Weibo, de Chinese Twitter.
Als je kijkt naar het koersverloop van het laatste jaar is dee gezakt van bijna $ 75 naar $ 42 nu een all time low. Wil dit zeggen dat dit een goed moment is om in te stappen. Ik ben geen proffesionele belegger maar gezien de gigantische markt qua aantallen gebruikers zou je zeggen van wel.
Recent was er een artikel inzake een nieuwe App van Weibo die nog niet gelancerd is maar nu al een enorme potentie aangeeft.
Ik zou het leuk vinden indien wij de ontwikkelingen van QWeibo en de App in dit Forum kunnen volgen en zou het op prijs stellen input te ontvangen over de ontwikkelingen omdat er al zo weinig te vinden is in fora etc.
An Oasis Of Opportunity Lies Within Weibo's New App
Nov. 27, 2019 3:53 PM ET|
Summary
Oasis has great potential to broaden Weibo's social commerce efforts.
It could substantially increase ad inventories and could complement Weibo's Yizhibo app.
Even being a fraction of Instagram's size could be immensely valuable.
Weibo continues to trade at an extremely conservative valuation despite Oasis potentially being a strong growth driver.
Although Weibo (WB) has recovered slightly since our last article, we do believe there's more room to go, especially after doing more research on their Oasis app, which should launch this month. Oasis has the potential to be a massive growth driver for Weibo and is already doing quite well. We believe the extremely low valuation Weibo is getting makes no sense with its great fundamentals and the launch of Oasis.
Source: Seeking Alpha
What is Oasis
Recently, Weibo has beta tested an app called Oasis. It seems to be similar to Facebook's Instagram, allowing users to “post, share, and edit pictures and videos with a variety of filters, as well as add featured tags to their content”.
Oasis uses a currency called “Water Drops” as a point system, allowing users with “Water Drops” to upvote top bloggers. The water droplets work in an interesting way, as described below:
The interest in Oasis has only increased with the news that digital assets, which may be blockchain-based, will be used in the app. The more active a user is, the more of these water droplets they will earn. If they are not collected within three days, however, they will ‘evaporate’. So, first impressions imply that the assets are an incentive scheme for engagement.
Though the app is not even officially launched, it reached the top of Apple’s social charts in China, beating hugely popular apps QQ and WeChat. The app’s Weibo page already has 8 million followers days after its release, according to Caixin. - Note: Now it already has over 10mil followers on Weibo
Source: Weibo
The oasis hashtag also has over 250mil views and 140k threads. In comparison the hottest thread we could find on Weibo only has 70mil views and 11k discussions.
Source: Weibo
Weibo itself has noted in its Q3 call that Oasis is meant to be a place where KOLs(Key opinion leaders) can share lifestyle content, while Weibo is the place where these KOLs can promote themselves and their products. Weibo also noted that Oasis should officially launch by the end of November after a promising beta test.
Also I'd like to share some color on Oasis. As you may know, we recently roll-out our photo and video sharing social community product named Oasis as one of our approach to further tap into the social area. The product was still in the beta testing, are waiting for the final approval from regulators. Oasis is positioned as a lifestyle focused photo and video sharing social platform. In terms of differentiation from Weibo, Oasis will encourage more UGC posting, particularly from vertical content creators. Content is lifestyle related and mainly taking photos and video format, which complements Weibo's content per system and address users' diversified social and content consumption needs.
During the beta testing period, we are encouraged to see early momentum in user content generation and social interaction. We expect to obtain approval and official launch of the product within this month. Going forward, we will continue to optimize product features and beef-up our efforts in the channel marketing in the hope of creating a live social platform with a distinct lifestyle live.
Source: Q3 2019 call
Many are also speculating that Oasis would have a social e-commerce feature to make up for Weibo’s lack of one.
Source: Technode
Notably, Instagram already has a feature that allows users to order items without leaving the app, so it would make sense for Oasis to have e-commerce functionality.
So what would be the implications if Oasis became successful?
Oasis has all the ingredients needed to become a successful social network. It has the backing of China’s largest social network, it already has millions of people waiting to download it, and it has little to no competition, as Instagram is banned in China, but how will Oasis’s success benefit Weibo?
Firstly, Weibo would start having a lot more ad inventory to sell, as from personal experience most people with multiple social networking apps tend to use them all for a longer period of time in total.This ad inventory could be more valuable. Oasis will likely have a lot more video content, which could represent more valuable ad inventory than other forms of content like blogs. Weibo could insert pre roll ads instead of the newsfeed ads it usually inserts.
Secondly, Oasis could broaden Weibo’s reach in social commerce. While Weibo already conducts social commerce through Yizhibo, its live streaming app, Oasis could help Weibo take it a step further. Weibo itself doesn’t have any e-commerce functionality, and Oasis could be a good way enable this for Weibo’s users.
Lastly, Oasis could be quite complementary to Yizhibo. Since Oasis will be more for casual topics like lifestyle, it could fit very well with Yizhibo, which also happens to be lifestyle focused. Getting more KOLs to post more lifestyle related content on Oasis could also lead to more KOLs streaming on Yizhibo, thus expanding Yizhibo’s userbase.
Valuation
Oasis is just another indication that Weibo's 15x PE may be way too conservative. If Oasis is successful, it would likely cannibalize some of Weibo's own market share but would more likely allow Weibo to capture market share from other players like Tencent. Even capturing a few million more minutes of time spent per day would substantially bolster Weibo's ad inventory and create millions of dollars of shareholder value. Instagram is currently valued at $100bil, so even if Oasis was a fraction of Instagram's size it could still be immensely valuable.
The good thing about Oasis is that even if it fails, Weibo won't lose anything except the money it invested in Oasis. Any benefit from Oasis is 100% accretive to Weibo.
Takeaway
Overall, with Oasis likely being a major growth driver in the future, the valuation of Weibo today just seems way too low. We continue to be long Weibo through Sina (SINA) for reasons stated here.