The Zhitong Finance App learned that Everbright Overseas released a research report saying that Shopify, a leading e-commerce SaaS company, has launched an AI series of tools to effectively empower customers and merchants, and that B-side product capabilities are expected to be greatly upgraded, thereby improving the operating efficiency of merchants and promoting GMV. It is recommended to pay attention to future developments, business models, and merchant feedback effects of more AI products. Mapping domestically, under the AIGC wave, the TOB industry represented by SaaS is expected to welcome new opportunities. 1) Focus on the CRM and ERP fields empowered by AIGC and recommend Golddie International (00268); 2) In the vertical e-commerce sector, follow the progress of e-commerce SAAS enterprise AIGC tool launch. It is recommended to focus on Weimue Group (02013), China Youzan (08083), and Guangyun Technology (688365.SH).
Incidents:Shopify, a global e-commerce SaaS service platform, held a semi-annual product launch conference “Summer '23 Edition” on July 26, 23, and revealed that it will launch more than 100 product updates incorporating artificial intelligence technology; on August 2, Shopify released the 23Q2 performance report.
Everbright Overseas's main views are as follows:
23Q2 performance:1) Shopify's revenue was US$1.69 billion (YoY +31%), with market expectations of US$1.62 billion; realized revenue of US$1.25 billion for merchant solutions (YoY +35%) and revenue for subscription solutions of US$440 million (YoY +22%); net loss of US$1.3 billion was due to the sale of logistics business. The company's official website revealed that on June 6, Shopify completed the sale of its logistics business to Flexport, and Shopify will focus more on building a software platform for e-commerce companies. 2) The company looked forward to Q3 results, saying that after adjusting asset sales, Q3 revenue is expected to grow at a year-on-year rate of about 20%. The company also indicated that Q3's free cash flow profitability will be higher than the entire first half of 2023.
Shopify actively embraces AI to continuously optimize the merchant and customer experience.1) In February '23, Shopify announced the launch of Shopify Magic into the field of generating artificial intelligence. This is an intelligent tool that uses AI to automatically write product descriptions. Merchants can enter several search keywords, then let the smart tool automatically write product descriptions that include these keywords. Shopify Magic integrates a variety of tools to perform many tasks, including generating customized blog posts for merchants, automated responses to simple merchant questions, developing AI-based email marketing campaigns, and writing product descriptions. 2) In March '23, Shopify added the ChatGPT assistant to the store app and website, becoming one of the first companies to use ChatGPT to generate mobile product recommendations. Customers only need 1-2 question-and-answer conversations with Shopify's intelligent customer service, and Shopify can propose solutions based on user past behavior data. 3) In July '23, Shopify announced that it would launch a new AI chatbot assistant called “Sidekick” to help merchants manage online stores and analyze financial performance. Sidekick can suggest sales strategies based on the specific context of each store and generate charts to support this view; it can also automatically change the homepage content according to user requirements, including price changes, discount labels, and store design changes.
Weimue Group, a leading domestic e-commerce SaaS company, launched the AI application product WAI.On May 24, Weimue officially released WAI, an AI application product based on a large model, which mainly helps merchants generate a large amount of high-quality content. With the help of WAI, the 618 promotion week: 1) Compared with the previous week, the amount of data generated by marketing title generation increased by 700%, the volume of data generated by marketing copywriting content in the circle of friends increased by 265%, and the direct adoption rate of written manuscripts for short videos increased by 450%; 2) The proportion of content generated by WAI being directly adopted also gradually increased. Taking SaaS integration as an example, the product description adoption rate reached up to 40%, the direct adoption rate of herbal notes reached 36%, and the direct adoption rate of oral broadcast manuscripts also reached 22%.
The impact of AI tools on e-commerce SAAS service providers:The bank believes that the revenue growth of e-commerce SaaS service providers such as Shopify is mainly driven by the number of users and the value of a single user. Small and medium-sized merchants use e-commerce SAAS tools essentially to improve efficiency. On the one hand, AI tools are customer-facing customer service-type conversations, and on the other hand, graphic generation can provide merchants with better sales suggestions, help merchants improve marketing strategies and enhance the consumer shopping experience. After increasing the GMV of merchants, it will effectively increase the stickiness of using SAAS products, thereby attracting more merchants to pay.
Risk warning:AI technology research and development and product iteration fall short of anticipated risks; competition in the AI industry intensifies risks; commercialization progress falls short of anticipated risks; domestic and foreign policy risks.