Santa Bella is going public.
If you are not familiar with Santa Bella, it is recommended that you open Dianping and Xiaohongshu.
It's this Santa Bella. However, it is not a company that only does confinement services as you think, but a multi-brand group company that expands its business territory around home care.
A few days ago, Santa Bella, China's largest integrated home care brand group, officially submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and some media said that the company is expected to become the world's first home quality care stock. The joint sponsors are UBS AG and CITIC Securities.
According to public information, the company has received investment from Tencent, Chinese Life, Mirae Asset, C Capital, Swire Properties, Sun Hung Kai Company, Gaorong Capital and other institutions.
Frost & Sullivan, a well-known market research agency, released a report that the demand for home care in Chinese mainland has great potential. As of the end of 2023, the industry market size was RMB573.8 billion, with a five-year CAGR of 13.2%. According to the forecast, the market size will increase from RMB657.8 billion in 2024 to RMB1,337.8 billion in 2030, at a CAGR of 12.6%.
From the maternal and infant circle to the blue ocean of family care, Santa Bella submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to seek listing, allowing the maternal and infant peers in the quagmire to see the dawn, which can be described as a shot in the arm for the industry.
Revenue of 775 million
A turnaround has been achieved
According to the prospectus, from 2021 to 2023, the sales of Santa Bella Group will be 390 million yuan, 589 million yuan, and 775 million yuan respectively, an increase of 99%, and the revenue has increased from 259 million yuan to 560 million yuan, an increase of 116%, and the adjusted profit in 2023 will be 20.8 million yuan, turning losses into profits for the first time. Adjusted EBITDA for 2023 was $61.4 million, a 31-fold increase from the previous year.
In terms of gross profit, the Group's gross profit increased by 158% from RMB79.29 million in 2021 to RMB205 million in 2023, and the gross profit margin increased from 30.6% in 2021 to 36.5% in 2023.
In terms of shareholding structure, Tencent holds 11.6% of the shares and Gao Rong holds 8.3% of the shares.
Innovative models
Scenario-based services + new retail products
According to public information, Santa Bella Group was established in 2017, and the main body of the company is Hangzhou Beikang Health Technology Group Co., Ltd. The business includes postpartum care centers, home care services and women's health functional foods, etc., radiating to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other first- and second-tier cities in Chinese mainland, and starting its internationalization strategy in 2022.
From the beginning of its establishment, Santa Bella Group has determined a multi-brand route, with "Santa Bella", "Little Bella", "Aiyu" and other maternal and child care centers, and "Yujia" home care services to provide scenario-based services, "STB Postpartum Training Institute" to provide postpartum repair services, and new retail products Guanghetang as an extension to create a full cycle of care for women.
It is reported that Santa Bella, Little Bella, and Aiyu are the three major confinement brands of the group, and the brand positioning is different; "Yujia" is its home-to-home service brand, providing users with high-quality childcare services, parenting guidance, child care and child growth services; STB Postnatal Training Institute is a brand that specializes in providing postpartum care services; "Guanghetang" is a brand acquired by Santa Bella in 2021, with a history of more than 20 years, positioned as a functional food for women's health, and a leader in the health food conditioning industry for women during pregnancy and childbirth in China.
According to the prospectus, by the end of 2023, Santa Bella has adopted a multi-brand strategy and has an extensive network of 59 high-end confinement centers under the names of its three main maternal and child care center brands, Santa Bella, Little Bella and Bella Isla, including 47 self-owned centers (i.e., centers wholly owned or controlled by the group) and 12 management centers (i.e., centers wholly owned or controlled by third parties and managed by the group).
However, judging from the performance, this is not a company that simply operates a confinement center.
According to the prospectus, the proportion of revenue of Santa Bella's maternal and child care centers is decreasing year by year, with a year-on-year decrease of 1.6% and 4% in 2022 and 2023, respectively. The gross profit margin of the women's health functional food business reached 63.3%, a year-on-year increase of more than 10%.
In addition, in 2022, Santa Bella completed a strategic investment in Hangzhou Bellis Meihua Women's and Children's Hospital, empowering maternal and child care services with the help of high-end medical "scientific expertise" and providing users with green access to medical treatment; In 2023, Santa Bella also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Kinoshita Group of Japan, aiming to jointly cultivate professional elderly care talents in Chinese mainland and continue to expand the group's business territory.
Obviously, compared with the traditional confinement center, the scenario-based service + new retail product model built by Santa Bella solves the problem of difficult repurchase of confinement centers and the current low fertility rate, and gradually breaks the revenue barrier.
37 theories and 33 practical operations
Santa Bella selects frontline caregivers
Take postpartum care as an example. In the early confinement industry, there were three main drawbacks, one was the lack of a national confinement care brand; Second, most confinement centers still use the confinement nanny system, but the professional ability of confinement nannies is uneven, and there is a general lack of scientific and systematic service standards; Third, most of the services of the confinement center are only for physiological care and ignore psychological needs.
From the beginning of the company's establishment, Santa Bella has prioritized a lot of resources to establish a complete set of scientific and rigorous nurse training system, innovated the use of nurses instead of confinement nannies, and delivered high-quality nurses to the store through its own training to ensure the quality and adequacy of the supply of front-line nursing talents.
According to the prospectus, as of December 31, 2023, a total of 621 nursing professionals with relevant professional qualifications provided postpartum care services in the group's confinement centers. These nursing specialists are usually sent to Santa Bella by more than 30 nursing schools that partner with them to ensure that every frontline nurse is professionally trained.
It is understood that the training system combines IAIM baby touch technology, developed by Dr. Liu Meifang, chief nursing officer of Santa Bella Group, has obtained the United States ACI international certification, and hired authoritative experts in related fields to teach, the training content covers maternal and neonatal care, breastfeeding nursing, postpartum rehabilitation and nutrition, infant early education and other professional courses, covering 37 major theoretical knowledge and 33 practical content, and has set service benchmarks for maternal and infant care and the preparation of standard operating procedures (SOP). After the nursing staff has gone through a rigorous theoretical and practical assessment, the passers can take up their posts to provide one-on-one service for the settled customers. Normally, each mother and baby will be cared for by 2 caregivers in shifts, ensuring that the new mother and baby can enjoy attentive care at all times.
In addition, Santa Bella designs an assessment framework for nursing professionals to create a clear roadmap for their career development.
Technology plus
Realize the standardization and refinement of care
With the development of technology, Santa Bella understands the importance of digital transformation. In order to make nursing services more refined, the Group has independently developed a complete set of digital nursing service platforms to build differentiated barriers through the method of "data-driven + service to find people".
First of all, when nursing, nursing staff can directly complete the workflow according to the standards generated by the system to ensure the unification of the nursing process. Secondly, the system will record the monitoring data of each pair of mothers and babies in each round, and the nurse will make a descriptive record of the nursing process, and with the help of large models and big data, the system will generate feedback and follow-up nursing opinions, so that the nursing standards can be unified. In the event of an emergency, users can also use Santa Bella's green medical treatment channel to achieve emergency medical treatment.
It is reported that this is not just a simple SaaS system, but a comprehensive system that combines service processes and user experience, which can standardize the process of front-line nursing staff and achieve the unification of service standards, and can achieve long-term management across regions. This innovative service model not only improves service efficiency, but also ensures that each client receives a tailored care service.
future
It is the care of family members throughout the life cycle
According to the prospectus, Santa Bella intends to further expand the home care platform through a diversified service and product portfolio to obtain a longer customer lifetime value and increase the high-value customer base, and plans to extend the customer lifetime value by opening elderly care and selectively launching new services according to market demand.
In fact, Santa Bella has already set foot in the field of elderly care in 2023 and signed a strategic cooperation with Kinoshita Group of Japan, aiming to promote the development of the elderly care training industry and further improve the quality and standard of elderly care services in China.
Whether it is the cultivation of maternal and infant care talents or the investment in elderly care services, it is inseparable from Santa Bella's original intention to change the shortcomings of the industry.
At present, there are many shortcomings in the nursing industry, such as: the quality of service is uneven, and it is difficult to standardize; It is difficult to manage and recruit front-line personnel; There is a lot of dirty work and there is no systematic professional talent training mechanism...... These require long-term investment to achieve improvements to traditional businesses.
According to the prospectus, continuing to cultivate nursing talents and building the team needed for business expansion is one of the strategic directions that Santa Bella will still adhere to after listing. This move not only cultivates professional nursing talents for Santa Bella Group and continues to ensure the service experience of users, but also provides high-end nursing talents for every family and the whole society, so that all family members can feel the difference of professional nursing.
In addition, with the advancement of Santa Bella's globalization strategy, how to realize the training of global and long-link nursing talents is not only a direction for Santa Bella, but also for the whole industry.
Starting from people, people-oriented, and returning service to service itself, this is the path that Santa Bella needs to take in the future.