China Net Finance, April 29 Yesterday evening, Yuanwang Technology (002291.SZ) released its 2023 annual report and 2024 first quarter report. According to the data, the company achieved operating income of 4.777 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year increase of 22.48%, and at the same time, the company's net profit loss was about 1.049 billion yuan due to the investment in new consumption projects, such as Yuanwang X27 PARK, Yinru Yuanwang Wenzhou Digital Ecological Industry Chain Base, Yuanwang Tianmen Live Operation Base, and footwear business cleanup.
However, with the official opening of Yuanwang X27 PARK, in the first quarter of this year, more than 60 new artists were signed by Yuanwang Technology, and the company's payment GMV reached 4.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of about 80%, and the cash flow turned positive to 174 million yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 43.44% in revenue. In other words, the seemingly "radical" investment in technology has begun to show short-term returns.
Is there a more efficient aggregation field?
For the live broadcast e-commerce industry, which has created countless GMV myths, after 7 years of development, it has ended its brutal growth and gradually entered a mature stage. Compared with the absolute overhead type, which is highly dependent on the head anchor, more live broadcast e-commerce companies have begun to matrix, hoping to reduce their dependence on the head anchor by making the cake bigger.
As a new consumer service platform driven by technology, in the past year, Yuanwang Technology has responded to the widespread phenomena in the industry, such as the increase in labor costs leading to losses, the vacancy and waste caused by resource concentration and low human efficiency, and the ability to reuse live broadcast operation tools not to meet expectations.
Taking Yuanwang X27 PARK as an example, in December last year, in order to explore the efficient aggregation field of live broadcasting, Yuanwang built the country's first commercial complex that is open online and offline all day. On the opening day, the special live broadcast of its cooperation with CCTV News achieved a total GMV of more than 220 million yuan. This move is to adjust the company's internal live broadcast strategy and contract outsourcing, summarize and refine the service experience in new consumption scenarios, improve the integration capabilities of supply chain, live broadcast methodology and consumption scenarios, and lay the foundation for large-scale replication of industrial chain projects and testing the integration of new business formats in the future.
In addition, the company has developed and upgraded its digital platform "Yuanwangyun", which has realized the standardization of the live broadcast process, the scale of analysis, and the intelligent selection of products through the application of cutting-edge technologies such as big data and large language models, and has become a first-class efficiency tool in the live broadcast e-commerce industry. According to the disclosure, Yuanwangyun has attracted 25,000 brands to settle in, with a total of more than 25,000 live broadcasts, a cumulative number of orders of more than 40 million orders, and a total of 8.2 million minutes of live broadcasts...... After plugging in the "wings" of digital systems and offline aggregation fields, it will bring leapfrog development to enterprises.
According to this year's quarterly report, since the opening of Yuanwang X27 at the end of 2023, the Q1 live broadcast in 2024 has increased by 157% year-on-year, the number of live broadcast accounts has increased by 108%, and the revenue has increased by 43.44% year-on-year, with GMV reaching 4.5 billion, and it is expected that the GMV of the whole year will exceed 10 billion. Judging from the earnings data, this has also become a recognition of Yuanwang's own strategy
Xie Rudong, chairman and CEO of Yuanwang Technology, said that Yuanwang should use a platform-based thinking model to promote the rapid scale of business and pursue overall stable increment. "In the past year, the company continued to focus on the live broadcast e-commerce business, optimized its business strategy in line with the development trend of the industry, and steadily promoted the company's strategic transformation from multiple aspects such as supply chain integration, scenario consumption, intelligent management, and IP commercialization. It is hoped that while improving the live broadcast e-commerce business through technological means and innovative means, it can also promote the development of new consumption fields and serve more enterprise users and individual users. ”
Is "de-overheading" a thing of the past?
At present, the growth rate of live broadcast e-commerce has declined to a certain extent compared with the early stage of industry development, but from the perspective of the annual market performance, it is still releasing growth signals. According to data from iResearch, the scale of China's live broadcast e-commerce market will reach 4.9 trillion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 35.2%.
In order to open up the market, Yuanwang will also officially launch its international layout in 2023 and establish an overseas live broadcast team to carry out global traceability. According to the financial report, the company has achieved good results in France, South Korea, New Zealand and other global traceability live broadcasts, and at the same time, as a leading domestic live streaming company, Yuanwang has also been invited by Tik Tok officially, and has now established a Tik Tok live broadcast team, and plans to implement the company's North American debut in Tik Tok's live streaming in June this year.
In terms of business model, the enterprises represented by Yuanwang Technology have deeply explored the potential of IP through multi-IP simultaneous operation, and established a unique anti-trend model. Under this model, Yuanwang Technology has established an anchor matrix of more than 100 stars + talents, and at the same time established standardized business processes to build complete marketing support such as professional operation, delivery, and content, so that the development of the enterprise has greatly reduced its dependence on "people", and it can be said that the problem of "de-overtaking" has been solved in advance.
The leading institutions in the live broadcast industry have various resources and have their own characteristics, and Yuanwang's advantages in celebrities, publicity, traffic delivery, and professional content creators have made them actively expand their business margins, operate trumpet matrices around celebrities and other IPs, distribute live slices, and test the waters of commercial marketing such as variety shows and short dramas, so as to explore a more diversified and stable monetization matrix.
This has allowed Yuanwang Technology to maintain steady growth in the industry in recent years.
From the perspective of revenue, since the consolidation in 2019, the revenue growth of Yuanwang Technology has remained above 30%, growing rapidly. In Q1 2024, this figure will reach 50%.
In terms of GMV, in 2021, the GMV of Yuanwang Technology will be about 10.255 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 138.49%. On this basis, it will increase by another 46.27% in 2022 to 15 billion yuan. In Q1 2024, the GMV growth rate will once again outperform the industry.
Compared with previous years, it only took 3 years for Yuanwang Technology to triple its GMV and double its revenue. Xie Rudong admitted that "conservative thinking" is the bottom line of the company's business safety. Since starting his business, he has always adhered to the business concept of replication and standardization, laid out in advance in the upward cycle of the industry, built a solid bottom, and improved the ability to resist risks.
In Xie Rudong's view, the cycle is both an opportunity and a challenge, and if it is used well, it can usher in new growth. "Yuanwang Technology builds a solid foundation in 'peacetime', and in the transition period, it has a forward-looking layout, excavates new growth points, and boldly invests. In 'wartime', it will naturally be able to see miraculous results. ”
(Editor in charge: Tan Mengtong)