Thank you for standing by, welcome to the Meituan third quarter 2022 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 one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Sijia Xu, VP, Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 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 third quarter 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 unaudited 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. For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS 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, and welcome to Meituan third quarter 2022 earnings call. During the third quarter, our total revenue increased by 38.2% year-over-year to RMB 62.6 billion. In this quarter, we stick to our retail plus technology strategy, continue to leverage our advantages in connecting consumers with local merchants, and provided better services to a broader range of consumers and merchants. As a result, annual transacting users on our platform increased to 687 million, while the number of annual active merchants increased to 93 million. The average number of transactions per transacting user increased to 39.5 for the trading 12 months of the third quarter compared to 34.4 for the trading 12 months of the third quarter last year.
We achieved an important milestone with the food delivery orders surpassing a daily record of 60 million despite the resurgence of Omicron. We launched a various marketing campaign during festivals and holidays and collaborated with the local governments to distribute consumption vouchers to stimulate the recovery of local consumption. We help local merchants expand their revenues and incomes through various initiatives such as traffic support and digital operational tools, and overcome the tough time along with our business partners in the ecosystem. We continually enhanced our retail capabilities, diversified the supply, and optimized logistic efficiency enabling us to provide consumers with a wider choice of daily necessity and ensure stable supplies during the pandemic. Going forward, we will remain focused on our mission to help people eat better, live better, while assisting the government to fulfill people's wish for a better life.
This quarter, the number of transactions in core local commerce was negatively affected by the pandemic. Our revenues still achieved a solid year-over-year growth of 24.6%. For food delivery, we continue to focus on high-quality growth. We effectively match diverse consumer demands across different scenarios, different purchase frequencies, and different purchasing power. We enhance the user stickiness through various measures, including optimize the marketing resource allocation, refined operations, and diversify the marketing campaigns. This quarter, the number of transacting users on our platform continued to grow steadily and quarterly consumption frequency reached a record high. Specifically, consumption frequency for high-frequency users, high AOV users, membership users had increased notably. Moreover, retention rate of low-frequency users had also increased.
As the pandemic was effectively under control in early August, coupled with the seasonality effect and consumers driving demand during summer holidays, the food delivery daily order volume peaked to over 60 million in the month of August. We continue to help accelerate the digital transformation of the restaurant industry, including breakfast, afternoon tea, and late-night snacks categories, which should lead to an increase in the number of active merchants on our platform. We also continue to iterate our online marketing tools to better serve our merchants, help them attract and retain customers during a difficult time. For example, we have chain restaurant launch mega feed dishes, allowing them to reach targeted customers with higher accuracy and increased revenues, as well as further enrich the high-quality supply on our platform.
We also took multiple measures to improve marketing efficiency for the merchants, including simplifying online marketing tools, optimizing the operational mechanism, enhancing user-friendly needs, improving the recommendation features, and more. We continue to improve our ecosystem and user experience for the merchants on our platform, activating small and medium-sized merchants' willingness and capability to operate online. We have witnessed that the consumer mindshare of Meituan has been able to deliver everything to their doorsteps, and that has expanded from food to broader categories. An increasing number of our food delivery consumers started to use Meituan Instashopping under non-catering scenarios. During this quarter, Meituan Instashopping maintained high growth momentum, with growth rate of user base, purchase frequency, and retention rate all accelerated year-over-year.
Notably, daily order volumes peaked at 9.7 million in August, with electronics products growing 11 folds. Our beauty, pet care, and flowers also realizing rapid year-over-year growth during the peak day. On the one hand, the strong growth was due to rising consumer demand for on-demand retail services. On the other hand, it benefits from our continuous focus and optimization on the supply side. As a result, both the number of active merchants and number of newly onboarded merchants grew by 30% year-over-year in the third quarter for Meituan Instashopping. We continually strengthen our partnership with the mainstream brands. For example, our collaboration with Apple authorized sellers expanded to over 1,100 stores in over 200 cities. The sales volume of iPhone 14 on its launch day grew robustly.
We also used the drone to shorten delivery time. The delivery of the first iPhone 14 order was completed within six minutes from the order placement. Moreover, we recently have formed a strategic partnership with Suning and onboarded over 600 Suning stores to our platform. Going forward, we'll collaborate with the more well-known brands to further strengthen our to consumer mindshare in the on-demand retail business, while continuing to expand the depth and breadth of our supply, including electronics, beauty, pet care, baby care, and more. In addition, the number of Meituan InstaMart, Meituan Shandiancang, has increased to nearly 2,000 by the quarter end. We continue to incentivize consumer demand for on-demand retail through our more comprehensive SKU offerings. As we grow our business, we also shoulder more social responsibilities.
In particular, as the leading on-demand retail platform in China, we will continually create more local job opportunities across the country. During the quarter, we further optimized our order dispatch system and encouraged the restaurant to upload the estimated pickup time so that the courier can plan ahead and avoid early arrival at restaurants in order to save their time. We also remain committed to enhancing the welfare and benefits for our couriers, help improve their job satisfaction and sense of fulfillment. For example, on July 17th, Knights Day, we hosted a number of events for the couriers and their family members, distributed holiday gifts and offered the reward to couriers for their diligent work and continuous service during the pandemic.
When extreme heat swept the country this summer, we not only adjusted the maximum delivery distance in our order dispatch system, but also offered protection subsidies and other type of benefits for couriers working under high temperature conditions. Despite the challenges from the pandemic resurgence, our in-store hotel and travel business still demonstrated a resilience, especially during summer holidays. We continued to iterate our operational strategy and provided more convenience and efficiency to our merchants and consumers. Both the number of our annual active merchants and quarterly transacting users reached their historical highs respectively. In response to the pandemic, we assisted local government, including those in Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing, Guizhou, and Hubei to distribute the consumption vouchers to stimulate the consumption. We continue to iterate and optimize supply, certifying our merchant base with regard to the degree of negative impacts from the pandemic.
We launched a self-pickup function for restaurant and provided a merchant with online marketing support and operational tools to help them endure the challenging time. To help them endure the challenging time. Thanks to our comprehensive product coverage and our ability to capture the rapidly changing consumption trends, we are able to continually optimize supply and enhance cross-sell capabilities and meet the vast consumer demand across different macro and consumption scenarios. We continue to onboard chain restaurants in the light meals and fast food categories and further stratified our operation strategy based on merchants rating. We provided the chain restaurant with differentiated digital solutions to help them broaden pro-product coverage and expand the transaction scenarios. Some categories, such as pet care and medical service, maintained a solid revenue growth of over 30% during this quarter.
Car camping and other trendy consumption categories also achieved a notable growth in summer. We provided a comprehensive suite of products and services for a broad variety of categories during Chinese Valentine's Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Furthermore, we continue to innovate new content formats to help merchant make effective decisions, which eventually help stimulate transaction. In addition, we continually optimize the display and recommendation for the UGC content and improve the authenticity of customer reviews on our platform. The optimized content in an improved platform use enable us to create a safe transaction and safe online operation environment. Our hotel and travel business continued to suffer from the ongoing pandemic, particularly in September, when serious outbreaks demanded a number of tourist cities like Sanya and Chengdu.
Moreover, strict inter-provincial travel restriction remained in place, which led to suppress the consumption demand in travel activities. Nevertheless, consumer demand for local accommodation was relatively resilient, and we continued to leverage our competitive advantage in this domain to feature specialty local tours and accommodations in some high tier cities to capture demand from high value consumers during the pandemic. In addition, we continue to deepen penetration in the high star hotel market. In September, we collaborated with the Marriott Group to launch joint market events and joint membership schemes, and teamed up with a number of well-known hotel groups that day. Furthermore, we continue to collaborate with the theme parks, such as launching special marketing events in Wuzhen and Universal Studios Hong Kong and more to help merchants acquire traffic, incentivized with reservations. Now moving on to our new initiatives.
Revenue of the new initiative segment grew by 39.7% year-over-year in the third quarter. For our largest new initiative, Meituan Select, we upgraded the brand positioning to next day supermarket in order to capture the evolving consumption trends and to deliver a clearer service philosophy to our consumers. Through this brand upgrade, we are able to better satisfy consumer demand for a wider selection of products with higher quality, more affordable price. Far, our next day supermarkets service model has covered nearly 3,000 cities and counties. We established a nationwide logistic system and self-pickup network to help integrate a digital economy with real economy, and to allow consumers to enjoy more value for money products with more convenience.
During the third quarter, we continued to implement our high quality growth strategy, improved supply chain and logistic capabilities, maintain our market leadership. On the product and supply chain front, we adhere to our industry-leading quality control standard, enhanced our operational capabilities in product selections, pricing, procurement efficiency, and supply chain management, which help us to strengthen consumer mindshare and enhance user stickiness. Combined with our constant improvement in logistic, we also innovatively piloted an industry-leading smart sorting system, which had brought a better fulfillment experience for consumers and will continually enhance our fulfillment efficiency and reduce the cost. We continued to optimize the infrastructure and operating system of the cold chain logistic throughout the entire logistic network, and expanded the cold chain coverage to broader categories such as meat and poultry, aquatic products, frozen food, and more.
Moreover, we actively supported the circulation of agricultural products using our logistic network. As a result, agricultural products now contribute to around 45% the total sales in the third quarter, and the number of offline self-pickup stations located in smaller counties and rural regions accounted for more than 50%. We not only helped improve shopping experience for consumers from lower-tier markets, but also helped create job opportunities and continued to support the rural revitalization. During the pandemic outbreaks in the third quarter, we actively participated in the pandemic control scheme and supported the local governments in providing sufficient supply of food, beverage, and daily necessities for people from the affected regions, including Guizhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Henan. Meituan Grocery continued to experience strong growth, with the GDV increasing by close to 80% year-over-year, thanks to our improvements in product and service offerings.
We proactively captured the rising demand during the holiday seasons, while ensured a sufficient supply in the pandemic-affected areas. On the Mid-Autumn Festival day, daily order volume surpassed 1 million to a record high. We continued to expand the product sub-offerings to broader categories and selections, but also increased the supply of local and seasonal products. During this quarter, we innovatively launched the locally sourced and selected products. That's 本地鲜货 in Chinese. Working closely with local governments and farmers from the products' places of origin. In addition, we worked with the local governments and provided trainings for new farmers through a variety of practical courses in e-commerce, live streaming, community operation management, and more. These courses aimed to assist the farmer to grow and sell the agricultural product.
We also supported the 本 地 鲜 货 program with additional traffic and promotional campaigns to match these products with local consumer demand and ensure delivery time within 30 minutes. We believe that these measures will effectively deepen the integration of the service industry with agricultural industry, and effectively help the farmer increase production and income. Despite the short-term challenges from the pandemic, we have a full confidence in the long-term development of our businesses. We firmly believe that consumer confidence will eventually recover as the pandemic passes. Our businesses that were largely impacted due to the pandemic will gradually return to their normal growth. Meanwhile, we will shoulder more social responsibilities as a technology-driven retail company with a nationwide coverage.
Going forward, we will continue to focus on our retail plus technology strategy, creating more job opportunities in our ecosystem, help merchant generate more income on our platform, provide consumers with ample supply of products and services, and improving people's livelihood and promoting the domestic economic circulation. With that, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Shaohui, with update on our latest financial results.
Thank you, Xing. Hello, everyone. I will now go through our third quarter financial results. During the third quarter, our total revenue reached RMB 62.6 billion, increasing by 28.2% year-over-year in the midst of the COVID resurgence and a challenging macro environment. The increase was mainly driven by the steady revenue growth of our core local commerce segment and a strong revenue growth of our new initiative segment, especially the goods retail business. Cost of revenue ratio was 70.4% this quarter, remaining flat on a quarter-over-quarter basis as the increased seasonal couriers incentives was offset by the continuous improved efficiency of our goods retail business. Year-over-year decrease was mainly due to the improved gross margin of our food delivery, Meituan Instashopping and Shopping, and the goods retail business.
Selling and marketing expenses ratio also remained flat on a quarter-over-quarter basis, but decreased year-over-year, reflecting our improved marketing efficiency. As a result of the improved operating leverage. Both R&D expenses ratio and the G&A expenses ratio reduced on both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis to 8.6% and 4% respectively. We continue to achieve meaningful progress in pursuing high quality growth with higher operating efficiency this quarter. Total segment operating profit and operating margin increased on both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis to RMB 2.5 billion and 4.1% respectively. On a consolidated basis, our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net profit for RMB 4.8 billion and RMB 3.5 billion for this quarter, turning from loss position to profit on a year-over-year basis and having remarkable increase on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Turning to our segment results.
We like that it's called local commerce. Our core local commerce segment revenue increased by 24.6% year-over-year to RMB 46.3 billion. Operating profit increased significantly by 124.6% year-over-year to RMB 9.3 billion, while operating margin for the segment improved on year-over-year basis to 20.1% by around 9 percentage points. On-demand delivery achieved 16.2% year-over-year growth in order volume this quarter. For food delivery, order volume recovered well in July and August versus June and was negatively affected by the widespread COVID resurgence in September. Year-over-year growth of food delivery revenue far outpaced order volume growth, which was due to several factors. First, we continue to control our user incentive spending by placing our focus on high-quality growth in response to the external environment.
We allocated more resources to mid and high consumption frequency and mid to high ticket size users, along with high ticket size orders such as for late night meals, which displayed more resilient demand. User incentive network contra the delivery service revenue decreased during this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. We continue to see a great number of premium restaurants with high ticket size launch food delivery services on our platform during this quarter, while long-distance orders continue a higher proportion of orders. This higher proportion of high ticket size orders drove a year-over-year increase in commission and delivery service revenue. Operating profit and operating margin for food delivery business both increased meaningfully on a year-over-year basis, primarily due to the reduction in user incentives, the favorable order mix change and less seasonal incentives to couriers.
The sequential decrease in both operating profit and operating margin was mainly due to seasonality as we provide more incentives for delivery couriers to work during the summer season and extreme weather. We also provide more incentives to users to stimulate their consumption during the summer season. Turning to Meituan Instashopping. This business was overall less affected by the resurgence of COVID than food delivery and continued to benefit from deepened Everything Now consumer mindshare and our wider selections. Daily average order volume achieved new highs and the order volume of Meituan Instashopping accounted for around 9% of our total on-demand delivery orders, increasing meaningfully year-over-year. As we mentioned before, we remain committed to Meituan Instashopping and expect to increase investment in user incentives and marketing in the second half this year.
During the quarter, we roll out a series of summer promotions to capture new users' mindshare and encourage repeat users to purchase across more categories. We also increased incentives for users in cities that were severely impacted by the pandemic, promoting the recovery of their consumption. As such, user incentives per order increased sequentially. AOV also declined quarter-over-quarter as a result of consumers' reduced demand for stockpiling. It continued to increase year-over-year due to our enhanced product mix. As a result, UE decreased quarter-over-quarter, improved significantly year-over-year. Year-over-year improvement in UE was also driven by a rapid growth in online marketing revenue, primarily stemming from the expansion of our online marketing merchant base and the merchants increased ARPU, especially from the top brands. Let's turn now to our in-store hotel and travel business.
The widespread of COVID and the COVID control measures in an increasing number of cities in September weighed on the recovery of our in-store hotel and travel business. Despite facing a challenging external environment, the revenue of in-store hotel and travel still achieved a strong recovery from the previous quarter and has displayed steady growth on a yearly basis. From July to August, consumer consumption demand for in-store services was very strong. COVID situation was much better and the COVID control were more regular and regional focused. As a result, in-store GTV saw a healthy recovery in July, picking up further in August. In particular, in-store dining GTV saw a sharp rebound from July to August, reaching a record high for two consecutive months.
The recovery of other in-store services was slower as some flattering categories and non-essential service categories was still suspended during COVID control, especially in Tier 1 cities. For hotel and travel, the overall recovery of domestic travel activity and hotel booking lacked the high in-store activity. As such, transaction-based commission revenue was lower than in-store GTV growth. For online marketing revenue, the overall recovery was slower than transaction-based commission revenue for several reasons. First, although we have seen increasing demand for in-store merchants for CPC and display ads compared to the second quarter, merchants remain cautious about spending their online marketing budgets, including the persistent macro headwinds and the continued impacts from the pandemic. Second, due to COVID control measures, Tier 1 cities will contribute a meaningful portion of our CPC revenue recover at a slower pace than expected.
While some gathering and non-essential in-store service categories, which were also a major source of CPC revenue, still suspended their operation. Nonetheless, merchants in some categories with more essential demand and less impacted by the pandemic continue to show strong marketing. For example, online marketing revenue for both pet care and medical services grew by more than 30% year-over-year. Our online marketing revenue for lifestyle services increased by over 80% year-over-year. Operating profit and operating profit margin for our in-store hotel and travel business increased on both a year-over-year and a quarter-over-quarter basis. The sequential increase of OP margin was mainly the result of business scale recovery. Year-over-year improvement was a result of our focus on cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Let's now turn to our new initiatives segment.
During the period, revenue in this segment increased by 39.7% year-over-year to RMB 16.3 billion, mainly due to the development of our goods retail business. Operating loss for this segment remained flat on a quarter-over-quarter basis, while operating margin improved by 6.4 percentage points quarter-over-quarter to negative 41.6%, primarily attributable to improved operating efficiency of our goods retail business and other new initiatives. On Meituan Select, operating loss slightly increased on a sequential basis due to business recovery. Our operating loss as a percentage of GTV continued to narrow sequentially. During the quarter, we implemented a series of cost control and efficiency improvement measures to improve our business capability through the refinement of our operation and management, facilitating an overall enhancement in logistic efficiency.
While our improved pricing mechanism, supply chain management, and product mix have driven a sequential increase in price per item. On Meituan Grocery, both operating loss and operating loss margin increased sequentially. Both AOV and order density declined from the previous quarter, giving consumers a reduced demand for stockpiling, given better COVID situation in Tier 1 cities compared to earlier quarter. However, delivery costs and warehouse expenses continued to decrease on order basis, the result of our improved operating efficiency. For other new initiatives, Power Bank turned profitable by bike-sharing B2B food distribution, restaurant management system, all narrowed their operating loss on a sequential basis. Now turning to our cash position. As of September 30, 2022, we continue to maintain a strong net cash position with our cash and cash equivalents, as well as short-term treasury investments totaling RMB 111.5 billion.
Additionally, our operating cash flow further increased on quarter-over-quarter basis to RMB 9.4 billion this quarter. To conclude, I would like to say that although the ongoing pandemic has brought continuous challenges to every member of our ecosystem, including ourselves, we remain confident in the recovery of China's economy and the long-term growth potential of our core local comm segment. At the same time, our continued exploration of the goods retail business through multiple business models will help us satisfy more consumers' needs. It will allow us to create more value to consumers and society, and also create more growth opportunity for the company. Given the challenges ahead, we will continue to enhance our core competence and dynamically adjust our operating strategy to balance growth and profitability, aiming for high-quality growth for our company and long-term value for our shareholders.
With that, we are now open for Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thanks, management, for taking my questions and congratulations on a strong set of results. I understand that the growth rate of core local commerce segment slowed down in September as compared to July and August. Could management share September and the latest monthly recovery trend of core local commerce segment, especially on the food delivery and in-store hotel and travel business?
Considering the recent COVID resurgence, how should we think about the growth trajectory for the segment in Q4? Thank you.
Thank you, Th o mas for the question. Thank you for noticing that the growth volatility in different months due to the COVID situation. Overall, as we have mentioned, Q2 was heavily affected by the control measures. The Q3, we have seen a couple of good months. In late August, we saw that the number of medium risk and high-risk areas increased sharply, reaching a peak in early September and continued right again into fall. For the strict COVID control measures in these regions materially impact our core local commerce business. For food delivery, order volume growth benefit from the high temperature in August, which further boost demand for food delivery services in summer. However, weather turned cooler from the end of August, partially impact demand for food delivery. Moreover, COVID affected food delivery more materially in September than in August.
Food delivery order volume under different consumption scenarios was particularly affected in more regions. As a result, food delivery order volume year-over-year growth decreased significantly in September compared to August. COVID also had a major impact on our instant business. Year-over-year growth of our instant GTV dropped significantly in September versus August. High-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, which contribute a significant percentage of our total instant GTV and marketing revenue, was still under COVID control measures. Lower tier cities overall GTV recovered strongly in August, but declined significantly in September due to COVID resurgence and strict control policy in more regions. Our hotel and travel business, like COVID researchers further discourage inter-city travel and hotel room night decreased year-over-year. Meituan Instashopping was less impact as we broaden and diversify our offerings.
Meituan Instashopping order volume maintained strong growth in September. October, COVID resurgence was seen in different regions across the country, and the number of medium to high-risk areas further increased compared to September and continued to rise to high in November with much higher month-over-month increase. Especially since mid to late November, COVID situation became worse. New control measures had a greater impact in Tier 1 cities. Winter, usually a flu season, contribute to the increased COVID cases. We think the current control measures may last to at least the year end, with December COVID situation worse than November. Despite the new optimized COVID control guidelines, we think the impact from COVID on core local commerce growth will be much greater in Q4 compared to Q3. We believe this fluctuation will be short-term before things get better with gradual re-relaxation.
It was evident that during the summer when our COVID situation improved, core local commerce growth showed strong recovery. It is very clear that our business is very resilient and still has high potential once the control measure released. Food delivery and Meituan Instashopping passed the milestone of 60 million and 9.7 million daily orders respectively in August. GTV of instant dining also reached new heights for two consecutive months in regions that were less affected by COVID or where control measures were not realized. Our local commerce business show healthy growth momentum. The demand for local consumption has always been there. We firmly believe that once the situation normalize, our core local commerce segment will resume its growth trajectory. We remain confident in the long-term growth potential. 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. I had a question on margin. The operating profit for the core local commerce continued to rise in Q3 versus Q2. What are the key drivers, and how should we think about the operating profit for local commerce segment in Q4? Thank you.
Hi, Gary. Thank you for the question. As you mentioned, we are very pleased to see the operating profit of our core local commerce increase sequentially in Q3. Breaking down into different business, food delivery operating profit dropped slightly quarter-over-quarter in Q3 due to seasonality as we increasing the subsidy. Delivery cost increased accordingly. COVID situation got better in July and August versus Q2, we increased marketing incentive to consumers to drive order volume. Meituan Instant Shopping operating profit dropped slightly in Q3 versus Q2 because we also increased the consumer incentives to help drive the consumption. We also increased brand marketing spending for Meituan Instant Shopping.
For in-store hotel and travel, OP margin improved meaningfully on a sequential basis, driving the OP increase for the entire segment. In July and August, local services demand and consumption rebounded sharply as a result of better COVID situation. We also optimized our marketing resources and continued to cut costs where necessary. On a year-over-year basis, the core local commerce operating profit also increased meaningfully. More areas are affected by COVID this year versus last year, we proactively adjust our operating strategy in response to the external changes. We continue to pursue high-quality growth and increase our overall efficiency. Looking forward, COVID situation are still impacting our core local commerce business. As we mentioned, the top line growth will highly depend on how this COVID situation evolves. We expect in Q4 it will be more effective than Q3.
We will continue our cost-cutting and efficiency improvement, especially around control our consumer incentive when consumer demand is more affected by COVID. On a year-over-year basis, operating profit and OP margin should be expected to continue improve meaningfully. For food delivery, we will pursue high-quality growth while maintain a reasonable level of season incentive. Competition is expected to remain rational. For in-store shopping, we will continue to invest for growth, increasing user mind share and prioritize our resources for key categories as we believe it's a important growth stage for Meituan Insta shopping. Unit economics should improve as we achieve higher economy scale and higher AOV. Currently the growth is the number one priority for Meituan Insta shopping. Next time hotel and travel business should see greater impact than food delivery. Are we continuing to improve efficiency and cut costs where necessary?
On marketing, we will use more effective online channels and optimize the offline channels to pursue high quality and sustainable growth. We are also planning to continue our investment into the install business to strengthen our user mind share and bring more high-quality merchants and high-quality deals on our platform. Overall, we believe our core local commerce business has kicked in into a stage of balancing the growth and the profitability. We will maintain a strategy for high-quality growth, and we are confident that this segment will continue to perform well. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Xing Ge, Shaohui, and Scarlett. I have a question on that the growth for in-store businesses seem to have slowed as you just shared. Other than the COVID impact, are there other factors that might have caused this? Some of the other companies in the sector has also been doing or starting local service businesses. What actions are we planning to take in the current competitive landscape, and what are we doing from products, content, merchant sides to maintain our competitive advantage? Thank you.
Thank you, Ronald. This is a good question and a tougher question. Over the past quarters, our GDP and revenue growth of in-store hotel and travel was more impacted by macro and COVID. It will take a longer time for a full range of category to go back to normal operations across country. For merchants to recover confidence, especially for advertising. We noticed that every time COVID situation got better, for example, in July and August, the human demand for in-store categories quickly rebounded. This business is highly resilient and flexible. We are positive on the mid and long-term growth for our in-store business and after COVID situation eventually normalized. That's about that's about the macro or the total addressable market.
Now let's talk about what you may be interested in, that's competition. Currently, in short form video platform achieved a relatively faster growth in their local service business. Their GTV is not apple to apple to our GTV. Our in-store businesses and other platform provide the user and merchants with quite different values. Through our shelf-based and search-based offerings, and we can better meet user demand to intentionally look for stores and discounts and deals. It also better meets merchants' online marketing needs for stable day-to-day operations. On the other hand, short form video platform is a deeper discount to stimulate consumer demand and to better meet the merchants' marketing needs during a short special period of time, such as new store openings and event-based promotions to their big user traffic.
Either way, all the players can accelerate the digitization process of local services industry to collectively grow the pie bigger and to better serve our merchants and consumers. If you're in the past quarter, because there are quite a wide spread of COVID resurgence, so many stores are in short of traffic or demand. That created better opportunities for other players who are good at doing concentrated marketing during this time. Overall, I would say the in-store industry is still at a very early stage in terms of digitization. It will enjoy a fast growth. Current penetration is still low, with more upside in future. Online penetration is only high single digits for in-store dinings and low single digits for other in-store services.
There were other players in the market in the past. Over the years, thanks to our strategy and execution, we continue to lead the industry growth. We are highly confident that of the future industry growth, and welcome other players to join us in accelerating its digitization and to help merchants and consumptions to recover. Well, in the past several years, we have accumulated large group of high quality consumers with over 15 billion authentic user reviews. Our method merchants and category coverage, together with our advanced LBS-based algorithm, can better adjust consumer preference to the right merchants. That provides merchants better user conversion and retention.
Overall, our products are effective in addressing merchants' diverse marketing needs, so we are confident we remain their top choice for merchants' online operation in the long term. In future, we will further improve our products. We will increase the merchants and category offerings with more quality additions and provide a differentiated and unique value to merchants. Also, we will diversify and upgrade content formats and recommendations to better meet the needs of consumers with great choice. We'll also expand the traffic channels and to use offline and online events to broaden our user coverage and strengthen user mindshare. Overall, we remain confident of our mid to long-term goals for our in-store business. At the same time, we are working hard to improve our products. That's it. Thank you.
Very useful. Thank you, Xing Ge.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ya Jiang with CITIC. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks for taking my question. Meituan already achieved adjusted EBITDA breakeven in Q2 and Q3, but new initiative segments still have big operating loss. Could you provide more color regarding ongoing cost-cutting initiatives for new initiative segments? When should we expect their earnings breakeven? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. With our cash flow has been very strong in Q3, thanks to the strong momentum from Q2 and our pursuit of high-quality growth across the company. Our operating profit also improved sequentially in Q3 . Loss from new initiatives narrowed significantly on a year-over-year basis and narrowed slightly sequentially as well. The pandemic resurgence in Q2 was positive for certain new initiatives such as Meituan Grocery in terms of unit economics. Our operating loss margin in Q3 for new initiative segment still improved significantly versus Q2 as we further refined our operations. Our Goods to retail business, including Meituan Grocery, Meituan Select, and our B2B food distribution service, continued to make meaningful progress during Q3. For Meituan Grocery, our order volume grew steadily, allow us to further solidify our market position. Competition also became more rational.
On Meituan Select, we continue to enhance our supply chain and fulfillment capability and gradually reduce user incentives and marketing expenses to further improve operating efficiency. For our B2B food distribution service, we continue to solidify our leading position and reach profit breakeven on city level in several cities. For other new initiatives, we continue to optimize our operation and narrow operating loss by maintaining healthy growth on scale. We are confident that our pursuit of high-quality growth and cost optimization will continue to show positive results in the near future. Meanwhile, we also review the progress of new initiatives proactively, and we are dynamically adjust our resources allocate to support high-quality development. Goods to retail with a focus on grocery through several business models is a key investment area and an important strategic direction for our company. We are confident in the development and the standalone profitability.
We are also confident that this will significant increasing the growth potential for our company. We'll achieve breakeven for our food retail new initiatives while achieve our business goals. Key is to continuously refine our business models and build up the key competence. That's what we are focusing on at this moment. Meanwhile, we are continuing to lower costs and expenses and increase our operating efficiency whenever reasonable. We don't think cost reduction in the near term should jeopardize the business development for the long term. We will balance the long-term growth with short-term loss reduction and be more ROI driven when we allocate resources. We are continuing to dynamically adjust our investment in any initiative based on the business development and the operating cash flow from our core local commerce. Given the current macro environment, we will try to achieve free cash flow positive going forward. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Shaohui.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Yang Bai with CICC. Please go ahead.
Thank you management. I saw some news articles about your expansion into Hong Kong and some recent hirings. Could you share more about your expansion plans? What is your plans around investment? Could you quantify the expected losses for Hong Kong or offshore business? Do you consider offshore business a new growth engine for the company?
Thank you. Yes, we have spent over the past more than 10 years digitizing and growing the local services industry in mainland China. While we have accumulated a lot of operational experience and know-how. Right now we are the largest player globally in terms of scale and have the highest operational efficiency in on-demand retail. China is a massive market with a population of 1.4 billion, where we believe on-demand services is still early in its development and have great growth potential. As we continue to develop our business in mainland China, we may explore to leverage our know-how from mainland China and provide the products and services to consumer in some overseas markets. This could further broaden our addressable market.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China or part of China that enjoys similar internet infrastructure to that of many overseas markets. It's also multilingual and multicultural. At the same time, Hong Kong residents is closely connected with the mainland residents in terms of culture, language and especially eating habits. Hong Kong is a good testing ground for us to experiment our global infrastructure and practice. Right now it is still a very early trial with just very small small scale pilot programs. We understand there are differences between the food services market in Hong Kong and the mainland China, and our delivery model may be different. Our team will also need more time to learn and the operational model and practice we use in Hong Kong may change.
Given the current macro environment, we will be very disciplined in order to build up our overseas organizational capability through small investments. Overall, for us to develop overseas business, we believe that refined operational capability and deep understanding of business models and local markets will be the key. Again, we are currently exploring at a very early stage, so we will conduct prudent and comprehensive evaluations. The overall budgeting for our overseas business will be very ROI oriented, and we expect very limited impact on our corporate PNL. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Eddie Leung with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good evening guys. Would you mind talking a little bit about your thought on Tencent's special dividend and whether that will have any impact on your cooperation with Tencent? Related to that, we have also seen some media reports about certain investors of Tencent, when they receive Meituan shares, they might consider selling down those shares. Also if you have any thought or comment on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Eddie. Tencent has been a long-term shareholder and supporter of us, and we expect to continue our collaboration from here. In terms of synergies, we help to enrich Tencent's Weixin consumption scenarios and contribute to the growth in Tencent payment, advertising and cloud business. Tencent has helped us expand our consumer reach through Weixin and supporting our growth, especially during the early stage of our development. We have now entered a stage of self-sufficiency in terms of both financing and business growth. Nevertheless, we believe that we will continue to collaborate with Tencent on strategy and operation levels as we continue to serve more consumers and merchants with more diversified products and services. Our existing DCA with Tencent will expire at the end of 2023, and we will proceed to discuss on the renewal upon expiration.
We are confident that the win-win business collaboration will continue with them. Our existing shareholder base and that of Tencent have a significant overlaps. Most of the Tencent's institutional shareholders are already our shareholders. We expect and hope that our existing shareholder to continue support and be part of our future and business growth as a result of this special dividend. We will also have additional shareholders to our register, and we warmly welcome them. We are keen to maintain close dialogues and share our long-term visions and growth potentials with them. We have reached a stage of a virtual self-financing where our core local commerce business generate healthy profits and cash flows. Our new initiatives be continuous loss reductions and efficiency improvement. We are to believe in our long-term growth trajectory and our ability to execute on our vision.
We are confident to generate long-term value for our shareholders as we create more commercial value through our various businesses and continuous enhance our social value. After Tencent distributed the shares, we saw the news that Naspers will hold our shares as an assets for sale when they receive the stocks. We just released our financial results, we will initiate conversations with Naspers to help them understand our short-term results and long-term strategies. We understand that Naspers will look for the best way to find and crystallize value for their shareholders over time. On one hand, our shares have strong liquidity, and we have a solid investor base. On the other hand, we strongly believe that our long-term value will be appreciated by more investors.
We'll continue to focus on executing our strategies and creating more values for both shareholders and the societies. Thank you.
Got it. Thank you very much, Xing Ge.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Ms. Xu for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you everyone for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.