By Casey Hall
SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China’s largest food delivery firm Meituan posted a bigger-than-expected 22.4% rise in third-quarter revenue on Friday, defying sluggish Chinese consumption.
Meituan, which has an app that provides services as varied as bike-sharing, ticket-booking and maps, reported revenue in the three months to Sept. 30 at 93.58 billion yuan ($12.94 billion), up from 76.47 billion yuan in the same period a year earlier.
Its net profit for the quarter hit 12.86 billion yuan, increasing from a profit of 3.59 billion yuan a year earlier.
Penny-pinching Chinese consumers have led to low-cost and discounted products becoming the focus for shoppers and platforms alike, benefitting Meituan, which delivers the goods for a small fee.
Meituan’s revenue from core local commerce, which includes food delivery and non-food delivery service Meituan Instashopping, rose 20.2% to 69.37 billion yuan.
Sales from new initiatives grew 28.9% to 24.2 billion yuan.
Last year, Meituan announced it was buying Light Year, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup established by Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen, for $281 million as major tech firms in China increase their bets on AI.
Meituan is China’s biggest delivery platform, with a 69% share of the 1 trillion yuan market, according to data from researcher ChinaIRN.
($1 = 7.2329 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Casey Hall; Additional reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Jacqueline Wong and Angus MacSwan)
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