Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

Losses in the online car business were hard to sustain, so after Uber and Lyft went public, Didi began to raise new capital.

The Wall Street Journal quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Didi plans to raise up to $2 billion and will issue additional shares at the same price as it did when it raised money from Booking last July. After this round of capital injection, Didi could be valued at $62 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Currently, Didi's shareholders include Softbank Corp., Apple, Alibaba and Tencent. Softbank Corp. and Tencent declined to comment.

Didi suffered a serious public opinion crisis after two public safety incidents last year. In addition to the well-developed offline cycling business, the progress of many overseas expansion has also quietly slowed down. Although the daily order volume of online ride-hailing has reached 24 million, occupying an absolute advantage in the market, the continuous subsidy has caused great losses to Didi.

According to data previously disclosed by Didi, the sum of the costs of Didi's auto business (21%) has exceeded the actual service charge (19%), and the difference (2%) is Didi's loss. 36Kr previously disclosed exclusively that Didi lost 10.9 billion yuan in 2018 and drivers subsidized 11.3 billion yuan. According to a previous report in the Wall Street Journal, Didi had $12 billion in cash reserves when it raised funds in 2017. Didi had only $7.7 billion in net cash after debt at the end of 2018, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the face of continued subsidy losses, Didi still faces the problem of insufficient compliance capacity. In order to help make a profit and adjust the relationship between transport capacity and taxi supply and demand, Didi began to try to adjust prices in Beijing. However, there are still a lot of things to be solved after getting the money.

First, costs for passengers and drivers in the bilateral market will continue to rise as more and more third-party travel service providers, new car and mainframe factories pour into the online car market and strict operating regulations are established in the region. Therefore, on the premise of meeting bilateral demand, the establishment of a profit cycle in addition to cash-burning subsidies is a major problem that Didi needs to solve.

In addition, Didi also has large stores in addition to online ride-hailing, and some new businesses are also in the investment period, such as overseas operations, self-driving, and the after-car market. This also puts forward higher requirements for Didi's follow-up cash flow.

After this fundraising, Didi's next step is to go public. However, this step is not so easy, as Uber and Lefter are examples.

Lyft and Uber traded after initial public offerings earlier this year and continued to trade below their respective offering prices for some time after listing, reaching an all-time low in May. Although both companies have recovered from the trough, their stock market performance has actually tested speculators' interest in investing in lossmaking companies. It remains to be seen whether Didi can create the next myth in the future after Uber and Lyft go public.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.