Litchi, is it turned over or given the ear economy again?

Speaking of ears economy, a little analysis and prospects can come up with the same conclusion. Some of the tracks play.

Some play in the play, the ears economy has a huge user foundation, and the ears economy has a great expansion boundary.

But the players who look back at this track seem to have a little "lying".

This lying is reflected in, in addition to the old players of litchi, Himalayan, and the tentative layout of a few giants, few new players enter the venue and the capital is also extremely calm;

In addition, the old players in the track either trapped the vortex of burning money, or long -term losses, whether revenue and user growth were weak, and even declined.

Yesterday evening, Litchi announced the unaudited financial report in the second quarter of 2022. The financial report showed that the lychee was profitable and it was profitable for three consecutive quarters. For the Ear Economic Circuit, it is undoubtedly a positive signal that has been waiting for several years. Essence

In this financial report, in addition to the benefits of profit, the revenue and users of litchi have experienced negative growth. From this long -term perspective, revenue and users' negative growth are far more terrible than losses. Essence

Did the litchi turn over?

In the Ear Economic Circuit, Litchi is undoubtedly lucky, and logs to the capital market with the first role of audio.

The reason for luck is that lychee has seized a good time for listing. For example, Himalayan, which performs better than lychee in all aspects. Because of the time to miss the opportunity, there have been many times outside the door of the capital market. How to transfuse blood and anxiety.

From this perspective, Litchi is really lucky. It was successfully listed on Nasdaq in early 2020, which relieved the lack of money to a certain extent, but the listing did not fundamentally solve the operating dilemma of litchi.

According to its second quarter performance, net profit was 18.9 million yuan, which was the profit of 16.4 million yuan in the first quarter, and the profit was positive for another quarter after the profit of 8.9 million yuan in the fourth quarter of last year.

That is, litchi has achieved three consecutive quarters of profit, which is obviously gratifying, especially the profit growth rate is very considerable. But after investing the profit growth, F will find that this is not entirely happy for litchi.

On the other side of the profit rolling and continuous growth, its overall revenue growth rate continues to slow, especially in the second quarter of this year, negative growth has occurred.

The financial report shows that the net revenue of lychee Q2 was 516 million yuan, which was 559 million yuan in the same period last year, a year -on -year decrease of 7.8%. In the first quarter of this year, Litchi revenue was 517 million yuan, a year -on -year increase of 4.4%; in the fourth quarter of last year, revenue was 420.3 million yuan, a year -on -year increase of 33%.

The decline in this growth rate is very scary to compare horizontally. The growth rate in the three quarters dropped from 33%to 7.8%. Seeing the key indicator of a company in the future is the growth rate of revenue.

Back in essence, profit continues to increase, but revenue continues to decline. There is only one reason for this situation, that is, litchi is constantly shrinking costs, especially camp promotion and marketing costs.

The financial report data shows that the operating expenditure of Litchi in the second quarter was RMB 161.6 million, compared with 190.3 million yuan in the same period last year.

Among them, sales and marketing expenditures have been greatly reduced, with 60.8 million yuan in the same period last year to 106.3 million yuan, which is mainly due to brand promotion and marketing costs.

The decrease in promotion and marketing costs not only directly leads to the decline in revenue growth, but also to turn negative. More importantly, users have also experienced large -scale decreases.

The financial report shows that the average monthly active user of the mobile terminal in the second quarter was 49.7 million, compared with 60.9 million in the same period last year, a decrease of more than 10 million; the average monthly paid user was 485,100, and the same period last year was 494,400.

It is not difficult to see from here that the burning of money has slowed slightly, and active users have a "avalanche" situation. Pay users who have a high proportion of the original proportion also have a lot of loss.

If the loss of users is the direct result of the reduction of marketing expenditure, the reduction of revenue will undoubtedly affect the income division of the creator, and further combat the creator confidence.

The financial report also shows that the revenue cost of lychee in the second quarter was RMB 340.1 million. In contrast, the same period last year was 4005 million yuan, mainly due to the decline in revenue, the income division cost decreased.

In deep into the vicious circle, the ears economy is difficult to get out of the mud

It is not difficult to see from some key indicators of the lychee financial report that litchi is caught in a vicious circle of burning money for users and revenue.

Of course, this may be the current common problem of the entire ear economic track. In addition to lychee, the situation of the Himalayan is also the same.

According to the data of the Himalayan prospectus, according to the prospectus data, from 2019 to 2021, Himalayan marketing expenditure was 1.219 billion yuan, 1.707 billion yuan, and 2.63 billion yuan, but on the other hand, at the same time, Himalayan revenue increased by 82.2% year -on -year, respectively. , 51.1%and 43.7%.

In other words, Himalayan spent double money and in exchange for the cutting of revenue growth, which also means that once the marketing expenditure is reduced, the positive revenue growth rate of Himalayan is also a high probability.

There are multiple reasons behind this:

First, although the ear economy has a strong user base, the user's willingness to pay is not strong. For example, litchi has nearly 50 million monthly work, but the paid users are less than 500,000; %; On the other side of the paid rate, the paid unit price of the ear economy is also very low. Take Himalayan as an example. From 2019 to 2021, the monthly payment amount of a single user is 11.6 yuan, 10.8 yuan, and 11.2 yuan, because the long-term long-term because of the long-term period, because the long-term is long-term Marketing such as subsidies and joint members, which leads to users' dependence on subsidies very strong;

Second, the ears economy is different from other network services such as short videos. Because of the attributes of listening, it can expand the boundary very small at the advertising level.

This is not difficult to see this from the income structure of the lychee. Taking litchi as an example, according to business, this year's Q2 audio and entertainment revenue is 513 million yuan, accounting for more than 95%; while podcasts, advertising and other revenue J Only 26.76 million yuan;

Third, the ears economy in the network content industry has always played the role of supplemers, that is, non -rigid needs, that is, to survive in the gaps of mainstream services such as social, news, short videos, and long videos. However, it is only for the rest of the demand for mainstream needs, and can be replaced at any time.

Therefore, it is not difficult for us to see that players of the Ear Economic Circuit, from continuous expansion of the boundaries, from radio, to audiobooks, to knowledge payment, podcasts, and even music.

And this model has led to the continuous rise in the cost of the platform. Especially for every segmentation, Jiu will pay double costs, resulting in losses unavailable.

In fact, after more than ten years of development, the pain points of these unsolved pains are also rapidly consuming the confidence of the capital market.

The Himalayan, which has repeatedly folded the iPO, and litchi with a market value of less than 100 million US dollars, are pointing to a answer. The business of this track is really difficult to do.

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