Text: Xiangshan Finance.
In the recent period, the pot ring is really out of the capital market.
Although it is known as the "first stock of pre-made dishes", the pre-made dishes that exploded on Chinese New Year's Eve failed to drive the stock price of the pot circle**. As for the strong demand for hot pot catering brought about by the cold weather, it seems that the pot ring has only had a dream for a short time.
Because after a short period of upward movement in January, the stock price of the pot ring fell by 17 on January 3043% is a watershed moment, and it has fallen back to its previous position at a faster rate.
As of March 1, the share price of Guoquan closed at 605 yuan, the distance fell below 5The issue price of HK$98 shares is just one step away.
This can't help but make people wonder, what happened to the pot ring?
Is the valuation logic of "eating hot pot at home" being overturned and reshaped?
For the ups and downs of the stock price trend of the pot ring, if you put aside the external factors of the overall weakness of Hong Kong catering stocks in recent times, Xiangshan Finance believes thatThe most fundamental reason may be that the value of the pot ring has not been fully recognized by investors.
The main manifestation is that its turnover rate is ridiculously low.
Since its listing on November 2 last year, no matter whether the stock price of the pot ring is at a high or low level, the daily turnover rate has basically remained at 002%-0.05% of the between, almost none of the chips in circulation have been fully replaced. That is to say, most investors believe that the ** of the pot ring may not be worth the current price, and there is still room for "bearish" downward adjustment in the future, so they are not in a hurry to buy.
So the question is, what is the pot circle that is "bearish" by the capital market?
Normally, the valuation judgment of an enterprise is actually a market value conversion or estimation for the growth of the enterprise itself and the future revenue capacity.
So specifically when it comes to pot rings,Xiangshan Finance summarized it into two reasons: first, the "old" business model of "eating hot pot barbecue at home" is losing its growth imagination; The second is that the new prefabricated vegetable market of "eating at home" has not yet seen any hope of breaking the situation.
Let's take a look at the former first, unlike most catering brands to join the way, the pot ring does not mainly rely on the franchisee to collect franchise fees, nor does it divide the profits of the franchisee, its main revenue comes from selling products to franchisees. For example, in 2022, the pot ring is 71Of the 700 million yuan in revenue, only 16% is the comprehensive guidance service fee charged to the franchisee, 984% is product sales revenue.
Therefore,The operation of the franchised stores will directly affect the performance of the pot ring.
As we all know, the most important thing about the fact that Guoquan has been able to achieve a breakthrough of 10,000 stores in the past three years, and even complete the listing, is that it has stepped on the dividend window period of the home economy under the epidemic, and accurately undertook the public's "flat" consumption demand for offline catering industries such as hot pot restaurants during the special period. So at that time, not only the capital investment institutions saw the imagination of the pot circle, but even countless ordinary people (later franchisees) also saw the hope of making money.
As a result, the number of stores in Guoquan, which was founded in 2017 and took three years of development to open less than 2,000 stores, has grown to 5,000 stores in ten months since the beginning of the epidemic in early 2020. At the end of 2022, the number of franchised stores of pot rings climbed to 9,216.
But now look backThe support of the previous capital can only be regarded as the icing on the cake, and the money-making dream of countless franchisees is the key to truly supporting the pot circle to break through the scale of 10,000 stores. But because of this, whether the franchised stores can make money directly determines the future store expansion speed and revenue performance of the pot ring.
However, the embarrassing thing is that after entering 2023, people's lives will gradually return to normal, and the lifestyle of "eating hot pot at home" aimed at by pot rings and franchisees may still continue, but the overall consumer demand will still have an irreversible trend of market ebbing. And to add insult to injury, fresh retail players such as Hema and Dingdong have also joined the "one-stop" hot pot scene at this time, which makes it difficult to retain customers in the current pot circle and develop new customers.
Of course, the most important thing is that it may be more and more difficult for the pot ring franchise stores to make money.
For this, investors can see it, and new and old franchisees can also feel it.
After all,The profit-making performance of franchisee stores is almost intuitively reflected in the revenue scale of the pot ring。Tianyancha APP shows that in 2022, the pot ring will achieve a revenue of 717.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 812%；Net profit turned into profit for the first time, achieving a profit of 24.1 billion yuan. However, in the post-epidemic era, for the four months ended April 30, 2023, Guoquan achieved revenue of 207.8 billion yuan, a rapid year-on-year decrease of 38%。
Perhaps affected by market confidence, on the one hand, the expansion rate of the pot ring has slowed down significantly. According to data, in 2020 alone, the number of franchises in pot rings increased by 2,855, almost double that of the past five years. In 2021, there were 2,568 additions, and in 2022, another 2,352 were added. However, as of September 26, 2023, the number of franchised stores of pot rings has only increased by 762 ...... from the end of last year
On the other hand, the number of store closures has begun to increase. In the first four months of 2023, although the number of stores in Guoquan increased by 754, the number of franchise stores closed at the same time also reached 132. You know, this data is only 279 in the whole of 2022.
To sum it up simply,The business development model of "eating hot pot at home" has exposed systemic bugs that are difficult to solve in the post-epidemic era. This means that the entire valuation logic derived from the past market dividend period may now need to be reversed and reshapedThat's why investors are concentrated on the ...... of bearish pots
Troubles of pre-made dishes for pot rings, TOB or TOC?
Of course, the pot ring is not unaware of the current growth dilemma. In the past year, we have also seen many strategic adjustments made by Guoquan to increase revenue and improve the current model, such as opening a high-end Black Pearl restaurant, and being rumored to acquire Song River Wine.
However, objectively speaking, in the current red to black catering stock market, it is almost difficult to tell a new capital story that is enough to stabilize the market stock price in a short period of time.
As for entering the liquor, the liquor industry as a whole is now in a period of deep differentiation and adjustment, on the one hand, the market channel is upside down, and on the other hand, the sinking of famous and high-quality liquor has become the norm. Therefore, even if Guoquan's acquisition of Songhe Liquor comes true, it is difficult to gain enough market imagination under such a strongly differentiated liquor pattern.
Therefore, if you look at it purely from a business perspective, Xiangshan Finance believes that the "prefabricated dishes" in the same home dining scene may be the most imaginative breakthrough point in the future.
In this regard, the pot ring also realized the strategic importance of prefabricated dishes very early, and even mentioned the investment and construction of prefabricated food production and research and development in the use planning of the funds raised by the IPO, but interestingly, it is somewhat contradictory about the development direction of prefabricated dishes.
In March last year, it was pointed out that the pot ring had tried to open the prefabricated vegetable market through the picnic camping scene in Guangdong, and launched various prefabricated dishes including coconut chicken hot pot, cheese shrimp cake, cumin mutton, etc., and the overall preference was more instant prefabricated dishes.
But in September, Yang Mingchao, chairman and CEO of Guoquan Food, said at a public meeting, "I think we are not talking about prefabricated dishes in China, but prefabricated ingredients, which is our judgment on Chinese prefabricated dishes." Yang Mingchao said that it is based on these thoughts that the prefabricated dishes of Guoquan Shihui are positioned as quick-cooking dishes, and they should retain the fireworks and can achieve Chinese food ...... home
Translated, compared to the ready-to-heat pre-made dishes that were chosen at the beginning, the pot ring now seems to focus on the "quick-cook" pre-made dishes that lack the last cooking action, that is, consumers can get the meat, vegetables and seasonings that are cut and prepared, but they still need to be cooked according to the SOP before they can be eaten.
From this point of view,The "quick-cooking prefabricated dishes" that the pot ring is aiming at now seem to be quite similar to the clean vegetable distribution and processing factories that appeared in the 90s of the last century, as well as the "** kitchen" model that was born later to put the production links such as washing, cutting and preparing vegetables in front of the production process to provide more standardized ingredients for large chain catering stores.
The only difference is that at that time, the "** kitchen" was mainly for B-end catering stores, but the prefabricated dishes of pot rings were for C-end consumers.
Then the problem arises, although many people don't hate the process of stir-frying when cooking, what they don't like is the cumbersome pre-loading of washing, cutting vegetables and preparing ingredients, as well as the after-end trouble of facing leftovers and a bunch of greasy pots and pans to wash. WhileNow the "quick cooking" prefabricated dishes of 2C pot rings have solved the first problem, but for the sake of fireworks, it has brought the second trouble to consumers......
In this way, the quick-cooking prefabricated dishes that the pot ring wants to make now seem to be a very embarrassing market proposition.
So in this case, why is the pot ring reluctant to focus on ready-to-heat pre-made dishes?
There are two reasons for this:First, the ready-to-eat ready-to-heat prefabricated dishes of 2C are still in the education stage of market users, and referring to Japan, where prefabricated dishes are developed, we can see that the penetration of C-end prefabricated dishes is a slow process - it took at least 30 years for Japan to complete the equal proportion of B-end and C-end.
Of course, the more practical reason is that instantaneous pre-made dishes focus on the food processing end. However, it was pointed out that before August 2021, the pot ring did not have its own food processing plant, and the products were all purchased. It was not until August 2021 that Guoquan successively acquired or controlled three ingredient processing factories, including the Heyi Factory, which produced beef products, and realized the self-production of some ingredients.
So to a certain extent, for ready-to-eat ready-to-heat prefabricated dishes, the pot ring may feel a little more than enough and not enough.
Second, although 2B's ready-to-eat ready-to-heat prefabricated dishes have large-scale imagination, they cannot form a business synergy with the existing pot ring stores. The only unilateral advantage of prefabricated dishes is the procurement of food raw materials, but the premise is still based on the scale of 10,000 stores in the pot ring, which almost does not bring any improvement to the operation of the franchise stores with the greatest pressure on the pot ring.
That is, the best pre-made dishes for pot rings, but not the most imaginative.
In this case, the only thing that the pot circle can do is to slow down, sort out its own strength advantages and strategic shortcomings, and reposition the market direction, perhaps more likely to regain growth in the future than to rush to "attack" with injuries. After all, until now, the pot ring that still has the advantage of 10,000 stores, compared with other prefabricated food players, the advantage is not half a star....
Disclaimer of WarrantiesThis article is based on the company's statutory disclosure and public information, but the author does not guarantee the completeness and timeliness of the information. Another: **There are risks, and you need to be cautious when entering the market. The article does not constitute investment advice, and whether to invest or not should be determined by yourself.