At a time when the forces of the snack track are engaged in a fierce battle, the good goods store (604719.SH) chooses to cash in first.

Recently, the quality goods store announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary plans to transfer its 3 per cent stake in Yichun Zhao Yiming Food Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhao Yiming") to Black Ant Capital at a price of 105 million yuan.

The good goods store expects that after the completion of the transaction, the consolidated statement in the current period will produce an investment income of about 60 million yuan, based on which it is estimated that Zhao Yiming's valuation will reach 3.5 billion yuan.

But in April this year, when the quality store invested in Zhao Yiming, it was clear that outsiders saw it not only as a financial investment.

In 2023, when hot Chinese dim sum shops and Chinese noodle restaurants have come to a standstill, snacks are almost one of the few popular tracks in the consumer industry, and entrants are aiming at the sinking market to expand aggressively.

Zhao Yiming is one of them.

According to its website, the number of Zhao Yiming snack stores increased by more than 1600 to 2300 during the year. Trade wind (ID:TradeWind01) also learned from people close to Zhao Yiming that by the end of this year, Zhao Yiming snacks target 2500 stores.

The "horse racing enclosure" in the industry is seen by people in the industry as an investment opportunity to reshape the competitive pattern of the snack industry. Over the years, upstream brands have failed to produce an absolute leader, and the CR5 of the industry is less than 25%. Therefore, with the continuous expansion of snack shops, the snack industry is expected to roll out a giant in the downstream channels.

In this context, more than 60% of the revenue depends on the offline quality shops resolutely choose to cash out, but in the big blue sea, which sells snacks, it does not really leave the market.

Control your own channels.

The marriage between the quality shop and Zhao Yiming is somewhat short-lived.

In April this year, Ningbo Guangyuan Juyi Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Guangyuan Juyi") signed an investment agreement with Zhao Yiming, with an investment of 45 million yuan and a shareholding of 3%. At that time, the good goods shop said that through the layout investment in Zhao Yiming snacks, "is actively expanding the volume of snacks business."

But only half a year later, the good goods store will have to clear the stock of this investment.

On October 16, the good goods store announced that Guangyuan Juyi plans to transfer its 3% stake in Zhao Yiming to Shanghai Yihi Enterprise Management Consulting Partnership (limited partnership) and Xiamen Heiyi No. 3 overseas connected venture capital partnership (limited partnership). The transferee is the black ant capital company of the main investment consumption track, and the good product shop is expected to complete the transaction. The consolidated statements in the current period will generate an investment income of about 60 million yuan.

People related to the quality store told ID:TradeWind01 that the company is based on its own business development considerations, and then consider the return on investment, and then make a decision (sale).

And the above-mentioned people said that the cooperation between the quality shop and Zhao Yiming is limited to the exchange and coordination of stores or the sharing of experience, and the quality shop has never had cooperation at the purchasing or sales level with Zhao Yiming.

This is a little different from the peer 002847.SZ store.

In 2022, another snack retailer, snack very busy, has become the largest customer of Yanjin store, contributing 7.31% of its sales, almost equal to the sum of 2-5 customers such as Walmart Inc and Bubugao.

Quality stores choose to adhere to offline expansion, vowing to hold the channel in their hands. The reason is very simple, offline channel is the main battlefield of snack brand competition, accounting for more than 85% of the market share.

On the one hand, before investing in Zhao Yiming, the quality store established its own brand "snack stubborn" to participate in the competition of selling snacks. As of October 13, snack stubborn families had opened more than 300 stores in Hubei Province, according to Wang Zehua, an analyst at founder Securities.

On the other hand, the good product shop is the same as the vector snack shop, making the store bigger and bigger. According to Xinfeng (ID:TradeWind01), according to people related to the quality shop, the number of shops in the previous good shop was 60 to 80 square meters, but in recent years, under the strategy of "opening big stores and closing small stores", the number of new stores is more than 100 square meters.

As of the first half of this year, quality stores had 3299 stores, and people are expected to open between 600 and 700 new stores this year.

Compete for the right to speak in the channel

After the high-quality shops and three squirrels have successively suffered large reductions, volume snack vendors such as Zhao Yiming are very popular in the primary market. If the shares of the above quality stores are transferred, Black Ant Capital is expected to hold 8.8% of Zhao Yiming's shares.

In the environment where the flow of e-commerce platform is becoming more and more expensive and the traditional supermarkets are declining, the essence of the large-scale expansion of snacks vendors is to compete for the core competitiveness of the snack industry, and the party with strong channel competitiveness will have the right to speak.

A food and beverage analyst at an AMC brokerage in Beijing told ID:TradeWind01 that channels will be the core competitiveness of leisure snack tracks. He describes the impact of the expansion of offline chains on snack brands "like online channels in previous years because the competition in the snack industry is' bad'".

According to a research report by Wang Ling, an analyst at Qianhai Securities in East Asia, the CR5 of China's leisure snack industry is only 24.6%, and the share of the prosperous market, which ranks first, is only 6.7%.

At present, the competition barriers of various snack vendors can not be easily established.

Some people in the snack industry told Xinfeng that at present, the participants in the snack market vary little from SKU to price, and the key to the current competition is to seize more points at a faster speed in order to gain relative scale advantage.

For example, the proportion of big-name products from stubborn snacks, such as those from Pepsi, may be higher, close to 30%, while the proportion of big brands with busy snacks is relatively smaller, about 20%.

Therefore, seizing the spot and opening more stores has become the core of the fierce competition. The essence of snack vendors' business is to reduce circulation links, reduce procurement costs by opening more stores, and then build competition barriers, but at present, Zhao Yiming's profit margins are still very meagre.

According to the announcement of the quality store, Zhao Yiming realized revenue and net profit of 1.215 billion yuan and 38.44 million yuan respectively in 2022, while it recorded 2.786 billion yuan and 76.31 million yuan respectively in the first half of this year, with net interest rates of 3.16% and 2.74% respectively.

For comparison, the net interest rates of good stores, three squirrels and Yanjin stores in the first half of this year were 3.85%, 3.3% and 11.91% respectively. Zhao Yiming, who controls the downstream distribution channel, did not earn more.

ID:TradeWind01 learned from people close to Zhao Yiming that the headquarters gross profit margin of high-end snack shops can reach 20%, while Zhao Yiming has only 8%, and the unit price of members is only 60 yuan, compared with 100 yuan for high-end shops. The source revealed that the number of Zhao Yiming stores will reach 2500 by the end of this year, and plans to reach 10,000 stores by 2026.

The clearance of Zhao Yiming, a good goods store, is not only a separate way in the ownership structure, but also a reverse bet on consumption upgrading and consumption downgrade market.

For now, shops dedicated to opening big stores and buying more expensive goods are under more pressure, recording a decline in both revenue and profit in the first half of the year. This is also reflected in the stock price, which fell as much as 43.02% for the whole year, and quality stores that decided not to hold the lifeblood of the channel in the hands of others still need to answer a better growth story.