Lin Chen/Wen
Yasui Foods, which makes quick-frozen foods, seems to be slightly tired. Its sales in the first half of the year increased by less than 40%, but the book balance of inventory goods and advertising expenses nearly doubled. The newly built Hubei subsidiary has been losing money for four years since its establishment, and the quick-frozen dish products cut in by OEM are suffering from low-priced snipers of less than 40% of the same products in the foundry.
On the afternoon of September 7, Anjing Food participated in the 2021 Online Collective Reception Day for Investors of Listed Companies in Xiamen. A month ago, Yasui Foods released its semi-annual report. According to this, the book balance of its ending inventory goods was as high as 279 million yuan. According to the financial network industry and economics, this figure in the same period of 2018-2020 is only hovering around 150 million yuan.
Image source: Screenshot of Yasui Food's 2021 semi-annual report
Advertising costs have been nearly doubled. In the first half of this year, this figure soared from 44.353 million yuan to 83.8533 million yuan, even compared with about 50 million yuan in the half year before the epidemic, it also increased by nearly 60%.
In this regard, the financial network Sankei asked at today's online exchange meeting, is there a difference in the pace of sales of Yasui food? What are the specific reasons for the sharp increase in publicity costs? Liu Mingming, chairman of Anjing Food, said that the high inventory is mainly due to the continuous expansion of the company's sales scale, and according to the dynamic sales situation, the demand for inventory reserves has expanded. The increase in advertising cost investment is mainly due to the sinking of channels and the need for product promotion.
However, the revenue growth rate of Anjing Food in the first half of the year was only 36.49%, which did not "resonate" with the 60% increase in advertising expenses. In addition, the growth rate of 36.49% is only about 15 points higher than that of 22.14% and 19.93% in the same period of 2020 and 2019, which is not consistent with the doubling of the book balance of inventory commodities at the end of the period.
The dislocation of Yasui Foods also lies in the continuous loss of new subsidiaries and the parity of foundries. Caijing noted that Hubei Anjing, which was established at the end of 2017, has made consecutive losses. In the four first half of 2018-2021, it lost 96,100, 552,300, 662,400 and 7,319,500 respectively. In other words, this year's loss is even more than 10 times that of last year's epidemic anxiety period. In his response, Liu Mingming explained that Hubei is still in the construction period due to the epidemic situation last year.
However, Caijing found that the vast majority of the products sold online by its sub-brand Mr. Frozen Products are OEM production. The product range includes a number of prepared dishes such as veal steak, garlic pork ribs, plum button meat and so on.
Among them, 300g of oyster sauce beef fillet is priced at 34.9 yuan / bag, and the product keywords include commercial chef dishes. The actual manufacturer is Xiamen Yijiajia Food Co., Ltd. Caijing Sankei learned from the latter in an anonymous capacity that it not only works for Yasui, but also produces the same product that identifies its own brand. Taking the 1 kg package often bought by catering channels as an example, the factory price of oyster sauce beef fillet is 45 yuan / bag.
According to rough estimates, the price of similar products produced by Yasui foundry is less than 40% of Yasui's. Will this "flat replacement" make Yasui have neither product differentiation nor product cost performance? In this regard, Liu Mingming only mentioned in the online exchange that the company is optimistic about the market prospects of quick-frozen "prefabricated semi-finished dishes" and "prefabricated dishes", strengthens research and development, uses its own channels and other advantageous resources, and quickly enters the market and strives to continuously expand its market share in the way of "self-production + OEM + mergers and acquisitions".
Quick-frozen food itself is a highly homogenized industry, and Yasui once became popular by grabbing cakes by hand. Today, Yasui, who is eager to enter the pre-made cuisine, should not ignore the importance of differentiated competition.