Your Needs Our Focus
Financial Bulletin
Your downstairs express cabinet is going to Hong Kong for IPO.
Release Time：2024-09-03
Following SF Holdings, SF Real Estate Trust, Kerry Logistics and SF City, Wang Wei, the head of SF, is about to welcome the fifth listed company in his life.
On August 30th, HIVE BOX Holding Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "HIVE BOX") officially submitted the form to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, intending to list on the main board, with Huatai International as the exclusive sponsor.
Such a company, which is mainly engaged in express delivery cabinet business and fell into the crisis of "withdrawing cabinets" at the beginning of the year, now plans to go public. What is even more surprising is that this "big brother of express cabinet" who has suffered losses for many years has turned losses into profits this year after seizing the business opportunity of "reverse logistics".
The whole express delivery industry has entered a new round of capital operation peak. SF Holdings, which belongs to SF Department, is seeking to go public in Hong Kong for the second time. After the first delivery failed, it submitted the form to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange again in June.
The express delivery industry will start a new round of competition, and even HIVE BOX, who is doing terminal business, cannot help being involved. Under the external challenges, such as fee disputes and increasingly fierce competition, HIVE BOX undoubtedly hopes to enrich its scale through listing and financing, so as to further enhance its competitive advantage.
Gong Fuzhao, an expert in the express delivery industry and chief consultant of Shuangyi Consulting, told Wall Street that HIVE BOX's last financing was in 2021. As a continuous investment project, express cabinet needs long-term financial support because of its long investment time and slow return.
However, in the context of the slow recovery of Hong Kong stocks, HIVE BOX must tell a more attractive business story in order to win the favor of the capital market.
HIVE BOX was founded in 2015. At that time, e-commerce was booming, and the express delivery business surged. Terminal delivery became a bottleneck restricting logistics efficiency.
In order to solve this problem, logistics giants including SF Express, Shentong, Zhongtong, Yunda and Prologis announced that they would invest 500 million yuan to establish HIVE BOX. Among them, SF holds 35%, Shentong, Zhongtong and Yunda each hold 20%, and Prologis holds 5%.
However, in 2018, "Tongda Department" all withdrew from HIVE BOX, and some insiders speculated that this was mainly related to the rookie's involvement in the smart express cabinet business. In this market competition, the "Tongda Department" deeply bound with Ali must choose a rookie.
HIVE BOX's last financing was in January 2021. According to SF Express, HIVE BOX will complete 400 million US dollars of strategic financing this time, and its post-investment valuation is about 3.4 billion US dollars, equivalent to over 24 billion RMB.
According to HIVE BOX's prospectus, Wang Wei and his wholly-owned Mingde Holdings are now the controlling shareholders of HIVE BOX, holding 48.45% of the shares through concerted action with other shareholders.
Backed by SF Express and Wang Wei, HIVE BOX has accelerated the expansion of the express cabinet market in recent years. In 2020, HIVE BOX was reorganized and merged with China Post Express, which ranked second in the market share at that time.
As the world's largest network operator of intelligent express cabinets, by May 31, 2024, HIVE BOX had operated 330,000 groups of intelligent express cabinets, with a total of about 29.9 million outlets, covering about 209,000 communities in 31 provinces of China.
Even so, the express cabinet business is not very profitable. Due to the huge investment in building express cabinets, HIVE BOX has been in a loss state. From 2021 to 2023, it lost 2.071 billion yuan, 1.166 billion yuan and 542 million yuan respectively, with a total loss of about 3.78 billion yuan.
On the eve of listing, HIVE BOX turned a profit, with a profit of 71.6 million yuan in the first five months of this year. In this regard, HIVE BOX said that the improvement in profitability is mainly due to the significant increase in the profitability of express terminal delivery services, the rapid growth of consumer intelligent delivery services and value-added services, and the improvement in operational efficiency.
Under the background that the terminal delivery service of express delivery falls into the bottleneck of income growth, the intelligent delivery service of consumers is the most beautiful growth story that HIVE BOX can tell today.
The so-called consumer intelligent delivery service is the service that consumers send to the counter. The parcel volume of this part of business in HIVE BOX is growing rapidly, which is about 114 million pieces in 2021 and 233 million pieces in 2023.
In terms of revenue, in 2022 and 2023, consumers' intelligent delivery services brought HIVE BOX 300 million yuan and 1.02 billion yuan respectively, which increased by 109% to 690 million yuan year-on-year in the first five months of this year, accounting for 36.3% of the total revenue, almost catching up with express terminal delivery services, which accounted for about 40.8% of the total revenue.
The reason why consumers' intelligent delivery services can usher in a substantial growth is mainly because consumers' demand for return and exchange has increased.
HIVE BOX pointed out that in recent years, e-commerce has ushered in the vigorous development of the mode of live broadcast and short-sighted goods, and the trend of impromptu consumption boom has greatly promoted the soaring sales of goods, and correspondingly promoted the demand for return and exchange, which has opened up a broad business opportunity for the "reverse logistics" market.
According to the consulting data, from 2019 to 2023, the reverse parts of e-commerce in China grew rapidly with a compound annual growth rate of 22.7%, and will maintain a compound annual growth rate of 20.7% in the next five years, while the forward parts of e-commerce are only about 11.2%.
HIVE BOX seized the great opportunity of "returning goods". At the same time, it said that it has successfully built and cooperated with the leading e-commerce platform, and seamlessly integrated the e-commerce return and exchange comprehensive service with the return and exchange process, making it an indispensable return and exchange option.
Even so, Gong Fuzhao pointed out that the sustainability of HIVE BOX's new business and how HIVE BOX can prevent the main business of express cabinets from shrinking further under the condition of increasingly dense post stations will become its next challenge.
In order to find new growth points of performance, HIVE BOX began to take advantage of its own community scene in 2022 to enter the care service and home life service.
It is worth mentioning that under the new tide of China enterprises going out to sea, HIVE BOX is not absent, and in 2022, he has expanded the smart cabinet network overseas. According to the disclosure in the prospectus, as of May 31, 2024, HIVE BOX has deployed 200 smart cabinets in Thailand, and the scale is still very small.
In order to keep the top position in the fierce market competition, sinking the market and overseas markets will be the focus of HIVE BOX's future efforts.
Risk warning and exemption clause
The market is risky and investment needs to be cautious. This paper does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it take into account the special investment objectives, financial situation or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, viewpoints or conclusions in this article are in line with their specific situation. Invest accordingly at your own risk.