(Observer Network News Wen/Lu Siye Editor/Zhuang Yi) As the topic of "New Oriental Anchor" appeared on the hot search, the number of online people in the live broadcast room suddenly increased to 100,000+, and New Oriental finally swept away some dark clouds overhead.
After surging 100% in intraday on Monday, Hong Kong stock New Oriental Online rose sharply for three consecutive trading days. On June 15, New Oriental Online's intraday gain expanded to 50%, and the cumulative increase this month exceeded 330%, and the stock price reached the highest level since June 2021.
The A-share education sector has also risen, as of press time, Onlly Education has risen and stopped, and Kevin Education, Zhonggong Education, and Kede Education have risen by more than 5%.
As of press time, New Oriental Online is up 42%
The education and training industry, which has been dormant for a long time, has finally ushered in a wave of enthusiasm. Nearly a year after the implementation of the education "double reduction" policy, the education and training industry has gone through a cold winter, and enterprises have found a way out, some have found a direction and a prototype, and some are still struggling in the quagmire of thunder and loss.
Educate and train enterprises to transform
Holding a whiteboard with Chinese and English bilingual introduction products, New Oriental anchor "bilingual live broadcast with goods" recently spread throughout the network, New Oriental's live broadcast room with goods "Oriental Selection" also rushed into the top three of the Douyin with goods list, GMV, the number of views have been among the head live broadcast room.
According to the data disclosed by Oriental Selection, the GMV in the live broadcast room exceeded 10 million yuan on June 10. Just a month ago in May, Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental, disclosed that the single-day GMV of the Oriental Selection Platform was still 1 million yuan.
"This Oriental selection was partially affirmed by everyone, but it was just a beginning, which inadvertently combined the previous English teaching and selling things." Yu Minhong said in the live broadcast room. In fact, this "unintentional" out of the circle is the dawn that New Oriental saw after 6 months of live transformation.
Since the implementation of the Opinions on Further Reducing the Homework Burden and Off-campus Training Burden of Students in the Compulsory Education Stage (hereinafter referred to as the "double reduction" policy) in July 2021, the education and training enterprises have divested the subject training in the compulsory education stage, and Xindong Convenience has begun to explore various new business opportunities in a "multi-pronged manner".
Non-academic tutoring, intelligent learning systems and equipment, study tours and study camps, teaching materials and digital intelligent learning solutions, preparation for the entrance examination... In addition to continuing some of the education business, in December last year, Yu Minhong announced that he would lead 100 teachers to start a live broadcast project to find vitality from the direction of "not doing the right thing".
On June 10, the "Oriental Selection" live broadcast room, Yu Minhong and a number of New Oriental teachers
Like New Oriental, in the past year, the education and training industry has undergone a major transformation.
Another giant, Good Future, directly takes the non-education and training business as the key investment direction in the future, and in March this year, Good Future announced that it has "entered the second stage of entrepreneurship" and made a comprehensive transformation to the direction of scientific and technological services and life sciences.
Peng Zhuangzhuang, president and CFO of Good Future, said at the Q4 results meeting of fiscal 2022 that Good Future is transforming into a provider of intelligent learning solutions. Since the beginning of this year, Good Future has successively established a number of subsidiaries, including software development, technical services, intelligent hardware and other fields.
Most companies are still looking for opportunities in the original education track, and adult education, vocational education, quality education, and intelligent hardware are considered to be the most promising tracks.
It is these four businesses that Gaotu bet on. At this year's Q1 financial performance meeting, Chen Xiangdong, founder, chairman and CEO of Gaotu, once again emphasized that this year, Gaotu will continue to focus on online education and invest in the four key businesses of college students and adult education, quality education, quality education and digital products.
Among them, the high road is under heavy pressure on the examination and research education. In May this year, Liu Wenyong, head of university business of Gaotu Group, publicly said: "The business of Gaotu university students will become the first in the examination and research education industry for a period of two years. ”
Since the business transformation in Q3 last year, Gaotu's revenue has fallen sharply, but it has achieved two consecutive quarters of profitability. According to the performance report released a few days ago, Gaotu's 2022 Q1 revenue was 725 million yuan, down 62% year-on-year, and the net profit was 53.72 million yuan, compared with a net loss of 1.426 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Gaotu's quarterly net profit since 2021
Another netease youdao that achieved quarterly profitability focused on intelligent hardware and education informatization business, and took the four major businesses of intelligent hardware, quality education, adult and vocational education and education informatization as the growth pillars.
In addition to the head enterprises, small and medium-sized education and training enterprises are also looking for new ways out, and many institutions are trying fancy cross-border transformation.
There are into the clothing industry. Since October last year, Ape Tutoring has been rumored to be building a team of designers to sell adult down jackets. At the same time, Ape Tutoring has successively launched the quality education brand "Pumpkin Science" and the new brand of To B education for the government and schools, "Flying Elephant Planet".
There are also those who are ready to make meals. In February this year, Park Shin Education announced that it was evaluating opportunities in the fast food chain restaurant business and planned to open a restaurant store.
There are also withdrawals from the education sector. On June 10, Ruisi Education issued an announcement that the company completed the merger transaction with Energy Chain Smart Electric, incarnating as the "first share of charging services".
The industry transformation is still in the early stages
In the early stage of industry transformation, the fire in the new oriental live broadcast room brought a good signal to the long-dormant education and training industry.
The research report of CITIC Securities pointed out that after the divestiture of the K9 discipline business, the main head education and training companies have basically completed business adjustments, and the new business has gradually improved. With the return of competition to rationality, the profit model of each company is also constantly optimized, and it is expected to gradually usher in normalized profitability.
However, it is too early to think that the "transformation is successful". In fact, in addition to the scenery of the head education and training enterprises, most enterprises are still struggling in the transformation.
From the perspective of the hottest vocational education direction, since last year, in many transformation directions, vocational education is regarded as the next track that is expected to become the outlet. On May 1 this year, the newly revised Vocational Education Law came into effect, clarifying that "vocational education has the same important status as general education".
In terms of market size, the number of graduates of Chinese universities in 2022 reached 10.76 million, an increase of 1.67 million year-on-year, and the employment competition was fierce, while the unemployment rate of China's urban survey from January to April 2022 rose month by month, reaching 6.1% in April, a new high since February 2020. In the context of employment difficulties, the demand for vocational training and academic qualifications has increased significantly.
CNC technology application education, picture source Xinhua net
With favorable policies and strong demand, vocational education and training have attracted many enterprise layouts. According to the "2022 China Vocational Education Industry Report", a total of 61 financings occurred in the vocational education market in 2021, with a total financing amount of more than 7.8 billion yuan, the number of financing and the total amount exceeded that of 2020, and the proportion of investment and financing in the entire education industry also reached a new high in the past five years.
Kaiwen Education, a listed company, said in its 2021 annual report released a few days ago that it will explore vocational education in addition to quality education and explore vocational education in an asset-light model of discipline co-construction and school-enterprise cooperation. In addition, Chalk Education, which focuses on vocational education and training, has been submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to launch a listing plan.
On the other hand, the leading vocational education company Zhonggong Education recently handed over a performance report on the first loss since its listing. In 2021, the revenue of public education in China was 6.912 billion yuan, down 38.3% year-on-year; The net loss attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was 2.370 billion yuan, compared with a net profit of 2.304 billion yuan in the same period last year, which turned from profit to loss.
Many players have poured in, but the road ahead of vocational education is not as broad as imagined. "Although the transformation and participation of other education and training institutions has intensified market competition to a certain extent." Li Yongxin, chairman of China Public Education, said at the performance briefing.
K12's transformation of vocational education has made the track crowded again, but the reason is that vocational education and training generally continue the model of pre-fee and strong sales, which is the root cause of high risk.
Vocational education and training is mainly examination training and skills training, mostly for the purpose of finally passing the assessment. In order to attract users to pay, the "agreement class" that promises to "guarantee" and "but refund" is the traditional sales model of vocational education institutions, and it is also the source of the risk of difficult refund and broken capital chain.
Recently, the online vocational education brand "Let's Start" has been exposed to many problems such as arrears of employee wages, collective refunds from students, large-scale layoffs, and arrears in agency advertising fees.
In May, the opening bar responded to the outside world that the arrears of wages and cashbacks will be made up as soon as possible, the student refund should be completed in June, and the arrears of advertiser fees are caused by the optimization process and will be completed within 3 months; As for the layoffs, it is from the beginning of May that the organizational adjustment and personnel optimization have been carried out, and the overall scale of layoffs has been controlled at about 30%-40%.
Coincidentally, in March this year, Wanmen University, an online educational institution focusing on adult education, exploded overnight, and CEO Tong Zhe ran away with 540 million yuan. Previously, the Wanmen University platform had thousands of courses including examination and career growth, and the registered users once exceeded 13 million.
Overall, although the popularity of the New Oriental live broadcast room has led to the hot education sector, the transformation of the education and training industry is still in its infancy, and it will take time to find the best choice for transformation.
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.