China's slow economic recovery since the coronavirus pandemic has prompted more companies in the world's second-largest economy to turn to low prices and discounted products.
“As consumers increasingly prefer products with better value for money, we have strengthened our price competitiveness,” Meituan Chief Executive Officer Wang Xing said in an analyst call after the company released its quarterly earnings on Thursday. There is an increased emphasis on discounts through livestreaming, Wang said.
Meituan, which operates an app that offers a range of services from bike-sharing and ticket booking to maps, said its revenue rose to 73.3 billion yuan ($10.11 billion) in the three months ended March 31, from 58.62 billion yuan a year earlier.
That beat the 70.32 billion yuan average forecast of 16 analysts surveyed by LSEG. Quarterly profit rose 59.9% to 5.2 billion yuan from 3.36 billion yuan a year earlier.
In April, shortly after Wang took over the reins of Meituan's international operations, Meituan began advertising jobs in Riyadh for KeeTa, a food-delivery platform it had launched a year earlier in Hong Kong.
Wang stressed that KeeTa's expansion into new markets is still in the “early stages”, with markets in the Gulf, Europe and Southeast Asia all under consideration.
“Global expansion is very important to Meituan's long-term growth, but we have to be cautious from a financial perspective,” Wang said.
In the first quarter, KeeTa was Hong Kong's top food delivery app by order volume, with a 43% market share, according to data from analytics firm Measurable AI.
Meituan is China's largest delivery platform, accounting for 69% of the 1 trillion yuan market, according to data from research firm ChinaIRN.
Lululemon's same-store sales rose 6%, a rare single-digit increase for the company after seeing double-digit growth for the past two years. Same-store sales in the Americas were flat last year, but in mainland China they rose 26%.
Published on June 8, 2024, 12:21 PM IST
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