The brand strategy of "fresh snacks" has been upgraded, blurring the boundary between snacks and staple foods. In early June, the company held a number of activities with the theme of "fresh snacks, win the Future" to communicate the company's brand innovation to partners and consumers. In order to meet the consumption demand of healthy and fresh snacks, Laifen first proposed the use of central kitchen-style supply to ensure the fresh taste of products, and put forward five standards to guarantee fresh snacks: fresh raw materials, technical fresh-keeping, packaging locking, distribution and competition for production and marketing, so as to break the clear boundary between snacks and staple foods. Specifically, the company goes up into the supply chain to ensure freshness through direct mining of origin and core raw materials, reducing SKU to more than 800s, digging SKU depth, looking for premium space; optimizing logistics distribution, daily distribution or daily distribution, and 30 minutes to home takeout. From the product point of view, the most replenished products during the 618 period are "hungry elements" series of vegetarian meat, followed by dried durian and probiotic nuts, these three products have strong fresh, healthy and delicious characteristics, which reflects the correctness of the company's strategy.
Build the "inner ecology" of smart retail and break the offline path dependence. Laiyi started in the direct store model, and then expanded to join stores, offline stores brought huge traffic for the company, the company with consumers as the core, expanded to online, has formed stores, third-party e-commerce platform, community self-APP, group purchase and other omni-directional system. Laifen built its own online platform, focusing on creating "Laifei app", opening up closed-loop experience services with offline stores, forming a unique core retention platform through member registration, service number content welfare, fission to home appliance merchants and more activities, while helping to save intermediate costs, benefit and consumers, customer loyalty is far higher than the external e-commerce platform, thus forming a "internal ecological" development model. Under this model, there are changes in store positioning and service industry. Shopping malls are based on brand experience, transportation hub stores are equivalent to external windows, community stores are service-oriented life convenience stores, and fourth-and fifth-tier cities are similar to "Laifei small stores". In the future, it will become a comprehensive community service platform, so that "fresh snacks" will become a distinct label of Laifen.
Profit forecast and investment advice. As a snack chain leader, the company has strong competitiveness in East China. After the adjustment of business thinking, the company is gradually on the right track, and the national expansion helps to increase the market share.
Twenty-one years ago, for the purpose of national expansion, the company assessed the income more than the profit; as the company continued to increase investment, continue to improve the profitability of stores, direct operation combined with joining the store opening model to achieve rapid expansion, the scale effect appears, and the net profit level is expected to rise to a new level in 21 years. It is estimated that the income in 20-22 years is 55.3,68.3 and 8.32 billion yuan respectively, the net profit is 1.3,2.2 and 340 million yuan respectively, and the EPS is 0.39,0.66,1.01 respectively. Compared with listed companies in the industry, Laifen's 20-year valuation is on the low side, and with the gradual improvement in fundamentals, it is expected to enjoy a valuation premium and maintain a "recommended" rating.
Risk tips: direct store rents and labor costs have risen sharply, the progress of joining has been lower than expected, online growth has slowed down, industry competition has intensified, raw material prices have risen, food safety issues, and so on.