Boots has not yet landed, had to wait a little longer

Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “nuclear race” (ID: Coreesports), Author: Chen Peipei.

The boots have not landed yet, so I have to wait a while

“It won’t count if there is no official announcement.” An insider close to the inside of Youzu Network told Jinghe. According to the calculation, there are already more than five fingers of vendors closely related to Youzu’s network scandals, such as Station B, ByteDance, Kuaishou, Ali Mutual Entertainment, and Changyou.

Competition learned that Youzu Network is indeed in talks with Byte and B, which is the most likely. Kuaishou and Ali are less likely to entertain each other. As for Changyou, it is less likely to cooperate at the capital level of Youzu’s network, but there are executives who quit. Currently, Li Bin, CTO of Youzu.com, used to be the general manager of Changyou’s platform business department and the producer of “Xin Tian Long Ba Bu”. At the end of 2020, after Wu Tao, CTO of Youzu.com, left, he joined. According to a number of people familiar with the transaction, Youzu Networks currently has chats with major manufacturers, such as Tencent and NetEase. Before the boots hit the ground, the bullet of Youzu.com may have to fly for a while.

Acquisition rumors have a long history

This wave of sincerity in the acquisition of station B has enough weight. On April 8, according to Reuters, Station B was negotiating to buy a 24% stake in Youzu Networks and the headquarters building. The transaction is worth nearly 5 billion yuan (approximately 765 million US dollars). According to the media, in March, Chen Rui, chairman and CEO of Station B, submitted a letter of intent to the chairman of Youzu.com.

Station B may form a consortium with some investors in Shanghai to jointly complete the acquisition of equity in Youzu.com. Jinghe exclusively learned that a large local media consortium in Shanghai did participate in this acquisition. In addition, Reuters wrote in the report that, according to two people familiar with the matter, in addition to buying shares, Station B also hopes to acquire Youzu’s headquarters building in Shanghai, and to assume the assets left by the company’s late founder Lin Qi. 700 million yuan in debt.

As soon as the news came out, the stock price of Youzu Network rose rapidly in the afternoon, rising by more than 8%, and the turnover exceeded 950 million yuan. Regarding this acquisition, B station and Youzu Network both gave a denial response. As of the close of trading on April 8, Youzu’s stock price was 13.88 yuan, down 1.77%. Objectively speaking, the matter of Youzu selling oneself is not new. Shortly after the news of ByteDance’s acquisition of Mutong Technology came to light, rumors about the acquisition of Youzu Networks have repeatedly appeared in the company’s internal employee exchanges.

Subsequently, the share price of Youzu NetworksDay (March 23, 24) hit the daily limit. Sex scandals continue, and all of this has to start with the death of Lynch, the actual controller of Youzu.com. After Lynch’s death in December 2020, Youzu Network made a series of adjustments.

On February 24 this year, Youzu Network issued an announcement stating that the company’s board of directors reviewed and approved the proposal that Lin Qi’s wife, XUFENFEN (Chinese name: Xu Fenfen) assumes the position of chairman, and Chen Fang assumes the position of prime minister, deputy general manager Xu Bin is also in charge of the secretary of the board of directors. In addition, the 23.99% shares of Youzu held by Lynch are also inherited by his children Lin Xiaoxi, Lin Ruijing and Lin Li.

Xu Fenfen, as the mother and legal guardian of Lin Xiaoxi, Lin Ruijing and Lin Li, exercises the shareholder rights of the company shares held by them on behalf of them.

Since then, Xu Fenfen has become the actual controller of Youzu Company and completed the equity change in April this year. Xu Fenfen was born in 1981, a Singaporean, and graduated from the University of Canberra with a major in business administration. Since 2015, she has served as the vice president and director of YOUZU (SINGAPORE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Youzu Networks. She has never directly held any shares of Youzu.

Before the stock price fluctuation of Youzu on April 8, some media reported that the actual controller of Youzu Network (Xu Fenfen) was also selling assets in Shanghai, including villas and luxury cars. This action once triggered a small range of speculation that Youzu’s network might have a new action.

Executive change, Chen Fang takes office

From the perspective of the management structure, since the death of Lynch, the positions of the senior executives of Youzu Networks have slightly changed. At the beginning of this year, Youzu.com launched a survey activity to explain to the outside world the response of the board of directors and the adjustment of the governance structure of listed companies. Those who participated in the reception of listed companies at that time included Director and Deputy General Manager Chen Fang (now Director and General Manager), Director, Deputy General Manager and Secretary Xu Bin, Director and Chief Product Officer Chen Wenjun, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, responsible for overseas issuance Liu Wanqin and director, Zhao Yuli, head of business in Japan.

At the meeting, Xu Bin saidAfter the death of Lynch, the company’s management has not changed significantly. He himself is mainly responsible for Youzu’s business in the entire capital market, including financial investment conditions. Public information shows that Xu Bin graduated from Beijing Normal University and worked for iResearch, Alibaba and other companies. From 2010 to 2013, Xu Bin worked at Qilu Securities (now known as Zhongtai Securities), from 2013 to 2014 at Industrial Securities, from 2014 to 2015 at Essence Securities, and from 2015 to October 2018 in Shanghai New Culture Media Group Co., Ltd. investment director, deputy general manager, board secretary and other positions.

Until November 2018, Xu Bin formally joined Youzu Networks. He is currently a director, deputy general manager and secretary of the board of directors of the company, and does not hold stocks of Youzu Company. And Chen Fang, who also has no shares, is currently mainly responsible for the business line of Youzu and the overall governance of the company. From the perspective of work history, Chen Fang has worked in many domestic game companies. Chen Fang, graduated from Nanchang University. He used to be the Director of Shanda Games Marketing Center and Vice President of Shanda Games. He joined Beijing Kunlun Wanwei Technology Co., Ltd. in 2014 and served as CEO of Kunlun Games from September 2014 to November 2018.

In December 2018, Chen Fang joined Youzu Networks Co., Ltd. and is currently the director and general manager of the company. Judging from his resume, Chen Fang’s game business ability is undeniable, and it is reasonable to be elected as the general manager, but whether he can control Youzu is still unknown.

Betting on cards, SLG, sub-categories dominate

Specifically, at the product level, Youzu is also heavily guarded. Judging from the list of high-level personnel, Chen Wenjun currently serves as the director and chief product officer of Youzu.com. He joined Youzu Networks in August 2011 and successively served as the first operating director of Youzu, the general manager of the Ares studio group, and the company’s vice president of R&D. It can be said that Chen Wenjun is one of the core members of the company that grows with Youzu. Back to the product line, in 2020, a number of popular products such as “Shanhai Jinghua”, “Wild Brawl”, and “Juvenile Three Kingdoms: Zero” have been launched.

Among them, “Wild Brawl” is a 3V3 competitive game launched by Supercell in 2018, jointly published by Youzu and Tencent in China. The game was launched on the national server on June 9, 2020, and quickly reached the top 5 iOS game best-selling list in the short term. However, from the perspective of the product’s later performance, “Wild Fight” has a slight lack of stamina in the national service market.

From September 2020, the work has gradually shown a downward trend in volatility, and the current best-selling list ranks around Top120. As Youzu’s core IP derivative product “Juvenile Three Kingdoms: Zero”, on the day it went live on November 12, it broke into the iOS best-selling list Top20 in one fell swoop, and topped the game free list for four consecutive days.

This allowed Youzu to gain a firm foothold on the card track, and at the same time promoted the growth of the “Juvenile Three Kingdoms” series. In 2015, Youzu’s “Juvenile Three Kingdoms” public beta was launched, with 80 million registered users and 250 million turnover, setting a record for the Three Kingdoms card game. In 2019, “Juvenile Three Kingdoms 2” debuted, and won the annual Hardcore League Superstar Recommendation and Meizu Popular Game of the Year and other honors in the month it went online.

On March 25, 2020, the “Juvenile Three Kingdoms” series reached the world record of “The Most Popular Three Kingdoms Card Game Brand” after being verified by the British Forbes World Records. In the recent research conference call, the management of Youzu also stated that the most important thing about the core track of the Youzu is the card, and then the SLG. It is reported that it is expected that at the end of January or early February of 2021, Youzu will launch the SLG product “infinity Kingdom”, which is the benchmark against Lilith’s “Awakening of Nations” to the global market.

The work took nearly three years to develop, and the team has created a product with a monthly turnover of over 100 million in a single region in China. In the past six months, Youzu has also conducted multiple rounds of tests on it overseas. In the company’s product planning, the senior executives of Youzu also revealed the pace of implementation of some new tours. The details are as follows: At the beginning of Q1/Q2 in 2021, “Pride of Eden” (game category: two-dimensional card) will be launched in the Japanese market, and the national service will be launched soon. At the beginning of Q2/Q3 of 2021, a mobile martial arts-themed card game based on the IP derivative of Juvenile Three Kingdoms will be launched.

In addition, “New Tomb Notes” will also be launched in Q3. In the overseas market, in addition to “Youth Three Kingdoms 2”, “New World of Gods and Demons” and “Youth Three Kingdoms: Zero” which will be launched at the end of 2020, Youzu will also cooperate with Tencent to represent “Saint Seiya” in Q3/Q4. At the meeting, the senior executives of Youzu said that in terms of the company’s product release in the global market in the past two years, with the exception of mainland China and Japan where Tencent is the main market, other regions are dominated by Youzu and have achieved very good results. .

Game revenue is mixed.

However, focusing on the overall revenue of Youzu’s game business, it is mixed. In April 2021, Youzu released an announcement on the revision of the 2020 annual performance forecast. Before the revision, the net profit attributable to the parent was 700 million to 750 million, and after the revision, it was 150 million to 225 million.

The announcement shows that the main reasons for the revision of the Youzu’s performance forecast include: the impact of differences in the main business estimates; the company has conducted a comprehensive inventory of various assets at the end of 2020; and the differences in non-recurring profit and loss estimates.

Among them, the estimated difference in the main business will affect the amount of no more than 300 million yuan. Specifically, it is divided into two aspects: the fourth quarter of 2020 game business revenue is different from expected; at the same time, the company continues to strengthen its strategic focus on card cards and SLG tracks to promote lean growth in performance, and stop part of the research and operation Game projects are also expensed in accordance with relevant accounting standards.

On the other hand, Youzu’s overseas market revenue has exceeded the domestic market since 2016 and has been maintaining a high level. Financial report data shows that in 2019, Youzu’s annual revenue was nearly 3.22 billion yuan, of which overseas game business revenue was 2.03 billion yuan, accounting for 63%. Youzu disclosed in the 2020 semi-annual report that the company’s 2020H1 mobile game business achieved operating income of 2.035 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 65.27%.

In addition, according to Sensor Tower data, Youzu has been among the top 10 Chinese mobile game publishers in global revenue for seven consecutive months in 2020, and ranked sixth for three consecutive months from May to July. To a certain extent, this reflects that Youzu pays more attention to overseas markets. At the same time, this is also an intuitive feedback of the company’s global product distribution strategy.

In terms of market coverage, Youzu’s Q3 2020 financial report shows that the company’s strategy of focusing on Japan and South Korea has made breakthroughs in its Greater Asia strategy. During the period, the company’s “Sale’s Light”, “Youth Three Kingdoms 2”, and “Red: Pride of Eden” were successively launched in Japan; in the Korean market, the company launched “Youth Three Kingdoms 2” and “GOTM” and other products. South Korea’s local game publishers ranked Top 10.

In addition, in the fourth quarter of 2020, the company’s MMO game “New World of Gods and Demons” will be launched in Europe, America and Southeast Asia. From the perspective of Youzu’s product line, the company’s reserves are acceptable, and there are plans for long-term operations. From the perspective of the company’s senior management team, the core business team is fairly stable. From the company’s price-earnings ratio, 20 times PE is low enough, of course, the game stocks are basically at this level. If the big company makes a move at this time, it might be a good opportunity.