Back to 2021-2022, Meituan’s quarterly results experienced various changes in reported metrics, which looks a bit dubious and problematic – whether it’s due to conflicts when measuring performance internally and to investors, or gov’s implicit requirement, or regulation changes.
Here are the 4 changes:
1/ Food delivery revenue split (2021q4): “Commission” split into “Commission” and “Food delivery services”, not segment changes.
2021q3
2021q4
2/ no more “GTV of food delivery” and “number of domestic hotel room nights” (2022q1)
2021q4
2022q1
3/ big change in 2022q2: new segment reporting of “Core local
commerce”, which combines previous “Food delivery”, “In-store, hotel & travel” & some business previously in “New initiatives and others”, e.g. Meituan Instashopping (美團閃購)
2022q1
2022q2
This segment reporting is used as of today.
Plus, in operating metrics, “Number of food delivery transactions” is now “Number of On-demand Delivery transactions”.
2022q1
2022q2
This is interesting – according to the footnote, “Number of On-demand Delivery transactions” includes number of transactions from food delivery and Meituan Instashopping businesses. While it’s consistent with “Core local commerce” definition, it’s hard to argue why business like Meituan Grocery (美團買
菜), which is under “New initiatives and others”, is not on-demand delivery transaction.
Plus, since “Core local commerce” now includes in-store, hotels etc., which has nothing to do with “delivery”, it’s hard to know the unit economics for delivery.
4/ No more reporting of “Number of Transacting Users”, “Number of Active Merchants” and transaction per user (2023q1)
2022q4
Gone in 2023q1