I thought that the market had expectations for the B station that had not untied the commercial "dead knot", but a comprehensive failed performance report still made the stock price of the B station fall sharply.
On June 9, after Station B released the first quarter of 2022 financial report, it fell 12% before the session and plunged further by 14% during the session, which shows that investors do not buy this financial report.
But before that, Station B was favored by most people. Because there are many young users in Station B, stickiness is strong, and the model is good, you can do short videos, compete with Douyin and Kuaishou, and you can do long videos, compete with Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku, or you can do live broadcasting and compete with Douyu Huya.
In fact, Station B continues to maintain its growth momentum in the new year, with daily active, monthly active and revenue achieving more than 30% growth.
Almost all Internet companies are trapped in the bottleneck of monthly life, and as long as the monthly life is close to the ceiling, it is equivalent to pronouncing the "death penalty" of the development potential of the enterprise. However, Station B is an exception.
According to the financial report data, the total monthly active volume of Station B in the first quarter hit a record high, with a total monthly active volume of 294 million, an increase of 31% year-on-year. Among them, the main mobile monthly active users reached 276 million, accounting for 94% of the total monthly active users, and the average monthly active users of the mobile terminal increased by 33% year-on-year. The huge total number of monthly active users also led to the growth of the total number of daily active users, with the average number of daily active users of Station B reaching 79.4 million in the first quarter, an increase of 32% year-on-year.
In addition, Station B achieved revenue of 5.054 billion yuan in the first quarter, an increase of 30% year-on-year.
The other side of the eye-catching operating figures is that the loss increased by 85% year-on-year, and the gross profit margin fell for five consecutive quarters, which means that the B station, which can only enter and exit, has fallen into the strange circle of "increasing revenue without increasing profits".
In the face of the embarrassment of revenue running and not winning losses, some media have issued articles questioning Station B's "throwing money for performance", and in the case of nearly 300 million monthly active users, Station B still continues to lose money or does not really open up the business model.
Judging from the financial reports of recent quarters, the real problem of Station B is that it wants to learn to shake the short video quickly, but it cannot put down the paid membership income of Aiyouteng, and there is a certain degree of strategic swing.
As early as the end of last year, Station B launched vertical screen and short video content, which was questioned by the outside world as a "vibrato mode" as soon as it was launched. Station B originally wanted to integrate the short video content naturally into the home page, so that users who prefer short videos can also be familiar with the kind of brainless "vibrato" time-killing mode in station B, so as to enhance user stickiness. Less than a year after going live, DAU penetration exceeded 20%, and reached 30% in the proportion of user likes.
However, this move has been criticized and opposed by many old users of B station. Between the content value-added model of long videos and the advertising mode of short videos, Station B is still trying to find a balance, both wanting to adhere to its original horizontal screen, length and depth of content tone, but also want vertical screen, short and fast content, to learn the vibrato model to attract more users, increase stickiness and get good advertising revenue. Although it has achieved an penetration rate of more than 20%, it seems to have achieved good results, but it has lost the original "initial heart" B station and lost many old users.
Therefore, the vertical screen mode that has been pinned high hopes on by Station B since last year has still failed to drive the "qualitative change" of commercial efficiency.
On the one hand, the advertising business fell by 34.44% month-on-month, and on the other hand, the revenue of e-commerce and other businesses fell by 39.87% month-on-month. The "shutdown" of the two engines of advertising and e-commerce means that the conversion of the B station revenue engine is temporarily frustrated.
Station B is not only struggling with profitability, but also has a cost of expenditure.
Whether it is the soaring game research and development expenses, or the revenue sharing expenditure that has been high, it has become a cost black hole that drags down the "turnaround" of Station B.
Reflected in the financial report, the cost of self-made content in the first quarter accounted for 15.2% of the revenue of Station B, and the revenue sharing expenditure accounted for 42.5% of revenue, and the cost structure of Station B was completely different from that of IYouteng. The rising revenue sharing expenditure shows that Station B has always been "generous" to creators.
40% of the revenue is sent to the UP owners, but the UP owners are reducing the share at the spray B station. Since March, many B station UP owners have reported a serious decline in creative incentives, with a range of up to 30%-80%, and some video partition creation incentives have dropped from 3 yuan / 1000 times to 0.6 yuan / 1000 times. Although it is not excluded that this is a means of content adjustment of station B, it also means that under the main theme of "cost reduction and efficiency increase", revenue sharing is another place where station B "opens".
The intensification of costs and the pain point of not making money are making Station B return to mortal dust.