Meituan Dianping Ord Cl B

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the METON fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. All participants are in 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 one 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.

Thank you, Operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Xin Wang, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Shaofui 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 2024 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 the actual results in the future. This presentation also contains an audit of IFI's 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 IFI's accounting standards. For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFIS accounting standards measures, please refer to the disclosure document in the IR section of our website. Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xin Wang. Please go ahead, Xin.

Thank you, Scarlett. Good evening, everyone. 2024 was an important year for Meitan. We adapted to the evolving consumption trends and facilitated industry transformation. For the full year of 2024, our total revenue increased by 22% year-over-year to IMB 337.6 billion. Annual transacting users exceeded 770 million. And annual active merchants increased notably to 14.5 million. Average purchase frequency of annual transacting user reached Newheim. And as a leading platform for local services, we explore the new growth opportunities through industry innovations and broad changes to consumers' daily lives, emergency business operations. As we maintain the steady growth in all our core business areas, we also help unleash consumer demand in the local services. In food delivery, We further expanded consumption scenarios and broadened the price spans through our ongoing innovations on the supply side. In Meituan Instant Shopping, we significantly expanded product selections through Meituan Instant Mart, effectively spurring consumer demand in on-demand retail. Regarding the in-store business, we unlocked the consumption potential in services retail through a wider selection of value for money group-buy deals. Meanwhile, we actively expanded into the overseas markets. In the fourth quarter, Kita was officially launched in Saudi Arabia, bringing China's speed to Saudi Arabian consumers for food delivery services. In addition, we continue to drive innovations and apply advanced technologies in the on-demand delivery space. For example, by the end of 2024, the accumulated number of commercial orders produced by our autonomous vehicles and drones have reached 4.9 million and 1.45 million, respectively. Our drone business also started a commercial operation in Dubai recently. In the long run, we believe technology will continue to transform the retail industry and will help us better fulfill our mission to help people eat better, live better. In 2034, we achieved a steady growth in our own demand delivery business with a daily order volume exceeding 98 million on the first day of autumn . And we are delighted to see that food delivery has become an important growth driver for the restaurant business. And on-demand retail has become an indispensable component of the retail industry and the lifestyle of more young people. As an industry leader, our own demand delivery business actively adapted to the evolving consumption trends. We further improved our consumer mind share of value for money and cultivated a more efficient and inclusive ecosystem. We explored supply chain innovations and refined operations, enhancing our ability to cope with different consumer demands, especially The development of new supply models created growth opportunities and helped the merchant withstand external challenges, further solidifying our competence on the supply side. For example, during 2024, the order volume of Ping Hao Fan kept hitting new highs. Ping Hao Fan has redefined affordable catering as an innovative business model that benefits both merchants and consumers. We continue to expand the supply, enhance food safety control, and improve the user experience of Pinghao farms, which incentivize the consumer demand in more scenarios and lift the consumer purchase frequency. For branded merchants, the branded satellite store is a new way to expand the business scale at a lower cost. This model allows branded merchants to offer a better price than in-store dining and bring consumers affordable and high-quality options. Meituan Instant Mart is another good example. In the past year, the number of Meituan Instant Mart and its order contribution both experienced rapid growth The progress was even more evident in the lower tier markets, and that has helped deepen online penetration of on-demand retail. Product diversity of Meituan Instamart was substantially improved, not only for convenience store supply, but also in many other vertical categories. In 2024, many large traditional retailers actively embraced the Meituan Instamart model. It complements traditional offline retail supply and enhances the convenience of on-demand retail, which further stimulates consumer needs. Our advantage on the supply side has significantly enhanced our brand awareness and elevated consumer experience. On-demand retail is no longer just about fulfilling consumers' urgent needs. It has evolved into a lifestyle characterized by a high level of certainty. Additionally, we continue to improve our services across different on-demand delivery categories. For example, consumers can enjoy one-stop services covering home testing, online diagnosis, medical insurance payment, and on-demand delivery when purchasing medicines on our platform. At our on-demand delivery business growth, we remain steadfast in our commitment to cultivating a sustainable ecosystem. On the merchant front, we streamlined our promotional schemes, standardized marketing activities, which largely mitigated irrational competition of the industry. We further enhanced the food safety management and improved the governance of malicious negative reviews. We also launched an RMB 1 billion merchant support program in the fourth quarter. By offering cash support and platform subsidies, we aim to help merchants improve their service quality, optimize efficiency, and explore innovations. For example, we provided digital tools and operational services free of charge for time-honored brands. Additionally, we largely extended the duration of traffic support for newly onboarded small and medium-sized merchants. Regarding couriers, enhancing their rights and benefits, and improving their work experience are our top priorities. Under the guidance of government authorities, we have accumulated, provided RMB 1.4 billion in occupational injury insurance for all the couriers in seven piloted provinces and cities since July 2022. Moreover, we implemented a series of courier-friendly measures. These include the introduction of anti-fatigue features in our system and providing special gathering accommodations for deaf and hearing-impaired couriers. We also provided support to the family members of numerous couriers who are facing major illness or are in need of educational aid. Moving forward, we will continue to invest in the ecosystem to drive sustainable development of the industry. Specifically, through in-depth research and under the guidance of relevant authorities, we have come up with a pilot plan for curious social security. We will roll out in some cities in the second quarter of 2025. In 2024, we actively adapted to the changing consumption trends and achieved rapid growth in the in-store business, thanks to our refined operations, new category expansions, and accelerated penetration into lower-tier markets. For the in-store business, Order volume increased by over 65% year-over-year in 2024. Both annual transaction users and annual active merchants broke new highs. As China's leading platform for local services, we provide merchants integrated solutions that encompasses business infrastructure plus marketing tools plus digital asset accumulations. After our organizational restructuring, we further integrated all the resources across different business lines and provided merchants with richer business infrastructure and traffic support. We offered merchants with more customized, diversified, and efficient marketing tools through special deals sessions. live streaming events, and theme-based campaigns. We also provided merchants with various tools and services, such as consumer insights, review management, and ranking lists to help merchants refine business operations and accumulate digital assets. Moreover, the upgraded Shen Hui Yuan membership directed our high-quality food delivery user traffic to in-store merchants, helping them improve marketing efficiency and boost transactions. Our solidified advantages on the supply side helped us further enhance consumer mindshare and drive business growth. In 2024, we actively capitalized on consumers' preference to access a wide array of leisure and entertainment services at a more affordable prices. Levering our expensive offerings, strong brand awareness, and high-quality services, we continue to expand into new categories and effectively incentivize consumption. Additionally, to capture the rising trends of county economy, and further dropped the demand for services retail, we accelerated the penetration of our in-store business in the lower tier markets. We developed easier to use operating toolkits for the small and medium sized merchants there, which lowered merchants' online operating barrier and accelerated merchant onboarding. we continue to enrich our offerings in group buy deals and packaged offerings through our tailored special deals session in those lower tier markets. As a result, our in-store business have achieved robust growth in the lower tier markets in 2024. In 2024, consumer demand for hotel and travel on our platform remained robust With the lower tier cities, niche travel destinations, value for money choices, and local accommodations emerging as new trends, fully tapping into our strengths in the lower tier markets and lower star hotels, we strengthened our collaborations with industry partners and improved the diversity and price competitiveness of our offerings. Meanwhile, We further leveraged our platform advantages and enhanced cross-sells with other categories. We identified the consumption needs in transportation, catering, and entertainment when consumers make travel plans and integrated resources across different categories to further refine our hotel plus X package deductions. On the merchant side, we precisely directed our user traffic, including the user traffic from our Shen Hui Yuan membership program to many low-star hotel merchants and offered comprehensive online tools and room renovation solutions. Moreover, we deepened our collaborations with high-star hotels in joint membership and joint marketing programs. Several leading hotel brands like Marriott, Wanda, and Intercontinental have actively participated in our Shen Hui Yuan membership program. For new initiatives in 2024, we continue to refine our operations in grocery retail and software and hardware services. and significantly improved their operational efficiency. We solidified our industry leadership in most of the new initiatives and accelerated our exploration in the overseas markets. After launching Kita in Riyadh last October, we further expanded Kita to all the major cities in Saudi Arabia with a user base and order volume growing rapidly. In the long run, we will continue to bring high-quality products and services to consumers and merchants in more regions around the world and help more people eat better, live better. Looking ahead, we will continue to facilitate the industry digital transformation, improve merchant operational efficiency, and help unleash consumption potential. While relatively Executing our retail technology strategy, we will actively embrace and expand investment in cutting-edge technologies such as AI or unmanned aerial delivery or autonomous delivery vehicles and accelerate the application of these technologies. We are committed to fully integrating AI into consumers' daily lives and help people eat better, live better. Furthermore, as an industry leader, we will also show our social responsibilities, create more job opportunities, and improve welfare for the couriers, and cultivate sustainable development of the local services ecosystem. With that, I will turn the call over to Shaohui for an update on our financial results.

Thank you, Xin. Hello, everyone. I will now go through our fourth quarter financial results. During this quarter, our business sustained healthy growth with our total revenue increasing by 20.1% year-over-year to RMB 88.5 billion. Cost of revenue ratio decreased 3.9 percentage points year-over-year to 62.2%. primarily due to the improved gross margin of our on-demand delivery business and the grocery retail business, and the strengthened operating leverage. Selling and marketing expenses ratio decreased 3.1 percentage points year-over-year to 19.6% thanks to our enhanced marketing efficiency. R&D expenses ratio decreased year-over-year to 6.1%, primarily benefiting from improved operating leverage. G&A expenses ratio was 3.3% remain stable. Our strategic focus on quality growth and operational efficiency continue to deliver strong results. This quarter, total segment operating profit grew to RMB 10.7 billion, up from RMB 3.2 billion last year. And total segment operating margin increased from 4.3% to 12.1%. On a consolidated basis, our adjusted net profit increased year-over-year, reaching RMB 9.8 billion this quarter. Turning to our cash position, as of December 31, 2024, we maintain our strong net cash position. With our cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 168.2 billion, cash generated from operating activity increased meaningfully year-over-year to RMB 16.9 billion. Now let's review our segment results, starting with all local commerce. Order volume growth for food delivery and certain non-food category was softer compared to Q3-24 due to factors including much warmer weather conditions during winter season and earlier return of working population from high-tier cities to lower-tier cities for the year-end celebration and etc., food delivery, the transaction frequency of meat to high-frequency users continued to grow year-over-year. Our rapid expansion and continuous iteration of Pin Hao Fan also allowed us to further capture consumers' demand for low-priced meals. We also made strong progress in converting more food delivery users to Meituan instant shopping users. driving their greater engagement across a wider range of non-food categories. Except for the on-demand medicine category, which saw a tough place due to the widespread of floods last year, the rest of the non-food categories stayed on a strong growth track. Number of transitions for our in-store increased by high 40s year-over-year this quarter. Our expansion into lower-tier markets has accelerated, driving meaningful increase in merchant base, user engagement, and transaction volumes in Q4. Our continuous iterations on special deal supply have also catalyzed increased demand for light meals and beverage. Additionally, our ongoing optimization of the Shen Hui Yuan program has enhanced fraud sales driving up consumption frequency across the in-store hotel travel categories. Our local commerce segment continues to deliver strong year-over-year revenue growth of 18.9%, reaching RMB $65.6 billion. We are pleased to see that the year-over-year decline in AOV for both on-demand delivery and in-store hotel travel narrowed sequentially in this quarter. Delivery service revenue grew faster than the order volume of on-demand delivery on year-over-year basis due to several reasons, including, first, user incentives deducted from delivery service revenue decreased as a result of the national rollout of Shen Hui Yuan program. Second, more merchants switching to Meituan's delivery service from their own fleet to save cost. Third, the increasing population of long-distance, nighttime, and large-size orders. Commission revenue achieved robust growth, primarily driven by the rapid order growth from in-store business, partially offset by the decline of AOV across various categories. With respect to online marketing service revenue, more merchants, offline retailers, and brands adopted our advertising services thanks to our upgraded marketing solutions that better meet their needs and boost their marketing efficiency. Core local commerce segments operating profit and operating margin both improved on year-over-year basis to RMB 12.9 billion and 19.7%. We drove greater efficiency in marketing and operations across our core local commerce businesses and realized greater operating leverage. Turning to our new initiative segment. During this quarter, revenue in this segment increased by 23.5% year-over-year to RMB 22.9 billion, mainly due to the development of our gross retail business and overseas businesses. Thanks to our efforts in improving operating efficiency in our grocery retail business, the segment's operating loss and operating loss ratio both narrowed on year-over-year basis to RMB 2.2 billion and 9.5% respectively. The sequential increase in operating loss was mainly due to our increased investment in our overseas business. Unfavorable seasonality for bike-sharing Power Bank, and other new businesses. In closing, 2024 has been a testament to Meituan's resilience and adaptability in the dynamic market. Our co-local commerce segment delivers solid results and achieves a number of impressive milestones. Our focus on high-quality growth and efficiency improvements also drove meaningful expansion in EBITDA and free cash flow. We remain confident in our business's long-term growth prospects. 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. Your first question comes from Ronald Kung with Goldman Sachs.

My question is on the AI. So as AI technology continues and focusing on AI applications and agents, these app traffic entry points may shift through time. So how does Meituan assess this risk and make some corresponding strategies? And on the AI topic, what are our AI and related tech investment plans? And how will we integrate these into our existing businesses to enhance competitiveness? Thank you.

Thank you, Ronald. Of course, everyone is very concerned about AI. So allow me to deliver the key message loud and clear in the very beginning. In AI, our strategy is to play offense, not defense. When something as fundamentally revolutionary as AI is coming, the only strategy that makes sense is not trying to defend what you already have. I think the only strategy that makes sense is to use whatever you have to try to play offense. I think that's the only strategy. Because AI is changing so quickly, and it's going to disrupt transform every industry. So we are both excited and also I think it's quite, to some sense, frightened to see what's coming and where it will come. So here, I think we are quite well positioned at this because Meituan as a company bridging offline businesses to online world, I think in the AI era, we will be well positioned to be the connection between digital world and physical world. So I will elaborate more. Put it this way, our AI strategy builds upon three layers. The first one is AI at work. We are integrating AI in our employees' day-to-day work and our daily business operations. And to significantly enhance the productivity and work experience for our over 100,000 employees. And the second layer is AI in products. So we will use AI to upgrade our existing products and services, both to B and to C. And we will also launch brand new AI native products to better serve our consumers, merchants, couriers, and business partners. More on that later. And the third layer is building our own in-house large-language model. We plan to continuously invest and enhance our in-house lab-directed model with increased capex. So far, we have made some progress in AI infrastructure, model training, and applications. And we will further accelerate our AI exploration. So I think on the first layer, AI at work, On the employee productivity front, we have developed our in-house large-language model. It's called Longcat. By putting Longcat side-by-side with external models, we have rolled out highly efficient tools for our employees, including AI coding, smart meeting, and document assistant. And also, it's quite... useful in graphic design and short-form video generation, and also AI sales assistant. These tools have substantially boost employee productivity and working experience. So right now, it's being used in customer service. We have developed an intelligent AI customer service agent using our in-house model. So after the pilot operation, the results show more than 20% enhance in efficiency. And moreover, the customer satisfaction rate has improved over 7.5 percentage point. And on the business operations side, we use AI sales assistant to support our BD teams. So for example, during this year's spring festival holidays, we gathered an updated business information of 1.2 million merchants on our platforms with AI sales assistant. So it very effectively reduced the workload of our BD team by 44%. Further, it enhanced the accuracy of the listed merchant information on our platform. In our tech teams, we use our in-house AI coding tool that integrates with our IDEs and load it out to our engineers. So right now in our company, about 27% of new code is generated by AI coding tools. But what's more important and more exciting is on the product front. So here we have two we are working on two directions at the same time. One is using AI to optimize current projects. And the other one is more exciting, is to develop AI-native new products. So on the first one, I think it's more difficult to understand we use AI across multiple categories by providing various tools such as AI smart online store design, smart merchant information enhancement and display, and operation management. That's all for the user's suspect for AI applications. But on the consumer side, we have already started testing AI systems in some categories to enhance consumer experience for their search and transaction on our platform. For example, we have a rollout and restaurant assistant and travel assistant, reservation assistant. They can chat with the users either by text or voice, making things more convenient and easier to use for users. Right now, we are already working on a brand new AI native product. We expect to launch this more advanced AI assistant later this year. and to cover all maintenance services so that everyone can have a free personal assistant. So based on our rich offline service offerings, efficient on-demand network, I think we will be able to handle many personalized needs in local services. Whether it's ordering food delivery or making a restaurant reservation, or purchasing group deals, or ordering groceries, or planning trips, or booking hotels. I think we have got it covered with one stop, and we are going to deliver it to you on time. So our diverse consumption scenario and broad offline services, service offline offerings, strong fulfillment capabilities are our distinctive advantages. Our AI system will not only offer consumer services in the digital world, not just a chatbot, but it's going to be able to satisfy a lot of their needs in the physical world. Because in order to bring AI to the physical world, you need more than just very smart algorithms or models. You need infrastructure in the physical world, and that's our advantage. On the algorithm and model and compute side, it's going to need a lot of CapEx and a very good foundation model. So in the past year, to ensure an adequate supply of GPU resources has been a top priority for us. And even as we allocate meaningful resources in shareholder return and new initiatives, we keep investing billions in GPU resources. So our capital capacity this year has been substantial, and this year we plan to further scale our investment in this very critical area. Thanks to our infrastructure large-language model team, we have made significant optimization both in efficiency and effectiveness. As a result, our in-house large-language model, Longcat, has achieved quite good evaluation results, comparable to the top-tier models in China. And in addition to our in-house large lecture module, we have also integrated other mainstream modules available in the market. So to enable our internal product developer team to move freely to freely explore AI-driven products and services. Notably, the API core volume for Loan Cat has increased from 10% at the beginning of last year to 68% currently. So which further validate the effectiveness of our in-house foundation model. On another front, I think AI is going to give a massive push to the development of robotics. So we have been a very early mover when it comes to autonomous delivery vehicles and drones. So actually we started our R&D in autonomous vehicles in late 26. We started our R&D in zones in 2017. So we have been working on this for many years. We are making very good progress. So right now we are looking into ways to apply AI in the on-demand delivery field. So apart from our in-house R&D, we have also made quite several investments in leading startups in the robotics and autonomous driving sector to support their growth. Looking ahead, we hope to deepen our business collaboration and technical exchanges with these leading companies. In future, our robotics and AI will be even more tightly integrated. And we will keep improving in the areas such as autonomous delivery and logistic and automations. Because right now, besides the last-mile delivery of on-demand delivery, we also operate a lot of rather big warehouses. And that will be very good use cases for automation technologies. So at the end of the day, our mission has always been to help people eat better, live better. And we have built a big infrastructure in the physical world with digital connections. We believe that kind of infrastructure is going to be very valuable when we are moving to the era of physical AI. Thank you.

Got it. Thank you, Shingo.

Your next question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Given the robust goals and momentum of QITA in Saudi Arabia, what's our expansion plan of QITA in the Middle East this year? And we also noticed from the news that the company Xiaoxiang Supermarket is actively preparing to launch business in the Middle East as well. Will the company accelerate overseas expansion for other businesses? And how should we project the losses for overseas expansions in 2025? And in the medium to longer term, what is your strategic plan for the overseas business and what is the profit outlook? Thank you.

Thank you, Gary. Yes, in the beginning of last October, I was personally in React together with our Kita team to launch Kita in React. I didn't do any real work. I was just there to witness the launch of it and to celebrate with our team. So in the past about four or five months, we have been doing quite nicely in Riyadh and other cities. So I think it's safe to say Kita has been on a good track and showing very good growth momentum. Thanks to our experience and know-how that we have built in China domestic market. So we believe Kita holds a leading edge over other players in terms of the product offerings or tech capabilities and operation know-hows. So building on the progress achieved in React, we continue to expand the operation into other cities in December and January. So now Kita is operating in more than half a dozen major cities in Saudi Arabia. For other markets outside of Saudi Arabia, we are still doing our research work, so we don't have any concrete business plan at this moment to share. At this stage, our overseas business is focused on food delivery, We believe that high-frequency traffic and the delivery network built by a food delivery business are of great values. First of all, in China, as a super app, our high-frequency food delivery business bring us large user base and low customer acquisition cost to other low-frequency categories. And so we have been able to drive the department in other services. And secondly, the 30-minute on-demand delivery network established by food delivery has enabled us to expand into more known food categories. That's how we built Meta InstaShopping and our on-demand marketplace model. And the Xiaoxiang supermarket that you mentioned is our first-party model. mainly for on-demand grocery. Back to on-demand delivery capability and consumer mind share, Xi'an supermarket provides consumers with groceries of very good quality and variety. So for overseas business, we believe various business, including Xi'an supermarket, have a good potential in the long term. But in the short term, we will focus on well, market research and some pilot program. So we are not going to make a very rush and aggressive investment. In the longer run, similar to our path in China, we hope to build other businesses on the foundation of the traffic and consumer mindset generated by our on-demand food business. So at this stage, we are focused on building up our food delivery business in those markets. And looking ahead, as a relatively new player in the market, Kita will focus on growth. We are also confident in its long-term prospect and its profitability. So food delivery business has proven its clear path to profitability, both in China and in other countries. In many overseas countries, such as the Middle East, the average order value is much higher than in China, and users are more willing to pay for services. And the profit margin for food delivery players is higher compared to those in China. Looking into 2025, the financial resources we are going to allocate to overseas will be significantly higher than 2024. And this will fuel robust growth in scale and quick pickup in market share. At the same time, we will keep a close eye on the return on investment. and we will continuously improve our efficiency. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Yao Jiang with SciTech Securities.

Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. As the company wraps, we rolled out business in Saudi, but lots of new initiative segments expanded quarter over quarter. So this year, how should we balance the investment in other new business, especially in the mid-time select? And given the increasing overseas capital needs, what is the company's shareholder return plan for this year? Thank you.

Thank you, Jianyang. We constantly conduct reviews of our capital allocation strategy. And this covers both our investment in new initiatives and also the shareholder return program. And each of our new initiatives is a different stage, and each needs different level of support from the company. So we will prudently evaluate the ROI for each new initiative and stay flexible to adjust business strategies based on that assessment. And our goal is to ensure that new initiatives can grow in a healthy way and achieve our long-term financial targets. So first, after years of iteration, some of our new initiatives like Kuaily, or our restaurant staff, or our bike or E-moped sharing, and shared power banks. Those new internships have already achieved market leadership and continue to improve efficiency. And our persistent effort to iterate strategies and operations has paid off over the past years. So we think the good momentum for these businesses will continue in the coming years. As for Meitan Select, we have made significant strategic adjustment to this business last year, resulting in a very substantial improvement in efficiency. Meitan Select has witnessed notable improvement across product quality, assortments, pricing, and as well as group leader service quality. We become increasingly aware of the core areas that Meitang should put efforts on to achieve its long-term targets. And we will actively build key capabilities. For instance, we are reshaping our merchandise-related capability for Meitang Select. This is a key factor that will differentiate us from our peers. However, supply chain transformation isn't something that can be done overnight. So it won't immediately reflect in the P&L. It will take time, and we need to be more patient. Again, the grocery market in China is massive. And right now the penetration, online penetration is still very low. And MetaSelect remains as one of our key models for exploring this market. And compared to offline retails, MetaSelect aims to offer goods with the same quality but meaningfully cheaper price in future. The uniqueness, the unique business model of MetaSelect can lower our procurement cost And it can also reduce the lost cost of fresh produce and eliminate offline store operation expenses. So if we can keep achieving continuous improvement across merchandise capability, operational efficiency, and service quality, I believe MetaSelab can achieve profit margin comparable to those of offline retail channels in the long run. Overall, while we accelerate overseas businesses, we will continue to improve operation efficiency of the other new initiatives based on our long-term strategy and financial targets. At the same time, we remain committed to enhancing our sharehold returns through share buybacks. So we will take into consideration quite a few elements of our capital allocation each year, such as business development plans and cash flow situation, and how much offshore cash we have, and the debt maturity schedules. So this year, we expect to repay around $1.5 billion US dollar convertible bonds that are subject to early put options, as well as 750 million US dollar corporate bonds that are maturing. About the 2.5 billion US dollar senior notes we issued last September has enhanced our offshore cash position. Before we expect to maintain stable sufficient offshore cash reserve for each year. And we will still use share buyback rather than dividend as the major approach for shareholder return. Through share buyback, we will first offset the dilution caused by ESOP for each year. And on top of that, we will remain flexible and try to capture a good market window to further trim down the number of total outstanding shares and thus enhance shareholder return. Thank you.

Thank you, Xin Ge. So our next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

Hi, good evening, management. Thanks for taking my question. Given the current scale of our food delivery business, What are our focus area and strategy to drive further penetration and maintain order growth? So what is the strategic focus on Meituan InstaShopping as well after its strong growth last year? And as companies invest more in merchant support as well as wider welfare, how should we anticipate profit growth on demand delivery this year? Thank you.

Thank you for the question. While the food delivery growth rate has been slowing down in recent years after reaching the high base, the management team remains very confident for the potential of the overall on-demand delivery business, including food delivery and including the non-food parts. On the food delivery part, While it's a very big scale of users, we actually continue to attract new users coming to our platform, particularly the younger users. We also noticed that among the new users, their initial purchase frequency and Apple value cohort are higher than our earlier cohorts, and their growth traction is much faster. We also noticed our existing users order food delivery more and more frequently in broader scenarios and in broader time periods. We also continue to make innovation on the supply side. For example, the Pinghao Fund and other new supply innovation being able to attract consumer demands increasing higher frequency and also improved overall efficiency. We expect both the number and the transaction frequency of the monthly transaction users on on-demand delivery will continue to grow. On the non-food part, the Mediterranean shopping continues to deliver strong results and maintain a much faster growth rate than the food delivery. we continue to empower the merchants and brands with online operation and deepen our collaboration with branded retailers. As a result, the supply for on-demand delivery continue to improve. On the consumer side, we continue to reinforce our Everything Now consumer MyShare, and we are glad to see that consumers are getting more and more sticky on these on-demand delivery services. Overall, we maintain the vision and the goal of over 100 million orders a day for our on-demand delivery business. Besides the growth potential, we also pay more and more attention to the healthy growth of the overall ecosystem. Queries and merchants are very important for our systemic growth. Last quarter, we launched a merchant support project with over RMB $1 billion funding to support our merchants. We are also going to launch the Social Security Pilot Program for our queries under regulatory guidance. It is expected to kick off in the second quarter of this year and in selected cities first. We will progressively roll out the Plan nationwide in the coming years follow guidance from regulators, and the plan might be further fine-tuned based on the feedback and assessments. While it may increase the overall cost, we believe for the long run, the whole ecosystem, including our platform, will benefit from this, and the improved efficiency will be able to offset the incremental cost. In addition, we continue to enhance food safety management. For example, we recently introduced the Broad Kitchen Ming Chu Liang Zhao program. In this program, we offer digital cameras and other facilities to allow open kitchen presentations online. We believe a better food safety environment will in turn further incentivize consumer demand and will eventually enhance our long-term competitiveness and bring sustainable growth. Overall, with the improving efficiency, greater economy scale, and enhanced operating leverage, we will be very confident to achieve steady profit growth for our on-demand delivery business. Thank you. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Good evening. Thanks, management, for taking my question. For in-store business, what's the current competitive landscape and what's the GTV growth expectation after the past two years of rapid growth? Can management also update about the cross-selling measure from Shen He Yuan to the in-store hotel and travel business? Does the user from Chen Hui Yuan have higher user security? Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Overall, while we already see very fast GTV growth in the last two years for our in-store business, we expect this growth momentum will remain strong in the coming years. The online penetration rate for the broad install categories remain quite low compared to physical goods e-commerce. And we will continue to drive the online penetration and solidify our competitive advantages. As for competition, we believe we differ from our competitors in business model in the value proposition for consumers and merchants, and also in operational strategy. We also have quite different categories mixed, merchant type, merchant scale, and the marketing efficiency. Even in the current consumption environment, both consumers and merchants have growing needs for digitization. These trends can deepen the industry's own world. online penetration, for the core category, the current competition remains relatively stable and we have effectively defended our market leadership. Moving forward, we will fully leverage our advantage in the share-based model, enrich our supply, and enhance price competitiveness. We will continue to expand and optimize our special deals to make it a more organized marketing scheme that focuses on low price and good deal. We will continue to solidify our position as the top choice for merchants' online operations and online marketing. Recently, we have remade our installed ad-hoc services Zao Zong Business, to Service Retail Unit, Fu Wu Ling Shou. We believe this is a better name that defines the category that we operate. We also renamed the combined leisure and entertainment and beauty divisions the name Happy Life Division, Le Sheng Huo. This division caters to the diverse needs of consumers for a happier life. Our life event division has also been renamed the Easy Life Yi Shen Huo Division. It helps enable people to live an easy and convenient life by providing various life services. As to your questions on the Shen Hui Yuan, last July, we expanded the Shen Hui Yuan program to nationwide for all the major categories in our core local commerce. In Q4, this Shen Hui Yuan program further expanded coverage to package tours, attraction ticketing, and more categories. The proportion of orders using Shen Hui Yuan continued to rise to over 40% of total ColocoCommerce order volume, and the increase in GTV contribution was even higher. Over 70% of our InstaHot10 travel merchant base are participating in the Shen Hui Yuan program. The integrated marketing operation strategy helps strengthen consumer mindshare, and Shen Hui Yuan effectively diverts user traffic to our broader categories. Currently, transacting users directed from Shen Hui Yuan represent 10% of the total retail service transaction users, and we continue to make progress in the user acquisition, retention, and purchase frequency. Soon, we will further upgrade the Shen Huiyuan program to Meituan membership program, Meituan Huiyuan. We expect this will unify the membership brand, integrate a wider range of category scenarios, and more diverse benefits for the consumers to enjoy. Through this Meituan Huiyuan program, we can offer more users much better benefits and greater variety of deals in a more targeted manner. We believe this program will further strengthen our leadership in the ecosystem. Thank you. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Charlene Liu with HSBC.

Hi, good evening. I have a question about organization restructuring. So after one year of organization restructuring of your core local commerce business, can management share your latest view on the business long-term growth trajectory? This includes GDP CAGR as well as GDP margin. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. I'm glad you raised the questions of the CRC's organizational restructuring, which happened about slightly one year ago. So far, the progress has been quite solid. We are glad to see that although it's a quite major organizational restructuring internally, the overall progress has met our expectation. And it also happened in a very complex and changing market environment, but we managed to solidify our leading position in the overall local service domain. Since the restructuring last year, we have integrated different business within the core local commerce and formed three key platforms, namely the Meituan platform, infrastructure platform, and the business R&D platform. With that, we are more efficient in our integrated marketing, user growth strategy, large language model development, and product innovations on both the consumers and business side. We have also reinforced our user mindshare in our five core business areas, namely food delivery, main-train instant shopping, service retail, hotel and travel, and medicine and healthy. Leveraging this upgrade organizational structure and the synergy it created, we continue to iterate our products and services, utilize AI to help business grow and further enhance user experience and engagement. With the Matron membership that I just mentioned, we expect to create even more synergy across these five business categories. With all this strategy, we are confident that we can further enhance user mindshare as well as our leading position in this overall local service area. We are also very excited for the potential that AI can bring to our CLRC business. We believe that more intelligent system will help us create an even better value proposition for both the consumer side and merchant side and can help realize our mission of helping people eat better, live better. Thank you.

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

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

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