Meituan was accidentally injured

A rumor of "clear warehouses" once again put Tencent in public opinion to bake, and Meituan was accidentally injured and fell to 100 billion yuan.

Author/Yibai

Produced/New Business Review

1. "Breakup" rumor

On the afternoon of August 16, the Internet industry set off a earthquake in public opinion.

Zhenyuan is a Reuters report: "Tencent plans to sell all or most of the total value of US $ 24 billion in the total value of Meituan held. It is reported that Tencent, which has 17% of Meituan shares in recent months, has been in contact with finances in recent months Consultant, study how to sell Meituan stock on a large scale; if the market conditions are appropriate, Tencent is expected to start selling this year. "

For a while, "Tencent is not optimistic about the Meituan", "the air outlet in the Internet era is about to end".

According to the rumors of this news, Tencent quickly issued a rumor: "The above rumors are not true. Tencent has no plans to sell Meituan shares." The person in charge of Tencent Public Relations also issued a message in the circle of friends as "the news of the Chinese companies in foreign media."

An unreal rumor, once again put Tencent under the spotlight, also dropped the market value of Meituan 100 billion yuan. After the news was revealed yesterday, Meituan closed down by 9.07%after a 10%fell by 10%in the afternoon. As of the time, the total market value of Meituan was HK $ 1.06 trillion.

It is not surprised that the market's emotional response is fierce. In recent years, Tencent has indeed reduced its holdings frequently. Some media have done statistics. In the past year, Tencent has reduced its holdings of six times, including both Internet e -commerce giants such as JD.com and SEA Hailan House, Huayi Brothers, Backgammon and Higher Traditional offline enterprises.

The epidemic has repeatedly caused cold environment, and the call of anti -monopoly anti -disorderly expansion is superimposed. At the performance meeting in the first quarter of this year, Tencent's management said that Tencent will take more balanced measures on investment in the future. It seems that Tencent's "weight loss" action will continue in the future.

However, the cooperation between Tencent and Meituan, both from the perspective of capital and business, is good. Not only does it not put pressure on Tencent's operation, it will bring a generous return.

According to the statistics of Snowball netizen "ICPA", after considering the listing of Meituan, Tencent's small amount of shares bought from the secondary market, Tencent's investment cost on Meituan is about 4.073 billion U.S. dollars. According to Meituan's financial report, Tencent holds about 17%of Meituan's shares, calculated by Meituan's current market value (131.948 billion), worth about 22.4 billion US dollars, several times of floating, this wave of investment is very cost -effective.

A senior investment banker also said in an interview with "Science and Technology Board Daily" that if Tencent really decided to sell Meituan stocks, it may be that the peak value of Meituan has passed, and Tencent needs to return funds to other things. "The shares holding are not realized, and the old holding may not be able to draw it in their own hands. For Tencent, it is redeemed."

Second, Meituan was accidentally injured

Prior to the rumors of "clearance", Tencent and Meituan were regarded as the "model" of industry cooperation.

The fate of the two began in January 2016. At that time, Meituan received a $ 3.3 billion round E financing led by Tencent, while Meituan's strategic financing, Pre-IPO, and targeted additional issuance later have Tencent.

In July 2021, Tencent also increased its capital of 2.6 billion yuan, and invested in technologies such as drones and drones for the latter.

While deepening the capital level of the two, the cooperation at the business level also develops simultaneously. As a traffic entrance, Meituan takeaway and Meituan purchased in 2016 and 2020 have entered the "shopping consumption" section of WeChat payment. In 2017, Meituan has become the largest market share of Tencent WeChat payment in the offline food and drinking field. In addition, Meituan also cooperates with Tencent on WeChat wallets, applets, and many businesses and products such as maps and WeChat card bags.

I still remember that in May 2017, Meituan CEO Wang Xing was interviewed by Caijing magazine. When asked "Who is your friend in the Internet circle?", Wang Xing's answer was Tencent.

It can be seen that for Meituan, Tencent is not only shareholders, but also allies. Cooperation with Tencent has always been pleasant. Earlier, Tencent's repeated capital injection was obviously optimistic about the "target" of Meituan, and timely rumors have also shown their own attitude.

This time, the Meituan was obviously injured by mistake. Those who sang Meituan on the grounds of selling Meituan for selling Meituan are not necessary. In fact, Meituan has a solid fundamental fundamental aspect, and even one of the few companies in the upper market is one of the few companies that have recovered rapidly.

In the first quarter of 2022, Meituan's revenue was 46.27 billion yuan, an increase of 25%year -on -year. Among them, the revenue of the catering takeaway business and the revenue of the store, hotel and tourism business achieved super two -digit growth, which were 17.4%and 15.8%, respectively. A year -on -year growth of operating profit margins. New business revenue increased by 47%year -on -year, of which Meituan's flash purchase increased strongly. In the first quarter, the order volume increased by nearly 70%year -on -year. The number of users and transactions also increased. The increase in the number of annual transaction users has promoted the rapid increase in orders.

The business profit under the epidemic is better than expected and confirms the toughness of Meituan's operation. And this kind of toughness is due to the accumulation and precipitation of Meituan business.

Few companies are as "changeable" as Meituan. Starting from group purchases, business extends from takeaway to wine travel to store, taxi, community group purchase, real -time retail ... Meituan has also evolved from a living service platform that focuses on "Food+Platform" and evolved into an Internet giant focusing on "technology+retail".

"Limited games are played in the border, but unlimited games are with the border, that is, playing with the rules, exploring and changing the boundaries itself." Wang Xing is a founder who has never set up restrictions on the development of the enterprise. People pay attention to the border, not the core. For a company, what is the core? First, "who you serve and what services are you provided", around this issue, you can constantly try various businesses and expand the boundaries to find answers.

The logic of this kind of unlimited game makes Meituan a large investment in the balance point of revenue, and will invest a lot of funds to deploy new businesses and take the initiative to expand their boundaries at the cost of losses.

In 2021, the new business represented by Meituan's retail business was as high as 38.4 billion yuan, and it ate its profits in traditional businesses such as catering and takeaway. You know, in 2021, Meituan's total revenue was 179.1 billion yuan, and its operating loss was 23.1 billion.

And its forward -looking layout around the core and market demand has indeed achieved results. Although the scale of Meituan's revenue is far less than that of Ali and JD, its market value can exceed JD.com and reach half of Ali.

Third, cautious Wang Xing, bet on real -time retail

Take a step back, even if Tencent has really reduced its holdings in the future, it will not affect Meituan's business operations. After all, Wang Xing is a helm in the helm of corporate operations with strong awareness and strategic determination.

In the second half of last year, Wang Xing said internally that Meituan would prepare for the expectations of new money in the next three years, and made "the worst extreme assumptions" for business operations to remind himself and management Pay attention to the cash flow and systematic cost reduction and efficiency of corporate operations, and pursue profitable growth.

Especially in recent years, Meituan needs to invest a large number of manpower and material resources to improve the working rights of the riders, reduce the proportion of commissioned commission, and need to open up new businesses to find a strong profit growth point for development. Instant retail is the target of Wang Xing's focus.

In September 2021, after the Meituan strategy was upgraded to "retail+technology", a special group responsible for retail -related business discussions and resolutions was set up, which consists of Wang Xing, Wang Yizhong, Chen Liang, Guo Wanhuai and so on. Meituan even let out a high saying that in the next five years, it will win 400 billion flow in the real -time retail market in the next five years.

In fact, in the past two years, the service boundaries of physical e -commerce and service e -commerce have become more and more blurred. Is Ali hungry? Douyin encourages restaurants to sell crayfish and hot pot takeaway. Jingdong has recently studied the possibility of entering takeaway. Meituan's layout of real -time retail is to use its own traffic with the riding power to empower a large number of local physical merchants.

In Wang Xing's opinion, the end of the retail industry is "all things to home". From the perspective of dismantling, everything means "more". When home, it means "fast". In theory, the more capable of capacity, the wider the city, the greater the scale of the instant retail. Meituan relied on 5.27 million riders to cover 2,800 cities at or above the county level to build an instant retail moat. In the past two years, Meituan has also made efforts to "more, good, province" on the basis of "fast".

Since last year, Meituan has made great efforts in the United States for daily department stores, fast -moving consumer goods and pet supplies -Meituan Lightning Warehouse. As of June this year, it has covered more than 100 cities across the country, 500 cooperative merchants, and more than 1,000 positions.

Meituan Shimbun actually builds a "warehouse+store" system composed of "Meituan Lightning Warehouse" merchant and third -party brand merchants. More than 1,000 warehouses and brand merchants have their own stores. , Extend to more scenarios.

In Q1 of 2022, the "new business and other" revenue of Meituan Shipping, Meituan Optimum and Meituan Cuisine, etc., increased by 47%year -on -year to 14.5 billion yuan, accounting The order volume of the Meituan flash purchase and GTV (total platform transaction) increased by nearly 70%and 80%year -on -year, respectively.

For brands and merchants, instant retail not only expands offline business radius, but also provides an efficient path for services to reach users. For example, domestic mobile phone brands are regarded as high -end core strategies. Secondly, the flash purchase solves the various inventory pressure caused by the epidemic, and perfectly solves the dilemma of online and offline conflicts.

If the past ten years, e -commerce has opened up the golden market for the online economy for ten years, then the instant retail does not have the golden decade of the offline economy. Following this idea, the first -time players will be very likely to become the next one. E -commerce giant.

Meituan, still in the game, possess a seat.

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