Changjiang Commercial Daily News ● Changjiang Commercial Daily reporter Zhang Lu
Although the loss situation is still ongoing, the user data of Kuaishou Technology (01024.HK) has set a new record.
On May 24, Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., Ltd. ("Kuishou" for short) released its results for the first quarter of 2022. In the first quarter, its total revenue increased by 23.8% year-on-year to 21.1 billion yuan, and the adjusted net loss narrowed to 3.72 billion yuan, which is higher than last year. During the same period, it decreased by 34.1%, and the adjusted net loss ratio improved by more than 15 percentage points year-on-year.
In addition, the company's user scale continued to break record highs. In the first quarter, Kuaishou's DAU (average daily active users) increased by 17% year-on-year to 346 million, and MAU (average monthly active users) increased by 15% year-on-year to 598 million, which means that Kuaishou's user retention rate has continued to improve.
The Changjiang Commercial Daily reporter noticed in the financial report that Kuaishou had two highlights this quarter.The first is the growth of advertising revenue. Data shows that Kuaishou’s advertising revenue in the first quarter was about 11.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.6%, making it the company’s largest source of revenue.Secondly, the e-commerce business performed well. The total value of Kuaishou e-commerce transactions (GMV) in this quarter was 175.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.7%.
Regarding the performance, some people in the industry said that Kuaishou has not gotten out of the predicament of losses while pursuing revenue growth. In the future, Kuaishou can appropriately narrow the growth rate and treat losses as a long-term goal.
Losses reduced by over 30% in the first quarter
A few days ago, Kuaishou Technology released its results for the first quarter of 2022.The data shows that Kuaishou’s revenue in the quarter was 21.1 billion yuan, exceeding market estimates of 20.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.8%; the adjusted net loss was 3.72 billion yuan, which was better than the market’s expected loss of 4.46 billion yuan, compared with 5.65 billion yuan in the same period last year. Down 34.1%.
It is understood that online marketing services (advertising business), live broadcasting, and other services (including e-commerce) are the three core businesses of Kuaishou. In the first quarter of this year, the revenue of the aforementioned three accounted for 53.9%, 37.2% and 8.9% of the revenue respectively. %.Online marketing service revenue has become the business that accounts for more than half of Kuaishou Technology's revenue.Specifically, Kuaishou’s advertising revenue in the first quarter was about 11.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.6%.
Affected by macro factors such as repeated epidemics, the market expects that as advertisers tend to be more conservative in their willingness to invest, the revenue of Internet platforms may be generally under pressure in the first quarter.However, Kuaishou Technology continued to optimize the experience of advertisers, and the number of platform advertisers increased by more than 60% year-on-year.In addition, advertising revenue from platform e-commerce merchants maintained a healthy growth trend, providing support for the "resilience" of the development of advertising business.
At the user level, in the first quarter of 2022, Kuaishou user data set a new record again.According to the financial report, in the first quarter, Kuaishou’s DAU (average daily active users) increased by 17% year-on-year to 346 million, and MAU (average monthly active users) increased by 15% year-on-year to 598 million.At the same time, the average daily usage time of each daily active user of the Kuaishou app reached 128.1 minutes in the first quarter of 2022, a year-on-year increase of 29.0% and a month-on-month increase of 7.7%.In addition, the total user traffic of Kuaishou app increased by more than 50% year-on-year.
However, it should be noted that the growth rate of Kuaishou MAU is also slowing down.According to the 2021 financial report, from the first to the fourth quarter of 2021, Kuaishou MAU will be 520 million, 506 million, 573 million, and 578 million, respectively, with year-on-year increases of 5%, 6.8%, 19.5%, and 21.5%.
For user growth, operation and maintenance, since 2022, Kuaishou has continued to enrich content.The financial report pointed out that Kuaishou has made significant progress in enriching the content and improving the quality of core vertical categories such as short dramas, sports and pan-knowledge.On May 24, the night of the first quarter financial report, Kuaishou announced that it had entered into a 2022 game cooperation framework agreement with Tencent. According to this, the two parties agreed to carry out various cooperation on games.
E-commerce turnover increased by nearly 50%
In the Kuaishou performance conference call, the company's executives repeatedly affirmed the e-commerce business's role in boosting the platform's performance growth.As of March 2022, the number of annual active buyers of Kuaishou e-commerce has exceeded 210 million.In the first quarter of 2022, Kuaishou e-commerce GMV reached 175.1 billion yuan, an increase of 47.7% from 118.6 billion yuan in the same period last year, of which more than 99% came from closed-loop e-commerce Kuaishou stores.
Although the first quarter of this year was affected by the epidemic in many places across the country, the logistics, warehousing and manufacturing of the e-commerce industry were impacted, which affected the merchants' launch activity and user ordering behavior. Compared with the fourth quarter of last year, revenue dropped by 20.8% , but in the first quarter, the "other service income" mainly based on e-commerce business still contributed 1.9 billion yuan in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 54.6%.
However, a reporter from Changjiang Commercial Daily noticed that the revenue of Kuaishou e-commerce business decreased month-on-month.The financial report pointed out that the company's other service revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021 was 2.4 billion yuan, a decrease of 20.8% from the first quarter of this year.
"The bottleneck of the e-commerce business at this stage is mainly on the logistics and warehousing side, and the purchase intention of Kuaishou users is relatively stable." At the performance meeting, Kuaishou CEO Cheng Yixiao analyzed that the areas seriously affected by the epidemic are also the e-commerce industry. The main position of Kuaishou, such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, is where many apparel and luggage manufacturers and industrial belts gather, while North China, Northeast China and other regions are the positions of Kuaishou's core users.
In 2022, Kuaishou E-commerce will upgrade its business strategy to the "Four Great Engagements" of "developing trust e-commerce, developing Kuaishou brands, developing brands, and developing service providers".This year, Kuaishou E-commerce has added the "big and fast brand" to further propose the strategy of "new market e-commerce", and proposed to support 500 "kuai brand" merchants.According to the financial report, in the first quarter of this year, the monthly average GMV of single merchants on the Kuaishou platform exceeded 25 million yuan.
In addition, it is worth noting that as of March 31, 2022, Kuaishou’s cash and cash equivalents were 15.3 billion yuan, compared with 32.6 billion yuan on December 31, 2021.During the first quarter, the cash on the account was 17.3 billion yuan less.
At the performance meeting, Cheng Yixiao also reiterated the continuous improvement of organizational efficiency.In fact, since Cheng Yixiao succeeded Su Hua as the company's CEO, Kuaishou began to vigorously reduce costs and increase efficiency.The financial report shows that in the first quarter of 2022, Kuaishou’s sales and marketing expenses decreased by 18.6% from 11.7 billion yuan in the same period of 2021 to 9.5 billion yuan.
