It took Akuan Food only 11 months from calling for listing within 3 years to disclosing the prospectus. Recently, the prospectus of Sichuan Baijia Akuan Food Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Akuan Food") was released in official website, China Securities Regulatory Commission, and it is planned to be listed on the main board of Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Akuan Food used to be called "Baijia Food", but it had a dispute with Baixiang Food, an instant noodle brand, because the shape of "Baijia" and "Baixiang" was similar. After reaching an agreement with the other party, it was changed to its current name. Akuan Food said that it is still impossible to rule out disputes with Baixiang Food on related and similar matters in the future, which will adversely affect production and operation.

As a new type of non-fried convenience food producer, Akuan Food's annual income has exceeded 1 billion yuan, but its net profit declined in the first half of 221. The industry believes that this shows that the marketing cost of Akuan Food is increasing, and the expansion of offline channels also needs to be laid out. In the future, Akuan Food may enter a new adjustment period.

subsidiaries drag down performance

According to the prospectus, Akuan Food was established in December 216, mainly engaged in the research, development, production and sales of new convenience foods. The main product types include instant noodles, instant vermicelli, instant rice noodles and self-heating foods. This time, Akuan Food plans to land on the main board of Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and plans to raise 665 million yuan for the construction project of Health Food Industrial Park (Phase I) and R&D Center.

For Akuan Food, the introduction of Baijia's convenient vermicelli products has created a development opportunity. Then, Akuan Food created explosive products such as red oil skin and sweet water surface with the strategy of big single product. According to the prospectus, the sales revenue of instant noodles and convenient fans accounts for about 85% of its revenue. In addition to its own brand, Akuan Food also provides OEM services for three squirrels, Baicaowei, Liziqi and Netease YEATION.

in terms of performance, from 218 to 22 and the first half of 221, the operating income of Akuan Food was 422 million yuan, 631 million yuan, 1.11 billion yuan and 593 million yuan respectively, and the net profit returned to the mother was 6,84,8 yuan, 23,648,5 yuan, 76,264,9 yuan and 21,929,4 yuan respectively.

When talking about the decline of Akuan Food's net profit in the first half of 221, Shen Meng, executive director of chansons Capital, said that this not only shows that it may have acted to stimulate performance growth before applying for listing, but also shows that its bargaining power in the market competition is not strong, and some profits must be sacrificed for revenue growth.

Lu Shengzhen, a marketing expert, said that such a change in revenue may mean that the marketing cost is getting bigger and bigger and the rate of return will be lower and lower for Akuan Food. This also means that the online market that Akuan Food relies on has entered a bottleneck period, while the competition in offline channels requires a high degree of product line richness, and the consumer groups faced by offline consumption scenarios will also change, which will cause Akuan Food to face new difficulties when expanding offline channels, and its profits may be in a stalemate for a period of time.

renaming due to the dispute between "White House" and "White Elephant"

Consumers who have come into contact with Akuan Food may have the impression that its company was called "White House Food" for short, but it was changed to "Akuan Food" in 221. For the reason for the name change, Akuan Food also disclosed in the prospectus.

The name change of Akuan Food mainly stems from its dispute with another convenience food brand, Baixiang Food. Akuan Food said that during the reporting period, Baixiang Food had repeatedly negotiated with Akuan Food about the use of words and pictures containing the word "Baijia", believing that Akuan Food's use of words and pictures containing the word "Baijia" was easy to be mistaken with the registered trademark of Baixiang Food. Moreover, Chuanbai Food, an affiliated company previously acquired by Akuan Food, has twice filed a lawsuit with Baixiang Food for the use of the "Baijia" trademark (both reached a settlement agreement under the auspices of the court).

In order to avoid unnecessary disputes, Akuan Food and its actual controller Chen Chaohui and Baixiang Food reached an agreement on the use of words and pictures containing the word "Baijia" on December 22nd, 22. According to the agreement, Akuan Food shall not use the words and pictures containing the word "Baijia" in the product category approved by the "Baijia" trademark which is convenient for fans, instant noodles and Baixiang Food to register in the 3th category of trademark classification, nor in the company's product packaging, product introduction, official website, WeChat WeChat official account, official Weibo and other social media, online flagship stores, authorized outlets, offline promotion activities and publicity documents.

at the same time, the agreement stipulates that the company names of Akuan Food Use Company and its holding subsidiaries (including the full name of the company and "Baijia Akuan" for short) and the registered trademark of "Baijia Chenji" (including the trademark pattern and the trademark name "Baijia Chenji") shall be used within the agreed scope. Akuan Food gave Baixiang Food 9, yuan, and both parties confirmed that there was no dispute about this.

after the signing of the agreement, if Akuan Food and its holding enterprises violate the agreement, Akuan Food promises to pay Baixiang Food a one-time penalty of 1.5 million yuan. However, Akuan Food still suggested that although an agreement has been reached with Baixiang Food, it cannot be ruled out that there will be disputes with Baixiang Food on related and similar matters in the future, which will adversely affect production and operation.

A number of capital-intensive shares

While dealing with the dispute of "White House" and "White Elephant", Akuan Food is also intensively introducing capital to quickly realize multiple rounds of financing. Its intention to go public quickly is not unrelated to capital-intensive shareholding.

On February 19th, 22, Akuan Food announced that it had reached a series A financing with a total amount of 11 million yuan. The investment was led by Tongchuang Weiye Group, followed by Qianhai Equity Investment Fund and Changzhou Binfu Modern Service Industry Fund. At that time, Chen Chaohui, the founder of Akuan Food, said that the company planned to complete the IPO within three years.

On June 11th, 22, Akuan Food announced that it had obtained a series B financing of nearly 2 million yuan from five institutions, including Gaoyou Venture Capital, Maotai Jianxin Fund, Yisan Capital, Tongchuang Weiye and Binfu Fund.

according to the prospectus, in September 221, after the last equity change, Chen Chaohui was the largest shareholder of Akuan Food, holding 52.573% of the shares. Gao Yiheng and Nanhai Growth each hold about 6% of the shares. The capital of all parties has formed a long list of shareholders.

Regarding the development opportunities in the capital market, Lu Shengzhen said that for Akuan Food, listing will give it the opportunity to develop new products, and with sufficient funds, it can increase the research and development of products other than dough and gradually eliminate the dilemma of single products and declining consumer loyalty. However, if the raised funds are only used for simple scale expansion, it lacks positive significance from the perspective of sustainable development.

New convenience foods still need efforts

Convenience foods, which were once silent due to the rise of the take-away industry, are thriving again with the east wind of "house economy" and "one person for food". Tianyancha App shows that as of the first half of 221, there were more than 52, convenience food-related enterprises with the status of being in business, surviving, moving in and moving out. Among them, the registered capital of less than 1 million yuan is over 7%. From the perspective of industry distribution, nearly 73% are concentrated in wholesale and retail, followed by manufacturing, accounting for over 17%.

consumers' cognition of convenience food is also changing. At one time, convenience food was regarded as a light meal in scenes such as taking a train, but in the past two years, convenience food has become the social conversation material of young consumers to some extent. Instant noodles have been invented in many ways, and new convenience food brands, such as Akuan Food and Lamian Noodles Shuo, have also become props for consumers to take photos and punch in.

the rapid development of new convenience foods is inseparable from marketing. These brands are well versed in the thinking of young consumers and have eaten up the bonus of new marketing, but whether they can maintain their advantages in the continuous influx of competition from players needs to be questioned. At present, the online market of convenient and fast food has gradually entered the stage of stock game, and the marginal effect of traffic advertising has gradually weakened, making it more difficult to obtain traffic, and online brands have begun to shift their positions to offline.

In addition, in the convenience food industry, Master Kong and Uni-President are two insurmountable mountains. Compared with the performance of Akuan Food, in the first half of 221, the instant noodle business income of Master Kong Holdings was 12.722 billion yuan, and the instant noodle business income of Uni-President China was 4.398 billion yuan. According to public information, Jinmailang Investment Co., Ltd., the controlling shareholder of Jinmailang Food Co., Ltd., which is planning to go public, has a revenue of 21.849 billion yuan in 22.

Lu shengzhen said that the objective laws of the market require new convenience food brands to focus on product research and innovation, and the life cycle of innovative products is short, so new products are usually needed to replace upgrading in two or three years to avoid consumers' aesthetic fatigue. This has extremely high requirements for the enterprise's product research and development ability, product packaging level and sensitivity to trend grasping. It is this innovative process that has created the prosperity of the new convenience food market.

Shen Meng also said that the most important thing for consumer goods enterprises that are not protected by technological research and innovation barriers is to strengthen their sensitivity to market consumption needs and preferences, and the judgment of market competition is consumers' choice.

Editor Li Yan proofreads Lin Zhao.