Himalaya has broken through IPOs four times, and its financial business is not transparent and subject to regulatory inquiries

Himalaya's financial business will be exposed to the sun.

A few days ago, Ximalaya submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission disclosed the requirements for the filing of supplementary materials for overseas issuance and listing, and the corresponding enterprises should submit supplementary listing materials to the regulatory authorities, among which Himalaya was required to explain the loan business and other major issues.

At present, Himalaya is involved in financial business, mainly including loan supermarkets as the lending platform, and its self-operated loan product "Listen to Xiaobei Borrow Money". Although Himalaya does not participate in the core business of finance, finance is a highly regulated industry, and the relevant supervision of all links from pre-loan to post-loan is also continuously refined, and Himalaya is facing the risk of doing business without a financial license.

This is the fourth time that Himalaya has sought to go public, and its financial business has attracted regulatory attention and is bound to need transparency.

1. Listen to Xiaobei go offline in a hurry for two months

In March this year, Himalaya Nongmo launched "Listen to Xiaobei to borrow money", which not only gave traffic entrance, but also jointly helped lenders to send benefits and fully promote credit business. However, its credit business has been questioned by many media, including China.com, Times Weekly and other media reports, Ximalaya listened to Xiaobei borrowed money to cooperate with Baifenbei, a subsidiary of Baiwei Jinke, etc., with a loan interest rate of nearly 36%.

AFTER BEING QUESTIONED BY THE MEDIA, THE WEMONEY RESEARCH LABORATORY FOUND THAT THE HIMALAYA APP WALLET PORT NO LONGER "LISTENS TO XIAOBEI TO BORROW MONEY". Previously, the product was located in Himalaya's "my" → "wallet", with an exclusive entrance, which shows how much attention it is taken to it.

Previously, the service of "listening to Xiaobei borrowing money" was still in its infancy, and its main function was to provide traffic import for the loan platform. According to Laser Finance and Economics, the product is provided by Himalaya with customer acquisition ports, brand display and repayment functions, and the user's mobile phone number and equipment information retained in Himalaya are provided to relevant lending institutions, and the lending institutions implement credit and lending services, and Himalaya does not participate in risk control.

However, users enter the loan platform from "Tingxiaobei", and then are further guided to the lending institution, which eventually leads to the superposition of various service fees, which also increases the borrower's borrowing cost.

Listening to Xiaobei borrow money is an attempt by Himalaya to truly touch the financial business. Previously, Himalaya had an advertising investment business, and its loan supermarket "borrowing benefits" were Banyan Loan, Du Xiaoman, Borrow Money, Hao Hui Borrow, Rong 360, Happy Loan and other products to divert traffic. Its page shows that the borrowing interest rate of these borrowing apps starts from 7.2%-13.33%, and it is the H5 page to attract customers.

ACCORDING TO WEMONEY'S RESEARCH OFFICE, SOME PRODUCTS IN ITS LOAN SUPERMARKET CHARGE HIGH GUARANTEE FEES, WITH AN ANNUALIZED INTEREST RATE OF NEARLY 36%.

TAKING LEXIANG LOAN AS AN EXAMPLE, A USER TOLD THE WEMONEY RESEARCH OFFICE THAT WHEN APPLYING FOR A LOAN ON THE PLATFORM, ONLY THE PRINCIPAL AMOUNT OF 6,000 YUAN AND THE INTEREST OF 786 YUAN WERE DISPLAYED, AND THE APPLICATION ONLY STATED THAT THE FINAL TOTAL REPAYMENT AMOUNT INCLUDING INTEREST WAS 6,786 YUAN, BUT AFTER THE APPLICATION WAS SUCCESSFUL, THE PAGE SHOWED A GUARANTEE SERVICE FEE OF 1227.24, WHICH CALCULATED THE ANNUALIZED INTEREST RATE OF NEARLY 36%, WHILE THE USER'S LOAN CONTRACT SHOWED THAT THE ANNUALIZED INTEREST RATE WAS 8.5%.

Another user borrowed 13,000 yuan from the Lexiang Loan APP, divided into 12 installments, with a total repayment of 17,362 yuan, showing a guarantee service fee of 2,659.

THE WEMONEY RESEARCH ROOM DOWNLOADED THE HAPPY LOAN AS A USER, AND THE LOAN PAGE SHOWED THAT THE ANNUALIZED INTEREST RATE STARTED AT 7.2%, WITH A MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF 200,000, BUT AFTER BEING TESTED BY WEMONEY RESEARCH ROOM WITH MULTIPLE MOBILE PHONE NUMBERS, THE APP COULD NOT BE REGISTERED.

2. Lack of financial licenses

Founded in 2012 by Yu Jianjun and Chen Yuxin, the company launched the online audio app "Himalaya" in 2013, mainly through professional production of content (PGC), professional user generated content (PUGC), user generated content (UGC) to provide audio content, content in the form of audiobooks, pan-entertainment audio, podcasts, boutique knowledge sharing and live broadcast.

According to the prospectus, Himalaya's revenue was 5.86 billion yuan, 6.06 billion yuan and 6.16 billion yuan respectively. It is worth noting that the company's revenue has risen steadily, but the growth rate has shown a decline. From 2021 to 2023, Himalaya's revenue growth rate decreased from 43.7% to 3.5% and 1.7%.

From 2021 to 2023, the company's net profit will be about -5.106 billion yuan, 3.7 billion yuan, and 3.736 billion yuan respectively; Adjusted net profit was -718 million yuan, -296 million yuan and 224 million yuan respectively. In 2023, Himalaya Holdings achieved a non-IFRS adjusted gain of $224 million. In this regard, the company said that the positive net profit was due to the expansion of the user base, the improvement of gross profit margin and the improvement of operating efficiency achieved by reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

In 2023, Himalaya will have an average of 303 million monthly active users, including 133 million average mobile monthly active users and 170 million average monthly active users who listen to audio content through IoT and other third-party platforms.

Himalaya has more than 100 million mobile users, which is a natural financial scene. From the above actions, it can be seen that Himalaya is eager to expand its financial business, and it is understandable for the traffic platform to monetize its financial business, but the platform should pay more attention to compliance while expanding its business line, and financial products should not become a weapon to harvest users.

According to the requirements of the CSRC for the filing of supplementary materials for overseas issuance and listing, Ximalaya should explain the loan assistance business provided to individual customers.

Specifically, the CSRC requires Himalaya to supplement the following information: the specific form of loan assistance business; Whether it involves the investment of self-raised funds as a source of loan funds, whether it is a financial or quasi-financial activity, and whether it has obtained the necessary business qualifications; Whether it involves credit reporting business, and explain whether the business development complies with the provisions of the Interim Measures for the Business Activities of Online Lending Intermediaries, whether it has been filed and registered in accordance with Article 5 of the Measures and the corresponding telecommunications business license has been obtained, and whether there are any prohibitive circumstances under Article 10 of the Measures.

At the same time, Himalaya should also explain whether the relevant financial business operation involves post-loan collection services, and whether there is any non-compliant collection method; the scale of the financial services business in each year during the reporting period, the names of the top five customers and the proportion of revenue from such customers, the scale of the issuer's self-raised funds and the source of funds, and the proportion of fees charged by the issuer to financial institutions in the loan interest; During the reporting period, whether the financial services business was subject to regulatory measures or penalties imposed by the competent authorities, whether there were abnormal business events such as major debt repayment risks, and whether there were substantial obstacles to the overseas issuance and listing.

At present, Himalaya lacks relevant qualifications, which will bring great challenges to Himalaya's financial business. (Wenxin/Text)