On 6th of May, the prospectus of Hello Inc. showed that the company's total revenue in the first quarter of 2021 exceeded 1.4 billion CNY and achieved 104% growth comparing same period last year. Among them, the revenue of shared two-wheelers was 1.17 billion CNY, a year-on-year increase of 89%; the revenue of car-pooling was 168 million CNY, a year-on-year increase of 162%; new businesses including electric bicycle also brought in more than 70 million revenues.
From the data, it can be found that the most important income of Hello currently comes from the bicycle sharing business which accounts for 83.5% of the total revenue. Although other business income has also increased significantly, the proportion is still very small. The prospectus also mentioned that Hello’s net profit is still at a loss stage, but the amount has narrowed from 632 million to 383 million, a year-on-year increase of 39%, which is also good news.
It is known that the total transaction volume of Hello in 2020 reached 13 billion CNY, and the two main businesses of two-wheelers sharing and car-pooling contributed 5.8 billion CNY and 7 billion CNY respectively. In the meanwhile, the number of annual transaction users reached 183 million, and the number of transactions reached 5.2 billion. It was a large increase in both the number of users and transactions.
In last three years, Hello’s annual revenue was 2.114 billion CNY, 4.823 billion CNY, and 6.044 billion CNY, respectively, showing a trend of steady growth. The net losses were 2.208 billion yuan, 1.5 billion yuan, and 1.133 billion yuan relatively shown that amount of losses is also gradually narrowing, but there is still a big gap from profit.
In April of this year, Hello Inc, submitted a prospectus to the US SEC, preparing to ring the bell on the Nasdaq in order to obtain more investment and capital integration. At the same time, Hello is also actively expanding its new business. In addition to launching shared mopes(electric bicycles), it also started to set up offline stores in same month and officially opened the electric bicycles sales business.
The first batch of electric bicycles launched by Hello includes three models: Hello A80 (Fairy), Hello B80 (Turing) and Hello B86 (Demon). The first model A80 is available in three different versions with starting price 3999 CNY, it has been launched in offline stores one after another.
According to the official introduction, Hello A80 series is built in the Hello’s VVSMART ultra-connected electric system which supports keyless unlocking. The e-bike is also equipped with super battery supplying by CATL, which has a over 70 kilometers’ riding mileage and supports fast charging. It can be ride for 1 hour with15 minutes ’charging, and takes only 1 hour to full charge, which greatly shortens the charging time of electric bicycle.
Comparing with electric bicycle sharing, selling is obviously more profitable which can greatly reduce the cost of e-bike’s launching and maintaining. This business may help Hello Inc. achieve profitability. But for Chinese consumers, they may prefer to share and rent other than buying -- at least for now.
However according to the analysis of the SITH’s marketing department, Hello may want to replicate the success of shared bicycles, and even go further based on this: Firstly, by using shared electric bicycles, cultivate users’ consumption habits even relying on electric two-wheels product for commuting. After the end of the user preemption phase, the subsidy for renting motorcycles/bicycles will be gradually cancelled. At this time, consumers may choose to buy a e-bike of their own, and Hello Brand will be a good choice. In addition, Hello’s market scale will undoubtedly help it reduce costs. In particular, cooperation on lithium batteries in with CATL-on basis of volume of shared bicycles-may be able to greatly reduce the price of lithium batteries on Chinese market. The pattern of the entire electric bicycle industry may be about to usher in a major change.
For other Chinese electric bicycle manufacturers, if they cannot make more efforts in innovation and produce more high-end and unique products, it will inevitably be drawn into a price war by Hello. Some small factories may be eliminated from the competition-just as the Tianjin bicycle factories were stricken hardly by shared bicycles years ago. However, for consumers in China and/or abroad, switching from lead-acid battery products to lithium batteries’ is undoubtedly an opportunity for consumption upgrades- if lithium battery technology matures and costs decrease continually.