In the winter, Fang Hongbo lifted the knife again

Source | Bohufn

Author | Li Xia

In May of this year, a Meimei employee suddenly received the news of being optimized, and I was so emotional that he wrote his "graduation speech" in the Midea internal forum.

(Message from Midea Old Employees Source: Network)

After seeing the current Midea Group, Fang Hongbo, after seeing it, it was sad for a while, returned hundreds of words, and finally borrowed Zhang Ailing's words to encourage employees who were optimized or unbound: as if they would not work hard tomorrow, like tomorrow I will definitely dream.

All in all, this time, the member of the United States ruled.

Old crafts for more than ten years

According to interface news reports, Midea's layoffs began in March, and subsequent efforts have continued to increase. According to insiders estimates, the proportion of layoffs was 20%. At the end of 2021, Midea employees 165,800, that is, about 30,000 people must be cut off.

The last large -scale layoff was ten years ago. In 2011, there were 32,000 Midea electrical layoffs listed on the market, setting a record of layoffs of A -share listed companies at that time. (Before 2013, Midea's listing name "Midea Electric" was reorganized after rectification, and the name was changed to "Midea Group")

At that time, the reason why Midea was so large -scale was because the country had subsidized home appliances to the countryside before, and Midea made "large -scale+low cost" expansion to seize the market. At the end of 2008, the total number of Midea electrical appliances was 40,800. At the end of 2010, this number became 98,700. With the disappearance of the home appliance subsidy policy, there is a problem with this model.

In 2011, the growth rate of Midea's revenue slowed down significantly compared with the previous year. In 2012, the revenue even increased by 23%. This year, Fang Hongbo officially helped Midea, and the founder He Xiangjian stepped down. Under the critical situation, Fang Hongbo made architecture adjustments in the organization, promoted flat management, and streamlined structures to improve organizational efficiency. Specific operations were closing shops, layoffs, and salary reduction.

In the following years, Midea's rejuvenation, especially in net profit, increased by 35%year -on -year in 2013, increased by 40%year -on -year in 2014, and net profit reached 11.6 billion.

Looking back at 2014, Fang Hongbo said that "one year's profit is equivalent to the past three years" is "the best period of history." At that time, Fang Hongbo, who was full of ambition, set his goal, "By 2017, the sales were 200 billion yuan, and the total number of employees was controlled within 100,000."

(Number of employees in 2015)

In 2015, the number of employees of Midea Group was 93,000. But since then, Midea has not completely followed Fang Hongbo's script.

In 2016, Midea's official website announced the completion of the acquisition of Toshiba appliances, and in the same year, the Italian central air -conditioning enterprise Clivet was acquired. In 2017, Midea announced that he would transform into a science and technology group. In that year, he acquired the German KU card robot in the field of automated manufacturing, and soon acquired Israeli Corporation in the field of servo motors and sports control.

After the continuous acquisition, Midea's revenue in 2017 exceeded 241.9 billion, but on the other hand, the number of employees soared to 136,800. In the following two years, the number of employees of Midea Group entered a stable period, 134,900 in 2019.

The epidemic in the past two years has changed this stable structure. After entering the epidemic in 2020, Midea employees did not increase and increase, reaching 165,800 at the end of 2021.

At the same time, after 2017, Midea's revenue stumbled for three consecutive years to individual digits. In 2021, the growth rate reached 20%, but the group's net profit only increased by 5.49%, and the number of digits of single digits increased for two consecutive years. The profit problem behind this seems even more severe.

This situation seemed to have known each other ten years ago, and it was time for Fang Hongbo to perform slimming.

Bao Da also Bao Xiao

At the conference call on May 6, Fang Hongbo said: "The industry will face major difficulties in the next three years, and it is an unprecedented cold winter." After two months of discussion with management, "made difficult choices in the struggle", "stopped non -core business and tightened non -core categories", so there was the scene where the old employee had left the post.

It is the inevitable development of Midea Group's strategic development.

Midea must not want to be led by the label of "home appliances" with his nose, and he had a "different mind" for home appliances. In 2004, Midea entered the automotive industry through the acquisition of Yunnan Bus Factory, Yunnan Aerospace Shenzhou Automobile Co., Ltd. and Hunan Sanxiang Bus.

In 2010, Midea's acquisition of Mei Zhi Optoelectronics, which was engaged in lighting and smart front -loading products; in 2016, Midea established Meiyunzhi to provide enterprises with SaaS services; the following year, Midea's logistics service providers were renamed Ande Zhilian to provide services to third -party enterprises.

In 2017, Midea announced the transformation technology group. In the year, the acquisition of KUKA and Gao Chuang, the number of employees soared. However, when the epidemic economy was economic downturn, the beauty was acquired in reverse and accelerated diversified.

In March 2020, Midea's subsidiary of 743 million yuan acquired Hekang New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and began the layout of energy conservation and environmental protection, new energy vehicles and other businesses. In December of the same year, Midea Group's HVAC and Building Division acquired Lingwang Elevator and entered the elevator business. Soon after, Midea acquired Thailand's Hitachi compressor factory.

At the end of 2020, Midea's public account issued a post to update the original four major business sectors into five major business sectors. In addition to 2C's smart home business group, there are 2B mechanical and electrical business groups, HVAC and building division, robot and automation business department And digital innovation business. In 2021, Midea's 2.3 billion took over Orte -like Medical in Yuyue Technology and entered the field of medical imaging. On April 26 this year, Midea Group's Midea Industrial Technology announced the acquisition of Wuhan's "Tianteng Power" and entered the two rounds of travel markets. Recently, Midea planned to scold about 2.2 billion yuan to win the actual control of Kuku Electronics.

Seeing this, there is a clever reader confused: this is not right. On the one hand, the future is an unprecedented cold winter. How sad and unusual depicted the layoffs, on the other hand out?

Let's take a look at the guiding ideology of this layoffs: retain the "Four Great and Four Smalls", and other shutdown and transfer.

The "four major" refers to Midea's robots and automation, building technology, new energy vehicle components, and energy storage business;

In addition to the "Four Great and Four Small", what else can be left.

New card and old card

The layoffs are generally subject to the environment, such as last year's education industry. However, there are also some companies that make people feel that they are using the environment as a term, layoffs to expand a new round of expansion. Their fascination operation is the left -handed layoffs and the right hand recruits people.

Midea's behavior is a bit similar. Speaking, you still look at data.

According to a former beauty employee, compared with the cost of labor, raw material costs have a greater impact on manufacturing companies.

In the past two years, raw materials have risen sharply. In the cost composition of the US appliances, the proportion of raw materials in 2021 accounted for 84.5%of revenue, an increase of 30.6 billion year -on -year. In contrast, labor wages accounted for only 5.9%. Even compared with 2019 (134,900 employees), wages increased by 2.5 billion. That is to say, the money that can be saved by layoffs can be salary.

But why is the employees of the home appliances?

The financial report in 2021 shows that Midea's revenue was 3412 billion, a year -on -year increase of 20%. Among them, the five sections of the five sectors of smart home business groups, industrial technology business groups, building science and technology divisions, robots and automation business departments, and digital innovation business achieved 234.9 billion yuan, respectively. 201 billion, 19.7 billion yuan, 25.3 billion yuan, and 8.3 billion yuan, the growth rates were 13%, 44%, 55%, 23%, and 51%, respectively.

Smart home, that is, home appliances, still showed its own, contributed 68.8%of revenue, and supported most of the sky, but it has been dragged on the growth rate.

Midea revealed in the 2021 financial report that in the future, it will pay attention to the "parallel development" of 2B and 2C business, realize "stock upgrade" on 2C, and achieve "incremental creation" on 2B.

In the middle of this seemingly incredible wording sentence, it can be seen that Midea's positioning of the five business sectors in the future: the four business segments of 2B will be the growth engine, and the 2C smart home will stabilize the basic disk of revenue. On the premise, attack high -end -such as Colmo.

High -end is obviously not a problem of many people. On the contrary, if the future manpower and material resources are placed in the remaining four sectors, there may be miracles.

The first quarter report of the Chinese home appliance industry in China shows that in the first quarter of this year, the domestic home appliance industry sales were 154 billion yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 12.3%.

Home appliances are not a long time to stay, and Midea has long seen different thoughts, but it has been tossing for so many years and has nothing to improve. However, with the significant acquisition of KUKA in 2017, Midea is bound to set up the brand of "technology" this time, and the old brand of "home appliances" will slowly collect it.

Whether it is beautiful or Gree or Haier, they have occupied the hills of home appliances, but like all large factories, they need to find new targets and continue to create value for shareholders.

The giants standing on the hills have a high starting point, and it is very simple to get started across banks, but after that, I can only see the creation of it. After all, Gree mobile phone has persisted for 7 years. 18 years ago, the beauty also built a car. On the new track, everyone's experience is zero. It is full of risks, but it is also full of proliferation of capital desire.

Reference source:

1. China Broadcasting Network: Midea's layoffs of 30,000 founding A -share listed companies may be forced by annual report pressure

2. Hexun.com: Fang Hongbo continues to serve as the chairman of the United States: 30 years of hard work and dare to do more

3. Chinese Entrepreneurs: Fang Hongbo, Chairman of Midea: Midea still has three major problems in the best period of history to be solved

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