/ Asahi/Guangzhou, June 01, 2022 -- In March 2022, the commercial territory of Monster Charging will be the next city.
Monster Charge has entered into cooperation with Beijing Global Resort to become the "official supplier of shared power bank in Beijing Global Resort". According to the agreement between the two parties, visitors can enjoy easy mobile charging service along the tour route at Universal Studios Beijing Theme Park, Beijing Global City Avenue and two resort hotels.
It is the first time that Monster Charge has cooperated with a world-class theme park since it teamed up with Shanghai Disney Resort, which shows its strength. Looking back, it was this aggressive layout that led to the rapid growth of Monster charging points and users -- by the end of 2021, Monster Charging had 845,000 points (POI), a year-on-year growth of 27.3%; The number of registered users reached 286.9 million.
Of course, other shared charging players aren't idle either.
For example, recently, small electric Technology and Beijing South Railway Station reached a cooperation, laying small electric charging bank large screen machines at each entrance; As of 2021Q3, Zhumang Technology publicly revealed that its total POI in the country has reached millions of levels.
In this sense, the industry is still fiercely competitive.
The snow is thick and the slope is long
The shared charging industry, which is now being fiercely contested, is arguably one of the last fruits of the "sharing economy".
Many of the concepts that emerged, such as umbrella sharing and car sharing, have faded from view as demand has been falsified, compared with the boom of five years ago. The need for shared charging has been proved in practice.
This demand comes first from the large mobile phone user base. According to the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, by 2020, the number of users of shared charging has reached nearly 290 million, with a user penetration rate of 21.41 percent, and the conversion rate still has great room for growth.
The demand for mobile Internet access is also growing steadily. According to the statistics of App Annie, a mobile data and analysis company, the average daily use time of Chinese mobile phone users reached 3.3 hours in 2021, ranking near the 17th in the world, which also has great room for improvement.
Today's phone batteries, however, are struggling to support these demands. The demand for more power is forcing the computing power of mobile phones to increase, leading to greater power consumption; Safety and lightweight have become important considerations for mobile phone products, but battery technology has not made a revolutionary breakthrough, and energy density improvement has entered the bottleneck. Sharing charging can help solve the problem of demand for mobile phones and lack of power supply, and a more efficient alternative is still not on the table.
Therefore, analysts are still optimistic about the shared charging industry.
Euromonitor International's "Shared Charging Industry Report for the first half of 2021" points out that the trade volume of 2021H1 industry (GMV) is about 5.28 billion yuan, with a month-on-month increase of 5.9%; The 2021H2 point continues to increase, the holidays are long, and the number of travelers is expected to rise. It is estimated that the GMV may exceed 10 billion scale.
According to iResearch, China's mobile device charging service market is expected to grow to 106.3 billion yuan by 2028, with a compound growth rate of 36.2% from 2020 to 2028.
Survival of the fittest race
Where there is growth, there will be players, and the battle for shared charging will continue.
It can be predicted that the intensity of competition will increase with the passage of time. From the revenue scale of 2021H1, the industry's first monster charging accounts for 40.1%, a very stable position; The proportion of CR5 brand was about 95.3%, which slightly increased compared with the end of 2020. In contrast, other brands have limited POI coverage despite improvements. The accelerated development of head players in recent years seems to bring the industry into a clearing stage, and player mergers even began to spread from the waist and ankle to the head.
Mergers and consolidations can bring outlets, cash and technology reserves under one umbrella, enhancing POI and its long-term growth potential. The coverage of POI is the most direct and core moat of the shared charging brand in the primary stage.
In fact, looking back at the rise of Monster Charge, it's not hard to see that the strong channel and operational capabilities that led to the rapid expansion of POI coverage were the key capabilities that made it stand out.
Monster Charging has built a highly competitive operation team and achieved the rise of the first stage by conquering POI in a single point. Later, it expanded the promotion focus from single point to joint partner (KA), covering core scenes such as catering, leisure and entertainment, hotels and shopping from point to point. In 2021, Monster Charge has reached cooperation with KFC, Ajisen Ramen, elong Hotel Management Company, Yinli Group and other star KA, and its business scale is constantly expanding.
Then, the company will add point placement to hospitals, transportation hubs and other places with high human flow and low point density to achieve full scene coverage through the connection between scenes. The business layout of the whole scene will generate the chemical reaction of scale effect, resulting in the double growth of traffic and viscosity.
But then again, there are some pain points in the shared charging industry that cannot be solved by the expansion of POI.
Such as a unified, smooth service system.
For users, smooth use experience is the core advantage of shared power bank.
In the past, due to the different standards and coverage of charging boxes between players, charging bank "borrowing difficult to return" often occurred. Only perfect coverage and unified technical standards, coupled with a certain vacancy rate, can allow users to find the point to borrow and return the power bank anytime and anywhere, to avoid unnecessary trouble.
But when players merge, existing facilities are not unified, and if they have to be replaced, the input-output curve has to be reworked, increasing capital expenditure and delaying profitability. How many players can afford such a setback in an accelerating market clearing?
Another example is to enhance the appeal of users through personalized and customized products and services.
Business is the scene itself today. The key is to meet the real needs of users; Create a highly immersive atmosphere and "can't stop" local experience; Create real social value that makes users feel like they should have it all at the moment.
At Beijing Global Resort, Monster Charge integrates POI into the scene. In the Land of Kung Fu Panda, the monster charging machine is draped in Chinese red, echoing elements such as pavilions and colorful lanterns. In the Future Water World scenic spot, the "monster charging drift box" in the drifters' small pavilion seems to be the "civilization relic" picked up by the wise islanders.
By "dressing up" the product and going deep into every scene, Monster Charging makes users have an immersive consumption experience.
At the same time, the service premium is determined by the experience, emotion and social value beyond the service itself.
In recent years, Monster Charging has made every effort to build a young brand, realize the online traffic drainage transformation, with the help of the power of fan community to attract the active participation of the target circle, word-of-mouth communication, with three-dimensional marketing to improve the brand stickiness of users.
In contrast, merging players can combine physical resources such as POI and cash reserves, but it is difficult to make two very different genes and values compatible.
The battlefield of shared charging is bound to be a life-and-death battle between service standards and even enterprise genes. There is no captive and no option to surrender. Only the strongest genes can win last.
And at present, the monster charging seems to be sharing the charging arena, the biggest winning rate of players.
Risk resistance from the outside in
The development expectation tends to be optimistic, and the pace of industry clearing accelerates. The shared charging industry has experienced from the explosion period, to the shuffle, silence and later prosperous development, and now it has come to the stage of optimization development. Whether the business model can guarantee long-term development has become a topic of concern for all players.
The cost behind the business model is always on players' minds. However, the improvement of profitability is nothing more than open source and reduce revenue, which occupy the minds of users, achieve brand expansion, and then improve the coverage and user loyalty. It is the category of open source. Therefore, the realization of the two-way flow of open source and reduce revenue can be converted into the driving force to push the company's operation on the right track.
This is also why, the current sharing charging players have code agent mode.
The penetration of shared charge operators into downstream POIs is mainly carried out through direct operation mode and agent mode.
Under the mode of direct marketing, the brand can better control the user experience and brand image, and directly and effectively obtain the market and customer information. Therefore, in the early stage of the development of the shared charging industry, the mode of direct marketing has become the choice of most players. In contrast, the agency model has stronger flexibility and more advantages in cost control, which is conducive to the rapid development of the sinking market, but the corresponding brand control degree will be reduced.
In short, in the transition stage from growth to maturity of the shared charging industry, the advantage of the agent model for cash flow control is prominent, and in the sinking market, this model can help players penetrate the target users faster and deeper, and expand the market.
In fact, Monster Charging began to explore the agency model early, and its direct sales and agency ratio is more reasonable and balanced. According to the information disclosed in the prospectus of Monster Charging, the proportion of direct sales points of Monster Charging in 2019 and 2020 is 68% and 61%. Xu Peifeng, COO of Monster Charging, said in the 2021 earnings report that Monster Charging can improve point coverage and market share faster by combining the advantages of both direct and channel models.
By investing in KA, Monster Charging has increased the number and income of POI. The shift to an agency model brings resilience to margins and faster point coverage and market share gains.
According to the 2021 performance data, despite the overall impact of the pandemic, Monster Charging's revenue still increased by 27.6 percent year on year to 3.6 billion yuan, which also reached a record high.
Facing the future, Monster Charging strives to continuously improve the efficiency of its business model and realize its own efficient development in the optimization and development stage of the shared charging industry.
At the 2021 results meeting, Xin Yi, CFO of Monster Charge, said that the challenges brought by the epidemic will continue in 2022, so Monster Charge has also taken some measures to improve the efficiency of asset use and reduce the proportion of fixed expenses to the total expenditure, including optimizing the vacancy rate of cabinet machines, reducing equipment costs, improving personnel efficiency and optimizing the management of fixed expenses.
At the same event, CAI Guangyuan, CEO of Monster Charging, stressed that the impact of the epidemic is temporary and that he remains confident about the long-term development prospects of the mobile device charging market. "We believe that the services we provide are very important to the way of life of most people in the country today."
conclusion
The shared charging industry is still a long slope and snow track, but under the fierce competition, the speed of the industry clearing has been visible to the naked eye. 2022 May be another crucial window for the industry to win.
And monster charging grasp the core role of POI on competitiveness, deep understanding of user needs at the same time, with strong concentration to continuously dig the company's long-term moat. With its own powerful capabilities, Monster Charging successfully landed on NASDAQ in 2021, becoming the "first share of shared charging". In the past few years, faced with the unpredictable consumer market and the impact of the epidemic, the company also had a relatively clear grasp of the market context, and still achieved revenue growth during the epidemic period.
This is also the fundamental reason for its accelerated rise in the past few years, step by step to become the industry leader, and continue to maintain advantages in the next stage of development of the industry. So Monster Charging is a good example of where the industry is headed.
Facing the future, under the major theme of stable growth, double cycle and promotion of consumption, with the gradual decline of the economic impact of the epidemic, leading players are bound to have stronger resilience in the overall reversal of the industry.
What will the next stage be about? What kind of player has the last laugh?
One obvious direction is that players need to take advantage of POI's scale to continuously understand users' usage and emotional needs, improve their ability to provide supporting services beyond power banks, and establish a good dialogue relationship with consumers.
More importantly, although consumption expectations are stabilizing, we cannot rule out the possibility of more black swans. The good top-level design born in the insight will polish the time into the precipitation of the business model, so that a company can seize the opportunity in the crisis, move forward in the countercurrent, and cross thousands of sails in Fengling.
