This article is based on publicly available information and is for information purposes only and does not constitute any investment advice.
The performance of Aimec is becoming more and more complex.
At the beginning of the market in July 2020, the epidemic could not suppress the high trend of Aimeike's stock price; But then, revenue and profit doubled and grew again, but the market value ushered in a shrinkage of half and again; In particular, just after New Year's Day in 2024, Aimeike was eager to announce last year's performance report, but it still did not support the decline of the stock price.
Some people say that no one can be immune to the market downturn, and some people say that mediocre companies will eventually return to mediocrity.
In our opinion, Aimeike is not mediocre, but it is also unfair to blame the general environment for the weakening of market capitalization. In fact, the resolute downward ** is telling a simple truth: the once invincible "medical beauty mao", the once perfect logic, is gradually being disintegrated.
The basic logic of the weakening of consumer companies after listing is that under the continuous competition between long and short forces, a scarce story is needed to support the valuation of enterprises. However, after the listing, the capital market found that the so-called scarcity could not be equated with the irreplaceability of the consumer market, so many companies began to exchange price for volume in the number game.
In the context of the dilemma of unit price and sales, Aimec sold a single Hi body with a cost of less than 32 yuan at a premium of more than ten times, and its revenue tripled in three years. also has a strong form, as well as the stock price of Aimeike at the beginning of its listing, which rose four times a year, and suddenly the price-earnings ratio soared to 337 times.
First of all, in the field of medical aesthetics, Hi Body has a real scarcity attribute
Steve Jobs had a core philosophy of distrusting market research and focus groups because these questions were all based on asking them what they wanted, and he always followed his imagination and believed that people simply didn't know what they wanted until you offered it to them. This can be proved by the era of smartphone enlightenment led by the iPhone 4, and the market demand follows Apple's innovation.
*: Public network.
In China, there are at least two people who can create market demand like Jobs, one is Zhao Benshan, who makes people "take two steps without getting sick", and the other is Jian Jun, the founder of Aimeike.
At the end of 2016, Aimeike's Hi Body won the product registration certificate, which was the first injection material applied to neck repair at that time. Subsequently, the sentence "the state of the neck exposes your true age" made thousands of girls who pursued a childish face panic, and the anxiety transferred to the neck lines supported a very potential market demand.
Until now, this small bottle of a complex solution composed of sodium hyaluronate, L-carnosine, glycine, alanine, proline, vitamin B2 and water for injection is still the only Class III medical device product approved by the State Food and Drug Administration for the improvement of neck wrinkles. You must know that the registration cycle of more than 2 years + 2 to 4 years of clinical cycle of Class III medical devices, a long enough exclusive period, Aimeike has eaten through the market dividends of neck wrinkle removal both in volume and price.
Figure: 2017-2019 Hi Sports Market Performance, **Aimeike Announcement.
Secondly, it is worth noting thatIn this new market, the killer feature of Aimeike's performance lies in the channel advantages of B2B2C
If the secret of selling medical dressings is to give full play to its own medical resource endowment, then the logic of Aimeike's selling body is to achieve a "win-win" situation with non-public medical institutions.
Based on the node data in 2019, Aimeike's sales expenses were 77.17 million yuan, accounting for 13 percent of revenue84%, which is not high among comparable companies in the same industry (Haohaishengke 3392%, Allergan 2152%, Bloomage Biotech 2765%）。However, these funds can play a role in leveraging the market because Aimeike spends its sales expenses on the cutting edge, and the sales channels of its products are mainly connected to non-public medical institutions, and the funds listed in the sales expenses are more like binding the cost of "providing services" paid by these medical beauty institutions.
*: Prospectus
With scarce products on the one hand and channel endowment on the other, Aimeike's performance trend has lasted for eight years. At the beginning of 2024, Aimeike announced last year's performance forecast, and Aimeike is expected to have a net profit of 18 in 2023100 million yuan to 1.9 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 43%-50% in the same period, but what it continues is no longer the logic of 2020.
Figure: Aimeike's performance in the past eight years, ** financial report data.
The author believes that whether the hyaluronic acid (compound) solution for injection can bring rich revenue and profits to the enterprise mainly depends on three aspects: first, the cross-linking technology and production process provide the safety, durability and comfort of the product, which determines whether the application market has enough repurchase to open up the long-tail growth space; secondly, the approved indications determine the application scenarios and competitive landscape of the product; Finally, the speed of approval determines the first-mover advantage of the product.
At present, Aimeike's Hi Body is still the only approved injectable hyaluronic acid product for neck repair, butDue to the improvement of the maturity of China's medical aesthetic market, the uniqueness of Aimec may be broken at any time
On the one hand, we know that the long approval process required for Class III medical devices, combined with the long clinical observation cycle required for injectable products, adds up to a long time lag between design and launch. But it's been more than seven years since Hi Ti was approved to go on the market, and no one can be sure that there won't be a newly approved Hi Ti competitor on the market tomorrow.
On the other hand, the supply market of our injectable medical aesthetic products is mature enough to provide sufficient conditions for the launch of new products.
With the continuous verification of the application market and upstream technology, a consensus has been reached on the preparation process of hyaluronic acid products for injection. According to the morphology, viscosity, elasticity, and texture of non-cross-linking, bidirectional cross-linking, and single-item cross-linking, it is difficult for any company to win by surprise, according to the complete system of injection into the superficial dermis layer according to the molecular size.
With the maturity of technology, the route of the supply market, whether it is design or filing, has been straightened out, and the supply of products may usher in an explosion. According to the data of Yaozhi.com, as of October 2023, there are 59 approved hyaluronic acid injection products in China, all of which are Class III medical devices, including 26 Chinese-made products and 33 imported products.
In addition, the popularity of recombinant proteins also poses a threat to the application market of Hi Body. In August 2023, Jinbo Biotech's recombinant collagen for injection was approved, although the site of action is the frontal region, it is not yet known whether the heat of collagen will be burned to the neck market in the future.
Finally, in addition to the intensification of competitors' competition for the channel side after the growth of supply, another implicit significance of the maturity of the supply market is that the Internet + medical aesthetics has reduced the decision-making cost of the consumer market, and the competitive logic of obtaining consumer users by competing for medical institutions and doctor resources is weakening.
In the past, consumers who relied on the recommendation of large institutions and listened to the advice of doctors learned to learn from others, whether it was from the exchange of experience on social networks or the popularization of science on medical aesthetic communication platforms, which increased consumers' confidence in decision-making, and online procurement of medical aesthetic products has gradually become a new form of consumption. Whether the impact of the giant creature from network marketing faced by Fuerjia will be repeated in Aimeike may be an important issue that investors need to pay attention to.
At that time, the scarcity of Aimeike's ace products faced many threats, and the channel advantage of institutions faced more uncertainties, which constituted a change in the valuation logic of Aimeike.
As of March 4, the market value of Aimeike was 69.7 billion yuan, down 60% from the highest value. At this moment, investors have already understood: the monopoly of the scarce track itself is an expectation, including the expectation of sustained high growth in the future, and if Aimeike wants to return to the high valuation level of the past, it must re-tell a value story that allows investors to reach a consensus.
Up to now, Aimeike's business strategy is a strategy of rolling out multiple products around the main line of medical cosmetology. As of now, Aimec has an average of 2In 17 years, a new product was launched, and 9 medical device products that have obtained registration certificates have formed a series of ** fillers based on hyaluronic acid, ** fillers based on poly-L-lactic acid and a product matrix of facial implant threads, specifically:
Hyaluronic acid series: Hi Body, Yimei, Bonida, Evelai, Yimei One Plus One;
Poly-L-lactic acid series: white angel;
Buried thread series: tight love;
Others: biological protein sponge, hemostatic compound dressing.
In terms of market promotion, the above products continue the idea of binding the resources of medical institutions and doctors, and Aimeike's introduction to the White Angel in the 2022 annual report is, "The White Angel has entered more than 600 medical beauty institutions and authorized more than 700 doctors". But the later products have never had as bright results as Hi Body.
First, as mentioned earlier, the field of hyaluronic acid for injection has been relatively matureIn addition to the scarcity of Hi body in the field of neck repair, the products used for nasolabial folds, nasolabial, face, and forehead that compete with Aimeike in the market are very rich, and Aimeike has not stepped out of the leading position.
Second, poly-L-lactic acidAs a regenerative injection, it is considered to be the second of hyaluronic acid0 version, butThe track is also very crowded, Huadong Medicine's Maiden Needle, Changchun Shengboma's Avalan, are in direct competition with the White Angel, in addition, Shangli and Sihuan Pharmaceutical Company have also laid out research projects in this field.
Third, buried thread productsIn 2020, 2021, and 2022, the sales volume will be 0480,000 packs, 1390,000 packs & 1590,000 packages, corresponding to revenue in the range of 1.84 million yuan to 5.38 million yuan, accounting for less than 1% of revenueIn addition to the obvious trend of starting volume, this part of the income is just a drop in the bucket for today's huge Aimeike
Finally,Aimeike's products under developmentAlso includes products such as recombinant collagen, peptides, botulinum toxin (introduced), chronic weight management, but more than at the momentThe field has gradually emerged as a representative enterprise
In the field of recombinant collagen, there were frontrunners Giant Biotech and Jinbo Biotech, and then the giant Bloomage Biotech entered the game; The peptide field is becoming more and more red, and Proya, which is good at peptide beauty, is also turning its attention to the filing of medical devices;
In addition to the listed Botox products, Hengli, Jishi, and Letibao, there are many companies such as Jingding Pharmaceutical, Fosun Pharmaceutical, Huadong Pharmaceutical, Haohai Biotech, Buchang Pharmaceutical, CMS Pharmaceutical, and Inming Biotechnology that have the same or self-developed or ** layout of botulinum toxin as Aimeike;
In terms of chronic weight management, as of the end of June 2023, Aimeike's product under development, liraglutide injection, has just completed phase I clinical trials, and its indications have a high degree of overlap with the marketed semaglutide, and its market prospect has changed from developing the market to needing to compete for market share from semaglutide and others.
Generally speaking, Aimeike's stock price has come out of its current form, not because investors are not satisfied with the figures in its financial report, but because Aimeike's pocket can no longer take out products that make the capital market shine. From excellence to equilibrium, when expectations are disappointed, Aimeike always has to adapt to the end game of falling valuations.