On August 28, Meitu released its 2024 interim results. From January to June 2024, Meitu's revenue was 1.62 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.6%. The most eye-catching data was the adjusted net profit attributable to the parent company of 278 million yuan. A year-on-year

html On August 28, Meitu released its 2024 interim results. From January to June 2024, Meitu's revenue was 1.62 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.6%. The most eye-catching data was the adjusted net profit attributable to the parent company of 278 million yuan. A year-on-year increase of 80.3%.

In fact, the net profit data of Meitu’s 2023 mid-term report is even more eye-catching, with a year-on-year increase of 320%. However, we observed in the topic "Net profit surged 320%, but Meitu's overseas performance needs to be strengthened" that in fact, such high profits were achieved last year mainly due to the recovery of cryptocurrency prices and the reversal of large impairment losses. .

In the previous pre-increase announcement, Meitu gave The two reasons for its performance growth are both related to its main business.

First, with the support of ai technology, in June 2023, Meitu launched/updated 6 products in one go, including Meitu Design Studio v2, Kaibai, ai digital human dreamavatar and other productivity products for b-end users, driver growth of domestic user payments. Another factor is globalization. Meitu’s app ranks among the best in many app stores, and foreign users and paying users have also achieved double growth.

According to the data released today, the mau of Meitu’s productivity scene products reached 19.2 million, a year-on-year increase of 42%. mau in overseas markets is 84.73 million , a year-on-year increase of 15%. The total number of paying users has increased from 9.11 million at the end of 2023 to 10.81 million. Of the increase, products such as Meitu Xiuxiu, Beauty Camera and Wink accounted for 80%, but no data on overseas paying users was clearly given.

Combining the financial report and past information releases of Meitu, we naturally concluded that Meitu is currently implementing the strategy of "turning to productivity tools for B-end users domestically, and still providing products for ordinary C-end users overseas". In the AI After that, did Meitu really find its “second spring” with this strategy?

In China, Meitu has occupied every tob ai image track

In 2022, ai image-generating products such as stable diffusion and midjourney quickly poured into the market. Meitu, which realized that it was lagging behind, began to catch up. In June 2023, Meitu released the self-developed Qixiang smart model with high profile, and also released/updated a number of products based on it.

from these new products Judging from its positioning, Meitu almost covers most of the popular productivity tracks in the AI ​​era. can find benchmark products in many tracks, such as Heygen, Canva, etc. In addition, Meitu has also entered the market. Specialized in video field.

Afterwards, there are still many beautiful pictures surrounding these scenes in China. For example, in February 2024, it acquired Zoku, the largest designer community in China, firstly to obtain more "data", and secondly to expand into the professional design field. In June 2024, the short video creation platform moki and the one-stop game advertising platform Qimi were released, continuing to increase productivity scenarios. Overseas , in September last year, Meitu launched the e-commerce design website vmake by airbrush to try to lay out productivity tools.

Judging from the results, although Meitu itself may have opened up its revenue line with the help of domestic TOB, Meitu's TOB products are still much worse than the first-tier products in each track. has the highest MAU on the mobile side since its launch, while vmake, the only website deployed overseas, has the highest traffic on the web side. We also used these 2 products to see how the beautiful pictures performed.

Kaipai entered the market with "full workflow" and is Meitu's most popular product in China.

Starting from the single-point function of the teleprompter, Meitu has expanded forward and backward to pre-content planning and post-editing and production. function, and this year also integrated the AI ​​digital human dreamavatar, has formed a relatively comprehensive workflow for oral broadcast scenarios (called talking video overseas).

Among the top 50 Chinese ios photography and video bestsellers, there are 3 products that overlap with the shooting function. Qutui Technology’s “Flash Cut” is more focused on digital people and post-production intelligent editing functions, while the other two teleprompter products are Compared with them, focusing on the pre-content planning and shooting process, the shooting starts with a more comprehensive workflow, forming a point of difference. This is very similar to the overseas similar product captions that we analyzed in the previous topic selection. It focuses on lowering the threshold and comprehensive functions. (Interested readers can refer to our previous topic selection "").

From the data point of view, mau is far ahead when it starts shooting, but its income is still the highest even though it started shooting, reaching about 80,000 US dollars in July, but other products also have about 50,000, and the lead is not obvious. Compared with some similar products in overseas markets For products such as captions, the monthly revenue on the iOS side alone is around one million US dollars. When we started shooting mau, we were able to achieve the top goal. With many functions limited, the commercialization results were not ideal.

E-commerce has become the leader in domestic subdivisions and is exploring more imaginative overseas markets.

Meitu Design Studio and vmake, two design products targeting domestic and foreign markets respectively, have achieved good results in the product matrix. can reach top 1 in the domestic beauty design studio, while vmake started late overseas and is currently only in the second echelon.

Let’s talk about domestic first , although throughout the image with In the design track, the data of Meitu Design Studio is lower than that of many graphic/graphic design products, but if you look at the e-commerce design segment, Meitu Design Studio should be the top one in terms of visits in the country. (Although the overseas version of Meitu Design Studio x-design has been launched overseas, the number of website visits in July was only 48,000, which is only in the initial stage)

From a functional point of view, Meitu Design Studio mainly has three parallel functions: AI commercial photography for e-commerce, AI photo retouching, and AI design, which are Meitu's own advantages. Judging from the title, Meitu Design Studio is more e-commerce focused. It has both photoroom-like AI product image production and AI model images that are mainly made by products such as weshop. In terms of external communication, Meitu also hopes that Meitu Design Studio can build brand awareness in the e-commerce industry.

Meitu’s financial report stated that Meitu Design Studio has approximately 9 paid subscribers 6w, and product revenue is year-on-year An increase of 152%. According to Meitu’s 2023 annual report conference call in March this year, Meitu Design Studio’s full-year revenue in 2023 will reach 100 million yuan (approximately 13 million U.S. dollars). If we calculate Meitu's annual revenue of 1.3 billion yuan from imaging and design products, Meitu Design Studio can account for about 7.5%. As a product that has been online for more than 2 years, it is a good result. (Multiple research reports mentioned that Meitu Design Studio has 15 million mau by the end of 2023. Based on the estimate of 870,000 paying users of Meitu Design Studio by the end of 2023 in this financial report, this data is highly likely to be credible. But we have observed that, The number of visits to Meitu Design Studio on the web side is 810,000, and the number of visits on the app side is only 100,000. The author speculates that in the financial report, Meitu also includes users who use the Meitu Design Studio function through the desktop version of Meitu Xiu Xiu. mau, resulting in data bias)

and the photoroom mentioned above, which specializes in ai product pictures (for details, please see our previous topic ""), the last time arr was announced, it had 65 million US dollars, probably for beauty design 4.7 times that of the room.The higher ceiling allowed Meitu to put the only tob productivity tool launched overseas in the e-commerce field.

In terms of function, vmake is very similar to the "Meitu Design Studio". It still does both "AI Commercial Photography" and "AI Model", but it removes the graphic design, AI writing, logo/ppt generation, etc. and e-mail in the Meitu Design Studio. Functions not directly related to the business scene have been subtracted for overseas markets.

According to similarweb data, vmake website visits in June reached 200w , the most popular overseas product photoroom is 1200w, a product with similar positioning is pixelcut It is 600w, and vmake can only be considered as a waist product at present. On the mobile side, both users and revenue are significantly different from the top. The difference between

vmake in overseas markets mainly lies in the AI ​​model map . Weshop, which was incubated by Mogujie, has also gone overseas to conquer overseas markets. However, the current problem with the model map is that it still cannot be directly implemented and needs to wait for technological breakthroughs. In the short term, the probability that AI models will become a breakthrough point is not high.

After seeing the above two products, I can actually feel that beauty Tu has made a layout on the "relatively necessary" track, and has achieved a relatively leading position in China. However, compared with the corresponding overseas talking video and e-commerce designs, there is a big gap in the ceiling of leading products, and There are a lot of players overseas. There are some beautiful pictures that start late. On tob, they need to face the lack of domestic payment capabilities. Overseas, they have to continue to move forward as a chaser.

integrates AI and explores video scenarios. Meitu’s c-end products focus on stability.

. Compared with the tob end, Meitu is more low-key on the tob end. At home and abroad, they integrate AI functions into old products. and explored the field of video editing.

The four old products have a relatively unified idea of ​​integrating AI. basically has the original functions. Join the market basically On the mainstream AI function , we will also focus on recommending AI photos, AI filters, AI ID photos/yearbook photos, clay style filters and other previously popular methods.

Judging from the results, after incorporating the AI ​​function, the results of these four products are relatively stable. In China, Meitu Xiuxiu’s revenue increased slightly, and the gap with Xingtu narrowed. Overseas, the total revenue of the four products was slightly lower than the second half of last year, but slightly higher than the first half of last year.

From the perspective of the functions of wink and airvid in the video scene, is different from the "comprehensive" one. 14wink focuses on beautifying portrait videos , and also emphasizes one-click For editing and quickly turning into a movie, airvid goes a step further, and even video editing-related functions have been removed. focuses on beauty. Meitu has indeed achieved "promotion" and is also very AI ("foolish operation lowers the threshold").

According to diandian data, wink’s global dual-end MAU in July was about 8.25 million, and China (including domestic Android), India, and Indonesia were the top Three major markets, in 24 years In the report, Meitu specifically named wink and gave data that mau increased by 99% year-on-year in the first half of 2023. airvid’s mau in July was about 800,000, and it has grown more than 4 times this year, with the Indian market accounting for more than 60%. The user growth of these two products is indeed remarkable.

But in terms of revenue, wink earned US$740,000 in July, and its total revenue from January to June this year was US$4.41 million, a year-on-year increase of 79%, which is considered a good one. Commercialization achievements, but the fly in the ointment is that these revenues basically come from domestic, and wink’s overseas commercialization has not yet been fully completed. Airvid’s current daily revenue is less than $50 and has not yet begun commercialization.

In 2023, in the two dimensions of mau and subscribers, Meitu’s overseas data will account for 30% left and right , However, subscription/in-app purchase revenue accounts for more than 50%, which is a very important revenue for Meitu, mainly relying on 4 old products. In the video field, wink’s mau has been on an upward trend since its launch, but its revenue basically comes from the domestic market. On the c side, pictures are generally "maintaining stability and growing slightly", while videos are seeing good growth in overseas users, but have not yet been able to earn money from overseas users.

To generate income, we still have to rely on going overseas.

From our observation of Meitu’s various product lines, we can see that Meitu in the ai era has turned to tob in China and has achieved good results. Two fields: oral broadcasting and e-commerce design The head of the subdivided track was achieved.Overseas, Meitu has not made efforts on the TOC side. When launching AI products, it still mainly adds AI functions to old products. ToB only has one product, vmake, . Overall, Meitu has achieved a lot of success overseas in this wave. The results are beyond words.

No matter how you calculate it, the two business lines of tob and toc have more growth and payment capabilities in overseas markets, so Meitu’s Why is Yibo lagging behind in overseas markets?

Let’s talk about toc products first. We have observed that in this wave of aigc image products, are basically “tob” products that are in demand and can really gain income, while “toc” products are basically not able to obtain significant income growth through AI.

Judging from the data of several head retouching products from January 2022 to the present, only remini, epik (and lensa) can rely on the popularity of single-point AI functions to obtain traffic and realize income in a short period of time explosive growth. Well-done ones such as Remini can convert part of the traffic brought by the explosion with more comprehensive and high-quality functions. The revenue has declined after the surge, but it has reached a higher level. And epik and lensa are a bit like, "like they are popular, but also like they are not popular at all". The highlights of AI on the toc side are more at the growth level, and everyone is still exploring the commercialization point. This is very different from Tob’s photorooms.

Meitu A defensive strategy is to imitate other products after they become popular. ensures the stability of product users and income. Judging from the overall income of overseas picture tracks, this strategy is relatively reasonable.