The Gengzi Year is full of many variables, such as the "new crown", the fuse of the US stock market, and the thunderstorm in long-term rental apartments...Although 2020 is a cold winter in the market, there is also a enthusiastic side. For example, the surge of new car-making forces and the continuous burning of money for online education are actually behind the influx of capital.
Among the domestic capital arena, the BAT formed by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent is a force that cannot be ignored in investment. Through this approach, Internet giants have extended their tentacles to various fields, and the unicorns they have created are still expected to develop into partners in their respective positions.
Looking back at this year's BAT record, although it is not as good as the investment scale in 2018 and 2019, its investment is still not small. Summarizing 2020, where will they focus their attention on the same occasion? Compared with the past, how have their investment logic changed?
Re-examination of the C-end "plate" targeted by BAT in 2020
New year and new weather, even in 2020, which is about to pass, the investment direction is still very different from last year. This year, online education, live broadcast, community group buying and new energy have become the most discussed topics. They are widely discussed, and capital has ignited enthusiasm in them, and there are more or less Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu figures behind them.
One. Hundreds of people compete in the education field, and BAT spends a lot of money
The popularity of the online education industry this year, especially the K12 subdivision track, is reflected in investment and financing on the one hand. From January to October, the cumulative financing scale of the K12 education industry reached 32.87 billion yuan, exceeding the total financing amount of the past four years. During this period, a single financing amount for online education reached 870 million yuan, 7.3 times that of 2019.
(Source: Poles)
Tencent has participated in many investment events in the education sector. According to the investment data CVSource, in recent years, the number of Tencent's investment in education has shown an upward trend, with large numbers and large sums of money.
On October 20 this year, Spark Thinking, a unicorn in the field of children's education, announced the completion of the E2 round of 100 million US dollars financing, led by Tencent.
It was also in October that Yuanjiao delivered a US$2.2 billion financing led by Tencent and DST, becoming the single largest financing line in China's Internet sector this year. With the blessing of this round of financing, Yuanjiao has become the unicorn with the highest valuation in the global education technology industry this year.
Ali is relatively cautious on the educational track. In the past, it seemed that I was only watching the periphery of the track, but this year I have the feeling of personally ending.
After Ali entered the education field, it launched the independent product "Bangbang Da" for the first time. Later, with the help of "Taobao Education", from the live broadcast of the course to the cost-effective and light classroom, Ali took extra care at every step of the rhythm.
Only from its posture, it is very different from other players. It is still an e-commerce business, linking merchants and consumers, just providing intermediaries instead of directly trying out education platforms.
Compared with the other two in BAT, Baidu is committed to the development of educational AI, and its self-built platforms include Baidu Education, Baidu Wenku, Baidu Translation, etc. But this year's actions on online education are not too many.
The largest shareholder of Homework Group is Baidu. During the Spring Festival, Baidu "knowledgeable and easy to learn" also cooperated with "Homework Group" to launch free live classes. Before this year, Baidu became an investor in online children's English Proud Kids and Jiuqu English.
This means that since last year, Baidu began to pay attention to the emerging education field of children's courses. Baidu has always attached great importance to the field of online education, and may have more actions in this field in the future.
two. Different play styles in the live broadcast field, intended to consolidate the dominant position
BAT has played differently in the field of live broadcast this year, but the intention is to consolidate the established dominant position. At present, Alibaba is focusing on e-commerce live broadcasts with the help of Taobao, while Tencent has done a lot on game live broadcasts, while Baidu has been strengthening pan-knowledge live broadcasts.
Alibaba has developed in-depth cooperation in e-commerce with many regions to cultivate e-commerce live broadcast talents. When Guangzhou proposed to build the "Live Broadcasting E-commerce Capital", Taobao Live was an important platform participant.
It is worth mentioning that Ali will become the second largest shareholder of Mango Super Media. Prior to this, Mango SuperMedia leveraged the enthusiasm of the "sisters" to take advantage of the trend of e-commerce to bring goods, but the overall performance was poor. If the cooperation goes smoothly, the two will have more possibilities on e-commerce live broadcasts.
And Tencent, the major thing it has done in live broadcast this year is to promote the merger of the two major game live broadcast platforms, Douyu and Huya. On October 12, Huya and Douyu signed a merger agreement, which means that more than 70% of the game live broadcast market will be occupied by Tencent. After the merger, Huya and Douyu will become an important supplement to Tencent's gaming ecosystem.
The boundaries of live broadcast are becoming more and more blurred, and the industry is developing towards an oligopoly. Baidu's strategic acquisition of YY this year has become a good choice. The acquisition of YY Live Broadcast is more a blessing of technology and experience. Although it cannot directly change the current live broadcast industry structure, the experience of YY Live in the field of pan-entertainment live broadcast will bring more possibilities to Baidu Pan Live broadcast.
three. Community group buying set off a money-burning war at the end of the year, Ali and Tencent have deployed
Community group buying has become another hot word in 2020. After the reshuffle in 2019, Ali, Tencent, Didi, Meituan, and Pinduoduo have all joined the battle. At present, a few monopolies have not yet formed.
According to relevant data, according to relevant data, there are currently more than 200 community group buying companies in China. From January 2019 to November 2020, a total of 26 investment and financing events occurred in the domestic community group buying field, with a total financing of over 11.7 billion yuan.
(Source: Enterprise Check)
Last month, Alibaba and Times Capital jointly led a joint investment of US$196 million in Shihui Group. This is the fourth time that Ali invested in Shihui Group in 2018. In addition, the Hema Optimal Group established by Ali this year was renamed Hema Bazaar, officially operating community group buying. And in the Hunan and Hubei regions where the Hema Bazaar is trial-operated, Taobao and Alipay are equipped with diversion entrances, and the vividness of the entrances even exceeds that of core businesses such as double twelve promotion and Taobao live broadcast.
Tencent is different from Meituan, Didi, and Pinduoduo's "personal end", mainly in the form of investment. Tencent invested in Prosperity Optimal and Food Sharing Club to increase the size of this track. Baidu, on the other hand, is relatively cautious about community group buying and has not yet participated in it.
four. There are giants behind the "three silly" new energy vehicles, laying out software and hardware ecology to seek future prospects
New energy vehicles have become a track in the simultaneous phase of BAT. In this regard, Ali and Tencent have successively built their own smart car ecology. They play different ways, but their logic is basically clear. They all cooperate with car companies from the perspective of software suppliers and system solutions. The two may be more closely tied in the software service ecosystem.
It is worth mentioning that Internet giants may have difficulty restraining the urge to "enter the market and build cars." Especially this year, the two models of establishing a new company by joint venture and "finding car companies" have emerged. Alibaba and SAIC jointly established a new high-end smart electric vehicle brand "Zhiji", which not only involves technical cooperation, but also involves equity cooperation.
Baidu is different from Ali and Tencent in that it has always invested a lot in the field of autonomous driving. This year around Apollo, Baidu
The commercial implementation has progressed very smoothly. In addition, in the 10 billion round D investment completed by Weimar this year, Baidu's name is also on the list of co-investors.
Looking at the track through the forward-looking trends of top investment banks, what is the investment trend of the giants in 2021?
At the end of each year, major investment banks have released market outlooks, and this year is no exception. Domestic and foreign investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, China Merchants Securities, and CICC have expressed their views on the potential opportunities in the capital market next year. With this as a reference, BAT may focus on or continue to increase these areas next year. Among them, medical health, consumption and SaaS are likely to be worthy of focus.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and CITIC Securities all expressed optimism about the pharmaceutical industry. Driven by the epidemic, the public's awareness of health has begun to rise, and it has become a general trend to focus on better services and rich scenes.
The stock price of JD Health, a subsidiary of JD.com, rose more than 55% on the first day of listing, which shows that the capital market is enthusiastic about it. Not only that, the major domestic Internet giants such as Baidu, Ali, Tencent, etc. are eyeing the medical and health field, and Internet medical treatment has become an important part of their respective ecosystems.
With the positive epidemic situation and the advancement of Internet giants, Internet medical treatment further penetrates into people's lives, which will bring huge value space that can be tapped. At present, the whole-process medical treatment platform can help solve the problem of seeing a doctor, and there are a number of application scenarios that will collide with new sparks under the combination of 5G, such as wearable medical care, remote surgery, etc. Internet companies are expected to find growth opportunities.
In the post-epidemic era, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and CITIC Securities also expressed optimism about the retail consumer industry. Such as Capital Zhang Aoping said in an interview that the consumer industry will become the mainstream industry for IPOs in 2021. In other words, more unicorns may be born in the consumer industry.
There are also relevant market participants that the resonant recovery of the global economy will be the main line of certainty in 2021. This means that related industries will be boosted on the procyclical main line.
Under the procyclical trend, the consumer demand of the people is expected to increase. Local life, new-style tea, catering and other subdivision tracks may have more opportunities to incubate unicorns. This year, Hey Tea, Xingsheng Optimal, and Xibei all reported plans to go public after several financings. Behind the rise of these top platforms, Internet giants will also consider putting more energy on these new forces and seizing opportunities from this wave of consumption boom.
The last area is the SaaS industry, which is experiencing rapid growth this year. From a domestic perspective, the SaaS industry started late and is in a stage of rapid growth. According to IDC, my country's enterprise-level SaaS increased by 41% year-on-year in 2019, with an average annual compound growth rate of 37% in the next five years.
China's GDP accounts for 16% of the global market, while SaaS accounts for less than 6% of the global market. In addition, the overseas cloud computing market is dominated by SaaS, accounting for 58%. It is not difficult to find that my country's cloud computing is still in its early stage. As my country's cloud computing infrastructure matures, the SaaS field will usher in an explosion.
In particular, this year's cloud video platform Zoom has increased several times, and its market value has exceeded 100 billion US dollars, which further makes enterprises aware of the feasibility of SaaS. Technology giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have performed well in the field of cloud computing, which will also promote Internet giants to continue their efforts in the To B business.
For DingTalk and Tencent Conference, the users of the former surpassed 300 million during the epidemic, and the users of the latter surpassed 100 million in 245 days. Serving C-end consumer-level users this year will bring a high market share, but in the future, it will continue to shift to enterprise organization services with IT payment capabilities and willingness to pay to achieve full commercialization of SaaS products.
It is worth mentioning that when serving B-end customers, different industries have different demands and diversified demands. Therefore, Internet giants may invest in relevant targets that meet segmented needs based on current office software. Such as e-signatures, e-commerce SaaS and so on.
Source of the article: US Stock Research Institute, please indicate the copyright for reprinting.