For a long time, low profile has been the bottom color of Huawei's financial business landscape. However, since the beginning of this year, some continuous signals have gradually exposed the tip of the iceberg in the financial layout of this software and hardware giant. In May, International Data Corporation (IDC) released the tracking of China's financial cloud market (the second half of 2021).
The report shows that in the second half of 2021, the financial cloud infrastructure market reached US $2.78 billion, of which the growth rate of public cloud and private cloud infrastructure markets reached 45.6% and 34.8% respectively. In this market (including public cloud and private cloud), Huawei financial cloud ranks first.
In April, Huawei payment appeared in the Huawei wallet app and launched the first binding and random reduction marketing activities. In March, 2021, Huawei won the third-party payment license through acquisition, which is also the first important license for Huawei in financial business.
In January, Huawei officially entered private equity, and its Hubble investment completed the filing and registration of private equity fund managers. The types of institutions are private equity and venture capital fund managers. This means that Hubble investment will set up private fund products in the future to raise funds for individual and institutional qualified investors for equity venture investment.
The C-end financial business that has not been developed, the aggressive development of financial cloud business, and the equity investment business of "making money through silence" constitute the core financial territory of this giant enterprise.
To C: caution, restraint, lack of license plate
Huawei payment is an important carrier of Huawei's financial business at the C-end. In recent years, the question "whether Huawei will make payment or not" is enough to reflect its entanglement and restraint in the C-end financial business.
In August 2016, Huawei pay was launched in Huawei mate and glory series smartphones, but Huawei did not plan to apply for a payment license at that time. Without a payment license, Huawei payment uses the cooperative bank's class II and III accounts to realize Huawei wallet balance payment, and through cooperation with UnionPay, realizes mobile cloud flash payment.
Su Jie, President of Huawei consumer BG consumer cloud service department, said many times at that time that Huawei would not apply for a payment license. He believed that an enterprise must have its own border awareness.
Until March, 2021, the third-party payment company "xunlian Zhifu" suddenly underwent industrial and commercial changes. Huawei became the sole shareholder of xunlian Zhifu and announced that it had won the third-party payment license. After obtaining the license, Huawei payment can provide balance payment, bank card payment, red packet, recharge, cash withdrawal and other services for individual users, as well as fund settlement, automatic account distribution, marketing empowerment and other services for enterprise users.
The insurance, loan and other businesses in Huawei wallet are not self operated products
Looking at the current Huawei wallet, we can see that although it provides many financial services, such as insurance, lending, credit card, change financing, etc., it does not have Huawei proprietary products. Huawei wallet is just a diversion for other platforms. For example, in terms of credit services, Huawei's "borrowing" column targets personal credit such as Du Xiaoman, Lexin, installment Le, Suning, Bank of Nanjing, Ping An Bank, and Huaxia Bank's rural commercial loans exclusively for small and micro businesses.
Huawei is not the first mobile phone manufacturer to obtain a payment license and then lay out finance. Xiaomi, the first to obtain payment licenses, has been active in the financial market for some time and has won several financial licenses.
On the other hand, Huawei has a natural traffic entrance for its customer base, with 300million domestic users and high brand loyalty; In terms of consumption scenarios, Huawei has the potential to cover the whole consumption scenarios of home and travel. It has made efforts in the fields of smart home, Internet of things, smart cars, system ecology and so on.
According to the data from questmobile, the activity of Huawei wallet users grew rapidly in 2021. In December 2021, the number of active users totaled 137million, an increase of 120.41% year-on-year; The number of daily active users was 26.9035 million, and the active penetration rate was 11.67%. The above three indicators ranked second only to Alipay.
It can be said that Huawei is facing a gold mine in financial business, especially consumer finance.
However, until the license was obtained, relevant Huawei executives still stated at the Huawei analyst conference that "Huawei has no plan to enter the payment market at present. In the financial field, Huawei's core is still to focus on ICT (information and communication technology) technology and apply it to the digital transformation of financial customers and the digital empowerment of the industry."
The scarcity of financial licenses also limits Huawei's ability to expand its business in C-end finance.
In addition to the payment license obtained through acquisition last year, Huawei has only one local small loan license with little news, that is, its subsidiary Shenzhen Huayi loan micro loan Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huayi loan"). Founded in 2017, Huayi loan increased its registered capital from RMB 1billion to RMB 3billion in 2019.
In the face of the C-end financial business, Huawei seems to be still very cautious, looking at it step by step.
To B: Huawei's financial cloud
Compared with the more restrained C-end financial services, Huawei financial cloud relying on Huawei cloud has developed rapidly in recent years.
The IAAs layer is the key infrastructure in the whole cloud computing industry chain. Alibaba cloud and Tencent cloud occupy the top two positions of China's public cloud IAAs all year round.
However, this situation has changed in 2020. According to IDC, in the last quarter of 2020, the share of Huawei cloud in China's public cloud IAAs market has risen to 11%, ranking second with Tencent cloud. In 2021h1, the market share of Huawei cloud reached 11.2%, officially surpassing Tencent cloud (11.1%).
In terms of the financial cloud, Huawei has also been in the forefront of the industry in just a few years. Insiders told titanium media, "Alibaba cloud, Tencent cloud and Huawei cloud are the three most valued clouds in the domestic banking industry."
The "China Financial cloud market (second half of 2021) tracking" released by IDC recently shows that in the second half of 2021, the financial cloud infrastructure market reached US $2.78 billion, of which the growth rate of public cloud and private cloud infrastructure markets reached 45.6% and 34.8% respectively. In this market (including public cloud and private cloud), Huawei financial cloud ranks first. Alibaba, Xinhua 3, Inspur and Tencent ranked second to fourth in turn, and the total market share of the top five reached 71.7%. In addition, Huawei ranks third after Alibaba and Tencent in the platform solution market.
In 2017, Huawei officially established cloud bu. At this time, the first batch of domestic cloud computing customers were almost harvested by Alibaba cloud and Tencent cloud.
A senior person in the financial cloud industry told titanium media app, "the biggest advantage of the hardware manufacturers represented by Huawei is that they can produce equipment, which can be packaged and sold together with hardware equipment, which is conducive to the rapid expansion of the market. At the same time, Huawei cloud also has Huawei's consistent strong executive power. Huawei has never suspended cloud business, but when it finds itself gradually marginalized, it immediately turns around to seize the market."
In addition, the advantages of Huawei's private cloud have also been significantly reflected in the financial industry.
Compared with traditional it and public cloud, the advantages of private cloud are mainly reflected in low latency, better compliance and security. Therefore, private cloud is more suitable for government, finance, manufacturing, medical treatment, telecommunications and other fields. IDC's Research Report on the development of China's private cloud market from 2020 to 2021 shows that the financial industry is the largest application field except for government agencies, and Huawei cloud is in the forefront of the private cloud market.
The head of a bank's Technology Department told Ti media that "the bank's core business system has a high demand for security compliance, and most of them use private cloud deployment. Insurance and Internet finance companies are relatively open to the use of public cloud." IDC also mentioned in the financial cloud report that the scale of private cloud infrastructure in the financial industry is still much higher than that of public cloud. The first mover advantages of Alibaba cloud and Tencent cloud are mainly concentrated in the public cloud field. Huawei cloud has formed a differentiated competitive barrier.
Behind the vigorous development, Huawei's financial cloud is not at ease.
The most intuitive problem is the profit. In order to quickly seize the market in the sales channel, Huawei is also willing to sacrifice profits and make concessions on the rebate ratio.
According to the "photon planet" report, Huawei cloud's first-class agents have four levels, and the rebate ratio is 25%, 30%, 35% and 40% respectively, which is equivalent to that the highest level agents sell products worth 10000 yuan, and Huawei cloud gives a commission of 4000 yuan. In contrast, Alibaba cloud and Tencent cloud are relatively close, and their rebate points are between 20% and 30%. Xuzhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, frankly said in September last year that "huaweiyun is a loss making business."
At the same time, as a hardware manufacturer, how to change from selling products to selling cloud services is also a challenge. "For salespeople, private cloud revenue comes quickly, while public cloud service revenue comes slowly." Xuzhijun said frankly that we all know that public cloud is the trend, but internally, Huawei will still "not be able to turn around. Huawei is also very painful in this process".
Investment: business collaboration and financial return
In addition to the layout of b-end and C-end, Huawei has also started the layout of private investment through its subsidiaries.
In January this year, according to the information on the website of the fund industry association, "Hubble Technology Venture Capital Co., Ltd." (Hubble investment for short) completed the filing and registration of private equity fund managers. The type of institution is private equity and venture capital fund managers.
The completion of the filing of private fund managers this time means that Huawei has officially entered the private fund industry. In the future, it will be able to set up private fund products to raise funds for individual and institutional qualified investors for equity venture investment.
Hubble investment was established in april2019 with a registered capital of RMB 700million, which is wholly owned by Huawei Investment Holdings Co., Ltd. and the legal representative is Bai Yi, an old Huawei person.
According to public information, Bai Yi has joined Huawei since August, 1997, and successively served as an employee of the R & D department, director of the Cooperation Department of the Research Institute, and deputy director of the enterprise development department; In August2007, he began to serve as president and vice president of Huawei enterprise development department, fund management department, financial risk control center and other departments; In april2019, Bai Yi took office as CEO of Hubble investment.
In the past three years since its establishment, Hubble investment has increased its capital frequently, with a registered capital of 700million yuan in 19 years, increased to 1.7 billion yuan in January of the next year, and increased to 2.7 billion yuan in October of the same year; In May, 2021, the registered capital will increase to 3billion yuan.
According to tianyancha data, since its establishment, Hubble investment has made 78 foreign investments, focusing on start-ups in the field of semiconductor chips, involving chip design, EDA (electronic equipment automation), packaging, testing, materials and equipment.
An industry fund investor told titanium media, "Hubble's investment style is not financial investment, and it doesn't pay much attention to revaluation. It pays more attention to the coordination with Huawei's core business. Huawei often provides orders to invested companies, but also provides technical, management and other support." However, the investor also said frankly, "while the invested company enjoys dividends, it also has the risk of over reliance on a single customer."
So far, Hubble has made a lot of financial gains.
On September 21, 2020, Hubble investment gained the first IPO company "sirip", with an issue price of 115.71 yuan. According to the prospectus, Hubble investment completed a capital injection of 72million yuan to srip at the price of 32.13 yuan / share in june2019. Just after the expiration of the one-year lock up period, on September 22, 2021, Hubble investment chose to reduce its holdings by no more than 160000 shares. Based on the market price, Hubble obtained more than 90million yuan through the reduction - which has exceeded the original Hubble investment of 72million yuan. Even after the reduction, Hubble investment still held about 4.64 million shares at that time, with a market value of 2.69 billion yuan.
Huawei Hubble is also behind the "No. 1 domestic PA share" Weijie Chuangxin, which was listed on April 12 this year.
According to the prospectus, Huawei Hubble acquired 3.57% of the shares at a price of 18.85 yuan / share in October 2020. Based on the equity transfer price, the overall valuation of Weijie Chuangxin is 1.035 billion yuan. According to the closing price on May 27, the share price of Weijie Chuangxin is 46.75 yuan, the market value is 18.7 billion yuan, and the net profit of Huawei Hubble exceeds 600million yuan.
It can be said that Huawei has already tasted the benefits of equity investment, whether it is industrial cooperation or financial return. After becoming a private fund manager, it is worth observing what Huawei will do next.
(titanium media)