Meitu accelerates from the advertising dependence, and it still cannot get rid of the realization problem of the tool software

In order to get rid of the fate of difficulty, Meitu turned to pay and SaaS.

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Produced/New Business Review

Around Meitu, two different sounds have been differentiated nowadays.

Conservatives believe that the business that becomes beautiful is not easy to do. Meitu is still looking for a business model for more than ten years, but the opposition insists on the misunderstanding of Meitu. Now, the market value of more than 90 % of Meitu is definitely underestimated.

The first statement is well understood. The flow of traffic in tool software has been born. Since its establishment, Meitu has frequently switched the track but rarely harvested. The second type of argument is not unparalleled. Looking at the latest financial report data, the VIP subscription business, which is highly hoped by Meitu, lives up to the company's largest source of income. SaaS and related businesses increased by 1542.3%year -on -year.

Benefiting from this, Meitu's original stock price also increased small. Although the increase was small, the new round of business value set off around the new story of Meitu was very large.

1. VIP subscription has water

SaaS Gold Mine is not easy to dig

Maps that are used to attacked on the product direction and business road, this time has a new main line.

"In the future, the growth of hopes for VIP subscription business and SaaS and related businesses can continue to bring more income to Meitu." Understanding Meitu founder and CEO Wu Xinhong, comparing the development of Apple ecosystems, VIP subscriptions The trend has been established worldwide, and the three major businesses related to SaaS -related Meido, Meitu Xiu, and Meitu Yunxiu have also emerged rapidly.

From TOC to TOB, Meitu obviously gets rid of the stereotype of the core product of "only Meitu Xiuxiu", but in depth, in the future, if you want to drive the haze through new stories, let investors who have lost patience regain confidence to regain confidence in confidence Meitu still needs to be boiled for a long time.

It was no shortage of traffic that was comparable to the number of BAT -level users, but lacked money. The biggest challenge to successfully realize the growth of VIP subscription revenue comes from user activity and online duration. From the past financial report data, it can be seen that before 2021, Meitu monthly living scale was 295.4 million, 261 billion, 245.9 billion, and 230.6 billion, which has been in a downward trend.

Although the 2022 semi -annual report of 240.9 billion monthly living has risen, it can be seen from the financial report that 240.9 billion is not the data of a single product, but the sum of the monthly active data of a variety of products such as Meitu Xiuxiu, Beauty Camera, BeautyPlus, Essence

Aside from the overlapping part of the monthly active users of each product, it can be said that the data rising mainly relies on the 124.7 billion monthly survival of Meitu Xiuxiu, and 8.7 % of the year -on -month growth rate. Beauty cameras and BeautyPlus monthly activity is basically declining. The same is true for foreign monthly work. It has fallen from 119.8 million to 2022H1 of 2022H1.

As the company's largest source of income sources, the VIP subscription business does not seem to be as good as the surface. Compared with the huge user base of Meitu's ecology, the number of VIP subscribers is still small. The indicator is "active" to be improved. Secondly, this dazzling data has also been questioned that doping moisture is suspected of inducing users to pay.

(User feedback of black cat complaint platform)

Naturally, it is not easy to rely on a fist -level business to carry the flag of commercialization. SaaS business, which has increased to RMB 26.6 million, also challenged.

The financial report revealed that the high growth of the SaaS business was mainly due to the beauty of the acquisition of ERP and supply chain management solutions for cosmetics stores. Can the reporting period still grow? Can it continue to create value for shareholders?

In addition to the beauty, Meitu also has a beautiful picture of the one -stop AI trimming of commercial photography, which is focused on AI skin measurement. The former likes to emphasize the technical content, but it is placed in the mainstream AI For the software market, the cost of 0.36 yuan in the Meitu single is not dominant in the pursuit of peers; the latter even publishes the "genetic mechanism of nasal lip ditch and its influencing factors" and "facial aging quantitative quantitative facial aging quantitative facial learning. The analysis of the two major scientific research results, but it is too early to talk about the commercialization of the project.

Second, the 14 -year -old beautiful picture of business late

The market value of 100 billion fell over 90 %

The lack of business models are accompanied by the entire growth process of Meitu. As a tool -type product, traffic monetization has always been difficult to solve.

As early as 2013, Meitu began a commercial exploration, and the first tuition fee was handed over to female mobile phones. In Wu Xinhong's positioning at the time, the mobile phone was just a continuation of a product, and there was not much ambition.

With a strong camera hardware and the software basic beauty of the software, the beauty base has occupied a place, but the good times are not long, and the market will soon have a more cheap alternative product. A loss of 500 million years of annual.

(Meitu 2018 financial report)

In the past few years, Meitu has regarded the short video platform "Mei Shooting" as a star business. At that time, Douyin was not online, the fast -handed was still exploring, and the short video market was a blue ocean. Unfortunately Living in the wind, by the end of 2019, there were only about 7 million users who had lived in the past 100 million months.

In addition to the live broadcast, Meitu has also tried to use AI skin measurement to recommend skin care products, so as to complete the realization of its own platform Meitu Beauty. It can only focus It was abandoned due to serious losses. After selling Xiaomi on the mobile phone, after the e -commerce company folded the sand, Meitu went further and further on the road of "Meihe Social". Limited to the more single business model of tool software, Meitu began to target the "social" track.

For a long time, Wu Xinhong participated in the product meeting. When it comes to the stickiness of competitive strategies, they will fall on social. Cai Wensheng also admits that because the attributes of Meitu partial tools are suitable for transforming social platforms. 500 million.

In fact, through the major applications of social links and mobile phone hardware products, the transformation from the tool product matrix to the platform product matrix is ​​completed, and it is unprofitable to build its own barriers. The days of doing pictures of pictures are also difficult.

As of December 2018, the company's overall monthly survival was 332 million, a reduction of more than 80 million compared with the same period last year, a decrease of 20%. The only growth comes from the ace application Meitu Xiuxiu, but it only increased by 0.3%. Another core beauty shot of social strategy is particularly bleak. After the rectification, the cliff -like decline in Meipa Monthly lived. By December 2018, only 38.94 million were left, a decrease of more than 60%from 98.13 million in the same period last year.

The side effects of frequent switching tracks are directly reflected in the net adjustment of the net loss. The data from 2017-2019 were 46 million, 879 million, and 190 million. The operating pressure brought about by relieving performance is imminent. Since 2020, Meitu has launched a VIP subscription business on the basis of the development of the main business and the SaaS services for vertical industries such as video.

Cai Wensheng risen at the cost of firing with Wu Xinhong's suspicion. From Fuding 418 million to a fierce loss of more than 300 million, from the financial report data, the company's net loss in the first half of 2022 increased significantly to RMB 281.6 million. Among them, Meitu lost 311 million yuan due to the impairment of coins.

I want the first beauty picture to eat "crab", but was caught by the crab. The loss of the losses of the original deduction of coins can be profitable. I wonder how many followers in the company now believe in Cai Wensheng's "if things go wrong," I believe it must be another arrangement of God, but investors have already expressed their attitudes with actual actions.

As of September 15th, Meitu Xiuxiu's stock price hovered around HK $ 0.98, with a market value of only 4.344 billion Hong Kong dollars, a market value of nearly 100 billion yuan during the peak, and fell more than 90 %. I remember that at the beginning of the market, Meitu was passed on to "the next Tencent".

Third, the common problem of tool software

Meitu anxiety doubles

Selling mobile phones to lose money; making money for e -commerce; betting on socially unsuccessful ... Only advertising revenue outside the main business maintains Meitu's revenue. Under the frequent transformation, Meitu tries to use VIP subscription with SaaS business as a new way, which is both the direction of transformation and the heavy responsibility of commercialization. How can the results still have to be observed, after all, tool software has fatalism.

A large amount of users have been deeply trapped in anxiety for a long time, which is a common problem for all tool software. Whether it is the anti -virus software in the PC Internet era, the download station of navigation stations, or the weather, menstrual period, and the software repair software in the era of mobile Internet, there are two main points of realization of tool products: one is to go after use, the user's viscosity is poor; Winners have obvious effects, and it is very difficult to establish a moat.

If you want to speed up the efficiency of traffic monetization, either implant advertisements to sell users, or sell e -commerce to sell things to users. Both of these routes have been tried. Today, Meitu commercialization mainly includes online advertising, VIP, VIP, VIP, VIP, and VIP. Subscription, SAAS -level related, Internet value -added services, IMS (expert content marketing solutions) and others.

Among them, online advertisements have become the main source of income from Meitu on survival for a long time. In 2020, this part of business revenue accounted for 57%. By 2021, the total income accounted for 46%, but it was still Meitu's largest source of income.

Data proves that tool software is easier to make advertising by diversion. Although the latest data is due to the weakness of Internet advertisements, the proportion of the first half of this year has declined by nearly half of the same period last year, whether this trend continues is still to be questioned. The same logic, although the SaaS depicted in the financial report has both cornerstones and prospects, the growth story is convincing and time proof of time.

The global Adobe company, which is well -known by Photoshop, is a SaaS giant, with a market value of more than 200 billion US dollars. In 2020, its market value once surpassed Tesla. Although the proportion of SaaS revenue of ADOBE's subscription system in the past two years has increased to more than 90%, before seeing the SaaSization business, Adobe has also experienced a period of pain in more than ten years.

In fact, paid software still has natural obstacles in the Chinese environment. As small as various tools, as large as operating systems, we have not come out of the free use of inertia.The niche market for the charging tool is difficult to continue, which means that Meitu's future VIP subscription business is not easy, and compared to the overseas SaaS market, the types and user needs of the Chinese B -end market are more complicated and diverse.More energy and time.But there is no way. You must know that the capital market is no longer believed in Meitu. Wu Xinhong, who focuses on the main business, has deeply reflected that he must reverse this situation. There is no shortcut.

From this perspective, the possibility of trying to realize with various layouts is a kind of fate that Meitu cannot escape.Now summarize the failure lessons of "overdrawing to do not good at control and difficult to control", focusing on the development of image technology research and development to make large VIP subscription revenue, and build the SaaS ecological closed -loop to help the digital transformation of the industry. It is also another fate that Meitu has to break through.

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