Text/Yiqing GPLP
A year ago, in the face of the market's doubts about Meitu, Meitu Chairman Cai Wensheng said: In 2018, Meitu will be fully profitable, and the institutions that sold Meitu may regret it, and Meitu's goal is 300 billion market value.
The Meitu interim report shows that in the first half of this year, Meitu's total revenue was 2.052 billion, down 5.9% from 2.18 billion in the same period last year. It's not good. But Meitu is pleased to announce that our loss has narrowed, from a loss of 131 million last year to a loss of 127 million, a decrease of 3.4% year-on-year.
The share price then plunged 13% to a market capitalization of about HK$17.16 billion as of today (August 23). According to the market value of 300 billion yuan advocated by Cai Wensheng, there is still a lot of road.
The first decline in revenue was a bit ominous
Meitu released its 2018 interim results report. According to the data, in the first half of 2018, Meitu achieved operating income of 2.052 billion yuan, compared with 2.18 billion yuan in the same period of 2017, a decrease of 5.9%, which is the first decline in revenue since the listing of Meitu, in addition to the growth of more than 50% in the half year of 2015, the previous annual report or semi-annual report, Meitu's revenue growth is more than 100%.
In addition to the decline in performance, the number of monthly active users of Meitu has also dropped sharply. As of June 30 this year, Meitu had 350 million monthly active users, down 15.9% from 416 million at the end of last year. Under the impact of emerging platforms such as Douyin and Weishi, Meipai's monthly active users are falling from 98.139 million at the end of last year to 42.767 million in the first half of this year, a decline of 56.4%. This is not the same as the data of Meitu's peak period.
In the 2017 semi-annual report, the total number of monthly active users announced by Meitu was as high as 481 million, compared with 131 million users lost in the first half of this year, down as much as 27.23%; at that time, Meipai had 152 million monthly active users.
The market value of 100 billion yuan has shrunk by 80%.
Under the triple decline in revenue, products, and active users, since the listing in 2016 caused a sensation, Meitu has still not solved its own profit problem. Meitu's net loss in the first half of 2018 was 127 million yuan, narrowing by 3.4% compared to 131 million yuan in the same period of 2017.
In terms of cumulative losses, this data is more frightening, the data shows that the overall loss of Meitu in 2017 was 197 million yuan, and the overall loss in 2016 was 6.26 billion yuan, which means that meitu has accumulated losses of nearly 6.5 billion yuan since 2016.
Meitu was listed on the Hong Kong stock market in December 2016, and although the market has a lot of controversy about Meitu, Meitu's stock price was crazy at one point. Four months after its listing, on March 20, 2017, Meitu's share price once hit 23 yuan, with a market value of nearly 100 billion Hong Kong dollars.
However, just today (August 23), Meitu's market capitalization is now only about HK$171.6.
Institutional investors have almost completely withdrawn
Meitu's institutional investors, including IDG, Qiming Venture Capital, Innovation Factory, Tiger Global Fund, etc., have earned rich returns after Meitu's listing and have sold after the half-year ban period. According to the data, the major shareholders of Meitu held more than 88% of the shares when it was listed, and by the end of last year, only about 66% was left, except for IDG, which still held 6.45%, other institutional investors have disappeared.
In May 2017, Cai Rongjia, the son of Meitu's chairman, reduced his stake in the company several times, with a cash amount of more than 900 million. At that time, Hong Kong media quoted Zhang Zhiwei, co-director of Xincheng Securities, as saying that although Cai Rongjia is not the controlling shareholder, the father-son relationship with Cai Wensheng is actually like "the same person", and now its bright and just reduction is not illegal, and it is expected that the company may have decided to deploy it before listing, and even suspected that the stock price speculation was related to the incident.
And Cai Wensheng himself was once rumored to be related to coin speculation, "Cai Wensheng claimed to be optimistic about the blockchain, perhaps in order to let ordinary investors buy bitcoin, resulting in a short-term rise in bitcoin, for Cai Wensheng, who holds about 10,000 bitcoins, it is just possible to sell at a high price and earn the difference." ”
"When ordinary investors came back, Cai Wensheng had already 'shelled the cicada', just as on April 29, 2014, Cai Wensheng stepped down as chairman of 4399 in response to the rumored incident of 'stock fraud'." A Bitcoin investor said.