Edit | Yuer Lake
出品 | 潮起网「于见专栏」
In 2024, the AI industry will continue to be hot. Not only have many AI companies reported news of a new round of financing, but AI voice unicorn Yunzhisheng Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yunzhisheng") has also been revealed to update its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange again to continue its application for listing, with CICC and Haitong International as joint sponsors.
However, from the current point of view, the road to listing of Yunzhisheng is full of twists and turns. In fact, as early as the end of 2020, when the AI track was in its prime, Yunzhisheng submitted a listing application to the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. However, just three months later, Yunzhisheng withdrew its listing application. Moreover, during the period, iFLYTEK also came forward to falsify its "financial data", which cast a shadow on the road to listing of Yunzhisheng.
After that, in June 2023, Yun Zhisheng was rumored to switch to Hong Kong stocks, and there was no follow-up for a while. Therefore, this time Yunzhisheng will be listed again, and the final outcome may still be unknown.
It is worth noting that as one of the players in the vertical track, Yunzhisheng has even lost money year after year due to its small market share and low market presence. Moreover, although the concept of AI large model is continuing the popularity of the AI track, the AI mountain and sea model launched by it has not shown superhuman competitiveness. As a result, industry insiders are also concerned about its future. Under the multiple practical difficulties, what are the chances of Yunzhisheng seeking to go public?
The increase in income does not increase profits, and the dilemma of loss is difficult to break
It is understood that at present, Yunzhisheng's products are mainly used in the field of smart life and smart medical care. Its AI products and solutions mainly cover smart living scenarios, including smart residences, commercial spaces, hotels and transportation. In terms of smart healthcare, Yunzhisheng also provides solutions for medical record voice input, medical record quality control, single disease quality control, and medical insurance payment management.
Although the application of Yunzhisheng's AI technology seems to be rich in application scenarios, its performance at the commercial level is somewhat unsatisfactory. During the reporting period, Yunzhisheng's operating income from 2021 to 2023 was 456 million yuan, 601 million yuan, and 727 million yuan respectively. Among them, the revenue of its smart medical and smart life segment accounted for about 28 kai.
In the past three years, Yunzhisheng's revenue has continued to grow, but its net profit has not risen. On the contrary, the company has been in the quagmire of losses. According to the prospectus, from 2021 to the end of 2023, Yunzhisheng's adjusted net profit losses will be 172 million yuan, 183 million yuan, and 137 million yuan respectively, with a cumulative loss of 492 million yuan in three years.
In addition, the performance growth rate of Yunzhisheng has also slowed down significantly. According to the prospectus, from 2020 to 2023, Yunzhisheng's operating income increased by 19.65%, 75.29%, 31.33%, and 21.05% year-on-year respectively. The degree of slowdown in growth can be seen.
It is observed that while the scale of revenue is growing, Yunzhisheng has also continued to increase technology research and development, but it has not occupied a significant advantage in the market. According to the data, Yunzhisheng's R&D expenditure increased from 188 million yuan in 2021 to 287 million yuan in 2022, an increase of more than 50%. However, the R&D investment of less than 300 million yuan is still a drop in the bucket compared with technology giants such as iFLYTEK.
On the one hand, although it ranks among the top 4 AI solution providers in 2022, its market share is only 0.6%. The top two competitors have market shares of 15.5% and 4.1% respectively. Compared with Yunzhisheng, there is a huge gap.
On the other hand, it is the norm for the AI industry to burn money, and Yunzhisheng's financing costs, operating expenses, and R&D investment remain high, which also leads to its losses, which also means that Yunzhisheng not only needs to compete with other players for scale, but also for profitability.
Moreover, with the launch of the "Shanhai Model" and continuous research and development, the related research and development expenses are bound to further increase. Therefore, it is still unknown when Yunzhisheng will turn around and make a profit.
The performance contribution is insignificant, and betting on large models is difficult to become a savior
In the stock book, Yunzhi claims that as a pioneer in the commercialization of AGI technology and AGI in China, it launched the first BERT-based large language model, UniCore, using its R&D expertise in interactive AI and the market insights gained since its inception shortly after the Transformer algorithm and the 2018 BERT algorithm made breakthroughs in natural language processing.
Since then, Yunzhisheng has also taken it as the initial core algorithm model of its central technology platform, Yunzhi Brain, and empowered a series of AI solutions for customers in a wide range of vertical industries.
Yunzhisheng also said that it was one of the first companies in Asia to commercialize AI large language models. It is precisely because of these historical precipitation that the company began to provide Transformer upgraded AI solutions to a wide range of vertical industry customers very early. In 2023, Yunzhisheng will take advantage of the trend to launch its own large language model with 60 billion parameters, the Shanhai Model, and continue to iterate the model.
As the saying goes, it's better to come early than to come at the right time. Yunzhisheng, which started earlier on the AI large model track, also does not have too many first-mover advantages at the commercialization level of its large model.
Although in the prospectus, Yunzhisheng said that the Shanhai model has been partially applied and has entered the commercialization stage. For example, its outpatient medical record generation system has been applied in some hospitals, and customer service has been provided at some railway stations.
However, as of December 31, 2023, there are less than 10 customers using Yunzhisheng's Shanghai large-scale model solution, and its revenue is only at the level of 10 million yuan, and its revenue contribution is only 2% of Yunzhisheng's total annual revenue. It can be seen that there is still a long way to go for the commercialization of the Yunzhisheng Shanhai model.
It is worth noting that Yunzhisheng's AI track is still facing fierce competition from many powerful players. For example, iFLYTEK, which has strong genes in the education industry, is a competitor that Yunzhisheng cannot ignore.
When the AI model boom came, Baidu, iFLYTEK, etc. had already entered the game, and the strength of such technology giants should not be underestimated. Moreover, compared with the AI R&D investment of technology giants such as Baidu and iFLYTEK, the technical competitiveness of Yunzhisheng is also very worrisome.
Therefore, the industry is also concerned about the prospect of Yunzhisheng betting on AI large models. While traditional AI technology and related products and solutions are difficult to compete with other competitors, in the field of new AI large models, it may be difficult for Yunzhisheng to overtake in corners, and the Shanhai large model is obviously difficult to become an antidote to the dilemma of saving Yunzhisheng's performance losses and insufficient market share.
The debt pressure is huge, and it is difficult to get rid of the dependence on large customers
It is understood that in addition to the low market rate and continuous loss of performance, Yunzhisheng is also under huge debt pressure. According to the financial report data, as of December 31, 2021, the company's net debt was 1.539 billion yuan, which increased to 1.911 billion yuan at the end of 2022 and further increased to 2.299 billion yuan at the end of 2023.
According to reports, this type of liability mainly comes from the redemption right granted to investors to recognize the redemption liability, and it is expected that the net asset situation will be realized after the IPO. From the perspective of Yunzhisheng's cash flow situation, Yunzhisheng has also been in a state of cash outflow for a long time.
According to the data, from 2021 to 2023, the cash used in Yunzhisheng's operations will be about 238 million yuan, 166 million yuan and 285 million yuan respectively. From the perspective of cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year, as of the end of 2023, Yunzhisheng's cash and cash equivalents were about 379 million yuan, compared with 74.118 million yuan in the same period of 2022.
In fact, Yunzhisheng's tight cash flow and high debt have a lot to do with its customer structure. According to its prospectus, Yunzhisheng has not gotten rid of its dependence on large customers. This may be because its bargaining power is not strong for downstream enterprises. As a result, it lacks a negotiating advantage in front of a small number of large customers, and its ability to collect payments is naturally tested.
The data shows that from 2021 to 2023, Yunzhisheng's accounts receivable will be 266 million yuan, 369 million yuan, and 411 million yuan respectively, increasing year by year, and the proportion of accounts receivable relative to operating income in the same period will be 58.07%, 61.39%, and 56.46% respectively. This also means that more than half of Yunzhisheng's revenue is occupied by downstream customers, and its own cash flow has been under pressure for a long time.
At the customer level, Yunzhisheng's customer expansion speed is average, and large customers are very concentrated. According to the data, from 2020 to 2023, the company's operating income from the top five customers accounted for 34.4%, 30.8% and 27.4% respectively, of which the revenue from the largest customer accounted for 21.6%, 13.1% and 9.3% respectively.
At the same time, in terms of the growth of the number of customers, the scale of its expansion in recent years has been relatively stable, and the growth is not obvious. For example, in 2020, the number of customers of Yunzhisheng was 459, while in 2021 it increased to 510, and in 2022 and 2023, the number of customers increased to 538 and 555, respectively. The number of customers who performed well also made its revenue scale very limited, and the growth rate also slowed down significantly.
It can be seen that when core operating indicators such as revenue and cash flow are under pressure, the future development of Yunzhisheng is also facing many uncertainties. At the same time, as the competition in the industry becomes increasingly fierce, how to increase the market share of Yunzhisheng is also a question mark.
epilogue
As a hot emerging industry, the AI track in the past was indeed very fragrant, which made countless entrepreneurs rush to it. However, as the market has undergone several reshuffles, the industry has shifted from the old time to capital, resources, technology, market and even cost performance. Therefore, the entire AI industry has also moved from extensive development in the past to vertical and professional competition.
Fortunately, Yunzhisheng is betting on the AI voice track with rich application scenarios and closer to commercialization. It's just that this subdivided track is not inaccessible, but is becoming more and more crowded. Therefore, even if Yunzhisheng has a certain first-mover advantage in the industry, and has a place in the industry with years of market games, it still cannot be taken lightly.
It is not difficult to see through the twists and turns of the development history of Yunzhisheng's past pursuit of listing that the future of Yunzhisheng will not be a smooth road to impact the capital market, and Yunzhisheng can only break through its internal and external troubles from the predicament.
Moreover, even if Yunzhisheng successfully goes public one day, I am afraid it is only the beginning of its new challenges. It is hoped that Yunzhisheng can rely on its brand heritage and technological innovation to take another step in the new field and inject confidence into the industry when the era of large models comes.