Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1564
Advertising became Tencent’s first business to rebound.
Taking advantage of the general trend of the recovery of China’s advertising industry and the accelerated commercialization of WeChat from the second half of 2022, Tencent Advertising ushered in a long-lost positive growth in the fourth quarter, with an increase of 14.6% and a scale of 24.66 billion yuan. According to “Wan Lian Cai”, the growth will also continue to the first quarter of 2023.
In the foreseeable future, advertising will become an increasingly important and relatively high-certainty growth engine for Tencent—especially considering that the maturity of the mini-program ecosystem will drive merchants to increase advertising in WeChat; and the user base of more than 400 million The video account will also continue to start commercialization attempts including e-commerce.
A Tencent advertising person told Wanwan Finance that at the internal meeting of Tencent Advertising in January this year, Lin Jinghua, senior vice president of Tencent and head of Tencent Advertising, once said that in 2023, Tencent Advertising will tap more vertical industries and small and medium business customers. , to find more room for ad growth. And many brands have also revealed to us that in 2023, the original advertising budget on Kuaishou and other platforms has been allocated to video accounts.
Some market participants are looking forward to the explosive growth of Tencent advertising, but this idea seems unrealistic. “Wan Lian Cai” understands that the content construction of WeChat video accounts is still the top priority at present, and will not increase significantly in the next year, but will strictly control the number of advertisements, so as not to damage the immature user experience and creator ecology.
The core financial data disclosed by Tencent in the quarter are as follows:
- The total revenue was 144.95 billion yuan, flat year-on-year;
- The cost is 83.1 billion yuan, a decrease of 3.75%;
- Sales expenses decreased by 47% to 6.15 billion yuan;
- In the case of staff reduction, the growth rate of management expenses is accelerating, and the proportion of revenue is flat month-on-month, with a total scale of 27.3 billion yuan; the number of employees will increase in a “disciplined” way this year;
- The operating profit of the main business (ie excluding investment income) was 30.975 billion yuan, the first increase since the fourth quarter of 2021. The operating profit margin under the same caliber was 21.37%, down 0.55 percentage points from the previous quarter.
The development and application of artificial intelligence technology is a hot topic recently, and Tencent executives have not “escaped” analysts’ questions about industry investment and prospects. Liu Chiping, President of Tencent, said that WeChat and QQ will integrate artificial intelligence technology to improve user efficiency, and developers can already use generative AI to develop small programs faster.
- Executive director Liu Chiping will be “rotated” in May this year.
- This is in response to the requirements of the HKEx Corporate Governance Code.
- Tencent has disclosed in the 2021 annual report.
Chief strategy officer James Mitchell (James Mitchell) added views on the scale of investment. He said that generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) itself is not a big investment, and services like Discord have already made money by distributing AIGC drawing service Midjourney.
What really requires a lot of capital investment is to build a large language model to support AIGC. Microsoft has said that their large models can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. However, this kind of cost investment is different from the asset-heavy projects that most Chinese Internet companies including Tencent have done in the past three years: the big language model is more like a fixed cost necessary for entering the industry, while Chinese companies have done a few years ago For those projects, such as community group buying, the cost increases with the number of users.
“We think these kinds of fixed costs (for Tencent) are more ideal.” Michel said. A development supervisor of a provincial operator made a metaphor, “(The big language model) is a bit like a base station, it is the foundation of the foundation, and only with it can we do business.” (Gong Fangyi Gao Honghao)
Nvidia, the supplier of all AI suppliers
“Just in time”, this year’s GTC opened, Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun described the arrival of accelerated computing and AI in four words.
He said that Moore’s Law has been an important law leading the dynamic development of the computer industry for the past 40 years. However, under the condition of constant cost and power consumption, the exponential growth of performance has slowed down, and AI has given the opportunity for chips and computing power to continue to grow. power.
For Nvidia, the launch of ChatGPT is also “at the right time.” At the end of November last year, Nvidia, like most of its peers, encountered a deterioration in the macro economy. Consumers and companies were saving money, and chips for computers and data centers were not easy to sell.
The situation is different after ChatGPT appeared. Nvidia’s market capitalization has risen by more than 80% since the beginning of the year (OpenAI’s major shareholder, Microsoft, has risen by less than 15%). Market research agency TrendForce estimates that OpenAI may use 30,000 Nvidia GPUs (mostly expensive A100 and H100) to train ChatGPT. Citigroup estimates that Nvidia will increase its annual sales by $3 billion to $11 billion as a result.
This isn’t the first time Nvidia has hit hot spots related to computing. Before ChatGPT, games, cloud computing, cryptocurrencies, Metaverse… In recent years, almost every technology trend that has attracted a lot of intellectual and cash capital can see Nvidia’s technology or products behind it.
The market is used to comparing upstream companies in the industrial chain like Nvidia to “shovel sellers”. Whether you want to dig gold, silver or iron ore, Nvidia is the winner because its shovel digs the fastest and saves the most effort.
The accelerated arrival of the AI era has given Nvidia the opportunity to sell more products to more people, not just selling chips, not just selling to technology companies, but being the most upstream supplier of the industry.
Huang Renxun said that AI software will be a much broader market than hardware. The value of AI services lies in accelerating the productivity of manufacturing, scientific research and other industries, and the volume of these industries is at the trillion-dollar level.
In the 78-minute opening speech, Huang Renxun almost never said a word about AI, nor about the specific application of the new product or the customers who have already adopted it. Among the new products or technological advances he announced were:
- Brand new GPU inference platform. Including 4 different configurations: L4 Tensor Core GPU, L40 GPU, H100 NVL GPU and Grace Hopper super chip, respectively corresponding to AI video acceleration, image generation acceleration, large language model (LLM) acceleration, recommendation system and LLM database. Among them, the H100 NVL specially developed for large models can be used to process ChatGPT, which is 10 times faster than the previous generation A100, and the cost is reduced by an order of magnitude. Early adopters of the four reasoning platforms include Google, Kuaishou, AIGC technology platform D-ID, etc.;
- Cloud service DGX Cloud. Provide a dedicated NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputing cluster, with NVIDIA AI software, so that every enterprise can use a simple web browser to access AI supercomputing, the current cooperation partners include Microsoft Azure, Google GCP and Oracle OCI, etc.;
- Customize the cloud service AI Foundations for large-scale model foundry. It can provide users with customized LLM and generative AI solutions, including language model NEMO, visual model PICASSO and biological model BIONEMO. The world’s largest library, Getty Images, will use it to build image and video generation models, and Adobe will also use it to make generative AI models to optimize images and video animations in the creative process;
- Scheduling optimization solution cuOpt. It can analyze 30 billion actions per second. With it, telecom operator AT&T can find solutions 100 times faster and update scheduling in real time. Deloitte, Accenture, etc. are also using it to help customers optimize operations;
- Video processing acceleration libraries CV-CUDA and VPF. Tencent uses them to process 300,000 videos a day, and Microsoft uses them to process visual searches;
- AI acceleration library Parabricks 4.1. It can be used for end-to-end genome analysis in the cloud or in instruments, and can reduce the cost of whole genome sequencing to $100. Downstream applications include drug development, agriculture and energy production, etc.;
- Holoscan, a software library that can be used to develop medical devices. Medtronic, a leading medical device company, used it to build a new system, GI Genius, which uses AI for early detection of colon cancer, which will be launched by the end of this year;
- A quantum control link developed in collaboration with Quantum Machines. Nvidia’s GPUs can be connected to quantum computers and error-corrected at breakneck speed. Although quantum computers will not be commercially available anytime soon…
Nvidia also has to be a supplier of its own suppliers. Its newly released cuLitho, a GPU-based computational lithography software library, is used in the most complex and expensive lithography process in chip manufacturing. After using it, the calculation lithography speed can be increased by 40 times, and the photomask production capacity can be increased by 3 to 5 times, and the power consumption is reduced to one-ninth of the current one. Huang Renxun said that cuLitho will assist the chip manufacturing process to move towards 2 nanometers and more advanced.
The three companies developing the technology with Nvidia are TSMC, ASML and Synopsys. The former helps NVIDIA manufacture GPU chips and is one of its most important suppliers. The latter two are global lithography machines and EDA leaders respectively, both of which are in the most upstream link of the entire semiconductor industry. All three now use Nvidia’s GPU and technology platform.
Throughout the speech, Huang Renxun repeated “this is AI’s iPhone moment” three times (this statement was put forward by himself in a salon last month), and he reminded companies to have a sense of urgency and to become disruptors rather than being passive. disruptor. It goes without saying that whoever becomes the next Apple, Nvidia wants to be their TSMC and more. (Qiu Hao)
Feishu Publishing Business Three-Piece Set
On March 22, Feishu held the Spring Future Unlimited Conference and released three business suites: “Multidimensional Form”, “Feishu Application Engine” and “Feishu Integration Platform”.
Among them, the multi-dimensional form is aimed at front-line employees in various industries, and its main features are flexibility, portability, and low barriers to entry. Users can not only submit data in the form, but also simultaneously perform process promotion functions such as automatic group pull and one-click reminder. Managers can check business progress and understand detailed data anytime, anywhere.
Feishu Application Engine provides a wide range of common modules, which can help technology developers greatly reduce development costs and quickly build business systems. For example, Haidilao used it to build a dish defect reporting system. The latter uses a tracking and resolution mechanism within 48 hours, and the fastest 2-hour closed-loop processing of a single dish problem, saving 40% of manpower in the entire process. Xie Xin, CEO of Feishu, said that this function has entered the stage of co-creation with customers and will enter the market when it matures.
The Feishu integration platform is a connector that connects the ERP, CRM, OA, human resources and other systems that may have been independent of the enterprise. It can aggregate processes scattered in various systems and share them with Feishu accounts, data, and processes. Employees can directly initiate various processes on Feishu, and the approval card will be automatically pushed to the manager’s Feishu chat dialog box. The Feishu integration platform currently has more than 100 system connectors, supporting mainstream systems in the market such as UFIDA, Kingdee, SAP, and Salesforce.
In 2020, Feishu Office was released, starting from chat, documents and meetings, to help solve the internal collaboration problems of enterprises. Then, the Feishu People system based on Feishu Office was launched, and the business of enterprise people and things can be connected in one “system” to improve the efficiency of organization and management. Then, it is today’s “business three-piece suit”. Xie Xin said that he hopes to further improve the positioning of Feishu and help enterprises transform the way they operate their business so that they can respond quickly and grow rapidly in the face of various uncertainties.
Temu, which has been online for 7 months, has begun to brand
Similar to Pinduoduo’s path, when Temu first launched in September last year, it mainly recruited white-label factories and accumulated a large number of users at low prices. The difference is that Temu, which has been online for less than 7 months, has already begun to promote branding. Some brand KA merchants (KeyAccount) will get a series of brand privileges, and have a special department to solve their demands one-on-one.
According to “Hugo.com”, at the Global Cross-Border E-Commerce Exhibition held in Shenzhen in mid-March, Temu Brand Investment Director Jiaxuan called on Chinese brand merchants to settle in. He said that Temu is not selling low prices, but satisfying users of different levels Demand, sellers who have brand ideas or have branded goods in their hands are very welcome to join. Compared with Amazon, Temu merchants do not need to buy volume, the promotion cost is low, and the platform sells on behalf of them, lowering the threshold.
Source: Hugo.com
We have sorted out this week that Temu has developed rapidly. In January this year, there were about 11 million monthly active users. There was news of a warehouse explosion. “LatePost” also reported that after several months of polishing, Temu’s overall product has been greatly improved.
These do not affect Temu to pull the brand to sell goods. Brands that have successfully gone overseas—such as Anker Innovations, which has a wide range of overseas users and an annual revenue of over 10 billion—are actually the most ideal. Temu gives cheap incremental traffic to the brand, and the brand “returns” to Temu’s new users and trust in the platform.
In order to attract brands, Temu emphasizes its store concept that values brands, and has developed a series of tools to help brands better display their image. He also said that he would communicate with brand owners to understand brand positioning and target groups, and promote them in a targeted manner based on brand demands. This sounds a bit like the Tmallization of Taobao back then. In the past few years, Pinduoduo has tried multiple gold, but the effect is very limited – but this experience is enough for Temu.
Consumers in European and American countries also pay attention to quality and brand culture. There is no “Tmall”. This is largely because the brand consumption culture in Europe and the United States has matured and the channels are very stable before the emergence of e-commerce, so brand owners are more inclined to build their own Independent station, self-operated users, the whole environment does not need Tmall. But if it is another online brand mall with rich cultural ecology and cheap things (although it may not have big brands), it may be quite attractive. (Lin Guangying)
Nike’s recovery in China is weaker than expected
In the three months to the end of February this year, Nike’s revenue was 12.4 billion US dollars, an increase of 19% year-on-year. Gross profit margin dropped to 43.3% due to discounted inventory clearance, and ending inventory still increased 16% YoY to US$8.9 billion. Consistent with the general trend of the industry, when consumption slows down, the sales of sports shoes are more stable, and the decline of clothing is more obvious.
The Nike brand remained strong globally, with sales up 27% in North America, 17% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 10% in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
The recovery in Greater China was less than expected. Sales for the quarter were $1.99 billion, down 8% year-over-year and up just 1% after adjusting for currency. Still, management expressed satisfaction with the momentum in the Chinese market, saying the fundamentals were strong, seeing a “real pick-up” in growth earlier this year, and saying the key to winning here was simply innovation and localization.
Although not mentioned, in the current Chinese market, domestic brands are a challenge that Nike cannot avoid. Anta’s domestic revenue has surpassed that of Nike since the last quarter. Last year, it achieved revenue growth (+8.8%) on the basis of maintaining a gross profit margin (60.2%). Li Ning changed its scale at a discount. Last year, its gross profit margin dropped to 48.4%, and its revenue increased by 14.3%.
Both are preparing to strive for a larger market share after the epidemic. As of the end of last year, Li Ning had 7,603 stores, 466 more than the same period last year, the largest increase since the epidemic. Anta has 11,587 stores, 130 more than the same period last year, which is the first net increase since the epidemic. (Lin Guangying)
CHART OF THE DAY | Last year, the permanent population of Zhejiang cities achieved a net increase
OTHER NEWS
AutoNavi and Koubei officially merged.
According to the exclusive news from LatePost , AutoNavi held an internal meeting on March 22, announcing the formal merger with word-of-mouth business of Alibaba Local Life. All local life-to-store businesses under Ali will be unified and integrated in the entrance of Gaode Map. At present, word-of-mouth has only a single-digit share in the in-store market, and it needs to face strong competitors such as Meituan and Douyin. After the merger, Koubei will receive 120 million daily active users of AutoNavi and more product strategy support. Yesterday we just mentioned that Starbucks has cooperated with AutoNavi to launch self-driving passengers in Beijing and Shanghai to pick up meals without getting out of the car.
Zhihu’s advertising revenue fell by 20% last year, and paid members took the lead.
Zhihu’s advertising revenue will drop to 930 million yuan in 2022. The management said it is affected by the macro environment. During the same period, the income of paid members increased by more than 80% year-on-year to 1.23 billion yuan, becoming the largest source of income, and the income from vocational training also increased by more than 4 times to 248 million yuan. In the end, Zhihu achieved an annual revenue of 3.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.8%.
JD Health’s revenue increased by 52.3% year-on-year, turning losses year-on-year.
JD Health announced its full-year results for 2022 on March 22. Revenue increased by 52.3% year-on-year to 46.7 billion yuan, with a profit of 400 million yuan. In 2022, JD Health will have a net increase of 31 million annual active users, bringing the total to over 154 million. Due to additional purchases by users, increased online penetration and a wide range of product categories, the sales revenue of pharmaceutical and health products has increased significantly, driving the growth of total revenue.
China’s first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine developed by CSPC was put into emergency use.
CSPC announced on March 22 that the novel coronavirus mRNA vaccine (SYS6006) independently developed by the group was put into emergency use in China. At the same time, the 2022 results were released, with annual revenue of 30.94 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11%.
The revenue of the game market fell back in February, but the turnover of “Yuan Shen” is still rising.
Gamma Data released the “Game Industry Report for February 2023” on March 22. The actual sales revenue of the Chinese game market in February was 21.609 billion yuan, a month-on-month decrease of 10.16%. The end of the Spring Festival holiday, the end of game operation activities and fewer days in February factors lead to this result. “Yuanshin” has maintained its turnover growth with the February game character activities and the 3.5 version update. According to Sensor Tower, “Yuanshin” ranked second in the global top game revenue list with a revenue of US$186 million in February.
From $10 billion to $10 million, Qutoutiao is about to delist.
According to the announcement, Qutoutiao received a Nasdaq delisting decision letter last week because it no longer complied with the listing rules (closing price remained above $1, etc.), and failed to submit financial reports on time. Qu Toutiao said that it will not appeal, which means that trading will be suspended from March 23. Qutoutiao was once hailed as “Pinduoduo in the information industry” by virtue of “making cash by reading news”. After its listing in 2018, its market value exceeded 10 billion US dollars, but it was also exposed by CCTV because of false and illegal advertisements. In recent years, the market value has been declining along with the number of users and revenue. After the market closed on March 21, there were only more than 10 million US dollars left.
China Southern Airlines will launch “fly as you wish”, while China Eastern Airlines and Air China have no plans yet.
On March 21, China Southern Airlines released the “Travel China” product, of which the “National Edition” is not limited to regional use, and the same route can be used for up to two round trips. Depending on the travel time, the price is between 3399 yuan and 4688 yuan. However, the use period is only 3 months, and the discounted price is much more expensive. After the product was officially launched, the sales system of China Southern Airlines froze for a while, and some users said that “it is more difficult to grab than before.”
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers called for a rational approach to the current round of car price cuts, saying that most of them are aimed at old models in stock.
The China Automobile Association issued a document on March 22, arguing that the hype of this round of price cuts should cool down as soon as possible, so that the industry can return to normal operation. He also pointed out that most of the price reduction promotions are old models in stock, and exaggerating the price reduction promotion will mislead consumers. New energy vehicles and fuel vehicles will coexist for a long time in the future to meet different consumption needs, and price wars are not a long-term solution. Since March, the auto industry has launched a “ten billion subsidy” , and many auto companies have adjusted product prices.
Tencent said there was a broad recovery among companies selling low-priced goods.
According to media reports, people familiar with the matter said that some workers at BYD’s Xi’an factory have adjusted to work 4 days a week, with two shifts of 8 hours per day at the factory, and the Shenzhen factory has also adjusted from 3 shifts per day to 2 shifts per day. However, it is uncertain how long the adjustment will last and the specific impact on production. Against the background of slowing industry demand since the beginning of this year, it is not surprising that car companies have taken the initiative to reduce production.
Lamborghini’s performance set another record, with a total of 9,233 vehicles delivered throughout the year.
Lamborghini’s delivery volume in 2022 will increase by 10% year-on-year, breaking the record in 2021. It is said that orders for some best-selling models such as marque have been scheduled for one and a half years later. Lamborghini achieved annual revenue of US$2.56 billion and operating profit of US$660 million, a year-on-year increase of 56%. According to 2021 data, China is its second largest market, with a total of 1,018 cars sold.
Robin Li said that it doesn’t make much sense to redo a ChatGPT.
According to 36 Krypton, Li Yanhong believes that China will basically not produce another OpenAI. OpenAI was born because major American manufacturers are not optimistic about this direction, but now major Chinese manufacturers are optimistic about AI large models and are doing this direction. It doesn’t make much sense for startups to recreate ChatGPT. There are great opportunities to develop applications based on large language models. There is no need to reinvent the wheel again.
Yang Hongxia, the former leader of the Ali M6 model, joined Bytedance AI Lab.
According to 36 Krypton, Yang Hongxia, the former leader of the Ali M6 large model, joined Bytedance AI Lab (artificial intelligence laboratory) to participate in the research and development of the language generation large model. Since the release of ChatGPT, Wenxin made an appearance, Jia Yangqing, Alibaba’s vice president of technology, resigned to devote himself to AI entrepreneurship, and Kai-fu Lee announced that he was preparing to form Project Al 2.0, and a new upsurge in the AI industry has been rolled up in China.
ChatGPT Bard for Google is open for user testing.
Google’s chatbot product Bard started user testing on the 21st local time. Google defines Bard as a “creative and helpful partner” and notes that Bard is an “early experiment” that may give inaccurate answers. Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard provides users with an empty text box where they can ask questions on any topic. The test will start in the United States and the United Kingdom, and users can apply for a queuing experience.
Amazon is shutting down DPReview, a popular photography review site.
Amazon announced that it will shut down camera review site DPReview on April 10. Founded in 1998, DPReview has become a cornerstone of photojournalism thanks to its comprehensive and in-depth reviews. DPReview is one of many cuts Amazon is making. Amazon has carried out two rounds of layoffs this year, affecting about 27,000 employees, and plans to cut some unprofitable departments.
Bill Gates wants to use artificial intelligence to reduce inequality.
On March 21, Bill Gates published an article discussing the impact of artificial intelligence on human life, hoping to use artificial intelligence to solve the problem of inequality. In the field of health and education, he believes that it is possible to train artificial intelligence models for health problems in underdeveloped countries, reduce the mortality rate of children under the age of 5, provide cheap smart educational tools for all schools, and avoid exacerbating the digital divide.
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