Author |dr Editor: Su Wei Title Picture |Genesis 1: Real Estate Storm From "almost enough", "intraday counterattack" to "** exceeded", Pinduoduo's long-standing "battle to the top" in the U.S. stock market and Chinese concept stocks has finally landed.
In the early morning of December 2, Beijing time, with the US stock market, Pinduoduo's total market value this week was fixed at $193 billion, and Alibaba's total market value fell to $188.4 billion, which was thrown away by Pinduoduo for two consecutive trading days.
In the middle of the week, this much-anticipated offensive and defensive battle, there was a fierce alternation, Pinduoduo rose more than 4% on the evening of November 29, the intraday market value surpassed Alibaba, briefly became the largest Chinese concept stock in the United States, to ** was overtaken by Ali, at that time the difference in the total market value of the two was less than 2 billion US dollars.
On December 1, U.S. time, Pinduoduo's market capitalization this week was finally fixed at $193 billion, nearly $5 billion higher than Alibaba. (Screenshot).
In fact, after Pinduoduo overtook Ali for the first time, this symbolic counterattack can already be said to have a result: subsequent ups and downs alternate, but they have repeatedly proved that the two are already at the same "peak" Huashan sword.
The conclusion of "the new king should be established" does not need to be made too early, but no matter how picky the market is, Huang Zheng and his Pinduoduo did take less than 10 years to stand on an equal footing with their predecessors.
In the midst of the many flowers and applause, the tribute from the opponent was especially weighty.
In an internal letter, Ma Yun generously congratulated Pinduoduo on its decision-making, implementation and efforts in the past few years, and of course encouraged Ali people themselves, "All great companies are born in winter", and in the current AI e-commerce era, opportunities and challenges are fair to everyone, and more importantly, "Ali wants to change, Ali wants to change".
Recently, Jack Ma has made a rare internal statement. (Picture: Network screenshot).
The stock price fell, the GMV growth rate in the third quarter was at the bottom, the Alibaba Cloud split and the Hema listing braked, and several major sectors continued to lose ......Ali should indeed change.
But how?After several changes of course, Ali's blueprint seems to be inconclusive.
Hurricane and ups and downs, ** two heavens
To be fair, Alibaba's change is not an "afterthought" stimulated by competitors, but a keyword that runs through almost the entire 2023.
On March 28 this year, Daniel Zhang, then chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, announced the "1+6+n" organizational change - after the "separation", each business group will have its own functional departments and be responsible for operating results, and qualified sectors will seek the possibility of independent financing and listing.
But since then, with Tsai Chongxin and Wu Yongming in charge, Alibaba's pace of change has also been adjusted several times - for example, Alibaba Cloud, which was originally intensively seeking to spin off and go public, was affected by US regulations and officially announced in November that it would not promote the split, and Daniel Zhang, who withdrew from Alibaba Group to Alibaba Cloud, also retired completely and has been at ease ever since.
It's hard to turn around when the ship is big, but the change can't stop. With the split of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group and the initial public offering plan of Hema have braked one after another, Ali's blueprint for change itself is obviously still in the "change", and Wu Yongming's "strategic focus and business strategy" not long ago will be presented in what form and whether there will be any adjustments, and it is not yet time to make a conclusion.
The huge ship is huge, and it takes a longer process to turn around. (Photo: Visual China).
Alibaba is a big ship, and under the profits of the e-commerce business, it has become a natural choice for each business segment to "separate" and face its own profit and loss problems.
It is worth mentioning that Ma Yun's rare internal voice and the soaring market value of Pinduoduo all occurred after the announcement of Pinduoduo's third-quarter earnings report.
On the evening of November 28, Pinduoduo announced its financial report for the third quarter of this year, and the results that far exceeded expectations instantly "blew up" the whole network - 688The revenue figure of 400 million yuan far exceeded the market earlier of 548The estimated value of 700 million yuan is as high as 94% year-on-year, and the net profit of US GAAP is 155400 million yuan, with a net profit margin of 226%, also exceeding market expectations.
You must know that under the premise of the overall slowdown in the growth rate of the e-commerce industry this year, in terms of the growth rate in the third quarter of this year alone, Ali is only a "measant" 8%, while Pinduoduo has almost doubled, and has achieved a dimensionality reduction blow to the entire industry with a unique attitude.
According to Pinduoduo's total revenue of 158.8 billion yuan in the first three quarters, a statistic was made, but 1Pinduoduo's 30,000 employees generated an average income of 12.22 million yuan per capita in the first three quarters, which is about four times that of Alibaba.
It is no wonder that this set of figures stirred up an echo of "putting forward opinions, stressing innovation, and seeking change" within Ali.
The sinking of consumption in your eyes may be an illusion.
Pinduoduo, whose main business is only e-commerce and grocery shopping, is much more focused on business energy than many increasingly bloated predecessors.
Many analysts believe that behind Pinduoduo's soaring, many achievements are due to the much-talked-about international business Temu. Although in the financial report, Temu's revenue data is still unknown, it still leaves enough room for the outside world to imagine.
Since its launch in the third quarter of last year, temu has expanded to more than 40 countries and regions around the world, capturing consumers in more than 70 countries and regions around the world.
In the U.S. market, Temu has even become the fourth largest e-commerce company in terms of visits, second only to Amazon, Walmart, and eBay, surpassing another Chinese overseas giant, Shein, in terms of network traffic and sales.
The storm that temu has set off abroad is even more violent than at home. (Picture Insect Creativity).
What is temu?Domestic consumers are probably not very familiar with it, but when it comes to how it plays, we are not so unfamiliar.
How similar is Pinduoduo's rise in China: a solid and complete ** chain foundation and extremely preferential cost performance.
In the past ten years, the "low price" has been deeply bound to the brand image of Pinduoduo, so that many people think that Pinduoduo's soaring this year is because it has caught up with the "era outlet" of consumption sinking.
There is some truth to this, but it is not entirely true.
In "The Fourth Age of Consumption", Japanese writer Miura Zhan has systematically portrayed the consumption changes in Japanese society since the Industrial Revolution in terms of time, consumption behavior characteristics and dimensions. The so-called fourth consumption era is that after the bubble economy in Japan, consumers began to appear "de-branded" consumption rationality, and were no longer willing to pay for excessively high brand premiums, but preferred cheap and high-quality goods and services.
At the moment when the fog of uncertainty is filled, the willingness to consume is declining, and for many first- and second-tier groups with decent lives and declining future income expectations, they have indeed entered the fourth consumption era with one foot.
But Pinduoduo's products are not only sold to them.
The population of the four most economically developed first-tier cities in China is less than 90 million. Whether it is Temu, which focuses on the world, or Pinduoduo, which is rooted in the sinking market of lower-tier cities, the broader ordinary people are the more important incremental markets.
For small-town youth, left-behind elderly, mothers and children in lower-tier cities, Pinduoduo is an admission ticket to contact e-commerce, which allows people who have never been in contact with e-commerce to buy high-quality products at a low price - for the domestic manufacturing industry with a complete processing industry chain, such products have never been lacking, and even enriched to overcapacity.
In the lower-tier market, where material life is relatively scarce, being able to buy better products with the same or even lower budget is more like a proper consumption upgrade - of course, Pinduoduo is not the only giant to catch up with this huge trend.
Well-known financial bloggers' interpretation of Pinduoduo's promotion of "consumption upgrading". (Screenshot of Weibo).
They chose the consumer".
As we all know, before Pinduoduo captured the minds of users, the identity of the "C2C king" originally belonged to **.
At the beginning of the new century, which took 2 years to defeat the world's largest C2C company, eBay, ** was a challenger to the retail channel and a subversive that made small and medium-sized businesses feel that "there is no difficulty in doing business in the world".
But in the new era, Alibaba's focus seems to have shifted to the B2C business, sparing no effort in the operation of Tmall's "Double Eleven", leaving the C2C business in a relatively "cold" state, even if it was later supplemented with the ** "Double Twelve" activity that is considered to be used to hold the C2C position.
Now even this "position" has announced a name change not long ago, after hiding the transaction volume, sandwiched in the "Double 11" and the New Year's Festival embarrassing years ago, after 11 years of "Double 12" officially became history.
Netizens' attitude towards the name change of "Double Twelve". (Screenshot of Weibo).
The road traveled by "Double 12" is also a microcosm of Alibaba's C2C business falling from its peak to a large extent. In 2011, ** launched the "National Crazy Robbery" activity on December 12, and the transaction volume reached 43 on the same day800 million yuan, the following year, more than 1 million merchants participated and 1The interaction of 500 million consumers has set a new record for logged-in users of Ali Wangwang.
At that time, ** still occupied more than eighty percent of the market share in C2C, and according to Goldman Sachs data, the market share of the entire Taotian Group is now just over forty percent, Pinduoduo has increased to 18%, and Douyin, which has not been in the live broadcast e-commerce for too long, has also grabbed 10%.
In September, Wu Yongming issued his first all-staff letter after taking over as CEO of Alibaba Group, clearly mentioning that he would establish two strategic priorities in the future: "AI-driven" and "user-first".
According to the first financial report, in a group interview this autumn, Yu Yong, president of the 1688 business department, once revealed his observations of his peers - "Pinduoduo, Douyin, and Meituan have all made choices, and they have chosen consumers." ”
You must know that whether it is the overwhelming "slashing" in the early days, or the tens of billions of subsidies and the current implementation of "refunds and returns", or the live broadcast that highly combines content and e-commerce, it has become an obvious trend to firmly stand on the side of consumers at the moment of competing for the stock market.
In the face of direct benefits, it is difficult for consumers to resist. (Picture Insect Creativity).
And between buyers and sellers, Ali has been cautiously playing a relatively neutral role.
Over the past decade, with the popularity of mobile internet, Chinese's e-commerce shopping Xi habits have been cultivated to be relatively mature, and we also like to label platforms with simple and easy-to-understand labels to make the most demand-oriented consumption decisions.
Someone is willing to vote with their feet and plunge into the arms of platforms that are more "consumer-oriented" and enjoy simple and straightforward discounts;Some people are happy to sit and see the entry of spoilers, wander between different platforms, and enjoy the user dividends brought by the Internet fight;Some people regard the live broadcast as an after-work pastime, and they are also willing to scan the code to pay obediently in the shouting of "Li Jiaqi".
The minds of consumers are not static, just like the seemingly unbreakable label of "cheap and good", which used to belong to **, and is now bound to other platforms, and the e-commerce story that was once considered to be over again and again has been born again and again.
The only constant is the change itself", clichéd but true.
Proofreading: Wu Zhifei.
Operation: Lu Zirui.
Typesetting: Chen Zexin.
References: 1] E-commerce seeks increments at low prices In 2023, the scale of "Double Eleven" users will reach a new highChina Business Daily.
2] Pinduoduo's market capitalization is close to Alibaba's |E-commerce newspaper.
3] Change!Ali's "1+6+N" is blocked?Wu Yongming redraws the picture | techweb
4] What happened to Alibaba? |YiMagazine
5] Hema dilemma: IPO can be suspended, why postpone new retail?Blue Whale Finance [6] invested heavily in agriculture and temu, and Pinduoduo wants to build two citiesThe Paper.
7] Alibaba: The basic market is still intensifying competition |Market.
8] The ferocious Pinduoduo, the anxious Ma Yun, and the attacking "white card" |Shokusha Society.
9]**Double 12 "end of life", 12 years of history can not match the "good price"?|Net Economic Society.