Huanju Group Said Muddy Water Report "Contains A Lot Of Mistakes" And YY Shares Fluctuated Violently

On November 18, U.S. time, the shares of huanju group suddenly dived, falling by more than 29%. At the end of the day, the shares of huanju group fell 26.48% to 73.66 US dollars per share, and the market value fell to 5.95 billion US dollars.

Overnight, the market value of huanju group evaporated by $2.2 billion, which was caused by muddy waters research, a well-known short seller, aiming at huanju group.

On the same day, muddy water issued a short report for huanju group, saying that huanju group was a fraudulent company. The report points out that after a year of investigation and research, it is found that YY live broadcast of huanju group is suspected of fraud in terms of revenue, profit and paying users.

Subsequently, huanju group responded to the 21st century economic report that muddy water's report was full of ignorance of the live broadcasting industry and the ecology of live broadcasting. The report contained a lot of errors due to unclear logic, chaotic data and generalization.

However, huanju group did not further explain how ignorant the muddy water report was and what errors it contained. However, according to the reporter of 21st century economic report, huanju group is preparing a more detailed description of the muddy water report, but as of the time of press release, the statement has not been issued.

Being short by muddy water

Muddy water said in its short report that it mainly adopts two ways to investigate YY business. One is to collect and analyze YY's 115.6 million transaction data through automatic means, and the other is to use the traditional way of muddy water, including reviewing documents and accounts, undercover field work and human procurement.

Based on the survey, muddy water listed three methods of fraud committed by huanju group that it observed:

First, 50% of YY's users' rewards come from their own services, and the other 40% are from external robots or hosts themselves;

Secondly, the gifts of the anchorperson are recycled by the system. The actual annual income of the head anchors who claim to make tens of millions of yuan a year is not more than 2.5 million yuan;

Thirdly, the guild managing the anchor also participated in the fraud. The large-scale associations on YY were owned by former YY employees. By comparing the financial report of huanju group and the corporate credit reporting reports of YY's top five associations, the income of these associations in 2018 was less than 15% of that announced by huanju group.

In addition, muddy water also listed several anchor cases of its investigation. For example, modern brothers can still receive virtual gifts continuously when YY platform is off air, and many of the gifts they receive come from the server of huanju group. Muddy water analyzed the data of 96 randomly selected fans and found that 97.9% of the virtual gift income may be suspected of fraud.

In addition, muddy water sampled and analyzed the user data and virtual gift income of huanju group by other means. Hunshui believes that about 90% of the live broadcast income of huanju group is fraud. In addition, the organization also believes that 80% of the revenue of bigo live, the overseas live platform of huanju group, is also fraudulent.

According to the financial report just released by huanju group, its Q3 revenue was 6.286 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36.1%. Among them, the revenue from live broadcasting increased by 40.1% to 6.049.1 billion yuan, accounting for more than 96% of the total revenue.

Baidu also knows?

Hunshui said in the report that its investigation into huanju group has been carried out for more than a year, and the choice to release the report at this time is also because Baidu has just announced that it has signed a final agreement with huanju group, which will purchase YY live broadcast of huanju for about $3.6 billion in cash.

For the deal, baidu CEO Li Yanhong said that the acquisition of YY is Baidu's offensive measure after the progress of mobile ecological infrastructure construction, "YY" The addition of live will enable us to gain the platform and operation experience of large-scale video social media. Combined with Baidu's accumulation of knowledge, e-commerce and other live broadcasting services, Baidu will become one of China's leading live broadcasting platforms, and make the revenue diversification strategy take another big step forward. "

It is reported that Baidu's acquisition of YY includes but is not limited to YY mobile app, yy.com website and YY PC, and the transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2021. After the acquisition, YY's entire team, including content and technology, will be assigned to Baidu.

Li Yanhong said, "live broadcasting has become an indispensable infrastructure for the Internet platform, and technology and data enabling are the key driving factors for the future industrial transformation, including live broadcasting. Let's look forward to the new possibilities brought by YY live's joining Baidu for the live broadcasting industry."

And muddy water put forward torture to Baidu in the report. It's no secret that Baidu is trying to grow, but will it really pay 7% more cash than its market value to buy an almost completely fake business form to achieve growth?

The report also quoted the words of Baidu's professional ethics committee when it reported a case of employees suspected of serious violations of discipline and law in April this year. Baidu said at that time, "we will resolutely crack down on all violations of discipline and law, zero tolerance for any behavior that touches the red line of professional ethics, and will never relax to anyone and at any time.".

Muddy water thinks, like YY this kind of huge scale fraud, in Baidu's due diligence is impossible not to discover. Therefore, muddy water also called Baidu, "you say Baidu has real morality and respect for the law, please prove it to us."

True or false of muddy water

Muddy water is the "old enemy" of China general stock. Since 2010, muddy water has short nearly 20 Chinese enterprises. But these short positions are not always successful.

According to 21 data news lab, among the Chinese enterprises short by muddy water, 6 Chinese enterprises, including Sino forest, Huishan dairy, lvnuo international and China high speed media, were finally delisted, while the stock prices of Oriental paper and shengyingxin fell by more than 80%. Ruixing coffee, which was withdrawn from the market this year, was also initially due to the release of an anonymous short report by muddy water, which became the fuse for the exposure of financial fraud.

However, there are also companies such as New Oriental and Anta sports, which beat back muddy water shorting, and the stock price rises instead of falling. This year, muddy water has also been shorting who to learn from, iqiyi, etc., but these attacks also have little effect.

YY group's acquisition is still hard enough to see how hard the group can stand. If, as it said in its response, muddy water's report "has a lot of mistakes", it may also be another failure of muddy water to short.

After a sharp fall on November 18, huanju group's shares rose 14.73% to $84.51/share. In November 19, the shares of Huanmei group rebounded sharply. As of press release, its share price has soared more than 20%, reaching a peak of $90.73/share.