Meituan, whose growth rate has declined and losses have intensified, seems to have found a new strategic fulcrum—the takeaway cabinet.
This is an infrastructure linking the past and the future. It can not only improve the efficiency of takeaway delivery to a certain extent, reduce the company's operating costs, but also provide support for the gradual implementation of the real-time retail strategy. It can become Meituan's rich nest and rookie.
However, after all, this is a story told by Alibaba, JD.com and many new retail players. Can Meituan really solve thousands of worries in one cabinet?
Lonely Brave
Recently, Meituan-W (-3690.HK) disclosed its Q1 performance in 2022, with a revenue of 46.269 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.0%, a net profit of -5.703 billion yuan, and a loss of 856 million yuan over the same period last year.
In the first quarter, the company's revenue growth rate hit a new low, which was 120.9%, 77.0%, 37.9%, and 30.6% in the previous four quarters; although the gross profit margin increased by 3.76 percentage points to 23.2%, the final profit index did not improve.
The main reason is that the company's expenses, which are mainly sales and marketing expenses, remain high.From January to March, the company's sales and marketing expenses were 9.106 billion yuan, an increase of 1.899 billion yuan over the same period last year.
After the Internet giants "give up their illusions", almost only Meituan is still increasing its money-burning efforts to seek new increments and expand new businesses.
However, even if it continues to increase investment, the company's user indicators have entered a downward channel.In the 12 months ended March 31, 2022, the number of transaction users of the company was 692.9 million, a year-on-year increase of 21.7%; in the previous four quarters, the user growth rates were 26.9%, 37.4%, 40.1%, and 35.2%.
In the transition from involution to lying flat, growth bottlenecks are inevitable.
Meituan's cornerstone business, in-store, hotel and tourism segments, recorded revenue of 7.622 billion yuan in the first quarter and operating profit of 3.474 billion yuan.The revenue of the food and beverage delivery segment of the growth business was 24.157 billion yuan, and the operating profit was 1.577 billion yuan. The reasons for the optimization of performance were mainly due to the increase in unit volume, the increase in the unit price of customers, and the improvement of the efficiency of the food and beverage delivery network.
However, the segmental profits of these "traditional businesses" failed to offset the losses of "new businesses".In Q1 2022, the new business and other sectors will achieve revenue of 14.491 billion yuan, and operating loss will reach 9.025 billion yuan.
How to reverse the weak growth trend?How to rediscover growth points for Meituan on the basis of the original business?
Takeaway cabinets
Many people have noticed that Meituan takeaway cabinets have been gradually installed in public service institutions such as major business districts and hospitals.With the smart takeaway cabinet, Meituan's delivery system will give priority to suggesting that takeaways be put in the cabinet for users to pick up.
In fact, Meituan has been planning to use takeaway cabinets to improve delivery efficiency since around 2017. It cooperated with Fengchao Express Cabinet in the early days, but the response has been mediocre.
In 2020, Meituan began to sporadically install smart takeaway cabinets in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities to meet the needs of independent storage, thermal insulation and disinfection, and contactless distribution; starting in the second half of 2021, the epidemic prevention requirements, the increase in the scale of the takeaway market, and the urgent need to improve distribution efficiency, etc. The combination of factors has allowed Meituan and Ele.me to compete on offline locations, and the development of smart takeaway cabinets has accelerated.
Like the unmanned delivery system that Meituan has invested heavily in research and development, the smart takeaway cabinet is aimed at improving profitability by reducing delivery costs in the future.
The younger brother puts the takeaway directly into the smart express cabinet, reducing the time for going upstairs and handover, which can greatly increase the time cost of a single delivery; in addition, the self-pickup mode is convenient for ordering, and the overall efficiency improvement of the takeaway delivery system is of great significance.
However, just as the express delivery industry has created a "last mile" problem by improving its own efficiency, and had to use express cabinets and rookie stations to patch up, takeaway cabinets have also encountered controversy from users.
"What's the difference between me going downstairs to pick up the courier and going to the restaurant with me to eat?""The courier used to be delivered to the door, and now I have to get it myself, and takeaways also have to do this"?
Therefore, the current smart express cabinets can only be used in specific scenarios, such as office areas, hospitals, and colleges where it is inconvenient for couriers to go upstairs.
In May of this year, Meituan announced that it would place smart express cabinets in 1,200 hospitals across the country, precisely to prioritize meeting these special needs.
Large-scale retail
Meituan's large-scale deployment of smart takeaway cabinets is not so simple.The strategic intentions of large technology companies need to be understood horizontally and vertically.
In the short term, in response to epidemic prevention requirements, smart takeaway cabinets can reduce contact.In the medium term, the popularization of takeaway cabinets can meet the demand for off-peak food delivery, improve the operating efficiency of the takeaway delivery system to a certain extent, and reduce costs to improve profitability.
In the long run, smart takeaway cabinets that can achieve various functions such as heat preservation can serve Meituan's large retail strategy.
"Everything actually has no simple boundaries, so I don't think it's necessary to set limits for myself. As long as the core is clear - who do we serve? What services do we provide them? We will continue to try various businesses.
" Under the command of Xing "Boundary Theory", Meituan has continued to diversify its business, from the earliest group purchases to later takeaways, hotels, and mobile travel.
When Meituan's in-store, hotel and tourism businesses entered a stable period, and the takeaway business was slowly approaching the ceiling, the company's major retail upgrade became imperative.
What is the essence of Meituan's local living strategy?sell things.It's nothing more than a difference in categories. You sell electronic products, it sells books, and I sell food and hotel coupons for life.
In 2021, Meituan will upgrade its corporate strategy from Food+Platform to Retail+Technology, and further expand its products and services to a wider range of retail areas.
Meituan Select, Meituan Shopping, and Meituan Flash are the three major business modules of the retail strategy.Among them, Meituan Select focuses on community group buying, Meituan Maicai is a direct-operated grocery shopping platform, and Meituan Flash Shopping is an instant e-commerce platform for all categories.
Previously, the Meituan APP has changed the second column of the main menu at the bottom to [E-commerce]. This entrance, which is second only to [Meituan], will put a lot of pressure on Alibaba-SW (09988.HK) Pinduoduo JD.com .
When Alibaba and JD-SW (09618.HK) are called "traditional" e-commerce, and the relative innovation of Pinduoduo has been wiped out by the market, Meituan may make the idea of instant e-commerce come true and further break through the user experience ceiling.
At the same time, the company clearly pointed out in the financial report that it "continues to convert high-quality users of food delivery into Meituan flash purchase users, and encourage consumption through multiple marketing and promotion activities".In the first quarter of this year, the order volume of flash sales business increased by nearly 70% year-on-year.
Previously, the shortcoming of Meituan's e-commerce business was the lack of offline delivery capabilities. After all, express delivery could not afford the high delivery cost of takeout.After the smart express cabinet was rolled out, this problem was also solved. It was Meituan's Fengchao and Cainiao.
The inconspicuous Meituan smart express cabinet will become the company's key infrastructure to link the past and the future: helping "traditional business" to improve efficiency and complementing "new business" shortcomings.
When the time and policy window for infinite expansion of the border is about to close, big retail may be the ultimate battle for Wang Xing to lead Meituan.
The key now is that increasing investment against the trend will allow Meituan to gain new growth points amid the heavy blockade?
