On November 6, autohome released its third-quarter performance for 2024.

The financial report shows that the company's revenue in the third quarter was 1.77 billion yuan (RMB), with online marketing and other business income growing by 3.1% year-on-year, accounting for an increased proportion of 34.82%; among them, revenue from new energy brands continued to grow, with a year-on-year growth rate of 54%; the company's adjusted net income was 0.497 billion yuan.

From the perspective of the automotive industry, autohome has seized the spread, consumption, and other demands brought by the iteration and brand upgrade of electric vehicle products. Data shows that the total sales volume of new energy vehicles in the first three quarters of this year increased by 32.5% year-on-year, with autohome continuing to outperform the industry sales growth rate with a growth rate of 54%.

As the automotive industry is reshaping its competitive landscape and competition among industry players is intensifying, autohome's attractiveness to users, OEMs, and dealers has not weakened, but the platform continues to grow amid changes. What kind of business layout has autohome formed currently to seize new growth opportunities?

Innovative business continues to grow, integrating online and offline to open up incremental opportunities.

Throughout this year, autohome has continuously upgraded its 'ecological' strategy, actively cooperating with a series of consumer-driven policies launched by the policy side through strengthening the path of integrating 'online + offline' to constantly realize the platform's inherent value and drive performance growth.

Specifically, with the country's 'replacing the old with the new' policy driving the continuous warming of offline consumption, the automobile consumption is gradually picking up. As an important role in long-term connecting the production side and the consumer market, autohome, based on a profound understanding of the automotive market, effectively helps boost the level of automobile consumption.

On one hand, autohome combines platform advantages and the advantages of the Ping An car owner ecosystem to open up more new consumption scenarios through activities like the 'Hundred Cities Renewed Car Buying Festival' and the 'Hundred Cities Auto Show Renewal Season', promoting the healthy development of China's automotive industry.

In the first three quarters of this year, a total of over 500 offline car exhibitions and nearly 2000 single-store events were held, covering nearly 250 cities nationwide. The average customer flow of car exhibitions exceeded 0.01 million, and the single-store events empowered the stores to increase transactions by over 60%. By converting more potential electric vehicle users in lower-tier markets, autohome has helped dealers and brands to explore more growth opportunities.

It is worth mentioning that as a heavyweight IP in the industry, autohome's "818 Global Auto Festival" was newly upgraded this year, combining online and offline for the first time. This not only expands the online traffic ecosystem but also achieves offline consumer conversion.

On the other hand, autohome further upgrades its new retail model. Based on accelerating the layout of "Autohome Space Station", the comprehensive implementation of the "Satellite Plan" is in progress.

According to reports, the "Satellite Plan" takes the autohome space station as a key node, radiating surrounding secondary sales outlets. The coordinated operation network between the space station and satellite stores achieves close collaboration, resource sharing, and complementary advantages. This helps the OEMs "fill in" sales channels, reduce operating costs, improve sales efficiency, and bridge the "last mile" closer to the lower-tier markets.

As of now, the total number of autohome space stations and satellite store franchise stores has exceeded 50. Generally, lower-tier markets include 300 prefecture-level cities and a large number of counties, towns, and villages below them. This means that autohome's construction of a sinking channel has initially formed a scale, and the company's new energy autos service ecosystem will gradually demonstrate network effects.

From past demand-side data, it can be observed that lower-tier markets have characteristics of a large population base, significant offline consumer flow contributions, fast consumption rebound willingness, and overall strong consumption momentum. Therefore, for autohome, there is potential to tap into greater potential of space stations and satellite stores, innovate around OEMs, dealers, and consumers, and develop more innovative business models.

Since last year, many new forces in car manufacturing and independent brand car companies have successively launched high cost-effective products, tapping into the price-sensitive lower-tier markets. Car companies are particularly eager to gain market share in the middle and lower-end markets, continuously optimizing product matrices and marketing strategies. Through continuous deepening of the new retail model, autohome can boost sales for new energy autos, paving the way for new performance growth.

Continuously improving its content ecosystem, autohome is becoming more stable.

Autohome brings innovative business growth with 'new energy + new retail', while focusing on online, Autohome is also constantly improving its professional and diversified content ecosystem, effectively increasing the platform's user base.

According to QuestMobile data, in September, the daily active users on Autohome's mobile end exceeded 70 million for the first time, reaching 72.87 million, a 5.6% increase compared to the same period in 2023. This means that Autohome's influence among the public continues to grow, and the platform's moat is still being reinforced.

From the latest layout actions, Autohome has created a brand new AH+ content brand and original content matrix, with over 13 columns, to deeply restore real-life driving scenarios for users, consolidating the barriers of professional content. For example, intelligence is the core demand of current consumers when buying cars, and Autohome has launched the 'AH-IT' intelligent evaluation system to provide users with a more realistic, rigorous, and intuitive evaluation to solve their car buying problems.

According to statistics, Autohome has horizontally laid out 7 major new media channels outside the platform, with a total fan base of over 60 million across all account matrices. Therefore, Autohome's high-quality original content will also reach and serve users through multiple channels, accumulating more user reputation.

The report shows that over 40% of users hope to establish contact with brands online, with brand official accounts on vertical media becoming the bridge that most users hope to communicate with brands; new energy vehicle users are starting to seek products of the same level based on parameters such as computing power and number of sensors, leading to frequent cross-level comparisons; and in important purchasing stages, the gap between users' actual experience reviews and expectations is gradually widening.

Furthermore, combining the trend on the demand side, users increasingly need more professional content to assist in consumer decision-making.

Statistics also show that the proportion of trade-in users is increasing year by year, with an expected 50% by 2024. Trade-in users prefer experiential/evaluation content to help them choose cars, while their identity as car owners makes them more interested in reading car sharing content.

All of the above collectively indicate that users are increasingly inclined to browse professional content when purchasing cars. Autohome's content innovation achieves information professionalism and aggregation, possessing a unique value that other generic content platforms cannot replicate or imitate, thus making it irreplaceable.

In the long run, Autohome is expected to be loved by more users for car viewing, purchase, and usage, and the platform's user stickiness will continue to trend towards gradual improvement.

In addition, in terms of tools, Autohome has newly released a scenario-based image library. As of now, it has already launched covering 36 mainstream models on sale, enhancing the efficiency and convenience of user car selection. They have also launched an industry partner co-construction plan, aiming to further increase user stickiness by creating more professional content to serve users.

Therefore, it can be foreseen that Autohome's core competitiveness will continue to strengthen, consolidating its leading position in the industry and providing strong support for the company's long-term sustainable development.

Summary:

Overall, Autohome's 'ecological strategy' has shown significant effectiveness, promoting continuous optimization of the business structure through online and offline integration, leading the business operation towards high-quality development.

In the short term, the heat in the car market remains high, from nationwide auto shows during the National Day Golden Week, to the 'November 11' car purchase promotion activities, to the traditional peak season for year-end demand, consumer car buying needs continue to increase. Autohome is expected to benefit from this and may give more expectations for the performance in the fourth quarter.

In the long term, Autohome's buybacks and dividends show full sincerity in rewarding investors, demonstrating confidence in its future development. The vigorous development of China's new energy vehicle market is an overall trend, and Autohome has formed moats in content, business, ecology, and other aspects. It's highly probable to commercialize in the future. With continuous improvement in performance, valuation repair will naturally follow.