China’s No 2 short video company Kuaishou appoints new CFO amid steep losses, share price rout

Kuaishou Technology, the company behind China’s second-largest short video platform, has appointed a new chief financial officer as it tries to narrow steep losses amid Beijing’s regulatory crackdown and stiff competition from rival ByteDance.

Jin Bing, who previously served as CFO of live-streaming company Joyy and online tutoring company Zuoyebang, will replace Nicholas Yik Kay Chong, who will serve a two-year term as senior adviser to the firm, according to a Kuaishou statement issued Monday.

The change comes just three months after Kuaishou Chairman Su Hua stepped down from his role as CEO. Su, a former Google engineer who graduated from Beijing’s Tsinghua University, handed over the chief executive position to his long-time collaborator Cheng Yixiao, who along with Su created Kuaishou a decade ago as a tool to create and share animated pictures.

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The Beijing-based short video company is trying to reduce its costs after Beijing’s crackdown on the technology industry, and amid fierce competition with ByteDance, the operator of TikTok and its Chinese sister app Douyin.

Kuaishou has started firing employees who received low scores in their performance reviews, the Post reported last month, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company reported a net loss of 7.1 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) in the third quarter, in line with 7 billion yuan the company lost in the second quarter, but lower than the 8.6 billion yuan loss estimated by analysts.

“We have made clear plans to reduce costs and expenses and also improve efficiency in areas such as bandwidth usage and server deployment … to be in line with industry peers,” a company representative said during a conference call after announcing the better-than-expected earnings numbers.

The company also said it had “no plan to increase headcount significantly” in 2022.

Kuaishou’s stock price has suffered since Beijing’s broad crackdown on the tech sector began last year. After a successful IPO in February 2021, which saw its shares rise by as much as 200 per cent on the first day of trading, the stock has become one of the worst-performing among mainland Chinese tech companies.

Its Hong Kong-listed shares slipped 0.4 per cent to HK$86.8 at noon Tuesday, lower than its issue price.