One year after the US stock market listing, Zhihu chose to return to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On the day of listing on April 22, at the cloud gong-beating ceremony held in Beijing, Zhou Yuan, founder, chairman and CEO of Zhihu, delivered a speech.

Image source: Visual China

After the first anniversary of its listing of US stock , Zhihu chose to return to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On the day of

html on April 22, at the cloud gong-beating ceremony held in Beijing, Zhihu founder, chairman and CEO O Zhou Yuan delivered a speech. In his speech, Zhou Yuan called Zhihu employees "pirates". He said:

"For me, Zhihu is not only a career to realize my dreams, but also because of the existence of all pirates, it has become a way to open up a route and discover a larger world. Our common carrier - the pirate ship. Today, The pirate ship sailed into the familiar harbor. Yes, we went home. Not only returned to the 'little home', but more importantly, we returned to the 'everyone'".

At the same time, Zhou Yuan also posted an article on his Zhihu authentication account. The article quotes the famous sentence of Portuguese poet Luís Camões, "The land ends here, the sea begins here" (Onde a terra acaba e o mar começa). The most famous place where the poem

appears is a cape adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal - Cape Roca . Cape Roca is the southwesternest point of the entire Eurasian continent , and is also considered the end of the continent. , the starting point of the ocean.

is visible, Zhihu is trying to regard this return to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as the opening point of a new era of navigation. This largest Q&A community platform in China was founded in 2010. It initially focuses on Q&A business model and product form. It is now also an original content platform with highly gathered creators, building an open and healthy community ecosystem.

On March 26, 2021, Zhihu was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States and achieved an expected full-year financial report. 13 months later, Zhihu landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and became the first Chinese Internet company to return to Hong Kong through dual main listing, building a more stable platform for its future development.

1. Did Zhihu be killed by mistake?

In order to cope with regulatory uncertainty, more and more companies choose to return to Hong Kong stock . Zhihu is currently the latest US stock Chinese stock that has been successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The game between the regulatory authorities has been implemented in real society and specific companies, and what is obvious is that Chinese stocks listed in the United States have collectively plummeted. However, there are two mainstream views on the decline in the stock price of the Chinese Internet in the capital market.

First, the golden age of Chinese Internet companies has ended, and stock prices finally returned to the rational range, and the inflated bubble was squeezed out; second, the US stock market and Chinese stocks have become the focus of the game between major powers, and funds are panic due to panic Haste evacuation, good companies are frequently killed by mistake, and the current stock price cannot reflect the company's fundamentals.

If you have the opportunity to ask Zhihu, two questions will probably be mentioned: How do you view the collective decline of Chinese stocks listed in the US? What is the experience of being in it?

Zhihu held a cloud-beating ceremony for listing back to Hong Kong in Beijing on April 22. The picture shows Zhihu founder and CEO Zhou Yuan and Zhihu IP " Liu Kanshan "

on the first day of listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Zhou Yuan also discussed this topic at the beginning in the article published on Zhihu.

"I remember the close friends, shareholders and friends who attended the congratulations at the bell ringing ceremony of the US stock market last year. I am really grateful. It is not easy to have ten years of support from everyone. At that time, I also made up my mind that only by relying on excellent results can I It is worthy of everyone's trust. After a year, if we say that we meet expectations, we have indeed delivered an annual financial report that exceeded expectations; if we say that we don't meet expectations, we really didn't expect that the environment will change so much this year. "

" I replied to them, it's really messy; forget the capital market for the time being, you need to exercise in winter... Alas, you have mixed feelings in your heart."

Zhihu, which is listed on New York Stock Exchange , now every share The offer is $1.52 (as of the close of April 25th Eastern Time). On March 27 last year, the first day of Zhihu's listing, the opening price was US$8.05 per share. In July 2021, Zhihu's stock price reached a high of US$13.85 per share.

Zhihu's stock price ushered in a turning point in July, which is also the turning point for most Chinese stocks listed in the US. Among them, policy factors have a great impact.From the overall perspective, it was from last year that regulators have continuously sent more stringent control signals to the Internet industry, until the " double reduction " policy that affects the life and death of the education and training industry was officially implemented in July, which can be said to have reached the A peak.

In fact, from the perspective of financial performance, Internet companies are still in a state of growth. Similarly, Zhihu's latest quarterly financial report shows that its core indicators, including user scale, revenue and other data, are in a state of rapid growth.

financial report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2021, Zhihu's performance exceeded market expectations and its annual revenue doubled. Total revenue in 2021 reached 2.959 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 118.9%, of which the revenue in the fourth quarter was 1.019 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 96.1%. While revenue surged sharply, Zhihu maintained a high gross profit level, with an annual gross profit margin of 52.5%, and a gross profit of 1.554 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 105.1%.

Zhihu's revenue has achieved continuous growth, mainly due to the ever-expanding user scale and the increase in average revenue per user. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Zhihu's average monthly active users (MAU) was 103.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 36.4%, and the average monthly paid members were 6.1 million, a year-on-year increase of 102%.

According to the current market value of Zhihu, Zhihu is only worth about US$1 billion. Zhihu's performance statement disclosed that as of December 31, 2021, Zhihu held cash and cash equivalents , fixed deposits and short-term investments totaled 7.4 billion yuan. It further shows that it has strong risk resistance and has sufficient resources to support a high-quality business ecosystem.

However, even so, one thing needs to be admitted is that there are many doubts about Zhihu's business in the current market. At present, the area where artillery fire is the most concentrated is the progress of Zhihu's video business.

Regarding the progress of the video business, Zhihu has focused on the performance report. The financial report believes that last year, Zhihu focused on creating a video content ecosystem that conforms to the community atmosphere and completed the first stage of the multimedia ecosystem upgrading. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Zhihu's monthly average video upload volume increased by 211% year-on-year, the number of video creators increased by 33% year-on-year, and the penetration rate of video consumer users in DAU (daily active users) exceeded 45%.

Zhihu has always been cautious about the layout of video business. In the future, it remains to be seen how Zhihu's video business will take its own path, but one thing is certain is that the recent adjustment of the video business does not mean that Zhihu will give up Video business.

Because of the recent issue in the direction of video business, Zhihu told Titanium Media APP, "Videos are an indispensable part of Zhihu's content ecosystem. In 2021, we will use video answers, co-creation and multi-scene video content through video answers, joint creation and multi-scene video content Recommended has promoted Zhihu's media upgrade. In 2022, we will continue to make efforts in the video field and continuously improve."

At the moment when Chinese stocks listed in the list collectively encountered the black swan event , for a company, the external environment is urgent What you can do after turning is extremely limited. Recently, there is good news that in response to the recent decline of Chinese stocks in Boao Forum for Asia 2022 Annual Meeting, Fang Xinghai, Vice Chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission, revealed that the current progress of China-US audit supervision negotiations is very progressing. It went smoothly, basically there was a video negotiation every other week.

He is very confident that in the near future, he will reach a cooperation agreement, so that PCAOB (Accounting Supervision Committee of the United States Public Company) will conduct inspections in China that audit the listing of Chinese stocks, and believe that the uncertainty will be fast It will be removed.

2. What is the unique value of Zhihu?

In the US stock market, investors' understanding of Zhihu will be more or less affected by the question-and-answer website Quora, which is about to fade out of the public's vision, and its influence is no longer as good as the moment it was born, and its commercialization ability is also questioned. .

Indeed, the birth of Zhihu was inspired by Quora to some extent. However, after the cruel ecological baptism of Chinese Internet companies over the years and the fierce traffic melee, Zhihu has developed into a comprehensive content platform, in the United States, Almost no benchmark products were found.

Currently, Zhihu’s content mainly involves knowledge, experience and insights. All three are related to information, but they all go beyond the information itself.

is currently the largest Q&A community in China, many topics have entered the hot discussion range of Zhihu users, and will discuss in-depth from multiple professional perspectives, showing unique content styles and forms. The form of question and answer forms a large collection of these contents with different styles.

Through the vote of approval and opposition, users also participate in a certain reality, creating value beyond knowledge. More connections and more value are also generated between people and content, and between people.

Based on this, at the beginning, Zhihu slogan was "discovering a bigger world" because every user in the community was constantly asking for solutions and asking questions, very much like a pioneer and explorer in an unknown world.

was a gathering place for Internet knowledge elites in the early days. The reason why Zhihu attracted users outside the circle was that Zhihu had many great masters, and the content of questions and answers was very professional. But as the user scale continues to expand, "professional" is not enough to explain everything that has happened in Zhihu over the past decade.

major corresponds to knowledge, and knowledge is the sum of the results obtained by human exploration of the world, and has objective and unified standards. However, in a community content, the impact on users is not only knowledge, but also experience and insights, and the connection between people as humans.

Therefore, at the beginning of Zhihu's second decade, in 2021, Zhou Yuan proposed Zhihu's "sense of gain" and said, "Zhihu will take 'sense of gain' as the core and start a very long cycle. Self-evolution. "

" sense of gain" was a new brand tone that Zhou Yuan spared no effort to establish for Zhihu in major public occasions last year. In his opinion, high-quality content has three characteristics to users: broaden your horizons, bring help, and resonate. And the three can be summarized as "sense of gain" under one concept.

Since May last year, Zhihu official has officially defined "sense of gain" as a yardstick for measuring the value of content, and is used to strengthen community governance and adjust the content structure.

Zhou Yuan believes that "sense of gain" represents users' most enthusiastic desire for high-quality content and has extremely strong value potential. For example, during the Zhengzhou rain disaster last summer, a "Hurricane Self-Rescue Manual" was widely circulated on the Internet. This manual was initiated by Zhihu answerer "Zhen Haoyuan".

Similarly, this year, as the new crown strain Omickron continues to spread, various versions of the epidemic stockpiling guide appeared on Zhihu. The format of graphic content displays important information at a glance, both efficient and detailed. , you can even see the confrontation of opinions on whether there is a necessary stockpiling.

pursues good content with a "sense of gain", which also shows from another perspective that in the environment where almost all this content platform pursues traffic and then converts it into commercial value, it is also a community with content as the core. Zhihu doesn’t want to go as dark as the Internet traffic route.

On the day of its return to Hong Kong for listing, Zhou Yuan also emphasized in the content letter that Zhihu "should resolutely fight against hydration." I don’t know if it is a response to some extent to the outside world’s doubts about Zhihu’s “watering”. This clearly shows that in the next stage, Zhihu will no longer pursue meaningless traffic data growth, but will hope to further consolidate Zhihu's tone and create Zhihu's unique ecological value.

Zhihu has found a survival path that suits its genes in addition to the traffic market. But at a time when content business is not easy to make money, is there enough prospects for "sense of gain" business?

uses "sense of gain" to open up the value chain, and Zhihu has made many successful attempts. For example, Zhihu relies on Q&A to open up the IP closed-loop chain of "Q&A-Publishing-Film" with Q&A, a large number of excellent literary works have been placed in Zhihu Yanxuan column, or entered the stage of copyright development of books and film and television, and some have been adapted into TV series and appeared on the Screen.

and all this was also fed back to Zhihu's financial statements last year. According to Zhihu's 2021 annual report, while revenue doubled, Zhihu's revenue structure was further optimized.

In terms of non-advertising business revenue direction with content as the core, Zhihu's revenue accounted for 61%. Among them, the revenue of commercial content solutions business was 974 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 617%; the revenue of paid membership business was 669 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 108.6%; Zhihu is committed to providing online education services for vocational training and professional courses, as well as e-commerce business For other businesses, the revenue in 2021 was 156 million yuan, an increase of 196% over 2020.

In fact, in the United States, the advertising revenue of absolutely most social network platforms with content as the core accounts for more than 90% of the platform's revenue, including Facebook and Twitter. Such a fixed and single revenue structure means limited market capacity and the ceiling of commercial space is very obvious.

However, in the field of Chinese Internet content track, the coexistence and symbiosis of multiple platforms have long been verified by time, capital and market. For example, short videos have , Douyin and Kuaishou's living space, and video accounts can also rise rapidly; long videos have , Tencent Video , iQiyi, Youku, and Mango TV and Bilibili The tone formed by and other unique and high-quality categories.

In the field of pursuing hot topics of graphic and text events, there is the instant fermentation of Weibo , further interpretations from Zhihu users, and various reviews and summary of WeChat public accounts.

When the last financial report was released, Titanium Media APP discovered that Zhihu specifically emphasized the point of "timeliness".

Zhihu said that with the growth of content magnitude and the upgrading of multimedia, Zhihu's timely content consumption trend is obvious, and "Zhihu on hot spots" has gradually become a consensus among users. As of December 31, 2021, the consumption penetration rate of Zhihu timely content in DAU was above 40%, and it effectively drove the natural growth of user scale.

For example, during this year's Beijing Winter Olympics , Zhihu's image of "technical and tactical master" of the Tokyo Summer Olympics was once again displayed, extending from the event hotspots of the Winter Olympics and the technology and tactics of sports to Multi-dimensional fields such as economy, humanities, history, and science and technology. The survival rules of Chinese Internet platforms under strong operations may be difficult for US stock investors to understand. Returning to the Hong Kong stock market, investors can understand Zhihu better, realize the preciousness of Zhihu's ability to survive smoothly in the field of Internet platforms with such fierce competition, and understand the real reason behind the continuous development and growth.

3. How does Zhihu plan to "spend the winter"?

This time, the dual main listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is Zhihu's choice to deal with changes in the capital market, and it is also a strategy to deal with the macroeconomic environment.

IMF expects that the global economic growth rate is expected to drop from 5.9% in 2021 to 4.4% in 2022, mainly because the growth rate forecasts for the two largest economies have been lowered. The emergence of new mutant strains may make the epidemic more lasting and once again cause disturbances to the economy.

rate hikes in advanced economies may raise financial stability risks and may put capital flows, monetary and fiscal conditions in emerging markets and developing economies at risk – especially in the case of a sharp rise in debt levels over the past two years. Geopolitical tensions remain, which makes other global risks possible.

For Chinese technology Internet companies, the timetable of their birth and rise is just superimposed on the period of China's highest economic and social development, as well as the highlight of the extremely prosperous globalization. During this period of time, these Internet upstarts have abundant start-up funds and fertile growth soil. But the corresponding drawback is that these companies, including the founders, are very young. They have not experienced the ups and downs of economic cycle and the treacherous international situation.

In this case, in corporate governance, "wintering" requires adjusting posture and clarifying the strategic direction. How to do it?

After communicating with hundreds of investors in the secondary market in the past year, Zhou Yuan believes that "ecology first, social value, ideal optimism" is the strategy that Zhihu should implement next.

Specifically, community ecology is the first and is Zhihu’s key strategy this year. They hope to take this as a starting point and prepare for the time-travel cycle. Under the strategy of "ecology first", Zhihu will focus on four major issues: creator experience, content gain, a good community atmosphere, and commercial growth rate that matches the pace of community development. In terms of social value, Zhou Yuan believes that today, "vigorously deliver miracles" and "pollution first and then governance" are no longer the development concept of the technology Internet industry, and the future of the industry lies in sustainable development.

This kind of thinking has indeed brought about rapid development, but business operations are not a "limited game". Efficiency is not the ultimate goal of the Internet, and Zhihu should pursue value to society. Especially today, the Internet industry needs to find its own positioning and better meet social needs in order to achieve sustainable business operations. Corresponding to Zhihu, "social value is to help more people relieve the fear, anxiety, pride and prejudice brought by the unknown."

. At the moment when the epidemic is constantly evolving, rationality and optimism have become a valuable quality. Under the superposition of multiple factors, fear, narrow-mindedness, pride and prejudice continue to appear with the outbreak of " Black Swan ". In this case, Zhou Yuan believes that it is particularly important to maintain the original intention of "gathering up the knowledge, experience and insights in everyone's mind and using them for everyone."

Zhihu chooses to go back to Hong Kong to go public, which is the general trend. The more complex and changeable the world is, the more unlimited possibilities there will be in the content community. It is precisely because of continuous innovation and change that Zhihu has developed smoothly to this day. Zhihu started with Q&A and has surpassed Q&A, and a new era of navigation has begun. Next, the test for this team that has already "landed" is how to make Zhihu surpass Zhihu.

(This article was first published in Titanium Media APP, author | Li Chengcheng)