AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)11/20 Report--

Haier Group may acquire a stake in Automotive Home, a well-known domestic automobile information platform, to achieve a controlling stake, and is expected to lay off 30% of Auto Home in January next year, according to a report on its own media account "Hang Party". In addition, the relevant team of Haier Group will officially enter Auto House at the end of the year, and the senior management of Auto House may have a big change at that time. It is rumored that Auto House is looking for a new CEO.

In response to this rumor, Haier Group responded, "Thank you for your attention, we do not comment on the market rumors." As of press time, Auto House has not responded publicly. It is worth mentioning that since the media account "boom Party" previously released the "Haier Group acquisition of Automobile Home" related content has been deleted.

Auto House is a first-class vertical information platform for cars in China, which was officially launched in June 2005 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2013. to provide domestic car consumers with comprehensive, accurate and fast one-stop service in all aspects of car selection, car purchase, car use, car replacement and so on. According to the third-quarter results released by Auto House, the company's revenue during the reporting period was 1.775 billion yuan, down 6.9% from the same period last year; the net profit from its mother was 426 million yuan, down 24.52% from the same period last year; according to the segment, the revenue from media services was 326 million yuan, the revenue from clue services was 831 million yuan, and the income from online marketing and other services was 617 million yuan.

Media service revenue is one of the three main sections of Auto House, including online advertising services and other forms of media promotion services, mainly from advertisements placed by automakers and dealers on their platforms. If the line of sight is lengthened, the revenue of the media service of Automobile House is 1.058 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2019. In other words, Auto House shrank by as much as 60% of the business from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the current fiscal quarter.

As a vertical media of automobile, Automobile House is becoming less attractive to manufacturers and dealers, especially in the current era of new energy vehicles, more and more heads of automobile companies are coming off the stage to seek traffic for enterprises. this massively reduces the marketing expenditure of automobile companies, which in turn makes them invest less in the automobile vertical platform. In addition, young people are more willing to get car information through video, evaluation and other forms, so it is inevitable that Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu separate user traffic.

In addition, there is also competition from peers, such as understanding the car emperor, Yi car net and so on have been squeezing its market share. Knowing the car emperor to increase investment in content innovation and Douyin integration, launched a series of high-quality car evaluation, shopping guides and car guides and other content to enhance the user experience and stickiness. At the same time, other platforms that take advantage of byte bounce, such as Douyin's traffic base for used car business integration, promote used car transactions in the form of short videos and live streaming, expanding market share and user base. By contrast, Auto House is also trying to follow up, but the progress is slightly lower due to the lack of flow and ecological support.

Let's talk about Haier. In fact, Haier has long been eyeing the automobile industry covetously. Although it is a home appliance enterprise, Haier Group cooperated with a series of automobile suppliers or brands as early as 2015, and in April this year, it even reported that Haier made cars again, of course, it was finally denied by the authorities. Cooperation with car brands is only to create an industrial Internet platform in the automotive field, in order to establish a set of home car interconnection ecology and bring better use experience to consumers.

Under the tide of digitization, it is undoubtedly a brand-new opportunity and challenge for the home appliance industry. It can not only take this opportunity to jointly seek new breakthroughs in the market, but also accelerate the transformation of enterprises to counter the competitive market environment. With the cross-border entry of a number of enterprises mainly home appliances into the automotive field, the increasingly hot domestic new energy vehicle market may usher in a new round of industry reshuffle. At present, Haier has not affirmed or denied the authenticity of the acquisition of Auto House, so whether it means that the two sides may still be in negotiations, there will be an answer at that time.

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