This article is from WeChat official account:Old judge driver (ID: panguansays) author: judge, head Figure from: vision China
On the evening of November 5th, Kuaishou formally submitted the prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The disclosure of a series of financial and business data made this product from Tieling to Causeway Bay the most beautiful cub in the science and technology world this month. For the first time, the old irons in second-tier cities breathe and share fate with the old irons in the secondary market.
I have been studying the early development of Kuaishou recently. In addition to product, technology, users, and market factors, the relationship between Tencent and Kuaishou is an important factor in the development of Kuaishou. This time the prospectus disclosed the status of cooperation between Kuaishou and Tencent, so today this topic will be separated and discussed separately.
Simply put, From equity to technology, from business to traffic, Tencent has full control over Kuaishou. In terms of user size, Kuaishou is the undisputed eldest son of Tencent’s invested companies, but is under Tencent’s full control.
Starting from the D round in March 2017, Tencent participated in Kuaishou financing five times in a row, invested more than 4 billion US dollars before and after, and held 21.57% of Kuaishou shares, making it the largest shareholder of Kuaishou. Based on the post-IPO market value of US$50 billion, the total value of Kuaishou shares held by Tencent is approximately RMB 70 billion.
But the value of Kuaishou to Tencent goes far beyond that. The data disclosed in the “Related Transactions” section of the prospectus shows that there is a large amount of service purchases between Kuaishou and Tencent.
In 2021-2023, in the form of a framework agreement, Kuaishou plans to purchase marketing and promotion services from Tencent. The annual maximum amounts are 4.1 billion, 4.7 billion, and 5.4 billion, respectively, and cloud services and technical services are 1.97 billion and 23.2 Billion, 2.65 billion, and 1.12 billion, 1.89 billion, and 2.78 billion for payment services.
In the same period, Tencent also purchased marketing and promotion services from Kuaishou, but the amount was much smaller, with 740 million, 960 million, and 1.25 billion in three years.
On the one hand, Tencent, which has two super-traffic portals, QQ and WeChat, has the traffic resources that Internet products rely on for survival. Tencent itself also needs to sell traffic to complete its own commercial closed loop.
On the other hand, the development path of Kuaishou relying on its own content to generate traffic has encountered a bottleneck, and it must purchase traffic from outside to achieve its own commercial closed loop. As Tencent’s invested company, it is not appropriate to buy ByteDance’s traffic, not to mention the latter’s Douyin, which is a mountain on the road of Kuaishou’s development.
Tencent’s control of Kuaishou is first reflected in its strategic position in the upstream of traffic. Cloud services and payment, as the infrastructure of video and live broadcast, and e-commerce business, are of even greater significance to Kuaishou.
The cloud services purchased by Kuaishou from Tencent reached 810 million and 760 million in 2019 and the first half of 2020, respectively. The payment channel fees paid to Tencent reached 220 million and 180 million in 2019 and the first half of 2020, respectively. . Kuaishou was caught in a bitter battle between competition and growth during the rising period of its business. While building its own IDC, it must rely on Tencent, which has a more complete infrastructure, to ensure that its product technical capabilities and service quality are not left behind.
In this way, the cooperation between Kuaishou and Tencent can be described as complementary and seamless? Opening up the financial data and looking down at the business data, the situation seems to be complicated.
Kaishou disclosed the daily activity data in two places in the prospectus.
As of June 30, 2020, Kuaishou “Chinese Application” (should include the main end and the super speed version) and WeChat applet The average daily active users are 302 million, while the average daily active users of “Kaishou App” are 258 million. Even if we take the larger value of 300 million, compared with the 320 million daily activity of the Kuaishou “K3 Campaign” peak, the daily activity data of Kuaishou in the first half of 2020 has almost no growth.
Coincidentally, on the morning of the 5th, the in-depth investigation article “perfect “Storm, Kuaishou in 2020” pointed out that Kuaishou’s daily activity data quickly dropped by around 50 million after reaching a peak of 320 million during the Spring Festival this year. 320 million minus 50 million, which is basically consistent with the average daily activity of Kuaishou apps announced by Kuaishou in the first half of the year, which also illustrates some problems.
On the one hand, the WeChat applet accounts for one-sixth of Kuaishou’s total daily activities; on the other hand, Douyin, which was completely blocked by WeChat next door, announced that it exceeded 600 million daily activities this summer. From the perspective of invested companies and downstream companies, it seems that Tencent was inseparable from Kuaishou; but from a business perspective, Kuaishou had to be controlled by Tencent. The dignity of 300 million daily lives depends on the help of Tencent’s father.
One-sixth vs. 600 million, this situation can be said to be very 666.
Since you look at business, you can’t just look at Kuaishou’s business. The relationship between Kuaishou Tencent also needs to consider Tencent’s business layout.
The failure of Tencent’s matchmaking game live broadcast business of Kuaishou, Huya, and Douyu disclosed in the article “Zhu Si Ma Ji”, and Kuaishou’s acquisition of Sogou, which was intercepted by Tencent, can only be regarded as a rebellious period after the invested company has grown. , A little friction with the parents. The real impact of Tencent on the Kuaishou business level is that Tencent re-impacts short video and live broadcast tracks with the help of video accounts.
In the video account business, WeChat is contrary to the normal state of Buddhism and opened an independent entrance. At the same time, it uses the social relationship chain and recommendation algorithm to distribute content, and when the live video account is still very rough and difficult to use, it does not hesitate to use the circle of friends Hard push.
I believe that in the past few days, many people opened the circle of friends, and they were all scared by the giant plaster-like “Friend Sharing” live broadcast portal. What’s more terrible is that this live broadcast portal cannot be closed. I saw everyone discussing countermeasures in several groups today, and the conclusion is that the WeChat friends who shared the live broadcast were deleted.
From the perspective of sinking the market and content tonality, the video account hits the basic market of Kuaishou. Tencent took the rein in his hand, and the cloud was light and breezy.
During the 2020 epidemic, online entertainment products, user data, and commercialization data all over the world, including China, are soaring. The video account was tested internally at the end of January, and the daily livelihood reached 200 million in July. During the same period, Kuaishou conducted the largest market launch in history, but the data did not rise but fell. To say that this has nothing to do with the entry of the video account, I don’t believe it anyway.
With the full opening and iteration of the live broadcast of the video account, the WeChat, as a supplementary battlefield for Kuaishou, not only has difficulty in continuing to contribute to Kuaishou’s daily activities, it has turned around to erode Kuaishou’s daily activities. As Pan Luan said in the live video broadcast last night, the competition for the world’s largest live broadcast platform is between WeChat and Kuaishou.
And Kuaishou also hopes to make a difference in games.
The “Kaishou Mini Game”, which was launched in 2018, is the main casual game. The daily activity has reached tens of millions. However, as the person in charge, Tang Yuyu, took maternity leave without any operation, the daily activity fell to just over one million in a year. After Tang Yuyu’s comeback in 2019, he took over the self-developed game and game live broadcast business again. At that time, Kuaishou’s daily game live broadcast exceeded the sum of Huya and Douyu.
It should be noted that the rapid advancement of Kuaishou game live broadcast and even the live broadcast business has benefited from the user base plate that is much larger than Huya Douyu on the one hand, and on the other hand, as a Tencent invested company, it can enjoy games such as game copyrights and China Unicom. Tencent family bonuses such as card free flow.
Sitting on such a huge group of game players and traffic, Kuaishou restarted the road of self-developed game products. At the same time, Kuaishou further enters the upstream and downstream of the two-dimensional industry through mergers and acquisitions and investments in companies such as Station A and Cross Star.
Looking at the game business of Kuaishou alone, it seems insignificant compared to Tencent; but Kuaishou has a big killer that has been polished for many years, that is, the user’s social relationship chain.
Since 2Since 017, Kuaishou has focused on strengthening user relationship chain construction from the product design level, and has benefited from this in terms of user interaction, retention, and content production. For game products, the effectiveness of the social relationship chain blessing has been repeatedly verified by QQ and WeChat.
Currently, Kuaishou is still actively recruiting game-related positions, coupled with the personal management of high-standard persons in charge, the determination in self-developed game development can be seen. Kuaishou, whose business is about to go public and whose business is in urgent need of breakthrough, has an increasingly delicate relationship with Tencent.
Enjoy the protection of giants and pay protection fees, but at the same time, they will inevitably be controlled by giants in business. Going public is a critical moment for companies, and for Kuaishou, Tencent’s competition and cooperation in the future development process is probably the most intriguing thing at this point in time.
Kaishou is indeed supporting the edge, but Tencent, which holds its equity, infrastructure, business, and traffic, laughed and said nothing.
Judge: Senior Product Manager, WeChat Official Account:Old judge driver (ID: panguansays)