Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1577
If you lose 4 percentage points less, Kuaishou will be able to make a profit
The unexpected advertising revenue and restrained marketing expenses helped Kuaishou to reduce its quarterly loss rate to single digits for the first time since its listing. Its annual e-commerce sales also reached the internally expected target of 900 billion yuan.
- Kuaishou achieved revenue of 28.29 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2022, a year-on-year increase of 15.8%; of which advertising revenue was 15.09 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14%;
- The gross profit was 12.877 billion yuan. Gross profit margin was 45.51%, down 0.77 percentage points month-on-month;
- Sales expenses and research and development expenses were reduced by 1.061 billion yuan year-on-year;
- The operating loss was 1.243 billion yuan. Profit margin -4.39%, narrowed by 6.9 percentage points month-on-month and 19.3 percentage points year-on-year;
- E-commerce sales (calculated immediately after placing an order, regardless of whether payment is made) were 312.386 billion yuan in a single quarter and 901.1 billion yuan in a year.
According to the non-public telephone communication minutes of Kuaishou and analysts, the internal circulation advertising revenue generated by Kuaishou merchants and anchors in the fourth quarter of last year accounted for about 45% of the total advertising revenue (about 6.79 billion yuan), and its growth rate of e-commerce sales The similarity (about 30%) is the most important revenue growth point. The external circulation advertising composed of brand and performance advertising has declined year-on-year, and the management expects to gradually turn positive this year.
Cheng Yixiao, founder and CEO of Kuaishou, said at the performance meeting that advertisers are cautiously optimistic about the first half of this year, “Considering the pace of economic recovery and the lagging nature of the advertising market relative to economic recovery, we believe that the overall online advertising market will grow in the second half of this year. A more pronounced rebound.”
The economic data released successively this year, especially the consumption data, hinted at the pressure of the overall recovery. Under this constraint, we have heard executives’ comments on the cost at the performance conferences of Chinese Internet companies such as Alibaba , Tencent , and Bilibili. With careful consideration of costs and costs, Meituan is one of the few platform companies that clearly proposes to expand investment. In this regard, Kuaishou is more like Bilibili – continuing to subsidize customer acquisition, but focusing on efficiency more than ever. (Gong Fangyi)
BYD’s orders in hand are worth more than 35.5 billion yuan
In the fourth quarter of last year, BYD’s net profit reached 7.311 billion yuan, an increase of 11 times year-on-year; contract liabilities reflecting orders and demand increased by 137.8% to 35.517 billion yuan.
The performance split table made by a large securities company shows that under the premise that the average selling price has hardly changed, BYD’s bicycle profit has increased from about 700 yuan in the second quarter of 2021 to nearly 10,000 yuan in the fourth quarter of last year. Actual (including batteries and photovoltaics) gross margin soared to 22.8%.
Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Auto, commented on Weibo that under the dealership system, this gross profit rate is comparable to Tesla (25.9%, direct sales), or even better, considering the lower average selling price. , BYD vehicle cost management is significantly better than Tesla. Li Xiang once said at an earlier media communication meeting that the biggest pressure in this industry is that the two leading companies can fight price wars.
With the decline in market demand, since January this year, about 40 auto brands in China have followed Tesla and cut prices, including BYD. But BYD is one of the few brands to gain more market share. In the first two months of this year, BYD’s domestic new energy vehicle market share reached 41% (27% for the whole of last year), compared with Tesla’s only 8%.
According to the performance summary, Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, said that BYD’s market share in the entire auto market in the first two months of this year has surpassed that of Volkswagen (including FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen), reaching 12%, ranking first; The (sales) target is to start with 3 million units and strive to double to 3.6 million units.
Regarding price wars and competition issues, Wang Chuanfu said that the market has entered the knockout stage in 2023. If the supply exceeds demand, the price war will continue; in the price range of 100,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, BYD has pricing power, but the company hopes Be calm, “Don’t make everyone feel uncomfortable, no one else will survive.” He also said that as long as it can win the battle in China, it will be competitive to increase the price abroad by 20%. BYD’s overseas strategy after that is to avoid the United States and South Korea and other automobile powerhouses, and focus on Southeast Asia and other regions with few local brands. (Qiu Hao)
WeChat continues to hold public classes in a low-key manner
On the evening of March 28, the PRO version of the WeChat Open Class was held in Guangzhou. Compared with the public class in early January this year , WeChat still did not announce more new business data this time, but introduced more systematically the progress of video accounts, WeChat payment, mini programs, enterprise WeChat, Souyisou and other products, as well as The next change.
The focus of the video account in the coming year is to continue to attract creators. The specific method includes releasing a paid subscription function, creators can set up a paid content area, and users become members by paying a monthly fee. In addition, the video account also stated that it will continue to encourage originality, and will launch a new creator sharing plan: original content can receive a series of supports such as advertising sharing in the comment area, original protection, and priority recommendations.
The content carrying mode of the video account will also be expanded – in addition to video, live broadcast, shopping, the future video account will also add audio, graphics and other content forms.
In addition, WeChat will launch a new function “Ask a Question”. According to WeChat, “Ask a Question” will aggregate and present high-quality answers to common questions in WeChat, and invite high-quality content creators to answer. This is somewhat different from the open Zhihu, which helps to ensure the quality of answers and maintain the user experience at the beginning of the function’s launch.
According to Wandian Finance, this is a new function developed by the WeChat “Souyisou” team for more than a year. Judging from the screenshots shared by users in the internal test circulating on the Internet, the “Ask a question” function is placed under the search box on the WeChat “Search” page. Related questions include: “What are the procedures for opening a store on Pinduoduo?” What is the reason for not entering the water”, “How to divide the ranks of Dou Break Sky”, etc. WeChat previously positioned “Souyisou” as a “connector” (video account, official account, applet, etc.) for various products within WeChat, and “Ask a question” may bring more new users to WeChat search.
In the open class that night, WeChat also introduced the progress of WeChat payment, small programs, and enterprise WeChat in terms of consumer protection, performance optimization, and business operation efficiency improvement. (Lin Guangying)
Unclear joint letter of thousands of people, calling for stronger supervision of artificial intelligence
Two weeks after OpenAI’s marvelous GPT-4 came out, its capabilities have proliferated in proportion to its fears. Today, an open letter said to have gathered the signatures of more than a thousand people in the industry and academia, including Musk, has sparked widespread discussion. The letter, issued by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, called for greater oversight of artificial intelligence. Musk is a member of the agency’s advisory board.
However, the loopholes in the signature review mechanism have reduced the support of this joint letter. Listed Turing Award winner Yann Lecun denied signing. Now his name is no longer on the list. We noticed that the number of people on the list did not increase but decreased before publication. For example, the name of Geoffrey Hinton, the father of deep learning, was also removed.
As of press time, a total of 1,123 names have signed and endorsed the open letter. In addition to Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, “A Brief History of Humanity” author Harari and others are on the list. According to media statistics, no OpenAI employees have signed the letter, but three researchers from DeepMind, Google’s artificial intelligence laboratory, have signed it.
In an earlier podcast interview, Altman was again asked about the risks of AI. He admitted that the OpenAI team did not understand how ChatGPT evolved its reasoning ability, and could only judge its “ideas” by asking it questions and then answering them. Altman even concedes that it’s “certainly possible” that AI will kill humans. Therefore, he supports and understands Musk’s long-standing security concerns, but also hopes that the latter will see OpenAI’s efforts to solve these problems.
Returning to the letter itself, its main appeals include:
- All AI labs immediately suspend training AI systems stronger than GPT-4 for at least 6 months;
- Using this time, AI labs and independent experts should jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development, subject to rigorous audit and oversight by external experts;
- At the same time, AI developers must collaborate with policymakers to accelerate the development of strong AI governance systems. The latter include at least:
- A new, strong regulatory body dedicated to AI;
- Supervision and tracking of capable AI systems;
- Help identify the source and watermark system of AI-synthesized content and real content;
- Robust audit and certification systems;
- Accountability for harm caused to AI;
- Public funding to support AI safety research, and more.
At the end of the letter, the initiator appealed to everyone to enjoy the long summer of artificial intelligence instead of falling into late autumn unprepared (the original text is “fall”, a pun, meaning both autumn and fall). (Qiu Hao intern Chang Junfei)
Huo Lala applied to be listed in Hong Kong, and the proportion of rake increased significantly last year
According to the prospectus disclosed on March 28, Huolala’s revenue in 2022 will be US$1.04 billion, a year-on-year increase of 22.6%, and the compound growth rate in the past two years is 39.9%. The number of orders completed in the whole year was 428 million, a year-on-year increase of 5.9%, and the adjusted profit for the year was 53.23 million US dollars, which was the first time to achieve profitability.
In 2021, Huolala’s share of the intra-city freight market will reach 52.8%, far surpassing Didi Freight (5.5%) and Kuaigou Taxi (3.2%). Considering the shrinkage of competitors, Huo Lala’s advantages should be further expanded.
- Didi Cargo has reported business contraction since the beginning of last year;
- Last year, Kuaigou Taxi only had 26.4 million orders, a year-on-year decrease of 7%.
Freight is a heavy and not very profitable business. The contradiction is that the freight market is mainly driven by urbanization and economic development, and cannot grow rapidly. While the platform improves the efficiency of matching supply and demand, it will also make the transportation capacity excess. Under competition, in order to win more scarce shippers, the platform will naturally ask the driver to make a profit.
In 2022, China’s freight market will grow slowly. The turnover (GTV) of Huolala’s freight platform in China was US$6.24 billion, which is only 8.4% more than that in 2021. But over the same period, the percentage of fees it takes on transactions has increased from 7.6 percent to 9.7 percent. After conversion, Huo Lala’s average commission per order has increased by 27.6 percentage points . This is why Huolala drivers refused to take out their cars last year, mainly because they were dissatisfied with the platform’s disguised price cuts and higher commissions.
I don’t know how much experience or lessons Huo Lala has learned from the ups and downs of its peer Kuaigou’s Hong Kong stock IPO . According to sources, HKEX is concerned about a series of compliance risks, including transportation safety, employment protection, data security, user privacy and so on. Huo Lala also mentioned in the prospectus this time that due to its market leadership, it has been and may continue to be subject to strict antitrust scrutiny. (Lin Guangying)
Single-day withdrawal requests from Silicon Valley Bank depositors peak at $100 billion
The latest testimony from a Federal Reserve official shows why Silicon Valley Bank has no options but bankruptcy.
A few days ago, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank, and Michael Barr, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and a member of the board of governors, was asked to testify. According to his testimony:
- Silicon Valley Bank depositors requested $42 billion in withdrawals on March 9. Depositors plan to withdraw another $100 billion the next day. (As of the end of 2022, the total deposits of Silicon Valley Bank customers are 175.4 billion US dollars);
- The Federal Reserve provided emergency loans to Silicon Valley Bank on March 9 and sought all possibilities to provide them with more emergency loans under legal circumstances;
- But at this time, Silicon Valley Bank did not have enough collateral to apply for a loan from the Federal Reserve, and there was no other way but bankruptcy;
- The Federal Reserve began to warn the management of Silicon Valley Bank in October 2021, asking them to improve risk management and internal controls, but the management did not take effective measures;
- Regarding the public questioning why regulators (including the Federal Reserve itself) failed to notice the risks of Silicon Valley Bank in a timely manner, Barr said that the Federal Reserve has initiated a review process to review how regulators have evaluated Silicon Valley Bank in the past.
Barr appeared to imply that VCs’ move to urge startups to withdraw funds hastened the panic, with “discussion of a run on social media exploding and uninsured depositors acting swiftly.” (Gong Fangyi)
OTHER NEWS
Qie Xiaohu, vice president of Tencent and senior technical expert, resigned.
“LatePost” exclusive news , Tencent Vice President, PCG (Platform and Content Business Group) information and service line leader Qie Xiaohu has resigned, and it is not clear where he will go next. Qie Xiaohu served as the global technical director of Google and the vice president of Google China Research Institute. After leaving in 2015, he successively joined Xiaohongshu and Didi as CTO. He joined Tencent in 2020 and has a good reputation in management and coordination. He is also a senior technical expert himself, and will participate in the publication of five papers in 2022, involving image perception, video text retrieval, etc. As GPT brings another round of AI upsurge, there are not a few technical experts who choose to leave from Internet giants.
Soul updated the prospectus, and the cost reduction measures greatly reduced losses last year.
The online social platform Soul updated its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on March 27. Its adjusted net loss in 2022 will be about 49 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 95%. Soul’s cumulative net loss from 2020 to 2022 will exceed 2.4 billion yuan. In order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, the company has taken measures such as layoffs and marketing costs. At the same time, Soul improves profitability through advertising and value-added services. In 2022, its revenue will be 1.667 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30%, and its gross profit margin will reach 86.3%.
Keep updated its prospectus, and self-owned brand products contribute half of its revenue.
Online fitness platform Keep updated its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on March 28, and its biggest source of income is still its own brand products. In 2022, Keep’s revenue will be 2.21 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36.6%, of which self-owned brand products account for more than half of the revenue, reaching 1.137 billion yuan. Thanks to the increase in the number of monthly members and the increase in penetration rate, Keep member subscription and online paid content revenue increased by 60.4% year-on-year, accounting for a 6% increase in revenue to 40.4%.
Zhong Xuegao launched 3.5 yuan ice cream, the main promotion point is low price and AI planning.
Ice cream brand Zhong Xuegao released a new product Sa’Saa on March 29, priced at 3.5 yuan, which will be sold through offline channels. Compared with other products with an average price of more than 10 yuan, Sa’Saa is currently the product with the lowest price under Zhong Xuegao. According to the ingredient list, Sa’Saa is different from other Zhong Xuegao products that mainly use milk and whipped cream. Its main ingredients are water and white sugar, which are lower in cost. Zhong Xuegao said that the product was created by AI, and the name, packaging, taste, pictures, etc. were all completed with the help of AI.
Pop Mart’s mainland revenue fell by 3.2% year-on-year last year, and is expected to grow significantly this year.
In 2022, 232 offline retail stores of Bubble Mart will be closed for one week to three months, and the proportion of affected stores will be at least 70%. However, overseas revenue increased by nearly 1.5 times year-on-year, driving the annual revenue to increase by 2.8% to 4.62 billion yuan. Bubble Mart has previously said that fashion games are anti-cycle , and this time the management also predicts that this year’s revenue will increase by 30% to 40%. In addition, due to the increase in construction costs and design authorization costs, Bubble Mart’s overall gross profit margin fell by 3.9 percentage points year-on-year to 57.5% last year.
Disney’s metaverse has “collapsed”.
Disney only last year called the Metaverse “the next great storytelling frontier” (“next great storytelling frontier”), and this year plans to lay off about 50 employees in the department-the ratio is close to 100%. This is only a small part of the 7,000 layoff plan. According to “21st Century Business Herald”, Disney’s Hulu has also laid off more than 90% of its employees in Beijing, and the compensation is N+3.
China has become South Korea’s largest trade deficit country.
According to the Korea International Trade Association, from January to February 2023, South Korea’s trade deficit with China accumulated to US$5.074 billion, and China became South Korea’s largest trade deficit country. Since 2018, the scale of South Korea’s trade surplus with China has fluctuated and decreased, and it has gradually turned into a deficit and tended to be normalized. The epidemic situation and the differences in the industrial division of labor between the two countries are all influencing factors. While the export of semiconductors, displays and other products has decreased, South Korea has imported more power battery materials and computers from China.
From January to February, the total amount of domestic social logistics increased slightly, and enterprises still have cost pressures.
From January to February this year, the total amount of domestic social logistics was 53.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.9%. The growth rate was lower than that of the same period last year, but faster than that of December last year. Among them, the total volume of industrial product logistics increased by 2.4% year-on-year, the logistics demand in export-related fields was relatively weak, and the total volume of logistics exports in industries such as textiles and automobile manufacturing declined. In addition, driven by management costs and oil prices, the business costs of logistics companies increased by 15.6% year-on-year from January to February, 2.9 percentage points higher than the growth rate of revenue.
Lululemon expects strong demand and reduced inventory this year.
Sportswear brand Lululemon once again showed its resilience against inflation. In the fourth quarter of last year, its revenue increased by 30% year-on-year. Against the background of the overall contraction of the sportswear industry, the company took advantage of this to expand its market share. Its Chinese revenue (accounting for 8%) has a compound growth rate of more than 50% in the past three years. Lululemon expects growth to remain strong this year, and issued better-than-expected performance guidance, helping the company’s stock price rise nearly 13% after hours.
Micron, a major memory maker, laid off employees more than expected, but hinted that the market is close to bottoming out.
As market demand continues to weaken, Micron set a record loss of US$2.31 billion in the quarter ended March 2 (including an inventory write-down of over US$1.4 billion), and it is expected that revenue will continue to decline by 60% in the next quarter. As a result, the company has cut expenses (annual capital expenditure is expected to be $7 billion at the lower end of the previously set range) and expanded layoffs (expected to cut 15%, higher than the original plan of 10%). The slightly more optimistic news is that the company’s CEO Sanjay Mehrotra hinted at the bottom of the memory market in the earnings call, saying that Micron’s inventory had peaked in the last quarter, and quarterly revenue was close to turning to a growth cycle. He also said that the data storage demand brought about by AI will help the entire memory market scale hit a new high in 2025.
For the first time, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission released departmental budgets in the name of the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration.
The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission released the “2023 State Financial Regulatory Administration (China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission) Departmental Budget”, which is the first time that the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission has issued an official document in the name of the State Financial Regulatory Administration. The official document pointed out that the total revenue and expenditure budget of the State Administration of Financial Supervision (the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission) in 2023 is 10.631 billion yuan. According to the institutional reform plan of the State Council, the State Council established the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration on the basis of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, which is responsible for the supervision of the financial industry except the securities industry.
The adult education and training platform Chabi announced its first annual report, and its net profit turned from loss to profit.
Chalk released its first annual report since its listing. In 2022, the gross profit will be 136.6 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62.4%, and the adjusted net profit will be 191 million yuan, turning losses into profits. Chalk indicated the increase in gross profit, mainly due to the strategic adjustment of student-to-instructor ratio and enhanced cost control. The total revenue was 2.81 billion yuan, of which the proportion of online training services increased by 10 percentage points, and the proportion of offline training services decreased.
Ali released an internal Q&A video and will hold a conference call to discuss organizational changes.
Alibaba will host a conference call at 8:00 am on March 30 to discuss the previously announced new organizational and governance structure. Yesterday (28th), in addition to publishing a letter to all employees, Ali also released a question-and-answer video within the group. It is mentioned in the video that the transformation of Ali Group is to promote production relations. The group’s “big, medium and small front desk” model needs to change the relationship. In the future, the main body of business responsibility will fall to each business group, and the brand of each business group will be strengthened. . Zhang Yong also mentioned that the conditions for independent financing and listing refer to meeting the listing conditions and someone willing to invest in you.
UBS brings back former CEO to oversee M&A deal for Credit Suisse.
UBS announced that Sergio Ermotti will take over as CEO to oversee the smooth progress of the Credit Suisse merger, effective April 5. Former CEO Ralph Hamers will stay at UBS to ensure a smooth transition period. From November 2011 to October 2020 Sergio Ermotti served as Group CEO at UBS for nine years and is currently Chairman of Swiss Re.
This article is transferred from: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1577
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.