"Commodity Information Service Providers" Zhuo Chuang Information Sprint A Shares Under The Pressure Of High Margin Still Exist

After 002095.SZ and 300226.SZ, 300226.SZ, another Shanghai Shandong commodity information service company (hereinafter referred to as "Zhuo Chuang") started its A share market.

With Zhuo Chuang information prospectus recently disclosed on the official website of CSRC for the first time, its business structure, financial data, etc. have also been disclosed for the first time.

According to the prospectus, its main businesses are information services, consulting services and conference research, of which information services account for over 100 million yuan and most of its revenue.

At present, Zhuo Chuang information has a wide range of information services and enjoys a higher gross profit margin compared with its peers. However, in the case of many competitors in this track, it also faces a lot of competitive pressure.

Billions of data businesses

In 2004, the bulk commodity data service was still in the blue ocean in China. Jiang Hulin, who graduated from the Physical Education Department of Liaocheng University, and six young people, together founded Zhuo Chuang information in a set of two rooms and one hall civil houses, and ran to various chemical markets across the country to collect data.

15 years later, Zhuo Chuang information has become one of the most commonly used websites to obtain commodity data, and the business has reached a performance scale of over 100 million yuan.

According to the official website, zhuochuang provides customers with commodity information, consultation and exhibition services. Its customers include industrial customers, financial institutions, commodity futures spot exchanges, government agencies, media and research institutes. Its focus areas include energy, chemical, plastics, rubber, non-ferrous metals, steel, building materials, agricultural products, agricultural and sideline products, agricultural materials, forestry, animal husbandry, fisheries, renewable resources and other commodities industries.

According to the prospectus, during the first half of 2016-2019, Zhuo Chuang information achieved operating revenue of 148 million yuan, 179 million yuan, 203 million yuan and 111 million yuan respectively, and realized non net profit deduction of 17 million yuan, 34 million yuan, 39 million yuan and 33 million yuan respectively.

Its main business income mainly comes from information service, consulting service and conference research, of which information service accounts for the majority. From 2016 to 2018, the proportion of information service income to Zhuo Chuang's information income exceeded 75%. In 2018, information business contributed revenue of 160 million yuan, accounting for 78.77% of the company's total operating revenue, while consulting services and conference research accounted for 11.53% and 8.87% respectively.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have contributed to the revenue, including government, commodity exchanges and Bloomberg news.

Prospectus shows that in 2018, the company's top five customers were Shell China, Yanan municipal government, PetroChina, Dalian commodity exchange and Fujian joint petrochemical company. The top five customers in 2017 were Prof energy information, Xinhua news agency, Shell China, Eastman China and PetroChina.

Competing for commodity information services

At present, Zhuo Chuang information has no lack of competitors in the commodity information service track, such as Baichuan information, which is commonly used by commodity price trackers, and shanghaisteel Union, which has been listed in A-share market. However, apart from the intersection of commodity information services, they also have their own focus.

Some analysts in the media industry pointed out that compared with other commodity information companies, the comparative advantage of Zhuo Chuang information lies in its wide coverage and large number of analysts.

The reporter learned that in terms of coverage, Zhuo Chuang information covers a more comprehensive commodity information. Shanghai Steel Union used to focus on the steel industry. In 2017, it invested and controlled Shandong Longzhong to improve the energy and chemical system. Business treasure mainly serves small and medium-sized enterprises in chemical, textile and other industries.

"Chuang Chuang's information coverage is relatively complete. Sometimes too small areas can only go to Zhuo Chuang to find data and consultation. Their analysts are also more subdivided, for example, an industry may be outstanding, with several analysts covering different segments, and the information industry and business community are covered by one person or several industries. Those who have long been tracking commodity prices told the twenty-first Century business reporter.

From the perspective of revenue scale, there is a big gap between Zhuo Chuang information and Shanghai Steel Union. In 2018, Zhuo Chuang information achieved a revenue of 203 million yuan, while Shanghai Steel Union achieved a revenue of 96.055 billion yuan. In terms of net profit, in 2018, Zhuo Chuang information's net profit attributable to the parent company was 45 million yuan, while Shanghai Steel Union's net profit was 121 million yuan, with a small margin difference.

This is also due to the different business structure. At present, most of Shanghai Steel Union's revenue comes from steel trading services. In contrast, Zhuo Chuang information's revenue mainly comes from light assets operation business such as information services, with a high gross margin. From 2016 to the first half of 2019, its main products' gross margins are 69.49%, 69.04%, 65.48% and 69.93% respectively. However, the gross profit margin of information services fell to 69.2% in 2018, compared with 71.76% and 72.22% respectively in the previous two years. Zhuo Chuang information said that it was mainly affected by the increase in the number of employees and the increase in salary.

In terms of information services alone, from 2016 to the first half of 2019, the gross profit margin of Zhuo Chuang information services was also much higher than that of Shanghai Steel Union. For the reason that the gross profit rate is higher than that of peers, Zhuo Chuang information explains the geographical factors. Shanghai Steel Union mainly operates in Shanghai, Zhuo Chuang information mainly operates in Zibo, Shandong Province, with labor cost lower than the former. However, the fund-raising project shows that it has planned to purchase office space in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. This may increase its cost.

Compared with Shanghai Steel Union and business treasure, Zhuo Chuang has not yet set foot in e-commerce.

Zhongtai securities has summarized the development process of e-commerce platform from 1.0 to 3.0 in the in-depth research report. The 1 stage, the e-commerce platform mainly provides information services, accumulates platform user traffic by providing information and information, and realizes through advertising, membership services and other business models. In the 2 stage, besides providing information and information, the platform adds online trading platform to meet the needs of enterprise transactions, including self-supporting, matching and selling mode. The 3 stage includes warehousing, financial credit, big data analysis and so on.

A number of commodity information service providers have tried to transform, but the results are different.