After the Spring Festival, Wanda continued to "slim down" and become lighter, but Suning continued to increase "weight". "The acquisition of Wanda Department Store by Suning Tesco, I know the time is similar, and I have not received any notice of change for the time being." On February 13, a busy Wanda Department Store worker told the Economic Observer that the Wanda Department Store where she worked was connected to Wanda Plaza in Shijingshan District, Beijing. Another clothing brand store sales staff said that the location here is more like a community department store, not as large as the commercial center of the department store, so the category is not so rich, but the store's annual sales will also increase.
A day ago, the above-mentioned Shijingshan Wanda Department Store had announced a change of ownership. Zhang Jindong, chairman of Suning Tesco, announced at the New Year group meeting that Suning Tesco officially acquired all 37 department stores under Wanda Department Store.
This is the third time that Zhang Jindong and Wang Jianlin have publicly held hands, after Suning and Wanda invested 9.5 billion yuan to buy about 3.91% of Wanda Commercial in January last year, which in the eyes of the outside world, the two are not only similar in age and like-minded, but also have a closer relationship.
Wanda, which once had unlimited scenery, is now shrinking its business line, and Wang Jianlin did not even mention the Wanda Department Store business at the 2018 annual meeting.
In recent years, Ali has invested heavily in RT-Mart, Hualian, Xinhuadu, Yintai and other supermarkets, jd.com has acquired The Jade Palace Hotel, and at the same time, most of the offline retail groups have also completed the transformation and took sides.
Behind the ups and downs of the capital market, it remains to be seen whether Suning can make up for the department store puzzle and revitalize Wanda Department Store, or whether the integration is not effective and become a "mess".
Closing phase
Cooperation with Wanda is an important part of Suning's development format, and the two have a deep relationship before. On September 6, 2015, Suning Yunshang and Wanda Lightning alliance, Suning Tesco Cloud Store and other brands into the opening or about to open Wanda Plaza operation, and in the future, every year, the two sides will determine a batch of cooperation projects according to the opening of Wanda Plaza, Wanda can also customize planning and design according to the needs of Suning Yunshang.
On December 19, 2017, Suning Chairman Zhang Jindong did the east in Nanjing, convened more than 300 well-known real estate developers across the country, including Wanda, Evergrande, Greenland, Country Garden and other real estate industry leaders, and released a long-brewed large-scale development plan: by 2020, Suning's offline stores will exceed 20,000, that is, within three years, it will be 5 times higher than that. The size of the transaction will hit the big target of 4 trillion yuan. "Judging from Wang Jianlin's ranking at that time, Wanda is very important to Suning," a person who did not want to name Suning told the Economic Observer, although no further cooperation with Wanda was announced, he felt that after the launch of the big development strategy, there should be a package plan for Wanda. Shortly thereafter, in January 2018, Suning Tesco announced the purchase of about 3.91% of Wanda Commercial. In March last year, Wanda Department Store was caught in a sale storm, and there were rumors that Yintai would take over, but at the time, the two sides did not respond clearly to the matter, and then there was no follow-up. As soon as the news of Suning taking over Wanda Department Store came out, it did not make the outside world have too much surprise, but it was a natural call to be very high.
According to the information provided by Suning, most of the 37 Wanda Department Stores in the country acquired are located in the CBD or downtown areas of first- and second-tier cities, with more than 4 million members. However, from 2014 to 2016, Wanda Department Store's total revenue fell from 10.56% to less than 7%, at the same time, since 2015, under the impact of Internet technology, the traditional department store industry is difficult to make a profit has become a common disease in the industry, and Internet companies have begun to acquire and provide technical support to help the transformation of traditional industries.
Wanda Department Store occupies a large position in Wanda Plaza, is a site selection, investment, construction as the core of the team, Bailian Information founder Zhuang Shuai told the Economic Observer, the main reason for its loss is not responsible for category planning, shopping guide training, background inventory information management and other management team. "Wanda consciously began to optimize the industrial structure, stripping away heavy assets such as hotels and department stores, and also gave Suning, which urgently needs to replenish the department store sector." Jiang Zezhong, a professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business, told reporters.
However, Suning has not disclosed too much about the subsequent personnel allocation of Wanda Department Store and business integration. A Suning insider told reporters that the follow-up operation and personnel arrangements need to wait for the completion of the project before being determined, and during this transition period, the two sides will maintain good communication to ensure the stability of the team and personnel.
According to the latest revised relevant regulations of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the transaction amount (including the assumption of debts and expenses) accounts for more than 10% of the latest audited net assets of the listed company, and the absolute amount of more than 10 million yuan of transaction information needs to be disclosed, according to the net assets of Suning Tesco's 2017 annual report of 78.958 billion yuan, the acquisition amount should be less than 7.896 billion yuan.
However, many experts said that the price is too high to calculate, the purchase price and asset prices are likely to be unequal, if combined with the A-share department store sector, the purchase price is about 2-3 billion yuan.
For the relevant information of the acquisition of Wanda Department Store, Suning said that it has not yet met the information disclosure standards of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. After the completion of the project, the company will disclose it in a timely manner in its 2019 periodic report.
Acquisition logic
Before the Spring Festival, Zhang Jindong further promoted brand integration, subdivided the retail group and established five major commodity groups: FMCG, fashion department stores, international, home appliances and consumer electronics. The Economic Observer learned that Wanda Department Store will be injected into Suning Retail Fashion Department Store Group, and President Gong Zhenyu will be responsible for follow-up related business. Gong Zhenyu was also in charge of life home and Suning international business, and he joined in 1998 and was an early core employee of Suning.
The predecessor of Wanda Department Store, Wanqian Department Store, was founded in 2007 and was once one of the four pillar industries under Wanda Group, "At that time, Wanda's operating idea was to promote the department store business by the flow of people in commercial real estate, and then the department store business to help the business of other merchants in commercial real estate," Yan Yuejin of E-House Research Institute told the Economic Observer. The early development of Wanda Department Store was so rapid that the scale of the early Wanda Department Store rushed to 110 in its heyday.
It is worth noting that after 2015, wanda department store business still has not provided stable blood supply to the group, and its poor operating ability has led to a growing loss, and in this year, Wang Jianlin said, "To close half of the domestic department stores", this big move adjustment has triggered heated discussions from the outside world. In recent years, the department store industry has gradually withered, and after in-depth reflection, Wanda has excluded department stores from the queue of the main core business, which is also Wanda's determination to optimize its industrial structure and transform into an asset-light.
In the past few years, in order to create a full-scene retail lifestyle experience, Zhang Jindong has launched formats such as "Suning Jiwu", "Su Xiansheng", "Suning Xiaodian", "Suning Retail Cloud", and Suning's categories have gradually expanded from home appliances and 3C to supermarket FMCG, maternal and infant, home and other fields.
In Zhang Jindong's view, the acquisition of Wanda Department Store is an important step in the company's 2019 all-scenario retail layout. Gong Zhenyu, president of Suning Retail Fashion Department Store, said that we will create a new core competitiveness of department stores through the ability to output smart retail CPUs, and further improve the layout of all scenarios and categories.
Back to suning's acquisition of Wanda Department Store, the two companies can also take what they need. Since 2016, the online traffic dividend has peaked, the competition has become more and more fierce, the price has also risen, since Ali proposed the concept of "new retail", other e-commerce giants have also joined the change, occupying the industry highland in the way of offline feeding online.
Zhang Jindong's "new retail" layout is ambitious, in the past two years, Suning has continuously opened stores, attaching great importance to offline business, as of 2018, Suning has opened more than 8,000 new stores, including Suning Small Store, Suning Tesco Plaza, etc. In addition, Suning has also rapidly expanded its ecological layout from the outside through strategic cooperation and mergers and acquisitions.
From the current point of view, Yintai Department Store has sold ali, and the chain degree of local department stores is not enough, "there are not many companies that can choose for Suning," Zhuang Shuai said. Cao Lei, director of the E-commerce Research Center, believes that wanda group's commercial real estate and department stores are also cost-effective targets, and Wanda also needs to sell some assets to withdraw funds.
"After Suning took over Wanda Department Store, due to the dilution of costs and the sharing of resources, the cost was greatly reduced, which increased profit margins and made the performance of the department store look better." Jiang Zezhong believes that Suning will use the model of Suning Department Store to replace the model of Wanda Department Store in the future, otherwise, the impact of the two models is the most prone to contradictions and conflicts in the acquisition process and the danger that the performance cannot meet expectations.
For the planning of future products, Suning related people told reporters that in addition to retaining the original categories of Wanda Department Store such as clothing, shoes and hats, gold jewelry, sports and outdoors, it will also modularize its own innovative formats and eight major industrial resources with department stores and interact with innovation.
At present, whether it is Ali "new retail", Suning "smart retail", Jingdong "borderless retail", etc., in the process of online and offline online integration, there is no successful case recognized by the industry, "omni-channel retail is the trend, there is no so-called offline online division in the future" Niu Donglai of the Capital University of Economics and Business told reporters that the trend of retail industry development is to build on the integration of resources on the information technology platform, and will form a number of large chains and multi-format layouts based on brands and platforms. Integrating the resources of the third- and fourth-tier advantageous retail industry and establishing a fair collaborative cooperation system are the core issues in the development of large chains and multi-format formats, and are the problems that need to be studied in the retail industry in a period of rapid change.