The Sharing Economy Market Data Monitoring Report shows that the size of the shared bicycle market reached 18.348 billion in 2019. After a surge of 597.23% in 2017, the market stabilized in the next two years. The growth rate in 2018 and 2019 quickly dropped to 46.69%, 38%. In 2019, the market size of shared power banks reached 7.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 141.57% from 3.266 billion yuan in 2018.
In terms of business model, shared bicycles and shared power banks have certain similarities. The source of income is mainly rental income, supplemented by advertising business.
Looking at several major bicycle platforms, in the case of generally no deposit, the source of income is mainly rental income, including bicycle usage fees charged by time and rental income generated by charter services such as weekly and monthly passes. The other is advertising revenue. Take Qingju Bicycle as an example. In the small program of Qingju Bicycle, in addition to scanning code cycling and monthly pass services, you can see obvious advertising promotion.
The prospectus of Monster Charging discloses that its rental income of charging treasures in 2020 will be as high as 96.5%, and advertising income will account for about 1%.
In the case of living on rent, price increase is an important way of “self-bloodmaking”. But the same is the price increase, and the room for shared bicycles and shared power banks to increase is quite different.
Sharing bicycles solves the “last mile” travel demand, which is a high-frequency rigid demand for some users. It is intensively used for transportation between subway stations and homes or business districts. At the same time, many users will have replacements Program. The use of shared power banks is a relatively urgent low-frequency demand. A related report from iResearch pointed out that users will be less concerned about the rental price and the number of future uses.
Therefore, at the pricing level, shared power banks can set different prices in different scenarios. In general scenarios, the price is set at 1-2 yuan per hour, while in bars, KTVs, scenic spots and other scenarios, it may be several times higher, reaching 10 yuan per hour or even higher; shared bicycles have alternative solutions and liquidity Stronger, the pricing in each city is basically the same. Even if the price increases, it is difficult to achieve a ten-fold increase in certain specific areas like power banks.
But bike-sharing companies need to pay higher costs than companies that share power banks.
Shared charging treasures need to focus more on the front-end grabbing merchant positions, but after the launch, the users rent and return them by themselves, and the later operation and maintenance costs are much smaller.
Among monster charging expenses, the highest proportion of expenses is entrance fees and commissions (1.576 billion yuan), which account for 56.1% of the 2020 annual revenue (2.809 billion yuan).
The product cost and operation and maintenance cost of shared bicycles with higher frequency of demand and greater mobility are much higher than shared power banks. The tidal effect faced by shared bicycles, such as working hours, bicycles gather near office buildings and subway stations, and rush to residential communities during off-duty hoursIn other places, this requires companies to increase a large number of dispatchers and maintenance personnel, and invest a lot of operation and maintenance costs.
Especially in the early reckless stage of the market, bicycle-sharing companies lavishly spread their bicycles and enclosing them, and many “bicycle garbage” piled up in mountains, causing a series of social problems. Since 2017, relevant departments have strengthened the management and regulation of shared bicycles. Under gradually strengthened regulation and supervision, the healthy development and refined operation of the shared bicycle industry also require industry players to pay more to achieve.
According to a previous report by “LatePost”, the daily operation and maintenance expenses of each shared bicycle are about 0.5 yuan to 1 yuan, and the manufacturing cost of a single bicycle is between 700 yuan and 1100 yuan, based on three years of depreciation. The manufacturing cost is between 233 yuan and 367 yuan per year.
Take Chengdu as an example. In 2020, the official website of the Chengdu Municipal Transportation Bureau released the “Assessment of the Quality and Credit of Shared Bicycle Services in Chengdu’s “5+1″ Area in 2019 and the Publicity of the Results of Share Allocation in 2020”, which mentioned that the United States The number of group bicycles must not exceed 240,000.
In other words, if Meituan’s single-bike sales reach 240,000 in one city in Chengdu, the single-day operation and maintenance cost will be between 120,000-240,000, and the annual operation and maintenance cost will be 43.8 million- 87.6 million yuan, the annual bicycle manufacturing cost is between 55.92 million and 88.08 million yuan.
To some extent, the profit model of shared power banks is better than shared bicycles.
Why do giants prefer non-profitable shared bicycles?
The cost of sharing bicycles is high, and it is necessary to deal with the war of burning money. Shared charging treasures can be responsible for their own profits and losses. It is also the traffic entrance of offline formats. Why do giants care about one and lose the other?
First of all, the capital war between these two tracks is not in the same order at all.
In terms of the amount of financing, shared bicycles have dumped a few blocks of shared charging treasures. The highest light moment in the power bank industry is the 11 financing in 40 days in 2017. The largest single financing so far is the over 200 million US dollar D round of financing completed by Monster Charging before submitting the prospectus. In 2017, Street Power sold 60% of its equity to Jumei Youpin for only 300 million yuan.
The former star of bike-sharing company ofo completed 11 rounds of financing within three years, with a financing amount of up to 2.2 billion US dollars; Qingju Bicycle completed a 1 billion US dollar A round of financing in 2020, and the first round of financing refreshed the single financing of the shared bicycle industry. The highest record is 5 times the single highest financing amount in the shared power bank industry.
For a long time, shared bicycles and shared power banks have been in a situation where one has high financing and has the confidence to launch a money-burning war, and the other has no money to burn.
In 2017, after ofo’s “charge 100 get 100 free” promotion, Mobike also kept up with the launch of the “charge 100 get 210” campaign.ofo is more favorable. The two companies also often launch promotions for a few days and unlimited free rides.
The leading companies of shared charging treasures that can only “five themselves” have already announced profitability in the second half of 2018. At that time, the price of shared bicycles could not rise up, and the cost of products was high, and they were still facing a huge amount of late. Operating expenses, the two star companies have been stuck in a state of loss for a long time. In the end, Mobike was acquired by Meituan, and Ofo was in deep financial crisis.
The 2020 epidemic will have a huge impact on the offline economy, and shared power banks are no exception. However, the rapid profitability of shared power banks has accelerated its entry into the capital “harvest” period under the catalysis of the epidemic. Xiaodian and Monsters accelerated the listing process, while Caller and Jiedian used equity financing to supplement their blood. Jiedian was also controlled by Jumei Youpin. In 2021, it introduced a new shareholder, Ganfeng Lithium (holding 12%). ).
But being able to make money does not mean that the giants will favor it, burn money and lose money, nor does it mean that they have no appetite for the giants.
In the first half of sharing bicycles, the duopoly suffered both losses and the bubble burst, which accelerated the giant’s ecological layout of shared bicycles. As of October 2019, Haro, Meituan, and Qingju together accounted for about 95% of the overall shared bicycle market. There are giants behind the “Three Kingdoms”. It seems that only Harbin Travel is operating independently, but the word Alipay on its bicycles, behind the largest shareholder Ant Financial, once held 36.7% of the shares, making it difficult to distinguish the relationship with Ali.
From the very beginning, shared bicycles have been placed high hopes by giants, because this format is aimed at the last 1-3 kilometers. Hello is the puzzle of the “last mile” in Ali’s perfect travel sector, and the starting point to cut into the online car-hailing; Mobike is the traffic entrance under the Meituan line and the pawn of its super life service platform to expand to travel; green orange After integration with Street Rabbit motorcycles, it has perfected the two-wheeler market in the Didi Chuxing ecosystem.
To this day, after Mobike “disappeared”, Meituan is still in the stage of large-scale investment in the travel sector. When the 2019 semi-annual report was released, Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, mentioned that the loss of shared bicycle business has narrowed year-on-year, but its 2020 financial report shows that the operating loss of new business and other segments has increased from 1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019. One of the reasons for the expansion of RMB to 6 billion in the same period in 2020 is that the introduction of new bicycles and motorcycles has caused significant depreciation costs, leading to an increase in the operating loss of the shared cycling business.
“But don’t worry, as long as the industry has revenue and development, its capital value is far greater than the actual profit value.” said Zhang Yi, founder and CEO of iiMedia. The reason why giants prefer to share bicycles can be summed up in one sentence. The high-frequency and just-needed bicycles, as an important supplement to the giant’s ecology, are far more valuable than a small business with meager profits.
Share bicycles and power banks, whoMore “money” way?
How much do the giants prefer to share bicycles? One example is that it is not enough to fight each other on bicycles, and the war has been burned into the field of shared motorcycles.
Halo, Didi, and Meituan all plan to launch more than one million motorcycles in 2020. In addition, according to “LatePost” report, in 2020, shared motorcycles have achieved partial profits in some regions, but the current goal of the giant is to grab market share rather than profit.
This proves two things: First, the focus of competition in the shared bicycle industry has long been shifted to shared motorcycles. The unit price of motorcycles is relatively high, which can be called the second growth curve of the shared bicycle industry.
The second is that shared bicycles are similar to motorcycles. They are part of the giant’s ecological landscape. Although they are intended to make a profit, at present, this new market is not stable yet. The most important thing is not profit, but continue to seize market share. . “The core of the competition in the bike-sharing industry is the competition for market share. During this period, it will inevitably require a large amount of investment to seize the market share, and this state will remain for some time.” Zhang Yi said.
The launch of motorcycles will inevitably bring about a rapid increase in costs. The high financing of the bicycle industry continues. Although the momentum of burning money is weaker than the first half, “time is still the most precious”, Zhang Yi said For the bicycle-sharing industry, even if there is a break-even at present, it is only a short-term phenomenon and is not representative. Once competitors increase their preferential strategy, other players will inevitably keep up. “If the bike-sharing industry wants to truly realize profitability, it still needs time to settle. Only by ‘boiled’ and ‘boiled’ to the end can the right to speak.”
Perhaps in the future, after the market competition for shared two-wheelers has come to an end, the true situation of this industry will slowly surface.
In contrast, although the sharing of power banks is a profitable business, there are still long-term worries, the industry ceiling is relatively low, the lack of imagination, and the right to speak when negotiating with capital.
On the one hand, the industry has not yet found a new growth curve. From the prospectus of Monster Charge, it can be seen that this industry has a very single source of income; on the other hand, the industry’s competition has always been the most primitive competition for offline merchant resources. For this reason, industry players’ fees in terms of entrance fees and commissions continue to rise, making profits thinner and thinner.
In this way, since the second half of 2020, the “three powers and one beast” following the financing boom in the charging treasure industry in 2017, the new round of progress in the capital market has some “have to” meaning.
From the beginning, shared bicycles and shared power banks were both a big bet. The shared bicycle bet on the capital acquisition, and the shared power bank bet on the viability of the profit model, but the two industries also face huge challenges, and this gamble is far from over.