprecedented difficulties.
For Didi, it was originally lucky, and in the early days of development, it was favored by Tencent, one of China's two major Internet giants, and gained its support. Later, Liu Chuanzhi's daughter Liu Qing was recruited, relying on her ability and connections to make great contributions to the expansion and development of Didi.
In the melee in the online ride-hailing market, Didi won, and all the major capitals finally gathered here and hatched this super unicorn. The daily order volume is 40 million, while other opponents are less than one million, and this gap allows Didi to dominate for a long time. According to the normal path, Didi went public, continued to grow, and then expanded to other fields, and has a good chance to become the third largest giant after Ali and Tencent.
However, a wrong decision ended its glory. On June 30, 2021, Didi secretly went public in the United States, with a market capitalization of $85.1 billion at one point, and now only $9.5 billion remains.
In the past year, Didi's bad news has been one after another, the market value has evaporated significantly, 25 APP has not been re-listed, meituan, AutoNavi and other opponents have been comprehensively encircled and suppressed, market share decline, layoffs, losses, Didi is struggling to survive. Now, another piece of news has come, and the United States has also intervened to investigate.
The United States struck, and Didi was once again investigated
According to media reports, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating Didi's poor performance in the initial public offering. Previously, after Didi went public, the SEC conducted an investigation into its listing and issuance.
When Didi went public on the New York Stock Exchange last year, it raised $4 billion. Is the poor performance of public offerings a survey of their poor stock price performance? Didi said it cooperated with the investigation, but could not predict the findings and consequences.
The roof leaked in the overnight rain, and Didi's current situation did not expect the United States to shoot. In fact, as early as last July, a number of U.S. law firms launched a class action investigation against Didi because of investors who suffered losses due to the sharp fall in Didi's stock price. However, these surveys have so far not heard any results.
The SEC investigation in the United States will undoubtedly further increase the pressure on Didi.
Didi became the most loss-making listed company
A few days ago, the list of China's top 500 listed companies in 2021 was released, and Didi made its debut on the list, ranking 81st with a revenue of 173.8 billion yuan. However, Didi lost 50 billion yuan, becoming the most loss-making enterprise in the list.
The loss is so serious, on the one hand, it is caused by diversified expansion, Didi heavy gold into the group buying business, to create orange heart preferred, in the last year a comprehensive withdrawal, accrued a loss of 20.8 billion. Other bike-sharing and freight businesses are also not profitable.
Didi's core online ride-hailing business has been losing money in the early years, but it achieved full profitability in 2020. In Q1 2021, it also made a profit of 5.5 billion yuan. However, in Q3, it fell into a loss again.
Since the Didi APP was taken down, opponents such as Meituan, AutoNavi, T3, and Cao Cao Chuxing have rushed to the top, adopting high subsidies and other forms to comprehensively encircle and suppress. Due to the removal of the APP, Didi could not obtain new customers, and could only stabilize old customers through some preferential activities. But there are too many opponents, too fierce, Didi at the end of 2021, monthly active users fell by 20% year-on-year. In 2022, layoffs began, and it is said that monthly active users have declined even more.
Shareholder support is also weak
Previously, it was rumored that the reason why Didi was in a hurry to go public was because shareholders were in a hurry to cash out. Didi, which relies on capital to do it and dominates the online ride-hailing market, the shareholders behind it are indeed very powerful. The top three shareholders are SoftBank of Japan, Uber of the United States, and Tencent of China.
However, Didi's current situation seems that shareholders are not willing to support it. On April 20, Didi withdrew from its Japanese takeaway business, which is said to be a big reason for the lack of SoftBank's support. SoftBank is the largest shareholder of Didi, according to the reason, Didi wants to expand its business, the major shareholders should fully support, and now such an attitude seems a little abnormal.
As one of Didi's shareholders, Ali's chairman of the board of directors and CEO Daniel Zhang previously withdrew from Didi's board of directors and was replaced by Ali's legal counsel, and then Tencent's president Martin Lau also withdrew, and was replaced by Tencent's deputy general counsel Liang Fengxia. The CEO and president of both shareholders have resigned as directors, which is not good news.
In fact, Ali has long laid out other online ride-hailing giants in addition to Didi, AutoNavi is a company of Ali, Harrow Travel has also entered the online ride-hailing business, in addition, Ali has also invested in Xiangdao Travel and Mass Travel, while Tencent has invested in T3 Travel and Ruqi Travel. In this way, they want to bet more on online ride-hailing companies.
Where is Didi going?
The main business is trapped, the sideline business is seriously damaged, and the development is not smooth, where should Didi go? It is understood that car building may be a new way out for Didi.
According to media reports, as early as April 2021, Didi launched a car-making project and began large-scale digging. Earlier this year, some media reported that Didi would announce its car-building plans in June this year.
For Didi, car manufacturing may be a good way out, on the one hand, it needs a large number of online car-hailing vehicles, on the other hand, new energy vehicles are in the air outlet, and now there is still a chance. Even if Evergrande falls into a debt crisis, it can build a car successfully, and Didi is not impossible to succeed.
However, Didi's loss is so serious, and it needs a lot of funds to build a car, can it have enough financial support? In short, the time left for Didi is very urgent.