"The first share of vending machines" hit the capital market again.
Recently, Beijing Youbao Online Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Youbao Online"), known as "China's largest unmanned retail operator", submitted a listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.In addition, Ubao Online has the largest network of vending machines in the country, according to Frost & Sullivan.
Ant Financial is the second largest shareholder, with a loss of nearly 1.4 billion yuan in the past two years
According to the data, seven people including Wang Bin, the main founder of the company, launched the vending machine business through Beijing Youbaokes in 2011, and built the first prototype vending machine, and then established Youbao Online in March 2012.It should be pointed out that Wang Bin, a veteran of the Internet circle, once served as a senior vice president of Sina and an independent angel investor.
As a result, Youbao Online has become the darling of capital since its inception.According to the Tianyancha APP, in 2011, Youbao Online first received tens of millions of US dollars in Series A financing from Fenghe Investment and Hanergy Venture Capital, and then successively obtained Yunfeng Fund and several first-line investment institutions of Huazhu Hotel Group. financing.During the listing on the New Third Board, the company also introduced institutions such as China Securities Investment Capital, CICC Capital, and Ant Financial Services.After delisting, Youbao Online completed another round of strategic financing of 1.6 billion yuan, led by Ant Financial and followed by Chunhua Capital.
At present, Wang Binchi, the main founder of Youbao Online, and Chen Kunrong, who is acting in concert, hold a total of 21.99% of the shares, of which Wang Bin holds 17.9%.In addition, Shanghai Yunxin, a subsidiary of Ant Group, holds 16.68% of the shares and is the second largest shareholder of Youbao Online; Chunhua Capital holds 5.56% of the shares through Chunhua Rongshun.
Youbao Online, which has a lot of capital "blessing", should have "unimpeded" capital road, but this is not the case.This IPO is not the first time that Youbao Online has hit the capital market. The company was listed on the New Third Board as early as February 24, 2016, and its stock listing was terminated on March 12, 2019.During this period, Youbao Online also plans to sprint for listing on the A-share ChiNext. It signed a listing counseling agreement with CITIC Construction Investment Securities on December 29, 2016, but terminated the counseling agreement on February 25, 2021.
In fact, Youbao Online's performance before the delisting of the New Third Board was still good. On September 30, 2018, the company's revenue was 1.806 billion yuan and its net profit was 100 million yuan.However, Youbao Online, which entered the Hong Kong stock market three years later, although its revenue scale has surpassed the past, its profitability is not as good as before.From 2019 to 2021, the company's operating income was 2.727 billion yuan, 1.902 billion yuan and 2.676 billion yuan respectively, and the corresponding annual profits were 39.649 million yuan, -1.184 billion yuan and -188 million yuan respectively.It can be seen from this that Youbao Online has been losing money for two consecutive years, with a cumulative loss of 1.372 billion yuan.
Gross profit margin shrunk by more than half due to COVID-19 outbreak
At present, the penetration of the unmanned retail market in China is extremely low.In 2021, the average number of vending machines per 1,000 people in China will be only 0.7, compared with 21.9 in the United States, 20 in Japan and 6.1 in Europe.At the end of 2021, China's vending machines only cover 7.6% of the country's potential available sites, and the penetration rate is expected to increase to 19.5% by 2026.
As of the end of 2021, Youbao Online's point network consists of more than 102,700 Youbao points and affiliated points of vending machines, covering 288 cities and 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China, of which 81.3% are concentrated in the first-line, new Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.
According to the prospectus, Youbao Online’s revenue mainly comes from smart retail business, supply chain operation services, digital value-added services and others.Among them, the revenue of smart retail business mainly comes from the retail of goods through the vending machines of Youbao; the revenue of supply chain operation service mainly comes from commodity wholesale, machine sales and leasing; the revenue of digital value-added services comes from providing advertisers with Derivative income from service fees charged by digital advertising services, etc.In addition, other services provided by Youbao Online include mini KTV services in China.
As can be seen from the above figure, the revenue share of smart retail business is increasing year by year, from 56.5% in 2019 to 71.6% in 2021. It is the core business of Youbao Online, and the gross profit margin has been around 46.4%.At the same time, the company's least profitable supply chain operation service, its revenue ratio has remained at 17%, but the gross profit margin of this business is only 3.7%.
In contrast, Youbao Online's most profitable digital value-added service, its revenue share has been decreasing year by year, from 20.1% to 9.3%, and the gross profit margin has also dropped from 90.4% to 76.3%.In addition, the company's revenue from operating mini KTV services is also shrinking. By 2021, the revenue of this business will only account for 1.2%, while the gross profit margin has plummeted from 66.9% to 19.3%, and even the number of mini KTVs has also declined from 6,410. to 4097, a decrease of nearly 40%.
This is mainly due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the government's implementation of social distancing, city closures, temporary business closures and other disruptive measures. Public venues where multiple vending machines and mini KTVs are located on Youbao Online were required to close, while passenger traffic and sales activities were negatively affected.Among them, the company's operating mini KTV, smart orange juice machine and smart coconut juice machine were confirmed to have large impairment losses.Therefore, Youbao Online's revenue fell by 30.3% in 2020, and recorded a loss of 1.184 billion yuan. At the same time, the company's gross profit margin also plummeted from 48.7% in 2019 to 29.4% in 2020, shrinking by nearly half.
To mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the company, Youbao Online shifted the company's marketing efforts to a partner model by introducing more point partners for its smart retail business to stabilize profit margins and mitigate the impact of outages.From 2019 to 2021, Youbao Online has more than 63,400, 58,400 and 85,100 Youbao points nationwide, of which approximately 17.2%, 68.5% and 84% are operated under the partnership model.During the same period, the revenue from the smart retail business under the company's partner model was 250 million yuan, 762 million yuan and 1.479 billion yuan respectively.
As a result, Youbao Online admitted in its prospectus that if it cannot maintain the current scale of the partnership model, retain existing point partners or attract new point partners, the company's point network expansion plan may be interrupted, and its The business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected as a result.
In fact, Youbao Online has been more of an "acquisition maniac" in recent years, and it has invested in a number of companies that complement its growth strategy, such as software developers and smart vending machine operators.Unfortunately, so far, the investment has not yielded economic benefits.From 2019 to 2021, the investment losses of Youbao Online accounted for by the equity method were RMB 7.169 million, RMB 3.472 million and RMB 4.092 million respectively.At the same time, the company has not stopped buying and buying, and it also intends to use the funds raised to make strategic investments and acquisitions in potential companies in the unmanned retail industry.
It is worth noting that Youbao Online, which claims to maintain its competitiveness through continuous research and development to improve its core technology, has seen its R&D expenditures decrease year by year during the reporting period.From 2019 to 2021, the company's research and development expenditures were 57.3 million yuan, 41.5 million yuan and 36.8 million yuan, respectively, accounting for 2.1%, 2.2% and 1.4% of the total revenue for the same period.
(Editor in charge: Guan Jing)
