ChinaNews.com client Beijing, April 30 (Xie Yiguan) "To travel, find Tuniu!" With this slogan, Tuniu Travel has entered people's vision. In the past, Tuniu was the first choice for people who chose to travel with a group tour, but the continuous loss caused Tuniu to gradually fall behind. An epidemic made Tuniu ushered in a dark moment, and even faced a delisting crisis.
Screenshot of Tuniu official website.
Share price is below $ 1 for 16 consecutive trading days
On the evening of April 9, Tuniu announced its 2019 performance report. The financial report shows that its net revenue last year was 2.3 billion yuan, an increase of 1.8% from the same period last year; the net loss attributable to shareholders of ordinary shares was 699.2 million yuan, an increase of 272.111% from the net loss of 187.9 million yuan in the same period last year.
This is the sixth loss year since Tuniu went public in 2014, with a cumulative loss of nearly 6 billion yuan.
Tuniu said that the new coronary pneumonia epidemic that began in January had a significant impact on the business. "At present, the market environment is unstable and it is impossible to reasonably estimate the extent of the impact of the epidemic on Tuniu's business, but it is expected to affect the business operations and financial situation of 2020 , Operating performance and cash flow have a significant adverse effect. "
Tuniu also said that in the first quarter of 2020, net income will be between 114.2 million and 159.9 million yuan, down 65% to 75% year-on-year.
Affected by the financial report, Tuniu's share price suffered a severe fall, closing down 7.08% on April 9. As of April 28, Tuniu's stock price has fallen 67.42% since the beginning of the year and closed at $ 0.82.
It is worth noting that since the stock price fell below $ 1 on April 6, as of April 28, Tuniu ’s stock price has closed below $ 1 for 16 consecutive trading days, which is a 96.7 drop from the historical peak of $ 24.99. %.
According to the Nasdaq Exchange "1 dollar delisting rule", if the closing for less than 1 dollar lasts for 30 trading days, the Nasdaq market will issue a pre-loss warning, if within 90 days of the warning, be warned The company is still unable to take corresponding measures to increase its share price and will be forced to delist.
This also means that in the next trading day, Tuniu if it can not actively take measures to boost investor confidence, will move towards a delisting ending.
Data Map: On October 3, 2019, tourists came from Sanya Nanshan Scenic Area. Photo by Wang Xiaobin
Why Tuniu is here
Tuniu has also been brilliant. In 2010, Tuniu Travel.com received a USD 10 million Series B investment led by DCM and followed by Gobi. In 2011, Tuniu completed a USD 50 million Series C financing jointly invested by Sequoia Capital, Lotte Group, DCM, and Plateau Capital.
From 2011 to 2013, Tuniu has grown rapidly for three years. According to the disclosure of the listing prospectus, the gross profit margins from 2011 to 2013 were 3.1%, 3.5%, and 6.2%, and the revenues were 770 million yuan, 1.12 billion yuan, and 1.96 billion yuan, respectively.
On May 10, 2014, Tuniu successfully landed on Nasdaq. After Ctrip, Qunar and Tongcheng Yilong, it became the fourth OTA (online travel) platform to be listed in the United States and ranked among the OTA "first echelon".
After successful listing, Tuniu accelerated the layout of offline stores. At the beginning of listing, there were 5 offline regional service centers. By January 2016, the number of regional service centers had increased to 170.
The money-burning strategy has achieved certain results. From 2014 to 2015, Tuniu's revenue was 3.5 billion yuan and 7.6 billion yuan respectively, with year-on-year growth rates of 81.3% and 116.3%, respectively. However, the high operating costs caused Tuniu ’s net losses attributable to ordinary shareholders in 2014 and 2015 to be 463.5 million yuan and 1.459 billion yuan, respectively.
With continuous losses, Tuniu did not stop its "burning money". In addition to signing Lin Zhiying and Jay Chou successively to start the "dual spokesperson model", starting in 2016, Tuniu and "You Are the One", "The Strongest Brain", "China's Good Voice", "Hua Er and Juvenile", "Fancy Sister" and many other variety cooperation The special sponsorship of "Run, Brother" in the fourth quarter alone cost 148.5 million yuan. Statistics show that Tuniu's 2016 marketing expenses accounted for 61% of total operating expenses, compared with 36% for Ctrip in the same period.
In exchange for the high marketing investment and store coverage costs, from 2016 to 2018, the net losses attributable to ordinary shareholders reached 2.427 billion yuan, 773 million yuan, and 188 million yuan, respectively. Although there was a little profit in 2018 under non-US accounting standards, it was only 22 million yuan.
Under the continuous loss, in June 2016, the core member of Tuniu founding team, CMO Chen Fuwei left. In November 2017, co-founder, president and chief operating officer Yan Haifeng and chief financial officer Yang Jiahong left. Tuniu also repeatedly reported layoffs.
Tuniu, deeply trapped in the high-cost vortex, proposed a transformation in 2019, and proposed the S (Supply Chain platform) 2 B (Business) 2 C (Customer) development model, which aims to expand traffic while reducing costs. However, Tuniu ’s efforts only pushed itself to a more difficult situation, and the net loss in 2019 expanded rapidly.
Why Tuniu will come to such a situation, "The main reason is that the product structure is simple, and compared with other OTAs, Tuniu ’s advantage is not obvious. The main business and group tour ceilings are low, it is difficult to break new Growth point. "Chen Liteng, an e-commerce analyst for life services at the NetEco-E-Commerce Research Center, pointed out.
In Chen Liteng's view, Tuniu's high marketing costs in the past few years and the expansion of the offline market have also caused its operating costs to remain high. The loss of early decision-making has also caused its subsequent development to fall into a bottleneck.
The continuous loss of performance also caused Tuniu to fall out of the first OTA echelon.
The 2019 financial report shows that Ctrip's revenue reached 35.7 billion yuan, an increase of 15% year-on-year, and the net profit attributable to the company's shareholders was 7 billion yuan, an increase of 536.4% year-on-year; Tongcheng Yilong's 2019 revenue was 7.393 billion yuan, an increase of 21.4% year-on-year; attribution The net profit of equity holders of the company was 688 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.8%.
Not only did the performance gap widen, once Tuniu and Tongcheng Yilong "sat together", but now the market value is still less than a fraction of Tongcheng Yilong. As of April 28, the market values of Ctrip, Tongcheng Yilong and Tuniu were US $ 14.5 billion, HK $ 27.9 billion (US $ 3.6 billion) and US $ 101 million, respectively.
Data Map: The long vacation travel that has been in full swing in the past years is affected by the new coronary pneumonia epidemic this year. Photo by Tuobo
Overwhelming cattle's "last straw"
According to a report released by Tongcheng Tourism at the end of 2019, the number of visitors during the seven days of the Spring Festival Golden Week in 2020 is expected to be around 450 million.
While tourism companies are expecting to make a big profit during the Golden Week of the Spring Festival, on the eve of the Spring Festival of 2020, an unexpected epidemic "looted" the entire tourism industry and also made Tuniu's situation "extremely worse."
According to the data of Tianyan check, as of March 25, there were 11,268 tourism enterprises in the country that had been cancelled or revoked. Most of the cancelled companies have cash flow problems.
Under the epidemic, Tuniu's cash flow was also tight. According to Tuniu, due to the special period, a large number of orders were returned during the Spring Festival and subsequent changes, Tuniu took on direct losses of more than 100 million yuan for customers. As of December 31, 2019, Tuniu's cash and cash equivalents, restricted-use cash and short-term investments totaled 1.9 billion yuan.
On the evening of April 17, Tuniu.com ’s CEO encountered a supplier ’s online debt collection when he opened his live show with Dundee. In addition, there is news that all Tuniu executives cut their salaries by 60%.
Although due to the impact of the epidemic, Ctrip and Tongcheng Yilong also lowered their first-quarter performance expectations: Ctrip expects first-quarter net operating income to decline by 45% -50% year-on-year; Tongcheng Yilong expects first-quarter net income to decrease by 42% -47% year-on-year .
"But from the perspective of financial performance, the funds reserves of Tongyi Yilong and Ctrip are sufficient, and they have a strong ability to resist risks." Chen Liteng said.
In contrast, Tuniu is in a much more dangerous situation in which it has suffered losses year after year and its net income is expected to fall by nearly 70% in the first quarter.
After Tuniu ’s latest financial report is released, Tuniu ’s chief financial officer Xin Yi will officially resign on May 31. Previously Chen Shihong, Chief Technology Officer of Tuniu, changed his position.
Tuniu's shareholders began to leave. Following the reduction of its shareholding to 5.6% last year, on April 2, Singapore investment company Temasek once again reduced its shareholding to 4.99%, and is no longer the beneficial owner of Tuniu Class A common stock holdings of more than 5%.
In May 2015, JD.com, which had led the investment of US $ 500 million in financing, now has a heavy loss. JD.com also finds another way. On the afternoon of April 26, "Outbound Travel Leader" Caesar Tourism announced that Suqian Hanbang Investment Management Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of JD.com, would spend 450 million yuan to participate in the fixed increase.
With the loss of executives, shareholder reductions, and stock price plunges, how Tuniu can "get out of nowhere" may leave little time for it. (Finish)