Author | Wang Hanyu
Edit | Pan Xinyi
Cover source | Visual China
From august 23, after the group released its second-quarter financial report, to the close of nasdaq on September 6, Eastern Time, Dada's stock price fell into 10.5%. Over the past year, Dada's stock price has continued to decline until the latest closing price on September 6 has fallen by 78.6% year-on-year, and the company's market value has evaporated by more than $5 billion.
The performance of Dada Group in the second quarter gave the capital market another reason to vote with its feet. According to the financial report, in the second quarter of 2022, Dada Group's revenue increased by 55% year-on-year to 2.281 billion yuan, but there was still a net loss of 579 million yuan, which was not significantly improved compared with the loss of 604 million yuan in the first quarter. This is the sixth consecutive year of losses since 2017.
Zhao Xiaomin, an expert in the express delivery industry and CEO of Guanshuo Capital, believes that the current performance of Dada Group in the stock market reflects the company's fundamentals more objectively. "Because in the more than two years since Dada was listed, there has been no sign of developing to a positive level, whether it is scale or revenue and profit indicators."
"In fact, for Dada's business model, the profit indicators at this stage are not the most critical, but more importantly, the user scale, the ability to solve the solution and the ability to cover the national network, these three solutions, the profit loss will slowly narrow, the company will eventually move towards the channel of profitability." However, observing Dada's above three index capabilities, Zhao Xiaomin believes that it ranks low among several major peers such as Meituan and Hummingbird.
In addition, Zhao Xiaomin also mentioned: "Although Jingdong has increased its holdings and blood transfusions to Dada, and now has also announced personnel adjustments, the market obviously does not buy." ”
On the day of the release of the second quarter financial report, Dada Group also issued a personnel adjustment announcement, announcing the resignation of the founder of the Group, Ku Jiaqi, as chief executive officer and chairman of the company's board of directors, effective from August 31, 2022. At the same time, Xin Lijun, CEO of JD Retail, will serve as the chairman and chairman of the board of directors of Dada Group, and He Huijian, former vice president of Dada Group, will be promoted to president of the group and be fully responsible for the daily work of the group.
The founder resigned and Jingdong's senior management took over, which is another performance of further control of Dada since Jingdong completed the merger of dada holdings and performance in February this year.
Zhao Xiaomin believes that after Jingdong takes over Dada in an all-round way and the two teams are integrated, whether Jingdong can use Jingdong to further empower Dada and help it break through the bottleneck of scale is the focus of the market in the next step.
The "old man" He Huijian returned to Dada
The combination of Jingdong and Dada is the "hugging group heating" under the continuous increase in the retail tide of the same city by e-commerce giants, and He Huijian's own professional resume is also deeply bound to the two enterprises of JD.com and Dada.
Previously, in June 2014, Kuaqi, who had a master's degree in logistics engineering, established Dada to focus on logistics crowdsourcing in the real-time delivery process; Less than a year later, in April 2015, JD.com's new business sector, JD.com, was officially launched.
During this period, He Huijian, who had worked at Dada, joined JD.com and was deeply involved in the research and development and operation of JD.com. Amplified to the external environment, at that time, the takeaway industry was in full swing, and various giants were betting on the staking ground. Dada enters as a logistics service provider, and in addition to sharing takeaway cakes together, its development has always been constrained by external orders.
At the same time, JD.com, which lays out instant retail, is also subject to JD.com's own shortcomings in the instant delivery link. Hu Chuncai, a retail industry expert and founder of Shanghai Shangyi Consulting, said on 36Kr that although Jingdong's overall scale of distribution warehouses in China is leading, in the instant delivery link, the density of JD.com's "capillaries" in various cities is still lacking.
Hu Chuncai's "capillary" density refers to whether the density of distribution warehouses and delivery personnel built around the city's various communities and business circles is high enough, "If this density is not high enough, the distribution cannot be delivered in half an hour and an hour." Jingdong's 'aortics' and 'veins' in the country are very strong, but compared with platforms such as Hema, JD.com lacks retail formats, so to the end of the same city distribution, its penetration of 'capillaries' is still relatively lacking. ”
At this time, Dada, who has experienced takeaway delivery training, is a good supplement to JD.com.
Therefore, after the establishment of Dada and JD.com in 2014 and 2015, in April 2016, the two sides began the road to integration. At the beginning, the two sides cooperated to establish a new company, and JD.com acquired about 47.4% of the new company with group resources, JD.com business resources and $200 million.
Then in 2018, JD.com and Walmart invested $500 million in Dada. By 2020, JD.com will hold a total of 45.3% of Dada's shares.
After the listing of Dada Group, JD.com's penetration of its control continued. In March 2021, JD.com announced that it would subscribe for Dada's newly issued common shares for US$800 million, and after the completion of the transaction, JD.com will hold a total of 51% of Dada's shares. By February 2022, JD.com spent US$546 million and certain strategic resources as consideration for the increase in holdings, and officially acquired a controlling stake in Dada. In the first quarter of this year, Dada's performance has been incorporated into JD.com's financial report.
Half a year later, the founder of Dada Group resigned, and the company's decision-making level ushered in the "Jingdong Department". He Huijian, who once left Dada, has also fully returned in this process, and has now taken over the daily work of the group.
Hu Chuncai analyzed that Dada's high-level coaching may come from the needs of JD.com to integrate two types of resources: remote delivery and instant delivery. "Previously, Dada had relatively certain independent decision-making power, but the two businesses were not under the leadership of the same decision-maker, and the integration of resources may be inefficient or prone to disagreement." If the remote and near-range ends are led by the same decision-making team, the synergy should work better. ”
"Warming up in the group" in the loss
In addition to JD.com's need to improve its own business layout, jd.com also needs to account for the shareholders of this acquisition that cost billions of dollars to complete, and how its follow-up earnings are.
Judging from the report card of Dada Group in recent years, the majority of shareholders need to be more patient if they want to see the substantial return of this six-year transaction. According to the latest financial report data, by the end of June 2022, Dada Group's cumulative loss in the past five and a half years reached 10.356 billion yuan.
And combined with the performance since the listing, the current loss trend of Dada Group has not yet improved significantly. From 2020 to the first half of 2022, the company's revenue recorded 5.74 billion yuan, 6.866 billion yuan and 4.306 billion yuan respectively, and the net profit of Dada Group continued to lose money, with losses of 1.705 billion yuan, 2.471 billion yuan and 1.183 billion yuan respectively.
At the same time, Dada Group's dependence on JD.com has also further increased. According to the second quarterly report of Dada Group, the proportion of JD.com's home business in the company's total revenue during the reporting period was about 64%, and the revenue of Dada Express delivery accounted for about 35%. In 2017, jd.com's home business contribution ratio was only 26%.
In the anti-audience package business, Dada Express achieved revenue of 1.439 billion yuan in the first half of this year, which is already lower than 1.488 billion yuan in the same period last year.
This means that in the process of Dada's gradual "jingdongization", its self-hematopoietic ability is also getting weaker and weaker.
Of course, backing up to "good daddy" JD.com, it is also a shortcut to achieve revenue growth. However, from the perspective of JD.com itself, its total transaction volume also lags behind its peers. Compared with the GMV of 84.2 billion yuan last year, jd.com's GMV last year was only 43.1 billion yuan.
According to the latest disclosed data of Dada Group, the GMV of JD.com to the end of June this year was 54.6 billion yuan, which is still lower than the level of Meituan Flash Sale last year.
According to the "White Paper on the Study of the Open Platform Model of Instant Retail" released by the China Chain Store and Franchise Association and others, by 2025, the scale of the open platform model in instant retail is expected to reach about 1.2 trillion yuan. In the trillion-dollar market, in addition to the Meituan flash sale, Hema, Tmall supermarket, etc., Jingdong Home and Dada may usher in more competitors to enter.
Zhao Xiaomin told 36Kr that after Jingdong takes over Dada in an all-round way, it is necessary to pay attention to whether Dada can break through the scale with the help of Jingdong to break through the scale and produce a substantial reversal. "After the current Dada structure is changed from top to bottom, the overall playing style, concept, and positioning will change, and the back is to see whether the market can buy or not for this change." But at least for now, the market is not buying the change at the top – the market believes that the challenge of changing [the current pattern] is still huge. ”