With the release of Meituan and Puduo's three quarterly reports after Friday, the core e-commerce platform has handed over the latest answers.

Under the "new order" of domestic regulation and traffic dividend period, Internet companies are deep in the "water reverse" period. In the third quarter, the overall growth rate of online retail market dropped to 8% from 13% in the second quarter. "e-commerce collective stall" once again triggered market concerns that the Internet is entering a "cold winter". Let's take a look at the latest performance of these four mainstream e-commerce platforms.

After comparing the latest performance data of several companies, it is not difficult to find:

First, the overall growth has slowed down to varying degrees, which is also in line with the trend of post-epidemic consumption recovery, the base is getting higher and higher, resulting in a high growth rate before and after a low judgment.Among them, JD.com continued to maintain the growth trend in the second quarter, thanks to the strong assists of the 3C category of home appliances and logistics and other service plates. Excluding the impact of Gao Xin's retail consolidation, revenue growth slowed to 16 per cent. On the other hand, only Meituan achieved growth compared with the previous month, with revenue reaching 48.8 billion yuan in the third quarter, an increase of 38% over the same period last year, an increase of 11.5% over the previous month, and slightly exceeding market expectations (48.5 billion yuan).

Second, there is an obvious differentiation in profits.The revenue growth of Big Brother BABA is not so good, but the profit performance is not so bad, with an adjusted profit drop of nearly 40%. However, if you exclude the impact on key areas of business (such as Taote, local life services, community business platform and Lazada), the net profit of its business division actually reached 52.2 billion yuan, which is about the same as last year, the core profitability is stable, and JD.com 's operating profit decline has also been significantly narrowed.

Look at Meituan, his losses continue to expand, operating losses reach 10 billion yuan, of course, including a fine of 3.4 billion yuan, deducting an increase of 3.45 billion yuan over the second quarter, mainly lies in the expansion of new business, if you exclude this impact, the main business operating profit, with catering takeout and inbound wine travel as the core, reached 4.6 billion yuan, an increase of 31% over the same period last year.

VisibleBased on the investment of long-term development, coupled with the back-feeding of the real economy and society under the guidance of the new policy of "common prosperity", maintaining low profit margins has been regarded as a phased normal, but it still does not affect the smooth operation of the internal business base.

01 user basic disk: who is growing the fastest?

Let's take a look at the changes in the basic disk of several users:

Big brother BABA quickly rebounded to catch up with JD.com in the same period last year, and then fell back and stabilized with him. However, JD.com 's growth rate remained relatively high, and more than 70% of its incremental users in the third quarter came from the sinking market. Pinduoduo caught up with and surpassed BABA in the latter quarter, but in the third quarter of this year, the number of active trading users rebounded and accelerated upward in the second half of this year. In the third quarter, it was far ahead at 38% year-on-year growth, with no sign of peaking.

At the same time, according to the number of active businesses disclosed by Meituan, there is a synchronous upward trend after the growth bottomed out in 2019.

When it comes to growth, Meituan is an unyielding head player, but the level of profit margin is far lower than that of mature physical e-commerce. Behind the increase in income without profit in the third quarter, apart from the investment in new business, we have also analyzed the fundamental reasons for the difference in business models between physical e-commerce and service e-commerce, and also put forward that under the new background, investment value returns to a reasonable balance between business value and social value. Meituan, who is thought to assume more social responsibility, also showed "reliability" and "courage" in the third quarter.

02 the second half of the Internet: a look at long-term Doctrine

Take Meituan as an example, one of its main businesses, catering takeout and wine travel to the store, is still a reassurance.

In terms of catering takeout, the amount of takeout orders increased by 29% over the same period last year, close to 200 billion yuan, and the growth rate slowed down year-on-year. Several large outbreaks broke out in Guangdong, Nanjing and other "granary areas" in the third quarter. Meituan takeout growth is inevitably affected to a certain extent, and there is a small increase (4%) above the high unit price of takeout customers, which has become a more sunny point. Company executives say this is due to more marketing activities to stimulate consumption.

Meituan takeout transaction amount and year-on-year growth rate

At the same time, the takeout commission rate for that quarter was still 13.4%, slightly lower than the 13.6% just after the outbreak in the same period last year. Meituan's profit from takeout has also become thinner: the overall operating profit is 880 million, 4 billion units, equivalent to a mere 22 cents per transaction, well below the combined single profit of nearly 70 cents in the peak quarter of last quarter. As the quarterly report does not disclose the cost of takeout riders, taking into account the increase in subsidies for riders in abnormal weather, it is expected that this should also bring a lot of pressure to Meituan.

It remains to be seen whether high rider costs will persist. During the special period, whether in the face of riders or businessmen, Meituan began to "make a profit" and pursue an ecological balance. considering the landing of "choosing one of the two", the profit pressure was also expected for the next period of time.

The changing trend of takeout monetization rate

Although the growth of hotel business in the third quarter was mediocre, due to the popularity of arrival, the overall revenue growth of arrival and wine travel still reached 33% to 8.6 billion yuan, in line with expectations. Among them, due to the increase in the proportion of advertising business with high gross margin, profit margin also reached a new high of 43.9%, slightly exceeding market expectations (40%), which is a small surprise.

In addition, the first domestic personal information protection law, which has been discussed for a long time, came into effect on November 1st. Although Meituan also has advertising services, advertising revenue accounted for only 16.4% in the third quarter, and the impact is expected to be limited.

As a strategic segment to open up Meituan's growth space, the growth of new business slowed compared with the second quarter, but it was still rapid, with revenue rising 66.7% year-on-year to 13.7 billion yuan, mainly driven by the growth of retail business and shared cycling services.

Among them, Meituan shopping, community optimization and Meituan flash shopping respectively cover the e-commerce fresh business under different business models. Meituan's layout in the fresh market is perfect and clear, using differentiated business models to accurately target different target customer groups, to achieve comprehensive coverage of first-and second-tier cities and third-tier and lower sinking markets.

This choice obviously matches Meituan's latest strategy (retail + technology) and business logic: Meituan locates the front position model of first-tier cities, focusing on "getting home in an hour"; Meituan prefers to focus on the sinking market, emphasizing the breadth of coverage; fast Donkey locates the B2B supply chain to serve small B merchants. After the completion of the integration, Meituan's retail business will cover C-end to B-end, covering the vast majority of merchants and users from the front line to the sinking market.

Recently, with the acceleration of the layout of Meituan, Meituan buying vegetables and Meituan flash buying these two dark cards have become increasingly prominent. According to market news, the total number of front positions bought by Meituan has doubled compared with that before the second quarter, and has begun to explore the large position model of 800-1000 square meters in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In September this year, Meituan bought vegetables nationwide with a monthly GMV of nearly 630 million yuan, almost the same as Missfresh Limited's average monthly sales in the second quarter. The daily order volume of Meituan's flash purchase in the third quarter has been stable at 4 million, ranking first in the industry, and pharmaceutical orders have also exceeded 1 million. In addition, flash shopping and fast donkey both account for about 30% of new business.

03 Where is the way forward?

When the flow dividend ends, the new pattern of competition and regulation, efficiency and fairness balance back, how to choose in the future?

Technology has long been a clear card.At present, science and technology is transforming various industries, making it more efficient and bringing great convenience to our lives. At the same time, science and technology also bring more fairness, let more people enjoy the convenience of science and technology, and realize the equality of science and technology. Therefore, more and more people realize that technology can improve efficiency and fairness in parallel.

The level of science and technology is not only an important embodiment of an enterprise's modern operating efficiency, but also a symbol of high-quality social development. At the same time of the continuous development and iteration of the enterprise itself, how to promote the continuous improvement of the industrial chain and social operation efficiency, and how to balance commercial and social values has become a new core proposition, especially these modern "infrastructure" enterprises, which have a bearing on people's livelihood.

Although the directions are the same, there are some new changes in the routes and main battlefields of the above-mentioned companies:

Among themPinduoduo All in AgricultureChen Lei, chairman and CEO, said at the meeting of the third quarterly report that all the profits in the third quarter would be invested in the "10 billion agricultural research project" to continue to promote the progress of agricultural science and technology. It is reported that this is also the project since its establishment at the end of August. Profits in the second quarter went up again after they were fully invested.JD.com said that he will focus on basic science and underlying technology in the future.Big BrotherAliNot to be left behind, recently announced the launch of a new XR laboratory for AR, VR and metacosmos, in an attempt to open up BABA's e-commerce industry chain.Marching into meta-universe。Meituan announced not long ago that he would adjust the strategy of "Food+Platform", which has been implemented for nearly four years, to "retail + technology".」Determination is even more evident.

"it is better to do well than to say well. BABA's management said last year that it exceeded 100 billion yuan a year, and JD.com also said that since the comprehensive transformation to technology at the beginning of 2017, he has invested nearly 75 billion yuan in technology. Although Meituan's revenue volume and profitability can not be compared with it, but for the application of science and technology without losing the "courage". In recent years, Meituan's annual R & D investment has exceeded 10 billion yuan, and continues to increase, R & D rates to maintain a leading level in the industry. According to public data, Meituan has more than 10, 000 engineers and is one of the largest teams of engineers in China.

Intelligent scheduling and matching, intelligent delivery and future key technology reserve will be the key battlefields of Meituan's future science and technology.

For example, in the intelligent scheduling link, how does Meituan ensure the scheduling of tens of millions of orders on the platform every year?

The answer is "superbrain system". Under the massive order data and AI algorithm, Meituan's AI superbrain system can comprehensively consider the expectations of merchants, consumers and the external environment, automatically divide orders and intelligently schedule transport capacity, realize millisecond scheduling of 10 million orders, and achieve the optimal allocation between consumers and platform servers.

With the enhancement of network effect, the improvement of transport capacity has become the focus that Meituan has to pay attention to. As early as 2016, Meituan began to consider independent delivery and carried out the development of unmanned distribution vehicles and drones. Today, Meituan's unmanned delivery vehicle has reached the L4 self-driving level, with a cumulative distribution of about 50, 000 units in Beijing. In May this year, Meituan sent an unmanned distribution convoy to support the prevention and control of the epidemic in Guangzhou and participated in material transportation and support. In July this year, Meituan's drone distribution was also officially launched, which will further replenish transport capacity.

In the next 3 years, Meituan's independent delivery strategy will be more widely promoted and become an important part of the urban intelligent distribution system. In fact, Meituan's investment in science and technology is not limited to the above areas. According to pencil track statistics, Meituan has made as many as 13 investments in cutting-edge science and technology since the beginning of this year, involving robots, intelligent cars, self-driving, semiconductors, biotechnology and many other fields.

04 summary

The Internet provides convenience for people's life in all aspects, and the improvement of social operation efficiency is undeniable, which is consistent with the ultimate goal of social development, which determines that the long-term fundamentals of the Internet will not change.

China has never been more deeply and widely aware of the significance of science and technology. In history, the industrial revolution, ignited by technological breakthroughs, has brought great efficiency progress and fostered the scientific and technological belief of western countries, which is now being engraved into the development gene of Chinese enterprises.

Enterprises that can perceive this and strongly resonate with the trend of high-quality development will walk out of a more vital growth path and release more lasting value.