In Q1 2021, GTV of Meituan food delivery business increased by 99.6% year over year. The daily average number of food delivery transactions increased by 113.5% year over year to 32.3 million.
Top e-commerce mobile shopping platforms in China 2021
Food delivery
In Q1 2021, GTV of Meituan food delivery business increased by 99.6% year over year to RMB142.7 billion.
The daily average number of food delivery transactions increased by 113.5% year over year to 32.3 million. The average value per order of the food delivery business decreased by 5.5% year over year.
The monetization rate of food delivery business increased to 14.4% from 13.3% in the first quarter of 2021. Subsequently, revenue increased by 116.8% year over year to RMB20.6 billion.
Food delivery became not only a necessity and a service needed regularly during workdays, but also a high-quality source of food for family gatherings.
During this Spring Festival, Meituan launched the “Open for Business” initiative, in which it cooperated with millions of merchants to provide consumers with convenient deliveries of quality products including meals, liquor, snacks, groceries, and more.
Order contribution from the breakfast, afternoon tea, and late-night snack categories further increased, and long-distance orders became a more meaningful part of the total orders.
Both its annual active merchants and annual advertising merchants for food delivery grew to record highs in the first quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, sales from high-quality merchants increased, comprising a larger proportion of total orders.
Since the introduction of Meituan’s “New Restaurant Manager” program last quarter, it continued to train more digital-savvy talents and helped them become better adaptable of digital operations.
In-store, hotel & travel
Revenue of the segment increased by 112.7% year over year to RMB6.6 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Operating profit increased 304.0% to RMB2.7 billion in the first quarter of 2021 from RMB680.2 million in the same period of 2020, and operating margin increased to 41.7% from 22.0%.
For in-store dining, Meituan achieved nearly 30% two-year GTV CAGR in the first quarter of 2021. Gathering dining events fully recovered, and light-meal consumption scenario maintained high growth.
For other in-store services, Meituan’s two-year revenue CAGR exceeded 30% in the first quarter of 2021 from the same period of 2019. Categories such as medical aesthetics maintained strong growth momentum, while categories such as leisure and entertainment, which were severely impacted during the pandemic, resumed normal growth.
Meituan also launched various marketing and promotional festivals, such as the “Wedding Festival” and “Back to School Festivals” to help lift merchants’ advertising budgets.
With respect to its hotel booking business, Meituan achieved over 100 million domestic room nights in the first quarter of 2021, representing a stellar 135.8% year-over-year growth, and a two-year CAGR of 13.3% from the same period of 2019.
Meituan expanded rapidly in high-star hotels, with room night contributions from high-star hotels surpassing 16.7% in the first quarter of 2021.
New initiatives and others
Retail, especially the community e-commerce business, continued to be Meituan largest investment area.
For the first quarter of 2021, revenues from the new initiatives and others segment increased by 136.5% year over year to RMB9.9 billion, primarily driven by the growth in retail businesses, B2B food distribution services, and ride-sharing services.
During the first quarter of 2021, community e-commerce business, Meituan Select, further expanded its geographical coverage to over 2,600 cities and counties, practically completing its nationwide expansion objective.
Meituan Instashopping continued to leverage Meituan platform capabilities to fulfill the rising consumer demand for on-demand delivery of local goods and products. In the first quarter of 2021, Meituan channeled more resources into categories, such as supermarkets, flowers, and prepared fruits, fueling the business growth of the quarter.
In response to the “stay-put” policy during Spring Festival, it successfully converted many food delivery users into Meituan Instashopping users, leveraging a complex on-demand delivery network.
For Meituan Grocery, it continued to take its service quality and consumer experience as a priority. Meituan opened more warehouses in the four cities that it operates in, to increase the warehouse density, capacity, and product selections.
As a result, quarterly transacting users grew by more than 400% year over year, and transaction frequency also improved, allowing to realize higher operating efficiency and better unit economics.
Finance Highlights
Meituan’s total revenues increased by 120.9% in the first quarter of 2021 to RMB37.0 billion from RMB16.8 billion for the same period of 2020.
The food delivery and in-store, hotel & travel segments posted stellar growth, realizing an aggregate operating profit by the segment of RMB3.9 billion in the first quarter of 2021, an increase from RMB0.6 billion for the same period of 2020.
Operating loss for the new initiatives and other segments expanded as Meituan accelerated its investment effort to provide services with more breadth. Both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net loss for the first quarter of 2021 decreased year-over-year to negative RMB2.4 billion and RMB3.9 billion, respectively.
The net cash flows used in operating activities decreased to RMB4.4 billion in the first quarter of 2021 from RMB5.0 billion for the same period of 2020.
Meituan had cash and cash equivalents of RMB17.8billion and short-term treasury investments of RMB35.3 billion as of March 31, 2021, compared to the balances of RMB17.1 billion and RMB44.0 billion as of December 31, 2020, respectively.