On August 30, Gome Fintech (00628.hk) released its interim report. As of June 30, 2024, the group's revenue increased significantly by 53.5% to 60.8 million yuan, and pre-tax profit increased to 33.6 million yuan, a staggering increase of 860%. The interim report stated that the increase in revenue was mainly due to a significant increase in other financial services. This indicates that Gome Fintech's financial services sector is still in a stable development state.

Despite the good performance of the financial services revenue, Gome has set its sights on another giant market.

On August 28, Gome Fintech announced plans to rename the listed company as "TongTong AI Social Group" and acquire new businesses to further develop in the "AI + social" integrated internet field. "TongTong AI Social", as the name suggests, Gome is laying out in the new internet field, this time directly targeting the business social field.

Why is it called business social instead of just social? The purely social market is already crowded, with several mainstream social platforms dominating the cake. For the capital team behind Gome, it is unnecessary to only focus on the single social field. The announcement stated, "Through the acquisition, our group will have multiple dimensional internet social platforms, creating a multi-dimensional business ecosystem that connects users and merchants." This confirms the point.

As a traditional internet retail giant, business itself is one of its strengths. The integration of digital ecosystems in the field of business social is just a way to leverage AI and other cutting-edge technologies, along with years of technology, user and supply chain foundation, and the addition of financial services.

So, Gome has set its sights on the business social field, which may seem abrupt from the name change, but from the perspective of recent acquisitions, the whole thing makes sense.

In the announcement of this business acquisition and renaming, there are only a few words about Gome Fintech's future business layout. But we can still glimpse Gome's ambition from this concise description. The announcement mentioned that Gome Fintech is expected to accelerate the layout of its comprehensive social internet platform business through this acquisition, and also mentioned the iterative improvement of global chip technology to enhance computing power, as well as the vigorous development of artificial intelligence and **, driving the internet economy into the era of Web3.0.

The comprehensive internet platform business and Web3.0, these are the keywords.

The third generation of the internet is driving the surge of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, metaverse, and AIGC in various internet sectors. Under the technological empowerment, the potential value of the metaverse will reach 5 trillion dollars. The China AIGC Application Landscape report indicates that the market scale of China's AGIC (Generative Artificial Intelligence) applications will reach 20 billion yuan this year, and it will reach a trillion yuan scale by 2030. The average compound growth rate from 2024 to 2028 will exceed 30%.

Many industries are focusing on Web3.0. From the perspective of internet applications and services, cutting-edge technologies such as AIGC and metaverse are driving the development of digital deep integration services and large-scale industry models, enabling digital consumption and digital entertainment in various vertical fields. According to the China AIGC Application Landscape report, AI native products at the application layer will begin to experience explosive growth in the next 3 years, and the commercial model for the enterprise-level market will be clear. The consumer-level market will shift its focus from 'customer acquisition first' to 'profit first'.

In the face of the trillion-level broad market, it seems that everyone wants to seize the opportunity. For Gome, aiming at AI+ social, and building a comprehensive internet platform, has perhaps been in the works for a long time.

Public information shows that in this related trade with Gome Fin Tech, Beijing Liheng, which controls three companies, should have long been involved in the digital ecosystem-related business and social fields, both of which have developed social tools for different audiences.

Retail industry veterans are leveraging cutting-edge technologies to transform internet business and social applications. With the deep integration of metaverse, technology large-scale models, the combination of multimodal models and business applications can bring significant value to digital assets, clearly possessing sufficient room for imagination.

On the day of the announcement, Gome Fin Tech's stock price soared by 22.95%, demonstrating the market's confidence in its strategic upgrade.

It is worth mentioning that since the announcement of the acquisition of CashBox on October 17 last year, Gome Fin Tech has shown signs of its move towards a comprehensive internet platform. After the public announcement of the acquisition of CashBox, Gome Fin Tech continued to rise, and its market value has nearly doubled, with a 281.25% increase in stock price.

Returning to the just released semi-annual report, Gome Financial Technology, which has achieved continuous profitability, is currently in a stable and rising trend. It has achieved relatively good results under the premise that the financial data of the newly acquired business has not been completely consolidated. It can be inferred that Gome Financial Technology is unlikely to give up its financial services sector. Regardless of its name change, the financial services business itself is complementary to the development of internet business, and the two are not in conflict.

Therefore, it can be understood that the official acquisition of CashBox is only a small move for Gome to integrate the digital ecosystem and achieve strategic upgrading. Behind it, the investment team has matured after various layout, and investment businesses related to comprehensive internet platforms are expected to gradually come to the forefront.

On the surface, it seems that it is named after 'Tongtong' and achieves strategic upgrading with 'AI social'. However, upon closer inspection, its essence should be the overall layout of transitioning from a financial technology company to a comprehensive digital ecosystem group. The naming of 'AI social' can even be said to be thinking big from small. If I'm not mistaken, Gome's good show is probably not limited to this.