Just rumored to go to Hong Kong for a second listing, Vipshop was suddenly investigated.

On January 14, the General Administration of Market Supervision (GAMS) issued an announcement stating that, according to reports, according to the law, Vipshop (China) Limited, Guangzhou Vipshop E-commerce Co.

Subsequently, Vipshop responded in its official microblogging: Today, Vipshop received a notice from the State Administration of Market Supervision to investigate Vipshop's alleged unfair competition. The only thing I can say is that I'm not sure I'm the right person for this job.

As one of the e-commerce giants, Vipshop is being investigated or related to the "two choices", after Vipshop was reported by the "Love Inventory" to force hundreds of merchants to choose between two choices, which had a great impact.

At the end of 2020, in response to the "double eleven" e-commerce platform for online shopping first price increase and then discount, false promotions, induced transactions and other issues, the General Administration of Market Supervision launched an investigation into this, Vipshop and other three e-commerce platforms were fined 500,000 yuan each.

In the rumors of the second listing of the key point, Vipshop continuous regulatory investigations, fines, listing will be so smooth?

Vipshop Information Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in 2008, the main business is the Internet online sales of discounted goods, brand-name discounts, limited-time rush is the main business model of Vipshop.

On March 23, 2012, Vipshop was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the U.S. As of the close of business on January 13 this year, Vipshop closed at $28.59/share, a drop of 2.59%, with a total market value of $19.3 billion.

In September 2020, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce released the list of "2020 China's Top 500 Private Enterprises", showing that Vipshop ranked 75th. At the same time, Vipshop was ranked 27th in the "2020 Top 100 Chinese Private Enterprises in the Service Industry".

Compared to Ali and Jingdong, Vipshop's main "sale" route, with the price advantage, once became the third largest e-commerce platform after Ali and Jingdong.

In the third quarter of 2020, China's e-tailing B2C market transaction size of 18,692,000,000 yuan, the Vipshop's market share only accounted for 2.5%, has been far behind Tmall and Jingdong, and has been the first time in the market. Already far behind Tmall and Jingdong.

The investigation of Vipshop may be related to the 2020 outbreak of "choose one".

In the past few years, e-commerce giants are becoming increasingly competitive, whether it is the sinking market or the discount market, e-commerce competition is fierce, with the "main discount sale" Vipshop is facing more and more rivals, "limited-time sale inventory" advantage is also being weakened. The company has been in the process of developing a new product line for the past few years.

One of the strongest rivals of Vipshop is the newcomer "Love Inventory", which focuses on inventory clearing, and the two sides are in the mall, the struggle of public opinion is full of gunpowder flavor.

In September 2020, love inventory through the microblogging article, Vipshop expressly required merchants not to cooperate with love inventory, "two choose one" alleged violation of the e-commerce law, I hope Vipshop will stop the behavior.

According to the love inventory said, by the "two choose one", August 2020 to December, love inventory affected merchants reached more than 500, the affected activities more than 7,000 stalls, turnover loss of more than 2 billion yuan.

Some suppliers said that Vipshop's mandatory requirements have been in place before, but since August 2020, Vipshop has begun to explicitly require "choose one".

There are also merchants who say that Vipshop has issued a notice that if you don't take the goods off the shelves of your inventory, Vipshop will ban all your goods from the shelves. Merchants said they have lost millions of dollars in this competition.

Vipshop responded to the allegations of "two-for-one" by saying, "The news is not true.

On September 14, 2020, Love Inventory said publicly on its official microblogging site that it had submitted a real-name report to the State Administration for Market Supervision and Administration of the People's Republic of China (SAMSAR) and four other organizations on September 11th by postal mail.

According to the letter from Love Inventory, Vipshop's behavior of forcing merchants to "choose one or the other" is in violation of Articles 22 and 35 of the E-Commerce Law, Article 12 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, Article 9 of the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests Law, and Article 11 of the Interim Provisions on the Management of the Centralized Promotional Activities for Online Goods and Services of the State Market Supervision and Administration (SMA). The illegal behavior of Article 11 of the Interim Provisions on the Management of Online Goods and Services has brought serious economic losses to the majority of merchants and interfered with the business order of other platforms in the market.

At the end of last year, the Central Economic Work Conference explicitly strengthened anti-monopoly and prevented the disorderly expansion of capital. There are more and more antitrust investigations against Internet giants, and on December 24 last year, Ali, ReadWrite, and Fengchao were topically punished for violating the antitrust law.

Also on November 10 last year, the General Administration of Market Supervision issued the "Anti-monopoly Guidelines on the Platform Economy (Draft for Comments)", which is clear on the "two choices", "big data to kill maturity", "Tying" and other monopolistic behaviors are defined. This time, Vipshop can be said to be in the gun's mouth.

On the same day that Vipshop was formally investigated, Xinhua News Agency published an opinion piece, "Vipshop 'on the list': before the rules, the size of the equality", saying, "online to engage in ad blocking, traffic hijacking, data kills maturity, cheating clicks, bundled software, malicious infringement; offline to force the platform to Merchants 'choose one or the other' and cut down on employees' due benefits, leading to the transmission of the impact of unfair competition from online to offline. All kinds of unfair competition behavior is harmful, covert, is quietly eroding the base of the healthy development of the market economy.

Immediately after the General Administration of Market Supervision opened an investigation, the central media came out to criticize, so it is clear that this time, Vipshop is not a small thing.

In fact, this is not the first time that Vipshop has been investigated. 2020, the end of the year, in response to the "double 11" before and after the consumer reflected a strong online shopping first price increase after discounts, false promotions, induced transactions, etc., the General Administration of Market Supervision of the Vipshop and other three companies were imposed a fine of 500,000 yuan.

Compared to the crazy "burning money" of Pinduoduo, Vipshop has been able to maintain profitability for a long time.

From the financial data, these years, Vipshop's revenue is quite considerable, from 2017 to 2019, revenue continues to step up, respectively, 71.1 billion, 81.5 billion, 88.7 billion, and during this period, Vipshop maintains a net profit of about 2 billion yuan, but in 2019, the net profit has doubled, reaching nearly 4 billion yuan.

According to wind data, from 2013 to 2019, Vipshop's net profit margin remained within 5%, and in the first three quarters of 2020, Vipshop's net profit margin rose to 5.25%.

According to several financial reports made public by Vipshop, it has been profitable for 32 consecutive quarters as of the third quarter of 2020, and the number of active users on the platform has shown strong growth. This shows that Vipshop's "sale" model still has a strong vitality and greater room for development. If it goes public again, it will be conducive to the development of new businesses and further develop the market.

Recently, there have been reports that Vipshop is seeking a second listing in Hong Kong, with a financing target of up to $2.5 billion. Three people familiar with the matter said that Vipshop's listing could take place in the second or third quarter of this year, depending on regulatory approval and market conditions.

However, the person in charge of Vipshop only gave a four-word response of "no comment".

If Vipshop really has a plan to go public in Hong Kong for the second time, it remains to be seen whether the recent frequent investigations will disrupt the pace of its listing.

For the e-commerce giants, the antitrust law has been like the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. In the past, this piece of violation of the chaotic, but due to legal regulatory reasons, the penalty is less, with the strengthening of the central antitrust, regulatory continued to tighten, e-commerce giants touched the antitrust investigation will be more and more.