Meituan Dianping Aktie

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Meituan First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Scarlett Xu, VP and Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good evening, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter of 2026 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO; and Mr. Shaohui Chen, Senior Vice President and CFO of Meituan. For today's call, management will first provide a review of our first quarter of 2026 results and then conduct a Q&A session.

Before we start, we would like to remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements, which include a number of risks and uncertainties and may differ from actual results in the future. This presentation also contains unaudited non-IFRS accounting standards financial measures that should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting standards.

For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS accounting standards measures, please refer to disclosure documents in the IR section of our website.

Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang. Please go ahead, Xing.

Hello, everyone. In the first quarter of 2026, we stayed focused on our long-term retail plus technology strategy, driving high-quality growth for both our company and the whole industry. As the preferred local service platform for consumers, merchants, Meituan's ecosystem showed strong resilience. Despite a complex market environment, we kept innovating products and services.

We increased investment in our ecosystem and technology and remain committed to creating long-term value for both consumers and merchants. We also expanded grocery retail and overseas business with improving operating efficiency. Meanwhile, we accelerated the application of AI in real business use cases. Thanks to these efforts, both our core local commerce and new initiative segments delivered solid results in the first quarter. Their operating losses narrowed significantly compared with the prior quarter.

Now let me walk you through each segment in detail. In the first quarter, in on-demand delivery industry, the irrational subsidy moderated compared with the last quarter. And even so, our food delivery business continued to attract a large number of new users. This shows that consumers chooses Meituan for our comprehensive and reliable services rather than price incentive alone. In addition, our stable, reliable delivery services during holidays and extreme weather, together with our growing high-quality supply have further strengthened our users' stickiness.

Notably, high and mid-frequency users become more active. Their ARPU increased and user loyalty strengthened. A large number of mid-frequency users upgraded to high-frequency users. These high-quality users have more diverse consumption needs and value services and supply quality more. Meanwhile, core users of Meituan Instashopping also demonstrated higher order frequency. Notably, the post-2000s generation has emerged as a key growth driver.

Our user structure advantages support our industry-leading operational efficiency. In the first quarter, the operating loss of our on-demand delivery business narrowed sharply on a quarter-on-quarter basis. To better meet user demand, especially that of our core users, we continue to improve our delivery services, merchant supply and the whole ecosystem. First, we expanded the coverage of our high-quality delivery service. More food delivery users now choose to use one-to-one express delivery, eDouyin Jisong, and they are willing to pay a premium for faster delivery.

During the holiday shopping season, we further promoted this delivery service for Meituan Instashopping. This service addresses users' time-sensitive shopping needs for categories such as mother and baby products or daily necessities and their needs for high-end gift purchase, including electronics, baiju. Second, we further enhanced our supply chain capabilities. For food delivery, our branded satellite stores Pingbai Weiqing Dian expanded rapidly. With our comprehensive operational support, these stores achieved higher conversion rates and repeat purchase rates than traditional restaurant.

For Ping Hao Fan, we work closely with the merchants to optimize their menus based on our in-depth insights into local consumer preferences. For Meituan Instashopping, we upgraded our supply chain services for all Meituan InstaMarts. We help the merchant improve product assortments, enhance procurement efficiencies and elevate the consumer experience.

Wai Ma Song Jiu [indiscernible] and branded flagship InstaMarts, Pingbai Weiqing Dian, Shen Qiang Shou, all continued their steady expansion, further enriching the product supply available on our platform. Beyond the supply upgrade, we expanded support for small- and medium-sized merchants and further improved food safety governance to build a healthier platform ecosystem.

In the first quarter, we provided a targeted operational support for more high-quality local restaurant merchants. We launched practical tools and policies to improve merchant experience, including malicious review management, order damage protection and AI-powered operational solutions among others.

On food safety, we launched 10 improvement initiatives in April. We strengthened food safety governance in 3 core areas. The first is merchant onboarding and the second is transparent operations and the third is cross-party supervision. Our goal is to build a safer and more trustworthy food delivery environment for all users.

For our in-store hotel and travel business, we continue to optimize our supply system and focus on ROI-led investment. These efforts further solidified our leading position in local services. Our core categories achieved steady growth in the first quarter. Attributable to our sustained efforts to reinforce consumers' perception of Meituan as a one-stop local service platforms.

First, on the supply side, we built a full-scope value-for-money supply system, spanning all categories and price tiers with a particular emphasis on high-quality supply. We expanded the reach and influence of our authoritative recommendation list, including the Black Pearl List, Hei Zhenzhu, Must-Eat List, Bichi Bang, Must-Visit List and Must-Stay List. This recommendation list help direct targeted traffic to high-quality merchants while providing consumers with clear, reliable guidance to inform their decision making.

In addition, we supported nearly 1.3 million skilled artisans on our platform. We help them upgrade professional skills and build personal brands through digital profiles and training programs. We continue to serve as a key link connecting merchants artisans and consumers. And second, on the product side, we launched a new point system that integrates platform points with loyalty programs of chain merchants. And this helped merchants refine operations based on member data and insights. It also supports merchants in transitioning from onetime customer acquisition to long-term user retention and customer relation management. Moreover, we actively upgraded industry-wide service standard and consumer protection mechanism.

We expanded assurance programs for prepaid services across fitness, health room and massage categories. We also introduced equipment and medicine verification processes for dental care, medical aesthetics and other health care services.

Our goal is to reduce information asymmetry in local services and build a standardized trust system. We believe this will help lower barriers to transaction conversion and particularly for nonstandard local service categories, thereby supporting the long-term sustainable growth of both our platform and merchants.

Now let's turn to our new initiatives segment. In the first quarter, we focused on the high-quality development of grocery retail and Keeta. For grocery retail, Xiaoxiang Supermarkets increased its coverage to 55 cities in the first quarter through accelerated expansion. While sustaining robust GTV growth, it further strengthened its supply chain capabilities, offering consumers a broader selection of high-quality and very competitively priced products. For example, in the first quarter, private label products accounted for a higher share of its GTV. And for Keeta, driven by economy of scale and refined operations, we achieved meaningful efficiency gains in both Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia in the first quarter.

Keeta also posted solid growth in other Middle Eastern markets and Brazil, following their respective market launches. Leveraging our accumulated operational experience, Keeta has achieved efficiency gains in certain new markets at a faster pace than we realized in our mature markets, at comparable stages of development.

Going forward, we will continue to leverage our strength in product, technology and operations to deliver better consumption and delivery experience to Keeta users. This quarter, we continue to make progress in AI development. We upgraded our AI assistant, Xiao Tuan. It brings users improved AI search experience. We recently added a dedicated Xiao Tuan entry point within the Meituan app, making it easier for users to access and engage with the AI assistant. It also helped users make quicker and smarter decisions on local services.

On the merchant side, our AI tools are designed to address real pain points in their online operations. In the in-store dining domain, our smart manager, Zhineng Zhanggui has served over 700,000 merchants in total. This quarter, we expanded its coverage from individual stores to chain stores. Our digital staff, Shuzi Yuangong continue to support small- and medium-sized merchants in services retail. It now serves over 300,000 merchants across a wide range of services categories.

Moving forward, we will continue to evolve our AI tools from single point AI empowerment towards human machine collaborations. AI will support decision-making in merchants' complex business scenarios. It will also enable end-to-end automation for routine and repetitive merchant tasks.

Looking back at the first quarter, I would say we delivered solid results and ongoing industry changes. All our businesses showed strong resilience amid a competitive market environment. For the full year of 2026, we aim to further deepen our competitive moat for core local commerce while further improving overall operational efficiency.

We will continue optimizing our products, advancing technological innovations and deepening investment in our ecosystem. We will further improve user experience, help merchants improve operational efficiency and revenues and protect the rights and interest of couriers. For new initiatives, we will focus on grocery retail and overseas expansion with a focus on achieving higher ROI. In addition, we will continue to invest in AI across both the physical and digital worlds, leveraging technology to drive retail upgrades and create long-term sustainable value for all stakeholders.

With that, I will turn the call over to Shaohui for an update on our latest financial results.

Thank you, Xing. Hello, everyone. In this quarter, we have achieved substantial financial improvement while maintaining resilient growth, and we are the go-to platform for local service merchants to run their business and for consumers to discover and transact. This strong mind share, together with our ongoing investment in user experience, supply and fulfillment allow us to navigate this dynamic environment effectively.

Now let's look at our financial results in detail. All comparisons are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Total revenue was RMB 91 billion, up 5.6%. Cost of revenue ratio increased by 8.7 percentage points to 71.5%. This was primarily driven by 2 factors: more consumer incentives deducted from revenue, higher rider incentives to maintain leading service quality amid intensified competition.

Selling and marketing expenses ratio rose by 7.6 percentage points to 25.2%, largely due to our increased investments in promotion, advertising and user incentive to enhance our brand awareness and core user engagement to address the competition. R&D expenses ratio increased to 7.7%, reflecting our increased investment in AI, while the G&A expense ratio remaining stable at 3.2%.

Our bottom line showed a strong improvement this quarter. Sequentially, we achieved more than RMB 10 billion loss reduction with total segment operating loss and adjusted net loss narrowing to RMB 4.1 billion and RMB 5 billion, respectively. This meaningful improvement reflected a moderation of competition, our effective execution on high-quality growth and operational efficiency improvement.

As of end of March, we held cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 180 billion. Beyond our own AI initiatives, we are also actively investing into some of China's leading AI and other technology companies to support their growth. As of March 31, our investment portfolio was nearly RMB 53 billion. Separately, fair value changes in certain of our investments, including Z.AI result in an RMB 7.6 billion gain recognized in other comprehensive income rather than the P&L this quarter.

Now let's look at the segment results. Starting with the core local commerce segment. Segment revenue was RMB 64 billion in Q1, returning to positive year-over-year growth. Segment operating loss narrowed meaningfully from last quarter to RMB 2 billion. On-demand delivery industry-wide subsidy started to go down in Q1. We further improved our subsidy efficiency and stayed focused on high AOV order segment and our core user base. Both the order volume and GTV of our on-demand business maintained resilient year-over-year growth during this quarter.

We further solidified our leadership in both food and nonfood sectors. Our on-demand deliveries unit economics improved significantly quarter-over-quarter. This is mainly driven by 2 factors. First, our superior order mix and user structure supports a faster recovery in AOV. And second, our overall better operational capability allow us to adapt more quickly to market shifts and drive further efficiency. However, both the AOV and subsidy for our on-demand business still need more time to go back to a reasonable level. So they continue to weigh on the revenue growth and operating profit of on-demand delivery business during this quarter.

For in-store, we continue to focus on high-quality growth. We held our position in core in-store categories and effectively capture increased holiday spending and emerging consumption trends. Our in-store business delivered steady growth this quarter, driven by strong performance across multiple fronts. We continue to see categories, including leisure and entertainment, sports and fitness, pet service and et cetera, grow rapidly in both order volume and GTV.

In time, we also saw promising traction in service verticals like medical aesthetics, health care, home renovation and et cetera, as we bring more nonstandard local service online and scale our skilled artisan community in those industries. In hotel and travel, we also delivered steady growth as we capture as travel demand during holidays.

Our industry-leading position in the low-star hotel sector stayed strong. Despite ongoing competition, our in-store hotel and travel business overall operating profit margin remained stable quarter-over-quarter.

Now turning to our new initiatives segment. Revenue in Q1 was up 21.3% year-over-year to RMB 27 billion. Segment operating loss narrowed sequentially to RMB 2.1 billion. First, our grocery retail business narrowed their loss quarter-over-quarter, supported by operational efficiency gains and seasonal tailwinds. Given growing strategic importance and sustained growth, we have started to disclose their product sales separately this quarter. The product sales mainly generated from our grocery retail business grew about 41% year-over-year this quarter, contributing meaningfully to the segment's growth.

Second, Keeta delivered resilient growth in Middle East, even in a challenging environment, further supporting its rapid revenue expansion. The loss from Keeta reduced quarter-on-quarter as we improved operating efficiency across all of its markets. In closing, I want to reiterate our confidence in the company's long-term sustainable growth potential.

As we continue to execute our Retail + Technology strategy, we will provide greater value to our merchants, consumers and the whole business partners. This will further strengthen our competitive position in the longer term. With that, we are now open for your Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.

I want to ask about the food delivery business. So as the industry subsidies gradually rationalized, what marginal shifts have you seen in the competitive landscape? And with seasonal tailwinds, do you expect the business to turn profitable for the second quarter? And how should we think about the UE progression into the second half? Just building on to that, on order volumes, given tough comps, what is your outlook for order volume growth for the next few quarters? And stepping back, if we think about the TAM, and key structural drivers for the overall market, could you just help us frame that and the long-term UE, unit economics trajectory from here?

Thank you, Ronald. So for your question on our food delivery subsidy and on the UE. So I think with industry-wide subsidy finally getting more rational, so we are seeing competition shifting back to the fundamentals. That's operational efficiency and user experience. So this transition plays to our strength. But even as we see -- we gradually pull back subsidies, we still continue to see healthy user growth and stronger engagement from our core users.

We also solidified our leadership in mid- to high AOV order segment. This is a natural result of our strong user mind share and better supply and service quality. And our structural advantage in operational efficiency are becoming increasingly evident at this stage and driving steady improvement in our financials. If competition stays more rational, we expect a meaningful UE improvement in Q2 compared to Q1, supported by seasonal tailwind, and we have sustained our market leadership in recent months, while also widening our UE gap advantage. We will continue to monitor the market closely and adapt thoughtfully.

Our focus stays on sustaining our leading position while driving operational efficiency improvement, both for ourselves and our merchants. However, our UE improved in the second half, we'll still depend on how the competition environment evolves. Also, keep in mind that delivery cost per order is seasonally higher in Q3 and Q4 compared with Q2. And on order volume, given the high basis from last year, we may see negative year-over-year order growth in the second half. But we are seeing a healthier order mix as consumers are increasingly willing to pay for quality. I would say this is a very positive sign for merchants who invest in quality supply.

Therefore, we expect the net GTV growth to be more resilient than order volume growth. That really comes down to our leadership in mid- to higher AOV segments. And the expected AOV recovery supported by our user structure advantages. And looking long term -- longer term, we continue to see upside in China's food delivery market. The service is becoming a high-frequency daily necessities for border and broader demographic, a structural shift that provides sustained momentum for deeper market penetration over time. And as we broaden our reach, we also help merchants access a bigger customer base. In fact, we are seeing the industry user base continue to expand.

On one hand, food delivery is penetrating deeper into the lower price segment. On the other hand, in our better service to consumers seeking premium and diverse options, driving steady expansion in the user base as well. We see high growth potential in purchase frequency and retention for the new users, and we believe our superior services supplies can well position us to capture this upside.

Looking back, this wave of irrational competition proved one thing. Volume acceleration driven solely by subsidy is not sustainable. True long-term growth comes down to supply-side innovation and better managing of demand supply across diverse use cases. Leveraging AI and other technologies to drive efficiency and experience improvement across the industry is also super important. These are the true foundation for healthy, sustainable growth. And that's exactly where we will continue to invest with conviction.

We have confidence in the industry long-term growth potential and achieving a sustainable high-quality 1 million order per day stays our target. On long-term unit economics, we expect competition to be more rational, particularly under regulatory guidance. And we are confident in sustaining our industry-leading operational efficiency, which will support our long-term competitiveness. We believe our food delivery long-term UE will get back to a reasonable level. And beyond that, significant synergy potential remains untapped across our core local commerce businesses. We will actively drive cross-selling between food delivery and other services. Ultimately, this will generate a long-term compounding value for the entire core local commerce segment.

Your next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Given the ongoing competitive pressure from Douyin, could management share some color about the recent trend for the in-store business? Should we expect continued pressure on both the top line growth and margin for the in-store business? In the longer term, how do you project the growth and margin trajectory, especially given the traffic disadvantage versus Douyin?

We have always viewed the local in-store services as more than just a traffic-driven business. It is a business built on physical world fulfillment and on consumers' trust. Traffic alone doesn't automatically translate into transactions. In local services, Meituan has built strength that cannot be replicated purely through traffic.

First is our brand. Our strong consumer mind share for finding stores and deals, supported by a trustworthy information and review system. Our value for money group-buy offerings, verified merchant information, integrate services like online reservation and [indiscernible] system and billions of authentic user-generating reviews together form a strong moat.

Secondly, is our continuous innovation across the whole value chain to build better and better experience. We support millions of skilled artisans on our platform, and we have deeply penetrated into sectors like medical aesthetics, elderly care and home maintenance. Our consumer protection initiatives have rebuilt consumer trust in prepaid service. By transforming offline nonstandard and long-tail services into reliable, standardized online SKUs, we have built a very differentiated supply ecosystem.

These initiatives continue to help build a self-reinforcing cycle at scale, continue to provide the best experience in the industry. We're also aggressively using AI technology with a focus to reshape the value that we deliver in the local service industry, transforming Meituan from a customer acquisition channel into a full-rounded AI-powered business partner in the local ecosystem. While competition has created some near-term noise, we believe market players have to continue to differentiate across category, merchant segment and market scenarios.

Our position as a one-stop local service platform stays strong. Our in-store revenue keeps growing steadily, and we continue to lead in core categories. We have also expanded into new service retail verticals and deepened our reach in lower-tier markets. Our investment strategy will adapt dynamically to the industry trends with primary focus always being the long-term healthy development of the industry.

This year, we will focus on 2 things: strengthening our competitive edge in core categories, and building a better digital infrastructure for local service merchants. As the industry subsidy gradually normalize, the value we deliver to merchant will matter even more in their day-to-day operations. We expect the in-store margin to stay stable in the near term, with room to recover over the long term. We have the conviction and patience to keep leading the evolution of the local service sector.

Your next question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley.

I have a question regarding AI. We've noticed that the Meituan app has recently launched the AI assistant, Xiao Tuan on its home page. Can management share some color on the progress so far? Are there any other initiatives underway to accelerate AI integration on the product side? And what capabilities are you looking to build? And what goals do you aim to achieve on the AI front over the longer term?

Thank you, Gary. Yes, you are exactly right. We have placed our AI assistant, Xiao Tuan, front and center in the Meituan app. It now sits in the middle of the bottom navigation bar for easier access. But I would say it is still at a very early stage. But anyhow, we are already seeing good initial results. More and more users are coming to Xiao Tuan, not just for very simple and short searches, but for more complex cross-use cases queries, things like please recommend a restaurant between 2 locations for guests who do not eat spicy food or book an on-site repair service. And what makes Xiao Tuan different is the foundations.

It's the authentic consumer reviews and comprehensive POI information and proprietary model trained specifically for local service businesses. Together, this gives Xiao Tuan the ability to understand better the full context and provide users with personalized recommendations. And particularly when users change their mind and adjust criteria like price range, locations or anything else, Xiao Tuan can seamlessly factor that in all prior instructions and update its recommendation accordingly.

The May Day holidays was a good example. Session volumes pick up meaningfully compared to Chinese New Year. More importantly, users won't just come in to redeem coupons on Xiao Tuan. They are actually using Xiao Tuan to discover services, destinations and ultimately plan and make a purchase on our platform. And beyond the Xiao Tuan, we are also embedding AI deeper into some specific verticals.

A good example is Xiao Tuan Health Assistant, Xiao Tuan Jiankang Guanjia, our dedicated AI product for health care services. It's built on years proprietary real-world data from pharmacies transactions and online medical consultations on our platform. And it's developed in close partnership with professional medical teams because that's where you don't want to have any hallucination by AI. It brings health consultations, medication guidance, medical report interpretation all into one seamless experience where users can consult and can order medication or book appointments all within the Meituan app.

And looking ahead, Xiao Tuan will be one of our key AI products on the consumer side. We will continue to deepen its integration into Meituan app. And beyond improving the effectiveness of user agent interactions, we will deploy Xiao Tuan's agentic task execution capabilities progressively across our business verticals. And our partnership between Meituan AI Assistant Xiaomei and the Tencent's AI chatbot Yuanbao will also be launched soon. And when the user submit local services related requests in Yuanbao, it will trigger an agent-to-agent communication with Xiaomei. And this seamlessly connects the user to our services, such as online food ordering and delivery. This collaboration will facilitate a streamlined one-stop local service transaction experience for users.

I think going forward, we will need to build capabilities not just for 2C, to consumers or 2B, to businesses and 2A, to agents is actually becomes more and more important. And as I've said in the past Q&As, we try to play offense, not defense in AI. And we consider AI to be a very important opportunity to deepen our moat and unlock new values, and we have been investing in our own large language model, LongCat.

We are improving our agentic capabilities. But what really sets us apart is our -- the foundation, the data we have. We have full spectrum local services coverage and verified merchant information, authentic user reviews and fulfillment infrastructure. Putting AI on top of these structural advantages, we will deliver superior AI-powered local service experience to users.

Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

Given the evolving industry and regulatory trends in the travel industry, could management share the recent performance of the company hotel and travel business as well as its development strategy for the full year?

Thank you, Kenneth. The hotel and travel industry has entered into a new phase in terms of regulation and competition. Consumer preference has increasingly shifted toward value-for-money options, offpeak travel, lower-tier cities and local leisure short distance getaways. In first quarter, our hotel travel business delivered steady growth, and we further consolidate our leading position in the lower star hotel area. Riding on strong travel momentum during Spring Festival holiday, including home visits and leisure travel, we offer well-priced high-quality accommodation with outstanding user experience, which effectively lifted transaction conversion rates.

We also continue to deepen our presence across the industry supply chain, catering to the differentiated needs of merchants at various operational stage, we provide end-to-end solutions covering brand establishment, targeting marketing, revenue enhancement, room renovation and PMS system support. These tailored solutions help merchants improve online operational efficiency and achieve long-term sustainable growth.

On the high-star hotel front, amid the evolving regulatory environment, we expand our high-star hotel portfolio to enrich accommodation choices for consumers. Earlier this April, we launched the 2026 Must-Stay List, featuring thousands of premium hotels across more than 200 cities nationwide. This list has become a credible curated guide for user seeking high-quality lodging experience. We partner with selected hotel merchants on the list to offer exclusive presale products for leisure travelers, bringing exclusive benefits, unique experience and one-stop high-quality vacation services. Furthermore, we remain focused on strengthening our membership ecosystem.

On the internal front, we ramped up cross-selling between accommodation and other businesses, provide high-tier Meituan members with exclusive perks, including complementary room upgrades, free breakfast, late checkout, early check-in and special discounts. Externally, we continue to promote joint membership programs with global high-end hotel brands, such as Marriott and launched exclusive membership benefit in partnership with Shanghai [indiscernible].

Looking ahead to the full year, we recognize that the recent hike in airline fuel surcharge will bring near-term vulnerability to hotel and travel industry. Long-distance travel and high-star hotels are likely to face headwinds, while short-term distance leisure travel, local accommodations and low-star hotels will remain resilient. Our structural advantage in these resilient domains position us well to navigate the current market cycle. In addition, we will fully capture opportunity brought by ongoing regulatory updates.

First, we will further solidify our core market leadership in the low-star hotel sector. Second, we will continue to expand footprint in the mid- to high-end hotels, deepen strategic partnerships with merchants, enrich our offerings and strengthen our ecosystem synergies. We will also continue to leverage the Meituan membership program to deliver targeted services to high-value users and push for further progress in the high-star hotel domain. We are confident in driving healthy, sustainable and high-quality growth for our hotel and travel space.

Your next question comes from Charlene Liu with HSBC.

I would like to ask about the Middle East situation. Can you help us understand the operational impact on Keeta so far? On UE, are the UE improvement trends in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia still on track for the quarter? Finally, given the heightened geopolitical uncertainties globally, how are you thinking about Keeta's expansion and investment pace going forward?

Thank you. Regarding the Middle East, we have seen some near-term fluctuations in our growth metrics given what's happening in this region. However, the impact has been manageable so far and our long-term conviction for this market is unchanged. We still believe Middle East is one of the most attractive on-demand delivery markets globally. The market is still growing fast, penetration remains low, and consumers there have strong willingness to pay.

Notably, even in this challenging environment, we continue to see a clear acceleration in the transition from offline to online. Consumer mind share for on-demand retail continues to strengthen and industry-wide online penetration is accelerating. On-demand delivery has clearly become an essential infrastructure. This shows the structural resilience of this business model. Broadly speaking, going global is a long-term goal for us and navigating geopolitical complexity is what we need to learn.

We will keep sharpening our risk management and building an organization that is better suited for global operations. As we do so, we will continue to grow alongside local players and create value for users, merchants and riders in the local markets. Operationally, Keeta maintained solid growth across all markets in Q1. Following Hong Kong's unit economics breakeven in Q4 last year, we delivered further efficiency gains in both Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia this quarter. This also is encouraging to see that the efficiency in ramp-up in other Middle East markets and Brazil has been even faster, thanks to the operational experience accumulated earlier.

We will prioritize operation improvement this year over new market expansion. In the longer term, we are confident in Keeta's potential to deliver on both scale and bottom line growth. In many global markets, food delivery is still an occasional service for a small segment of consumers, not a daily necessity for the mass market. This demonstrates significant growth potential.

Going forward, we will explore market expansion opportunities thoughtfully, and we will be financially disciplined. Food delivery, it's a proven business model globally and Keeta's steady efficiency gains across existing markets validates our operational playbook. As we grow and keep optimizing our operations, we are confident we will eventually achieve sustainable profitability at scale. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Alicia Yap with Citigroup.

I have a question related to your grocery retail Xiaoxiang Supermarket business. So amidst the on-demand delivery price war, we have seen fresh people maintain a rapid growth recently. Could management provide some color on Xiaoxiang Supermarkets recent performance? And then specifically, how do you view the strategic value of the 1P model like the Xiaoxiang Supermarket within the Meituan's on-demand delivery ecosystem? And what are your long-term targets for this business?

Thank you, Alicia. Well, to answer your question, yes, we know that all our peers are growing fast. I could say Xiaoxiang is growing even faster. So thank you for paying attention to Xiaoxiang Supermarket. In today's very competitive online environment, we need to make sure we have the best supply on our platform. For average consumers, they don't understand, and they don't care about whether it's a so-called 1P model or 3P model. So they only care about what they can buy from the platform and whether the suppliers, the stores can provide good quality and also an equally important predicted reliability.

So here Xiaoxiang is competing on a level playing field on the Meituan platform. But it's very important that as everything now becomes the new normal for more and more users, and they are raising their expectations on product variety, quality and value, they know they can get the same very fast delivery from any seller, but they are expecting more from the sellers. And we believe the future growth of on-demand retail markets will be driven by a hybrid model, including the so-called 3P model or like -- or initiatives by Meituan Instashopping and together with a 1P model like a Xiaoxiang Supermarket. And Xiaoxiang provides a very consistently high-quality supply with a very competitively priced product fulfillment.

So this positions us strongly to capture the substantial growth potential in this evolving space. We think it's a model built directly on our core strengths and has a clear path to profitability. But on the other hand, we have a lot to learn in this grocery business. On the operational side, Xiaoxiang has delivered a very robust GTV growth in 2025, significantly outperforming the whole industry. And I'm glad to say that this momentum continued into Q1. And recently, we accelerated our expansion. Now Xiaoxiang covers 55 cities as of the end of Q1 with the plans to enter more markets in the coming quarters.

Meanwhile, we continue to strengthen our merchandising capability and go deeper into the entire supply chain. And as an example, our private brand product, PB products are gaining greater recognition from consumers and now account for a growing share of our sales. In our more established cities like Beijing and Shanghai, we have seen a notable increase in AOV over the past few quarters. This reflects our success in capturing more wallet share by expanding our high-quality competitively priced product offerings.

And also to further strengthen our omnichannel capabilities, we are actively launching new physical stores. And you may be aware that we -- Xiaoxiang started as a pure online dark store model. But last December, we have opened our first physical store in Beijing in Harbin. And building on the success of our first physical store, we opened a second one in Ningbo in this past April. We believe physical stores can broaden our user reach and allow the consumers or potential customers to see more directly our high-quality physical goods. Because when you enter a physical store, you are going to have a much broader of view compared to any screen. And you can not only see more, you can smell it, you can touch it. So this is much more attractive than any online presentations.

So physical store will be a very good channel to strengthen Xiaoxiang's brand awareness over time. And on the other hand, even with this very rapid expansion, we remain very focused on ROI because grocery retail is a long game. And this reflects in our continued year-over-year improvement in margins in Q1. And looking ahead, we are confident that Xiaoxiang will become one of the leading players among online grocery stores. And we are targeting a sustainable low single-digit profit margin in the long run. But what's most important is that we want to build Xiaoxiang to become one of the most loved grocery brand in future. Because the mission of our company is to help people eat better. Besides food delivery, people who want to cook for themselves need to buy grocery, and we want to build Xiaoxiang to become one of the most loved grocery brands. That's our target.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Scarlett Xu for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you all for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with everyone next quarter. Thank you for your support.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Meituan Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to Scarlett Xu, VP and Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good evening, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO; and Mr. Shaohui Chen, Senior Vice President and CFO of Meituan. For today's call, management will first provide a review of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 results and then conduct a Q&A session.

Before we start, we would like to remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements, which include a number of risks and uncertainties and may differ from actual results in the future. This presentation also contains unaudited non-IFRS accounting standards, financial measures that should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting standards.

For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS accounting standards measures, please refer to the disclosure documents in the IR section of our website. Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang. Please go ahead, Xing.

Thank you, Scarlett, and hello, everyone. And 2025 was a year of both opportunities and challenges for Meituan; and facing unprecedented intense competition, we stayed focused on serving our consumers, merchants, couriers and all ecosystem partners.

And we were committed to creating long-term value. In 2025, our platform GTV and transaction volume both achieved a double-digit growth and annual transacting users and user transaction frequencies and ARPU all reached a new high. And these key metrics reaffirmed our solid position as the preferred local service platform for Chinese consumers.

In 2025, we fully upgraded our Meituan membership program. This was our first consumer loyalty program covering nearly all categories. It helped us drive cross-selling and enhance core user stickiness. Meanwhile, leveraging our comprehensive advantages in local services, we launched our own AI assistant, Xiaomei and Xiaoguan.

We brought AI technology into real consumption use case, going forward, Meituan membership and AI will continue to be the key tools for us to deliver differentiated and enhanced local experience. No matter how the market environment evolves, we remain focused on strengthening our long-term moat and promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the whole industry.

We also actively pursued new growth opportunities. During 2025, we made a series of key progress. First, we accelerated our deeper penetration into the supply side and built a comprehensive cost-effective supply system, spanning a full price range and diverse categories through supply side innovation. This allows us to precisely meet users' comprehensive needs across food delivery, e-commerce and services retail.

It also strengthened our positioning as a one-stop local service platform. In food delivery, we focused on innovation in products, store formats and channels in collaboration with the merchants. Innovative formats such as branded satellite stores [indiscernible], have helped a large number of restaurant brands and small and medium-sized merchants improve operational efficiency and expand their businesses.

Through Pin Hao Fan, Shen Qiang Shou and other formats, we work with the merchants and launched the high-quality value-for-money megahit products across different price ranges, serving a broader consumer base.

In quick commerce, we deepened our presence in local supply, becoming an important partner for many leading brands in their omnichannel strategies. We continue to extend our reach in the supply chain. Our innovative supply format, including Meituan Instamart, Meituan [indiscernible] and branded flagship Instamart, [indiscernible] as well as our self-operated Xiaoxiang Supermarket, a micro fulfillment center have become important supply for quick commerce.

Wai Ma Song Jiu achieved rapid growth as we worked closely with top liquor brands. In health care and pharmaceuticals, we continue to strengthen local supplies of common household medicines, medical devices and supported the online launch of many innovative drugs and further expanded coverage of 24-hour pharmacies, online consultations and home testing services.

Xiaoxiang Supermarket accelerated its city expansion in the fourth quarter. Over the past few years, Xiaoxiang Supermarket has built a strong supply chain, upgraded fresh produce quality and developed industrial-leading product capabilities.

And our private label products now cover broader categories, contributing higher GTV shares. In our in-store hotel and travel business, we featured our high-quality merchant recommendation list and expanded our 6 series programs [indiscernible] to more categories such as education, fitness, health care and elderly care. Based on our deep insights into consumption trends, we further enriched offerings in sports events, cultural and other ticketing, home services and more.

In addition, we supported over 1 million independent artisans [indiscernible] in digitizing their profiles on our platform, enhancing our unique service ecosystem and connectivities. Second, we focused on enhancing our comprehensive service capabilities. Through product iteration and Meituan membership upgrades, we delivered a superior consumption experience for consumers.

In fulfillment, we upgraded on-time guaranteed [indiscernible] and one-on-one express delivery [indiscernible], significantly expanding their coverage in 2025. This provided consumers with a more reliable and higher quality fulfillment protection and strengthened our competitive edge in fulfillment.

In quick commerce, we launched the industry's first full cycle service assurance program, [indiscernible] with millions of merchants and brands. It offers free return shipping for high-tier Meituan members and selected brands products. It lift industry service standards across experience, fulfillment, delivery and aftersales support.

In health care, we expanded online consultation with Grade 3A hospital doctors. We upgraded the verification and service protection for dental care and medical aesthetics and other services. These efforts comprehensively improved the reliability of online health care services, and we deeply integrated these high-quality services with our fully upgraded Meituan membership.

We launched a series of exclusive benefits for our members, covering various consumption scenarios such as food delivery, hotel booking, lifestyle services, mobility, health care and more. Richer member exclusive benefits, activities significantly improved consumer mind shares and transaction frequency, allowing us to better serve our core user base.

As a result, a large number of mid-tier members advanced to higher membership tiers. Our high-value member base continued to grow steadily amid very intense competition with their transaction frequency and spending rising notably, they also make purchases across a broader range of categories. Our continuously enhanced Meituan membership program delivered strong multidimensional support.

It boosted traffic operations and transactions and growth. It also drives cross-selling among different categories and different scenarios within our core local commerce business. Overall, we have strengthened our leading position in user structure and consumer mind share even in a very highly competitive market.

Third, we stay focused on cultivating a sustainable ecosystem, and we are taking very concrete actions to drive high-quality growth for the whole local services industry. We continue to empower small and medium-sized merchants. For example, we increased the financial support, promoted the Bright Kitchen program [indiscernible] and use AI tools improve merchant operational efficiency. We aim to foster the healthy development of the food service industry and address structural challenges such as the marketing evolution nature and food safety governance.

We also made progress in courier welfare in 2025. We that the industry in providing pension insurance subsidy program for all types of couriers across the country. Our occupational injury insurance program has now expanded to 17 provinces and cities, covering more than 16 million couriers. This protection is provided at no financial cost to the couriers.

Additionally, we continue to enhance the multi-tier welfare system for couriers across health care, education, housing and other areas. Fourth, in our overseas market, Keeta accelerated its global footprint and delivered a good growth momentum in 2025. In Hong Kong, Keeta further solidified its leading position and achieved positive unit economics in the fourth quarter. In Saudi Arabia, Keeta's order volume keep growing throughout 2025, and it has become one of the top platforms for local consumers with higher-quality services.

In the second half of 2025, we launched our operation in Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Brazil. All these new markets recorded strong growth momentum since business is launched. Going forward, we expect Keeta to continue leveraging its strength in products, technology and operational know-how. We will work closely with merchants and couriers in all markets around the world, jointly drive the digital transformation of the industry and enable consumers in more countries and regions to enjoy our high-quality and efficient services.

And moreover, in 2025, we embraced the opportunity brought by AI. We are committed to driving the AI transformation of the physical world by integrating AI innovation with our proven services advantages in the physical world. Over the years, we have made significant investment in AI technology. We combined the strength of our in-house multimodel LongCat model and that's a series of large language models. And we -- at the same time, we also used state-of-the-art third-party models.

We also leveraged Meituan's unique digital assets, including extensive merchant information and high-quality diverse offerings and real consumption behavior and user reviews. We first tested Xiaomei, a smart live assistant as a stand-alone app. What's more important is that we have rolled out Xiaoguan and our AI assistant embedded in the Meituan app to all users.

We have integrated AI technology with use cases on Meituan, covering all categories in local services on our platform. Xiaoguan, the AI feature in Meituan will fundamentally change how consumers use our apps. searching will evolve into simply making requests in natural language, not just keywords.

Then Xiaoguan draws on Meituan's rich supply and strong fulfillment capabilities. Combined with our mature native interface in the Meituan app, it brings consumers a brand-new easy-to-use and superior experience. In 2025 -- in 2026, we will continue to refine Xiaoguan's user experience.

Our goal is to make Xiaoguan the most consumer-centric AI agent for local services. Looking back on 2025, we faced a complex external environment and unprecedented fierce competition, but we remain committed to our mission to help people eat better, live better and we work hard to deliver real values for consumers, merchants, couriers and all ecosystem partners.

Looking ahead, we believe our core local commerce still has strong growth potential and very strong business resilience. We'll continue to deepen our supply -- our penetration into the supply side, enhance service quality, improve our Meituan membership program and invest in the ecosystem. We will further strengthen our position as the preferred local services platform for most consumers and drive the high-quality development of the industry.

Meanwhile, grocery retail and overseas market are long-term growth trend with a clear strategy and potential. We will actively explore these areas with investment discipline. More importantly, as we get into the AI era, we will firmly implement our retail plus technology strategy, utilizing AI to deeply empower the local services industry and deliver better experience for both consumers and merchants. With that, I will turn the call over to Shaohui for an update on our latest financial results.

Thanks, Xing. Hello, everyone. Now let's begin with our fourth quarter financial results. Please note that all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted.

In Q4, our total revenue was RMB 92.1 billion, up 4.1%. Cost of revenue ratio increased by 11.6 percentage points to 33.8%. This is primarily driven by 3 factors: more consumer incentives deducted from revenue, higher rider incentives to maintain leading service quality and increased overseas operational costs. Selling and marketing expenses ratio rose by 14.8 percentage points to 34.4%, largely due to our increased investment in promotion, advertising and user incentives to enhance our brand awareness and the core user engagement. R&D expenses ratio increased to 7.6%, reflecting our increased investment in AI, while the G&A expenses ratio saw a slight increase to 4%.

Fourth quarter total segment operating loss and adjusted net loss narrowed sequentially to RMB 14.7 billion and RMB 15.1 billion, respectively. This sequential improvement reflect our focus on quality growth and execution efficiency amid the intense competition. As of December 31, 2025, we held cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 166.8 billion. While operating cash flow was still negative, we achieved sequential improvement with operating cash outflow narrowing to RMB 6.6 billion.

Now let's look at the segment results, starting with the core local commerce segment. This quarter, we continue to see healthy growth in both order volume and GTV. Our leadership in both food delivery and Meituan shopping stayed strong, while our market position in core local in-store categories remained stable. Our core user base continued to show healthy growth and higher engagement on our platform. These users aren't just transacting more often. They are exploring more services across our platform during this quarter.

Their retention rate further improved in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter. Multiple consumption categories, including medicine and health, leisure and entertainment, sports and fitness, pet services and most categories in the Meituan instant shopping maintained double-digit growth across both order volume and GTV.

On the financial side, segment revenue was RMB 64.8 billion in Q4, down 1.1%, while food delivery industry-wide subsidy slightly moderate from Q3, they were still at historical high levels. In Q4, we stayed focused on quality growth and further pull back resources from those low AOV and low-quality orders. This drove a sequential recovery in our food delivery average order value.

Although our food delivery net AOV is still well above the industry average, intensified competition did lead to a significant year-over-year drop in food delivery AOV, which weighted on our commission revenue growth. The impact of consumer subsidy on delivery service revenue also continued through Q4. Our online marketing revenue maintained stable growth. We continue to see merchants across categories from small- and medium-sized restaurants to offline retailers and other local service providers treat Meituan as a key marketing channel.

Our advertiser base continued to expand steadily. On the cost and expenses side, we increased marketing spending and promotions to enhance brand positioning and price competitiveness while driving engagement among core users. We allocated more resources to enhance our membership program. We also provide more incentives for our couriers to ensure deliver service quality and user experience alongside continued investment in ecosystem development.

Core local commerce segment operating loss was RMB 10 billion in Q4, with operating loss narrowing significantly from last quarter. This improvement was largely driven by meaningful loss reduction from our food delivery business. Turning to our new initiatives segment. In Q4, revenue reached RMB 27.3 billion, up 18.9% year-over-year, primarily driven by the expansion of Keeta and grocery retail business. However, segment operating loss widened to RMB 4.6 billion, reflecting both seasonal headwinds in business like bike-sharing as well as strategic investments in overseas expansion and grocery retailing.

During this quarter, we expanded Keeta into 4 new markets, which required meaningful upfront investment. However, we are encouraged that in established markets like Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, unit economics are already showing healthy improvement driven by order density growth and operational efficiency. We are optimistic that Keeta and new markets will follow this positive trajectory for grocery retail. It remains a key long-term priority for Meituan. Xiaoxiang Supermarket has made solid progress over the past few years with key metrics trending positively.

In Q4, we accelerated its expansion into new cities and expanded it's warehouse network to capture growing online grocery demand. We also grew our physical presence with the launch of our first Xiaoxiang Supermarket offline store in Beijing and the opening of multiple new Happy Monkey stores. In addition, we recently announced our plan to acquire the domestic assets of Dingdong Grocery, which we expect to further enhance Meituan's overall capability in on-demand grocery retailing. We are confident that these strategic investments will solidify our competitive advantage and create long-term value in the grocery sector. Looking ahead, we are still confident that in the company's long-term sustainable growth trajectory will continue.

We are firmly against industry evolution, and we believe the competition will gradually be normalized with the regulation guidance. We will focus more on driving greater efficiency and higher quality growth and continue to invest in technology, service quality and ecosystem development. With that, we are now open for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.

So I want to ask about the battle on AI gateways or entry points as this kind of new era has begun. So how does the company think about this trend and the future development? On the risk side, will this lead to a loss of kind of position as the main traffic gateway in the app era? And what strategies or plans do management -- does management have to address the risk? And could you also share the latest progress on your AI agent and LongCat model?

Thank you, Ron. So in the past earnings call, I have made it clear that I think while AI is going to revolutionize everything. And in this AI revolution, the only strategy that makes sense is to play [indiscernible] instead of just defense. But that doesn't mean we are going to rush to try to become one of the token factories, not at all.

We view AI as a strategic opportunity to improve and strengthen or even revolutionize our product offerings in local services as our core business. So I will elaborate a little bit. First, I think AI takes big investment. So since early 2023, we have been investing a lot in both the CapEx and also the AI talent to build our in-house model. So other than those cloud companies, we have probably made the largest investment in AI among all Chinese companies other than those cloud companies.

And we -- while we have been doing this for more than 3 years, it has -- obviously has an impact on our balance sheet and cash flow. We will remain committed to developing our in-house large language models from Cat because we believe in order to better understand the physical world, do it in a more precise way based on our own massive proprietary data, we need to have the capability to build an in-house model.

But at the same time, we are also working with sort third-party model. And we are striving to take the lead in upgrading our Meituan app into an AI-powered app in order to better fulfill the end-to-end needs of our consumers in local services and quick commerce. So in our view, the battle for the so-called Super Gateway is fundamentally about the capability to accurately understand the user needs and then efficiently execute the task.

But here, it is much more complicated than [indiscernible] chatbot. The local service industry features highly complex use cases. And there's a massive amount of very fragmented information and a lot of real-time information from small and medium-sized merchants. Those merchants are not fully digitized. So a lot of the data on the merchant side and some on the consumer side has not been effectively digitized.

In order to benefit from AI, I think it has to be first digitized. So that's what we have been doing for many years. A lot of merchants run on our digital system. So we have the unparalleled access to their data. But moreover, local service platform also need to be able to deeply involved in the management of the fulfillment services. Otherwise, it's just a chat bot. And here, I don't think the general AI can reliably manage and guarantee the real physical world service experience.

And we -- Meituan has been -- have built up, it tends to be physical world data, including merchant POI data, dynamic and real-time merchant operation data and the most comprehensive authentic user reviews for local services. I believe our deep expertise in food delivery network, the on-demand delivery network and our business development operation, our retail supply as well as our -- in future, our drone and unmanned driverless vehicles and other embodied AI technology will give us significant advantages in connecting AI with the physical world.

And our in-house model is catching up with those open source sort of models. And our agents are evolving rapidly that will help us seamless integrated digital and physical world information. So to give you some example, so we have recently made our AI assistant Xiaotuan available to all users within our Meitu app.

Before that, we have released a stand-alone AI app that's Xiaomei. But with Xiaotuan, all existing hundreds of millions of Meituan app users will benefit from these new AI features. Xiaotuan covers all local service categories on our platform. The user can express their needs in a more natural way. In the past, most people have gotten used to search through a few keywords.

But now with the enhanced AI capability, Xiaotuan can -- understand the query -- longer query in natural language and Xiaotuan can access all data within Meituan app. So I'll give you one example. It's very common for a user to use Meituan app to find a restaurant. But sometimes you need to be able to better understand the use case. For example, maybe one day, I'll give you one very concrete example. So I would like to ask Meituan, okay, here, I'm in the office in Wangjing, that's the northeastern corner of Beijing.

And I have a friend who is working in [indiscernible] on the west side of Beijing. And we plan to have lunch together. We only have 2 hours' time. So could you help us find a restaurant with a good [indiscernible] spicy food in the middle, and it needs to have a convenient parking space. I think that's a very natural real need. But in the past, with very limited keyword search, the user will not be able to ask these kind of questions.

So now with enhanced AI capability, it has become possible. It's a very real use case. But in order to really answer that question, you need to understand -- you need to have the mapping information, the POI information or even the traffic information. And also you need to know there are -- you need to know more than just there are restaurants. You also need to understand the offering of the restaurant or the real-time capacity of the restaurant.

Otherwise, you will recommend a very popular restaurant, but the user will not be able to reserve a table or a private room. So that's not what you need. So to really fulfill this need, we need -- our system need to have access to a lot of information in the physical world. And AI is helping us to bring all those data, physical world data together and offer a much better user experience to our users. So leveraging Meituan's comprehensive and authentic merchant database, [indiscernible] can now quite actually answer those specific questions about not only merchant location, business hours, the store facilities and more. And [indiscernible] can also utilize our authentic user reviews and recommendations to deliver valuable insights. So with this enhanced reasoning capability, [indiscernible] can fulfill more personalized queries and generate the one-stop guides for dining, entertainment, travel and more.

We are pleased to see the Xiaotuan feature effectively addressed users requests during spring festival, but that's just the beginning. It received a positive feedback and further strengthened user engagement. In the future, I think the model will become better, and we will continue to deepen the integration of [ Xiaotuan ] feature in the Meituan app.

So we want to use the new AI technology to make Meituan app, the go-to destination for the local needs, local services needs of all users. We'll enhance the AI search capability, and we will enhance the execution capability, and we strive to upgrade Meituan to make it a leading AI-powered app and AI gateway for local services needs in the future. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Ya Jiang with Citic Securities.

And regarding the State Council's investigation into the food delivery market competition, which started in early January, has our business strategy changed? And what changes are we seeing in the competitive environment recently? And looking ahead, how do we plan to sustain or expand our competitive advantages on the current regulatory environment? And can food delivery continue to loss narrowing trend from quarter 4 into quarter 1? That's my question.

Thank you, we believe the regulatory guidance is already quite clear. The authorities are firmly against the so-called evolution nation and want to foster a healthy and orderly market. Subsidy-driven or price-driven competition in the food delivery sector is a very typical -- the so-called irrational competition is a very typical evolution.

And so we take this issue very seriously and want to reiterate our position. We are firmly against evolution. We will actively work with the regulatory investigations. And meanwhile, we are putting back resources on the low-quality orders while striving to defend our market leadership.

So in 2026, no matter how the market environment evolves, our strategy for food delivery stays clear and consistent. First, we will stay focused on doing the right thing to enhance our core strength as expanding high-quality selections, ensuring fast and reliable deliveries and offering consistently affordable prices. Second, like I said before, we will maintain our leadership while focusing our resources on driving quality growth and improving operational efficiency.

And third, we will keep creating value for the whole industry. Beyond our ongoing work in supply side innovations, fuller support and welfare improvement, food safety, and we are also pushing product and services upgrades, innovation in AI and all other technologies to drive efficiency and experience improvement across the industry.

So looking ahead, we believe competition will shift toward deepening users' lifetime value, improving supply quality varieties and delivering a seamless end-to-end user experience. During recent months, even with the continued intense competition and quite irrational subsidies, Meituan is still the top choice for high-value consumers when it comes to food services because we deliver a better overall experience. We have held our competitive advantages in mid- to high average order value orders with average order value consistently well above industry peers. And driven by our focus on quality growth and an improved order mix, we are on track to see a more meaningful sequential improvement in our food delivery per order loss in Q1 versus Q4 last year.

And we believe a more regulated market can help shift competition from pure subsidy wars toward innovation, service experience and efficiency. These are the areas in which we are better positioned. But we will keep sharpening our core strengths through better operation, product innovation and iteration.

This will help us reinforce our structural advantages in mid- to high AOV orders and high-value users and efficient delivery network. We remain confident in the competence and long-term potential of our food delivery business. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

We noticed that [indiscernible] has substantially increased the subsidies for in-store business since fourth quarter last year and its subsidies is expected to remain high in 2026. So I just want to see what's your view about the current competitive landscape in the local service and compared to the competition cycle back in 2022 to '23, how does Meituan's current strategy differ this time?

Thank you, Kenneth, for the question. The short answer from a short-term perspective to your question is that, yes, we see the competitors' recent ramp up investment, this may negatively impact our short-term profitability. That's something we are facing, and we would like the market to understand. But I would spend more words on our long-term strategy for this business.

I think it's key to understand that the competitive landscape now is evolving quite a lot. The whole in-store industry has seen significant changes in the last few years. On the competition side, the industry participants are now having quite differentiated focus on categories, merchants and consumption scenarios. Leading players are now focusing more on efficient operational strategy. And for us, our priority has always been the sustainable long-term development of the industry rather than short-term winning a [indiscernible] battle.

We truly believe that in-store business still has high potential, but still need lots of investment and more innovation across the whole value chain. No matter how the landscape shifts, provide efficient and high-quality service to consumers and merchants and driving robust offline consumption growth is the key to succeed. Over the last few years, we have seen that customers' demand has evolved. They require more personalized experience and value for money dining and services.

Demand also for extended services such as online touring, reservation and online ordering with offline pickup continues to grow. On the supply side, offerings have continued to evolve in line with consumption trends with new supply formats and service categories emerging. This ongoing momentum is also a key driving force for digital transformation. On the technology front, both consumers and merchants have growing expectations and demand for AI-powered products. Under these trends, Meituan has always been very alert and continue to bring our extensive experience and understanding of the industry and to continue the innovation.

We have built and further enhanced differentiated advantage in areas such as category mix, merchant ecosystem and operational efficiency. For example, thanks to years of expertise and insights from Meituan and Dianping in dining sector, we have noticed a shift in the business logic of fine dining. We proactively share these insights with our fine dining partners and help them stay ahead of the curve and quickly adapt to changing consumer demands.

We also continue to track the industry trend and explore new supplies in areas such as self-service models, leisure and entertainment, sports, culture and art activity ticketing, self-operating home services and more. Our platform's years of accumulated authentic user reviews and integrated one-stop online services, including the group buying, online ordering, pickup now, [indiscernible], reservations and QR management have become our unique competitive advantages.

Additionally, more than 1 million skilled artists have become a unique supplier on our platform. Our technology side, the AI agent smart operator [indiscernible] helps merchants optimize their digital service. Merchants are able to deliver personalized service by leveraging AI to record and analyze consumer preferences and can also intelligently analyze consumer feedback for operational improvements. In addition, our AI agents such as digital employees and [ AIBD ] streamline merchant operations across store opening, daily operations and consumer acquisition.

We will continue to enable merchants with their own AI assistance. In '26, we will further differentiate our service and allocate more resources with higher ROI. We will strengthen our position in core categories and minimize inefficient investment in noncore areas. Looking ahead, we will remain committed to providing consumers with a seamless service loop that offers quick, precise decisions and one-stop experience.

We aim to develop a full life cycle merchant empowerment system that covers customer acquisition, conversion and retention. We will continue to foster sustainable industry growth through digital transformation. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Why did Meituan acquire Dingdong and what synergies are expected with Meituan grocery retail business? How has Meituan strategy for self-operated grocery retail evolved?

Thank you, Thomas, for the question on Dingdong and on Meituan's grocery strategy. We recently announced the acquisition of Dingdong's Mainland China business for USD 717 million. But please note that this transaction is still subject to regulatory approval.

The reason, obviously, the most important reason is we have true confidence on China's grocery retail business, both online and offline. Besides that, there are 2 key reasons for this acquisition, particularly. First, it will enhance Meituan's overall capability in on-demand grocery retailing, particularly strengthening our supply chain capability. It will also contribute to further operational efficiency improvement of our grocery retail business.

Secondly, Dingdong has established itself as a strong player in the East China area. With this acquisition, it will significantly improve our coverage and our service quality in this region. Broad retail aligns closely with our company's mission and represents one of our long-term strategic priorities. As market dynamics evolve, we have observed that self-operating supplies like Xiaoxiang Supermarket are becoming increasingly important in the on-demand delivery ecosystem. Xiaoxiang Supermarket represents guaranteed high-quality supply on our platform, offering users a more reliable shopping experience. Given the industry's growth potential, we see substantial opportunities ahead.

Last year, we have already restructured our grocery retail portfolio, shifting to a more efficient way to drive sustainable growth. In the past few years, Xiaoxiang Supermarket has maintained strong growth momentum while continuously improve operational efficiency. We expanded our private brand merchandising offerings, cover nighttime consumption scenarios and maintain industry-leading fulfillment speed and experience.

We believe Xiaoxiang Supermarket represents a model where Meituan can leverage its strength with a clear path to profitability. Moving forward, we plan to expand this model to more cities and regions, bringing faster, fresher and more affordable on-demand grocery retail to more consumers. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley.

My question is related to Keeta. Keeta has made some progress in both Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. But given the regulatory and competitive constraints, the road ahead looks quite challenging. Could management share if there are any updates to the company's overseas strategy for 2026. How much do you plan to invest in Brazil this year? Do you expect Saudi Arabia to reach breakeven in 2026?

Thank you, Gary. Before addressing the specifics of our 2026 international strategy, I want to take this moment to express my deepest gratitude to Keeta's employees, merchants, couriers and all ecosystem partners in the Middle East.

Thank you for your unwavering dedication to your work to provide essential services to our users during this difficult time. We are doing everything we can to safeguard your safety and livelihood to overcome these challenges together.

And now back to Gary's question. So first, I want to emphasize that Meituan's core philosophy in China has always been to create value for the whole ecosystem and drive long-term industry growth, not just evolution. That has never been what we want to do. And our international operations through Keeta will follow the same playbook. We want to grow alongside with local players.

We want to help accelerate the digital transformation of local services industry there, and we want to grow and serve a bigger market together. So ultimately, we want to create new value for users, merchants, couriers and other partners in these markets. In 2026, Keeta will mostly focus on our current markets because each market has a different dynamics.

So we will stay flexible. We will tailor strategies locally while balancing growth and profitability at every market and at every stage. It's very important that compliance will remain a top priority. So we are working very actively with the local regulators. So in the long run, we are committed to our global operation with a strategic focus on the on-demand delivery, the quick commerce, which can leverage our core strength.

And so for the market that you mentioned, -- and as I said in the last quarter, so Keeta has achieved first profitable month in Hong Kong in October '25. Allow me to remind you that Keeta launched in Hong Kong in May '23, and it has broken even in October '25.

So it took us 29 months to get to profitability. And this year, we will focus on further improving our operations there. For Saudi Arabia, -- and that's a very -- that market is very favorable for food delivery business and for the profitability there. Therefore, we expect Keeta to hit its first profitable month in Saudi Arabia much faster than in Hong Kong.

And definitely before the end of this year. Actually, I would say we are very close to that in the near future. We are already profitable in some -- we have get to breakeven in some cities. And I think other cities are following very fast. So because since we have recently cut the subsidy significantly in Saudi Arabia, -- but our order volume stayed resilient. So that means users are choosing Keeta for our better services, not for subsidy or lower price.

So in 2026, we will further refine our operations. In other Middle East markets and our orders are also growing fast. With our Saudi Arabia experience and regional brand recognition, I'm confident that we can improve our operational efficiency quickly in those new markets. However, our growth in this market in '26 remains subject to external risk, for example, the current regional conflicts.

And regarding Brazil, we see tremendous long-term value there, and we remain firmly committed to Keeta's long-term growth in this market. For now, our operations are focused on Sao Paulo, the largest city. And rather than a full nationwide rollout, we are prioritizing refining our business model in South Sao Paulo before we do a broader expansion.

Meanwhile, we will actively pursue business strategies to build differentiated advantages. So overall, Keeta's loss in 2026 will remain significant because we entered a lot of new markets, a lot of new countries in the second half of 2025. And orders in this market are still scaling up. And however, this will be offset by more efficient improvement in our domestic new initiatives. So as a result, we expect that the overall loss in our new initiative segment in 2026 will not be bigger than 2025. Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Scarlett Xu for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you all for joining the call. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Meituan Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Scarlett Xu, VP and Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good evening, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Third Quarter of 2025 Earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO; and Mr. Shaohui Chen, Senior Vice President and CFO of Meituan. For today's call, management will first provide a review of our third quarter of 2025 results and then conduct a Q&A session.

Before we start, we would like to remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements which include a number of risks and uncertainties and may differ from actual results in the future. This presentation also contains unaudited non-IFRS accounting standards financial measures that should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS Accounting Standards. For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS accounting standard measures, please refer to disclosure documents in the IR section of our website.

Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang.

Thank you, Scarlett. Hello, everyone. We are in the third quarter, we actively responded to the shift in the competitive landscape of food delivery and quick commerce. Meituan remains the go-to platform of local services for Chinese consumers. Over 800 million consumers use our services, covering everything from food and dining, quick commerce to services retail and more. Specifically, the Meituan's app DAU jumped over 20% year-over-year in the third quarter. On average, users transact with us at least once a week and our top-tier and high-quality users engage with the platform every day. Across all local commerce businesses, we have stepped up product and service iteration to enhance user mindshare and strengthen our competitive advantages.

Thanks to our fully upgraded Meituan membership [ Mei tuán huìyuán ] we have effectively boosted for selling activities and enhanced the core user stickiness. We are also the primary platform for merchants' long-term growth, empowering them with the technology and supply innovations and helping them to integrate AI into their operation to improve efficiency.

First, let's talk about our food delivery business. Here, we continue to leverage our competitive strengths to deliver industry-leading operational efficiency and a superior consumer experience. Our sustained focus on service quality and the healthy development of the industry has enabled us to navigate a quite dynamic market, strengthen our consumer mindshare and reinforce our leadership in the food delivery sector.

Amid intense competition, we stepped up supply side innovation and service upgrades. For our innovative supply models like Ping Hao Fan, or Shen Qiang Shou or Pingbai Weiqing Dian as branded satellite stores. And we further deepened our collaborations with quality merchants. It allows us to offer consumers a wider range of high-quality products across all price bands. And we also selected top-tier restaurant merchants on [Foreign Language] based on real and authentic data and matched the quality offerings precisely with our high-quality food delivery users.

Additionally, we have rolled out premium services like on-time guarantee [ Zhunshí baozhèng ] and one-to-one express delivery, [ yi duì yi jí sòng ]. These measures have strengthened our core competitiveness in fulfillment and elevated the delivery experience for consumers and solidified our advantages in user structures. We remain as the Chinese consumers' go-to food delivery platform.

In the third quarter, both DAU and MTU as Monthly Transacting User for food delivery hit an all-time high. We further expanded our advantage in user structures. In addition, we stepped up our efforts to address ecosystem issues and invested in the ecosystem development, specifically for couriers' welfare, we expanded the courier pension insurance subsidy program to a nationwide publish beginning in November and extended an occupational injury insurance to 17 provinces and cities.

We have also implemented a comprehensive courier welfare scheme, which include critical illness support, educational funds for couriers' children and skill development and academic advancement opportunities for couriers as well as benefits such as work meals, health checkups and travel subsidies.

Moreover, we have built couriers homes [ qishou zhi jia ] rather stations across the country to provide our couriers with convenient facilities and services. Going forward, we will keep enhancing couriers' welfare and protection. And as consumers' preferred quick commerce platform, Meituan Instant Shopping continues to lead the industry's rapid growth and service upgrade. In Q3, both new user growth and core user purchase frequency further increased. As we continue to diversify supply, the proportion of users buying across multiple categories has been steady on the rise. This shows our everything now consumer mindshare is getting even stronger.

New supply formats like Meituan InstaMart, Shandiàn Sòng expanded rapidly, bringing this high certainty lifestyle to more regions across China. We also teamed up with the leading brands in the liquor and apparel categories, which reflected these top brands recognition of quick commerce's value and their trust in Meituan.

In October, we officially launched a branded flagship InstaMart Pingbai Guanqi Shandian Chang, providing retail brands with full quick commerce infrastructure, warehousing, on-demand delivery and the digital system. By leveraging our strengths in user traffic ecosystem and online capabilities, we empowered brands to drive user growth, boost sales and connect more deeply with younger consumers.

Beyond that, we are committed to continuously upgrading our quick commerce services. After rolling out the industry's first full cycle service assurance program, [ Anxin San Gou ] we recently introduced an end-to-end authentic product verification process for chinese [indiscernible] and launched the industry's first alliance for high-quality fresh-cut fruits brand [ Huo Qian ]. As the industry leaders, we will keep setting benchmarks that focus on premium quality and top-tier service. Overall, we have built the world's largest and most efficient intracity on-demand delivery network, delivering a best-in-class fulfillment experience to consumers.

Our platform has accumulated a large user base of high-quality users with a very strong purchasing power. We also provide merchants with industry-leading services and create the most diverse supply. These valuable assets built up over more than a decade will fuel the long-term growth of our food delivery business. They will also serve as a solid foundation for our efficient expansion in the broader quick commerce space.

Now let's turn to our in-store business. In the third quarter, both our merchant base and user base reached new highs with a nearly 20% year-over-year increase and user transaction frequency continued to grow robustly. We further refined our product and content ecosystem. Our goal is to give every consumer simple, more reliable reference for purchase decisions. To date, our platform has accumulated over 20 billion authentic user -- consumer reviews with nearly 3.5 billion new reviews added in the past 12 months.

Additionally, we are now using AI to filter out low-quality reviews and those manipulative contents. This way, we can ensure a comprehensive authentic review ecosystem that provides a truly useful decision-making support for consumers. We also expanded the reach and influence of our high-quality list, including the Black Pearl Guide, hidden Jewels and our Must-Eat list Bi Chi Bang. Currently, these 2 lists cover 34 and 144 cities, respectively.

Moving forward, we will expand to more regions and welcome more quality restaurants to join our list. Beyond that, we have iterated products like pickup now, [indiscernible] 12:26 smart ordering and one-click payments, extending coverage to more merchants and meeting consumers' more diverse and personalized needs.

Moreover, we further promoted our safe learning program, [ Anquán xuéxí jìhuà ] in the broader education space and expanded our safe series, [ Anquán xìliè ] to more categories such as fitness. We offer flexible redemption options, which has significantly boosted consumer trust in prepaid services. For self-service formats such as an unmanned chess and cards, playing cards rooms and self-service KTV, we upgraded our booking system to deliver a smoother hassle-free experience for consumers from reservation all the way to service fulfillment. In healthcare and pharmaceuticals, we expanded our video and phone consultation services to include more doctors from Grade 3A hospitals, [ San jí jia deng yiyuàn ] and offering -- we offered 24/7 instant consultations plus 30 minutes prescription drug delivery.

We improved in-store verification service for dental care and medical aesthetics and standardized supply chain management to build end-to-end consumer trust. During the third quarter, we launched the 2025 Polaris medical aesthetic guide [ Beijing Yi Mei Bang ] which has set industry standards and raised the bar for service quality. These are just a few examples.

Going forward, we will continue to leverage our deep industrial and consumer insights to turn more offline services transactions into trusted online transactions for consumers. And now let's turn to our new initiative segment. And this segment delivered another solid performance in the third quarter.

Our grocery retail businesses, especially for Xiaoxiang Supermarkets and Kuailvdian sustained a strong growth momentum. We not only solidified our market position, but also achieved improvement in operational efficiency. And additionally, Keeta accelerated its global coverage. After launching in Qatar in August, we entered Kuwait and the UAE in September, deepening our presence in these key Middle Eastern markets.

In October, Keeta also kicked off a pilot operation in Brazil. Going forward, we will continue to leverage our strengths in product technology and operation know-how to deliver superior consumer -- and delivery experience for consumers in more parts of the world. After 6 months of iterating our promoting Meituan membership, we have achieved good progress.

We added new member benefits and exclusive offers across multiple local service categories. This has notably strengthened our user mindshare and boosted member transaction frequency. Specifically, a large number of our mid-tier users have upgraded their membership tiers and the number of high-value members kept growing steadily even in the recent very fierce competitive environment.

It's a clear sign of our unique edge in serving high-value users. What's more, our enhanced Meituan membership program is driving growth across businesses in key areas. It supports user acquisition and traffic operation and transaction growth and marketing while also effectively fueling cross-selling among various businesses and consumption scenarios.

Moving forward, we will leverage our competitive advantages, broad coverage in local services, continue to refine the membership program and increase user engagement and transaction frequency. During the third quarter, we continued to invest in AI and achieved multiple milestones. For example, we launched several models in our LongCat-Flash series, all delivering leading performance. And we rolled out a range of AI decision-making and application tools tailored specifically for restaurant merchants.

And we also launched Xiaomei app, a smart life assistant for consumers. and currently is in larger-scale testing. Going forward, we will make our AI tools more industry-focused and service oriented. We will provide effective solutions for merchants across all operational decision-making scenarios and make consumers' decision-making process and consumption experience more intelligent, more convenient and more personalized.

Founded in 2010, Meituan has witnessed and led the digital transformation for China's local service industry. Since 2010, we have built the online purchase, offline consumption user mention in local services through group purchase model. And back in 2013, we stepped into the food delivery space and our intracity on-demand delivery network made food delivery services more accessible than ever, turning it into a key food consumption habit for Chinese consumers.

And as leading -- as industry competition keeps evolving, we are confident in maintaining our leading position by continuing to strengthen our core competitiveness. guided by our retail plus technology strategy. We will continue to refine our products and services to better meet consumers' very diverse local services needs while empowering merchants through technology innovation and AI application, altogether to drive the sustainable and healthy development of the whole industry.

So we are as ever committed to helping people eat better, live better. And with that, I will turn the call over to...

Thank you, Xing. Hello, everyone. I will now go through our third quarter financial results. During this quarter, our total revenue increased by 2% year-over-year to RMB 95.5 billion. Cost of revenue ratio increased 12.9 percentage points year-over-year to 73.6%. This was primarily driven by: first, higher incentives for our couriers to maintain industry-leading delivery service quality and experience; second, the increased cost in our overseas operations.

These factors were partially offset by the improved gross margin of our grocery retail business. Selling and marketing expenses ratio increased 16.7 percentage points year-over-year to 35.9%, driven by our increased investments in promotion, advertising and user incentives to enhance our brand awareness, user acquisition and core user engagement. R&D expenses ratio slightly increased to 7.3% as a result of our increased investment in AI, while G&A expenses ratio maintaining stable year-over-year at 3.1%.

This quarter, irrational competition within the on-demand delivery industry significantly distorted sector-wide profitability. Our deliberate strategy investments to sustain leadership and competitiveness resulted in a total segment operating loss of RMB 15.3 billion and an adjusted net loss of RMB 16 billion. However, we maintained uncompromised service standards while continuing to drive initiatives that foster the industry's sustainable development.

As of September 30, 2025, we held cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 141.3 billion. However, cash generated from operating activities turned to negative RMB 22.1 billion, primarily due to our investments in response to the intensified competition.

Now turning first to our core local commerce segment. Revenue declined year-over-year this quarter, primarily driven by 2 factors. First, intensified competition caused a significant drop in food delivery average order value, weakening commission revenue growth. Second, delivery service revenue saw negative growth due to substantially higher incentives deducted from delivery service revenue. Despite these headwinds, we strategically increased investment across our ecosystem to reinforce market leadership and drive sustainable growth.

For consumers, we strengthened marketing efforts to enhance brand positioning and price competitiveness while boosting user engagement. For couriers, we expanded incentives to guarantee deliver service quality and experience. Besides, supporting merchant partners remains a priority for us. Having empowered over 360,000 restaurant merchants nationwide, we recently committed an additional RMB 2 billion in merchant support funds. We hope to enable more restaurant partners to achieve efficient and sustainable operations.

While these investments waived on the segment profitability in this quarter, they solidified our leadership in both food delivery and Meituan Instashopping. Our market position in core in-store categories also remained stable throughout this period. We sustained our role as consumers go-to platform for local services. Both order volume and GTV for core local commerce maintained healthy growth this quarter. Notably, on-demand delivery saw accelerating order growth. Core user base grew steadily year-over-year with more low-to-medium frequency users moving up to high frequency. These users are transacting more often, staying more engaged and exploring more consumption scenarios.

I mean the recent demand boost from the intensified industry competition, we secured the highest quality incremental orders. Moving forward, we will keep focusing on consumption frequency and engagement of core users through better supply and fulfillment capabilities. In-store business also sustained its strong growth momentum with continued outperformance in lower-tier markets.

Turning to our new initiatives segment. During this quarter, segment revenue grew by 15.9% year-over-year to RMB 28 billion this quarter. Despite the impact of strategic transformation of Meituan Select, our revenue remained solid growth driven by the expansion of our grocery retail business and overseas business. The segment's operating loss and operating loss ratio both narrowed on a quarter-over-quarter basis to RMB 1.3 billion and 4.6%, respectively. Thanks to our efforts in improving operating and marketing efficiency in our grocery retail business and other new initiatives.

The year-over-year increase in operating loss was mainly due to our increased investment in overseas business. As we look ahead, we remain confident in our ability to navigate a dynamic and competitive environment. We are making deliberate investments in technology, service quality and our ecosystem. These investments will strengthen our competitive position and unlock new growth opportunity for the industry over time. We have full confidence in our ability to deliver healthy, high-quality growth over the long run when competition normalize. With that, we are now open for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question comes from Ronald Keung from Goldman Sachs.

So I want to ask, can management comment on any notable changes in the competitive landscape of the food delivery sector, particularly as we head into the fourth quarter. Have we seen any industry subsidies that is starting to scale back? And we've noticed your competition has stepped up investments in membership programs like 88VIPs and these membership programs. So how is the engagement and retention trending for your core customers? And sorry for a long question. But from a financial standpoint, I want to also ask how should we expect fourth quarter performance for the food delivery has there been any change in the long-term outlook for growth and profitability of the business?

Well, Ron, thank you for your questions. Before I get into the question, let me restate what we have said very clearly over the last 2 quarters. First, I think the food delivery price war is an example of evolution nature and low price, and low quality and essentially a race to the bottom. We are firmly against it. And the last 6 months have proved the one thing, and it doesn't create any real value for the industry, and it cannot be sustainable. And second, we are doubling down on curious rise and protections and on supporting for small and mid-sized merchants. That's the only way to keep the industry healthy in the long run.

And the third, we will focus on doing the right things, that's serving consumers, merchants and couriers as well. And we are fully confident in defending our leadership in on-demand delivery in creating real long-term value. In October and November in the industry, the subsidy level temporarily went down versus the summer peak season and especially after the Double 11 promotion period. And we are still closely monitoring the market dynamics and we'll adjust our strategy accordingly.

And recently, we have seen a rebound in our market share in order volume. We maintained a consistent leading addition in GTV market share for mid- to high AOV orders. For example, I think it's very important to focus on higher AOV sector. Our GTV market share for orders with a net AOV above RMB 15, it's more than 2/3, while our GTV market share for orders with a net AOV above RMB 30 is above 70%. I think those are more valuable sectors we want to focus on.

Our net AOV per order remained much higher than other platforms. And our core users continue to show high retention rate. with their consumption frequency, stickiness still growing steadily, I think this clearly reflects the strong user mind share we have built in the food delivery sectors and as well as our competitive edge in serving our core users.

It's common for consumers to have a multiple local service app installed on their phone. However, Meituan remains the go-to platform of food services for hundreds of millions of consumers. This is especially true among our core users. Their consumption frequency has been several times higher than that of the average consumers. Even in such a highly competitive market, they show strong brand recognition and deeper consumer loyalty. This is because high frequency or higher AOV consumers value the delivery experience and the supply quality, service reliability far more than just a lower price. Our faster and more reliable delivery provides greater certainty, particularly during extreme weather and holiday periods.

Our diverse and valuable money offerings across all price ranges allow us to precisely match consumers' needs. Through our Meituan membership program, we offer more attractive deals and exclusive service upgrades to our core users, and we are confident in our ability to deliver higher quality and more comprehensive services to our core users. This will help us further strengthen their stickiness and engagement in the long run.

In addition, continued investment by industry peers in the premium user segment will expand the overall addressable market benefiting us as well. We will leverage our strength in service quality and brand to further strengthen our position among a broader base of premium users.

In terms of financial data, and although I believe food delivery losses has peaked in Q3, and our food delivery business will still incur a substantial loss in Q4, we will make necessary investment to maintain our leadership. But we are not interested in engaging price war. So we would adjust our investment dynamically based on the competitive landscape. And we will continue to strengthen our advantage in service experience and operational efficiency.

In the medium to long term, the competitive landscape will remain dynamic; however, the business or industry revolution typically follows a clear trajectory from capital-driven to efficiency-driven, and ultimately to innovation-driven. China's food service has now entered a stage where supply-side innovation and service upgrades and technological solutions are critical for sustainable growth and traffic gain and scale expansion purely driven by very aggressive subsidy will not be sustainable.

And we believe the current irrational competition in food delivery will inevitably transit to a more rational and mature phase. Ultimately, the platform with deeper industrial insights and proven operational excellence and ability to sustain high-quality growth will be the industry leader.

Therefore, as I mentioned last quarter, Meituan will stay focused on doing the right things to expand high-quality selections to ensure a fast and reliable delivery and offer consistently affordable prices. We will defend our market position while continuing to create greater value for the whole industry. Food delivery has become a high society lifestyle for more and more consumers with clear long-term growth prospects. Our long-term target of reaching 100 million high-quality daily order remains unchanged. We remain confident in maintaining industry-leading unit economics with proven operational efficiency advantages. Long term, even with higher subsidy in a dynamic market, we expect food delivery profit to return to a reasonable level. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Gary Yu from Morgan Stanley.

I have a question regarding Instashopping. The other e-commerce platforms are doubling down on Quick Commerce and bringing more traditional e-commerce brands to this space. How does management view our competitive edge? And after our own Double 11 event, could you share Meituan Instashopping strategy going forward? Will you scale up investment in the fourth quarter?

Thank you, Gary, for your question. First of all, I would like to highlight that we have a particularly strong competitive advantage in our quick commerce native supply. That is even stronger than that of our food delivery business in which we are already a leader. From our perspective, quick commerce operates on a fundamentally different logic than traditional e-commerce as well as half-day delivery or next-day delivery.

Quick commerce means no stockpiling. You get what you see right way. Platform needs to identify real consumer needs and get the right supply in place. Leveraging years of understanding of the market demand and merchants pain points, we have digitized offline supply and deploy our InstaMarts to better address the quick commerce demand.

Simply shifting traditional e-commerce supply to the quick commerce channels creates no incremental value for either merchants or consumers. To better serve the lifestyle shaped by quick commerce, we are also driving industry-wide upgrades in infrastructure and the service experience. For example, we extended 207 Meituan InstaMarts and pharmacies, roll out chilling facility for alcohol and beverages and introduced quality guarantee services for fruit cart such as Bright Kitchen [ míng chú liàng zào ] and damage guarantee Huabei pay.

More importantly, our food delivery business has already cultivated a group of users who highly rely on 30-minute certainty. Our platform is the best fit for quick commerce. We delivered the highest conversion rates and incremental sales for merchants. As such, we managed to solidify mindshare among our core user group and defend our leadership across categories despite intensified competition.

Under the new competitive landscape, we are deepening omnichannel partnerships with brands beyond physical stores and Meituan InstaMart. We also launched branded flagship InstaMart Pingbai Guanqi Shandian Chang, which operates 24 plus 7 operations for 30-minute delivery of diversified and quality brand products through the native quick commerce channel.

We provide brands with 4 quick commerce infrastructure, warehousing, delivery and digital systems. Hundreds of brands have already joined during Double 11. We also stepped up user education for this initiatives. On the first day of the Double 11 event,[ Hangzhou's ] brand saw 300% sales growth in their branded flagship InstaMart. We hope to help brands move beyond the evolution in traditional e-commerce and tap into new growth opportunities in quick commerce.

Our branded flagship InstaMart enables lower operating costs, faster turnover, stronger brand awareness and more sustainable repurchase for brands. We are also enhancing our brand service tools. For instance, we offer smart distribution tool and AI-powered decision hub for our FMCG partners. We will keep working to remain the go-to platform for brands to unlock growth in quick commerce.

In Q4, we will keep investing in supply side operations while ensuring best-in-class user experience. We also stepped up our investment in user education around Double 11 and other campaigns. Operating loss for Meituan Instashopping in Q4 may slightly widen versus Q3. That said, our competitive moat across supply, user base and fulfillment will allow us to sustain leadership with higher subsidy and operational efficiency. We are confident in restoring profitability and achieving a reasonable and sustainable margin in the mid- to long term. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

Recently, AMAP has introduced a 3 Star initiative. Taobao also launched the group buy deals. So how do management view the impact of this move on the competitive landscape to our in-store business? And under this new competitive environment, what specific measures will the company implement to address these challenges?

Thank you, Kenneth, for the question about our in-store business. Our in-store business model and operational strategy differ from roles of competitors across category mix, merchant scale and type of marketing of ROI. By building authentic, accurate and easily accessible POI data over time, we have established a dominant consumer mindshare as the go-to platform for local services. Consumers complete most of their local service transactions on our platform.

On the other hand, AMAP has a very clear consumer image as a navigation tool. It's a navigation tool that make it difficult to cultivate consumer mindset for searching for local services. We have built a comprehensive user review ecosystem based on our operation in the past decade, accumulating over 25 billion of [indiscernible] reviews. This constitute one of the key reasons why consumers trust and consistently choose Meituan as their go-to platform for local services.

We also have the broadest category coverage and selections in the local service space. We offer consumers one-stop service and seamless experience, including table reservation, diverse group buy deals coupons, in-store ordering, payment and membership benefits. Moreover, we maintain industry-leading merchant coverage, leveraging our experienced offline business development team and deep industry insights, we deliver best-in-class service to merchants. These are all the core competence that we believe other people cannot be quickly replicated in response to the evolving and dynamic competition.

We continually iterate our product and operational capabilities to provide more diversified and personalized services to more quality merchants and consumers. First, we continue to cultivate an ecosystem conductive to quality merchants by expanding the coverage of our Must Eat list, Must Visit list, Black Pearl Guide and by introducing more specialized leads, we are able to provide merchants with more targeted traffic promotion and better transaction conversion.

Second, we have also refined our rating criteria to encourage merchants to focus on product and service quality rather than just the number of consumer reviews. We utilize big data to intelligently identify and help merchants automatically drop abnormal reviews, significantly optimizing both merchant and user experience.

We believe with the AI technology further penetrate into our business, we will be able to further improve the system. Additionally, we roll out more consumer-friendly products such as VR merchant tool for reservation, preorder while querying and smart in-store ordering. This digital solutions further enhance consumer experience and improve merchant operational efficiency. The above are just a few examples.

In the future, we will continue to focus on 3 key directions: ecosystems optimization, service innovation and operation upgrade. We will drive to provide consumers with a seamless merchant fuller life cycle empowerment across customer acquisition, conversion and retention.

We will continue to foster sustainable industry growth through digital transformation. Competition may temporarily impact margins for our in-store business, but we expect long-term competitive landscape for in-store business remain unchanged. With full confidence, we believe we can maintain our leading market position and continue to lead the evolution of the industry ecosystem. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Company has rolled out AI agent Xiaomei for testing. What's the current progress and future plan for Xiaomei? Additionally, will Meituan app integrate in that AI agent directly in the future. Could management share more about our future plans and investment strategy in AI? Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas. In this quarter, we continue to iterate our AI capability across 3 core dimensions. The first is training our in-house LLM. The second is AI in products and the third is AI at the work. So we have rolled out multiple open source LongCat-Flash series model. So we trained that LongCat and large language model in-house. So these models continue to get quite favorable feedback from the broader developer communities. So I think that's the beauty of open source model.

And our LLM are deeply integrated with our core application use cases. It drives effective innovation based on our real-world needs to support our long-term strategic growth and the online to offline convergence. For AI applications, we have upgraded a bunch of AI tools for local services and offering smarter and more tailored services to our merchants. For example, our Kangaroo Advisors Diashu [Foreign Language] can help restaurant merchants with product selections and location planning. And another application, our smart operator, [Foreign Language] integrates multifunctional capabilities such as an AI reception, AI operational analysis and AI review responses, enabling intelligent and efficient store operations for merchants.

And we also launched our Smart Life assistant Xiaomei app for users, which is now in quite a large-scale testing period. We also introduced our AI agent [Foreign Language] in our Meituan app. So that answers your question. We are testing both stand-alone AI agent app. But at the same time, we are going to integrate AI agent function in our main Meituan app. And these 2 agents now cover various aspects of local services, including dining, accommodation and transportation, travel, entertainment and shopping. And they can complete the process from searching to price comparison and to order placement, which can provide the users with a more intelligent and more personalized service.

We will also continue to develop tools like AI coding and we have an application that's no code to help employees improve their work efficiency. And looking further forward, we will further enhance our competitiveness in our in-house foundational model and explore more AI agent applications in local services. We will also iterate our AI agent strategy based on operational insights and user feedback and driving deeper AI-enabled empowerment in our ecosystem.

Your next question comes from Ya Jiang from Citic.

And my question is about the new initiatives and related businesses and for your Keeta in Hong Kong, is it on track to reach breakeven thing? And additionally for the Middle East following our Q3 expansion into several new GCC countries. How is performance shaping up in this market?

And also with recent reports about Keeta entering Brazil, even when there are strong existing payers like iFood and BD what will Keeta do differently in Brazil to take [indiscernible] even shares there? And lastly, given the particularly intense competition in domestic market, what strategic rationale supports accelerating over and base expansion at this juncture? And how does this align with our overall capital allocation framework? How should we project losses for new initiatives segment next year? Lots of questions. Thanks.

Thank you, Jiang. And thank you for your interest in our new initiatives. In this October, Keeta in Hong Kong has turned profitable. So I think that's a major milestone for us. Remember that we launched Keeta in May 2023, and it become profitable in October 2025. So it took us 29 months to get to that milestone. So it's actually ahead of our original 3 years plan.

So I think that proves what really works in this industry is a customer-centric approach, and it proves our deep operational know-how and strong technology capability can bring to better unit economics in and we are going to keep improving on that basis. It will bring more meaningful quarter-over-quarter improvement. So -- and also, we expect to follow the similar path in other markets, for example, in Saudi Arabia and other GCC markets. Regarding the GCC region, building on our foundation in Saudi Arabia, we launched in several additional markets in GCC. For example, right now, they are still in very early stage. It's important to point out, we launched in Qatar in August and launched in Kuwait and UAE in September. Again, still in very early stage. So I think it's premature to share more details. But given the common market structure and user behavior across the Gulf region, I think it's reasonable to believe it remains one of the most attractive markets for food delivery.

And also compared to Saudi Arabia, consumers in some other GCC countries not only have more mature food delivery habits, the penetration there is already higher, but they also benefit from more diverse and more richer restaurant supply. So that suggests there's a lot of untapped penetration potential in this market.

Regarding our latest market, Brazil, I have already shared some thoughts in previous earnings calls. Brazil ranks among the top 5 food delivery markets in terms of GMV globally, and it's still growing at over 20% annually. But when we did the market research in Brazil, we noticed that the transaction fulfilled through more traditional channels such as through WhatsApp or very older way, phone calls or websites, they are still a very big portion, maybe even exceeding the online food delivery platforms. This indicates immense potential for online penetration over the next few years. And I think it provides an opportunity for Keeta to enter this market in spite of already -- there are already some incumbents.

So in the past, our food delivery operation in China have established the world's most efficient tech platforms, including algorithms and the whole tech system. So that system can support over 150 million peak daily orders for very organized and very fast on-demand delivery. And furthermore, Keeta's early success growth in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia over the past 2 years, that further proves our capability to localize our operation for different markets.

So I think we are confident in bringing a better experience service to those markets, because I believe in this industry, it's always important to go back to the basics because there are different stakeholders in the industry. What do consumers want? Maybe they have different preference for different cuisines. But I think in any market, the consumers always want a big selection, a good selection and they want affordable prices, and they want to have reliable and faster deliveries. I think that's the common need across different markets, no matter it's in China -- Mainland China or Hong Kong or Saudi Arabia or other GCC countries or Brazil or in other markets. That's what consumers want.

And for merchants, they want to have more businesses and they want to have a reasonable commission rate and they want to have a good delivery experience. And also, we need to think about what regulators want or the general society want. So there, I think they are interested in more job creation. Regulators want to see happy consumers, want to see happy merchants. They want to see more job creation and want to see more talent development. I think we are going to do all that in those markets where we do business.

And regarding capital allocation, we should emphasize that Keeta is a part of our new initiatives. Our other new initiatives also includes grocery retail, which is another long-term strategy for us. We scaled back the Meituan Select by the end of Q2, but we will expand our Xiaoshan supermarket that's doing very well. And we will try other offline retail format like [ Happy Monkey Kuai Lu ] in 2026 to further improve our supply quality in grocery.

So Keeta and grocery retail, I think these 2 represent a high conviction long-term opportunity for us, given this proven model and our transferable expertise from China to some other markets. But near term, our expansion into GCC markets and Brazil requires a substantial upfront investment in Q4. But given our early success in Keeta in Hong Kong, I think we are confident that we can see a quite good trajectory in those markets, including Saudi Arabia and other GCC markets. There, we already see a rapid improving unit economics and I think those markets are big enough to have multiple players. And yes, overall, we expect Keeta in GCC countries and Brazil to follow a similar unit economic improvement trajectory as we have seen in Hong Kong. And overall, we don't expect to see a bigger loss in -- for new initiative segment in next year compared to 2025. Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Scarlett Xu for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with everyone next quarter. Thank you so much for your support.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Meituan Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Scarlett Xu, VP and Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good evening, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter of 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO and Mr. Shaohui Chen, Senior Vice President and CFO of Meituan.

For today's call, management will first provide a review of our second quarter of 2025 results and then conduct a Q&A session. Before we start, we would like to remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements, which include a number of risks and uncertainties and may differ from actual results in the future. This presentation also contains unaudited non-IFRS accounting standard financial measures that should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting standards. For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS accounting standard measures, please refer to disclosure documents in the IR section of our website.

Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang. Please go ahead, Xing.

Thank you, Scarlet. Hello, everyone. In the second quarter, the competitive dynamics of both food delivery and more generally, the on-demand retail evolved rapidly. Our business maintained a steady growth with revenue increasing by 11.7% year-over-year to RMB 91.8 billion. The total MAU exceeded 600 million, while the MAU of our major app alone surpassed 500 million. An annual transaction frequency hit a new record with the average user transaction volume transacted at least once a week. So this underscores Meituan's position as the preferred platform for local services among a growing number of consumers, leveraging our extensive categories and merchant coverage and coupled with our industry-leading efficiency, efficient reliable on-demand delivery network, we deliver comprehensive, high-quality and convenient services to our consumers.

And looking ahead, we will further enhance our products and services to better address consumer needs by applying technology and rolling out more innovative supplies, we will continue to empower the local service industry and further unlock the industry's long-term potential.

In the second quarter, the on-demand delivery industry entered a new phase and another round of intense competition and drawing on the operational capabilities and the unparalleled efficiency we have built over a decade. We further solidified our market leadership, hitting an important milestone in July as our high steady on-demand delivery order finally surpassed 150 million orders per day, and that day is not per day.

And that being said, what truly matters more than these figures is our steadfast commitment to service quality and consumer experience. And more importantly, the intensified competitive landscape will not change our commitment in building a healthy ecosystem. We understand deeply that only by fostering sustainable ecosystem, can we ensure the long-term development and deliver sustainable win-win outcomes for all participants.

In the second quarter, our Food Delivery business successfully attracted a larger base of new users while solidifying the royalty of our core users. This achievement stems from our comprehensive offerings of value for money products across all price bands and the reliable service experience that we offer. In using Meituan membership and diversified marketing initiatives, we effectively enhanced user stickiness and transaction frequency among our core users while deepening penetration into high-value scenarios such as The Family Meals and Premium Meal options.

As a result, we maintained an unrivaled market leadership in the Food categories. Meanwhile, we remain focused on building a sustainable ecosystem for the whole industry. Through collaborative efforts with the merchants to drive supply side innovations, we continue to lead the industry-wide advancement in quality standard user experience. In July, we had partnered with over 800 restaurant chains to launch more than 5,500 branded satellite stores while helping them optimize their online operational efficiency and lower costs with our AI-driven solutions.

Our target is to expand this network to over 10,000 branded satellite stores by the end of this year. And our centralized kitchen initiative, [indiscernible] cloud kitchen continued its expansion, setting new benchmarks for food safety across the industry. It delivers end-to-end infrastructure support to restaurants of all types, encompassing supply chain management and Bright Kitchen program in [indiscernible] and digital operations, all under a unified food safety management framework. Over the next 3 years, we plan to invest in building 1,200 [indiscernible] cloud kitchens nationwide, enabling tens of thousands of restaurants to upgrade quality, creating a fully traceable and trustworthy food delivery model for consumers.

In addition, we continue to iterate the supply diversity and service quality of our Pin Hao Fan [indiscernible], making sure they meet consumer demand for value for money across different price ranges. Notably, Pin Hao Fan has emerged as the fastest-growing innovative product in the industry over the past 5 years, serving as a reliable revenue stream for small and medium-sized merchants as well as restaurant brands.

Recently, we launched [indiscernible], a 10,000 brands initiative for Pin Hao Fan, which provided tailored support for 10,000 branded restaurants nationwide. Throughout the second quarter, we continued to promote the [indiscernible], the Bright Kitchen program, directing more traffic to participating quality merchants and providing hardware subsidies to small- medium-sized merchants. We also simplified our marketing schemes to alleviate operational burden on merchants, redirecting industry focus towards quality enhancement.

Moreover, we are committed to developing a robust welfare schemes for couriers, ensuring competitive compensation flexible hours and safety protection. Starting July 1, we have expanded the coverage of occupational injury insurance to all couriers in 17 provinces and cities. Following successful pilot in Changzhou and Nantong, our pension insurance subsidy program will be expanded nationwide by the end of this year. We expect it to cover more -- over 1 million couriers. And we have also upgraded additional supportive measures for couriers.

For example, we set up RMB 1.6 billion, summer subsidy fund. Our critical illness fund has been expanded to cover more disease and now include children for a part-time cross-sourcing couriers. In collaboration with the ecosystem partners, we have built couriers homes in multiple provinces and cities, offering free services such as emergency assistance, rest areas, supplies and battery replacement and charging facilities to all couriers or even including couriers from other platforms.

In the second quarter, Meituan Instashopping solidified its leading position with a rapid growth of on-demand retail industry and evolving consumer needs. GTV achieved a much stronger growth than order volume. User growth also accelerated. Not only the more food delivery users converted to Meituan Instashopping users, but also around 20 million new users have tried our 30-minute delivery service for the first time this quarter. And transaction frequency of core users increased notably with the consumption scenarios and expanding beyond grocery to encompass 3C electronics, cosmetics, mother and child products and more. And this quarter marked our first June 18 shopping festival era for on-demand retail, during which we helped nearly 1 million off-line stores serve over 100 million users.

It was a June 18 event dedicated to offline merchants enabling brick-and-mortar retailers to enjoy the benefit of online shopping festivals and drive sales growth through on-demand retail channel. During this June 18 shopping festival, GTV for over 60 product categories on our platform doubled while overall GTV of Meituan Instamart nearly doubled. High AOV items such as mobile phones or Chinese [indiscernible] milk powders and home appliances experienced a 200% GDP growth.

In the liquor category, we enhanced the shopping experience for chilled beer and strengthened consumer mind share of purchasing Chinese liquor or Meituan [indiscernible]. Through the introduction of national subsidy and a series of shopping protection measures, we significantly elevated the shopping experience for 3C electronics. And we also added more snack discount stores to enrich the supply of leisure food on our platform.

On the service front, we launched a service insurance plan, [indiscernible], upgrading services across 3 dimensions: the service experience and fulfillment and post sales support. Notably, we partnered with numerous home appliances brands to offer value-added services such as half-day delivery and installation service through off-line stores. As the on-demand retail industry grows, we continue to lead supply-side transformation.

By the end of the second quarter, we have collaborated with retailers and brands to set up over 50,000 instamart nationwide at [indiscernible]. Through instamarts, we facilitated the digital transformation of numerous local mom and pop stores, expanding the service radius and enhancing operational efficiency. This quarter, our in-store business maintained its strong growth momentum with order volumes surging over 40% year-over-year, and annual transacting users increased by more than 20%.

And annual active merchants hit a new high and GTV of hotel and travel during the Labor Day Golden Week also reached a new high. On the merchant side, we have actively seized the emerging opportunities in the service retail industry, such as the new categories innovative supply models and the growth potential of lower-tier cities and continue to promote merchants' digital upgrade and standardization by providing integrated services, including train store management, business decision-making, marketing, customer acquisition and organizational management.

We help merchants improve their efficiency and their business scale. We remain committed to empowering merchants to build their online presence and strengthen their online brand images. For example, we help merchants refine store pages displays with more sophisticated, more accurate and diversified information, help them simplify store management through more efficient systems and leverage digital assets such as user reviews, photos and videos and various feature rankings list to enhance their brand influence.

In addition, we helped over 1 million independent artisans digitize their profile, matching them with consumer demand, while providing them with more convenient online management tools. And our goal is to turn a good craftsmanship into good business.

And recently, we launched a series of AI assistant in the merchant interface, which have started to be rolled out to more services, retail merchants. And on the consumer side, we have further solidified the consumer mindshare of finding stores and deals on Meituan. Particularly, we leveraged the Meituan membership to provide the consumers with richer benefits and better service experiences.

This quarter, we launched more in-store benefits for members of different tiers, such as member exclusive free offers and member exclusive discounts, covering various categories, including restaurant dining, beverage, leisure and entertainment as well as housekeeping and laundry services. These efforts have continuously improved user loyalty, transaction frequency and the efficiency of cross-selling across different businesses. We also leveraged Meituan membership to direct high-quality users to the hotel and travel business, upgrading the membership benefits in hotel and travel to deliver greater value.

Notably, we have witnessed a growing trend among high-tier members to expand their engagement with our travel-related products and explore more categories on our platform. For example, the proportion of the high-tier members purchasing hotels and travel offerings rose markedly during the Labor Day holiday. This quarter, we deepened our strategic partnership with Marriott International with the official launch of our joint membership program.

On the first day of the partnership, the number of bookings of Marriott hotels on our platform surged by 88% year-over-year, with bookings from young users under the age of 30, surging over 148%, a clear indicator of our expanding growth potential in the high-star hotel segment.

And next, let's turn to our new initiatives. In the second quarter, we refined our grocery retail strategy while accelerating the overseas expansion of our food delivery brand, Keeta. In June, we launched a strategic transformation for Meituan Select. We exited underperforming regions with sustained losses while continuing to explore this next-day delivery plus self-pickup model and new community retail formats in core regions.

Concurrently, we are accelerating the expansion of our Xiaoxiang Supermarket, that's our self-operated on-demand grocery business with a clear road map to gradually extend this model to all first- and second-tier cities nationwide. During this quarter, Xiaoxiang Supermarket maintained a very high growth, significantly outpacing the industry average.

We now operate nearly 1,000 brand distribution centers in 20 cities. In Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, all Xiaoxiang Supermarket locations have extended operating hours to 2:00 a.m., enhancing coverage of consumers' nighttime shopping needs. We are also continuously elevating product qualities and diversities with both the number of our private brand products and their contribution to our total sales growing steadily.

On the international front, Keeta delivered a very robust growth in both order volumes and GTV this quarter. In Hong Kong, our first market, we further strengthened our leading position while driving continuous improvements in efficiency. And in Saudi Arabia, Keeta's footprint has expanded to 20 cities by the end of July. Additionally, we officially launched Keeta in Qatar last week.

Looking ahead, we will continue to leverage our strength in product, technology and operations know-how to bring superior experiences to consumers around the world. Over the years, we have stayed committed to pursuing what's challenging yet right in the long term. Guided by our retail plus technology strategy, we have deepened our roots in the retail sector, while driving industry growth through relentless innovation. We believe that industry progress does not come from temporary scale expansion driven by massive short-term subsidies. Instead, it lies in empowering merchants to reduce operational costs, enhance operational efficiency and improve quality through digital transformation.

And this is exactly why we are firmly against the evolution nature. We aim to remain our focus towards improving user experience and enhancing supply and bringing competition back to the track of value creation. As a platform that connects hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of merchants and millions of couriers, we adhere to the principle of achieving win-win outcomes for all stakeholders. Whether through technology breakthrough or business model innovations, we will always prioritize sustainable industry growth for a healthy ecosystem and unlock greater consumption potential.

With that, I will turn the call over to Shaohui for an update on our latest financial results.

Thank you, Xing. Hello, everyone. I will now go through our second quarter financial results. During this quarter, our total revenue increased by 11.7% year-over-year to RMB 91.8 billion. Cost of revenue ratio increased 8.1 percentage points year-over-year to 66.9%. This was primarily driven by: first, higher incentives for our couriers to maintain industry-leading delivery service quality and reliability amid the current intensified competition. Second, the increased cost in our overseas operations. These factors were partially offset by the improved gross margin of our Grocery Retail business.

Selling and marketing expenses ratio increased 6.5 percentage points year-over-year to 24.5%, reflecting our strategic investments in promotion, advertising and user incentives to enhance our brand awareness, accelerate new user conversion, enhance core user frequency and stickiness in the competitive market.

Both R&D expense ratio and G&A expense ratio maintained stable year-over-year at 6.8% and 2.9%, respectively. This quarter, total segment operating profit and adjusted net profit declined significantly this quarter to RMB 1.8 billion and RMB 1.5 billion, respectively. The significant financial volatility reflects unprecedented competitive intensity across the on-demand delivery sector with industry-wide subsidy reaching record highs.

In response, we deliberately increased investments to defend our market leadership while fortifying long-term competitiveness. Throughout this process, we maintain unwavering focus on operational efficiency with industry-leading service quality from consumer merchants and riders. We are cultivating structural modes whose value compounds independently beyond the current market condition.

Turning to our cash position. As of June 30, 2025, we maintained a strong net cash position with our cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 171 billion. However, cash generated from operating activities reduced meaningfully year-over-year to RMB 4.8 billion, primarily due to our competitive investments that push operating profitability.

Now let's review our segment results, starting with core local commerce. This quarter, our core local commerce segment maintained healthy growth in both order volume and GTV. However, revenue growth significantly lagged behind scale expansion with segment's revenue increasing 7.7% year-over-year to RMB 65.3 billion. This is mainly due to a large portion of incentive, carter delivery service revenue as the result of higher incentive spending.

Meantime, we also stepped up marketing investments to reinforce our on-demand delivery brand awareness and price competitiveness on the user side. We also provided more incentives to couriers to guarantee a stable competitive delivery capacity, providing consumers with better delivery experience. As a result, segment's operating profit declined year-over-year to RMB 3.7 billion, with margin contracting to [ 57% ] this quarter.

However, both our Food Delivery and Meituan Instashopping sustained their leadership. The overall on-demand delivery order volume achieved a modest year-over-year growth acceleration this quarter. while the year-over-year growth in GTV maintaining the same pace as compared to that in last quarter despite AOV drop. It's important to highlight that core user engagement metrics across both business have showed sustained improvement this quarter.

Our demonstrated ability to drive higher purchase frequency and the stickiness among core user base will serve as the key efficiency of our innovative supply models. Meanwhile, the interior operational efficiency model of our innovative supply model such as Pin Hao Fan and [indiscernible] allow us to cost effectively serve our rapidly expanding price-sensitive user base while delivering an increasingly diverse and stable selection of value-for-money offerings.

Our core competitive strengths remain structurally intact throughout the period. Our operational strength also continue to allow us to deliver better unit economics than industry average, positioning us well for the eventual market normalization.

Our in-store business maintained strong growth momentum this quarter, achieving record highs in both order volume and GTV with upgraded supplies and enhanced service quality. We've successfully capitalized on elevated consumer spending in local service, especially during peak holiday period. During this quarter, various categories, including fitness, photography, education and others delivered robust growth across the board. As on-demand delivery traffic grew rapidly, our upgraded membership program has deepened cross-business collaboration within core local commerce. Through tailored short-term promotions, integrated market service benefits and long-term loyalty benefits, our membership program is driving higher engagement across all user groups while converting growing food delivery demand into incremental transaction growth for In-store, hotel and travel business.

This demonstrating the strong fly-wheel effect of our local commerce ecosystem. Turning to our new initiatives. During this quarter, segment revenue grew by 22.8% year-over-year to RMB 26.5 billion this quarter. The accelerated year-over-year growth was primarily driven by the fast expansion of our grocery retail operation and overseas business development. The segment's operating loss and operating loss ratio both narrowed on a quarter-over-quarter basis to RMB [ 1.5 ] billion and 7.1%, respectively.

Thanks to our efforts in improving operating and marketing efficiency in our grocery retail business and other new initiatives. The year-over-year increase in operating loss was mainly due to our increased investment in overseas business.

In closing, while we expect there will be continued fierce competition in the near term and that will bring negative impact on our financial results. I want to emphasize that resilience of our core local commerce business has been proven across multiple cycles. Every challenge eventually will strengthen our competitive positioning, sharpening our execution and driving operational excellence. Look beyond short-term volatility, we have full confidence in our ability to sustain healthy quality growth over the long term.

With that, we are now open for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

My question is about competition. Given that competitors continue to offer high subsidies, could management elaborate on our response strategies and their effectiveness? Has the competition significantly impacted our market share? What is our view on the impact of the industry evolution driven by [indiscernible] .

Thank you, Thomas. Well, allow me to begin with a very clear message. We are firmly against the evolution. So we are [indiscernible] S.o the regulators have made it very clear. That's not something they want to see in the market. But that being said, when the competition continues and become -- well, as I even more fierce, we will do our part to defend our market position. So this is not the first time we face this kind of intense competition. So in the past many years, we grew and we grew through competition. And through competition, it had shaped our leading position.

So let's focus on what makes us the market leader in the past and what we plan to do to continue innovating and being in the market leader. So I think at the end of the day, on-demand retail is a format of retail and to succeed in retail business, after all kind of fancy stuff, it all boils down to the fundamentals, the basics, the selection and the price and the service will be more specific delivery.

So we have always focused on doing the right things. So we make sure we can deliver -- we have the best growing selection, and we make sure we can have a fast and reliable delivery, and we make sure we have a consistently affordable price. Yes, nothing fancy, but just go back to the basics.

And also, well, in the past, put it this way, so for investors who have been with us for a long time, going back to 2018 during our IPO Roadshow. So we -- while we showed the road map, we promised we can grow to -- back then, our average daily number of daily orders is below 20 million. We set a goal -- we can grow to 100 million orders per day by 2025, and we are going to make RMB 1 profit per order. So that's too very easy to understand, goal that we set 7 years ago.

So in the past year or 2 in quite several quarters, we have proved that we can -- well, we get to RMB 1 profit per order per day. So I think that's reasonable because it's about 3% profit margin if you count the average order value, it's around RMB 30 and RMB 1 profit, that's just about 3%. I think that's a reasonable long-term profit margin.

And also this month -- for this past quarter because of the very fierce competition, we not only reached the 100 million orders -- daily orders. And actually, we have -- we significantly surpassed that, reached 150 million. At the same time, we were not able to get to RMB 1 per order. So I think we have reached each of the 2 goals at different stage. Now I think it will take several more years' effort to be able to achieve those 2 goals at the same time. So it will take some time. I think we are on the right track.

So no matter what happens in the market in the competition, we will focus on doing the right things, going back to the basics that's providing a better selection, make sure we can do fast and reliable delivery and make sure we offer consistently affordable price. So that's how we operate our business. And that's how I think we are going to grow the market, grow the volume and over longer term, improve the unit economics and delivering more values to both consumers, merchants and couriers. So that's our plan. So we are not going to be greatly affected by short-term price war. And that's it.

Your next question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.

So I want to ask, could management share your -- kind of what are the core advantages that could sustain our competitiveness given this intense competition? Do we have kind of any new insights in the long-term kind of TAM, which is the total addressable market for the food delivery sector? And what are our medium- to long-term growth targets for order volume, GTV and market share given what you've shared just now. So how can we quantify the impact on both short-term profits and the medium- to long-term profit recovery trajectory?

Thank you, Roland. Let me get back to your sub questions one by one. The first one is on competition advantage, I believe. So I think -- so to echo on what Xing just mentioned, I think our competitive advantage is always built on really focusing the right thing on the right fundamentals of the whole business model by providing the value that consumer is looking for.

Early in the industry development, we already understand our business is essentially part of the retailing business. So we need to have good selection and good services and good price. For the selection we are working very hard to bring the merchants on board, digitize their operating process and help them build the capability to operate online. We also invest heavily to build a standardized large-scale intracity fulfillment network and continue to improve the delivery efficiency.

We also work very hard on the supply side innovation and efficiency of the whole ecosystem to continue to offer good price deal for the consumers. Through elevated service and diverse supply, we have accumulated a large base of high-quality users with increasing engagement. We have seen all the cohorts of our previous and existing consumers continue to show very strong traction. The longer they stay with us, the higher loyalty they showed. Our competitive moat in the user merchant rider, flywheel and operational efficiency reflect over a decade of committed investment and continuous acceleration. Our team has also demonstrated strong execution capability through various challenges in the past.

And today, our core local commerce continue to enhance cross-business synergies. We also continue to invest in industry ecosystem and solidify long-term moat and drive high-quality industry growth. So this is for the competition advantages.

For your next questions on the total addressable market, we -- in all our previous quarters, we have always emphasized that food delivery has been an indispensable part of consumers' daily lives and of the whole food service industry. And we are very certain it will really become a lifestyle for the new generation of consumer. It has very clear long-term growth potential. This is also why I mentioned that early on, we already committed to a long-term goal of 100 million average daily orders. Current intense competition is likely to accelerate the order volume growth. And we have seen that 100 million orders is no longer just a long-term target. It's an achievable daily number during this competition. But at the same time, we have seen the AOV volatility during this competition.

So we believe not just the order volume, but also the high-quality orders over the long term is more meaningful. While the industry acceleration has speed up, we believe that when the competition normalized, consumer merchants and couriers will ultimately choose the platform with richer supply, higher quality services and optimal operational efficiency. And we remain committed to a healthy ecosystem and also very confident that the long-term leadership in GTV for our food category.

To your last question on the financial impact, while we are very certain that we remain absolute industry-leading operational efficiency, actually, based on our market intelligence compared to the industry peers, our unit economics advantage the UE gap has further widened amid intensified competition during this period.

Having said that, we do expect the core local commerce to incur substantial loss in Q3, driven by strategic investments. The investments will cover the high incentive to secure price competitive and industry-leading delivery services. It will also be spent on marketing to strengthen our brand awareness. We will adjust this investment dynamically. But for longer term, we remain very confident that the unit economics of this business will come back and will return to a reasonable level. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley.

I have a question regarding on-demand retail. As major e-commerce companies continue to expand investment in on-demand retail, what differentiated competitive edge does Meituan hold in this market? And what kind of progress has been made in recent category expansions? Given the current competitive landscape, has management formed new perspective on long-term TAM and profit potential of on-demand retail? And what are Meituan InstaShopping medium- to long-term growth and profit targets?

Thank you, Gary. So as I mentioned a moment ago, to succeed in this on-demand retail, we have to go back to the basic focus on doing the right things. But the 3 most important things are selection and delivery and price. So because we started earlier in this, we have the largest network. So I'm confident to say that in on-demand retail, we have the largest selection. And because we are in a hyperlocal business, it's not just one unified national supply. You have to make sure you have good supply in each sale. So because we have been doing this for -- since 2018, so we have the best selection and also because we have the largest delivery network built on top of not only other on-demand services but also in the restaurant.

So we have the scale and the density. That's why we are able to offer fast and reliable delivery. And also, we have invested a lot in building the infrastructure, including the IT system and also the kind of marketing tools to help a seller to streamline their operation to make sure we have consistently affordable price, that's the 3 most important things. But compared with restaurant delivery, I would say, the more general on-demand retail is still in a relatively early stage of market penetration.

So in this past the second quarter, yes, we have seen more e-commerce players ramping up their investment in this sector. So I think that underscore its growth potential. So similar to food delivery, we believe that by delivering stable high-quality services and better supply can on-demand retail be truly well cultivated and become consumption habits for more and more users, and that will grow the whole industry and creating a real incremental value for retail industry.

So now we have accumulated over 1 million retailers spread out over the country and that enable us to provide consumers with access to nearly all off-line retail categories. To further grow the supply, we have launched a lot of new supply format. One of the most important initiatives is [indiscernible] like Meituan InstaMart. Well, many years ago, we started with trying to work with existing suppliers. But for all kinds of reasons, it didn't work out very well. So we have decided many years ago that we need to grow with new supply formats. And Meituan InstaMart has been growing for many years and leveraging the years of industry insights and all the data we have accumulated.

Now we have empowered tens of thousands of Meituan InstaMart, and they operate in many different categories and effectively addressing the unmet consumer demand from traditional supply. And this innovation model is very rapidly penetrating not only the top-tier cities, but also the lower-tier markets. I would say, they perform even better in lower-tier markets because before we go there, the offering in those markets is significantly less than in top-tier cities.

And along the way, we have deepened the collaboration with brands to explore offline inventory tailored to the on-demand retail channels because you need to go deeper and deeper. You cannot just offer existing inventory through a new channel. You have to tailor the offering to the specific channel. So beyond the supply expansion, we have enhanced the supply quality and expanded all kind of use cases and improve the user experience. For example, people need to -- well, from time to time, people need to buy medicines. So we work with not only a lot of pharmacies, but we also built a new initiative that's our 24-hour pharmacies because you never know when you [indiscernible] medicines.

So the 24-hour Meituan pharmacy is very popular because it can meet the 9x consumption needs. And also for another category, the flowers, we have built our own [indiscernible] as the brand for premium flower shops, and they can meet high-end gifting needs. That's a very important subcategory of flowers. And those all represent incremental market opportunities and untapped by offline retail or traditional e-commerce. At the same time, we are also upgrading the service experience. For example, while on Meituan, you cannot only buy beers, you can also get the chilled beers because you don't want your beer to be not chilled. So in order to be able to offer chilled beer, we will have the [indiscernible], and they can make sure you get your beer quickly and it's chilled. So that's a better user experience.

And also, we take a lot of efforts to guarantee the freshness of the fruit cut [indiscernible] and all kind of fresh food. And also, we offer a 7-day return service for many categories. So through this evolving supply ecosystem and a stable fulfillment and elevated consumer experience, we have established a strong consumer mind share of having everything delivered to the doorstep within 30 minutes. That's becoming a lifestyle consumer habit.

And a growing number of Meituan Instashopping users are naturally converted from our Food Delivery business. So most of them have a strong consumption power, quite a high royalty and rely heavily on this convenient and reliable lifestyle. For our core users, we continuously refine the user experience and introduced a membership benefit to boost purchase frequency and category expansions. So we are confident that as industry competition rationalize, we will capture larger portion of the consumer wallet share with the riches supply and most reliable services.

And also in the past quarter, while this year marks our first June 18 promotion [indiscernible] finally, we are in the -- from the main game of e-commerce. So we have long explored extending traditional e-commerce categories such as 3C electronics and daily necessities, apparels. And through our first June 18's marketing campaign, we further strengthened the consumer mindshare in Instashopping for everything on Meituan with a standard performance in high-value categories. For example, GTV of [indiscernible] surged over 10x with an average 28 minutes delivery time and GTV of large home appliance grew over 11x and GTV of early educational [indiscernible] rose over 3x.

And also notably, our members demonstrated a strong purchasing power. The average spending of our top-tier members was 3x that of our enterprise members during the event, thanks to our high-value membership coupons. And moreover, the growth momentum of lower-tier markets was more outstanding with over 50% year-over-year growth rate.

And going forward, we will continue to build a differentiated supply and expanding the product categories while deepening supply chain innovations. And also the increased investment from other players will help accelerate the whole industry penetration in the long run. And I believe the on-demand retail market will become much bigger than most people have originally thought. However, the low price demand stimulated by short-term very aggressive subsid, and they can only replace existing off-line or traditional e-commerce.

I don't think that's the best way to create real value. I think the true incremental demand requires not just subsidy, but it requires a consistent supply-side cultivation. So we will remain patient and continue to strengthen the core capabilities. And overall, we are increasingly confident in Meituan Instashopping growth rate over the next few years. And we believe we can capture more incremental demand amid the market expansion.

And regarding profitability, Meituan Instashopping has been profitable for several consecutive quarters in the past. But now we are in a different -- a new stage of the growth. So in short term, we will prioritize growth over profitability. We will continue to invest to solidify consumer mindshare and ensure a stable use experience so as to maintain the market leadership.

However, our long-term profit target remains unchanged. And as the subsidy went down hopefully over the years, certainly not over the quarters. And I think Meituan Instashopping profitability will return to a reasonable value. So all in all, I understand because a lot of more investment has been put into this industry in the past quarter, and we expect even more to come in the coming quarters. So I would say there's nothing more exciting than being an underdog in a bigger game. So that's very exciting. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

I want to shift gears to the in-store business. What's the competitive landscape latest? And also, could management elaborate on the recent progress for in-store dining and service retail? Additionally, since the launch of Meituan membership, any positive developments to share, particularly like cross-selling along with quantitative results?

Thank you. Regarding the competition in in-store, our primary focus remains on the long-term healthy development of the business. We differ from competitors and business models and operational strategy with unique strength in category mix, merchant ecosystem and operational efficiency. Recently, amid growing demand for value for money in-store dining and services, we have expanded coverage of high-quality, low-priced offerings, refined subsidy strategy and enhanced consumer mindshare. To address service retail merchants' rising needs for enhanced online operation and customer acquisition, we have extended the scenario coverage of our AI business systems.

We try to cover end-to-end workflows from simple daily task to complex operations, helping merchants reduce cost and improve efficiency. In lower-tier markets, we have strengthened our marketing capabilities and launched targeted group byproducts. As a result, both transacting users and GTV in lower-tier markets grew rapidly.

Currently, industry-wide subsidy levels remain stable and the merchants are increasingly focused on ROI for daily operations and marketing. Competition in our core categories also remained stable, and we are confident in further solidifying our advantage in the in-store.

As for the Meituan membership, it has continued to make positive progress. We have rolled out member benefits, spanning from food delivery and in-store dining, service, retail, hotel and travel, Meituan Instashopping, medical and health bike sharing, enriching the benefit scheme and driving sustainable growth and member engagement.

In the second quarter, the net number of members who upgraded their membership tiers exceeded 10 million with a higher proportion among top-tier Black Gold and Black Diamond members, fueling faster growth in their order volume and GTV. Rotating benefits across different services has boosted cross sales. Additionally, we are working to position Meituan membership as a universe program for local service. By partnering with external merchant membership schemes, we offer members more premium benefits while enabling merchants to pricely reach target customers. For example, we have launched joint membership program with Marriott Hotel Group. Going forward, we will introduce more joint membership benefits and expand the ecosystem's reach. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Ya Jiang with CTC Securities.

My question is regarding the new initiatives segment. We see that Meituan recently announced a significant scaling back of Meituan Select and also accelerated expansion of Xiaoxiang Supermarket. And besides, we noticed that Meituan plans to explore the offline hard discount model through Happy Monkey in Chinese [indiscernible]. Could you please share rationale behind these adjustments? And what are your key considerations for exploring the hard discount model? And after scaling back Meituan Select, what's your capital investment plan in grocery retail? Additionally, what's the growth expectation for Xiaoxiang Supermarket over the next 2 to 3 years? And how we should view its long-term profit potential?

Thank you, Jiang Ya. And as I explained in the previous questions, I think in order to further grow on-demand retail, it's very important to target different categories. There are so many different categories, but grocery is probably one of the most important ones, both because grocery can be very big and also because it really fits our mission to help people eat better, live better. So we have been working and investing in grocery through different formats for many years since 2018.

And the most recent progress in the past quarter is that -- well, you have mentioned that all. So we scaled back on Meituan Select. At the same time, we accelerate expansion of Xiaoxiang Supermarket and we also have plan to explore a different format.

So let's start with Xiaoxiang Supermarket. So I can confidently say that Xiaoxiang is growing very quickly. And I believe we are among the largest online grocery operations and also because we are among top 2 and we are growing the fastest. So I think we are in a very good position to provide the best offering in online groceries. And we control the supply and we can iterate and improve the selection. I think we are particularly strong in those fresh food. So we plan to invest more in Xiaoxiang Supermarket.

And actually, many of my friends told me besides Meituan Food Delivery, Xiaoxiang Supermarket is the most frequently used business, Meituan business they rely on because the grocery is just a high frequency behavior. And also, along the years, we realized the Xiaoxiang Supermarket can probably cover more cities than we originally thought. Today, we have almost 1,000 Xiaoxiang Supermarket and across 20 cities. And following the restructuring of Meituan Select, I think we will have more resources to invest in the expansion of Xiaoxiang Supermarket. We plan to cover all first and second-tier cities.

And also, we anticipate that Xiaoxiang Supermarket will continue to outpace the overall industry growth in coming years. In terms of profitability, I think while we never expect grocery to be a hugely profitable business. But I think when we grow to a big scale with a good overall efficiency, we should be able to target to achieve a low single-digit profit margin. I think the 3% is a rule of thumb.

And you also mentioned a new initiative in the Happy Money [indiscernible] I think while China's grocery retail market has very substantial growth potential, and there's still a lot of users who prefer -- especially in lower tier cities, they prefer to shop in stores. So here, we have to try more like an omnichannel model, not only online but also offline.

And well, discount retail, I think that's just a term. So we don't obsess with the term. I think we are trying to offer a new format with a limited selection with a very competitive price and mostly in-store shopping. So while this is still in a very, very early stage, so I think we don't have much detail to share at this stage, and it's just an experiment.

Well, next quarter, I think we will have a little bit more detail to share with all investors. So -- but that being said, because we have been planning this, and I think we will fully consider the capital needs of the business because we have scaled back Meituan Select. So the overall CapEx in our whole grocery division will be significantly less than the past 2 years. So I think we are patient in this. So we are -- after the streamlining, I think we are in a better position to get to the long-term growth.

Your next question comes from Alicia Yap with Citigroup.

I have a question on your overseas business. So beyond the Saudi Arabia, Keeta has just launched in Qatar and also plans to enter Brazil in the coming months. Could management share the updates on TD's overseas progress and also the future expansion plans? So what competitive edge does Meituan or Keeta have over the local players, given the need to allocate resources to cope with the intense competition in the domestic food delivery market? Will the company actually control the pace and also the scale of the overseas investment?

Well, thank you, Alicia, for your interest in Keeta. So as I said in the past, Meituan is going to be a global company, and we remain open to new market opportunities in international markets. But at the same time, in terms of the expansion phase, so we are not in any hurry. We didn't start Keeta until 2023, it's slightly over 2 years old, but I think we are already -- we have already made very good progress.

So now we are already #1 in Hong Kong, and we entered the Saudi Arabia in last September. So we are fairly 1 year old there. I think we have become one of the top 2 players in Saudi Arabia. So I think we have been able to make very fast progress because we -- again, we focus on doing the right things, the 3 basic, the selection and the fast and reliable delivery and consistently affordable price because we have operated at a huge scale in China, and we have built the IT infrastructure. So we have been able to reuse that and adapt that to the different needs in different markets. But because we have the better IT infrastructure. So we were able to achieve get to scale and achieve an efficient operation in a quite fast pace.

And in July, we expanded -- we covered more cities in Saudi Arabia. Now we operate in about 20 cities in Saudi Arabia. I think we have mostly done with geographical expansion in Saudi Arabia. And also, we have entered a new market, Qatar. So Qatar is our second destination in GCC in the Gulf States.

Well, Qatar is not a country with a huge population, but its per capita is among the highest in the world. And Qatar, consumers have a strong willingness to pay for services. So which provides a good foundation for the development of food delivery or more generally on-demand retail in the future.

And so I think we are going to keep growing in both Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

And as for Brazil, I think we are still doing market research. We have a small team there, and we plan to grow our team there, and we are prepared for the market entry. And we are quite optimistic about the potential, but we understand it's among -- although it's a big -- it's among the top 5 food delivery market in terms of GMV, but we understand that the competition is also going to be quite fierce. So I don't see we want to -- we are not in any rush. We want to make sure we do our research. We have built a good team -- we have a good team in place and then we can truly create new values for consumers, merchants and couriers.

And so I think for Keeta, in general, I think we are very optimistic about the long-term growth potential as we -- our plan is to get to HKD 100 billion run rate GMV in 10 years. So since we started in Hong Kong in May 2023. So the 10-year goal is set at May 2033. So we are not in any hurry. So we will take consideration of the -- all the recent situation in both domestic and international markets, and we will grow in our existing markets and make a good preparation for launch in new markets. So that's the overall strategy. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Charlene Liu with HSBC.

I would like to ask if the company plans to set a cap for overall investment when addressing competition in food delivery and on-demand retail in the short term. Obviously, we have seen core local commerce profit come under pressure. How would it affect the company's budget for investment in overseas expansion and grocery retail going forward? And can we ask the management to kindly outline the company's capital allocation priorities and strategies and share a little bit more on whether the increased business investments could potentially impact shareholder return, including buyback?

Thank you, Charlene. I understand the question is mainly focused on how we plan to allocate our capital going forward. So similar to the philosophy that we shared in previous quarters, the key principle for us to considering capital allocation needs, what makes the best ROI? What's the best way of the use of the capital and generate long-term return. In the domestic opportunity, we truly believe that our core business, including the Food Delivery, broader on-demand retail as well as our in-store business has huge potential, and it's also our core business. So we will always prioritize our resources for this core business. We believe this is a market with huge potential and still at its early stage.

And while there is different level of competition in different segments, we feel this will all help and educate the market and speed up the growth of the market. So we will always see from a long-term perspective, whether we can create value to this segment. Specifically, as we mentioned earlier, we believe the value we create for this business is by providing the best selection, the best services and the best price. As long as our investment can help us build on those long-term capabilities we will be very determined to invest.

But at the same time, we do not like the irrational spending in the unsustainable manner. So we believe that it's important that we make investments but focus on ROI. Given the competition now is very intense and we expect the competition will continue for -- in the short term, we expect there will be significant loss for both Food Delivery and our core local commerce segment in Q3. At the same time, I want to highlight that our efficiency and growth quality have consistently outpaced peers with recent trends indicating that this competitive gap is widening further amid intensified competition. So while the short-term profit may fluctuate due to the increased investments, we anticipate core local commerce will be able to generate stable cash flow once the industry subsidy is back to rational level.

For your questions on allocation into new business, particularly the gross retailing and Keeta. As Xing mentioned, we have very clear long-term target and have very strong confidence about the potential of these 2 areas. But at the same time, we are also taking a more long-term view and long-term patience in growing this business. For grocery retailer, we have accelerated the growth in our self-operating on-demand retail such as [indiscernible]. And this will also strengthen our overall capability in this self-operating model, but we also respect the complexity in covering more cities and building more frontier warehousing. So we will manage the pace to make sure the growth is a high-quality growth. For Keeta, as mentioned, we will consider resource availability and market opportunity, while we are very determined that the investment can generate high ROI.

We respect the complexity and managing overseas. So it's very important we learn along the way to understand the local market demands and local different industry dynamics. Both grocery retail and Keeta has very clear long-term profitability potential at scale, and we will continuously to optimize the operational efficiency to drive the high-quality growth. Meanwhile, as mentioned in earlier quarters, we continue to believe share repurchase is our current most effective approach for enhancing shareholder returns. But at the same time, given the opportunity we mentioned, we plan to prioritize the use of cash on to our core business. So we will continue to evaluate the market situation and seize favorable market windows to reduce the outstanding shares and enhance shareholder return.

For a longer period of time, we believe we can create solid shareholder returns for our shareholders. Thank you.

That does conclude our question-and-answer session. I'll now hand back to Scarlet Xu for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with everyone next quarter. Thank you for your support.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Meituan First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Scarlett Xu, VP and Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good evening, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter of 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO; and Mr. Shaohui Chen, Senior Vice President and CFO of Meituan. For today's call, management will first provide a review of our first quarter of 2025 results and then conduct a Q&A session.

Before we start, we would like to remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements, which include a number of risks and uncertainties and may differ from actual results in the future. This presentation also contains unaudited non-IFRS accounting standard financial measures that should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting standards. For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS accounting standard measures, please refer to the disclosure documents in the IR section of our website.

Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang. Please go ahead, Xing.

Thank you, Scarlett, and hello, everyone. In the first quarter, our business maintained steady growth with revenue increasing by 18.1% year-over-year to RMB 86.6 billion. Both annual Transacting Users and annual Active Merchants reached new highs. We are delighted that an increasing number of consumers and merchants choose Meituan as their preferred platform for local services.

Beyond our ongoing efforts in enhancing products and services to elevate their experience, we have continued to expand our investments in the ecosystem development, actively promote the industry's healthy growth and unlock greater consumption potential for China's local services through improved supply and service innovations.

Since launching of our food delivery business more than 11 years ago, we have continuously diversified our product offerings, broadened our price bands and optimized our 30-minute delivery network to bring better services and choices to hundreds of millions of consumers.

Over the years, we also supported millions of merchants, especially small or medium-sized merchants, to reach out to new customers, achieve business growth and navigate industry cycles to promote the industry transition into a phase that focuses on healthy development. We aim to further facilitate industry transformation, enhance the online business operation environment and generate greater value for the food service industry.

Through our innovative and refined supply models, we continue to help restaurants, merchants and other new growth opportunities. For example, we actively promoted Branded Satellite Stores in Taipei, Shenzhen, and that enables chain restaurants to rapidly expand their geographical presence with much lower cost compared to a traditional dying establishments.

And by the end of the first quarter, more than 480 brands have successfully launched more than 3,000 high-quality Branded Satellite Stores on Meituan. What's more impressive is the average revenue per store is several times that of a typical dine-in store.

And besides Branded Satellite Stores, we also designed and refined other innovative off-line business formats, different formats, offering customized growth strategies and operational solutions for chain restaurant merchants.

Additionally, we introduced our self-operated cloud kitchen tailored for chain restaurant brands. Meanwhile, we fully recognize that small and medium-sized merchants are the cornerstone of China's food service industry. This business are also essential to the local employment and community economy. We remain steadfastly committed to providing more support to the small and medium-sized merchants.

Our goal is to ensure that those small and medium-sized merchants, who operate diligently on our platform, gain visibility and trust from consumers and gradually become consumers' preferred choices. In Q1, we further implemented a comprehensive range of measures to support high-quality, small and medium-sized merchants. This includes providing financial assistance, traffic support, free digital tools and online services. By doing so, we effectively help this merchant improve supply, elevate service quality and offer broader selections.

Furthermore, recognizing the importance of food safety and product quality, we have launched a Bright Kitchen program [Foreign Language] and other food safety measures to enhance our platform supply quality. We believe higher transparency allows consumers to easily discover high-quality restaurants. To support micro merchants, including family-owned restaurants and community restaurants, we offer them targeted subsidy to cover costs such as hardware, procurement, installation expenses to join our Bright Kitchen program [Foreign Language].

Looking ahead, we plan to invest RMB 100 billion over the next 3 years to drive the whole food service industry to high-quality growth. These resources will be used to support merchants across various categories and to boost consumer demand.

Food is an indispensable part of our ecosystem. Over the past decade, we have consistently enhanced our measures to protect couriers’' rise and interest and to improve their working experience. Since July 2022, we have provided over RMB 1.5 billion in occupational injury insurance for all couriers on our platform across 7 pilot provinces. We plan to roll out occupational injury insurance to more provinces this year and expand nationwide by the end of next year.

This April, we also launched a new pension pilot program for couriers. That will be gradually rolled out nationwide in future. And meanwhile, we offer a comprehensive talent development program and career promotion path for couriers. Notably, 86% of the management position within our delivery networks are filled by couriers promoted from the front line. We also provide couriers diverse job transfer opportunities within our platform and already sponsored hundreds of couriers to enroll in universities for higher education.

Beyond work support, we provide living and health care assistants to couriers and their families. For example, we have allocated more than RMB 100 million in critical illness aid for over 6,000 couriers and their families. Through our Baby Kangaroo Charity Program, and that is [Foreign Language], we have provided tens of millions of RMB medical assistance funds and provided educational support for couriers' children.

We also placed great emphasis on supporting female couriers. In 2024, the number of female couriers who have received the income from our platform exceeded 700,000. This March, we provided female couriers with three 1-year coverage of critical illness insurance for women [Foreign Language]. Looking ahead, we will collect more feedback and suggestions from our couriers, continue to enhance their welfare and ensure that their hard work is duly recognized and rewarded.

In Q1, Meituan Instashopping continued to deliver robust growth underscoring the great potential of on-demand retail and its broader consumer recognition. In April, we officially launched our on-demand retail brand, Meituan Instashopping, [Foreign Language]. Consumers can easily access the Instashopping page directly from the homepage of the Meituan app to browse and purchase all kind of daily necessities. At around-the-clock next-generation shopping platform, Meituan Instashopping work with the millions of retailers, brands and local small and medium-sized merchants.

We meet the daily shopping needs of more than 300 million consumers across the nation, delivering an unparalleled experience that gets high-quality products to consumers' hands within 30 minutes. This public brand debut is a direct response to the surge in popularity of on-demand retail. We aim to offer more high-quality products along with an enhanced convenience and a more reliable shopping experience for every consumer.

We also aim to jointly capitalize on the opportunity from industry transformation and supply chain upgrades with millions of merchants on our platform. As an important new sales avenue for retailers and brand owners, Meituan Instashopping will continue to introduce more online tools and support merchants across all categories to expand Meituan InstaMart, [Foreign Language]. And these measures will help drive business growth for the merchant and enhance their online operations.

And now let's turn to in-store, adapted to the demand trends and the new macro environment. We have proactively expanded our product categories and services offerings to cater to the diverse consumer preferences. For example, in response to the evolving consumption trends, we rolled out initiatives like a Safe Learning that is [Foreign Language], Safe Training that is [Foreign Language], providing more flexibility for consumers to restore consumer competence in prepaid services. Safe Learning has onboarded over 20,000 education institutions across the country, covering extensive education scenarios with courses spanning sports, arts and other fields.

Consumers can seamlessly place orders and redeem services in installments and request refunds when needed with a single click on our platform. Building on this success, we recently launched Safe Training [Foreign Language], which covers fitness training and extending this very free consumption model to broader in-store categories, meanwhile, leveraging the efficient user-friendly online tools, a wide array of marketing programs. We also help merchants reach a larger customer base with enhanced conversion rates enabling them to benefit from digital transformation and achieve business growth across various consumption scenarios.

The number of annual active in-store merchants increased by more than 25% year-over-year in Q1. And beyond offline merchants, our platform host numerous independent artisans such as photographers, hair stylists [indiscernible]. As the platform connecting artisans, merchants and consumers, we introduced a suite of offerings for the artisans from onboarding process, review management, content display, operations support to consultation services. These services empower over 1 million active artisans to develop their personal brand online.

We also streamlined collaborations between merchants and artisans, while enabling consumers to easily access their preferred artisan with the broader selections and high price to value and distinctive service experience.

Since integrating the medical aesthetics and health care business into the medical and health division, we have further enhanced cross-sells deepened penetration into the industry supply chain and delivered comprehensive medical and health solutions to consumers.

During the peak flu season in the first quarter, we collaborated directly with the pharmaceutical companies to ensure sufficient drug supplies, while solidifying our leadership in the on-demand medicine delivery. We expanded our supply to address the needs of chronic disease, medicines and medical equipment and further increase the user purchase frequency. Meanwhile, we have extended a partnership with medical aesthetics providers, dental clinics, eye-care clinics, specialty clinics and traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and more.

We targeted our existing user base to cross-sell more medical and health care services. For example, in dental care, we focused on deliberative consumptions, such as dental implants and refining the price comparison experience and decision-making process for the consumers.

We also introduced safe implantation, [Foreign Language], a guarantee to mitigate a consumer's concerns and risks. For eye-care, through expanded supply and targeted marketing campaigns, we capitalized on the demand scenario of students, renewing their eyeglasses during winter vacations and travelers purchase sunglasses for holiday trips. And looking ahead, we will continue to innovate our products and services to meet the consumers' evolving one-stop medical and health care needs.

And at the end of March, we rolled out the Meituan Membership Program, [Foreign Language], which encompasses all our business categories. It features Shen Quan as a universal benefit covering every aspect of consumers' daily lives. We aim to provide members with a wider array of benefits, an elevated experience. Under this membership framework, users can accumulate growth points and through the membership tiers and unlock additional privilege.

Currently, the privilege mainly include the hotel travel and various other local services categories. Going forward, we'll continue to expand member benefits to more categories. Additionally, we will introduce tier-specific privilege such as priority delivery services for food delivery and 3 complementary drinks and dishes for in-store and to continuously enhance the user experience of Meituan Membership. And we anticipate to solidify the consumer mindshare in Meituan as the go-to platform to discover local stores and great deals through the new Meituan Membership brand. By providing benefits that span all categories and scenarios, we seek to boost user stickiness, increase transaction frequency and optimize cross-sell efficiency.

And now let's move on to our new initiative segment. In first quarter, we further refined operations and achieved a notable efficiency improvement in grocery retail, software and hardware services on a year-over-year basis. Through grocery retail business like Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Meituan Select, [Foreign Language], we started to offer comprehensive support for export enterprises, covering marketing, channel expansion and brand partnership and so on to help them distribute high-quality export products in domestic markets.

Our overseas business also witnessed a significant breakthrough. In Saudi Arabia, Keeta has very effectively showcased our product capability and technological edge by delivering an enhanced consumer experience in both transactions and deliveries. We have won wide recognition from local consumers and quickly risen as one of the top preferred food delivery apps in the region. And looking ahead to the rest of 2025, we remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering the healthy development of our ecosystem.

On the merchant front, we will introduce more support measures, improve the online operational environment and help merchants iterate innovative supply format. Regarding our couriers, we will offer a broader range of measures to safeguard their rights and enhance their benefits, while promoting social recognition for their contribution. For our consumers, we are devoted to delivering more comprehensive services, products and membership benefits, particularly to those who have been our loyal supporter over time.

And by leveraging AI technology, we will continuously refine our user experience and improve merchant operational efficiency. And furthermore, we're proactively aligned with the national strategies aiming at boosting consumptions and expanding domestic demand. And by staying attuned to emerging consumption trends and identifying new markets and new opportunities, we will promote consumption growth and industry transformation contributing to the broader economic landscape.

With that, I will turn the call over to Shaohui for an update on our financial results.

Thank you, Xing. Hello, everyone. I will now go through our first quarter financial results. During this quarter, our business sustained healthy growth with our total revenue increasing by 18.1% year-over-year to RMB 86.6 billion. Cost of revenue ratio decreased 2.3 percentage points year-over-year to 62.6%, primarily due to the improved gross margin of our grocery retail business and strengthened operating leverage, partially offset by the increased cost related to overseas businesses.

Selling and marketing expenses ratio decreased 1 percentage point year-over-year to 18%, thanks to our enhanced marketing efficiency. Both R&D expenses ratio and the G&A expense ratio maintained stable year-over-year at 6.7% and 3%, respectively.

Our strategic focus on quality growth and operational efficiency continued to deliver strong results. This quarter, total segment operating profit grew to RMB 11.2 billion, up from RMB 6.9 billion last year, and total segment operating margin increased from 9.5% to 13%. On a consolidated basis, our adjusted net profit increased year-over-year, reaching RMB 10.9 billion this quarter.

Turning to our cash position. As of March 31, 2025, we maintained our strong net cash position with our cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 180.4 billion. Cash generated from operating activities increased meaningfully year-over-year to RMB 10.1 billion.

Now I'd like to review our segment results. Starting with Core local commerce. We saw a sequential recovery in our on-demand deliveries year-over-year order volume growth this quarter. For food delivery with the headwinds from warm winter subsidizing, Q1 daily order growth was higher than that of Q4. Medium to high-frequency users continue to demonstrate significant greater engagement. This is a direct result of our focused execution across supply side optimization, production itineration and operational enhancement.

Meantime, we continuously accelerate our new supply format this quarter. Notably, Pin Hao Fan sustained its strong growth treasury with core consumers' retention rate climbing steadily year-over-year. This quarter, Meituan Instashopping sustained strong growth momentum, numerous consumption categories, including beverage, snack food, 3C, home appliance, beauty and personal care as well as other nonfood categories or deliver standout performance. The Valentine's Day period proved particularly noteworthy with daily order volume nearly doubling year-over-year.

Beyond flower gift, we also observed significant demand expansion in nonfood gifting category such as small appliance, jewelry and beauty products, demonstrating our platform's evolving role for more consumers, particularly among the younger generations and far more categories.

In addition, Meituan InstaMart proves our continued progress on the supply side. The number of Meituan InstaMart and its order contribution continue to increase, especially in the lower-tier markets. Our Insta business effectively capture heightened consumer spending during key holiday period with order volume increasing by about 50% year-over-year this quarter.

We enhanced our special deals program. It not only continue to gain traction across high-frequency categories like meals, fast food and beverage, but also catalyzed increased demand for seasonal consumption categories around holidays. In lower-tier markets, we maintained strong momentum with continued growth in merchant coverage, user engagement and transaction volume during Q1. Importantly, we achieved these results while further improving profitability in lower-tier cities. We optimized Shen Hui Yuan membership program has emerged as another powerful growth accelerator for this quarter, effectively helping in-store hotel and travel business, acquire new users. We engage in active users and increased transaction frequency.

Our Core local commerce segment continued to deliver strong year-over-year revenue growth of 17.8%, reaching RMB 64.3 billion. Core local commerce segment's operating profit and operating margin both improved on a year-over-year basis to RMB 13.5 billion and 21%, respectively. We drove greater efficiency in operations across our core local commerce business and realized greater operating leverage.

Turning to our new initiative segment. During this quarter, revenue in this segment increased by 19.2% year-over-year to RMB 22.2 billion, mainly due to the development of our grocery retail business and overseas business. Thanks to our efforts in improving operating and marketing efficiency in our grocery retail business, the segment's operating loss and operating loss ratio both narrowed on a year-over-year basis to RMB 2.3 billion and 10.2%, respectively. The sequential increase in operating loss was mainly due to our increased investment in overseas business.

In closing, I would like to highlight that over the years, our Core local commerce business has navigated complex and evolving market conditions with resilient performance. Each challenge has made us stronger, strengthening our competitive edge, driving operational excellence and delivering consistent financial improvement. Looking ahead, we remain confident in the substantial growth potential across all businesses of our Core local commerce segment. The increasing synergy will further amplify our advantages. We have full confidence in our ability to sustain healthy quality growth over the long term.

With that, we are now open for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Ronald Keung from Goldman Sachs.

So I want to ask about the -- on the food delivery side that JD announced a 10 billion subsidy program into food delivery and made some progress. So, has this initiative impacted our order volume growth to date? And how does management assess the shift in the competitive landscape?

So meanwhile, given Ele.me also announced a similar 10 billion subsidy program. So will we be making any corresponding adjustments to our subsidy strategy to sustain competitiveness? And what specific measures will we adopt to respond to this new competitive environment? And how might these market changes influence Meituan's overall profit growth for the current year? Apologies for the long question.

Okay. Thank you, Ronald. I think that's a very important question. So the short answer is that we are going to take whatever metric it takes to win the game. Now the longer version, so it seems kind of funny, so 10 billion tier, 10 billion there, it seems every Internet player wants to chip in their 10 billion in the game. So that means the -- well, the winner is going to be really valuable. And we plan to be the winner.

Currently, we are the largest player in this business, and we have been doing this for more than 10 years. And we have endured several rounds very fierce competition in the past 10 years. So now I think we are better positioned to win again this time. So I would like to elaborate on that. So first, I want to highlight that we welcome the new entrants to this food delivery and on-demand retail market.

The movement of the new entrants underscore the significant growth potential that exists within the food delivery and a broader on-demand retail sector. And we believe competition will drive the development of the whole industry with a particular upside for an on-demand retail, where our Meituan Instashopping lease. However, I have to say that the current industry kind of irrational subsidy competition and characterized by low quality and low price, it's probably not sustainable in longer term. So eventually, competition should realign with the business fundamentals.

Only the platform that can effectively activate the 3-pillar flywheel of consumers, merchants and delivery network will achieve sustainable growth. And we maintain full confidence in our scale advantage and competitive moat of our location-based on-demand delivery network. We remain confident about the future growth potential of both our food delivery and our broad Meituan Instashopping business. And to be more specific on food delivery, the recent very heavy subsidy in the industry have effectively catalyzed more demand, particularly for the very elastic consumption category such as the milk, tea or coffee beverages.

And our platform also experienced very robust growth in the beverage category in April and May, and other food categories also maintained a steady growth. And we also observed that more mid-frequency users increased their order frequency and it became higher frequency users. The retention rate of these core users maintained very high. And because of the intensified the competition, consumer experience on other platforms was compromised in areas such as system outage and delayed delivery and a very high refund rate.

And by -- but our platforms has consistently delivered a stable experience through our very reliable delivery network and advanced system. Because we have been operating for more than 11 years, so we have built a quite sophisticated service capability that can meet the consumers' daily demands across broad price bands and different consumption scenarios. And our platform hosts a large number of high-quality small and medium-sized merchants, who serve not only at the cornerstone of our food delivery supply, but also at the vital backbone of China's food service industry.

Through continuous product and service integrations, we assist small and medium-sized merchants in customer acquisition and revenue growth. Meanwhile, we help a branded restaurant to innovate their supply model, including Branded Satellite Stores, [Foreign Language], and community dine-in stores. These innovative offerings like Pin Hao Fan and Shen Qiang Shou not only address consumer demand for value for money options, but also help merchant boost order volumes and increase revenues. These collective efforts have diversified and elevated the quality of our supply, coupled with our industry-leading delivery network and continuous operational enhancement. We are well positioned to deliver more predictable services and richer consumption experience for our consumers.

And we are confident that as the industry irrational subsidy phase out, consumer will choose the platform that offers the broadest selection, the best experience and more reliable services. So we are well prepared to confront the competition. So in near term, we'll make necessary investment to solidify consumer mind share. And we are confident in our ability to maintain our long-term leadership in the industry. Meanwhile, we will prioritize the healthy and sustainable development of the whole industry and the ecosystem. We believe that the China's food delivery industry should enter a new phase of development.

Neither platforms nor merchants should go back to the previous competition model driven by very aggressive subsidies. An increasing number of merchants are now actively embracing new supply format, seeking growth by enhancing product quality and service offerings. And they are also phasing up to the industry challenges such as excessive marketing promotions and food safety issues. We recognize that these industry-wide issues profound and require immediate attention. Therefore, in order to directly addressing competition, we will actively drive innovation on the supply side and tap into new growth opportunities this year.

And we will also take a proactive steps to improve the overall quality of the industry and optimize the online business environment for merchants. And we are also actively advocating against unnecessary and excessive competition within the industry. And we will continue to help merchants streamline their marketing efforts and reduce the operational burdens. And at the same time, we will focus on enhancing our marketing efficiency and boost the purchase frequency and user stickiness of our core users. And we remain committed to creating tangible values for all stakeholders, including merchants, couriers and consumers and thereby guiding the industry towards a more rationale and quality service-driven growth trajectory.

And financially, due to the intensified competition, we expect volatility. So I think nobody should be surprised that there will be volatility in short-term financial results. Recently, other players are still maintaining a very high subsidy ratio. And these circumstances, we will continue -- we will increase our investment. We're adhering to principle of a fair and orderly competition. And our overall investment philosophy is to drive the industry healthy growth and defend our market position.

We will also increase investment in the ecosystem as committed. And as a large portion of our investment will counter revenue, we expect the year-over-year growth rate for our Core local commerce revenue in Q2 will decelerate from that of Q1, and operating profit for Core local commerce in Q2 will decrease significantly year-over-year.

We do not know how long the irrational competition from the new entrants of the market will continue. So it's impossible to give accurate financial guidance at this point for Q2 or the rest of the year, but we will continue to defend our market share. We are very confident we can solidify our market leadership. And we have been instrumental in growing the food delivery industry in China in the past -- in the last decade. And we are best positioned to continue to create value for all stakeholders. And we hope all stakeholders can see through short-term fluctuation and focus on our long-term competitive strength, sustainable growth potential.

In the longer run, Core local commerce has room to unlock revenue and cost synergies among different businesses. And as our business further scale up, economies of scale will become more evident. We also anticipate that after this phase of intense competition, the food delivery industry will return to a more rational and sustainable growth path leading to a healthier ecosystem. And then we are confident the GTV profit margin of Core local commerce will steadily improve to a reasonable value.

And also, I think the regulators is also working on this. But because we have been doing business in the Internet sector in China for more than 10 years, so I believe it's the job of the regulator to stop the irrational and unhealthy subsidy competition. And our job is to win the fight as long as it's allowed to go on. So we are ready, we are prepared to do whatever it takes to win the fight and solidify our market leadership. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Ya Jiang from Citic Securities.

We can see that on-demand retail has become a lifestyle for more and more young people and with our rebranding of Meituan into shopping, what are our strategy in expanding to more category selections? And how is the progress of our InstaMart? Also, where are we moving up to higher ticket size items like consumer electronics and appliance?

Thank you for the question. Yes, I'm glad you asked a question about Meituan Instashopping, which we launched in 2018. And since then has seen its spending too many categories and covering almost all the aspects of daily life, category like flowers, fruits fresh food are naturally well suited to the on-demand retail model. For this category by integrated innovative product format, we are able to incentivize new consumers' demands and redefined boundaries of the on-demand retail industry.

But at the same time, more importantly, Meituan Instashopping has maintained a robust growth trajectory in nonfood category as well, such as the 3C, home appliance, beauty and personal care, mom and child, pet care, daily necessity and apparel. These categories, though often perceived as low frequency due to their nonurgent nature, have also witnessed remarkable growth. With our continuous efforts to broaden product coverage and elevate quality standards, the order growth for nonfood category exceeded 60% in the first quarter. Our extensive assortment of daily necessities and long-tail products effectively address consumers' urgent needs.

Categories such as beauty and personal care, toys and video games, pet care, mom and child products also fulfill consumers' aspiration for a quality lifestyle and emotional satisfaction. The growth of 3C products and home appliance is also striking. Portable small home appliance, kitchen appliance, camera equipment, smart devices and gaming equipment all achieved substantial growth on our platform. Notably, some consumers have even purchased large home appliances like refrigerator and laundry machines through our on-demand retail platform.

Additionally, the apparel order volume from young consumers have far exceeded our initial expectations. These developments indicate that on-demand retail has become an important channel for meeting diverse consumer needs and a trusted lifestyle choice for the younger generation. Meituan InstaMart represents our innovative supply model. Currently, we have more than 30,000 Meituan InstaMarts with over 10,000 of them being convenience stores. The remaining InstaMarts cover almost all the categories previously mentioned. We are constantly enhancing the coverage density of convenience store InstaMart for categories like food, pet care and beauty products. The InstaMart network have reached significant scale and are in the midst of rapid expansion.

Meanwhile, categories such as trendy beverage, food has entered an accelerated growth phase after initial exploration. Furthermore, an increasing number of leading KA brands from sectors, including supermarkets, convenience stores, small home appliance and daily necessities are accelerating their investment of Meituan InstaMarts. We remain committed to entering a series of merchant support. As for Q1, total transaction user of Meituan Instashopping exceeded 500 million, with young consumers born after 1990 accounting for 2/3 of this figure. User stickiness and purchase frequency also increased.

We officially launched our on-demand retail brand called of Meituan Instashopping to build on this solid foundation [Foreign Language]. We are trying to deliver everything to your door step within 30 minutes [Foreign Language]. During the initial phase of the brand launch, our strategic marketing campaigns drove the peak daily active user of Instashopping to nearly $6.5 million, with young users born up to 1995, accounting for more than half of this total.

In May, we launched the first service assurance plan [Foreign Language] that covers the whole process of on-demand retail in this industry. Partnering with hundreds of well-known brands and a wide range of local merchants, we upgrade our service experience, fulfillment and aftersales services. Our goal is to promote on-demand retail as the most superior shopping experience in terms of service and guarantee.

For example, we collaborate with home appliance brands to provide half-day delivery and installation service for home appliance, offer exclusive delivery and customer service for high-value merchandise and enable 30 minutes delivery of products under the training program from hundreds of thousands of local stores. We also offer 7-day return guarantee services for millions of stocks and launched guaranteed reimbursement for foods and fresh produce that are damaged or for beers or beverage that are not chilled as promised. We firmly believe that Meituan Instashopping will emerge as a leading consumption platform for more consumers, particularly among the younger generation.

We expect that with the updated brand name and service assurance plan, we will take an increasing share in the high AOV categories and work more closely with an increased number of brands. For example, in Q1, we successfully onboarded 5 prominent brands such as [indiscernible] to set up InstaMarts on our platform. This collaboration not only provides consumers with high-quality electric products, but also generate substantial incremental revenue for brand owners, effectively fostering a win-win ecosystem.

In addition, to better satisfy consumers' strong demand for on-demand retail, our food delivery business as well as Meituan Instashopping, we launched June 18 marketing event from May 28 [Foreign Language]. We will collaborate with restaurant and retail brands to provide consumers with more cost-effective products and services. In conclusion, we are extremely confident in the huge potential of Meituan Instashopping for long term.

Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong from UBS.

Could management elaborate on the recently announced RMB 100 billion for subsidy promotion plan for the next 3 years? Meanwhile, Meituan has also launched a pilot program for the couriers' pension insurance. Could you share some colors on the latest progress as well as the expansion plan and the pace for the rest of the year?

Thank you for paying attention to our announcement. Yes, it's correct that we have announced RMB 100 billion investment plan to drive industry growth for the next 3 years. Our goal is to help industry find new growth opportunities, improve the supply quality and cultivate more favorable business environment for restaurant merchants through our sustained investments. This plan caters around 4 key areas. First, empowering merchants. Last year, we launched our first RMB 1 billion merchant support fund, [Foreign Language]. By the end of April this year, the program has benefited over 180,000 merchants covering small and medium-sized merchants community [indiscernible] first shops high-quality brands venturing into new supply formats and lower-tier markets and also renowned time owner brand. Merchants have utilized our support funds for online operation improvement, product innovation and equipment upgrades.

The second focus area is elevating supply quality, the Branded Satellite Stores [Foreign Language], we introduced last year has helped over 480 brands, opened 3,000 high-quality satellite stores, leveraging AI-driven services such as location selection, product curation and targeting traffic support. These Branded Satellite Stores have achieved an average revenue 2 to 3x that of traditional stores.

In addition to expanding the Branded Satellite Stores, we also allocated resources to high-performing merchants, including [Foreign Language] merchants, while providing various special subsidies to other quality merchants. Certainly, we will continue to promote the Bright Kitchen program [Foreign Language].

These initiatives aim to encourage more high-quality food delivery merchants to set up high-standard kitchens, thereby strengthening the industry food safety infrastructure with increased hardware subsidy and traffic support. We anticipate that the number of participating merchants will exceed 100,000 by the end of this year. We will invite more food delivery merchants to join our Bright Kitchen program because it allows consumers to observe the food preparation process in real time. This transparency is key to enhancing public confidence in food safety.

Fourthly, stimulating consumption. We will leverage diversified products such as Meituan Membership, [Foreign Language], to incentivize users. We aim to invigorate food delivery consumption, enabling merchants to boost order volumes and expand their business.

Regarding the pension for couriers. On April 3rd, we launched a new pension pilot program in Nantong and Changzhou covering all queries in these 2 cities. Over the years, we have maintained regular communication with relative authorities, continuously deepen our understanding of social security policy guidance for flexible workers and gain more insights into the needs of couriers. This has enabled us to proactively explore effective solutions for enhancing the rights and interest of flexible workers.

Previously, we implemented the occupational injury insurance pilot program, which has provided [ CNY 1.5 billion ] insurance coverage to about 7 million couriers in 7 pilot provinces. The newly launched pension insurance pilot program is designed in line with the national policies for flexible employment social security. It offers subsidies specifically tailored to the unique nature of couriers' job.

Here is the detailed scheme. For couriers, who's monthly income reached the lowest threshold of the local contribution base for social security in 3 out of the past 6 months, Meituan will subsidize 50%. This plan fully respects the flexibility inherent the new economy, allowing couriers to freely determine their work schedules and work loss. By lowering the participation barriers, it can cover broader couriers with no precondition requirements, no limits in where couriers register their social security, no requirements regarding working hours or delivery volume, no distinction based on delivery types.

In early May, the first batch of couriers enrolled in our pension insurance pilot program received our cash subsidies. We are pleased to see the program has been positively received by the human resources and Social Security Bureau in the pilot cities. Going forward, we will continue to address couriers' inquiries about the pension insurance plan, enhance policy promotion and encourage couriers to participation in the program. We plan to expand the pilot program to more cities this year, continuously refining it during the implementation. At the same time, we are confident that the efficiency and order density increase in our network will be able to provide cost savings that can offset the incremental cost from these insurance. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Gary Yu from Morgan Stanley.

Could management share the latest progress of Keeta in both Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia? What are the company's core competitive advantages in these regions? The company had previously mentioned to focus on Middle East in the short term, but recently announced to enter food delivery market in Brazil. Why is the company preparing to enter regions other than the Middle East ahead of schedule? What are Keeta's regional expansion plan and criteria for selecting new markets? And since the overseas market is not as large as the Chinese market, could management share its overall plan and long-term goals for these overseas business?

Thank you, Gary. So Keeta has been making good progress in both Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. So last week, we celebrated the second anniversary of Keeta in Hong Kong. So it was officially launched on May 22, 2 years ago. So in the past 2 years, we have been able to become the largest food delivery player in Hong Kong. And also, we are continuing to grow in terms of both order volumes and average order value and also the market share and also the number of restaurant, number of couriers, and that's for Hong Kong.

In Saudi Arabia, we launched in last September. So we are slightly more than half year old there. But now Keeta has been operating in 9 cities. So that's about average Saudi Arabian city with a population of more than 1 million. And so that's the current -- our markets, and we plan to expand to more Saudi Arabian cities.

And also, you are correct that we announced a plan to enter Brazil. And we are committed to investing USD 1 billion in the next 5 years. So I explained why and how we plan to win the game. So we got into the food delivery business in late 2016. And over the past decade, we have invested a lot to build global leading food delivery business. So currently, we are handling more than 20 million orders on a daily basis. And in the process of building this food delivery business, we have developed a world-leading system, and that takes a lot of software engineering skill to build and it takes a lot of machine learning to optimize the order dispatch system.

So it's quite easy to build primitive online order -- online food app, but when it grows in scale and when you need to meet the demand of more and more users, more and more restaurants and more and more couriers, you have to use machine learning to optimize system. Otherwise, you will not be able to cope with the increasing demand. So through Meituan, we have built that system. We are confident we have one of the best systems. And we plan to apply all the knowledge and all the operational know-how through Keeta. And we want to bring these core competencies to other markets.

We are confident by leveraging our competitive products, services and operational know-how, we are well positioned to offer consumers, restaurants and couriers in other markets with a very fast delivery, very good user experience, and also, I think in that process, we are going to help create a lot of employment opportunities in those markets. And so I think, well, in a few years, Keeta will become a top choice food delivery platform in a growing number of overseas markets.

About the pace of our plan. So I think as we have stated in the past, Meituan is destined to become a global company in the longer term. We are in no hurry. So we will evaluate every opportunity very carefully. And this decision to enter a new market is made through a comprehensive analysis. And that takes into account many factors, that include current size and the potential size of the market, also the growth potential and also the market structure is very important because when you enter a market, you want to make sure you can become either #1 or #2, otherwise, it doesn't make much sense. So the market size and market structure and also because we need to work with a lot of local partners, so we pay a lot of attention to the regulatory framework and the overall business environment in each market.

So regarding Brazil, I think it's very important that we see that enduring and strategic partnership between these 2 countries. And President Xi visited Brazil last year and President Lula visited Beijing early this month. So I think that shows the strength of the strategic partnership between 2 countries.

And also, we believe that an investment of a Chinese company in Brazil will be well received by both Brazilian consumers and local merchants. Yes, I've been to Brazil earlier this year. So I see a very vibrant economy with a very big population. So I think Brazil is a country with a lot of potential. So it's one of the largest countries.

In terms of territories, Brazil is #5. In terms of total population, Brazil is #7. In terms of GDP, Brazil is probably around #9. But in terms of food delivery, Brazil is actually among top 5. So that shows the current size and the potential of the Brazilian food delivery market. Also, I think it's not entirely fair to say that other markets are not as big as China. Of course, the 2 largest markets globally is China and the United States and nobody should be surprised, but there are many other countries. If we put them together, they will be bigger than either China or the United States. That's because there are many countries, each country is going to be different. So we need to evaluate the opportunity more by individual countries. So our current plan is to work on both Saudi Arabia and prepare for the launch of our Keeta in Brazil.

So yes, we are very excited about this. Keeta is doing well in Hong Kong, in Saudi Arabia, and Brazil is a very good opportunity in the longer term. And also, I have huge confidence in the growth potential in global food delivery or in even more broader terms, not only restaurant food delivery, but also the on-demand delivery in general. So right now, in many markets, food delivery is only an occasional convenience for selected populations. But I think over time, it will become -- the penetration will become higher and the frequency will become higher. We have witnessed that in China, I think it's going to take place in many different countries.

And given our know-how and our world-leading software system, I think we should be able to bring that to that market and create values for all stakeholders there. So that's our plan. And I think it will have some impact on our short-term profitability. But I think in longer term, the global expansion represent very good -- very promising growth opportunity for us. I think that's the plan. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Alicia Yap from Citigroup.

Congrats on the solid results. My question is related to investment and capital allocation. So given the company's significant increased investment in the overseas expansions and also face domestic food delivery competition, will the company modify business strategy and investment scale of Meituan Select to balance your overall profitability and cash flow? What are the company's capital allocation priorities and strategies? So will the share repurchase program be suspended because of the higher overseas investment?

Thank you, Alicia. Yes, we constantly conduct a comprehensive review of our capital allocation strategy and always try to balance the Core local commerce cash flow, the priority and resource requirement of new initiatives as well as shareholder returns to come up with an optimal capital deployment strategy for each year. As for the competition, we have consistently confronted competition and emerged stronger through them since day one. We believe that healthy competition serves as a catalyst invigorating industry and fostering its long-term development.

Despite short-term profit fluctuation due to competition, we are confident that our Core local commerce segment will continue to generate robust cash flows, providing a solid financial foundation for our overseas expansion and our grocery retail business. Our new initiatives are at very wide growth stage. We have tailored distinct KPIs for each business unit, and we will carefully assess the performance of each business and dynamically adjust our strategy.

As for Meituan Select, it's part of our broader grocery strategy. We maintain a very committed approach to capture the grocery opportunity in China. We believe the industry has huge potential in being digitized and provide better user experience and provide better infrastructure to improve the efficiency of the whole industry. At the same time, we realized China is very big and the grocery industry is very fragmented.

We need different solutions for different markets. For example, in higher tier markets, we operate Xiaoxiang Supermarket, leveraging the front-end warehouse model, and it is performing very good. We also have the marketplace model called Meituan Instashopping to building a platform for local retailers to connect with local consumers. These 2 businesses have been instrumental in establishing our brand image in grocery retail.

For lower-tier markets and for more daily consumption, we believe they should be using different models and service a very challenging and fragmented market and Meituan Select is what we are using to testing the potential of this market and to validate the business model in those markets. While it turned out to be much more challenging than we have expected, we continue to believe in the potential and improve the supply chain capability and provide better experience for these lower-tier cities' demand. We will continue to focus on testing Meituan Select model and validating its unit economics rather than expanding its scale. So the total loss from Meituan Select is under control.

Despite this, we also have seen continued improvement in its business operations since last quarter. Specifically, we have enhanced efficiency and service quality of pickup stations, upgrade product quality and improved delivery timeliness. This year, we will continue to fortify our core competence and improve our operational efficiency.

As the question for shareholder returns, we will continue to assess our cash reserve and potential net inflows and make flexible arrangement. We will maintain share purchase program as the main channel for shareholder returns. Our fundamental goal is to offset the share dilution caused by our ESOP program each year as a starting point. Beyond this, we will also look for appropriate market window to further reduce the number of outstanding shares when we feel the time is right. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Thomas Chong from Jefferies.

Could management update us about the progress of company's AI large language model as well as the R&D expenses and time line of the relevant applications?

Thank you, Thomas. Yes. Of course, no earnings call is complete without a question on AI. So this quarter, while we continue to strengthen our capabilities in all 3 layers, when we talk about AI, I think there are at least 3 layers, the AI infrastructure and the AI in products and AI at work. So that's how we view AI.

And this quarter, we iterate our foundation large language model, and we have launched a new AI application and services for external users. At the same time, we also enhanced the suite of employee productivity to boost our own efficiency and improve the work experience. So it's fair to say we have made good progress on all 3 fronts.

So first on AI infrastructure. We continue to increase our investment for large language model and allocating resources not only to infrastructure CapEx but also to recruiting top-tier AI talents and to ensure our foundation of large language model is among the best tier in China.

And during this quarter, we made continuous upgrade to our LongCat, large language model. The enhanced model can now seamlessly switch between reasoning and non-reasoning modes with the performance in both modes reaching the caliber of China's leading models.

Now we have also updated our end-to-end voice interaction model, LongCat F. So this updated model demonstrate advanced capabilities in understanding nuanced information, including the emotion or contextual environments and engaging in natural voice conversation. So it performs closely approach that of GPT-4o and the value of AI extends beyond efficiency improvement. It can also serve as a powerful tool to empower merchants on our platform. So by leveraging AI, we can better help merchants accelerate the digital transformation and optimize the cost.

And on May 18, the Meituan Restaurant Advisory Committee hosted an AI evolution in food service symposium in Shanghai, enjoying from feedback in committee discussions. Next month in June, we plan to launch [Foreign Language], it will be an AI-powered business decision assistant for the food service industry. It will act as an intelligent operational assistant for food service merchants and industry professionals covering 4 key scenarios, the cuisine dish selection and the new store location selection and menu development and store operations. This innovation marks a shift in the industry decision-making. From experience driven to AI plus data, that is a new process. And it will effectively mitigate operational risk for merchants while fueling business growth.

And the third one, I think, is actually the most exciting one for the past quarter. So we believe developing internal AI tools, as AI at work. We want to use AI to enhance employee productivity and the workplace experience. That remains a key priority in our AI initiative. So in the last quarter, we continued to improve the AI coding capabilities for engineers and actively promote internal adoption of AI coding. So currently, about 52% of new code in our company is generated by AI.

And in some R&D teams, over 90% of the team members use AI coding tools intensively. And our goal is to gradually achieve 100% adoption across all engineers. And we have our own no-code platform, and it's for all employees and it has been widely adopted internally. The no-code platform allows user to quickly generate applications through natural language dialogue without requiring prior coding experience. And no-code is now used by all professional roles within our company, including product managers, user experience designers, business analysts, HR and finance staff.

They leverage no-code for creating product prototypes, interactive pages and efficiency tools, with 62% of product managers and 28% of business analysts using the no-code platform internally. Last week, we launched the no-code platform for public users free of charge. And the URL is nocode.cn. And users can bring various creative ideas to life without adding coding skill. We believe this application will support digital transformation for small or medium-sized merchants in this AI era.

On nocode.cn, users have created 9,410 applications, with more than 1,600 of them published and in active use. So in longer term, we believe Meituan's unique advantage lies in our diverse consumption scenarios. We have abandoned offline services offerings and we have very strong fulfillment capabilities. So we will continue to build our AI capability in foundation R&D and application and leveraging AI to help people eat better, live better in the physical world. Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Scarlett for any closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you for joining our call, and we look forward to speaking with everyone next quarter.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.