Recently, Meituan released its results report for the third quarter of 2024. Financial reports show that Meituan achieved revenue of 93.6 billion yuan in the third quarter, an increase of 22.4% over the previous year.

Meituan's stock price has achieved a cumulative increase of more than 100% during this year, showing the market's strong confidence in Meituan's future development, and also partially confirming the remarkable results Meituan has achieved in improving efficiency and optimizing the business structure. Meituan CEO Wang Xing said, “We will continue to meet the needs of users, help and support the management of merchants, care for and support the development of riders, and achieve a win-win situation with our ecological partners.”

Increased synergy and steady growth in core business

Meituan's organizational restructuring and business sector integration and innovation have brought significant synergy effects. The core local business can be summarized into two major sectors: home delivery and in-store, including food and beverage takeout, Meituan flash shopping, and in-store, hotel and travel businesses. The overall core local business in Q3 was 69.4 billion yuan, up 20.2% year over year.

Through the upgrade and expansion of the “God Member” service, Meituan has achieved full coverage of various consumption scenarios and expanded to the whole country. Currently, more than 50% of in-store wine tourism businesses have participated. This move has not only enhanced user stickiness, but also brought more exposure opportunities for merchants.

Another growth point is flash sales. The innovative model of flash sales and the expansion of cooperation further reflect Meituan's leading position in the field of instant delivery. Cooperation with physical retail brands and large retailers enables Meituan to meet the immediate needs of consumers in different scenarios such as holidays, travel, and daily use. This quarter, the average number of Meituan flash sales orders exceeded 10 million orders per day, and both the number of users and transaction frequency achieved double-digit growth. On the day of Tanabata, the peak number of orders surpassed 16 million orders.

It is worth mentioning that large retailers are starting to speed up the deployment of Meituan. In October, Mingchuang Premium and Meituan announced that they had reached an in-depth strategic cooperation. Within the year, Meituan will launch more than 800 “24H supermarket stores” in the form of lightning warehouses to serve consumers' immediate needs for “online orders and delivery in as fast as 30 minutes”. Currently, Mingchuang Premium has opened 500 stores in Meituan. Financial reports show that in the third quarter, Meituan's annual number of trading users, annual active merchants, and average annual spending frequency of annual trading users all continued to grow, breaking through record highs. The number of orders shipped instantly increased to 7.1 billion.

New businesses continue to reduce losses and focus on healthy growth

Meituan achieved remarkable results in reducing losses in its new business, and operating losses narrowed further to 1 billion yuan this quarter. Compared with the past five years, Meituan's investment in new businesses has paid more attention to efficiency and effectiveness.

From 2019 to 2023, the cumulative loss of the new business exceeded 100 billion in five years. Beginning in 2023, Meituan's new business began focusing on cost reduction and efficiency. This year, the loss of the new business narrowed to 2.8 billion in Q1, further narrowed to 1.3 billion in Q2, and 1 billion this quarter.

Reducing costs and increasing efficiency is also the current consensus in the Internet industry, which is also a major direct source of corporate profits. With the exception of Meituan Premium, the new business as a whole was profitable in the third quarter. In October, Keeta officially launched in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, marking an important step in Meituan's international expansion.

As the growth rate of the new business accelerates further, the loss rate also narrows significantly, reflecting that Meituan's new business is expected to enter the harvest period. This transformation not only reflects Meituan's substantial achievements in reducing costs and increasing efficiency, but also conforms to the current consensus of the Internet industry, which is to increase corporate profits by improving efficiency.

Ecological win-win, helping steady development

Meituan's business model has always revolved around win-win ecology. In terms of merchant support, Meituan invested 1 billion dollars in grants through the “Prosperity Program” to provide more help to catering businesses that focus on products and explore innovation. All cash support will be paid in installments starting on December 31 of this year. This not only enhances the merchant's operating efficiency and economies of scale, but also lays a solid foundation for Meituan's long-term development.

In terms of rider support, Meituan has further enriched riders' care and provided more rights and support for riders through measures such as a “rider-friendly community” traffic solution, a “rider's home” function, and a pilot rider fatigue management mechanism. By the end of October, the “Rider-Friendly Community” traffic solution launched by Meituan in cooperation with seven major property companies, including Vanke Property, CNOOC Property, and Jinke Services, had already served more than 1.6 million riders, and is expected to be implemented in over 10,000 communities across the country within the year. In addition, Meituan is also cooperating with trade unions at all levels and offline businesses to continue to expand the network of rider stations in the city. Currently, the number of post stations nationwide has increased to nearly 50,000, effectively solving the problem of riders' difficulties in resting.

In terms of rider income, Meituan revealed that the average monthly income of high-frequency riders in the third quarter was between 5,720 yuan and 10,865 yuan.

High-frequency riders are riders who take orders for 22 days or more in the current month and take orders for an average of 6 hours or more per day. Judging from the average income in various regions, the average income of high-frequency riders is slightly higher than the average income of local residents.

Also, according to research statistics, the average delivery time for riders is 6.9 hours per day during peak season and 5.1 hours in low season. By strengthening business collaboration, focusing on healthy new business growth, and promoting ecological win-win, it can be seen that Meituan has not only achieved steady growth in its core business, but has also made significant progress in seeking ecological balance. As Meituan continues to focus on the “retail+technology” strategy and contribute to the rapid development of the retail industry, Meituan is expected to continue to maintain its leading position in the field of local lifestyle services and create more value for all ecosystem participants at the end of the next year.