Like real estate, after 2018, our car-consumption market moved from an era of increase to an age of stock, yet the rise of new energy vehicles in the stock has triggered another wave of swaps。
On the one hand, there is an increasingly chaotic and inward-rolled pattern of car brand competition, on the other hand, a new generation of young car owners growing up in the internet era, and, on the other hand, a frontal platform such as a car house, which combines transactions, is at a turning point in the face of market challenges。
On 16 february, the automotive house published the 2022 q4 and the annual financial paper. This is also the second year of the car house's declaration of a 4. 0 eco-cycle age。
Following the first year of the strategic transformation, when both profits were lost and lost, the financial indicators of the motorhouse remained in the lower range in 2022, with some operations warming up and rebounding slightly in the second half of the year。
What's the financial situation of the car house? Can it lock the hearts of users and cars? How much imagination can the policy-stimulated second-hand car market bring? This paper attempts to answer these questions。
01 overall down, local rebound
At the beginning of 2021, after a second return to hong kong and a change in the ceo's personnel, the automobile house declared an ecological era of 4. 0。
This is the second phase following the digital transformation of the automobile house in 2018. Citing the interpretation of the hku book, the 4. 0-era motor house will “continue to use saas service capabilities, along with ai, big data and cloud computing techniques (collectively abc), for horizontal and vertical expansion towards 4. 0 abc + saas”。
However, in the first year of the strategic transition, the motor house handed over the worst financial returns in history, with revenues falling by 16. 4 per cent, net profit to the mother by 34 per cent, and the hong kong stock price fell from hk$ 198. 56 to hk$ 55. 32 at the end of the year, to over 70 per cent。
In 2022, the performance of the motor home as a whole continued its downward trend, with operating income of $6. 94 billion, a decline of 4. 1 per cent over the same period, and net profit to the mother of $1,855 million, a decline of 17. 5 per cent over the same period。
First look at income。
The income of the car house comes mainly from three components: marketing of the factory media, selling user leads to 4s distributors, online marketing and other business。
Media and referral services are the basic set of automobile homes, and online marketing and other services include, inter alia, car finance, used car trading platforms, saas services, etc., representing the company's future performance growth point。
In 2022, the car house media service earned $1. 963 billion a year, a slight decline of 2. 4 per cent over the previous year。
Officially, the drop at the beginning of the year was mainly affected by the shortage of chips, the limited sales of cars and the reduction in advertising costs at the garage, which resulted in q1 media revenues of only $267 million, with the lowest single-season revenue record, and the subsequent warming of the car-consuming market, among other things, which rebounded to $610 million。
Thread services are the largest current share of income in automobile homes, which is generally stable, at 3,057 million yuan in 2022, an increase of 2. 3 per cent over the same period, the first positive increase since 2019。
This recovery, however, is due more to the fact that the spring collage, combined with the concentration of market demand by the end of the national car consumption subsidy preference, is not necessarily a long-term phenomenon。
Weaknesses are also evident after the outbreak of demand. Ifcs data show that in january 2023, the retail market for passenger vehicles sold 1293,000 vehicles, a decline of 37. 8 per cent over the same period and a decline of 40. 4 per cent in the ring。
Revenues from online marketing and other business blocks were also more common in 2022. Although official emphasis was placed on an increase of more than 20 per cent in the average income of distribution stores throughout the year, the overall income trend was downward, totalling rmb 1. 92 billion, a decrease of 14. 2 per cent。
Look at the profit。
In 2022, the car house's operating profits were 1,248 million yuan, a further decline of 30 per cent over the same period。
In general, the decline in business profits is due mainly to higher main costs, leading to lower corporate maturities, and higher operating costs, reducing profit margins。
In terms of operating costs, in the case of lower income, there is relatively strict cost control in the car house。
In 2022, the total cost of running motor homes was rmb 4,786 million, an increase of 1. 8 per cent over the previous year, while in 2019, the second year of the transition, the cost of operating was 21 per cent higher。
The decline in profits was mainly due to the continuous increase in content-related inputs in the automotive house, which resulted in a 3. 3 percentage point to 82. 2 per cent decline in corporate māori rates during the reporting period, updating the record of the lowest māori rates in companies after the transition in 2018。
Such input into content is closely linked to the increasing competition in the market in recent years。
Do users still love car homes
In essence, the business model of car-like media provides information flow services to a number of parties, such as hosts and distributors, with the advantage of an information platform。
The large user base is the basis for the birth of information, and the main vehicle plant and distributor are the direct sources of revenue for the platform. From these two dimensions, the motor home competes fiercely with two similar platforms that understand the drivers and cars。
High-quality content is key to maintaining user activity. This is also the purpose of the car house's willingness to reduce profits and increase content inputs. However, more than one car house is valued for content。
The vehicular retweeting, which in 2022 was on line 21 and 337 issues, reached a cumulative internet broadcast of 1. 42 billion. Of these, seven original sets of programmes and products form the supervalid vehicle assessment system, which aggregates over 1,000 vehicles and is more systematic and comprehensive than other platforms。
The new energy vehicle winter survey in 2022, for example, demonstrated the superiority of some of the new energy cars during the winter, but the netizens also questioned whether the extreme assessment matched the day-to-day needs。
In terms of the platform's resource inputs, it is understood that the emperors continue the tradition of tremors, with the introduction in 2022 of the “fighter” support scheme, which provides flow support and financial incentives for in-depth content and the creation of novels, allowing the platform to grow rapidly in terms of both the number of creators and the number of readers。
The car house is in a relatively vulnerable position with regard to online content. By the end of 2022, the four original ip columns of the automotive house, " faraway notes " , " the accident prosecutor " , " a minute of compulsory classroom " , " supertest " , had a total of 800 million webcasts。
This has led to the user advantage of the car house, which is being rapidly levelled down by similar platforms。
The auroral data show that in 2022 the average monthly active users of q4 car homes, masters of cars and cars were 4,774, 3. 601 and 3. 511 million (not including the bulk of the price offered under the flag), while in 2021 q1 the monthly activity of the masters was half that of car houses。
The layout of the bottom scene car house is relatively leading. Whether it is the ai experience at the guangzhou car fair, or the “energy space station”, which officially opened in september, the house of automobiles in transition is taking the first step towards landing in the new scenes of new content, such as the neural universe and virtual digitals。
However, at a stage when new technologies are not yet mature and below-line population movements are still not being restored, the effectiveness of user upgrading needs to be further observed。
What's the point
The number and viscosity of platform users is an aspect that affects the willingness of the main vehicle plant and distributor to pay, but as head platform indicators gap, advertising and lead prices, conversion efficiency, etc. Become more important selection criteria。
According to interviews with seven car brand sales conducted by car fans, the motor home, based on the volume of leads, remains a platform to which most branders subscribe, with traditional brands such as mercedes, bmw and so on, with most of the leads coming from the car house. It is even more likely that in the case of new sources of energy, in the case of a match between an emperor and a motorist, the chance of success is higher, even though the driver has less clues than the car house, but the rate of conversion is higher than that of a car home。
However, the decline in the quality of niche platforms is a general consensus among distributors. In an era of social media prevalence, user loyalty to a single platform has declined, with multiple platforms browsing and retention, leading to a high repetition of inter-platform leads。
In this context, the three collective price increases in subscriptions to the platform at the beginning of 2023 again triggered a boycott by a number of distributors。
In fact, niche platforms do not affect consumer demand, price increases only increase the cost of taking customers for distributors, lead efficiency does not change, and in times of financial constraints, abandoning less useful service platforms is a good way to save costs in the short term。
The pressure on the car home can also be seen from the data. Known by the king, as of october 2022, the number of co-dealers who know how to sell motor vehicles increased from 44 per cent to 288,000, the largest industry at this stage. The number of co-dealers in the car houses declined in 2020 and 2021, and data for 2022 were not updated in the quarterly reports。
In the long run, not only is the digital transformation of the vernacular media, but so are the digital means by which cars build their own private spaces, which means that some of the owners can skip intermediaries like the vernacular media and match brands. The value of platforms such as motor homes has diminished relatively, but this is a long process。
How much imagination does a used car have
Unlike the value-added properties of housing, consumer properties of cars mean that vehicles can only stimulate consumption and remain market-active if they are constantly updated. The replacement of old cars into the used car market created another boom。
According to the chinese association for the circulation of cars, the volume of second-hand car transactions increased from 4. 33 million to 1. 75 million in 2011 with the saturation of the market for new vehicles. Compared with mature markets such as the united states and germany, the volume of second-hand car transactions is almost twice as high as that of new vehicles, and the domestic level is currently not even。
Since 2023, the state has introduced a new policy of second-hand car trading, which restricts individuals from reselling more than two second-hand cars more frequently in a year, and has curbed the insecurity of individual second-hand car dealers at the policy level, better than a platform for relatively well-developed systems。
For too long, however, the small, scattered and chaotic market for used cars in our country has not led to a clear and effective solution due to increased internet penetration。
In addition to the direct branded used car home, the car house formally acquired the used car platform every day in late 2020 to improve the last link in the service chain。
The second-hand car home is the traditional b2c model, which helps consumers to select second-hand cars, while the day-to-day car-shooting model is the c2b model, which helps individual car owners to compete online, transfers the origin of the car to second-hand dealers, and collects a percentage of the second-hand car dealer's transaction payments as commission income。
At present, the two platforms are still some distance from the industrial locomotive. As of july 2022, there were 4. 63 million used-cars per month, 3. 754 million used-cars per month and only 240,000 daily。
Based on the user and flow resources of the automobile house and the sanctuary group, the cost of getting caught daily is lower and the balance of gains and losses is achieved in the second half of 2022. The second-hand car home has been profitable because of its size。
However, it is also officially acknowledged that the market for used cars is still at the stage of commercial model exploration. Issues such as the exit of users from the platform for self-dealing, the non-transparent course of dealing, and the platform's offer of a vehicle loan to dig holes have not been adequately addressed. If there is a platform to take the lead in finding solutions to the pain, the profit of the follower will become unpredictable。
05 conclusion
As an old player and head platform for car-like platforms, the development of car houses is much more threatening than the threat of survival。
