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Text / Wuji
Source: BT Finance (ID: btcjv1)
In this year’s snack food track, the three squirrels are the only one with a decline in revenue, and the three squirrels have “both down” in revenue and profit.
The three squirrels of “the first share of Internet celebrity food” have entered an eventful autumn.
Recently, three squirrels’ snacks made fried geckos on the hot search, with 220 million views in a single day. The three squirrels took an arrogant attitude and responded that such a situation would never happen to their product technology production line, and had already Call the police.
The three squirrels made a very clear statement that this was a man-made “touching porcelain” accident. However, some netizens believed that the three squirrels were clean and neat, which once caused a lot of controversy. Some people believe that although the food safety problem was caused by the production of the foundry, the three squirrels chose the foundry and the distributor by themselves. It is impossible for them to have nothing to do with the problem, and at least they should be jointly and severally responsible.
Some food industry analysts believe that the three squirrels have many problems themselves, such as quality control, internal control system, internal management, personnel training, etc. There are certain drawbacks, and blindly throwing the pot can not solve the fundamental problem.
Some media pointed out that the three squirrels had previously caused huge controversy because of the “squinting model” advertisement, which brought enough lethality to the brand, and then exposed food safety issues one after another. This snack food company listed in 2019, more The big crisis comes from a sharp drop in revenue.
Is it really the truth?
Both revenue and profit decreased, and many major shareholders reduced their holdings
There is a view that the stock price of the three squirrels has been falling because of its poor performance.
Indeed, the performance of the three squirrels in recent years has not been satisfactory. Judging from the performance of the first half of 2022, they have once again achieved a “both decline” in revenue and net profit. The financial report shows that in the first half of 2022, the total revenue of the three squirrels was 4.114 billion yuan, a decrease of 21.8% from the total revenue of 5.261 billion yuan in the same period last year, and the net profit attributable to the parent dropped directly from 351.8 million yuan to 82.1343 million yuan, a year-on-year A decrease of 76.65%.
In the first quarterly report, the performance of the three squirrels was also poor. In the first quarter of 2022, the total revenue of the three squirrels was 3.089 billion yuan, a decrease of 15.85% compared with 3.671 billion yuan in the same period in 2021; net profit attributable to the mother was 1.62 100 million yuan, down nearly half from 315 million yuan in the same period in 2021.
(Three Squirrels’ share price trend in 2022)BT Finance inquired about the revenue of the other five snack food companies listed on the A-share market in the first half of the year. Among them, the total revenue of Yanjin Shop in the first half of the year was 1.210 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.73%, and the net profit was 129 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 164.97%; The total revenue of Qiaqia Foods in the first half of the year was 2.678 billion yuan, an increase of 12.49% year-on-year, and the net profit attributable to the parent was 351 million yuan, an increase of 7.25% year-on-year; the total revenue of Laiyifen in the first half of the year was 2.312 billion yuan, an increase of 10.12% year-on-year. The net profit attributable to the parent was 111 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.02%; the total revenue of BESTORE in the first half of the year was 4.895 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.72%, and the net profit attributable to the parent was 193 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.67%; I miss you in the first half of the year. The revenue was 616 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.87%; the net profit was 2.358 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 95.73%. In terms of revenue, the three squirrels are the only company that has experienced a decline, and in terms of net profit, only I miss you and the three squirrels have experienced a decline, and the three squirrels are the only company whose revenue and profit “both fell” .
Affected by this, the major shareholders IDG Capital and Capital Today began to cash out continuously. According to the announcement released by the three squirrels on July 29, 2022, the shareholder LT GROWTH INVESTMENT IX (HK) LIMITED plans to reduce the number of shares due to its own capital needs. The total does not exceed 24.06 million shares, and the reduced shares exceed 5% of the total share capital, but not more than 6% of the total share capital of the three squirrels. If calculated based on the stock price of 21.42 yuan on the day of the reduction on July 29, the total amount of cash reduction this time is 515 million yuan.
As the third largest shareholder of the three squirrels, this reduction of LT GROWTH INVESTMENT IX (HK) LIMITED is not the first time to reduce its holdings. During 2020, there have been three reductions. And this is not the first shareholder of the three squirrels to reduce their holdings. Looking at the announcements of the three squirrels in the past year, it can be found that there are as many as 9 announcements on the reduction of holdings in one year, and the majority shareholders have reduced their holdings many times, and even the fifth The liquidation of major shareholder GaoZheng Capital Limited.
Financial industry analyst Xu Yi believes that listed companies are sensitive to the successive reductions of major shareholders in the capital market. Repeated reductions or even liquidation of positions by major shareholders means that shareholders are not optimistic about the prospects of the company, so they will reluctantly cut the meat and stop losses in time.
Online base camp lost
The three squirrels in the early years ate all the e-commerce dividends.
Although the three squirrels continued to improve the supply chain in the later period, they still rely heavily on online sales. According to the financial report, in the first half of 2022, the third-party e-commerce revenue of the three squirrels reached 3.013 billion yuan, accounting for 73.3% of the total revenue in the first half of the year. Online sales are still the main battleground for the three squirrels.
However, judging from the data shown in the financial report, the third-party online sales of the “base camp” of the three squirrels have fallen into an embarrassing situation. In the first half of 2022, third-party online sales revenue fell by 17% year-on-year, and both Tmall and JD.com, which are the most reliant, experienced large-scale declines. Among them, Tmall’s revenue fell by 26% year-on-year, and JD.com’s revenue fell by 22% year-on-year. %. The loss of the two ace positions at the same time indicates that the base camps of the three squirrels have been lost one after another.
The defeat of the online position does not mean that the three squirrels are reluctant to spend money to buy traffic. It can only be said that the cost of acquiring customers for the three squirrels has increased significantly. The sales expenses in the first half of this year were as high as 952 million yuan, accounting for 23.2% of the total operating costs. Excessive sales expenses caused the gross profit margin of the three squirrels to drop from 31.13% in the same period last year to 27.86%, and the net profit margin dropped from 6.69% in the same period last year to 2%. The company’s gross profit margin was 27.86%, compared to last year. The 31.13% in the same period fell by 3.27 percentage points; the net profit margin was 2%, and such a low net profit was not competitive with competitors. During the same period, the net profit margin of Qiaqia Foods was 13.14%, and that of Yanjin Shop was 10.64%, 6.6 times and 5.3 times that of the three squirrels respectively.
Affected by the epidemic, the three squirrels continue to reduce offline stores. According to the financial report data, in the first half of 2022, the three squirrels’ food stores have changed from 141 to 85, 56 closed stores, and alliance stores have also changed from 962 to 962. There were 780 stores, 182 stores were closed, only 1 new catering store was added, and 37 new alliance stores were added. The total revenue of offline stores was only 637 million yuan, accounting for only 15.5% of the total revenue. Among them, the revenue of catering stores was 339 million yuan, and the revenue of alliance stores was 298 million yuan, down 41% and 18% respectively year-on-year.
There are early signs of the dismal performance of offline stores in the first half of the year. As early as 2021, Zhang Liaoyuan, the father of the squirrel, the founder of the three squirrels, has already admitted his mistakes in exploring offline stores. Zhang Liaoyuan began to focus on traditional offline channels. According to him, high-quality retail terminals of more than 500 square meters in China There are about 40,000. The three squirrels must win more than 30,000 of them to realize the distribution business. Zhang Liaoyuan’s goal is relatively ambitious. He plans to achieve offline annual sales of 5 billion yuan in 2023, but from the current half a year. From the reality of offline sales of only 637 million, it is not easy to achieve a sales plan of 5 billion yuan within a year.
Some insiders said that offline retail is not easy to do now, especially in the past two years, the epidemic has been repeated, and expanding offline is likely to lose money and make a lot of money, and it is almost impossible to double offline sales in a short period of time. completed tasks. “Although the three squirrels have started offline distribution and entered many mainstream stores, they do not invest in entry fees, and the effect of driving sales only by brands will naturally not be too obvious. Big brands such as Master Kong, Wahaha, and Haitian will do the same. It takes a lot of money to ensure the smooth expansion of offline sales.” The person is not optimistic about the offline sales model of the three squirrels, suggesting that the offline battlefield expansion of the three squirrels will be extremely difficult.
The progress of the offline battlefield is unfavorable. The online e-commerce sales that rely on for survival are “receding”. It is also expected that the performance of the three squirrels continues to “fall evenly”. This may be the crux of the continuous reduction of many major shareholders. .
Can self-built factories turn things around?
The three squirrels mentioned before give consumers the impression that they are OEMs, which has continuously weakened the brand power of the three squirrels and directly caused many quality problems. A squirrel began to “focus on” self-built factories.
The financial report of the three squirrels stated that “the company is actively deploying manufacturing demonstration factories, and the first batch of daily nut factories to be built was put into operation in August this year. Relying on the overall scale and the manufacturing advantages under construction, the company has a full range from sales to production to penetration of raw materials. Industrial chain integration capabilities.”
It is understood that in August this year, the first two production lines of the Three Squirrels Daily Nut Factory were officially put into operation, taking the first step of building their own factories, so the three squirrels are expected to get rid of the label of OEM.
Wang Tao, a researcher in the food industry, expressed his approval for the three squirrels’ self-built factories, but at the same time believed that the self-built factories were a double-edged sword, “In the past, the three squirrels had frequent food safety problems. I can understand and accept that if we build our own factories now, once food safety problems occur again, we can’t throw the blame. Food safety problems, as a difficult problem in the food industry, are difficult to achieve zero. This is a bigger test for the three squirrels. They need to spend more energy on management.”
The self-built factory needs real money. The financial report shows that due to the self-built factory, the operating cash outflow of the three squirrels in the first half of the year was 4.326 billion yuan, while its operating cash inflow in the same period was 4.62 billion yuan. The difference between the two is only 4.326 billion yuan. Less than 300 million yuan, which means that the cash flow of the three squirrels is only 238 million yuan, while the cash flow of Qiaqia Foods in the same period was 2.006 billion yuan, the cash flow of BESTORE was 1.597 billion yuan, and the cash flow of the three squirrels was 2.006 billion yuan. Only 12% of Qiaqia Foods and 15% of BESTORE. Cash flow will be severely tested.
In order to seek more liquidity, Squirrel Dad Zhang Liaoyuan pledged two equity stakes in April and August this year, of which 4.12 million shares were pledged to China International Capital Corporation Limited and 7.54 million shares were pledged to China Everbright Bank until 2022. In half a year, Zhang Liaoyuan has pledged 40 million shares, with a total shareholding of 160 million shares. The founder’s pledge of equity is mostly a manifestation of the company’s lack of cash flow. Now the three squirrels are not optimistic about the cash flow, so Zhang Liaoyuan has to pledge equity.
In the face of the unfavorable factors such as rising prices of raw materials and freight under the epidemic, the three squirrels began to reduce SKUs under the competition of stock, and transformed from the whole category to “nuts and dried fruits + selected snacks”, using their own advantages as their specialty to avoid stalls is too large. Nut products are the starting products of the three squirrels, and they are also the most competitive and advantageous categories among many categories, and their market share has been ranked first in the industry for a long time.
Taking the sales of nuts in 2021 as an example, the daily sales of nuts in that year exceeded 1 billion yuan, ranking first in the mixed nut category on Tmall. During the 2021 Chinese New Year Festival, the sales of nuts of the three squirrels are also in the online market. First, the market share of “Nut Gift” once exceeded 30%, and it has been the No. 1 sales of nuts in the Chinese market for five consecutive years.
However, as competitors continue to squeeze the living space, price wars are inevitable, which forces the three squirrels to only deploy raw materials and factories to reduce costs. This is also the old road that the milk powder industry and beverage industry took many years ago. Extending to the upstream of the industrial chain can improve its own gross profit margin. The only opportunity for self-built factories or three squirrels to catch up with competitors such as Qiaqia Foods, but the short-term cash flow pressure also brings certain risks to their own operations.
“Three Squirrels’ previous OEM model made it difficult for Three Squirrels to strictly control product quality and standardization. Many times they would also feel very innocent, but the lack of Three Squirrels’ internal control system is the only reason The root cause of the frequent occurrence of food safety problems is that self-built factories can only cure the symptoms but not the root causes. If you want to completely reverse the status quo of frequent food safety problems, your own management and control capabilities must be improved in all directions.” Wang Tao believes that self-built factories are a prerequisite , but not the fundamental solution to the quality problem.
In the case of declining performance and net profit, the three squirrels faced a severe test after their revenue exceeded 10 billion. This self-built factory is not a panacea for solving all “difficult diseases”. It is also necessary to strictly control its own quality. Only in this way can we make breakthroughs in the fierce competition in the market, so that shareholders can see the “money” scene, and frequent share reduction events will no longer occur.
(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view and does not represent the position of Sina.com.)
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