Sina and Netease's performance has soared sharply and their financial reports have been outstanding. When will Sohu be able to emerge from the phoenix?

Zhang Chaoyang is certainly insightful, but it is not easy to make a comeback in the fields of self-production and production. After all, iQiyi and Youku are also doing the same. "This is heavier business."

Original title: Sohu is anxious to move

forward after Sina and Netease. Whether the story of phoenix nirvana can fall on Sohu is unknown, but the pressure is quite high. Sohu recently released its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2016. Total revenue for the full year of 2016 was US$1.65 billion, down 15% year-on-year. This was the first decline in its 16 years since its listing. At the same time, it lost US$226 million for the whole year, which has been losing money for four consecutive years.

Almost at the same time, Netease and Sina, which were both four major portals at that time, also disclosed financial results one after another. Among them, Netease's net income in 2016 was 38.179 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 67.4%. Net profit was 11.605 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 72.3%, and total revenue and net profit both hit record highs; Sina's 2016 net revenue was 1.0309 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 17%, and net profit was 109.1 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 94%. Tencent's 2016 full-year financial report has not been disclosed yet, but based on its past momentum and data for the first three quarters of last year, its performance is probably better than Sina and Netease.

Although a company's merits and demerits cannot be measured simply by financial data, especially since the concept of the "four major portals" has become a thing of the past, Sina, Sohu, Netease, and Tencent are now very different in their main businesses, and comparing financial reports is not the only evaluation criterion. But in any case, Sohu is not a leader.

In the past few years, Tencent has been the leader in the entire Internet industry in China. In terms of market value, apart from Alibaba, which can compete with it, Tencent has already far surpassed other companies. In terms of revenue pillar games and super application WeChat theory, the same goes for Tencent's leading edge at the business level; in the past two years, Weibo, a subsidiary of Sina, which has found a path to commercial monetization and taken advantage of self-media and Short Video, has been widely praised as being "brought back to life", and Weibo has also become the first engine driving Sina to rebuild, with an increasingly fierce momentum; Netease, which has been low-key in the past few years, has made a blockbuster in 2016. The game business represented by "Yin Yang Shi" continues to maintain an offensive against Tencent. It is currently the only company in the domestic game field that can catch up with Tencent. E-commerce businesses such as Koala Haigou and Netease's strict selection have given Netease the opportunity to overtake in corners.

But even with Sohu,"veteran" Zhang Chaoyang has few impressive achievements. Among Sohu's four major business segments, media platform (portal business), video, Sogou, and games, brand advertising revenue dominated by media platforms and Sohu Video was US$448 million, a year-on-year decrease of 22%; online game revenue dominated by Changyou was US$396 million, a year-on-year decrease of 38%; only Sogou performed well, with revenue of US$660 million in 2016, an increase of 12% from 2015, becoming the only existence that maintained Sohu's face.

However, in the eyes of industry insiders, Sogou has a strong demand for an independent listing, and Tencent is an important shareholder. As a tool and technology-oriented company, the collaborative value of Sogou and Sohu is relatively small. Once the listing is split, Sohu's parent will be in the public market. There is greater pressure on the image and revenue level.

"Looking back on 2016, Sohu Group faced a very challenging operating environment." Zhang Chaoyang, chairman and CEO of Sohu, commented on the performance. He said that weak macro economy, increased competition and tightening regulatory measures for related industries have affected Sohu's financial performance.

Separately, Sohu's pressure on the portal business of media platforms is similar to that of Sina and Netease, and even Tencent. Today, the impact of new media platforms such as Headline, Diandian Information, and Baidu Baijihao is increasing. According to financial report information, even Sina's main revenue from advertising on its portal dropped sharply, relying on Weibo to "support" it.

In terms of the video business, Sohu Video is the only part of the business segment that is unprofitable and has serious blood loss. This is inevitable. Domestic video websites generally face huge losses, but iQiyi, Youku Tudou, and Tencent Video are each backed by the three giants, which means that there are other strong businesses that have blood transfusions, but Sohu Video is not so lucky.

Because Changyou, which previously played the role of "treasure basin," suffered from the influence of executive struggle and weak new products in recent years, the game business itself has been pulled down by the first-line echelon, and failed to obtain the dominant position such as Netease and Tencent in the transformation of mobile games.

"The head-drama competition model is unsustainable, and the focus is shifting to content production and co-production." This is Zhang Chaoyang's new strategy for Sohu Video and plans a profit plan for 2019.

Industry insiders who declined to be named believe that Sohu Video had huge advantages in the copyright of British and American dramas, but it encountered external pressure due to regulatory issues and had to adjust it in a hurry. Zhang Chaoyang is certainly insightful, but it is not easy to make a comeback in the field of self-production and production. After all, iQiyi and Youku are also doing the same. "This is heavier business."

Editor: Nancy