Author / Cao Qian Yang Lin
Following the acquisition of Ele.me, it may be time for Ali to consider taking over ofo.
36氪 was informed that on the evening of April 3, Mobike held a shareholders meeting on the acquisition of Meituan . According to the "Beijing News" report, after shareholders voted, it was finally determined that Meituan would acquire Mobike with 35% of Meituan's equity and 65% of cash, and Mobike's early investors and founding team had all cashed out. China Renaissance is the coordinator of the transaction.
36 Krypton learned that Didi had previously intended to invest in or acquire Mobike, but the two parties failed to reach an agreement. Before the news of the acquisition, Hu Weiwei, the founder of Mobike, had already begun to liquidate his shares in Mobike. One piece of news that has not been confirmed by Mobike is that a person familiar with the matter disclosed to 36Kr in January this year, "Hu Weiwei currently owns about 9 points in Mobike, and CEO Wang Xiaofeng is one or two points less than her." The person familiar with the matter said that since the end of last year, Mobike has been looking for major government funds including Meituan, Didi and China to seek financing or acquisitions. Mobike’s assets are then packaged and bought to large companies in need, but only if the founding team of Mobike is all out.”
All out, this seems to be the tangled point between Mobike and the intentional "Xiajia". However, 36 Krypton learned that since the end of last year, several senior executives of Mobike have left one after another and joined the blockchain business.
This time Mobike and Meituan can reach an acquisition deal, which seems to be a matter of course.
Meituan needs to seek new traffic entrances for itself. Although Meituan Taxi is currently fighting with Didi, taking the car-hailing market share from Didi does not satisfy Meituan's appetite. Meituan's ambition is to eat the whole big cake of the travel market. After acquiring Mobike, Meituan further increased its influence in the travel market. After all, the development of Mobike and ofo in the past two years has occupied a certain share of the mobile travel market, so Meituan has more confidence.
What's more, Mobike owns more than just shared bicycles. Since the second half of last year, Mobike has also continued to accelerate its deployment in areas such as shared motorcycles and shared cars. Meituan has its own taxi business. In the field of travel, the acquisition of Mobike is an option.
For Didi, it currently holds two shared bicycle ace cards, ofo and Xiaolan Bicycle, which is a great threat to Meituan, which wants to enter the travel market. Meituan must ensure that it has at least one bike-sharing ace in its hands, and Mobike is the only and best candidate.
Meituan and Mobike have always had a good relationship. As early as 2016, Meituan CEO Wang Xing participated in a total of more than 100 million US dollars in financing in his own name. At that time, the relationship between the two parties was relatively close. In January 2018, Meituan became the lead investor in the over $1 billion Series E financing. Coupled with the friendly and cooperative relationship between Tencent and the acquirer, the acquisition of this acquisition is almost a matter of course.
In the final analysis, the competition between Meituan and Didi in the travel market is actually a showdown between Alibaba and Tencent. Ali, as the driving force behind the scenes, has been pushing Didi to continuously lay chess pieces in the field of shared bicycles, and Tencent is naturally not far behind. However, as a listed company, Tencent is naturally not suitable to personally take over the revenue of Mobike, which is still losing money. At this time, only the unlisted super unicorn Meituan can take on this important task.
According to 36 Krypton's previous report, Meituan is discussing IPO matters and plans to IPO in Hong Kong as early as 2018, with a valuation of US$60 billion. Meituan is also considering listing in mainland China if policy permits. But to reach a valuation of US$60 billion, Meituan’s incremental taxi-hailing growth is far from enough. Today's acquisition of Mobike will add more weight to Meituan's valuation, which Meituan can't ask for.