This article comes from: Understanding notes, cover from: Oriental IC
Some things can’t be fined, and it’s good to look at it. It’s full of doubts when you look at it.
Lenovo has had a very high voice recently. The new quarterly earnings report has just been released. The online reviews are all about the “performance increase” and “net profit growth”. At the same time, in terms of products, Lenovo not only took out a folding screen notebook ThinkPad X1, but also launched the long-awaited folding screen mobile phone Motorola Razr 2019. The classic clamshell design of this phone instantly brought back the thoughts of countless users back more than a decade ago, which led to a lot of discussion.
But both the financial report and the folding screen Razr seem to make us less and less aware of Lenovo.
See “feelings” Can’t see the folding screen of the future
Mobile phone business, I am afraid it is the biggest pain in Lenovo. From the “China Cool Alliance” fell into the dust, the mobile phone business let Lenovo a few members of the generals, and still can not see the prospect.
Although Lenovo’s mobile business achieved a pre-tax net profit of RMB 58.1 million this quarter, while its profit increased, its overall revenue declined. The financial report shows that for the first six months ended September 30, 2019, Lenovo’s mobile business revenue fell 7% to $3.012 billion. For the mobile business, Yang Yuanqing said: “Investors are most concerned about whether the mobile phone business can turn a profit. To be profitable, we must put the non-profitable place in a secondary position.”
The decline in revenue and the increase in profits are an intriguing phenomenon. The related communication industry experts said that the “receipt decline is the direct indication of the decline in sales, while the increase in profits may come from various aspects, such as the reduction of internal costs or the profit of stand-alone.increase. For Lenovo, the most important thing now is to open sales and increase market share. If the market size has been small, even if the profit is only small, the overall brand competitiveness will not be strong.
Last week, Lenovo finally officially released Motorola Razr, a folding screen product that it has been preparing for a long time. Is this product amazing? It was amazing at first sight, but when you looked at it carefully, it was difficult to mention the desire to buy.
Firstly, in order to restore the shape of the old Razr, the design of the flip-type folding screen was used. It can be seen that Lenovo has done a very good job in folding the hinge design of this product, which can be almost seamlessly folded. . But is this flip-type folding for portability really a user’s demand?
When other folding screens provide users with more display space as much as possible, this way of doing the opposite is not in line with the mainstream of the market.
Secondly, although we encourage all forms of innovation, excellent innovation is based on ensuring the most basic user experience. The new Razr made a great compromise in the user experience in order to achieve the form of its own folding screen. As an absolutely high-end model priced at $ 1,500, the new Razr uses the previous generation of mid-range chip Snapdragon 710, which is clearly not satisfactory to users.
In terms of other hardware configurations, the new Razr is only equipped with a 2500 mAh battery, a 15W charger, and a 16 megapixel single shot. As for the NFC, wireless charging, the current configuration of the flagship standard is not available. With a thousand yuan machine configuration, do a million folding machine, sell is the feelings?
The current Huawei and Samsung folding screens are all products for the future, in order to show the innovative strength of the manufacturers. Lenovo’s folding screen is more like a product for the past, showing the feelings of the manufacturer.
At this conference, the products that are really mass-produced may only have the Z6 Pro 5G version. CurrentlyThe newly released Z6 Pro 5G, and the previously released Z6 Pro, are connected to the Qualcomm 5G baseband (can use 5G networks) on the hardware. The overall design and other hardware configurations have not changed significantly.
The price of Z6 Pro third-party merchants in 4G version is now less than 2,000 yuan. The new machine “plugs” a 5G baseband and raises the price of more than 1,000 yuan. Is this premium a bit too high?
Objectively speaking, Motorola’s acquisition of Motorola, compared to Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia, the results are much better, at least not cut off in an instant. However, the original intention of Lenovo’s acquisition was not realized today. During this period, we have seen the positioning and strategy of Lenovo’s mobile business, which has been swaying, and it still makes people understand it today.
In the mobile phone market where innovation is not enough, Lenovo has released a nostalgic Razr, a 5G that is not leading. What do you want to do?
Excessively “positive” earnings content
On November 7, Lenovo announced its second-quarter results as of September 30, 2019. The financial report shows that Lenovo Group achieved strong performance growth this quarter: quarterly revenue of 94.8 billion yuan, achieving 9 consecutive quarters of year-on-year growth; pre-tax profit of 2.17 billion yuan, an increase of 45%. Net profit reached 1.42 billion yuan, an increase of 20% year-on-year.
Specific to the business line, PC and mobile phones are dazzling: PC market share reached 24.4%, ranking first in the world, sales growth rate exceeded 7%; mobile business profit reached a new high, pre-tax profit increased more than 400 million yuan, this is also the merger of Lenovo’s Motorola mobile phone businessThe best score.
It seems that the second quarter is indeed a successful quarter for Lenovo, with both revenue and net profit growth. But behind these optimistic figures, there are still many places worthy of scrutiny.
The growth rate of revenue is a key word. The higher the index, the faster the growth rate of business income, and the better the market prospect of the enterprise. In the earnings report, Lenovo did not disclose the actual growth rate, but only said that the company achieved “strong performance growth.” So how strong is this so-called strong growth? According to the financial report, Lenovo’s revenue growth in the past quarter was only 1%, and Lenovo’s revenue growth in the first half of the year was only 3%.
It is obviously not appropriate to use “strong growth” to describe this 1% increase. At the same time, this is the slowest quarter of Lenovo’s growth in the past seven quarters.
There are still many businesses that also achieve “strong growth.” Lenovo’s financial report data shows that the DaaS device-as-a-service, device-exclusive service, and IT operation and maintenance management services in the intelligent change business achieved super high growth of 725%, 81%, and 70%, respectively. These growth rates are very good at first sight, but Lenovo has not released accurate data before and after these high growth rates. Without accurate revenue data, simply publishing the growth rate, such a “strong increase” will appear less convincing.
In terms of revenue, according to Lenovo’s official press release, Lenovo’s smart device business group (IDG) revenue of 85.5 billion yuan this quarter Data Center Business Group (DCG) revenue of 9.3 billion yuan and smart change business revenue of 6.19 billion yuan. The total revenue of the three is 100.99 billion yuan. Here we will find a very strange problem. Lenovo’s total revenue this quarter is only 94.8 billion yuan.The renminbi, how did the extra 6.91 billion yuan out of thin air come from?
In this regard, Internet industry watcher Sun Yongjie said to understand the notes: “The extra 6.19 billion yuan is the ‘intelligent change business’ listed separately. This part of the revenue source is actually IDG and DCG.
For such an approach, Sun Yongjie believes that Lenovo is doing this to let the outside world see the results of its intelligent transformation, but there will also be a problem that it is easy for the outside world to think that the “intelligent change business” of $6.19 billion comes from IDG. Outside the DCG. However, this method is actually very easy to cause investors to misunderstand and bring about bad negative effects.
Unknown Lenovo, or the old Lenovo?
If you let go of Lenovo’s own interpretation of the financial report, you can get a clear conclusion from this financial report: PC business is very good, overall revenue growth is not high, and mobile phone and data center business revenues are declining.
In 2016, Lenovo proposed an intelligent transformation. Now, in the past three years, Lenovo’s progress in intelligent transformation has not seen any significant changes. Of course, the ship is difficult to turn around.
This quarter, Lenovo’s main revenue still comes from the smart device business group, which contributed 85.5 billion yuan of the total revenue of 94.8 billion yuan, of which 74.7 billion yuan comes from the PC business. Therefore, although Lenovo has been emphasizing intelligent transformation in the past, until today, the traditional PC business still accounts for 78.7% of its revenue.
From this point of view, Lenovo is still the old Lenovo – PC association.
(Source: Lenovo Financial News) Press Release
PC is Lenovo’s most familiar battlefield, Lenovo is playing in this marketIt’s more than enough, and the advantage is still there. Moreover, understanding the notes does not mean that the PC is a sunset industry, the demand for productivity will exist for a long time, but the incremental space is not large, and the shape and function of the PC products will also undergo relatively large changes. It can be foreseen that in the future, PC is still the main battlefield of Lenovo, and it is a business that cannot be lost.
For other businesses outside of PC, Lenovo has been in the layout for a long time, but it is not going well from today.
The data center business group (DCG) is still in a loss state, with a loss of $103 million in the past six months, although the loss was year-on-year. Narrowly 20 million US dollars, but at the same time revenue also fell 15% year-on-year, this decline is still a little scary. DCG business, Lenovo has a very strong competitor both overseas and China, and there is no advantage in market share and technology. The future is full of uncertainty.
(Source: Lenovo Financial News)
Look at the mobile phone business again.
During the Wuzhen Internet Conference in 2016, at the Ding Lei dinner, Yang Yuanqing agreed with Lei Jun and Yu Chengdong that Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi should bring in the future.Hand to the global smart phone TOP3, first across Apple, Samsung, and then compete for high and low. At that time, when Yang Yuanqing proposed such an agreement, what was he thinking about?
Hey, sigh!
The association that is becoming more and more incomprehensible is still the old association.
This article comes from: Understanding notes