Meituan Class B

Meituan Class B

61.15
CNY
+0.25
(+0.41%)
367.84BMarket Cap
Nov 27Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 26, 2026

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Meituan fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode.

There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad.

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

Scarlett Xu

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.

Xing Wang

Thank you, Scarlett, and hello, everyone. 2025 was a year of both opportunities and challenges for Meituan.

Facing unprecedentedly intense competition, we stayed focused on serving our consumers, merchants, couriers, and all ecosystem partners. We were committed to creating long-term value.

In 2025, our platform GTV and transaction volume both achieved double-digit growth, and annual transacting users, user transaction frequencies, and ARPU all reached a new high. 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 Xiaotuan.

We brought AI technology into real consumption use cases. 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 moats 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 deep 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 allowed us to precisely meet users' comprehensive needs across food delivery, quick 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 merchants. Innovative formats such as branded satellite stores, Pinpai Weixing Dian, and Huanxiong Shitang, Raccoon Kitchens, have helped a large number of restaurant brands and small and medium-sized merchants improve operational efficiency and expand their businesses.

Through Pinhaofan, Shenqiangshou, and other formats, we worked with merchants and launched high-quality, value-for-money mega-hit 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 Shandiancang, and branded flagship Instamart, Pinpai Guanjun Shandiancang, as well as our self-operated Xiaoxiang Supermarket, a micro-fulfillment center, have become important supply for quick commerce.

Wai Mai Song Jiu achieved rapid growth as we worked closely with top liquor brands. In healthcare and pharmaceuticals, we continued to strengthen local supplies of common household medicines and medical devices, 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 industry-leading product capabilities.

Our private label products now cover broader categories, contributing a higher GTV share. In our in-store, hotel, and travel business, we featured our high-quality merchant recommendation list and expanded our safe series programs, Anxin Xilie, to more categories such as education, fitness, healthcare, and elderly care.

Based on our deep insights into consumption trends, we further enriched offerings in sports events, cultural and art ticketing, home services, and more. In addition, we supported over 1 million independent artisans, Shouyiren, in digitizing their profiles on our platform, enhancing our unique service ecosystem and connectivity.

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, Zhunshibao, and 1-on-1 Express Delivery, 1-Dui-1 Jisong, significantly expanding their coverage in 2025. This provided consumers with 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, Anxin Shangou, with millions of merchants and brands. It offers free return shipping for high-tier Meituan members and selected brands' products.

It lifts industry service standard across experience, fulfillment, delivery, and after-sales support. In healthcare, we expanded online consultation with Grade 3A hospital doctors.

We upgraded the verification and service protection for dental care, medical aesthetics, and other services. These efforts comprehensively improved the reliability of online healthcare services.

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, healthcare, and more.

Richer member-exclusive benefits and activities significantly improved consumer mindshare 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 multi-dimensional 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 mindshare, 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, Mingchu Liangzao, and used AI tools to improve merchant operational efficiency. We aim to foster the healthy development of the food service industry and address structural challenges such as marketing involution, neijuan, and food safety governance.

We also made progress in courier welfare in 2025. We led 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 continued to enhance the multi-tier welfare system for couriers across healthcare, education, housing, and other areas. Fourth, in our overseas market, Keeta accelerated its global footprint and delivered 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 its launched.

Going forward, we expect Keeta to continue leveraging its strength in products, technology, and operational know-hows. 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.

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 multimodal LongCat model, that's a series of large language models, and 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, high-quality diverse offerings, and real consumption behavior and user reviews. We first tested Xiaomei, a smart life assistant as a standalone app.

What's more important is that we have rolled out Xiaotuan, 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.

Xiaotuan, the AI feature in Meituan, will fundamentally change how consumers use our apps. Searching will evolve into simply making a request in natural languages, not just keywords.

Xiaotuan 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 2026, we will continue to refine Xiaotuan's user experience. Our goal is to make Xiaotuan 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 remained committed to our mission to help people eat better, live better. 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 penetration into the supply side, enhance service quality, improve our Meituan membership program, and invest in the ecosystem.

We'll 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 track with clear strategy and potential.

We will actively explore these areas with investment discipline. More importantly, as we get into the AI era, we'll firmly implement our Retail + 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.

Shaohui Chen

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 RMB92.1 billion, up 4.1%. Cost of revenue ratio increased by 11.6 percentage points to 33.8%, this primarily driven by three factors: more consumer incentives deducted from revenue, higher rider incentives to maintain leading service quality, and increased overseas operational cost.

Selling and marketing expenses ratio rose by 14.8 percentage points to 34.4%, largely due to our increased investments 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 RMB14.7 billion and RMB15.1 billion, respectively. These sequential improvements reflect our focus on quality growth and execution efficiency amid the intense competition.

As of December 31st, 2025, we held cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB166.8 billion. While operating cash flow was still negative, we achieved sequential improvement with operating cash outflow narrowing to RMB6.6 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 Instashopping stayed strong, while our market position in core in-store categories remained stable. Our core user base continue 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 Meituan Instashopping, maintained double-digit growth across both order volume and GTV. On the financial side, segment revenue was RMB64.8 billion in Q4, down 1.1%.

While food delivery industry-wide subsidies slightly moderate from Q3, they were still at historical high levels. In Q4, we stayed focused on quality growth and further pulled 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 subsidies 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 delivery service quality and user experience alongside continued investments in ecosystem development. Core Local Commerce segment operating loss was RMB10 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 RMB27.3 billion, up 18.9% year over year, primarily driven by the expansion of Keeta and grocery retail business. However, segment operating loss widened to RMB4.6 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 four 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 improvements driven by order density growth and operational efficiency.

We are optimistic that Keeta in 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 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 the company's long-term sustainable growth trajectory will continue.

We are firmly against industry involution, 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. Thank you.

If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2.

If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.

Operator

Your first question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Ronald Keung

Thanks, Xing, Shaohui, Scarlett, and Wang. Want to ask about the battle on AI, gateways or entry points, as this kind of new era has begun.

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?

What strategies or plans does management have to address the risk? Could you also share the latest progress on your AI agent and LongCat model?

Thank you.

Xing Wang

Thank you, Ronald. In the past earnings call, I have made it clear that I think, while AI is going to revolutionize everything, in this AI revolution, the only strategy that makes sense is to play offense instead of just a defense.

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. That's our core business.

I will elaborate a little bit. First, I think AI takes big investment.

Since early 2023, we have been investing a lot in both the CapEx and also the AI talents to build our in-house model. Other than those cloud companies, we are probably the we have probably made the largest investment in AI among all Chinese companies, other than those cloud companies.

We while we have been doing this for more than three years, while it has an obviously it had an impact on our balance sheet and cash flow, but we will remain committed to developing our in-house large language models, LongCat, 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. At the same time, we are also working with SOTA third-party model.

We are striving to take the lead in upgrading our main 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. In our view, the battle for the so-called super gateway is fundamentally about the capability to accurately understand the user need and then efficiently execute the task.

Here, it is much more complicated than, while clever chatbot. The local service industry features a 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 are those merchants are not fully digitized. 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. That's what we have been doing for many years.

A lot of merchants run on our digital system, we have the unparallel access to their data. Moreover, local service platform also need to be able to deeply involved in the management of the fulfillment services.

Otherwise, it's just a blabber chatbot. Here, I don't think general AI can reliably manage and guarantee the real physical world service experience.

We Meituan has been built have built up extensive physical world data, including merchant POI data, dynamic and real-time merchant operation data, and the most comprehensive and 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, while in future our drone and unmanned driverless vehicles and other embodied AI technology will give us a significant advantages in connecting AI with the physical world.

Our in-house model is catching up with those open-sourced SOTA models, and our agents are evolving rapidly. That will help us seamless integrate digital and physical world information.

To be to give you some example, we have recently made our AI assistant, Xiaotuan, available to all users within our Meituan app. Before that, we have released a standalone AI app, that's Xiaomei, but for with Xiaotuan, all existing hundreds of millions of Meituan app users will benefit from this new AI features.

Xiaotuan covers all local service categories on our platform. User can, while express their need 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, while it can understand the the the query, longer query in natural languages, and Xiaotuan can access all data within Meituan app. I will 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 will give you one very concrete example.

I'd 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's working in Zhongguancun, that's on the west side of Beijing, and we plan to have lunch together, we only have two hours' time, could you help help us find a restaurant with a good Sichuan spicy food in 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 this kind of questions.

Now, with the 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 private room. That's what not what user need.

For to to really fulfill this need, need we need our system need to have the 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. Leveraging Meituan's comprehensive and authentic merchant database, Xiaotuan can now quite accurately answer those specific questions about not only merchant location, business hours, the store facilities, and more, and Xiaotuan can also utilize our authentic user reviews and recommendations to deliver valuable insight.

With this enhanced reasoning capability, Xiaotuan can fulfill more personalized queries and generate the one-stop guides for dining, entertainment, travel, and more. We are pleased to see that Xiaotuan feature effectively addressed user request during Spring Festival.

That's just a beginning. It received a positive feedback and further strengthened user engagement.

In the future, I think that the model will become better, and we will continue to deepen the integration of Xiaotuan feature in the Meituan app. We want to use the new AI technology to make Meituan app the the the go-to destination for the local needs local services need of all users.

We'll enhance the AI search capability, and we will enhance the execution capability, and we strive to upgrade the Meituan to make it a leading AI-powered app and an AI gateway for local services need in future. Thank you.

Ronald Keung

Very useful. Thanks, Xing.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Alicia Yap with Citi Security.

Please go ahead.

Ya Jiang

Thank you. Good evening.

Thank you for taking my questions. Regarding the State Council's investigation into the food delivery market competition which started in early January, has our business strategy changed?

What changes are we seeing in the competitive environment recently? Looking ahead, how do we plan to sustain or expand our competitive advantages under current regulatory environment?

Can food delivery continue its loss narrowing trend from quarter four into quarter one? That's my question.

Thank you.

Xing Wang

Thank you, Alicia. We believe the regulatory guidance is already quite clear.

The authorities are firmly against the so-called involution, neijuan, and want to foster a healthy and orderly market. Subsidy-driven or price-driven competition in the food delivery sector, the so-called irrational competition, is a very typical involution.

We take this issue very seriously and want to reiterate our position. We are firmly against involution.

We'll actively work with the regulatory investigations, and meanwhile, we are pulling back resources on the low-quality orders while striving to defend our market leadership. 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.

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

Looking ahead, we believe competition will shift toward deepening users' lifetime value, improving supply quality and varieties, and delivering a seamless end-to-end user experience. During recent months, even with the continued intense competition, 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. 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.

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.

We will keep sharpening our core strength 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.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

Please go ahead.

Kenneth Fong

Hi. Good evening, management.

Thanks for taking my question. We noticed that Douyin has substantially increased subsidies for in-store business since fourth quarter last year, and its subsidies is expected to remain high in 2026.

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.

Shaohui Chen

Thank you, Kenneth, for the question. The short answer from short-term perspective to your question is that, yes, we see the competitors' recent ramp-up in investments.

This may negatively impact our short-term profitability. That's something we are facing, and we would like the market to understand.

I will spend more words on our long-term strategy for this business. I think it's key to understand that the competitive landscape now has 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. For us, our priority has always been the sustainable, long-term development of the industry rather than short-term winning a traffic 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 queuing, 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 continued to bring our extensive experience and understanding of industry into continued 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, cultural 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, pick up now, Miaoti, reservations, and queue management, have become our unique competitive advantages.

Additionally, more than 1 million skilled artisans have become a unique supply on our platform. On technology side, the AI agent Smart Operator, Zhineng Zhangui, helps merchants optimize their digital service.

Merchants are able to deliver personalized service by leveraging AI to recall and analyze consumer preferences, and can also intelligently analyze consumer feedback for operational improvements. In addition, our AI agents, such as digital employees and AI BD, streamline merchant operations across store opening, daily operations, and consumer acquisition.

We will continue to enable merchants with their own AI assistants. In '26, we will further differentiate our service and allocate more resources with higher ROI.

We will strengthen our position in core category and minimize inefficient investment in non-core areas. Looking ahead, we 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 lifecycle merchant empowerment system that covers customer acquisition, conversion, and retention. We will continue to foster sustainable industry growth through digital transformation.

Thank you.

Kenneth Fong

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Please go ahead.

Thomas Chong

Hi, good evening. Thanks, management, for taking my question.

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

Thank you.

Shaohui Chen

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 US$717 million, but please note that this transaction is still subject to regulatory approval.

Obviously, the most important reason is we have true confidence on China's grocery retail business, both online and offline. Besides that, there are two 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 a strong player in the East China area. With this acquisition, it will significantly improve our coverage and our service quality in this region.

Grocery 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 represent 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.

With expanded our private brand merchandising offerings, cover nighttime consumption scenarios, and maintain industry-leading fulfillment speed and experience. We believe Xiaoxiang Supermarket represent 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, bring faster, fresher, and more affordable on-demand grocery retail to more consumers. Thank you.

Thomas Chong

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley.

Please go ahead.

Gary Yu

Hi, thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. 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 break-even in 2026?

Thank you.

Xing Wang

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 all users during this difficult time. We are doing everything we can to safeguard your safety and livelihood, to overcome these challenges together.

Now, back to Gary's question. 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 involution.

That has never been what we want to do. 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.

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 dynamic.

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. We have working very actively with the local regulators.

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. For the market that you mentioned, as I said in the last quarter, 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, it took us 29 months to get to profitability. This year, we will focus on further improving our operations there.

For Saudi Arabia, that market is very favorable for food delivery business 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 near future. We have get to break-even in some cities, and I think other cities are following very fast.

Since we have recently cut the subsidy significantly in Saudi Arabia, but our order volume stayed resilient. That means users are choosing Keeta for our better services, not for subsidy or lower cost price.

In 2026, we'll further refine our operations in other Middle Eastern 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 operation 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. 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 São Paulo, the largest city, and rather than a full nationwide rollout, we are prioritizing refining our business model in São Paulo before we do a broader expansion. Meanwhile, we will actively pursue business strategies to build differentiated advantages.

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. However, this will be offset by more efficient improvement in our domestic new initiatives.

As a result, we expect that the overall loss in our New Initiative segment in 2026 would not be bigger than 2025. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.

I'll now hand back to Scarlett Xu for closing remarks.

Scarlett Xu

Okay. Thank you all for joining the call.

We look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today.

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.