Key points of the report
The scale growth slowed down, the popular categories switched, and the channel operation strategy was more refined. 1) In 2021, the scale of China’s book retail market was 98.68 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 1.65% and a year-on-year decrease of 3.51%. The production capacity of new books has been restored, and there are 193000 kinds of dynamic sales varieties, which is basically the same as that in 2019. The median price of new books is 49.8 yuan. 2) The scale of physical bookstores accounted for 21.48%, the scale of online bookstores was 21.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.09%, the scale of online stores accounted for 78.52%, and the scale of online bookstores was 77.48 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1%. 3) The sales of children’s books, social sciences, teaching aids and literature account for 87% of the overall market scale, of which the scale of children’s books increased by 1% year-on-year, and children’s science popularization has become the largest sub category in children’s books; Driven by the sales of books published on topics such as Marxism Leninism and academic culture, the scale of codeyang increased by 10.02% year-on-year; The sales of literature books have achieved positive year-on-year growth. 4) In 2021, the distribution of short video live broadcasting channels will become more popular. While enjoying the flow dividend, it will also differentiate from other online platforms in hot selling varieties & categories and marketing methods
The head effect is prominent, and the publishing organization is strong. In 2021, the contribution rate of the top 1% varieties in the book retail market reached 59.7%, further increased by 1.08 PCT compared with 2020, and the market head effect was more obvious; Fictional, non fictional and children’s best sellers are mainly composed of comic knowledge, online paper books and classic long-selling books. In terms of publishing institutions, China Publishing & Media Holdings Co.Ltd(601949) , Phoenix publishing and ChinaWorld publishing ranked among the top three publishing groups, people’s publishing house, Citic Press Corporation(300788) , Beijing United Publishing ranked among the top three publishing houses, Thinkingdom Media Group Ltd(603096) , Beijing moti, Dook Media Group Limited(301025) ranked among the top three book companies.
Our views on the industry: 1) the structural growth opportunities of the category under the high-quality content, including children’s books with rigid demand, and the sales of short video platform further drive the growth; The market share of theme publishing is expected to continue to increase under the promotion of major topics and multiple themes; The elastic growth of literary categories under the linkage of digital reading, paper books and film and television works. 2) The differentiated development opportunities formed in the channel reform, Wuxi Online Offline Communication Information Technology Co.Ltd(300959) and live broadcast goods form sales category, content quality and price differential marketing with other e-commerce. Short video live broadcast goods can become the main positions for new book publicity and old book de inventory, and form the precipitation and transformation of private traffic, Self operated e-commerce and platform e-commerce take brand advantage as the core to form differentiated products and marketing. 3) The “14th five year plan” of the publishing industry is expected to bring an inflection point for the development of the industry. In the “14th five year plan” of the publishing industry, it is pointed out that we will standardize the online and offline publishing order, strictly standardize the cooperation between publishing units and private institutions, strengthen the supervision and management of publication prices, promote book price legislation, effectively stop the vicious “price war” of online and offline publication sales, and create a healthy and orderly market environment. This is expected to play a normative role in the continuous emergence of fake books that disrupt the market price order in recent years and the declining sales discount rate. In the long run, the problem of low discount in the book market is expected to be solved, which is conducive to the book publishing and distribution companies to maintain a stable gross profit margin.
Investment suggestion: as a segment with steady performance and continuous dividend, publishing has a certain excellent investment cost performance. At present, the overall P / E ratio of CS publishing industry is 13.82 times, which is at the quantile of 21.70% of the valuation in recent five years, and is lower than the median and average value of historical valuation. Leading publishing groups, publishing houses and book companies have the advantages of high-quality content matrix and production capacity. It is suggested to pay attention to Citic Press Corporation(300788) , Thinkingdom Media Group Ltd(603096) , Dook Media Group Limited(301025) , Guomai Culture & Media Co.Ltd(301052) , China South Publishing & Media Group Co.Ltd(601098) , Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing & Media Corporation Limited(601928) , etc.
Risk warning: the impact of epidemic situation is repeated and the time is uncertain; Book sales decline; Risk of piracy and infringement; Risk of intellectual property disputes.
