Membership Churn Is a Long-Term Concern for Iqiyi in an Increasingly Competitive Industry
We are encouraged that Iqiyi has been successful at turning around its business to generate high-single-digit operating margins, which are a significant improvement from a 30% operating loss margin since its IPO in 2018. We expect Iqiyi to maintain profitability in the near term because of expectations of lower content costs that are 50%-60% of sales, rather than the 70%-80% level prior to 2022. However, we forecast that subscription prices and memberships will grow at only low-single-digit levels, given our view that Iqiyi will have challenges in retaining customers on a consistent basis and is vulnerable to switching costs and churn.