Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

Editor | Huang Yu More than half a year ago, e-commerce giants began to follow in the footsteps of PDD to launch "refund only". However, the drawbacks of "refund only" gradually emerged, and now Taobao is correcting its course. On July 26th, Taobao announced that it would optimize the "refund only" strategy, improve the seller's after-sales autonomy based on the new version of the experience score (store experience score), the higher the experience score, the greater the seller's disposal rights, and stores with a score of 4.8 or higher will receive more autonomy. The relevant policies will be officially implemented on August 9th. It's easy to see that Taobao is trying to strike a new balance between user experience and seller rights. Over the past few years, the biggest change in the e-commerce industry has been the rise of PDD. In addition to low prices, "refund only" is also a core factor in PDD's success. Therefore, e-commerce platforms have gone from questioning and understanding PDD to learning from PDD. At the end of last year, in order to strengthen consumer rights, Taobao began to support buyers for refund only, and JD.com also revised its guidelines to add standards for user refund only. However, while "refund only" protects consumers, it is also vulnerable to abuse by "wool party" and causes harm to seller rights. For example, during this year's June 18th promotion, many clothing merchants stated that the return rate can reach 80% or even 90%. Since consumers can apply for a refund without returning the goods for quality issues, a large number of merchants are experiencing significant losses. Insiders at Taobao told Wall Street News that Taobao is taking a beneficial exploration between users and sellers by optimizing the "refund only" based on the store experience score. "By guaranteeing consumer rights, it also significantly optimizes the business environment and forms a more benign and healthy e-commerce ecology." This also conforms to the current tone of Taobao's adjustment of the business environment. Recently, Taobao launched a round of scale modification for merchants, such as clarifying that "experience score" is the core basis for traffic distribution. In addition, from September 1st, Tmall will cancel the annual software service fee for the platform. However, Taobao's relaxation of the "refund only" rights of sellers is only to a certain extent. The premise for sellers to obtain autonomy is to continue to improve their service capabilities. At the beginning of the year, Taotian announced the upgrade of the new store comprehensive experience rating standard. After the upgrade, the rating focuses more on consumer-related indicators such as "refusal rate for refund" and "platform help rate." In addition, services that affect consumer shopping decisions, such as "return insurance", will also be a bonus for merchants. In other words, if sellers want to get high scores, they really need to serve consumers well. Of course, Taobao also provides practical rewards such as traffic to high-quality merchants, and this time it has also ceded some after-sales rights. Wall Street News learned that after the optimization strategy of "refund only" is launched, Taobao will not actively intervene through Wangwang or support refund only after receiving goods for sellers whose store experience score is greater than or equal to 4.8. Instead, Taobao encourages merchants to negotiate with consumers first. In short, Taobao will reduce or cancel after-sales intervention for high-quality stores, and the platform will give different degrees of autonomy to merchants according to the experience score and industry nature. In addition to giving merchants more autonomy, Taobao will also provide multiple after-sales service solutions for merchants to choose from, guiding merchants to continuously optimize after-sales services and reduce disputes and losses caused by "refund only". It is worth mentioning that Taobao has also optimized the appeal process for "refund only". After the user initiates an appeal, the platform will invite a third-party testing agency to sample the product. If the test passes, the platform will compensate the loss to the seller. As Taobao adjusts the "refund only" policy, it is time for the industry's grand "learning from PDD" campaign to reflect. In the increasingly fierce e-commerce competition, true innovation and differentiation can bring greater competitiveness than copying and learning from others.

Investor Zheng Gang of Smartisan Technology criticized Luo Yonghao, bringing the debt situation of this super internet celebrity back into the public eye.

When people thought that Luo's debts had been paid off long ago, on August 4th, Zheng Gang released a video stating that Luo Yonghao's debts had not been fully repaid by 2024. Everyone suddenly realized that Luo still owed money.

In response to this, on August 26th, Luo Yonghao published two articles, fully disclosing the amount of the debt and the progress, as well as the debt dispute with investor Zheng Gang of Smartisan Technology.

Luo Yonghao stated that he has so far repaid a total of 0.824 billion yuan, exceeding the previously disclosed "debt of more than 600 million yuan". The reason is the additional compensation and fines resulting from various legal disputes, which increased the total debt. New debts were incurred at the end of 2022.

Luoyonghao also revealed a new outstanding debt. He said that when Smartisan Technology was financing, it received 300 million yuan of state-owned capital investment and 300 million yuan of loans, totaling 600 million yuan. When "Zhenhuan Chuan" was launched in the first season, this part was not included.

Luoyonghao also admitted in the article that he did borrow 15 million from Zheng Gang's investment institution and did not repay it after it matured. He frankly said that if he personally repaid this money for Smartisan Technology, it would be the last installment before the end of Zhenhuan Chuan, on the condition that the other party sincerely apologized.

Subsequently, Zheng Gang publicly responded that even if Luo Yonghao gave him 150 billion, he would not accept it and it was impossible for him to apologize by video.

It can be confirmed that the total debt of more than 1.3 billion means that Luoyonghao's road to debt repayment will continue. With such a huge debt, Luoyonghao has been repaying it through the commissions from the Jiaoge Pengyou livestream. The pressure on Jiaoge Pengyou will continue.

On the surface, Luoyonghao does not hold any equity in Jiaoge Pengyou because he is still a person with discredited. However, his friends Li Jun and Lu Jiayao collectively own more than 40% of the shares. Luoyonghao has repeatedly stated that Li Jun is his behind-the-scenes boss. Some industry insiders believe that there may be nominee holding among them.

So far, the livestreaming business of Jiaoge Pengyou is still doing well. On August 27th, Jiaoge Pengyou Holdings released its mid-year performance announcement. In the first half of 2024, the company's total revenue increased by 43.8% year-on-year, reaching 620 million yuan, and net income increased by 93.8%, reaching 83.81 million yuan, with a net margin of 13.5%.

Among them, the new media service business segment achieved revenue of 560 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43.9%, accounting for 90.6% of the total operating revenue; the radio and television business achieved revenue of 58 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.6%.

Livestreaming e-commerce is still a very profitable industry. In the first half of 2024, Jiaoge Pengyou's gross margin was 51.5%, a decrease of 5 percentage points from last year, but still at a high level. Among them, the gross margin of livestreaming e-commerce was 53.8%, and the gross margin of advertising business was 29.8%.

However, with the slowdown in the growth rate of the live-streaming e-commerce industry, MCN institutions are facing increasingly fierce competition and higher profitability thresholds, which also puts pressure on Be Friends Hldg's growth.

At the same time, the loan dispute between Luo Yonghao and investors involves not only financial issues, but also trust and reputation. As a livestreaming host, Luo Yonghao is often caught up in public opinion storms, which may also add uncertainty to Be Friends Hldg.

In the first half of the year, Be Friends Hldg completed a total transaction volume (GMV) of approximately 5.96 billion yuan on new media platforms, with a year-on-year growth rate of approximately 18.2%. Although it is still among the top players in the livestreaming e-commerce sector, the growth rate has slowed significantly.

In response to this, Be Friends Hldg has already started to decentralize and build a livestreaming matrix. As of now, the company independently owns and broadcasts from over 50 livestreaming rooms, making it one of the MCN institutions with the largest number of livestreaming rooms in the new media industry, with a total of over 68 million livestreaming fans.

Be Friends Hldg CEO Li Liang stated at the earnings conference that Luo Yonghao is a contracted artist of the company, earning income through sales commissions during livestreaming. His return to social media has a supportive effect on the company's brand, but Be Friends Hldg does not consider this as the main expectation for business growth.

At the same time, Be Friends Hldg is targeting the overseas market in an attempt to open up new growth opportunities for livestreaming e-commerce.

Since March, Be Friends Hldg has launched the construction of its overseas team and has established a North American office in Seattle, while also preparing to build a Middle East team. The company plans to lead Chinese brands overseas through cooperation with local influencers, and its first live-streaming sales in the US market have generated GMV of over one million US dollars.

Looking ahead, Li Liang said, "Our strategic plan is to achieve an annual sales GMV of 30 billion yuan within the next three years. This goal will support our layout of self-operated products and the upstream and downstream of the supply chain."

Although in the future, Luo Yonghao will still rely on being friends to repay debts, in the long run, this company does not want to depend on Luo Yonghao.

Moreover, after 8 years of development, the dividend of live streaming e-commerce is gradually fading, both being friends and Luo Yonghao are facing a real test. How to continue moving forward amidst controversy is the challenge they must face.