Decrease 2.2 billion in 3 years, and SOUL went to Hong Kong to continue his life

Recently, Soul, known as the "first share of the social Yuan universe", focuses on the social network of young people, submitted an application for listing in Hong Kong. According to the prospectus, Soul's revenue was 1.281 billion yuan in 2021, and the monthly active users reached 31.69 million, and the average daily active users were 9.3 million, which doubled from three years ago. Among them, 74.9%of the monthly active users were Z For generations (young people born after 1995). The market gives SOUL valuation of $ 2 billion, which is equivalent to twice that of Momo's Mother's Ziwen Group.

On June 10, SOUL withdrew the application for listing in the United States. In May last year, Soul submitted a listing application to the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission). The consideration of other capital operations decides to suspend the IPO process first. Its major shareholder Tencent also supports this decision. "

On the other side of the user's growth, SOUL has insufficient hematopoietic ability, seriously relying on investment and financing, and risks such as social safety supervision of strangers, and also laid land mines for the company's operations. Established in 2016, with the concept of "soul social", Soul prominently siege in the social field of strangers in the Z era. Will Soul go public like this again this time?

01

Three years of loss 2.25 billion

At the beginning of the establishment of young people in the Z era, Soul played a "not looking at the face" soul dating model with Momo and the exploration of Momo and the exploration of Momo and the exploration. It was driven by the algorithm and was driven by interest.

In less than two years, Soul has captured a large wave of young people after the 95th, and survived more than 1 million a day. According to the information of the prospectus, the growth rate of SOUL's revenue is very rapid. In the three years from 2019 to 2021, the revenue reached 70 million yuan, 5 billion yuan, and 1.28 billion yuan, respectively, with an average three -year growth rate of 3.85 times.

However, the price of revenue growth is to burn money crazy. Data show that in the past three years, SOUL spending on sales and marketing has reached 2 billion yuan, 620 million yuan, and 1.51 billion yuan, respectively. 100 million yuan, 580 million yuan, and 1.32 billion yuan, a cumulative loss of 2.25 billion yuan in three years.

It is the gold owner behind it to support Soul, Tencent. The prospectus shows that Tencent is the largest institutional shareholder of Soul, holding 49.9%of the shares, and a company's 25.7%voting right. In contrast, SOUL founder Zhang Lu holds 32%and has 65%voting rights. In addition, Mihayou, Yuansheng Capital, Wuyuan Capital, GGV, etc. also hold shares.

▲ Figure: soul official micro

In 2020, Tencent, through its imaging architecture (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd., was US $ 135 million in Soul, and the company's financial crisis was eliminated. The following year's SOUL US stocks failed, and Tencent Union Mihayou voted another $ 177 million, accounting for 5.47%of the shares. With the continuous transfusion of gold, the growth model has been significantly effective in a short period of time. From 2019 to 2021, the scale of SOUL users has doubled growth. MAUs were 11.5 million, 20.8 million, and 3.1.6 million, respectively, and DAUs were 3.3 million, 5.9 million, and 9.3 million, respectively, more than doubled.

But from the perspective of returning to Soul's own hematopoietic ability, it is obviously not enough to support its growth ambitions.

From the perspective of business models, SOUL's revenue is too single. The prospectus shows that before 2019, all the revenue of Soul came to value -added services, that is, virtual gifts and membership ordering. In 2020, SOUL began to try to expand the advertising business, and developed an advertising package for corporate advertising. The prospectus showed that the advertising business achieved revenue of RMB 113 million in the second half of 2020 and the annual revenue of 2021 Only 6.1%.

Since 2021, SOUL also obtained some income income through new business malls. Good things are the functions of sending physical gifts through private chat dialog boxes, such as snacks. E -commerce earns less than 1 million yuan a year.

The current SOUL's revenue mainly relies on its value -added services, and the proportion of revenue brought by advertising and e -commerce business does not exceed 10%. This means that SOUL has a hand -to -hand traffic but cannot be well realized.

02

The concept of the Yuan universe is not good

In terms of commercialization, Soul thought about a way out and entered the Yuan universe.

In the text in its prospectus, the first sentence: We are committed to creating a "social Yuan universe" with Soul as links with users. This is also a great weapon for Soul to tell stories to the capital market.

Different from the previous strangers, Zhang Lu, the founder and CEO of Soul explained to the concept of the social Yuan universe, the true meaning of the social Yuan universe is born in the real world, parallel to the real world, and immersed in immersion Social scenario that is strong and always online. And have a complete operation economy, data, digital items, content and IP.

In the prospectus, Soul disclosed in detail a plan to continue to develop and invest in social Yuan universe in the future. Among them, technical investment will be the key to the development of Soul's social Yuan universe. In the future, it will use 3D modeling technology to customize the whole body Avatars on the basis of the existing NAWA engine. In addition, Soul stated that it will continue to explore the integrated application of extension reality (XR) technology, and finally realize the virtualization of users and space, so that each user has a whole set of virtual assets and space. The profit space of Soul in the social Yuan universe is to sell these virtual assets and charge the costs incurred in user transactions.

In terms of virtual asset monetization, Soul made a lot of attempts. A monetization direction of virtual assets is to sell avatars. Let users replace the user's real photos with virtual avatars. On Soul, in order to avoid social obstacles caused by appearance, young people choose to design and buy and sell Avatars (virtual avatars) to express themselves. In addition, the platform also has a personalized element universe dressing function similar to QQ show and QQ space, which can build virtual images through personality testing and labels; to buy soul coins to achieve self -image dressing, virtual pets, props and other decorations, etc. Buy, etc.

▲ Figure: soul official micro

In the Yuan universe world built by Soul, there are many game scenarios such as Soul Wolves to provide an immersive experience. However, in the SOUL Yuan universe plan, the most important revenue comes from advertising. Soul's point of view is that the "Yuan Cosmic Advertising" will become the main contributor of the realization of the Yuan universe. In the future, we can continue to expand the boundaries of advertising production by inserting digital billboards in the cities of the universe. For example, Soul has previously been customized for Chevrolet.

Soul's "Social Yuan Universe Concept" is still a long distance from landing. Regarding the concept of the Yuan universe, what is more common at present is the virtual world that uses scientific and technological means to link and create, and has a digital living space with a new social system with a new social system. The Yuan universe should have systems such as economic systems, immersive experiences, open and free creation, strong social, virtual identity and other systems.

These planets have layouts in SOUL, but they are actually splitting each other. For example, the logic of its economic system is a single item. Users purchase virtual currency by recharge, while virtual currency can only purchase gifts or customize personal virtual images, not a complete economic cycle. In terms of creative space, currently only providing posting, pinching and audio recording on Soul, there is no more valuable and precipitated content soil.

At present, the concept of the Yuan universe is still in the early days of development, and the market has not yet reached a consensus on the concept of the Yuan universe. The various technologies involved in the Yuan universe are complicated, and the R & D expenses and time cycles to pay for this are still longer.

Internet analyst Zhang Shule once told the Daily Economic News that the hardware conditions required by the Yuan universe, that is, the lightweight and high -definition of VR or AR are far immature, and the corresponding software space is the Yuan universe platform. Therefore, Even when the concept of the Yuan universe broke out, the actual landing needed at least the 'five -year plan'. The core difficulty of the concept of the Yuan universe is that the corresponding technology is immature, and the lack of the sense of substitution and immersion in social gameplay.

This is a good story for the capital market, but it is difficult to solve the problem of commercialization of Soul in the short term.

03

Social software of strangers

Destined

The social attributes of strangers determine the adhesion of the platform, but only three minutes of heat. In essence, this business imagination is limited, and it is accompanied by the risks of dangerous user security. While Soul brought together a large amount of users, it was accompanied by various cyber fraud cases. Data show that the "pig -killing" fraud cases on SOUL can only be counted as high as 8.97 million.

Although SOUL continued to make efforts to reduce fraud in educational users and maximize the reduction of fraud through big data screening, many fraud cases still broke out.

This is also a difficult problem in the development of social software. This risk laid hidden dangers for the sustainable development of Soul. On the other hand, although taking the Yuan -Universe Express can provide more imaginative story space for the capital market, it is limited by the restrictions on the development of the Yuan universe in the field of the universe in the country, and the risks are still greater. Moreover, a major difficulty faced by strangers is that so far, the industry has not found the additional ecological value that can give users a stable, except for social networking.

Senior Momo has not found the curve of continuous growth. As the Internet dividend continues to fade, Momo's performance development has entered a bottleneck period. According to the first quarter of the 2022 financial report of Momo Mother's Ziwen Group, Momo's net revenue in the first quarter was 3.148 billion yuan, which showed a year -on -year decline in nine consecutive quarters, and the net profit fell 37.35%year -on -year to 289 million yuan.

Momo former CEO Tang Yan said in an interview that Momo was listed when the growth curve was the most beautiful. At present, Soul's monthly active users and growth are slowing down, and they have missed the most beautiful growth curve.

The old -fashioned competitors are still strong, and the new players have ushered in explosive growth. Although the size of the old -fashioned competitors Momo and the exploration users continue to decline. Data show that from the third quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021, the scale of the exploration and payment households has dropped from 4.1 million to 2.5 million. However, from the perspective of overall users, Momo's market share is much higher than Soul. According to the financial report of Zhiwen Group, the MAU of Zhiwen Group in December 2021 was 114.1 million, and the same period last year was 113.8 million, which was nearly 4 times that of Soul. For new players, Soul is also facing strong competitors. For example, byte beating has just acquired POLIQ, a startup company focusing on two -dimensional virtual social business. At the end of 2020, the company launched a virtual social product "VYOU Weili", which is basically the same as Soul in terms of social Yuan universe concept construction.

Poliq's threat to Soul is that the founder Ma Jiezi has experienced experience in the VR field. He has served as the head of the VR industry and senior director of VR and AR in HTC and Xiaomi. All in all, the social software of strangers is always a flash. Momo, the exploration represents the social network of strangers after the 8090s, and the young people rushed to the younger Soul, the younger generation, and the social software of their strangers will usher in their strangers.

Social Yuan cosmicization may be the future trend, but Soul may not be able to settle "the first share of the social Yuan universe". Based on the audit speed of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since this year, and the usual practice of most new listed companies will fail after 6 months, Soul may not be available until next year.

Author ｜ Zhang Yao

Edit ｜ Hu Zhanjia

Operation ｜ Chen Jiahui

Title ｜ SOUL Official Weir

Produced ｜ Zero -state LT (ID: lingtai_lt)

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