"Investor Network" Pan Wanyu
Recently, a share award plan released by Blue Moon Group Holdings Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Blue Moon", 06993.HK) has attracted market attention. This is the first time since the company's listing. The market is generally concerned about This is reviewed positively.
company announced that it plans to use group funds to subscribe for no more than 5% of the total number of shares in issue on the date of adoption (i.e. 292,959,750 shares), and the total number of shares involved in awarding awards to selected participants will not exceed 1% of the total number of shares in issue on the date of adoption. % (i.e. 58,591,950 shares). The main reward targets are core employees who have contributed to the growth and development of the group.
Blue Moon stated that the program aims to recognize and reward certain qualified participants who have contributed to the company's growth and development, and provide them with corresponding rewards to encourage them to contribute to the company's continued operations and development, while attracting suitable talents to join. Promote further development of the company.
's stock price continues to fall and the target price has been lowered.
It is worth mentioning that Blue Moon, which has only been listed for half a year, has been on a downward trend since its high of 19.16 Hong Kong dollars. As of the closing of June 22, Blue Moon's stock price was 10.82 Hong Kong dollars. Compared with the issue price of HK$13.16 when it was listed on December 16, 2020, it has continued to fall for more than half a year and has broken.
At the same time, the first annual report data submitted by Blue Moon was somewhat lower than market expectations. In 2020, Blue Moon's revenue was 6.996 billion (Hong Kong dollars, the same below), a year-on-year decrease of 0.8%, and net profit was 1.309 billion Hong Kong dollars, a year-on-year increase of 21.3%. However, by category, Blue Moon's personal cleaning care and household cleaning categories will grow rapidly in 2020. Among them, the revenue of personal cleaning and care products in 2020 was HK$836 million, a year-on-year increase of 99.7%; the revenue of household cleaning and care products in 2020 was HK$565 million, a year-on-year increase of 24.5%.
UBS released a research report on May 13, saying that based on Blue Moon's lower-than-expected performance last year, low expectations for offline distribution business growth and rising raw material costs, it will lower its profit forecast for 2021 to 2023 by 15% to 26%.
UBS also pointed out that the company's stock price has fallen by 36% since the Lunar New Year holiday, which is 5% lower than the Hang Seng Index. The current price of the stock is equivalent to 32.5 times the forecast price-earnings ratio for 2021, and its peers are 36 times. The bank significantly lowered its target price from HK$19.7 to HK$10.94 and maintained a neutral rating.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch also stated at almost the same time that Blue Moon's 2020 sales and net profit fell 0.8% and rose 21.3% respectively year-on-year, which means they rose 5.3% and 16.9% respectively in the second half of the year, which was generally in line with expectations, but based on the reflection line The potential execution risks of lower distributor channel penetration and soaring raw material costs have lowered its after-tax net profit forecast for this year and next by 12% each, and the target price has been reduced from 18 yuan to 14.5 yuan. reiterated its 'neutral' rating.
started with hand sanitizer, but is it difficult to create a "hit" again?
Blue Moon was founded in 1992 and has been deeply involved in the field of household cleaning products for more than 20 years. The company launched antibacterial hand soap in 2000 to expand its personal cleaning business and entered the laundry detergent market in 2008, ushering in the laundry detergent era.
On December 16, 2020, Blue Moon was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the “first laundry detergent stock” in China. At present, the company has more than 80 varieties of products in three categories: clothing cleaning care, personal cleaning care, and home cleaning care.
Blue Moon initially started with hand sanitizer. Until the SARS outbreak in 2003, Blue Moon seized an opportunity to develop rapidly. At that time, the public began to pay more attention to personal hygiene, including hand washing, and gradually realized the shortcomings of hand washing with soap. Blue Moon seized the opportunity and frequently appeared on TV stations through offline activities such as social donations and promotion of hand washing. In just one year, it built itself into a leading brand in the hand sanitizer category.
Since then, Blue Moon has been at the forefront of the hand sanitizer market for a long time, ranking first in market share from 2012 to 2019. However, with the epidemic still raging, Blue Moon's journey to explore the new "hand-washing" category market in 2020 was not smooth.
Generally speaking, in the more mature daily necessities industry, one of the ways for companies to further compete for market share is to continuously launch new products, and Blue Moon has always been committed to this.The financial report shows that since 2020, Blue Moon has accelerated the speed of new products. Focusing on the anti-epidemic theme, it has successively launched a variety of "hand washing" products such as foam antibacterial hand sanitizer, automatic mobile phone washing, no-wash antibacterial hand sanitizer and Jingxiang amino acid hand sanitizer. Peripheral products.
It is worth mentioning that "Investor Network" browsed the Blue Moon Tmall flagship store and Blue Moon Supreme flagship store and found that the new foam antibacterial hand sanitizer in 2020 has a monthly sales of 600+ and a cumulative review of 700+; no-wash antibacterial hand sanitizer The monthly sales volume of antibacterial hand sanitizer is more than 100 units, while the monthly sales volume of automatic mobile phone washing and Jingxiang amino acid hand sanitizer are only 6 and 12 bottles respectively. However, these new products did not become an instant hit, sales were mediocre, and some of the products were even barely known.
"Investor Network" wrote to the relevant person in charge of Blue Moon to inquire about the reason for the mediocre sales of the company's new products surrounding "Wash Hands", but did not receive a reply from the other party.
Blue Moon said that the total proceeds from the first global offering were HK$11 billion, of which HK$220 million was planned to be used to enhance research and development capabilities, accounting for about 1%, and would be used to increase brand awareness, further enhance the company's sales and distribution network and The cost of enhancing product penetration was HK$5.76 billion, accounting for more than 50%.
(Picture source: Blue Moon Financial Report)
Regarding this, Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, analyzed to "Investor Network", "In fact, most hand sanitizer products have different functions, and these functions are actually very mature. Such as disinfection, aroma and other functions. Therefore, there is no need to invest too much in R&D. Instead, the focus is on promotion and marketing. The business logic of this relatively mature FMCG manufacturer is closer to that of companies such as Coca-Cola. "
China Food Industry Analyst Zhu Danpeng believes that after Blue Moon's listing, its comprehensive strength has been greatly improved. "It has also been a good blessing for the widening, deepening and reinforcement of the moat. Overall, Blue Moon's future development will still be Worth looking forward to.”
The ability of e-commerce channels to attract followers
Regarding the layout of distribution channels, Blue Moon has proposed to further consolidate the leadership position of online channels, follow the trend of channel development, and expand to emerging online channels such as social e-commerce. sales platform.
"Investor Network" noticed that Blue Moon's advertising layout on the Douyin platform is a bit unsatisfactory. Browsing its homepage, it can be seen that the number of views and likes of Blue Moon's works is not as good as that of its competitor Libai. As of June 21, Blue Moon has 79 works, 210,000 fans, and a total of 2.50,000 likes; while Liby has 342 works, 90.30,000 fans, and a total of 340.70,000 likes. Judging from the small number of works, Blue Moon may have been on Douyin for a shorter time and the frequency of updates is lower, but overall, the results are not very ideal. On the contrary, Liby has put a lot of effort into its works. In addition to receiving tens of thousands of likes, many of Liby's works have invited popular stars such as Wu Yifan, Zhou Bichang, and Zhang Ziyi to shoot them to help attract fans.
In this regard, Xu Xiongjun, a strategic positioning expert and founder of Jiude Positioning Consulting Company, said, "New media Internet marketing such as Douyin short videos is very important. This is also the direction of Blue Moon's marketing channel to combine online and offline new retail layout. In addition to Taobao, Tmall, and JD.com, short video e-commerce live broadcasts such as Douyin e-commerce will become more and more popular in the future, and Blue Moon still needs to strengthen this area. "
However, Blue Moon has been improving in recent years. Sales expenses (sales and distribution expenses) gradually decreased. Blue Moon's sales and distribution expenses are mainly invested in employee local promotion and multimedia advertising. The financial report shows that the company's sales expenses have decreased since 2018. From 2018 to 2020, the company's sales and distribution expenses dropped from HKD 2.548 billion in 2018 to HKD 2.323 billion in 2019 and HKD 2.017 billion in 2020. , a drop of more than 20% in three years.
In this case, Blue Moon has not made efforts on social e-commerce platforms to please young consumer groups. Is it because of its confidence in the brand that has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, or is it due to product positioning?
Hand sanitizer takes the lead and is committed to capturing the high-end market
It is worth mentioning that Blue Moon has never stopped moving towards higher-end markets.In 2018, Blue Moon aimed at the domestic consumption upgrade market and launched Supreme Laundry Detergent, which is positioned in the high-end market, filling the gap in the high-end field of the domestic laundry market. In the same year, it established Supreme Laundry and Care flagship stores on Taobao, JD.com and other platforms and launched related high-end cleaning and care products.
"Comparing Blue Moon with Liby, we can see that Liby started out by making washing powder. Liby washing powder can be the first in China, but the washing powder category is declining. Nowadays, many people do not use washing powder to wash clothes, especially In cities, most people use laundry detergent; and Blue Moon is the pioneer of laundry detergent in China. The reason why laundry detergent is growing rapidly is because the market demand for laundry detergent brands is large, and the size of the demand determines the size of the brand. , we see that Blue Moon’s turnover has increased from one billion to two billion to close to 10 billion,” Xu Xiongjun analyzed.
With the support of this brand positioning, Blue Moon has been firmly at the forefront of the industry for more than ten years. According to Frost & Sullivan, Blue Moon has maintained the first place in China's laundry detergent market share for ten consecutive years from 2009 to 2019; the market share of hand sanitizer also ranked first from 2012 to 2019; in terms of retail sales value , from 2017 to 2019, its market shares in the three major markets of laundry detergent, hand soap and concentrated laundry detergent were: 24.4%, 17.4% and 27.9% respectively, ranking first in all.
"The brand of Blue Moon laundry detergent is very strong. It is the leader of domestic laundry detergents. Its leadership position in laundry detergents is very stable and has been maintained for many years. Blue Moon's entire blue bottled laundry detergent is positioned in the mid-to-high-end line, which is different from that of established brands. White, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other brands that target mid-to-low-end consumer groups, Blue Moon firmly controls the brand strategic positioning of mid-to-high-end laundry detergents." Xu Xiongjun continued to analyze, "Revolving around the high-end strategic positioning, the Blue Moon faction. Promoters carry out promotional activities in supermarkets, but the entire promotion is on the high-end route, such as no price reduction, less price reduction, and instead, many low-end brands such as Libai and other low-end brands often engage in price wars, promotions, and price discounts. More, and Blue Moon has always maintained a high-end image, just like luxury goods, allowing the market to recognize its high-end image. "Of course, its product quality and technology are also very good, which is the foundation of its life." Xu Xiongjun added. (Produced by Thinking Finance) ■
