Fast dog taxi, wind and rain

Visual China.

Text |Wired Travel, by |White as a mirror, edZhou Xiongfei

Yesterday, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that Alibaba Group on January 4 ** Kuaigou Dache shares, which with 0HK$55 shares of *** out of the latter 66940,000 shares**, cashed out about HK$370,000.

Wired Travel noticed that since December 12, 2023, in less than a month, Alibaba has ** Kuaigou Taxi shares four times, with an average price of less than 1 Hong Kong dollar share, totaling about 759480,000 shares, with a cumulative cash out of about 463HK$400,000.

After two years and a total of 7 rounds**, Alibaba's shareholding in Kuaigou Dache has increased from 14 at the time of the latter's listing97% all the way down to 793%。

To add insult to injury, Kuaigou Taxi was also "abandoned" by the company's founder when it was the major shareholder. According to the announcement, the company's founder Chen Xiaohua has resigned as chairman and executive director since December 19 last year, and no longer holds any position in Kuaigou Dache.

Chen Xiaohua, the former chairman of Kuaigou Taxi, the source of Kuaigou Taxi's official WeChat

Behind the departure of the major shareholder ** and the helmsman, it is the current situation that Kuaigou Taxi has been in decline for many years.

According to public data, from 2018 to 2022, Kuaigou Dache has a cumulative loss of nearly 4 billion yuan in five yearsLast year, its losses continued, and as of the first half of that year, it still lost as much as 6400 million yuan.

The intra-city freight market in which Kuaigou Dache is located has a scale of trillions, but as a leading player, it has such an unoptimistic performance. The reason behind this has a great relationship with factors such as the low entry threshold of the freight industry in the same city, the fierce competition in the industry and the subsidy war.

According to the data disclosed by Kuaigou Dache, from 2018 to the first half of last year, Kuaigou Dache invested a total of 178.1 billion yuan, compared with the "wealthy" cargo lala, Kuaigou Taxi's sales expenses for five or six years are only one year's marketing expenses for cargo lala.

In addition, giants such as Didi and Meituan have entered the intra-city freight track in recent years, which has further encroached on the market share of Kuaigou Taxi. Fast dog taxi from 2020 to 5The market share of 5% is firmly in the second place in the industry, and it has fallen all the way to 23%, falling out of the top five in the industry. With the gradual decline of Kuaigou Taxi's market position, the rapid expansion of losses is also a normal phenomenon in the industry.

With internal confidence turbulence, external industry competition and cash-burning subsidies continuing to lose money, Gogox had to embark on a way to survive - to open up the sinking market and accelerate the pace of going overseas. However, under the undercurrent of the freight market in the same city, Kuaigou Taxi, which has weak financial strength and no strong backer support, is facing the danger of passive survival.

From "the first share of freight transportation in the same city" to a "penny stock" with a stock price of less than 1 Hong Kong dollars, it took less than a year for Kuaigou to take a taxi.

Founded on June 8, 2017, Kuaigou Dache, formerly known as 58 Suyun, officially changed its name to "Kuaigou Dache" in August 2018, positioning itself as a "taxi platform for pulling goods".

Tianyancha data shows that from 2015 to June 2022, Kuaigou Dache has experienced 5 rounds of financing, and 58.com, Alibaba, Tencent Investment, and Huaxing Capital are all on the list of investors.

According to the prospectus, Alibaba has passed through **China, Cainiao, and Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, LThe three companies indirectly hold shares in Kuaigou Dache, and hold a total of 9214530,000 shares, with a shareholding ratio of 1497%, the second largest shareholder.

Only three months after the listing of Kuaigou Taxi, Alibaba began to ** Kuaigou Taxi. According to Hong Kong Stock Exchange documents, in September 2022, Alibaba traded at an average price of 6HK$36 *** Kuaigou taxi 23240,000 shares, with a shareholding ratio of 1399%。

In December of the same year, Alibaba sold at an average price of 506 Hong Kong dollars *** fast dog taxi 90260,000 shares, with a shareholding ratio of 1297%。Entering 2023, Alibaba has accelerated the pace of **, and in November 2023, ** Kuaigou Taxi 25560,000 shares, followed by three intensive activities in December**, with a total of HK$4.26 million in cash.

At the beginning of 2024, Alibaba will continue to **Kuaigou Taxi 66Of the 940,000 shares, the proportion of holdings has dropped to 793%。

This means that in just two years, Alibaba has carried out as many as 7 times for Kuaigou Dache, which is indirectly shareholding, which is one of the few cases of shareholders from the perspective of the industry, which has also aroused widespread attention inside and outside the industry.

Ali's previous ** situation, connected travel tabulation.

This is also "uncomplaining" of Alibaba, after all, after the real gold ** smashed into Kuaigou Taxi, the latter did not contribute a lot of returns to the former, but made Ali lose a lot.

According to the prospectus, Alibaba followed up the Series A, B and C rounds of financing of Kuaigou Dache with different entities, holding 75,476,660 shares, 16,568,047 shares and 100,640 shares respectively, at a cost price of 1$62 shares, 1$81 shares as well as 2$34 shares, based on this calculation, the cost price of Ali is about 1$65 shares.

In other words, the cost of Ali's stake is more than 12 Hong Kong dollars, and as of press time, the share price of Kuaigou Dache is 0HK$55 shares, compared with the issue price of 21 at that timeCompared with 5 Hong Kong dollars, it has exceeded 95%, and it has officially become a "penny stock" in the mouth of shareholders. This means that Ali has been running for five years, and the investment has shrunk by more than 9%.

In response to Alibaba's **, Kuaigou Dache responded to ** that shareholders are normal ** behaviors implemented by shareholders based on their own capital arrangement needs, and will not affect the company's daily operations.

It's just that he would rather lose money than cut meat, which shows that Ali has little confidence in Kuaigou taxi. After all, even though today's Kuaigou Dache is still the only listed freight company in the same city, the first-mover advantage brought by the preemptive listing does not constitute a solid moat.

The numbers don't lie. According to the disclosure data of Kuaigou Dache, from 2018 to 2022, it lost about 107.1 billion, 18.4 billion, 65.8 billion, 87.3 billion and 120.9 billion yuan, with a loss of nearly 4 billion yuan in the past five years. In addition, the loss of Kuaigou Dache has not stopped, and it is still losing as much as 6400 million yuan, and Kuaigou Dache has said that it will continue to incur losses as of 2024.

At a time when major shareholders have lost patience and frequently, Kuaigou Dache is facing not only the status quo of stopping losses in the distant future, but also the declining situation of internal and external troubles.

According to the Frost & Sullivan report, the scale of the intra-city logistics market in Chinese mainland will reach 1 in 202023 trillion yuan, which is expected to reach 212 trillion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 117%。

Under the scale of trillions, the concentration of the intra-city freight market is not high, and Zhiyan Consulting showed in the "2020-2026 China Intra-city Freight Industry Panorama Research and Investment Prospect ** Report" that the market share of the TOP10 in China's intra-city freight track is only 35%。This means that even the players in the first game still have a chance to get a piece of the pie.

Because of this, since 2020, a number of giants such as Didi, SF Express, Meituan, and Full Bang have entered the market, and the freight track in the same city has gradually become crowded.

In June 2020, Didi established a new brand "Didi Freight" to enter the intra-city freight market. In November 2020, the leading enterprise in the field of trunk logistics, Full Bang, acquired the "Provincial Provincial Turnback Car" and launched the "Yunman Express" to enter the same city for freight. In December 2020, SF won the online freight license. In November 2021, Meituan launched its online freight platform, Zhuolu.

In the face of the low entry threshold of the intra-city freight market, increasing subsidies and continuing to burn money has become one of the best ways to quickly seize market share.

After Didi Freight entered the game, it launched a new round of subsidy war. On the driver side, Didi provides incentives to attract new drivers, who can get 50 yuan for registration and 200 yuan for attracting new users. In addition, Didi Freight also subsidizes drivers through various activities such as order receiving awards, all-day awards, morning peak awards, new driver awards, and hot spot order receiving awards.

On the user side, Didi Freight gives 1 cent for the first order, 5% off coupons and 100 yuan coupons for Kaicheng. In Beijing, new users can use Didi Freight for only 1 cent within a 5-kilometer radius. Therefore, at that time, Didi Freight was only online for more than three months, and its eight-city orders broke the 100,000 mark in a single day, quickly ranking among the forefront of the industry.

In order to cope with Didi Freight's offensive, Cargo Lala also began to heavily subsidizeFor example, the launch of a 5% off monthly card is also a 5% off coupon for Didi Freight. In 2021 alone, Lala has launched a number of subsidy activities of hundreds of millions of yuan, including a subsidy of 100 million yuan for the "New Year Cargo Pulling Festival" for drivers, a subsidy of 500 million yuan for the "Cargo Pulling Welfare Month" in April for users and drivers, and another subsidy of 300 million yuan for the "Golden Autumn Shopping Festival" in September.

Cargo Lala advertising, the source of the goods Lala official WeChat.

In order to compete for market share, Kuaigou Dache had to follow up with a money-burning subsidy.

For the driver's side, Kuaigou Taxi has launched an activity that rewards 20 yuan per order, and there is no upper limitFor the user side, Kuaigou Taxi has launched discounts such as "99 minus 10", "338 minus 30", "1288 minus 100" and so on.

Gogox's sales and marketing expenses increased from 19.5 billion yuan, an increase to 33.5 billion yuan, an increase of more than 70%. From 2020 to 2022, the sales and marketing expenses of GoGox accounted for the proportion of current revenue, respectively. 5%。

It's just that the continuous burning of money has not brought more market share to Kuaigou Taxi, and even the original position of the second in the industry has not been maintained. According to Frost & Sullivan, GoGoGo's market share in 2020 was 55%, ranking second in the industry. But in 2021, GoGo's market share slipped to 32%, ranking third in the industry, the rising star Didi Freight surpassed Kuaigou Taxi.

According to the prospectus submitted by Cargo Lala in 2023, in the first half of 2022, in the closed-loop freight GTV (total transaction value) ranking, Kuaigou Dache's industry ranking slipped to sixth, and its market share dropped to 23%。

The cash-burning subsidy not only did not gain market share for Kuaigou Taxi, but even brought the huge losses mentioned above. Seeing that the loss is far away, Gogox has no choice but to increase the driver's commission in order to alleviate the pressure of loss.

From 2018 to 2021, the commission rates of Kuaigou Taxi were respectively. 0%, showing a year-on-year upward trend. Kuaigou Taxi said in the prospectus that the continuous increase in commission is to enhance the brand effect.

But this move also made Kuaigou Taxi fall into the quagmire of internal worries.

Jesse, a former JPMorgan analyst, once believed that when Kuaigou Taxi faced a decrease in orders and an increase in losses, it would in turn "harvest" drivers and further deduct the income of drivers in order to reduce losses and increase revenue, but this move will undoubtedly suppress the enthusiasm of drivers and even flee from Kuaigou Dache.

The data shows this trend- In 2019, the number of active drivers of Kuaigou was 27240,000, but in 2021, the number of active drivers dropped to 21350,000. After the listing, GoGox will no longer publish the number of active drivers.

2019-2021 change trend in the number of active drivers of Kuaigou Dache, data** in public data, online travel mapping

Chen Xiaohua, who has led Kuaigou Taxi to cultivate the freight market for ten years, seems to be "powerless" to the weak Kuaigou Taxi. On December 19, 2023, GoGox announced that founder Chen Xiaohua resigned as chairman and executive director, and no longer served as a member of the company's nomination committee and any position in the group.

This also means that as of now, Kuaigou Taxi is in the chaotic development of "no commander in the army", and it also aggravates the degree of its internal worries.

Under the division of the heroes, the inflection point of the freight market in the same city has not yet been clarified, and burning money and enclosing land is still the main theme. It's just that Kuaigou Taxi, which has been carrying heavy loads for a long time, has fallen into the predicament of internal and external troubles mentioned above. As a result, Kuaigou Taxi had to embark on the road of survival.

Kuaigou Taxi's choice of survival road is an attempt to find some blue ocean markets that have not yet been fully explored.

In April 2022, GoGox added content about the sinking market to the updated Hong Kong stock prospectus. According to GoGoGo's plan, it will provide services in more than 90 lower-tier cities in China by 2025 to improve business cooperation with existing and growing customers and drivers.

The domestic layout of Kuaigou Taxi, the source of the official website of Kuaigou Taxi.

The layout of the sinking market is not new to Kuaigou Taxi. In 2020, GoGox began to establish partnerships with individuals and entities in lower-tier cities, and tried to expand in lower-tier markets by recruiting shippers and drivers.

Zhang Kan, who works in the freight industry in fourth- and fifth-tier cities, told Connected Travel that the current local customer collection channels mainly rely on acquaintances and waiting for orders in street markets. The entry of giants may make the intra-city freight market more standardized, but it is also necessary to invest more subsidies or innovative ways to transform consumers' minds in the early stage.

Therefore, GoGox has launched a "partner plan" for the sinking market, covering the low-density market by establishing partners, and providing all-round support from brand to technology to capital level, while partners use local connections to expand customers and build a fleet.

Since its development in 2014, although the scale of the entire industry has continued to grow, the market in the first and second-tier cities has become saturated, while the sinking market represented by the third- and fourth-tier cities has not yet been fully developed, and there is still great growth potential. Zhang Xiang, dean of the New Energy Vehicle Technology Research Institute of Jiangxi New Energy Technology Vocational College, said to Connected Travel.

In addition to the sinking market, Gogox also looks at overseas markets.

In August 2017, GoGox merged with Gogox (formerly known as "GoGoGAN"), a freight and logistics platform in Southeast Asia, to quickly enter the Southeast Asian market and currently operate in more than 340 cities. After more than five years of operation, in 2022, GoGoGo's international business revenue reached 4300 million yuan, accounting for 55 percent of the total revenue13%。In the first half of 2023, GoGoGo's overseas revenue will reach 22.4 billion yuan, accounting for 60% of revenue.

Kuaigou Dache also said in the prospectus, "The increase in the total transaction volume of consignment orders in overseas markets is mainly due to the increase in online penetration in the Asian intra-city logistics market and the strong demand for logistics services." ”

From this point of view, although Kuaigou Taxi is currently looking for its own way out with the "two legs" of sinking market + layout to go to sea, there are also some challenges if it wants to get through these two roads.

First of all, from the perspective of the sinking market. In the same year that Kuaigou Taxi laid out the sinking market, Cargo Lala also began to attack lower-tier cities. In 2020, the latter publicly stated that it had gradually penetrated into the fourth and fifth tier cities in order to open up more sinking markets, and by the end of that year, Lala announced that it had completed 5The $1.5 billion Series E financing will be mainly used to expand the sinking market.

In May 2021, Lala announced that its cross-city truck business scope has covered 116 domestic cities, of which 23 cities have been stationed in the third and fourth line sinking markets. It is expected that the business will penetrate into 179 cities within the year, forming a network covering the basic node cities across the country.

With the rapid entry of cargo lala, it is foreseeable that the layout and development of Kuaigou Dache in the sinking market is likely to encounter many obstacles. And such obstacles, Kuaigou Taxi will also encounter in overseas markets.

In 2014, Lala entered Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and other countries one after another. In 2017, it entered the Vietnamese market, in 2019, it entered the Indian market, and in the same year, the company officially launched its operation in Brazil. According to the financial report, the comprehensive overseas GTV of Cargo Lala in 2022 will reach 5100 million US dollars, revenue of 99.87 million US dollars (about more than 700 million yuan), overseas business revenue accounted for 9 percent of the total revenue4%。

Last year, Lala used Facebook to recruit Japanese drivers for drivers with "black license plates" for light trucks that have been licensed to transport goods for a fee, and plans to enter the Japanese market in early 2024. According to the prospectus disclosed by Cargo Lala in 2023, Cargo Lala currently operates in more than 400 countries around the world.

In addition to the obstacles to opening up more markets, the supervision of freight platforms by the relevant authorities is also tightening, which will also have an adverse impact on the development of GoGox in the industry.

After all, in 2022 alone, freight platforms such as Kuaigou Taxi have been interviewed at least three times by the Ministry of Transport and other relevant departments. Including business model, first-class system, safety risks, etc., Kuaigou Taxi needs to spend a lot of effort to improve.

In addition, judging from the financial report data, as of the first half of 2023, the total amount of cash and cash equivalents and transactional financial assets of Kuaigou Dache is 47 billion yuan, and the total liabilities reached 44.6 billion yuan. This also means that if GoGox wants to continue to develop its business in the future, the lack of funds may become a constraint.

Overall, market share has been eroded, performance has been losing money year after year, and the core founders have left ......All kinds of unfavorable factors have cast a shadow on the prospects of Kuaigou taxi. As the freight industry in the same city enters the second half, enterprises that lack capital strength and differentiated competitiveness in the industry will face the fate of being eliminated, leaving few opportunities for Kuaigou taxi to "counterattack".

Zhang Kan is a pseudonym in the article. ）