On July 12, according to LatePost reports, some Meituan veterans have recently changed their positions, involving the Meituan platform and the in-store business group.
Among them, Han Jian, the CTO of Meituan Daojia Business Group and the head of the R&D platform, was transferred to the CTO of the Meituan platform and reported to Li Shubin, the head of the Meituan platform. His position was taken over by his subordinate, Sun Zhizhao, the former head of delivery technology of Meituan Daojia Business Group.
It is reported that the Meituan platform did not have a unified technical director before, and the technical team was distributed under various business departments. This time, after Han Jian was transferred to the Meituan platform, he disassembled the Search and NLP (Natural Language Processing) Department, Growth Technology Department, Service Experience Department, and App Technology Department according to their functions, reorganized and merged them, forming a front-end, back-end, New divisions for Algorithms, Testing and Product Division.
After the transfer, Han Jian said internally that when he came to the Meituan platform, he would do three things: reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve quality.
Since the beginning of this year, the Meituan to-store business group has experienced changes in the heads of two business units within half a year. First, in April, Wang Yiming, the head of the restaurant’s catering business department, announced that he would be transferred, and Zhang Jian, the former vice president of Spark Thinking, took over Wang Yiming’s position. In June, Li Yang, the head of the intercity transportation (including air and train tickets) business, resigned, and the business was handed over to Liu Yanxiang, the head of the ticket business department.
This month, Liu Wei, the former head of the regional operation department of the Meituan Optimal Division, was also transferred to the Meituan Daodian business group as the head of the platform product department. Liu Wei, an old employee of Meituan, joined Meituan in the early days of its establishment and was called “Sister Wei” internally.
As we all know, in-store is the business with the highest operating profit margin in Meituan, and it has always been called the “cash cow” of Meituan.
Leifeng.com learned that on June 2 this year, Meituan announced its performance report for the first quarter of 2022, showing that Meituan’s in-store, hotel and tourism revenue was 7.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.8%. The operating profit was 3.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.4%, and the operating profit margin was 45.6%. Among them, revenue and operating profit grew strongly in January and February.
In addition to the changes of Meituan veterans, Qiu Guangyu, the former head of the Kuaishou Internationalization Division, has also recently joined Meituan.
At present, Qiu Guangyu is temporarily serving as assistant to Wang Xing, the founder and CEO of Meituan, and it is not clear what business he will be responsible for next.
It is reported that Qiu Guangyu joined Kuaishou in August 2020. Previously, he was the chief operating officer of Didi’s International Business Department. He worked in Didi and Kuaishou for 5 years and 18 months respectively, and participated in the internationalization battle of the two companies successively.
At the beginning of 2021, Kuaishou Internationalization had set a goal of breaking DAU of 100 million yuan, and raised overseas expansion to one of its core strategies.
Qiu Guangyu, who was in charge of international business at the time, proposed to increase Kuaishou’s DAU (number of daily active users) in overseas markets to 100 million by the end of the year, and hoped to form a global 1:2 market structure with TikTok within three years. However, in Kuaishou at that time, the global DAU was only 10 million, while the global MAU of Tiktok was close to 1 billion.
In order to achieve the goal, Qiu Guangyu integrated a number of overseas products into one product of Kwai, and built a middle platform for it; he won a 20% salary increase for subordinate business employees.
People close to Kuaishou said that Kuaishou internally approved 2 billion US dollars (about 12.7 billion yuan) for overseas growth last year. And after the second half of the year, the largest structural adjustment in ten years was carried out, and four new business units were added: e-commerce, commercialization, internationalization, and games.
According to media reports, in the first three months of 2021, Kuaishou spent at least $250 million overseas, about one-sixth of Kuaishou’s total marketing expenses in the first quarter, and nearly $100 million in a single month in April.
But soon, at the end of October of that year, Su Hua stepped down as CEO, and Kuaishou ended the long-standing dual-core governance structure: Su Hua was in charge of the strategy and the new direction of the company’s development, while Cheng Yixiao was in charge of specific businesses and officially in charge of all of Kuaishou’s core businesses.
In October of the same year, Kuaishou, eager to reduce costs and increase efficiency, began to work on international business.
At this time, the Kuaishou internationalization department began to adjust its strategy, and the user growth direction changed from acquiring new users to retaining old users through refined operations; the plan to enter new markets was temporarily suspended.
By the end of 2021, Kwai’s daily active users will reach about 60 million, which is still far from the original target of 100 million.
According to The Passage.com, Kuaishou spent 12.7 billion yuan overseas in 2021, and lost nearly 20 billion last year. Coupled with changes in the internal and external environment, Kuaishou realized that it would be impossible to continue to burn money overseas for growth.
On the other hand, before leaving office, Su Hua was in charge of the commercialization and internationalization of Kuaishou, mastered the company’s personnel, and was in charge of external affairs. However, with Su Hua’s resignation, the international team gradually began to reshuffle.
In February this year, Kuaishou market leaders Shao Kai, Zack and others resigned one after another. Zack is the head of the Southeast Asian market. Shao Kai and Xu Zhiwei are responsible for the Latin American market and the Middle East market respectively. The three report to Qiu Guangyu, the head of the Kuaishou International Business Department.
But since March, Qiu Guangyu has gradually faded out of Kuaishou’s international business related conferences. On March 17th, Kuaishou directly announced at the overseas staff meeting that it would adjust the organizational structure of the International Business Department. Qiu Guangyu, the head of the business department, no longer served as the head of the International Business Department due to personal reasons, and would resign.
This international business executive, who only joined Kuaishou in August 2020, has drawn an end to his short “Journey to Kuaishou”.
After Qiu Guangyu resigned, Xu Zhiwei, who was in charge of the production and transportation line (product and operation business) of the Kuaishou Internationalization Division, and Wang Meihong, the head of overseas technology, reported directly to Cheng Yixiao. Zhou Chi, head of Kuaishou’s overseas e-commerce and live broadcast business, and Zheng Yanxiang, head of overseas commercialization, reported directly to Xu Zhiwei.
People close to Kuaishou said that the departure of many business leaders is related to the development of Kuaishou’s internationalization in 2021.
According to financial report data, despite the growth of Kuaishou users, losses continue to expand.
On March 29 this year, Kuaishou released its 2021 annual financial report data. According to the financial report, Kuaishou’s total revenue in 2021 is 81.082 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.9%. Among them, online marketing services are the largest source of income, and the annual revenue of this business segment increased by 95.2% year-on-year to 42.7 billion yuan. In addition, Kuaishou’s total e-commerce transaction volume (GMV) for the year reached 680 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 78.4%.
Due to the change in the fair value of convertible redeemable preferred shares of 51.276 billion yuan, Kuaishou lost as much as 78.077 billion yuan during the year. According to non-IFRS measurement, Kuaishou’s adjusted net loss in 2021 is 18.852 billion yuan, and the loss will increase by 139.7% year-on-year.
In addition, the proportion of Kuaishou live broadcast revenue to total revenue in 2021 will drop from 56.5% in 2020 to 38.2% in 2021. At the same time, live broadcast revenue will drop from 33.2 billion yuan in 2020 to 31 billion yuan in 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%.
The cost of sales of Kuaishou was 47.052 billion yuan, an increase of 34.58% over the same period in 2020. Kuaishou’s sales and marketing expenses in 2021 will increase by 66% from 26.6 billion yuan in 2020 to 44.2 billion yuan in 2021, due to increased spending on product promotion and increased spending on brand marketing activities.
However, as for the overseas performance and related data in 2021, Kuaishou CEO Cheng Yixiao said almost nothing at the financial report meeting.
In this regard, Kuaishou once described its overseas achievements in the first quarter financial report of 2021: “We have also achieved encouraging results in overseas markets, with an average monthly active user of more than 100 million, and by 2021 April continued to grow to 150 million”. Cheng Yixiao also said, “2021 is the best year for Kuaishou’s five-year history of going overseas.”
That is to say, after burning more than 10 billion yuan, Kuaishou’s fourth round of overseas expansion ended by lowering its growth target and suspending new market openings.
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