Following Dexin Food, Tianye Co., Ltd., another supplier of Mixue Bingcheng , Luckin , and Luckin , has also started its journey of A shares IPO. Recently, the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission showed that Fresh Beverage had previously officially submitted a prospectus to the exchange, preparing to sprint to the deep main board.
prospectus shows that Fresh Beverage plans to issue no more than 41 million shares this time, raising about 450 million yuan for Tianjin production base construction projects, Zhaoqing production base construction projects and restocking. After the project is completed, the company will add a total of 60,000 tons of beverage raw materials production capacity per year.
new tea beverage raw material supplier
three major products gross profit margins have been declining year by year
It is reported that fresh drinks are a subsidiary of fresh fruit juice (1256.TW), a listed company listed in Taiwan. It mainly engages in the research, production and sales of beverage categories, taste granules, jams and direct drinks. It is a raw material supplier for a comprehensive solution for new tea beverages. It has established cooperative relationships with Mixue Bingcheng, Shuyi Shaoxiancao , Gu Ming, Shanghai Auntie, Luckin Coffee , Hema Fresh , etc.
2019~2022Q1, Fresh Beverages achieved revenue of RMB 787 million, RMB 812 million, RMB 1.064 billion and RMB 201 million, respectively. In 2020 and 2021, increased by 3.22% and 30.99% year-on-year; achieved net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 129 million, RMB 180 million, RMB 189 million and RMB 15 million, respectively, and increased by 39.68% and 5.09% year-on-year in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Compared with comparable companies, the performance scale of fresh drinks ranks second overall among comparable companies, second only to Jiahe Food, and its growth rate performance is also relatively stable.
Data source: Tonghuashun IFind, Jibao
Although the overall performance is good, the gross profit margin performance of fresh drinks is not that good, and it has even declined year by year.
prospectus shows that from 2019 to 2022Q1, the comprehensive gross profit margins of freshly-lived beverages were 36.84%, 42.31%, 33.64% and 24.50%, respectively, which declined severely; specifically among the products, Yibao found that in addition to direct beverage products, the gross profit margins of the remaining three main products of freshly-lived beverages have all declined to varying degrees since last year.
From the perspective of unit selling price and cost changes, taking the most obvious taste granules as an example, the prospectus shows that from 2019 to 2022Q1, the average selling price of fresh beverage taste granules products was 13.98 yuan/kg, 13.30 yuan/kg, 10.15 yuan/kg and 7.92 yuan/kg, respectively, and in 2020 and after, the year-on-year decrease was 2.11%, 13.10% and 15.94% respectively; in contrast, the data shows that during the same period, the unit cost of granules products of was only -1.17%, 1.06% and 7.72%, respectively, which is far less than the decrease in unit price.
Downstream customers extend to the upstream
R&D and marketing efforts need to be strengthened
In fact, it is not only fresh drinks, but also Oubao found that the situation of decline in gross profit margin also exists among comparable companies in the same industry. The reason is related to the degree of competition in the entire freshly prepared beverage ingredients industry and the fluctuations in the price of upstream raw materials. Here we focus on the competition situation in the industry.
As we all know, the freshly made beverage ingredients industry belonging to is a fully competitive industry with many manufacturers in the industry. The market concentration of is low and mainly small and medium-sized enterprises. At present, my country's current beverage ingredients industry has basically formed a competitive landscape where well-known multinational brand enterprises (such as Kelly, Wild, etc.) and excellent domestic brand enterprises occupy the dominant market position, and a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises are distributed in the mid- and low-end fields.
Not only that, in recent years, in the context of fierce competition in the downstream consumer terminal market and rising upstream raw material costs, Mixue Bingcheng's downward pressure on gross profit margins has also been relatively high (according to the "China New Tea Supply Chain White Paper, 2022", the comprehensive gross profit margin of the new tea beverage industry in 2021 was 54.3%, a year-on-year decrease of 2.2%. It is expected that as the cost gradually increases, it will further drop to 48.4% in 2024), which has also made them begin to consider extending to the upstream supply chain.
data shows that in addition to the existing layout of R&D, production, logistics and warehousing, in August last year, Mixue Bingcheng also established Chongqing Xuewang Agricultural Co., Ltd. to lay out upstream manors to stabilize quality, compress costs, and reduce the bargaining power of upstream suppliers; in addition, Naixue's Tea and others have also chosen to purchase products directly from the source of raw materials through suppliers.
In this context, suppliers such as fresh drinks can only continuously improve their competitiveness by improving R&D strength, expanding production capacity, etc., and get a share of the fierce market competition.
However, Jibao found that fresh drinks do not seem to pay so much attention to R&D.
First of all, in terms of cost investment, the prospectus shows that from 2019 to 2022Q1, the R&D expenses of fresh drinks were RMB 12.3553 million, RMB 11.6034 million, RMB 13.336 million and RMB 3.2614 million, respectively. The corresponding R&D expense ratios were only 1.57%, 1.43%, 1.25% and 1.62%, and the overall trend was declining year by year.
In terms of technical personnel, the prospectus also shows that as of March 31, 2022, the company had only 53 R&D personnel, accounting for 5.37% of the total number of employees, and there were only 18 employees with master's degree or above in the company, accounting for 1.82%.
At the same time, the company's sales expense rate is also lower than the average level of comparable companies.
related parties appear on the list of the top five clients
fundraising and investment projects are doubtful in the necessity of fundraising and investment projects
In addition to the above issues, Fresh Beverage also has some doubts in fundraising and investment projects, related transactions, financial internal control, etc.
First of all, in terms of fundraising and investment projects, as mentioned at the beginning, Fresh Beverage plans to raise about 450 million yuan this time for Tianjin production base construction project, Zhaoqing production base construction project and replenishment. However, Jibao found that during the reporting period, the capacity utilization rate of freshly-lived beverages was actually not high, with 93.59%, 72.84%, 79.24% and 59.73% respectively from 2019 to 2022Q1, respectively.
At the same time, the company's account does not seem to be short of money. The prospectus shows that at the end of each period of the reporting period, the company's cash balance was RMB 607.91 million, RMB 118 million, RMB 358 million and RMB 218 million, respectively, accounting for 18.85%, 33.74%, 66.07% and 37.43% of current assets, respectively. In addition, the company also used idle funds to purchase some bank wealth management products and structured deposits . As of Q1 2022, the balance of transactional financial assets was 126 million yuan.
. In terms of related transactions, the prospectus shows that Jiangsu Jiulongzhu is one of the top five customers of Fresh Beverages. The purchase amounts of fresh drinks from 2019 to 2022Q1 were RMB 45.1285 million, RMB 60.6381 million, RMB 72.0722 million and RMB 12.9444 million, respectively. The company's director Lin Liling once held 20% of the equity of its holding subsidiary Haoduodan through Weilang Venture Capital.
In addition, from 2019 to 2021, Fresh Loving Beverage also paid a small amount of audit fees for the indirect controlling shareholder Fresh Loving Juice, Fresh Loving Holding employees and travel expenses, and advanced a small amount of audit fees for the related party Sunjuice I, with a total amount of 6.52 million yuan.
At the same time, Jibao also noticed that the prospectus showed that as of the end of each period of the reporting period, the company's other receivables were RMB 10.5049 million, RMB 11.2393 million, RMB 2.49 million and RMB 1.8649 million, respectively, which have been significantly reduced since 2021. In response, Xianhuo Beverage also stated that the balance of other receivables on December 31, 2021 dropped by 77.85% compared with December 31, 2020, mainly due to the company's clearance of the arrears of related parties.
Finally, in terms of financial internal control, the prospectus shows that during the reporting period, there were third-party collections of fresh beverages, involving 103 million yuan, 101 million yuan, 70.0881 million yuan and 9.1258 million yuan, respectively, accounting for as high as 13.04%, 12.38%, 6.59% and 4.54% of revenue, respectively, which is relatively high and higher than comparable companies in the same industry.
Data source: Jibao, prospectus for each company
Author: Tong Qianru
