Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Meituan fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. All participants are in a 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 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Shaohui 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 2025 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 actual results in the future. This presentation also contains audited non-IFRS 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 and non-IFRS accounting standards measures, please refer to the disclosure documents in the IR section of our website. Now, I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang. Please go ahead, Xing.
Thank you, Scarlett. Hello, everyone. In 2025 was a year of both opportunities and challenges for Meituan. Facing unprecedented intense competition, we stay focused on serving our consumers, merchants, couriers, and all ecosystem partners. We were committed to creating long-term value. In 2025, our platform GTV and transaction volume both achieved a double-digit growth. Add new transacting users and user transaction frequencies and ARPU all reached a new high. These key metrics reaffirmed our solid position as the preferred local service platform for Chinese consumers. In 2025, we fully upgraded our Meituan membership program. This was our first consumer loyalty program covering nearly all categories. It help us drive cross-selling and enhance core user stickiness. Meanwhile, leveraging our comprehensive advantages in local services, we launched our own AI assistant, Xiao Mei and Xiao Tuan.
We brought AI technology into real consumption use case. Going forward, Meituan membership and AI will continue to be the key tools for us to deliver differentiated and enhanced local experience. No matter how the market environment evolves, we remain focused on strengthening our long-term moat and promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the whole industry. We also actively pursue the new growth opportunities. During 2025, we made a series of key progress. First, we accelerated our deeper penetration into the supply side and built a comprehensive, cost-effective supply system, spanning a full price range and diverse categories through supply side innovation. This allowed us to precisely meet users' comprehensive needs across food delivery, quick commerce, and services retail. It also strengthened our positioning as a one-stop local service platform.
In food delivery, we focused on innovation in products, store formats, and channels in collaboration with the merchants. Innovative formats such as branded satellite stores, Raccoon Canteen, have helped a large number of restaurant brands and small and medium-sized merchants improve operational efficiency and expand their businesses. They achieved rapid growth as we worked closely with top liquor brands. In healthcare and pharmaceuticals, we continue to strengthen local supplies of common household medicines, medical devices, and supported the online launch of many innovative drugs and further expanded coverage of 24-hour pharmacies, online consultations and home testing services. Xiaoxiang Supermarket accelerated its city expansion in the fourth quarter. Over the past few years, Xiaoxiang Supermarket has built a strong supply chain, upgraded fresh produce quality, and developed industry-leading product capabilities.
Our private label products now cover broader categories, contributing higher GTV shares. In our in-store hotel and travel business, we featured our high quality merchant recommendation list and expanded our safe series programs to more categories such as education, fitness, health care and elderly care. Based on our deep insights into consumption trends, we further enriched offerings in sports events, cultural and art ticketing, home services, and more. In addition, we supported over 1 million independent artisans and so in digitizing their profiles on our platform, enhancing our unique service ecosystem and connectivities. Second, we focus on enhancing our comprehensive service capabilities. Through product iteration and Meituan membership upgrades, we delivered a superior consumption experience for consumers. In fulfillment, we upgraded on-time guaranteed one-on-one express delivery, significantly expanding their coverage in 2025.
This provided consumers with a more reliable and higher quality fulfillment protection and strengthened our competitive edge in fulfillment. In quick commerce, we launched the industry's first full cycle service care assurance program with millions of merchants and brands. It offers free return shipping for high tier Meituan members and selected brands products. It lifts industry service standard across experience, fulfillment, delivery and after sale support. In healthcare, we expanded online consultation with Grade 3A hospital doctors. We upgraded the verification and service protection for dental care and medical aesthetics and other services. These efforts comprehensively improve the reliability of online healthcare services, and we deeply integrated these high-quality services with our fully upgraded Meituan membership.
We launched a series of exclusive benefits for our member, covering various consumption scenarios such as food delivery, hotel booking, lifestyle services, mobility, healthcare and more. Richer member exclusive benefits and activities significantly improved consumer mind shares and transaction frequency, allowing us to better serve our core user base. As a result, a large number of mid-tier members had advanced to higher membership tiers. Our high value member base continues to grow steadily amid very intense competition. With their transaction frequency and spending rising notably. They also make purchases across a broader range of categories. Our continuously enhanced Meituan membership program delivered a strong multidimensional support. It boosts the traffic operations and transactions and growth. It also drives cross-selling among different categories and different scenarios within our core local commerce business.
Overall, we have strengthened our leading position in user structure and consumer mindshare, even in a very, highly competitive, market. Third, we stay focused on cultivating a sustainable ecosystem, and we are taking very concrete actions to drive high frequency high quality growth for the whole local services industry. We continue to empower small and medium-sized merchants. For example, we increased the financial supports, promoted the Bright Kitchen program, and use AI tools improve merchant operational efficiency. We aim to foster the healthy development of the food service industry and address structural challenges such as the marketing involution nature and food safety governance. We also made progress in courier welfare in 2025. We adapt the industry in providing pension insurance subsidy program for all types of couriers across the country.
Our occupational injury insurance program has now expanded to 17 provinces and cities, covering more than 16 million couriers. This protection is provided at no financial cost to the couriers. Additionally, we continue to enhance the multi-tier welfare system for couriers across healthcare, education, housing and other areas. Fourth, in our overseas market, KeeTa accelerated its global footprint and delivered a good growth momentum in 2025. In Hong Kong, KeeTa further solidified its leading position and achieved a positive unit economics in the fourth quarter. In Saudi Arabia, KeeTa's order volume kept growing throughout 2025, and it has become one of the top platforms for local consumers with higher quality services. In the second half of 2025, we launched our operations in Qatar, Kuwait, U.A.E. and Brazil.
All these new markets recorded strong growth momentum since business is launched. Going forward, we expect KeeTa to continue leveraging its strength in products, technology and operational know-how. We will work closely with merchants and couriers in all markets around the world to jointly drive the digital transformation of the industry and enable consumers in more countries and regions to enjoy our high quality and efficient services. Moreover, in 2025, we embrace the opportunity brought by AI. We are committed to driving the AI transformation of the physical world by integrating AI innovation with our proven services advantages in the physical world. Over the years, we have made a significant investment in AI technology. We combined the strengths of our in-house multi-modal LongCat model, and that's a series of large language models.
At the same time, we also use the state-of-the-art third-party models. We also leveraged Meituan's unique digital assets, including extensive merchant information and high-quality diverse offerings and real consumption behavior and user reviews. We first test Xiao Mei, a smart life assistant as a standalone app. What's more important is that we have rolled out Xiao Tuan and our AI assistant embedded in the Meituan app to all users. We have integrated AI technology with use cases on Meituan, covering all categories in local services on our platform. Xiao Tuan, the AI feature in Meituan, will fundamentally change how consumers use our apps. Searching will evolve into simply making requests in natural languages, not just keywords. Xiao Tuan draws on Meituan's rich supply and strong fulfillment capabilities.
Combined with our mobile native interface in the Meituan app, it brings consumers a brand new, easy-to-use and superior experience. In 2026, we will continue to refine Xiao Tuan's user experience. Our goal is to make Xiao Tuan the most consumer-centric AI agent for local services. Looking back on 2025, we faced well, complex external environment and unprecedented fierce competition. We remained committed to our mission to help people eat better, live better. We work hard to deliver real values for consumers, merchants, couriers and all ecosystem partners. Looking ahead, we believe our core local commerce still has strong growth potential and very strong business resilience. We'll continue to deepen our penetration into the supply side, enhance service quality, improve our Meituan membership program, and invest in the ecosystem.
We'll further strengthen our position as the preferred local services platform for most consumers and drive the high quality development of the industry. Meanwhile, grocery, retail and overseas market long-term growth trend with a clear strategy and potential. We will actively explore these areas with the investment discipline. More importantly, as we get into the AI era, we'll firmly implement our Retail Plus technology strategy, utilizing AI to deeply empower the local services industry and deliver better experience for both consumers and merchants. With that, I will turn the call over to Shaohui for an update on our latest financial results.
Thanks, Xing. Hello, everyone. Now let's begin with our fourth quarter financial results. Please note that all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. In Q4, our total revenue was RMB 92.1 billion, up 4.1%. Cost of revenue ratio increased by 11.6 percentage points to 33.8%. This is primarily driven by three factors. More consumer incentives deducted from revenue, higher rider incentives to maintain leading service quality, and increased overseas operational costs. Selling and marketing expenses ratio rose by 14.8 percentage points to 34.4%, largely due to our increased investment in promotion, advertising, and user incentives to enhance our brand awareness and the core user engagement. R&D expenses ratio increased to 7.6%, reflecting our increased investment in AI, while the G&A expenses ratio saw a slight increase to 4%.
Fourth quarter total segment operating loss and adjusted net loss narrowed sequentially to RMB 14.7 billion and RMB 15.1 billion, respectively. These sequential improvements reflect our focus on quality growth and execution efficiency amid the intense competition. As of December 31st, 2025, we held cash and cash equivalents and short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 166.8 billion. While operating cash flow was still negative, we achieved sequential improvement with operating cash outflow narrowing to RMB 6.6 billion. Now let's look at the segment results, starting with the core local commerce segment. This quarter, we continue to see healthy growth in both order volume and GTV. Our leadership in both food delivery and the Meituan Instashopping stayed strong, while our market position in core in-store categories remained stable.
Our core user base continues to show healthy growth and higher engagement on our platform. These users aren't just transacting more often, they are exploring more services across our platform during this quarter. Their retention rate further improved in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter. Multiple consumption categories, including medicine and health, leisure and entertainment, sports and fitness, pet services, and most categories in the Meituan Instashopping maintained double-digit growth across both order volume and GTV. On the financial side, segment revenue was RMB 64.8 billion in Q4, down 1.1%. While food delivery industry-wide subsidy slightly moderated from Q3, they were still at historical high levels. In Q4, we stayed focused on quality growth and further pulled back resources from those low AOV and low quality orders. This drove a sequential recovery in our food delivery average order value.
Although our food delivery net AOV is still well above the industry average, intensified competition did lead to a significant year-over-year drop in food delivery AOV, which weighed on our commission revenue growth. The impact of consumer subsidy on delivery service revenue also continued through Q4. Our online marketing revenue maintained stable growth. We continue to see merchants across categories from small and medium-sized restaurants to offline retailers and other local service providers treat Meituan as a key marketing channel. Our advertiser base continues to expand steadily. On the cost and expenses side, we increased marketing spending and promotions to enhance brand positioning and price competitiveness while driving engagement among core users. We allocated more resources to enhance our membership program. We also provide more incentives for our couriers to ensure delivered service quality and user experience alongside continued investment in ecosystem development.
Core local commerce segment operating loss was RMB 10 billion in Q4, with operating loss narrowing significantly from last quarter. This improvement was largely driven by meaningful loss reduction from our food delivery business. Turning to our new initiatives segment. In Q4, revenue reached RMB 27.3 billion, up 18.9% year-over-year, primarily driven by the expansion of KeeTa and grocery retail business. However, segment operating loss widened to RMB 4.6 billion, reflecting both seasonal headwinds and businesses like bike-sharing, as well as strategic investments in overseas expansion and grocery retailing. During this quarter, we expanded KeeTa into four new markets, which required meaningful upfront investment. However, we are encouraged that in established markets like Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, unit economics are already showing healthy improvement driven by order and order density growth and operational efficiency.
We are optimistic that KeeTa in new markets will follow this positive trajectory. For grocery retail, it remains a key long-term priority for Meituan. Xiaoxiang Supermarket has made solid progress over the past few years, with key metrics trending positively. In Q4, we accelerate its expansion into new cities and expanded warehouse network to capture growing online grocery demand. We also grew our physical presence with the launch of our first Xiaoxiang Supermarket offline store in Beijing and the opening of multiple new Happy Monkey stores. In addition, we recently announced our plan to acquire the domestic assets of Dingdong Grocery, which we expect to further enhance Meituan's overall capability in on-demand grocery retailing. We are confident that these strategic investments will solidify our competitive advantage and create long-term value in the grocery sector. Looking ahead, we are still confident that the company's long-term sustainable growth trajectory will continue.
We are firmly against industry involution, and we believe the competition will gradually be normalized with the regulation guidance. We will focus more on driving greater efficiency and higher quality growth and continue to invest in technology, service, quality, and ecosystem development. With that, we are now open for Q&A.
Your first question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Chen Shaohui, Scarlett and Wang. I wanna ask about the battle on AI, so the gateways or entry points as this kinda new era has begun. How does the company think about this trend and the future development on the risk side? Will this lead to a loss of kinda position as the main traffic gateway in the app era? And what strategies or plans does management have to address the risk? And could you also share the latest progress on your AI agent and LongCat model? Thank you.
Thank you, Ronald. In the past earnings call, I have made it clear that I think, well, AI is going to revolutionize everything. In this AI revolution, the only strategy that makes sense is to play offense instead of just defense. That doesn't mean we are going to rush to try to become one of the token factories. Not at all. We view AI as a strategic opportunity to improve and strengthen or even revolutionize our product offerings in local services. That's our core business. I will elaborate a little bit. First, I think AI takes big investment. Since early 2023, we have been investing a lot in both the CapEx and also the AI talents to build our in-house model.
Other than those cloud companies, we have probably made the largest investment in AI among all Chinese companies, other than those cloud companies. Well, we have been doing this for more than three years. It hasn't-
Obviously had an impact on our balance sheet, cash flow. We will remain committed to developing our in-house large language models from scratch, because we believe in order to better understand the physical world, do it in a more precise way, and based on our own massive proprietary data, we need to have the capability to build an in-house model. But at the same time, we are also working with a sort of third-party model. We are striving to take the lead in upgrading our Meituan app into an AI-powered app in order to better fulfill the end-to-end needs of our consumers in local services, in quick commerce.
In our view, the battle for the so-called super gateway is fundamentally about the capability to accurately understand the user need, and then efficiently execute the task. Here it is much more complicated than well, clever chatbot. The local service industry features highly complex use cases. There's a massive amount of very fragmented information and a lot of real-time information from small or medium-sized merchants. Those merchants are not fully digitized. A lot of the data on the merchant side and some on the consumer side has not been effectively digitized. In order to benefit from AI, I think it has to be first digitized. That's what we have been doing for many years.
A lot of merchants run on our digital system, so we have the unparalleled access to their data. Moreover, a local service platform also need to be able to deeply involved in the management of the fulfillment services. Otherwise, it's just a clever chatbot. Here I don't think a general AI can reliably manage and guarantee the real physical world service experience. Meituan has built up a ton of physical world data, including merchant POI data, dynamic and real-time merchant operation data, and the most comprehensive and authentic user reviews for local services.
I believe our deep expertise in food delivery network, the on-demand delivery network, and our business development operation, our retail supply, as well as our, well, in future, our drone and/or unmanned, driverless vehicles and other embodied AI technology will give us significant advantages in connecting AI with the physical world. Our in-house model is catching up with those open source sort of models. Our agents are evolving rapidly. That will help us seamless integrate digital and physical world information. To give you some example, we have recently made our AI assistant, Xiao Tuan, available to all users within our Meituan app. Before that, we have released a standalone AI app that's Xiao Mei.
For Xiao Tuan, all existing hundreds of millions of Meituan app user will benefit from this new AI features. Xiao Tuan covers all local service categories on our platform. The user can express their needs in a more natural way. In the past, most people have gotten used to search through a few keywords. Now with the enhanced AI capability, Xiao Tuan can understand the longer query in natural language, and Xiao Tuan can access all data within Meituan app. I'll give you one example. It's very common for a user to use Meituan app to find a restaurant. Sometimes you need to be able to better understand the use case. For example, maybe one day, I'll give you one very concrete example.
I would like to ask Meituan, okay, here I'm in the office in Wangjing. That's the north eastern corner of Beijing. I have a friend who's working in Zhongguancun, that's on the west side of Beijing. We plan to have lunch together. We only have two hours time. Could you help us find a restaurant with a good Sichuan spicy food in the middle, and it needs to have a convenient parking space? I think that's a very natural real need. But in the past with a very limited keyword search, the user will not be able to ask these kind of questions. Now with enhanced AI capability, it has become possible.
It's a very real use case, but in order to really answer that question, you need to understand, you need to have the mapping information, the POI information, or even the traffic information. You also need to know there are restaurants. You need to know more than just there are restaurants. You also need to understand the offering of the restaurant or the real-time capacity of the restaurant. Otherwise, you will recommend a very popular restaurant, but the user will not be able to reserve a table or a private room. That's not what user needs. To really fulfill this need, our system needs to have access to a lot of information in the physical world.
AI is helping us to bring all those data, physical world data together and offer a much better user experience to our users. Leveraging Meituan's comprehensive and authentic merchant database, Xiao Tuan can now quite accurately answer those specific questions about not only merchant location, business hours, the store facilities, and more. Xiao Tuan can also utilize our authentic user reviews and recommendations to deliver valuable insight. With this enhanced reasoning capability, Xiao Tuan can fulfill more personalized queries and generate the one-stop guides for dining, entertainment, travel, and more. We are pleased to see the Xiao Tuan feature effectively addressed user's request during Spring Festival. But that's just a beginning. It received positive feedback and further strengthened user engagement.
In the future, I think the model will become better, and we will continue to deepen the integration of Xiao Tuan, the feature in the Meituan app. We want to use the new AI technology to make the Meituan app the go-to destination for the local needs, local services needs of all users. We'll enhance the AI search capability, and we will enhance the execution capability, and we strive to upgrade the Meituan to make it a leading AI-powered app and an AI gateway for local services needs in future. Thank you.
Very. Thank you, Xing.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ya Jiang with CITIC Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. Regarding the State Council's investigation into the food delivery market competition, which started in early January, has our business strategy changed? What changes are we seeing in the competitive environment recently? Looking ahead, how do we plan to sustain or expand our competitive advantages on the current regulatory environment? Can food delivery continue its loss narrowing trend from quarter four into quarter one? That's my question. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Ya Jiang. We believe the regulatory guidance is already quite clear. The authorities are firmly against the so-called involution nature and want to foster a healthy and orderly market. Subsidy-driven or price-driven competition in the food delivery sector is a very typical the so-called irrational competition is a very typical involution. We take this issue very seriously and want to reiterate our position. We are firmly against involution. We are actively work with the regulatory investigations. Meanwhile, we are pulling back resources on the low-quality orders while striving to defend our market leadership. In 2026, no matter how the market environment evolves, our strategy for food delivery stays clear and consistent.
First, we will stay focused on doing the right thing to enhance our core strengths as expanding high-quality selections, ensuring fast and reliable deliveries, and offering consistently affordable prices. Second, like I said before, we will maintain our leadership while focusing our resources on driving quality growth and improving operational efficiency. Third, we will keep creating value for the whole industry. Beyond our ongoing work in supply-side innovations, courier support and welfare improvement, food safety, we are also pushing product and services upgrades.
Innovation in AI and all other technologies to drive efficiency and experience improvement across the industry. Looking ahead, we believe competition will shift toward deepening users lifetime value, improving supply quality and varieties, and delivering a seamless end-to-end user experience. During recent months, and even with the continued intense competition and quite irrational subsidies, Meituan is still the top choice for high-value consumers when it comes to food services. Because we deliver a better overall experience. We have held our competitive advantages in mid- to high-end average order value orders with average order value consistently well above industry peers. Driven by our focus on quality growth and an improved order mix, we are on track to see a more meaningful sequential improvement in our food delivery per order loss in Q1 versus Q4 last year.
We believe a more regulated market can help shift competition from pure subsidy wars toward innovation, service experience and efficiency. These are the areas in which we are better positioned. We will keep sharpening our core strengths and through better operation, product innovation and iteration. This will help us reinforce our structural advantages in mid to high AOV orders and high-value users and efficient delivery network. We remain confident in the competence and long-term potential of our food delivery business. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my question. We noticed that Douyin has substantially increased the subsidy for in-store business since fourth quarter last year, and its subsidies are expected to remain high in 2026. Just wanted to see what's your view about the current competitive landscape in the local service and compared to the competition cycle back in 2022 to 2023, how does Meituan's current strategy differ this time? Thank you.
Thank you, Kenneth, for the question. The short answer, from the short-term perspective, to your question is that, yes, we see the competitors' recent ramp up in investment. This may negatively impact our short-term profitability. That's something we are facing and we would like the market to understand. I would, you know, spend more words on our long-term strategy for this business. I think it's key to understand that, the competitive landscape now has been evolving quite a lot. The whole instant industry has seen significant changes in the last few years. On the competition side, the industry participants are now having quite differentiated focus on categories, merchants and the consumption scenarios. Leading players are now focusing more on efficient operational strategy.
For us, our priority has always been the sustainable long-term development of the industry rather than short-term winning a tactical battle. We truly believe that instore business still has high potential, but still need lots of investment and more innovation across the whole value chain. No matter how the landscape shifts, provide efficient and high quality service to consumers and merchants, and driving robust offline consumption growth is the key to succeed. Over the last few years, we have seen that customers' demand has evolved. They require more personalized experience and value for money, dining and services. Demand also for extended services such as online touring, reservation and online ordering with offline pickup continues to grow. On the supply side, offerings have continued to evolve in line with consumption trends, with new supply formats and service categories emerging.
This ongoing momentum is also a key driving force for digital transformation. On the technology front, both consumers and merchants have growing expectations and demand for AI-powered products. Under these trends, Meituan has always been very alert and continue to bring our extensive experience and understanding of industry and to continue the innovation. We have built and further enhanced differentiated advantage in areas such as category mix, merchant ecosystem and operational efficiency. For example, thanks to years of expertise and insights from Meituan and Dianping in dining sectors, we have noticed a shift in the business logic of fine dining.
We proactively share these insights with our fine dining partners and help them stay ahead of the curve and quickly adapt to changing consumer demands. We also continue to track the industry trend and explore new supplies in areas such as self-service models, leisure and entertainment, sports, cultural and art activity ticketing, self-operating home services and more. Our platforms, years of accumulated authentic user reviews and integrated one-stop online services, including the group buying, online ordering, pick up now, reservations and queue management, have become our unique competitive advantages. Additionally, more than 1 million skilled artisans have become a unique supply on our platform. Our technology side, The AI agent, Smart Operator, [Non-English content], helps merchants optimize their digital service. Merchants are able to deliver personalized service by leveraging AI to recall and analyze consumer preferences, and they can also intelligently analyze consumer feedback for operational improvement.
In addition, our AI agents, such as digital employees and AI BD, streamline merchant operations across store opening, daily operations and consumer acquisition. We will continue to enable merchants with their own AI assistants. In 2026, we will further differentiate our service and allocate more resources with higher ROI. We will strengthen our position in core category and minimize innovation in efficient investment in non-core areas. Looking ahead, we will remain committed to providing consumers with a seamless service loop that offers quick, precise decisions and one-stop experience. We aim to develop a full lifecycle merchant empowerment system that covers customer acquisition, conversion and retention. We will continue to foster sustainable industry growth through digital transformation. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thanks management for taking my question. Why did Meituan acquire Dingdong? What synergies are expected with Meituan grocery retail business? How has Meituan strategy for self-operated grocery retail evolved? Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas, for the question on Dingdong and on Meituan's grocery strategy. We recently announced the acquisition of Dingdong's mainland China business for $717 million. Please note that this transition is still subject to regulatory approval. The reasons, obviously the most important reason is we have true confidence in China's grocery retail business, both online and offline. Besides that, there are two key reasons for this acquisition, particularly. First, it will enhance Meituan's overall capability in on-demand grocery retailing, particularly strengthening our supply chain capability. It will also contribute to further operational efficiency improvement of our grocery retail business. Secondly, Dingdong has established itself as a strong player in the East China area. With this acquisition, it will significantly improve our coverage and our service quality in this region.
Grocery retail aligns closely with our company's mission and represents one of our long-term strategic priorities. As market dynamics evolve, we have observed that self-operating suppliers, like Xiaoxiang Supermarket, are becoming increasingly important in the on-demand delivery ecosystem. Xiaoxiang Supermarket represents guaranteed high-quality supply on our platform, offering users a more reliable shopping experience. Given the industry's growth potential, we see substantial opportunities ahead. Last year, we have already restructured our grocery retail portfolio, shifting to a more efficient way to drive sustainable growth. In the past few years, Xiaoxiang Supermarket has maintained strong growth momentum while continuously improved operational efficiency. We've expanded our private brand merchandising offerings, covering nighttime consumption scenarios, and maintaining industry-leading fulfillment speed and experience. We believe Xiaoxiang Supermarket represents a model where Meituan can leverage its strengths with a clear path to profitability.
Moving forward, we plan to expand this model to more cities and regions, bringing faster, fresher and more affordable on-demand grocery retail to more consumers. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity to ask question. My question is related to KeeTa. KeeTa has made some progress in both Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. Given the regulatory and competitive constraints, the road ahead looks quite challenging. Could management share if there are any updates to the company's overseas strategy for 2026? How much do you plan to invest in Brazil this year? Do you expect Saudi Arabia to reach breakeven in 2026? Thank you.
Thank you, Gary. Before addressing the specifics of our 2026 international strategy, I want to take this moment to express my deepest gratitude to KeeTa's employees, merchants, couriers, and all ecosystem partners in the Middle East. Thank you for your unwavering dedication to your work to provide essential services to our users during this difficult time. We are doing everything we can to safeguard your safety and livelihood to overcome these challenges together. Now, back to Gary's question. First, I want to emphasize that Meituan's core philosophy in China has always been to create value for the whole ecosystem and drive long-term industry growth, not just involution. That has never been what we want to do. Our international operations through KeeTa will follow the same playbook.
We want to grow alongside with local players. We want to help accelerate the digital transformation of local services industry there. We want to serve, grow and serve a bigger market together. Ultimately, we want to create new value for users, merchants, couriers, and other partners in these markets. In 2026, KeeTa will mostly focus on our current markets, because each market has a different dynamics. We will stay flexible. We will tailor strategies locally while balancing growth and profitability at every market and every stage. It's very important that compliance will remain a top priority. We have been working very actively with the local regulators.
In the long run, we are committed to our global operation with a strategic focus on the on-demand delivery, the quick commerce, which can leverage our core strength. For the market that you mentioned, and as I said in the last quarter, KeeTa has achieved first profitable months in Hong Kong in October 2025. Allow me to remind you that KeeTa launched in Hong Kong in May 2023, and it has broken even in October 2025. It took us 29 months to get to profitability. This year we will focus on further improving our operations there. For Saudi Arabia, that market is very favorable for food delivery business for the profitability there.
Therefore, we expect KeeTa to hit its first profitable months in Saudi Arabia much faster than in Hong Kong, and definitely before the end of this year. Actually, I would say we are very close to that. It's in the near future. We are already profitable in some. We have got to break even in some cities, and I think other cities are following very fast. Since we have recently cut the subsidy significantly in Saudi Arabia, but our order volume stayed resilient. That means users are choosing KeeTa for our better services, not for subsidy or lower price. In 2026, we'll further refine our operations in other Middle East markets and our orders are also growing fast.
With our Saudi Arabia experience and regional brand recognition, I'm confident that we can improve our operational efficiency quickly in those new markets. However, our growth in this market in 2026 remains subject to external risk, for example, the current regional conflicts. Regarding Brazil, we see tremendous long-term value there, and we remain firmly committed to KeeTa's long-term growth in this market. For now, our operations are focused on São Paulo, the largest city, and rather than full nationwide rollout, we are prioritizing refining our business model in São Paulo before we do a broader expansion. Meanwhile, we will actively pursue business strategies to build differentiated advantages.
Overall, KeeTa's loss in 2026 will remain significant because we entered a lot of new markets, a lot of new countries in the second half of 2025. Orders in this market are still scaling up. However, this will be offset by more efficient improvement in our domestic new initiatives. As a result, we expect that the overall loss in our new initiative segment in 2026 will not be bigger than 2025. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Scarlett Xu for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you all for joining the call. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.