On May 14, the latest financial report released by Ali showed that Cainiao's revenue in the first quarter of this year was 24.557 billion, a year-on-year increase of 30%, and the annual revenue increased by 28% year-on-year to 99.02 billion.
In the financial report, Cainiao attributed the growth of revenue to the global network construction and the leading edge of cross-border e-commerce logistics.
It should be noted that although the revenue maintained growth, the adjusted net profit loss for the whole year was 1.342 billion, which turned from profit to loss compared with the previous year.
In fact, since the rookie announced its entry into the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last year, the market is full of expectations for the rookie IPO, the "first stock of global smart logistics", and expects the ninth listed company to appear in the express delivery industry.
However, it backfired, and on March 26, Ali issued an announcement announcing its decision to withdraw the rookie's listing application and the rookie's IPO was terminated.
The rookie who plans to "fly solo" will eventually "return home". After breaking through the Hong Kong stock market for a period of time, what challenges and variables do rookies still face? How can a rookie who personally goes out to do express delivery seize a new seat in the industry?
The business is on all sides
Yibao.com found that 2023 can be called the most turbulent year experienced by Cainiao since its establishment, and it is also a year of sprint.
In order to be able to make a high valuation before listing, rookies have made many new attempts, launched their own express delivery business, and even did not hesitate to grab land with Tongda brothers.
In June last year, the long-brewing "Cainiao Express" was officially launched, upgrading from the original distribution business of Tmall supermarket to a national express delivery network, focusing on half-day delivery, same-day delivery, door-to-door delivery and night pick-up services.
In fact, at the user level, Tmall supermarket home delivery has occupied the minds of some users, and the market terminal is not surprised by the rookie to do express delivery, after all, the rookie station has long been "famous". As for e-commerce merchants, the comprehensive consideration is the price factor, and the "inclusive price" self-imposed by rookies is also an option for merchants who are not sensitive to timeliness.
After a year of market layout, the industry even believes that the rookie business is in a comprehensive benchmark against SF, the "first brother" in the industry.
In the first quarter of this year alone, rookies have been making big moves, and they are highly targeted and purposeful, which can be described as "learning from each other".
The first is to speed up the promotion of the "Standard Express" service, benchmark SF's time-sensitive products, including personal shipping and e-commerce products, and take "half-day delivery" and "next-day delivery" as the core selling points to achieve door-to-door and point-to-point express delivery services. In order to improve the fulfillment ability, in March this year, the news of Cainiao Express's recruitment of 6,000 couriers also attracted a lot of attention and became a hot event on multiple platforms.
Secondly, as we all know, the logistics delivery business of fresh agricultural products has always been an advantageous project of SF Express and JD Logistics.
During the spring tea season, Cainiao opened a special guarantee green channel for core production areas such as West Lake Longjing and Anji White Tea, set up points in the village to collect and deliver goods to the door on demand, focusing on differentiation beyond the average level of peers. The results are good, and the next-day delivery rate of spring tea exceeds 90%.
Yibao.com learned that in terms of intra-city distribution business, Cainiao did not miss the opportunity to "fight in the ring" with SF, and is simultaneously exploring pilot intra-city distribution services in economically developed areas such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai.
In addition, in terms of large-scale logistics business, Cainiao's international and domestic markets have made good progress in the past two months.
On March 28, Cainiao and AliExpress announced that the exclusive "oversized special line" for hosting merchants has expanded to Europe and the United States after South Korea, and landed in the core markets of the United States, Spain and France.
In April, Cainiao Large-scale Logistics went deep into the Foshan Home Improvement Furniture Industry Belt and carried out in-depth cooperation in the field of home furnishing dry fitting and assembly, so that the Cainiao Home Improvement Logistics Network could further release benefits.
However, in terms of business, attacking from all sides and comprehensively benchmarking the head express delivery companies did not gain more attention for rookies in the capital market.
Behind the Hong Kong stocks
According to the calculation of the share capital of the previous strategic financing in 2019, Ali increased its capital by 23.3 billion yuan to win 12% of the equity, which is estimated that the valuation of rookies at that time was about 200 billion.
Less than a year after the IPO was announced, Cainiao's valuation was nearly halved, and the original plan for an IPO in Hong Kong to raise up to US$2 billion may now shrink to less than US$1 billion (about HK$7.8 billion), far below previous expectations.
As a result, Cainiao decided to voluntarily withdraw its listing application. Tsai Chongxin, chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, said that the current global market is relatively sluggish and lacks liquidity, and it is based on the group's strategic considerations and the actual situation of the progress of the rookie IPO.
Indeed, for the shareholders of rookies, it is better not to go public at the price of half cut.
It's just that last year's business plate for the listing is still pending, whether it is self-operated express delivery, fresh product logistics or intra-city distribution business, it needs a lot of financial support, and the rookie is still in a loss-making state.
Taking Cainiao's self-built and self-operated express delivery business as an example, in the field of express delivery, it is the basic operational capacity of the transfer center, fleet, and terminal outlets that determines the service and timeliness, and it is very dependent on infrastructure construction, such as sorting centers, network density, etc.
At present, the gap between rookies and SF Express and JD.com's infrastructure is too large.
According to the prospectus disclosed by Cainiao last year, Cainiao has 2,700 self-owned trunk lines, 12,000 in SF Express and 7,500 in JD.com in the same period; At the terminal network level, Cainiao has 4,400 terminal outlets, while SF Express and JD.com have 29,000 and 18,000 respectively; At the hub transfer level, Cainiao has 7 national warehouse and distribution hubs, while SF Express has 39 domestic hub transit yards in the same period.
Yibao.com believes that in the final analysis, a rookie who started as a platform business and did express delivery was originally one step later than his peers, lacking a first-mover advantage. The self-operated express delivery is "dirty work", "hard work" and "tiring work", which requires long-term construction investment.
After all, as an independently operated group company, Ali's recent plan of 27 billion yuan to repurchase rookie shares is another big deal.
Where to fly in the future
Rookies who want to stand on their own must think about the next direction after stopping the IPO. Judging from the latest movements of rookies,
Yibao.com believes that, first of all, the traffic from the Taotian e-commerce platform, and the experience and resources accumulated at the end of the past years through the Cainiao Station, including digital logistics technology and massive data, as well as the overall logistics algorithm system, are still the current competitive barriers of Cainiao, and focusing on e-commerce is also in line with the group's strategy of focusing on the fundamentals.
In the field of e-commerce, while continuing to empower the intellectualization of accessibility coefficient, we will supplement the shortcomings of accessibility in mid-to-high-end e-commerce parts.
Secondly, global expansion and cross-border business. Originally, the cross-border logistics segment was the most outstanding part of Cainiao's business structure, with international logistics business accounting for 47.4% of Cainiao's revenue in fiscal year 2023, domestic logistics accounting for 46.2%, and the remaining 6.4% being technology and other services. Therefore, in the strong field of rookies, it is natural to choose to dig deeper into the value.
As AliExpress's "overseas partner", basically AliExpress's service is upgraded, and the rookie will follow suit and become its exclusive logistics service provider.
In January this year, AliExpress teamed up with Cainiao to fully launch the "semi-custodian" model, covering many countries in Europe and the United States, and then "tens of billions of subsidies to go to sea", providing international express delivery services such as warehousing multi-platform delivery and bonded warehouse tax declaration for merchant brands.
On April 6, Cainiao also jointly announced with AliExpress that the Chengdu cross-border e-commerce warehouse was officially put into use.
Since the road of IPO is temporarily impassable, it is necessary to adjust the capital strategy in time, and the warehousing and logistics industry fund is a good move. Following the establishment of a 3 billion logistics and warehousing fund with Chinese Life, on April 16, Cainiao joined hands with PICC Capital and Shentong to announce the establishment of a 3 billion warehousing and logistics equity investment fund for warehousing and logistics construction in core economic regions such as the Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei.
To sum up, it is not difficult to see that for rookies, standing on the shoulders of giants and having a clear long-term development strategic direction, even if they suffer short-term setbacks, they can eventually fly back to the normal business track. Whether the next rookie can fly more and more steadily remains to be tested by the market.