How To Fight Against The Red Sea Of Consulting Industry?

On April 16, the municipal Party committee of Shenzhen Stock Exchange on the gem released the results of the 23rd review in 2021, and three companies including Beijing zero point data Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "zero point") passed the meeting smoothly. As a "entrepreneurial mentor" of Yuan Yue's company, the capital market has attracted the attention of investors.

Its main business is to provide data analysis and decision support services for customers in public affairs and commercial fields, that is, to provide data research or statistical reports for customers of government agencies or enterprises.

Compared with the popularity of a few tenths of a dozen, Yuan Yue, the actual controller, is a powerful force in the entrepreneurial circle, and is known as the "father of youth entrepreneurship" in the industry.

According to the public data, Yuan Yue attended the conference and forum as a lecturer and event host all the year round, and his research and writing focused on the fields of brand management, system marketing system, leadership shaping and crisis management. In addition to social activities, Yuan Yue is also rich in business. He is the chairman of zero point research consulting group, founder of Pegasus travel, a business management service organization, and vice president of China Market Research Association. He is also the dean of Business School of Xinhu Commercial University, doctor of Sociology of Peking University, MPa of Kennedy School of government of Harvard University, and visiting professor of Tsinghua University.

What is the success of the company incubated by "wanghong" Professor Yuan Yue?

Emergency "mine clearance" on the eve of the meeting

The listing process is more tortuous.

The company was listed on the new third board in February 2017 and terminated in December 2018. In October 2019, the listing process of the science and Technology Innovation Board will be launched immediately after zero. In April 2020, a few zeros will be rerouted to the gem.

Some industry insiders pointed out that data research companies are generally considered to lack the attribute of science and technology innovation, and they plan to be listed on the science and technology innovation board. It can not be ruled out that the reason is that the science and technology innovation board has just been established in 2019, and the company's management thinks that they can enjoy the "first dividend".

From the perspective of financial data, during the reporting period from 2018 to 2020, the revenue of zero point is 349 million yuan, 381 million yuan and 378 million yuan respectively, and the net profit is 35.7614 million yuan, 40.5398 million yuan and 51.3606 million yuan respectively. Yuan Yue directly and indirectly controls 81.43% of the company's equity, and has absolute control.

From the performance point of view, it is in line with the gem's "net profit in the last two years is positive, and the accumulated net profit is no less than 50 million yuan". However, the 21st century economic report reporter investigation found that there are many doubts about the recognition of revenue.

According to the data, in 2018, there were 1269 contracts signed in that year, while 1320 contracts achieved operating revenue in that year. The number of contracts to achieve revenue was greater than the number of contracts signed. Part of the contracts signed in previous years will be accepted and confirmed in the report period of 2018.

In 2018, there were only 966 contracts signed and contributed revenue in that year, with revenue contribution of RMB 227 million, while the company's annual revenue in 2018 was RMB 349 million. The revenue of contracts signed and completed in 2018 only accounted for 64.94% of the company's revenue in that year. 40% of the revenue was deferred confirmation of contracts from 2014 to 2017, with an accumulated amount of up to 122 million yuan.

In the prospectus, the company only disclosed that the composition of contract revenue in 2018 was cumulative data of contract revenue of the first five years. Whether the same situation exists in 2019 and 2020, the company did not disclose.

In addition to the dispute over financial data, Yuan Yue also carried out emergency "mine clearance" before listing.

According to Yuan Yue's concept of "cast the net before you have fish", according to the available industrial and commercial data, Yuan Yue worked in nearly 60 companies and was the actual controller of more than 110 companies.

According to the investigation by 21st century economic reporter, most of the companies yuan Yue holds or holds are equity investment, market information investigation, media marketing, enterprise consultant, etc., and most of them are small and micro enterprises, and nearly half of them have registered capital less than 1 million yuan.

Yuan Yue, as the founder of Pegasus venture capital management service company, has invested in hundreds of companies. During the reporting period, there were 299 enterprises serving and investing abroad, of which 45 were directly or indirectly controlled by Pegasus, 18 were nominated directors by Pegasus service and Pegasus investment, and 236 were other enterprises.

There are so many investment enterprises that it is inevitable to step on thunder.

According to several share bidding documents from zero point, there were significant violations of laws and regulations in the reporting period of Cheneng loan, a company that participated in the investment and nominated directors of Pegasus. As a P2P platform, Che Neng loan was punished according to law for the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits in February 2020. Up to now, there are still more than 60 million yuan in arrears. Before the explosion of thunder, Yuan Yue also allowed Che Neng Dai to use his portrait for marketing and publicity activities, and repeatedly promoted his platform.

Therefore, Yuan Yue transferred his 5% stake in Pegasus enterprise services to Yang Zhenyu before submitting the prospectus at about 0:00, and no longer served as the executive director of the company. At present, Yuan Yue still holds 35% of the voting rights of Pegasus enterprise services. Whether he will be responsible for the illegal fund-raising case of Che Neng loan, the public security system has no clear answer. According to the industry, its urgent transfer of shares may be suspected of evading regulatory review on the eve of IPO.

Moreover, as of June 2020, Yuan Yue transferred and cancelled a large number of affiliated companies. Among them, 26 foreign-invested enterprises held by Pegasus enterprise service and Pegasus investment had transferred their equity and 47 enterprises had written off.

This has aroused the concern of the regulatory authorities, and inquired about the issue of the intensive cancellation of affiliated companies by zeroth, asking whether there were violations of laws and regulations during the period of renewal of affiliated companies, and whether the equity transfer and cancellation procedures were legal. However, in the prospectus, there was no discussion on whether there were violations of laws and regulations during the period of the renewal of relevant companies.

Making ministries and commissions the banner?

This time, zero point plans to rush to the gem, and plans to raise 298 million yuan to invest in three projects, namely, "zero point cloud assessment", "knowledge intelligence spectrum" and "several decision-making cloud brain". According to the company's planning, the raised investment project does not involve the investment in fixed assets such as civil engineering and factory buildings, and the operation of the project will rely on the operation of leasing commercial office space.

The prospectus disclosed that at the beginning of its establishment, the company started with research and consulting services. After successfully building an influential industry brand - "zero point survey", it further developed multi-source data analysis and data intelligent application business.

According to the public data, the core business of the company is mainly divided into public affairs data analysis and decision support services, and business data analysis and decision support services.

The former mainly serves the party and government organs, institutions, research institutions and community organizations at all levels from the central to the grass-roots level. Through investigation and data analysis, the former directly or indirectly provides support services for their decision-making. The representative cases of such services include the survey on the civilized image of Chinese outbound tourists issued by the Ministry of culture and tourism, aiming to provide decision-making reference for relevant departments.

The service in the commercial field mainly serves enterprises in various industries, mainly involving consumer goods, finance, automobile, real estate, TMT, logistics and other industries. Through investigation and data analysis, it provides support services for their business decision-making.

According to the prospectus, it has served China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, China CITIC Bank, China Life Insurance, China Mobile and other large enterprises in the past.

In terms of public affairs business, the company's revenue during the reporting period was 188 million yuan, 185 million yuan and 187 million yuan respectively. In terms of business service business, the company contributed 161 million yuan, 196 million yuan and 191 million yuan respectively in the report period.

Different from other companies in the same industry, such as zhuos data, which focuses on the automotive industry, iResearch focuses on the new economy, and Huichen information, which mainly serves customers in the commercial field, half of the business at a few tenths is for party and government organs and enterprise units.

According to the prospectus, the company is one of China's leading data analysis and decision support service institutions. It has the identity of a third-party evaluation agency with relevant work of several ministries and commissions of the State Council and vice president unit of China market information survey industry association. It has advantages in the fields of Party and government, enterprises and public utilities.

However, it is not difficult to find that most of the investigation and research projects of central ministries and commissions served by zero zero are auxiliary research, and there is still a long way to go from their claimed supporting decision-making reports. During the reporting period, the only government customer with relatively stable status among the top five customers of the company is Beijing Haidian District government, which contributes about 15 million yuan of revenue to the company every year. The other government users in the top five customers of the company only include Harbin Pingfang business environment construction supervision bureau and Beijing market supervision administration bureau. The contract amount of that year is less than 3 million yuan, accounting for about 2% of the annual revenue.

Large amount contracts of public affairs business of the company are mainly obtained through open bidding, competitive negotiation and single source procurement.

During the reporting period, only about 25% of the signed contracts were obtained through public bidding, with an annual quota of about 100 million yuan. The number of contracts signed by other government procurement procedures accounted for more than 20%. The average contract amount of projects signed in each period during the reporting period was 180600 yuan, 204800 yuan and 209200 yuan respectively.

Some people in the consulting industry pointed out that judging from the contract amount, most of the orders from the party and government institutions served by the zero point number are small orders, which is not small compared with the description in the decision-making report of serving the central ministries and commissions vigorously publicized.

The large number of small orders also led to a considerable part of the public affairs business to be collected through a third party. During the reporting period, the amount and proportion of the third-party payment were significantly higher than that of Huichen information industry companies. During the reporting period, the amount of third-party payment received by the company was 27.1046 million yuan, 54.2962 million yuan and 43.6735 million yuan, respectively, mainly due to the unified payment designated by the government procurement project and the unified payment specified by the enterprise group.

Not only that, the company's commercial business also faces the situation that the average single contract amount is small. According to the prospectus, the company's commercial business is mainly obtained through business negotiation. The average contract amount of the projects signed in each period is 242500 yuan, 255600 yuan and 175700 yuan respectively. The company also mainly uses small amount contracts in the commercial field.

Frequent turnover of employees

According to the report of xinsijie Industry Research Center, there are more than 30000 enterprises in China's information consulting industry, and the industry competition is fierce. According to zero, participants in the competition in the research and consulting industry are expanding, and the overall competition in the industry is gradually intensifying. The company is faced with the risk of declining business performance in the increasingly fierce market competition environment.

As a matter of fact, the turnover rate of employees in the reporting period has been significantly higher than that of comparable companies in the same industry.

The total number of employees in the reporting period was 808, 948 and 891 respectively, and the overall turnover rate was 28.50%, 24.10% and 23.85%, respectively. In the report period, the number of research and consulting personnel of the company was 378, 365 and 342 respectively, and the annual turnover rates were 30.51%, 30.87% and 28.30%, respectively, and the turnover rate was higher than the average turnover rate of the company.

For the company's high turnover phenomenon, zero several thinks that the main reason is the increasing competition in the industry market and the growing demand for excellent talents. At the same time, the company also admits that if the company's talents can not meet the needs of continuous growth of business scale and continuous technology research and development, or the company has brain drain, the company will face the risk of talent shortage.

What's more unusual is that during the reporting period, there were even two CFOs leaving their posts one after another, which is very rare in IPO companies.

Among them, Liang Huiyi served as chief financial officer and Director Secretary from July 2016 to August 2017, and resigned from the company in August 2017; Yin lianfei served as chief financial officer from August 2017 to may 2019, and resigned from the company in May 2019. The two executives have been in office for only 12 months and 21 months respectively.

In May 2019, when the company was preparing to go public, the company had to temporarily appoint director Zhou lingu as CFO of Shixing company. In September of that year, Liu Sheng was officially appointed as CFO of the company.

(Editor: Zhang Yujie)

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