Through frequent marketing campaigns and capital operations, Yimer has achieved the expansion from a small township health center in Beijing to a national chain of plastic surgery institutions.
Wen 丨 BT Finance Celebrate Autumn
Ten years ago, Yimer Chairman Wang Yong'an once said: "Beauty plastic surgery is a rigid demand, and people's pursuit of beauty can step on the blood and move forward." ”
Today, this statement is proved to some extent. In 2020, the scale of China's medical beauty service market has reached 117.6 billion yuan, serving 20.5 million people.
Yimer, as one of the earliest private medical aesthetic institutions in China, has witnessed the development of China's private medical aesthetic industry all the way, and has also ushered in a major milestone in its own operation - the secondary listing.
On the evening of August 3, Imer submitted a form to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and applied to go public in Hong Kong. This is the second time that Yimer has launched a sprint to the secondary market after landing on the New Third Board in 2016.
This time, what are the odds?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > on the market</h1>
Recently, the wind in the medical beauty concept section has been blowing strongly.
Aimeike listed less than a year, the stock price has soared more than 10 times, the market value exceeded the 100 billion yuan mark; the other two hyaluronic acid giants are not to mention more, this year, HaoHai Biotech stock price rose as much as 128.37%, Bloomage Bio rose 48.71%, both reached the highest highest value.
Although the main business of other listed companies is not medical beauty, it is also "wet and flying".
For example, Aoyuan Meigu, which is mainly real estate, has risen by more than 20% in many consecutive trading days since announcing that it will acquire medical beauty institutions; blonde rabbi, which specializes in consumer goods for young children, has also gained 10 up and down boards for 10 consecutive trading days after announcing the acquisition of part of the equity of a medical beauty institution...
In recent years, the medical aesthetic industry has flourished, and the market size has climbed from 77.6 billion yuan in 2016 to 143.5 billion yuan in 2019. Although the epidemic has contracted in 2020, it is expected to maintain a high growth rate in 2021-2025, and is expected to reach 278.1 billion yuan in 2025.
According to industry insiders, under the continuous hot market situation, a number of medical beauty chain institutions are preparing listing plans. Yimer also became the first medical aesthetic institution to announce an IPO in Hong Kong this year.
Frost & Sullivan data shows that in terms of revenue from medical beauty services in 2020, Ymer ranks fourth among all private medical aesthetic institutions in the country and first in the northern market.
According to the prospectus, Imer's revenue in 2018-2020 was 661 million yuan, 739 million yuan and 811 million yuan, respectively, and the revenue in the first quarter of 2021 was 270 million yuan, an increase of 117.7% year-on-year.
From the perspective of revenue composition, it is mainly divided into two major blocks - non-surgical services and surgical services.
In 2018-2020, non-surgical services provided nearly 70% of revenue, at $451 million, $517 million and $600 million, respectively. According to Frost & Sullivan statistics, looking at the medical aesthetic non-surgical services alone, Imel's revenue ranks third in the country, while the proportion of revenue ranks first.
Immel also acknowledged in the prospectus that the current focus of strategic development is on non-surgical services.
From the perspective of customer unit price, surgical services are much higher than non-surgical services: as of March 31, 2021, the average cost per surgical service was 7364 yuan, while the average cost per injection cosmetic diagnosis and treatment and energy beauty diagnosis and treatment were 2007 yuan and 1841 yuan, respectively.
Although non-surgical services are relatively affordable, high repurchase rates, greater viscosity, and lower risk are more conducive to sustained growth. Global market data also confirms this, it is reported that the market size of non-surgical aesthetic projects increased from $13.8 billion in 2014 to $23.8 billion in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.7%, faster than the surgical service market in the same period, and is expected to reach $41.9 billion in 2023.
As can be seen from the prospectus, the overall gross profit margin of Imer remains above 50%.
BT Finance has written an article to introduce that although the medical beauty industry has always been named as a huge profit, the real profit is the upstream producers, the gross profit margin is usually as high as 80%-95%, such as the "woman's Moutai" Aimeike, the gross profit margin in 2020 is 92.17%, exceeding the same period of data (91.68%) in Guizhou Moutai.
Medical aesthetic institutions such as Yimer are located in the middle of the industry. Gross margins of 50%-65% are normal for midstream companies, with net profit margins usually only 0%-10% and even the possibility of losing money.
As of the first three months of 2018 to 2020, Yimer has been in a state of loss, with operating losses of 38.53 million yuan, 60.25 million yuan and 15.24 million yuan, respectively. After business adjustment, Yimer turned a profit, with an operating profit of 32.18 million yuan in 2020 and 19.88 million yuan in the first three months of 2021.
The main reason for achieving profitability in 2020 was that in addition to an increase in revenue of about 10%, the net profit of a subsidiary that accounted for the joint venture increased by 56.6%, contributing 3.017 million yuan. BT Finance analyzed through the prospectus that this part of the income may come from the sale of Ruilishi (Beijing) in June 2020 and the income from its wholly-owned Beijing Long Island Hospital.
Although Imer ushered in a 119% increase in the first quarter of this year, it remains to be seen whether its profitability can be sustained.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" > marketing veteran</h1>
The two main sources that eat up Imer's profits are the cost of sales and marketing expenses.
The sales cost referred to in the prospectus mainly includes procurement costs, employee costs and depreciation and amortization, which are necessary for the normal operation of the enterprise. Therefore, the focus should be on "sales and marketing expenses".
Specifically, "sales and marketing expenses" are mainly the cost expenses of sales personnel and promotion and marketing expenses. Yimer has as many as 932 sales and marketing personnel, accounting for the heaviest proportion, as high as 43.6%. That said, nearly half of the team exists to market customers.
When Yimer listed on the New Third Board in 2016, it disclosed that its revenue in 2015 was 610 million yuan, but its net profit was only 30.14 million yuan, and its advertising expenses were as high as 160 million yuan.
Although the proportion of Imer's sales and marketing expenses in total revenue decreased year by year from 2018 to 2020, 30.1%, 29.7% and 23.1% respectively, it is undeniable that Imer's ability to make a fortune is a jaw-dropping marketing campaign.
The two founders of Yimer, Wang Yong'an and Li Bin (Note: Public information is also written as "Li Biao" and "Li Bin", this article is based on the prospectus) are college classmates, both are journalists, and they are well versed in the way of traffic.
In 2003, SARS swept the country, and Imer had few customers. In order to win customers, Wang Li picked up the old business of media people - engaging in hot spots, creating news, and carefully planning the sensational "China's first artificial beauty Hao Lulu incident".
According to reports at the time, Hao Lulu performed a series of surgeries on more than ten parts of the body, which lasted nearly 200 days and cost more than 300,000 yuan. Because the joint media tracked and exposed the whole process, it quickly attracted widespread attention from the society, and the brand received a lot of exposure in a short period of time, and Yimer became a hit.
Although there is no revenue data for the year, some relevant reports prove that Imer has achieved fame and fortune through this marketing plan:
When Jinan Hospital was first established in 2000, there were only 3 to 5 surgeries a day, and after the Hao Lulu incident, an average of 5 to 10 surgeries a day were performed, and even 25 surgeries were performed on holidays; and some media said that Yimer's monthly turnover rose from the original 100,000 yuan to 2 or 3 million yuan.
Wang Li did not stop at the success of the Hao Lulu incident, but also set his sights on the entertainment fashion circle with the most spending power in the medical aesthetic plastic surgery market at that time.
In 2005, Imer partnered with Li Yapeng's Yanran Angel Fund, promising to donate a certain amount of free surgery. It is said that in order to facilitate cooperation, Li Bin offered a very tempting condition to obtain Li Yapeng's consent - no matter how much other hospitals offered, Yimer would give it a 20% discount; assuming that one day the foundation ran out of money, as long as Yimer was still there, it would continue to do it.
In 2012, before Li Bin withdrew from Yimer, he also posted on Weibo that Yimer had completed 3,000 cases of cleft lip and palate surgery designated by Yanran Angel Fund. In addition, the "Yanran Angel Hospital" mentioned in the blog post is precisely by Wang Yong'an, Li Bin, Tang Yue and Li Yapeng as founding directors and legal persons.
Through the deep binding with Li Yapeng and his foundation, Imer's brand image has been further enhanced and has begun to enter the vision of more investment institutions.
In 2011, Yimer received a series of financing of 200 million yuan, which was funded by Lenovo Investment and Tiantu Investment; in 2015, Yimer B raised US$100 million, with Huatai Ruilin, CDH Investment and Joy Capital jointly injecting capital. In 2016, Yimer began to try to land on the secondary market, and was listed on the New Third Board in October.
Although it was delisted in less than half a year, through frequent marketing campaigns and capital operations, Yimer has achieved a leap from a small township health center in Beijing to a star chain of plastic surgery institutions with a national layout.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="45" > external and internal troubles</h1>
The second impact on the capital market, Imer is still full of challenges.
The earliest business of Wang and Li was to lease a foreign equipment for a laser strong pulse skin treatment instrument (that is, the photon skin rejuvenation treatment instrument we are now familiar with) to the hospital, earning a share, and the income was very impressive - only two months after the launch, it began to make a profit, and in less than two years it was stationed in more than a dozen top three hospitals in Beijing.
However, the good times did not last long, and the Ministry of Health issued a policy to explicitly order social capital not to participate in the construction of tertiary hospitals. Since the road of public hospitals is not feasible, it is better to build your own hospital. At that time, the ninth production team of Tayuan Village, Dongsheng Township, Haidian District, Beijing, had a hometown hospital, the Red Cross Jianxiang Hospital, which was being sold, and Wang and Li bought it. As a result, the Red Cross Jianxiang Plastic Surgery Hospital (later renamed Yimer Jianxiang Hospital) was born, and Yimer officially entered the ranks of the first batch of private medical aesthetic institutions in China.
It can be seen that the birth of Imer was a product of the policy supervision at that time. In fact, the development of Yimer and even the entire private medical aesthetic institutions is closely related to macro policies.
With the endless chaos in the medical beauty industry and the increasing tightening of policies, since 2017 ushered in the era of strict supervision, the National Health and Family Planning Commission and multiple departments jointly launched a special action to severely crack down on illegal medical beauty behavior.
Strict supervision, to a certain extent, is good news for medical beauty head enterprises, after all, the entry threshold of the medical aesthetic industry has been raised, and a large number of non-compliant institutions have been eliminated, which will help reduce the customer acquisition costs of formal medical aesthetic institutions and increase the market share of leading enterprises.
According to iResearch's "2020 China Medical Beauty Industry Insight White Paper", in 2019, there were about 13,000 institutions with medical beauty qualifications in China, while the number of illegal medical beauty stores exceeded 80,000, and legal medical beauty institutions accounted for only 14% of the industry. It is worth noting that in legal medical aesthetic institutions, there is still a phenomenon of 15% exceeding the scope of operation.
Yimer has been exposed to the publication of false and illegal advertisements, management irregularities and other issues, and its 100% controlled Tianjin Hospital has been fined 230,000 yuan for publishing illegal advertisements. In addition, Yimer's branches in Qingdao, Harbin, Beijing and other branches have been complained by consumers about plastic surgery failures or sequelae.
Although Yimer is a veteran medical beauty enterprise, the frequent occurrence of medical beauty accidents and litigation lawsuits has laid hidden dangers for its future development. Especially after the listing, the information is more transparent, and any negative news will have a bad impact.
In addition, doctor resources will likely become one of the bottlenecks restricting Imer's future development.
According to iResearch Consulting, in 2019, there were more than 100,000 illegal practitioners of medical aesthetics in China, and legal doctors accounted for only 28% of the industry. Since the training period of a regular physician is 5-8 years, the talent gap is huge.
As of March 31, 2021, Imel had 157 physicians in practice and said more than 65 percent were in-house, but the modalities were not specified. In contrast, Huahan Plastic Surgery, a listed company on the New Third Board, has greater advantages, and its subordinate hospitals have carried out all-round cooperation in medical education and research with two universities such as Nanjing Medical University, ensuring talent reserves and transportation.
Of course, investors are most concerned about the profitability of Imer after its listing.
Yimer lost the VAM agreement twice in 2011 and 2016 because it failed to meet its performance commitments, and had to compensate investors for its shares, casting a shadow on its business ability.
As mentioned earlier, Immel mainly relies on marketing advertisements to gain customers. According to reports, before the listing of Yimer on the New Third Board, nearly 75% of Yimer's sales expenses were spent on online and traditional media advertising, the most important of which was Baidu, which amounted to 62.76 million yuan in 2015, accounting for 29.76% of the company's total purchase amount.
In 2016, Baidu's bidding mechanism was adjusted, and at the same time, the downstream Internet medical beauty platform represented by new oxygen began to rise strongly.
BT Finance has analyzed that there is no essential difference between new oxygen and Baidu, and what is earned is the advertising fee sent by medical beauty institutions. What is more absolute about the new oxygen is that in addition to the pit fee and advertising fee, about 10% of the commission will be charged to further squeeze out the medical and aesthetic institutions in the middle reaches, and forced by the pressure of customer acquisition and the power of traffic, the middle reaches do not have much resistance.
This means that the medical and aesthetic institutions in the midstream are under pressure at both ends, and they have to pay the cost of raw material products upwards and the cost of promoting customer acquisition downwards, and their profit margins are in jeopardy.
Although Immel said that it has formed a full-time direct sales team of 736 people, through social fission and other means, it is confident of "gradually reducing the dependence on third-party customer acquisition channels", but it is difficult to ensure that the countermeasures work, and at the same time, it is inevitable to expand the cost of the sales team, which is also under financial pressure.
As a result, public financing has become one of the few options for Immel. However, in today's increasingly standardized industry regulation, stripping away the fancy marketing cloak and leaving Imer with little space and time to prove himself is running out.
#伊美尔 #
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