Focus:
- 1 In the New Oriental Online Stock Bar, some investors said that "the market will vote with their feet, the reduction is too sudden, and the executives are too sensitive to grasp the time window, especially this kind of growth stock, which has increased by more than 20 times in just half a year."
- 2 After the landing of the "double reduction", New Oriental tried a number of transformation directions, including off-campus trusteeship, sports industry, communication services, etc. In the end, with the emergence of Dong Yuhui, the road of New Oriental Online transformation came to an end.
- 3 Dong Yuhui's personal account fans on Douyin have exceeded 10 million, while the number of personal account fans of other anchors selected by Oriental has not exceeded 3 million.
Zhongxin Jingwei, Feb. 19 (Ma Jing, Zhao Jiaran) Recently, a news that Dong Yuhui, anchor of Oriental Selection (securities named New Oriental Online), was given a Beijing household registration, house and license plate. In this regard, Dong Yuhui himself and the Oriental Selection Official quickly clarified on social platforms.
In the context of the recent rumors of executives reducing their holdings and leaving, a screen brush once again verified that Dong Yuhui is "walking traffic", but also put the potential problems that the market is worried about on the table again.
Stock prices plummeted, executives reduced their holdings, and Dong Yuhui "did not dare to take any more vacations"
The online news originated on February 16, Dong Yuhui was awarded the "Deep Cultivation Award" at the 2023 Beijing Pinggu Talent Development Conference, which focuses on recognizing outstanding talents who have made outstanding contributions to the development of Pinggu District, played a leading role in economic and social development, and have certain influence in the industry. On the same day, Pinggu District also issued the "Several Measures to Support Talent Development in Pinggu District", which proposed to give a one-time financial incentive of 1 million yuan (after tax) to talents with outstanding contributions, as well as the establishment of "green channels" and incentive housing. It is reported that Dong Yuhui has received the award of the above-mentioned outstanding contribution talents.
In fact, Dong Yuhui's recent rebuttal of rumors is not the only one. From the end of 2022, as Dong Yuhui reduced the live broadcast time, there have been rumors such as "is he going to fly solo". After the broadcast on the fifth and sixth days of the Lunar New Year (January 26 and 27), Dong Yuhui began to take a vacation, during which various versions of speculation circulated in the market, and some even speculated whether he had left.
While Dong Yuhui was on vacation, another big event happened to happen at New Oriental Online. This speculation became rampant after CEO Sun Dongxu and CFO Yin Qiang reduced their holdings on February 7 and 9 to cash out a total of HK$278.59 million. In the New Oriental Online Stock Bar, some investors said that "the market will vote with their feet, the reduction is too sudden, and the executives are too sensitive to grasp the time window, especially this kind of growth stock, which has increased by more than 20 times in just half a year", and even some investors bluntly said "let Dong Yuhui come out to make a force".
On February 8, Dong Yuhui, who officially ended his vacation, finally appeared in the live broadcast room of the Oriental Selection of Agricultural Products Monopoly, and the live broadcast time was changed from 7 pm to 9 pm to 8 am to 10 pm.
Until February 16, Dong Yuhui officially responded to the rumors of resignation for the first time in the Oriental Selection Live Broadcast Room. "Don't dare to take a break, take another break, Dong Yuhui has passively resigned, and everyone is rumoring every day that Dong Yuhui should leave."
It is worth mentioning that the recent stock price "collapsed" due to the rotation of executives to reduce their holdings and cash out, it seems that with the emergence of Dong Yuhui. Wind shows that on February 6, New Oriental Online's stock price closed at HK$56.70 per share with an 8.4% decline, and on February 7, New Oriental Online's stock price turned down to rise. In contrast, on February 6 and 9, the market of New Oriental Online was consistent with the trend of the Hang Seng Technology Index, and although the final closing trend was different on February 7 and 8, there was little difference in the rise and fall.
After Sun Dongxu and other executives reduced their holdings to cash out, New Oriental Online's share price began to "fall endlessly" from February 10, falling from a high of HK$63.23 per share to HK$48.35 per share on February 14. Since February 16, New Oriental Online's stock price has stopped falling and rebounded. During this period, except for February 13, the Hang Seng Technology Index and New Oriental Online market trend are basically the same frequency.
New Oriental Online's stock price performance from February 6 to 17 Source: Wind
"Traffic" Dong Yuhui, become a double-edged sword?
"You don't actually think about corn, you think about yourself back then." Time goes back to the summer of 2022, with bilingual live broadcasts and frequent golden sentences, Dong Yuhui, known as "Jay Chou of Zhongguancun", became popular. Fans call themselves "mother-in-law".
Before Dong Yuhui appeared, the industry still had doubts about New Oriental Online's switch to e-commerce live broadcasting. After the "double reduction" landed, New Oriental tried a number of transformation directions, including off-campus hosting, sports industry, communication services, etc. In the end, with the emergence of Dong Yuhui, the road of New Oriental Online transformation came to an end. On January 12, 2023, New Oriental Online announced that it changed its company name "New Oriental Online Technology Holdings Limited" to "Oriental Selection Holdings Limited".
Not long ago, New Oriental Online handed over its first semi-annual report since the transformation live broadcast. For the six months ended November 30, 2022, New Oriental Online's total revenue reached RMB2.08 billion, a year-on-year increase of 262.7%; Net profit increased by 207.6% year-on-year to RMB585 million, turning from loss to profit.
E-commerce live streaming undoubtedly carried the banner of New Oriental Online's performance. In the first half of fiscal 2023, the total revenue of the "self-operated products and live streaming e-commerce segment" represented by "Oriental Selection" was RMB1,765.8 million, accounting for nearly 85% of the total revenue, of which the revenue of self-operated products exceeded RMB1 billion. The company's total e-commerce live merchandise transaction volume (GMV) was 4.8 billion yuan, of which GMV from Douyin accounted for the vast majority. During the reporting period, the company had 35.2 million followers on Douyin and paid 70.2 million orders.
At present, the number of fans of Dong Yuhui's personal account on Douyin has exceeded 10 million, while the number of personal account fans of other anchors selected by Oriental has not exceeded 3 million. In addition, Dong Yuhui's star effect has also been verified on other accounts of New Oriental Online.
In early February, Dong Yuhui appeared in the live broadcast room of "Oriental Selection to See the World", one of the Oriental Selection Matrices, selling tourism products. According to media reports, at about 15:30 on the day Dong Yuhui participated in the live broadcast, the number of online people in the live broadcast room of the "large" Oriental selection was less than 10,000, while the number of online people in the "small" Oriental Selection to see the world reached more than 50,000. Based on the fact that the traffic of small numbers is higher than large numbers, some netizens speculated that "in the future, Dong Yuhui's task is to bring up the various numbers of Oriental Selection", and some people analyzed that "where there is Dong Yuhui, there is traffic, and Dongfang Selection is really inseparable from him".
In fact, after Dong Yuhui, Oriental Selection trained more than 20 anchors such as Dunton, Mingming, and YoYo. However, judging from the number of fans and live broadcast traffic, these anchors have not successfully reproduced Dong Yuhui's explosion.
Oriental Selection February live broadcast room data Source: Gray Dolphin Data
Taking the Oriental Selection live broadcast room in February as an example, gray dolphin data shows that from February 8 to 11, February 15 and February 18, the sales of the Oriental Selection live broadcast room exceeded 20 million yuan, and the number of views was more than 10 million, and Dong Yuhui had live broadcast periods on the above dates.
China New Frontier noted that China Merchants Securities and other institutions previously pointed out in research reports that New Oriental Online has a certain dependence on top anchors, and if the anchor team is lost, it may affect sales.
Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, has long observed and studied live streaming e-commerce MCN institutions such as Oriental Selection. He told Zhongxin Jingwei that star anchors are very important for live streaming e-commerce enterprises, but as Oriental Selection continues to cultivate more anchors with goods, Dong Yuhui's importance in bringing goods will decrease, but it is not ruled out that Dong Yuhui's important role in anchor training, corporate publicity and company management will be excluded.
In addition to Dong Yuhui, what cards can Oriental Selection play?
"Dong Yuhui is the most core anchor resource of Oriental Selection, which is undoubted, and Oriental Selection therefore has obvious advantages. However, we must also see that any company with live broadcast as the core needs to continue to make blood, and if Oriental Selection can prove to the market that it has the ability to build multiple Dong Yuhui, then it will form greater competitiveness. Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, told China-Singapore Jingwei that Oriental Selection has many teacher resources and may be able to create new traffic IP.
Chen Tao, senior consultant of Analysys Brand Retail Industry Center, mentioned to Zhongxin Jingwei that e-commerce live streaming is completely different from entertainment live streaming in the traditional sense, and the core lies in transactions, which cannot be measured only by the attention of users. The popularity of the moment is only secondary, the focus is on whether there is a strong supply chain and excellent products behind it to support it, so as to establish long-term contact with consumers. At present, the penetration rate of live streaming in the entire e-commerce industry is not high, and there is still enough market to accommodate enough MCNs and anchors. In particular, e-commerce does not account for much in retail, and there are still many points of integration between live streaming and retail.
Jiang Han also mentioned a similar view, he believes that for the current live broadcast market, anchors are often the easiest factor for everyone to accept and recognize. However, anchors are definitely not the only important factor in e-commerce live broadcasting, but only as a connection point for the market. In addition to building top streamers, live streaming companies should maintain their strong performance capabilities, including the ability to control and develop the market.
According to media reports, in the January earnings call, Sun Dongxu revealed that Oriental Selection plans to invest in outstanding suppliers in the future and gradually deepen its ability to control the entire supply chain. Jingwei noted that the first step has been taken in the Oriental Selection. On January 31, Oriental Selection announced that it will invest 17.52 million yuan for the expansion of Oriental Selection's self-operated grilled sausage, which is currently the highest sales volume of Oriental Selection's self-operated product.
However, Chen Tao told Zhongxin Jingwei that as far as the industry as a whole is concerned, expanding self-operated products is not the mainstream of the development of live streaming e-commerce MCN. The advantage of live streaming e-commerce MCN lies in the output of content or the cultivation of anchors, which can match its own traffic with products. MCN should strengthen operations and content cultivation in this regard, and give play to its strengths, which may be a more worthy direction to explore.
(The views in the article are for reference only, do not constitute investment advice, investment is risky, and caution is required when entering the market.) )
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Responsible editor: Wei Wei