
Meituan / Earnings Calls / March 21, 2025
Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Meituan Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to Scarlett Xu, VP and Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Scarlett XuThank 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. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO; and Mr. Shaohui Chen, Senior Vice President and the 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 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 in the non-IFRS accounting standards measures, please refer to the disclosure document in IR section of our website. Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang. Please go ahead, Xing.
Xing WangThank you, Scarlett, and good evening everyone. 2024 was an important year for Meituan. 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 RMB337.6 billion. Annual transacting users exceeded 7.70 million and annual active merchants increased notably to 14.5 million. Average purchase frequency of annual transaction user reached a new high. And as a leading platform for local services, we explored new growth opportunities through industry innovations and broad changes to consumers' daily lives and merchants' business operations. As we maintained steady growth in all our core business areas, we also helped unleash consumer demand in the local services. In food delivery, we further expanded consumption scenarios and broadened the price bands through our ongoing innovations on the supply side. In Meituan Instashopping, we significantly expanded product selections through Meituan InstaMart, effectively transferring consumer demand in on-demand retail. Regarding the in-store business, we unlocked the consumption potential in services retail through a wider selection of valuable for money group-buy deals. Meanwhile, we actively expanded into the overseas markets. In the fourth quarter, Keeta 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 year-end of 2024, the accumulated number of commercial orders fulfilled by our autonomous vehicles and drones have reached 4.9 million and 1.45 million respectively. Our drone business also started commercial operations 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 and live better. In 2024, we achieved steady growth in our on-demand delivery business with peak order -- daily order volume exceeding 98 million on the first (Technical Difficulty). We are delighted to see that food delivery has become an important growth driver for the restaurant business. On-demand retail has become an indispensable component of the retail industry and the lifestyle of more young people. As an industry leader, our on-demand delivery business actively adapted to the evolving consumption trends. We further improved our consumer mindshare 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 Pin Hao Fan kept hitting new highs. Pin Hao Fan has redefined affordable catering as an innovative business model that benefits both merchants and consumers. We continue to expand supply, enhance food safety control, and improve the user experience of Pin Hao Fan which incentivized the consumer demand in more scenarios and lifted the consumer purchase frequency. For branded merchants, the branded satellite store is a new way to expand business scale at a lower cost. This model allows branded merchants to offer better price than in-store dining and bring consumers affordable and high-quality options. Meituan InstaMart is another good example. In the past year, the number of Meituan InstaMart 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. As our on-demand delivery business grows, we remain steadfast in our commitment to cultivating a sustainable ecosystem. On the merchant front, we streamlined our promotional schemes of 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 RMB1 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 RMB1.4 billion in occupational injury insurance for all the couriers in seven piloted provinces -- cities since July 2022. Moreover, we implemented a series of courier-friendly measures. These include the introduction of anti-fatigue features in our system providing special caring 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 couriers' social security, we will roll out in some cities in the second quarter of 2022 -- 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 transacting 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 a richer business infrastructure and traffic support. We offered merchants with more customized diversified 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 list to help a merchant 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 wider array of leisure and entertainment services at more affordable prices, delivering our extensive 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 drive 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 package the offerings through our tailored special deals session in those lower-tier markets. As a result, our in-store business has 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 net 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 advantage and enhanced cross-sales 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 + X packaged deals. 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 Keeta in Riyadh last October, we further expanded Keeta to all the major cities in Saudi Arabia with the 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 resolutely 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 service vehicles, and accelerate the application of these technologies. And we are committed to fully integrating AI into consumers' daily lives and help people eat better, live better. Furthermore, at the industrial region, 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 Chen for an update on our financial results.
Shaohui ChenThank you, Xing. 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 RMB88.5 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 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% and remained stable. Our strategic focus on quality growth and operational efficiency continues to deliver strong results. This quarter, total segment operating profit grew to RMB10.7 billion up from RMB3.2 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 RMB9.8 billion this quarter. Turning to our cash position, as of December 31st, 2024, we maintain our strong net cash position with our cash-and-cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB168.2 billion, cash generated from operating activity increased meaningfully year-over-year to RMB16.9 billion. Now, let's review our segment results, starting with core local commerce. Order volume growth for food delivery and certain non-food category was softer compared to Q3 2024. Due to factors including much warmer weather conditions during winter season, an earlier return of working population from high-tier cities to lower-tier cities for the year end celebration and -- et cetera. Food delivery, the transaction frequency of mid-to-high-frequency users continued to grow year-over-year. Our rapid expansion and continuous iteration of Pin Hao Fan also allow us to further capture consumers' demand for low-priced meals. We also made strong progress in converting more food delivery users to Meituan Instashopping users driving their greater engagement across a wider range of non-food categories. Except for the on-demand medicine category which saw a tough base due to the widespread floods last year, the rest of the non-food category 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 beverages. Additionally, our ongoing optimization of the Shen Hui Yuan program has enhanced cross-sales driving up consumption frequency across the in-store, hotel, and travel categories. Our core local commerce segment continued to deliver strong year-over-year revenue growth of 18.9% reaching RMB65.6 billion. We are pleased to see that the year-over-year decline in AOV for both on-demand delivery and in-store hotel and travel narrowed sequentially in this quarter. Delivery service revenue grew faster than the order volume of on-demand delivery on a 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 for 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 a year-over-year basis to RMB12.9 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 RMB22.9 billion mainly due to the development of our grocery 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 a year-over-year basis to RMB2.2 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 core local commerce segment delivered solid results and achieved 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' long-term growth prospects. With that, we are now open for Q&A.
OperatorThank you. [Operator instructions] Your first question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.
Ronald KeungHey, Scarlett and Wang. 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.
Xing WangThank you, Ronald. So, of course, everyone is very concerned about AI. So, allow me to deliver a 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 the way 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 our AI is changing so quickly and it's going to change, disrupt, or 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 what will come. So here -- but 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 400,000 employees. And the second layer is AI in products. So, we would 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 large language 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 very highly efficient tools for 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 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 large language model. So after the pilot operation, the results show more than 20% enhance in efficiency, moreover, the customer satisfaction rate has improved over 7.5 percentage points. And on the business operations side, we use AI sales assistant to support our BD teams. For example, during this year's Spring Festival holidays, we gathered an updated information of 1.2 million merchants on our platform through AI sales assistant. So it very effectively reduced the workload of our BD team by 44% and further 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 roll 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 products 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 not difficult to understand, we use AI across multiple categories by providing various tools such as smart online store design and smart merchant information enhancement and display and operation management. That's all the usual suspect for AI applications. On the consumer side, we have already started testing AI assistant in some categories to enhance consumer experience for their search and transaction on our platform, for example, we have a rollout of 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. And right now we are already working on a brand new AI native project. We expect to launch this more advanced AI assistant later this year and to cover all Meituan services so that everyone can have a free personal assistant. So, based on our rich offline service offerings, efficient on-demand delivery 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 a one-stop and we are going to deliver it to you on time. So our diverse consumption scenario and broad offline services -- service offerings, strong fulfillment capabilities are our distinctive advantages. And so our AI assistant 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 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 capacity this year has been substantial. And this year we plan to further scale our investment in this very critical area. And thanks to our infrastructure large language model team, we have made significant optimization both in efficiency and effectiveness. And 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 language models, we have also integrated other mainstream models available in the market. So, to enable our internal product development team to move freely -- to freely explore AI-driven products and services. Notably, the AI core volume for LongCat has increased from 10% at the beginning of last year to 68% currently, so -- which further validates 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 move when it comes to autonomous delivery vehicles and drones. So, actually, we started our R&D in autonomous vehicles in late 2026. We started our R&D in drones in 2017. So, we have been working on this for many years and 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 research -- in-house R&D, we have also made quite several investment 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 the future, our robotics and AI will be even more tightly integrated and we will keep improving in the areas such as autonomous delivery and logistics and automation. Because right now apart -- besides the last mile delivery of on-demand delivery, we also operate a lot of, well, 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.
Ronald KeungGot it. Thank you, Xing.
OperatorYour next question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley.
Gary YuHi. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Given the robust goals and momentum of Keeta in Saudi Arabia, what's our expansion plan of Keeta in the Middle East this year? And we also noticed from the news that the Company's 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.
Xing WangThank you. Gary. Yes, in the beginning of last October, I was personally in Riyadh together with our Keeta team to launch Keeta in Riyadh, 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, so we have been doing quite nicely in Riyadh and other cities. So, I think it's safe to say Keeta has been on a good track and showing very good growth momentum. Thanks to our experience and know-how built up -- that we have built in China domestic market. So we believe Keeta holds a leading edge over other players in terms of the product offerings, tech capabilities, and operational know-hows. So, building on the progress achieved in Riyadh, we continue to expand the operation into other cities in December and January. So now Keeta is operating in more than half a dozen major cities in Saudi Arabia. For other markets outside Saudi Arabia, we are still doing our research work, so we don't have any concrete business plan at this moment to share. And at this stage, our overseas business is focused on food delivery. We believe that high-frequency traffic and delivery network built by food delivery business are of great value. First of all, in China, the Super App, our high-frequency food delivery business brings us large user base and low customer acquisition cost to other low-frequency categories. So we have been able to drive the development in other services. Secondly, the 30 minutes on-demand delivery network established by food delivery has enabled us to expand into more known food categories. That's how we built Meituan Instashopping and our on-demand marketplace model. And the Xiaoxiang Supermarket that you mentioned is our first-party model mainly for on-demand grocery, backed by Meituan's on-demand delivery capability and consumer mindshare, Xiaoxiang Supermarket provides consumers with groceries of very good quality and variety. So for our overseas business, we believe while various business including Xiaoxiang Supermarket have a good potential in the long term, but in the short term, we will focus on well, market research and some pilot programs. So we are not going to make a 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 mindshare 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 at the relatively new player in the market, Keeta 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 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 in 2024 and this will fuel robust growth in scale and quick pick up in market share. At the same time, we will keep a close eye on the return -- ROI, the return on investment and we will continuously improve our efficiency. Thank you.
OperatorOur next question comes from Ya Jiang with CITIC Securities. Thank you.
Ya JiangThank you for taking my question. As the company rapidly rolled out business in Saudi, the loss of new initiative segment expanded quarter-over-quarter. So this year, how should we balance the investment in other new business, especially in the Meituan-Select? And given the increasing overseas capital needs, what is the company's shareholder return plan for this year? Thank you.
Xing WangThank you, Jiang Ya. 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 at different stage and each needs different level of support from the company. So, we will prudently evaluate the ROI for each new initiative, 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 Kuailv where our restaurants are at or our bike or IMO pad sharing and shared power banks. Those new initiatives 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 Meituan Select, we have made significant strategic adjustment to this business last year, resulting in a very substantial improvement in efficiency. Meituan Select has witnessed notable improvement across product quality, assortments, pricing and as well as group leaders service quality. We become increasingly aware of the core areas that Meituan 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 Meituan 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. Meituan Select remains as one of our key models for exploring this market and compared to offline retails, Meituan Select aims to offer goods with the same quality but meaningfully cheaper price in future. The uniqueness -- the unique business model of Meituan Select can lower our procurement cost and it can also reduce the loss 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 Meituan Select can achieve profit margin comparable to those of offline retail channels in the long run. So, overall, while we accelerate overseas businesses, we will continuously improve the operational efficiency of the other new initiatives based on our long-term strategy and financial targets. And at the same time, we remain committed to enhancing our shareholder return 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 convertible bonds that are subject to early put options as well as $750 million corporate bonds that are maturing, about $2.5 billion 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 its PL and on top of that we will remain flexible and try to capture good market window to further trim down the number of total outstanding shares and thus enhance shareholder return. Thank you.
OperatorThank you, Xing Wang. Our next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.
Kenneth FongHi good evening management. Thanks for taking my question. Given the current scale of our food delivery business, what are our focus areas 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 company invests more in merchant support as well as wider welfare. How should we anticipate profit growth for the on-demand delivery this year? Thank you.
Xing WangThank you for the question. Yes, while the food delivery growth rate has been slowing down in recent years after reaching a high base, the management team remains very confident for the potential of the overall on-demand delivery business. It's 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 ARPU 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 Pin Hao Fan and other new supply innovation being able to attract consumer demand, increasing higher frequency and also improve the overall efficiency. We expect both the number of and the transaction frequency of the monthly transacting users on on-demand delivery will continue to grow. On the non-food part, the Meituan Instashopping continued 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 operations and deepen our collaboration with branded retailers. As a result, the supply for on-demand delivery continued to improve. On the consumer side, we continue to reinforce our everything now consumer mindshare 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 are paying more and more attention to the healthy growth of the overall ecosystem. Couriers and merchants are very important for our sustainable growth. Last quarter, we launched a merchant support project with over RMB1 billion funding to support our merchants. We are also going to launch the social security pilot program for our couriers under regulatory guidance. It's expected to kick off in the second quarter of this year in selected cities first. We will progressively roll out the plan nationwide in the coming years following guidance from regulators and the plan may be further fine-tuned based on the feedback and assessments. While it may be increasing 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 a Bright Kitchen [Foreign Language] program. In this program, we offer digital cameras and ask the 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 feel very confident to achieve steady profit growth for our own-demand delivery business. Thank you.
Kenneth FongThank you.
OperatorYour next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.
Thomas ChongGood 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 Hui Yuan to the in-store hotel and travel business, does the user from Shen Hui Yuan have higher user stickiness? Thank you.
Xing WangYes, thank you. Overall, we -- 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 in-store 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 and business model in the value proposition for consumers and merchants and also in operational strategy. We also have quite different categories mix merchant type, merchant scale, and the marketing efficiencies. Given the current consumption environment, both consumers and merchants have growing needs for digitization. These trends can deepen the industry's 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 [indiscernible] to make it a more organized marketing scheme that focused on low price and good deal. We will continue to solidify our position as the top choice for merchants' online operation and online marketing. Recently we have remade our in-store other services Dazhong business to service retail unit [Foreign Language]. We believe this is a better name that defined the category that we operate. We also renamed the combined leisure and entertainment and beauty divisions the name Happy Life Division [Foreign Language]. This division caters to the diverse needs of consumers for a happier life. Our Life Event division has also been renamed Easy Life [Foreign Language] 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 packaged tours, attraction ticketing and more categories. The proportion of orders using Shen Hui Yuan continued to rise to over 40% of total core local commerce order volume and increase in GTV contribution was even higher. Over 70% of our in-store, hotel, travel and merchant base are participating in the Shen Hui Yuan program. The integrated marketing operations 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 Hui Yuan program to Meituan Membership Program -- Meituan Hui Yuan. We expect this will unify the membership brand, integrate a wider range of category and scenarios, and a more diverse benefit for the consumers to enjoy. Through this Meituan Hui Yuan 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.
Thomas ChongThank you.
OperatorYour next question comes from Charlene Liu with HSBC.
Charlene LiuHi, 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 GTV, CAGR as well as GTV margins. Thank you very much.
Xing WangOkay, thank you. I'm glad you raised the questions of the CRC's organization 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, their overall progress has met our expectations 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 consumer and business side. We have also reinforced our user mindshare in our five core business areas namely food delivery, Meituan Instashopping, service retail, hotel and travel, and medicine and healthy. Leveraging this upgraded organizational structure and synergy it created, we continue to iterate our products and service, utilized AI to help business grow and further enhance user experience and engagement. With the Meituan 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 (CLC) [ph] 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.
Charlene LiuThank you.
OperatorThere are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Scarlett Xu for closing remarks.
Shaohui ChenOkay, thank you for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Thank you for your support.
OperatorThat does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.