Some people say that cross-border e-commerce seems to be the head of the market share, but the actual undercurrent is also changing rapidly.
A few years ago, Amazon, Wish, etc. were firmly on the top platforms, but now Wish is selling itself, and TikTok Shop, Temu and other companies have sprung up.
"Bantian Five Tigers" and "Four Youths in South China City" have created cross-border e-commerce legends, how many big sellers used to be barbaric and soaring, but now they have almost disappeared, and their financial reports have been losing money.
A title has still made many big sellers painful, such as a tree, and Zebao.
Xinghui shares were also questioned because of Amazon's ban
Not long ago, Zebao's parent company, Xinghui Co., Ltd., announced its annual financial report for 2023 as scheduled, and was also inquired by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
Specifically, although the revenue of Xinghui in 2023 will be 1.626 billion yuan, it will decrease by 30.85% compared with the same period in 2022; In addition, although the loss is significantly lower than in 2022, it still loses 76.0925 million yuan.
Among them, Yien.com noticed that the Shenzhen Stock Exchange asked it to explain the follow-up impact of Amazon's account ban.
Amazon's ban on accounts is still a scar that is difficult to heal for big sellers. Not long ago, Yien.com reported on the ongoing lawsuit between a tree and Amazon over the ban of accounts.
And apparently Zebao has not completely escaped from this prison. Like big sales such as Youkeshu, Zebao also started by crazy sales on Amazon in the early days.
2021年,泽宝旗下六个主要品牌RAVPower、VAVA、Taotronics、Anjou、Sable、Hootoo被禁止在亚马逊销售,相关的亚马逊店铺也被封停。
According to the annual report, in 2021, Zebao will have a total of 367 closed stores on Amazon, and the balance of funds of the frozen stores as of the end of 2021 is equivalent to about 32.2301 million yuan, so Xinghui Co., Ltd. has made an impairment provision of 680 million yuan for the goodwill of Zebao's asset group, and a provision of 416 million yuan for the decline in inventory of Zebao's technical inventory at the end of the period.
In the same year, Zebao was hit hard by this incident, and its revenue fell by 46.09% year-on-year, from 4.773 billion yuan in 2020 to 2.573 billion yuan in 2021, with a loss of about 886 million yuan.
In 2022, still affected by the account closure incident, Zebao's revenue will drop by 52.44% year-on-year to only 1.224 billion yuan.
In terms of specific sales volume, the sales volume of 3C products dropped sharply from 16.77 million to 7.4 million, a decrease of 55.84%.
In addition, it was determined that the unrecoverable frozen Amazon store payments reached 16.82 million yuan, and 13.17 million yuan was expected to be unrecoverable after the deadline.
In 2023, the situation will not improve, Zebao's revenue will continue to decline by 33.99%, leaving only 808 million yuan, and the sales volume of 3C products will drop by another 39.54%, from 7.4 million pieces to 4.48 million pieces. Moreover, the above payment has not been recovered, and Zebao's goodwill impairment provision is still 680 million yuan.
After the account ban incident that year, Zebao urgently accelerated the "multi-platform, multi-channel" business strategy in the second half of the year, expanding third-party platforms, independent stations and offline channels such as Walmart, Ebay, Rakuten, Newegg, etc., so that in 2021, non-Amazon channels brought Zebao 605 million yuan in revenue, an increase of 92.03% from 315 million yuan in 2020; The proportion of total revenue in cross-border e-commerce was 23.47%, an increase of 16.87 percentage points year-on-year compared with 2020.
Does this mean that Zebao has successfully reduced its reliance on Amazon's single platform? Probably not.
In 2021, Zebao's revenue on Amazon will be 1.972 billion yuan, although it will decrease by 55.76% from 2022 (4.459 billion yuan), but its proportion is still as high as 76.54%.
In 2022, its revenue on Amazon will be 601 million yuan, a year-on-year plunge of 69.53%, but it still accounts for 48.92% of revenue, and it can be seen that its revenue from independent stations and offline channels is also declining, although other third-party platforms have increased by 107.73%, but only 181 million yuan of revenue, accounting for only 14.72%.
In 2023, Amazon's channel revenue will drop by another 28.60%, but it will still account for more than half (53.06%) of 429 million yuan, and it can be seen that in the past year, Zebao's revenue in all sales channels has plummeted, and the third-party platform has fallen the most, reaching 53.44%, and the Amazon channel is the least loss.
Judging from these data, even if Zebao has a shadow on Amazon and intends to weaken its dependence, the current situation is that it is slightly unsuitable for other platforms and channels.
In the past, the good cards were full, but now they are defeated
It is not only the Amazon account closure incident that has been concerned by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, but also the subsequent impact of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on the company's cross-border e-commerce business.
In 2018, Xinghui purchased 100% of Zebao's equity, and in 2018, 2019 and 2020, it was the performance VAM period between Zebao and Xinghui shares.
In January this year, SKL, a subsidiary of Xinghui Co., Ltd., received a tax payment notice from the Italian tax department, and the tax year of the payment notice is from 2017 to 2021, and the specific tax-related matters involve the M&A delivery date and the performance VAM period.
Specifically, SKL, as a company established by Zebao for e-commerce procurement business and online business in Amazon-registered stores, the Italian tax department believes that the company has not paid VAT in full from 2017 to 2021, so it issued a tax payment notice to SKL, with a total of more than 6,424,400 euros in taxes and penalties.
As early as before this tax penalty notice, Xinghui shares also received a payment notice from the U.S. tax department.
Specifically, STK is a subsidiary of Zebao Technology in California, USA, which mainly conducts online business in Amazon-registered stores. The relevant U.S. tax department determined that from 2016 to 2021, STK had failed to pay sales tax in full, so it issued a tax payment notice to STK, with a total of US$2,378,400 in taxes and penalties.
Xinghui shares also said that it would recover the taxes and penalties before the delivery date of the major asset restructuring target (December 31, 2018) and the losses during the performance VAM period from the relevant parties (i.e., Sun Caijin, the founder of Zebao, etc.) in accordance with the provisions of the "Asset Purchase Agreement" and the "Profit Forecast Compensation Agreement".
And because of these two taxes, Xinghui shares will include them in the annual profit and loss in 2023, with an amount of 18.3275 million yuan, which is also one of the reasons for the net loss.
In April, Xinghui announced that it would file a lawsuit with the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, demanding that Zebao's former high-level Sun Caijin and other four people jointly and severally compensate for losses of about 243 million yuan.
Now, Zebao has been losing money year after year, and Xinghui shares have also issued the "announcement on the uncompensated losses reaching one-third of the total paid-in share capital" for three consecutive years.
A good hand of cards is now played in pieces, some people say that Zebao has long been kicked off the table, this former cross-border star is now falling, how can it clean up in order to return to the game as a winner?