With a big shrank of 138.5 billion, Liu Qiangdong couldn't sit still

来源:雷达Finance(ID:leidaplus)作者:X编辑

Liu Qiangdong's wealth has shrunk staggeringly.

Liu Qiangdong, who once became very low-key after the "Mingzhou Incident", has become more and more high-profile recently. After speaking out at the company's internal meetings many times before, Liu Qiangdong will appear directly in front of the public this time.

However, this time Liu Qiangdong met with the public in a rather unique way, and he will appear in the form of a digital human live broadcast at the same time in the form of Jingdong Home Appliances and Jingdong Supermarket procurement and sales live broadcast room. And the behind-the-scenes hero who provided technical support for Liu Qiangdong's digital human live broadcast this time was the Yanxi launched by JD.com in the field of artificial intelligence technology.

Unlike Liu Qiangdong's increasingly high-profile appearance, his own ranking on the "Hurun Global Rich List" has been declining in recent years. Since 2021, Liu Qiangdong's ranking on the list has slipped from 54th to 427th, and his latest disclosed wealth of 49.5 billion yuan is 138.5 billion yuan less than the 188 billion yuan in 2021.

Liu Qiangdong, who gradually walked out of the haze of the "Mingzhou Incident", has recently returned to the management C position of JD.com. Under his leadership, JD.com has made continuous moves in the past year or so, such as criticizing senior executives, making frequent personnel adjustments, and reintroducing the low-price strategy.

However, judging from JD's latest financial answers, JD has not officially returned to the road of high growth. Compared with Pinduoduo and Alibaba, JD.com is currently facing more obvious bottlenecks in terms of performance growth. This time, Liu Qiangdong met with the public in the form of a digital human live broadcast, and his real purpose may also be to drive the construction of JD.com's content ecology, including live broadcast and short video, so as to further tap more potential market users.

Some analysts pointed out that the public is currently more curious about digital human live broadcasts, and due to the limitations of existing technologies, today's digital human live broadcasts are still not as smart as live broadcasts to a certain extent. In the process of Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast of digital people on April 16, the aforementioned shortcomings can also be seen. When the novelty fades, Liu Qiangdong, a digital person without a "soul", will face more challenges if he wants to retain the majority of consumers on the platform.

01

Liu Qiangdong entered the live broadcast strongly, and "Qiangdong AI" played for him

As the real speaker of JD.com, Liu Qiangdong's every move has attracted the attention of the outside world. On April 15, some media took the lead in disclosing the news that Liu Qiangdong was going to appear in public. According to a person familiar with the matter, Liu Qiangdong is about to start a live broadcast on the Jingdong App. The aforementioned person also revealed that it is expected to be officially broadcast soon (within this week), but it will take a new form.

Not long after the above news came out, Jingdong announced the matter through its official account Jingdong Blackboard, and revealed what the new form of Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast was. Different from the traditional way of live broadcasting, Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast this time replaced him with the digital person "Brother Dong". And the premiere time of this live broadcast is also set at 6:18 pm on April 16, which has special significance for JD.com (in line with JD.com's first 618 promotion).

At the same time as the official announcement of Liu Qiangdong's digital human live broadcast, JD.com also released a warm-up video of Liu Qiangdong's digital human appearance in advance. In this video, Liu Qiangdong first greeted the public, "Jingdong's new and old friends, hello everyone, I'm Liu Qiangdong, doesn't I look a little different today? Yes, what you see is my doppelganger, Jingdong Yanxi AI digital human. ”

Liu Qiangdong also revealed that the upcoming live broadcast, his digital avatar will meet you in the live broadcast room of Jingdong procurement and sales, and the live broadcast will share Liu Qiangdong's experience and experience in food, reading, life, etc., and at the same time bring you low-priced and good things carefully selected by Jingdong procurement and marketing.

It is worth noting that Tianyancha intellectual property information shows that recently, Beijing Jingdong Century Trade Co., Ltd. applied for the registration of trademarks such as "Lao Liu Special Field", "Youjing Home Products" and "Round Head Price", and the international classification involves advertising sales, clothing, shoes and hats, etc., and the current trademark status is pending substantive examination.

In fact, long before JD.com released the news that Liu Qiangdong's digital person started the live broadcast debut, JD.com just announced that it would invest 1 billion cash and 1 billion traffic as rewards to attract more original creators and high-quality content institutions to settle in, bring users a better consumption experience with high-quality content, and help brand merchants find new growth points.

Some analysts believe that Liu Qiangdong, as the leader of JD.com, has a lot of work to do, so it is difficult for him to have enough time to devote himself to live broadcasting. In this context, the use of digital human live broadcast seems to be a more suitable entry point for JD.com's live broadcast. Behind JD.com's heavy investment in supporting content creation and Liu Qiangdong's digital debut, it actually reflects JD.com's "ambition" to develop short video and live e-commerce business, and its ultimate purpose is to drive JD's growth.

At the same time, the form taken by Liu Qiangdong in this live broadcast will also play a role in helping JD.com promote its AI technology to a certain extent. Radar Finance learned that the warm-up promotional video of Liu Qiangdong's digital human live broadcast was supported by Jingdong Yanxi. As early as July last year, Jingdong launched a large model of Yanxi.

Compared with the general model, this large model derived from the industry and service industry integrates 70% general data and 30% of the native data of the digital intelligence supply chain, and has the advantages of "higher industrial attributes, stronger generalization capabilities, and more security guarantees", and is committed to going deep into knowledge-intensive and task-oriented industrial scenarios such as retail, logistics, finance, health, and government affairs to solve real industrial problems.

In order to consolidate industrial applications, JD.com has launched a complete set of tools for large models, including the infrastructure to support the research and development of large models - Yanxi AI development and computing platform, vector database, hybrid multi-cloud operating system Yunjian, high-performance storage platform Yunhai, software and hardware integrated virtualization engine Jinggang and other core products.

It is reported that the Yanxi model created by JD.com has been connected to AI products such as Jing Xiaozhi, virtual anchors, and intelligent outbound calls. Specifically, it takes at least five hours for merchants to write a live broadcast script with 50 SKUs, but the K-PLUG model only needs to be generated with one click, which greatly improves the operational efficiency of the live broadcast room.

As far as the cost of a virtual anchor is concerned, it is not even 1/10 of that of a real person. With the help of automatic generation of live broadcast copywriting based on large models, one-click configuration of goods, and visual construction of highly flexible live broadcast rooms, it can be efficiently started within 2 hours, and the daily operation energy investment is as low as less than 30 minutes.

According to incomplete statistics, since 2022, Yanxi virtual anchors have been employed in the live broadcast rooms of hundreds of domestic brands such as Frog Prince, Liushen, Tongrentang, Pechoin, Xifeng Wine, etc., with a daily broadcast time of up to 6-24 hours, and a conversion rate of up to 40%.

Although Liu Qiangdong's digital human live broadcast is full of gimmicks this time, there is a big question mark over how long it can maintain its popularity. Although digital human live broadcast may become one of the main directions of the development of the live broadcast industry in the future, as far as the current market situation is concerned, there is no head anchor with enough influence among digital human anchors.

Therefore, some voices believe that for businesses, digital human live broadcast can help them reduce costs and increase efficiency to a certain extent, but it is still difficult for JD to create a head anchor that can compete with other platforms.

02

Liu Qiangdong's wealth continues to shrink, and JD.com's market value is "beaten" by opponents

As the ruler of the trillion-dollar e-commerce giant, Liu Qiangdong has a lot of wealth. With JD.com's business empire, Liu Qiangdong is also a frequent visitor to various rich lists. However, Liu Qiangdong, who has changed his low-key style in the past and now decides to "show his head", is now facing a situation where his wealth is shrinking.

In the "2024 Hurun Global Rich List" released not long ago, Liu Qiangdong ranked 427th on the list with a wealth of 49.5 billion yuan. Compared with the previous year, Liu Qiangdong's ranking on the list has dropped by 291 places, and his wealth has shrunk by nearly half.

Radar Finance further combed and found that this is not the first time that Liu Qiangdong has faced a decline in the ranking on the "Hurun Global Rich List". In 2021, Liu Qiangdong, who is in the limelight, ranked 54th on the "Hurun Global Rich List" with a wealth of 188 billion yuan, and his ranking climbed 71 places like a rocket compared with the previous year.

But then in 2022, Liu Qiangdong's wealth shrank to 135 billion yuan, and his ranking on the "Hurun Global Rich List" also slipped 23 places to 77th. Last year, Liu Qiangdong's wealth shrank again to 95 billion yuan, and his ranking also fell to 136th. Compared with the highlights of this year and 2021, Liu Qiangdong's wealth has decreased by 138.5 billion yuan in four years, and his ranking has dropped by 373 places.

Liu Qiangdong's wealth has shrunk sharply, which is partly related to JD.com's "cold eye" in the capital market. According to Flush iFinD, from April 16, 2021 to April 15, 2024 (Eastern Time), JD.com's U.S. stock price fell by as much as 64.88%. According to this calculation, JD.com's market value evaporated by about 74.671 billion US dollars, equivalent to 540.509 billion yuan, in the previous time period.

According to Oriental Wealth data, as of December 31 last year, Liu Qiangdong held more than 10% of JD.com's equity. With the cold performance of JD.com in the capital market, the value of this part of the equity held by Liu Qiangdong has inevitably been affected.

Compared with its competitors who are also e-commerce platforms, JD.com's market value has also been thrown off a big gap. As of the close of trading on April 15, JD.com's latest market capitalization was $39.884 billion. For reference, the market capitalization of Alibaba's U.S. stock was $176.55 billion during the same period. According to this calculation, Alibaba's market value is more than 4 times that of JD.com.

What is even less optimistic for JD.com is that Pinduoduo, as a junior, has also surpassed JD.com in terms of market value. As of the close of trading on April 15, Eastern time, Pinduoduo's latest market value was $151.844 billion, about 3.8 times that of JD.com, and Pinduoduo once staged a drama where its market value surpassed Alibaba.

JD.com's cold experience in the capital market may be related to the challenges it is facing in its performance growth to a certain extent. According to JD.com's previously released financial report, JD.com will earn a total of 1,084.7 billion yuan in revenue in 2023, a growth of 3.7% compared with the same period in 2022. Among them, goods revenue increased by 0.7% compared with the full year of 2022, and service revenue increased by 17.8% compared with the full year of 2022.

In 2023, JD.com's revenue from electronic products and household appliances will increase by 4.4% year-on-year to 538.799 billion yuan, while its revenue from daily necessities will decrease by 4.8% year-on-year to 332.425 billion yuan in the same period.

In 2023, the growth of JD.com's service revenue will be mainly driven by the growth of logistics and other service revenues, with the revenue of this segment increasing by 29.7% year-on-year to 128.712 billion yuan last year, and the platform and advertising service revenue under the same service revenue reaching 84.726 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of only 3.4%.

Compared with its peers, JD.com's growth does not have any advantages. According to the latest financial report disclosed by Alibaba, for the nine months ended December 31, 2023, Ali recorded a total revenue of 719.294 billion yuan, an increase of 9% compared with the same period last year.

Among them, Taotian Group, which is regarded by the outside world as the basic disk of Alibaba's revenue, received a total of 341.677 billion yuan in revenue during the aforementioned time period, an increase of 6% compared with the revenue of 323.317 billion yuan in the same period last year.

Another e-commerce giant, Pinduoduo, although the overall revenue scale is not as large as the previous two predecessors, but the growth rate of its performance is very amazing. In 2023, Pinduoduo's annual revenue will reach 247.639 billion yuan, an increase of 90% compared with the same period last year.

In terms of further breakdown, in 2023, Pinduoduo's online marketing services and other revenues will be 153.541 billion yuan, an increase of 49% compared with the scale of 102.931 billion yuan in the previous year. In the same period, Pinduoduo's transaction service revenue of 94.099 billion yuan increased by 241% year-on-year. In contrast, JD.com's performance growth is quite weak.

03

Liu Qiangdong is becoming more and more high-profile, and Jingdong's "turnaround battle" is not easy to fight

In the past year or so, Liu Qiangdong is gradually returning to the power center of JD.com and strongly intervening in the company's operation and management. Back to November 2022, Liu Qiangdong attended JD.com's business management training meeting through video connection access, and delivered a sharp speech at the meeting.

At that time, Liu Qiangdong mercilessly criticized the executives, directly reprimanded some executives for deviating from the core of business strategy, and pointed out that the executives told too many bells and whistles in strategy, but did not consider cost, efficiency, and experience enough. Liu Qiangdong also pointed out that Jingdong has recently made consumers gradually have the impression that the price of goods is getting more and more expensive, ignoring the pursuit of many grassroots consumers for cost performance.

Subsequently, Liu Qiangdong issued an internal letter, announcing the payment of five insurances and one housing fund for Debang employees who have newly joined the JD family, the establishment of a housing security fund for all grassroots employees of the group, and the reduction of the salaries of more than 2,000 senior executives.

The first two things just came to an end, and Liu Qiangdong immediately started a large-scale personnel structure adjustment within JD.com. It is reported that the presidents of many business groups of JD Retail Group have been affected by the adjustment.

After that, JD.com's personnel adjustments even rose to the level of group CEO and JD retail CEO. In May last year, Xu Lei, who was regarded by the outside world as the No. 2 person in JD.com, chose to retire. With the retirement of Xu Lei, the responsibility of CEO of JD.com Group was entrusted to Xu Ran, who had served as the chief financial officer of JD.com. In November of the same year, Xu Ran took over the position of CEO of JD Retail from Xin Lijun.

In addition to frequent personnel adjustments, JD.com has also actively responded to Liu Qiangdong's low-price concept in the past year. In March last year, JD.com joined the "10 billion subsidy" war. In August of the same year, JD.com announced that it would lower the threshold for free shipping for self-operated goods. A few months later, in the Double 11 war, JD.com directly took "really cheap" as the theme of the big promotion.

In terms of live broadcast business, Jingdong brought in Luo Yonghao, the former Douyin first brother, and a friend behind him. However, after making friends with Luo Yonghao, JD.com's live broadcast business still failed to achieve a phenomenal breakthrough. Moreover, Luo Yonghao's strategy of reducing the frequency of live broadcasts and making friends on multiple platforms has made JD still not create a real head anchor.

In addition to pulling "foreign aid", Jingdong also launched a live broadcast of JD.com's procurement and sales that focuses on "no pit fees, no commissions for talents, that is, cheaper". In the follow-up live broadcast, Jingdong procurement and sales also called Li Jiaqi and Pinduoduo successively. For example, Jingdong procurement and sales launched the "Low Price Li Jiaqi Live Room" in the home appliance and home furnishing section, and also posted the slogan "Please stop blocking Pinduoduo and compare prices directly" on the background of the live broadcast room.

And this time Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast, Jingdong also played the character of "Purchasing and Selling Dongge" for Liu Qiangdong's digital person. However, relying too much on the marketing and promotion of special nodes or hot spots such as big promotions has also become an unsolved problem for JD.com's procurement and marketing.

In fact, behind JD.com's recent frequent actions, it reflects the company's current anxiety in the face of decline, and Liu Qiangdong, as the leader of JD.com, is also aware of the predicament that JD.com is currently facing.

In December last year, an employee pointed out many problems in JD.com on the intranet. For example, the promotion mechanism needs to be simplified, the platform promotion should plan the rhythm and intensity in advance, and cannot follow the friends of the business, the platform ecology needs to give more traffic support to pop merchants, and the category mentality, except for 3C home appliances, other categories have no uniqueness, etc.

In the face of the outspokenness of the employees, Liu Qiangdong did not choose to escape, but agreed, "I think this brother said it really well." It can be said that every sentence points to the company's pain points, which are all real problems, and they must be changed. Otherwise we have no way out".

At the same time, Liu Qiangdong also carried out self-reflection, "There are so many problems, of course, I am not mismanaged, and I blame myself very much", "No matter what, I will not lie flat, and I hope that my brothers will never lie flat".

However, judging from the latest financial report handed over by JD.com, Liu Qiangdong's goal of bringing JD.com back to high growth has not yet achieved obvious results. Especially at the moment when the momentum of younger generations such as Pinduoduo and Douyin is very rapid, and the comparison that many players have made certain achievements in going overseas, Liu Qiangdong still faces a lot of challenges if he wants to lead JD to win this tough battle.

Some industry insiders pointed out after watching the live broadcast debut of Liu Qiangdong's digital person that although Liu Qiangdong's demeanor and timbre are highly similar to Liu Qiangdong's, its live broadcast is still a bit rigid and not smart enough compared with real people.

[The author of this article is Radar Finance, and the entrepreneur is authorized to reprint.] If you need to reprint, please contact the WeChat public account (ID: leidaplus) for authorization. ］