I'm Chen Zhe, the IR, and also the Secretary. Please allow me to introduce. We have Mr. Chen Min, the President of the Board of Directors, the CEO, and the CFO, Mr. Zhang Zhisong. Please read the disclaimer on the screen. By attending the press conference containing this presentation or reading this presentation material, all participants agree to be bound by the restrictions in this disclaimer by default. There are four parts of our presentation. The first is the introduction of the overall performance of the company in 2023 by Mr. Chen Min. The second part is introduction of overall financial performance of the company in 2023 by Mr. Zhang Zhisong. Lastly, we will have enough time for the management to answer the questions raised by investors, analysts online. If you want to ask questions, you can raise your hand in our meeting system.
First of all, let's invite Chen Min, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of TUHU Car Inc. , to introduce the overall performance of the company.
Dear analysts, investors, friends from the capital market, I'm Chen Min. Thank you very much for joining us in 2023 annual result announcement, TUHU Car Inc. This year we have quite good economy, and it's a milestone year for TUHU. As Chinese economy continued to improve, the company was successfully listed in the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 26, 2023, becoming the first independent automotive service company listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Our high-quality performance proved that we saw the historic opportunity in the automotive service industry in 2011, and also showed that our online and offline integration business model in the industry has been recognized by the market.
In the past year, on the business side, we continued to expand the coverage of shop stores and product service categories, improved integrated operation capability of online and offline strength and supply chain control efficiency, and further integration of the full self-deployment technology capability across the industry, and further consolidating our position as China's leading online, offline integrated auto service platform. In 2023, continued to lead industry in financial performance, user scale and store coverage. We achieved a total annual revenue of CNY 13.6 billion, an increase of 17.8% compared to 2022. Thanks to the improvement of the company's brand premium ability and enhancement of the scale effect and the continuous optimization of management efficiency. We've achieved the first FY profitability in 2023, achieving the adjusted net profit of nearly CNY 500 million and generating free cash flow of nearly CNY 400 million.
On the client side, we adhere to the user-centered business model, and number of registered users has exceeded 115 million by the end of 2023. According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Public Security, the number of car drivers in 2023 is 486 million, which is equivalent to about one out of every four drivers is our TUHU car service users. Among them, more than 19.3 million in the past year on our platform to order products and services and further become our paying users. On the store side, we unswervingly take the development of lower-tier cities and county- level cities. In the past year, the whole country sees a new 1,256 stores opened, an increase of 27%.
Among them, 881 stores were opened in the second tier and below cities, making our stores in these places have accounted for 57% of the total number of stores in the country. At the same time of rapid expansion, we can also ensure the profitability of our stores. By the end of last year, more than 93% of all TUHU workshops were profitable. We combine the regional characteristics, model distribution, vehicle drivers, age bands, consumption habits, and supply network of various local areas in the country and open stores to places where users need by constantly iterating and optimizing the store structure and form. Now all of our stores can cover the provincial and the city areas and regions in China. Now we have the largest coverage of cities and counties in China.
In all the first- tier and new first- tier cities in China, our average number of stores has exceeded 100. In the previously empty western and the northern regions, our growth this year has been particularly significant, even in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Xizang Autonomous Region, we already have 40 TUHU stores and seven TUHU workshops respectively. 70% of the new stores this year were opened in the second tier cities and below. In just one year, we expanded coverage of 221 counties and county level cities. On the 318 Sichuan-Xizang Highway, stretching more than 1,200 km from Chengdu in the east to Ngari in the west, there are already 145 TUHU stores, with an average of one store every 8.2 km away. These stores can help every driver on National Highway 318.
In the process of expanding lower-tier cities, we can use the characteristics of local market, combine our experience, and manage, give franchisee the best policy and the plans. In the province of Anhui, which ranked the number nine in car ownership with such a large market space, especially the vehicle ownership of Hefei City, rank among the best, ranking top of the country's 2,355 TUHU stores in counties and cities. Anhui province marketing TUHU car brand trust is very high. As of the end of 2023, TUHU has opened 254 stores in our province, and these technicians in franchisee stores have very high level of cooperation in the process of working as in lower-tier cities. In our development, we've thought out a variety of execution forms and cooperation models based on a deep understanding of the offline car maintenance service business.
Since July 23rd last year, we launched the TUHU wash and detailing service centers in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chengdu, choosing high-quality business district to form shops groups with the original workshop store to meet the growing needs of users. We've also shared resources with CNPC and explored the sustainable development path suitable for each others, and we are working with other partners and groups to launch the quick repair chain and a community exhibition hall to help the full ad stores to transform their channels and help TUHU Automotive Care service in preferred locations in different areas. We have been working with not just the C-end customers, but also joining hands with franchisees. The expanding of stores is the result of the old and new franchisees who believe and trust us.
Faced with the time-consuming and the lengthy store opening and review process from prospective franchisee, through several months of research and development, in 2023, we launched the industry's first self-service store opening system. The system internalized part of the core store application process, from franchisee's assess and review, to site selection, to formal signing, original need for offline manual participation in the review process to achieve online. It's not just the simplified steps. The save time, and cost of opening shop has been largely reduced, and we can see that the efficiency of the entire store application process has been improved by 60%. We have been continuing developing and expanding store skills. We have invested more time and energy improving the operation system and efficiency of the stores. In 2023, we released the TUHU national workshop store, Intelligent Distribution System.
System automatically planned the number of visits to the store and assigned the execution item for supervisor so that the task can be accurately distributed to the person in the store when users arrive. In terms of control mechanisms, we've added a selection of good reputation store or word-of-mouth store this year. The store will be judged on three important aspects, service, technology, environment. The stores that have won the selection will receive incentives such as interface exposure and promotion ranking. This not only positively incentivizes the franchising attitude of doing a good job in business, but also enhances user service and brand recognition of TUHU Car Automotive Service and improve the service quality of the shop by user supervision, standard transparency, and franchisee incentive. At beginning of 2023, we launched the OCR image camera automatic recognition technology.
Based on the application of this technology, we can ensure the user's vehicle inspection report and other picture information in the system is more accurate, achieving 3x increase in the monthly inspection amount, and the single inspection time is shortened by 20%, further ensuring the vehicle inspection meets the standard and store order operation meets the requirement. As the first company to introduce online-to-offline integration into the automotive service market, we have reshaped the industry value chain with our online platform management and concepts, and user traffic development and operation experience brought great innovation to the entire industry and won high recognition from users. 2023, we carried out in-depth user operations through sticky tools such as super membership and maintenance value card.
By the end of the year, the number of registered member have exceeded 1 million, and the members have brought a higher product and service repurchase rate than ordinary users. Adhering to the concept of user-centered, we improved our user satisfaction through system construction. In August last year, our user service passed the COPC system certification. In the future, we will be committed to providing more excellent user experience and customer recognition. Thanks to our effort, number of our monthly active users and the number of users who paid on November 11 in double 11 have reached a record high. User satisfaction rate has increased 94%. We have become the first choice of our users in terms of the satisfaction rate, authenticity and low price.
From the perspective of a brand cooperation and a product supply, we have been the largest customers and the most trustworthy partners of many well-known brands at home and abroad in the Chinese market. We are working hard to explore a market share space and more power points at both ends of the procurement and the operation. In cooperation with international big names, we officially partnered with Michelin in mid-2023. We directed the provision of the positive, which is good quality products and also the NEV tires. We have more cooperation in terms of innovation. Last year, we have more cooperation with our brand partners. We take an example, have cooperated with Shell, Castrol, Mobil for the lubricant oil products, and also with Brembo and Bosch. We have together collaborated to provide the braking products.
With wipers, we cooperated with Valeo and Bosch for the high-end products exclusively provided to us. Apart from these products, we also have cooperation in terms of the engine-related parts and products. Right now, for the self-controlled products, we have gained great approval and recognition from the users. Right now, we have the product matrix for self-owned brands, Pengchu, Thor, Bear, Driving, we call it Jiaju, and Honeywell. With the background of the scaling up in China, throughout last year, for every product pipeline, we have realized or fulfilled great increase in all categories and SKU. We have also gained the approval and recognition from consumers for our owned products and third-party products exclusive for us. Actually, we started as a tire provider. It took us six years for us to become the largest tire replacement dealers with the mature service network and our large user base.
Later, we gradually tap into other industries such as the lubricant oils, the chassis parts, storage batteries, and power battery repair. We have gained the number one position in this industry. The example of car wash and detailing. In China, we have cooperated with more than 10,000 cooperation stores and workshops to produce and to provide our fast wash, quick wash, standard wash, and detailed wash services so that we will cater to the new business models. For the product side, we continue to improve our product supply system with the powerful upstream-downstream supply chain, log management capabilities, so that we reduced the decision cost of the users by a large extent. Of course, we can never not talk about one thing, which is NEV, the car detailing or car care services related with NEVs.
Three years ago, we tapped into this market, and we would like to seek for some breakthrough points. For personnel, right now we have over 8,000 qualified technicians who can provide NEV repairs and maintenance, and also 400 power battery repair technicians. For business perspective, right now, we are increasing the penetration of NEV in all business lines. Roughly out of 100 NEV car owners, seven of them chose TUHU to provide services for them. Maybe you don't know that yet. In 2023, we have replaced and repaired more than 20,000 NEV power batteries. We are now already the largest independent power battery repair providers. We also cooperated with CATL, EVE Energy, Gotion, and SVOLT. In total, 13 mainstream battery factories, we partner with them, and to provide better services.
From ESG perspective, we also cooperated with third parties, and we have plans being mapped out according to the 2030 carbon peak and the 2060 carbon neutrality national strategy. Last year, based on the foundation of the original warehouses, front distribution houses, and warehouses and the stores, we now have improved our supply chain coverage and time delivery efficiency. Right now in Wuhan, we have input last year a warehouse which is fully automatic, and now we have that related more than 350 TUHU workshops with that service. The front distribution warehouse in 2023 also made some innovations with the self-operated small warehouses and the franchisee warehouses. We reduced the cost and also opened 158 new front distribution warehouses.
Now in China, 75% warehouses can have the access of this warehouse's service so that the arrival at the same day, and the second day arrival service for the online order of tires and the online maintenance products have reached the percentage of 60% and 60% respectively. Not only by expanding our business, we also have realized or fulfilled our CSR responsibilities. Till now, we have provided more than 50,000 jobs for technicians and others, and we added vitality to this market into the industrial chain. We also continue to make innovations for seven consecutive years. In China, we never stopped providing services during the Spring Festival, so that during that period, if anyone has problems, they can come to us. For natural disasters, we also face those disasters and provide services like donation.
Last year, August, we provided to Hubei Foundation of Charity, CNY 3 million for the reconstruction of the disaster. Also in Beijing, there was a storm. We also provided services, more than 200 workshops of our company responded to car owners' demands, and also same thing happened in Zhengzhou. You see, in recent years in China, we had launched lots of measures benefiting the industry. Last year, October, nine departments of China have jointly issued a guideline on improving the automotive aftermarket development. They encourage the circuit model like for franchisee operation and to improve the quality of car repair and maintenance, and also, of course, including NEV technologies in terms of repair and maintenance.
We see we are consistent with the national policy, so we have followed the national directions, and to provide to the industry the better services and products, with better price and better efficiency, with better standards. Thank you.
I think next we will give the floor to the CFO, Mr. Zhang Zhisong, to talk about the financial performance of 2023 and the highlights.
Thank you, Chen Zhe. Next I will give a quick brief of the financial results of the 2023 and the second half of the year. Last year, we have recovered from the pandemic, and people's consumption power have also gained back. We have increased also in terms of the number of users mid-transactions, which, in comparing with 2022, improved by 15.9%, stood at 19 million. The second is the number of workshops, which is the supply side.
We added 1,256 workshops last year, surpassed our target. The growth rate was 27%. In 2022, the pandemic was really serious, so we did not finish our target. In 2023, we adjusted our target. In lower tier cities, the stores shares have increased to 57.9%. That is also a proof and evidence of our strategy towards the lower tier cities. This has laid a solid foundation for our financial outcome. The general revenue last year had increased by 17.8% year-on-year, apart from Qipeilong platform business. The wholesale business of the low GP, we have made an adjustment. The better part, we endured some loss, but all the other business sectors have achieved strong growth, especially in 2022. The pandemic have impacted the two sectors, which is tire and chassis retails, and car maintenance and repair.
This year they have increased by 20.9% and 22.5%. Not only that, the advertisement franchisee and other service sector also increased by 15.8% year-on-year. Including the franchisee service growth rate, more than 33%, mainly because in 2022, we had deducted some management fees for franchisees, and their profitability have increased significantly. Also because in 2023, we scaled back for the sales of NEV, it has kind of dragged down the overall growth rate. For the GP, general profit and the pro GP rate, we also achieved great increase. For the GP ratio from the 19.7% in 2022, it has grown to 24.7% in that year. Also, our Gross Profit have increased by 47%, which is CNY 3.36 billion.
To give you a breakdown, benefiting only to our exclusive products and the owning products share improvement, and also the drop of the purchase price, we see the increase of GP in the car products and services, like the chassis parts and the tire. GP ratio increased by 3.3%. Car repair and maintenance increased by 2.8% and stood at 32.4%. Also, because we have a very relatively fixed cost for the franchisee cost and advertisement, so that we see an increase of 11.7% of this sector. For operation experience, in the last few years, we have been improving our efficiency. We replace human labor by systems and new technologies to realize skill efficiency. In 2022, we suffered a loss, but in 2023, because of the cost apportionment, we saw that our period costs have dropped a lot last year.
The ratio of the period costs in revenue have reduced from 28.2% in 2021 to 24.4% in 2022. If we deduct the dividend payment, which is a non-cash payment, then the ratio will be even obvious. All of the factors at last helped us with the growth and the fact that we have turned it around. Actually, we can see the evidence long before, because in the second half of 2022, we have realized the positive number of EBITDA. In the first half of 2023, we have realized the net profit, a positive net profit after being adjusted for the first half of the year. The second half of 2023, saw the continuing of that trend. We see the improvement of the profit rate after adjustment, which also leads to the improvement of the whole year profit rate. This is about the free cash flow.
The operational cash flow now is more than CNY 1 billion. If we only consider the core business revenue, which in 2023, gives us a number of CNY 400 million of the free cash flow. Considering the net income of the CNY 1.1 billion of the IPO revenue, we right now have the number of CNY 2.1 billion.
You can see the chart on the right-hand side. We have also optimized our cash structure, and we have enough cash reserve now with good structure. In the second half of 2023, our financial performance has surpassed that of the first half in all around, no matter from perspective of operating revenue, gross profit, net profit, and cash flow. No matter if it's year-on-year or month-to-month, we see very obvious increase, and we are very confident we can follow in the same trend and realize the long-term goal we set. That's the end for the financial part. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Zhang Zhisong, for your sharing. Now let's get into the final session of the conference, the Q&A session. If you want to raise questions, you can click the button, raise your hand, and we will answer your questions accordingly in sequence. Thank you very much. The first person to ask question is Tim from Goldman Sachs. Okay, you can raise your question now.
Hello, everyone, the management, and first I'd like to congratulate you for this successful IPO and this financial statement that's far exceeding our expectation. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Can you hear me loud and clear?
You can ask questions now.
Congratulations on your successful IPO last year, and also this first financial statement is far beyond our expectation. I saw this announcement made by the company this month. The company decided to buy back its Class A common stock, Class A shares, based on amount not exceeding $1 billion in the market. I would like to know the considerations behind it and plan you have for the capital market?
Thank you, Tim, for your question. I will ask our CFO, Zhang Zhisong , to answer this question.
Thank you. Thank you, Tim. There are a few reasons why we made this announcement.
First of all, under this current stock price, our board of directors and management agree that the intrinsic value of the company is undervalued. On March 14, our closing market value was only about CNY 8.5 billion. Even if the company's income and profit level were calculated back in 2023, the company's income was CNY 13.6 billion, and the current market share price was only 0.63 x because we have nearly CNY 6.8 billion in cash in our account, and the price value is less than CNY 2 billion. Net profit before interest, tax, and amortization after 2023 was CNY 750 million, and a ratio of enterprise value to profit before interest, tax, and amortization was less than 3 x.
We believe that the current stock price pressure is mainly caused by external reasons such as the external cabinet environment, and the release of the restricted stock on the company's share and does not reflect the real value of the company. We will be very confident in the future performance. We will see overall profit improvement, and we will prove our value through sustainable development. We have quite rich cash, and the background of the company has been fully profitable. The working capital can be provided by its own capability by repurchasing the order and the shares. The net income per share can be increased, and the future income and profit growth can be shared with the long-term shareholders. We will absolutely protect the long-term values of our shareholders. Thank you very much for your answer, and also thank you, Tim, for your question.
The second question will be made by Ren Danling from CICC. If you can hear me, you can ask question directly.
Hello, everyone. Hello, management. Thank you for your detailed presentation and congratulate you again for the performance last year. I would like to ask you a question about company's future expansion plan, expansion strategies, the earning strategy in terms of the workshop. You just mentioned that we have an increasing amount of lower-tier stores, and how do we evaluate this strategy will affect company's future income and growth profit?
Thank you, Danling, for your question. I will give floor to our CFO, Zhang Zhisong , for this question.
Thank you, Danling, for your question. First of all, in terms of our expansion in the future, the store network can be expanded even further.
This can be decided by the number of franchisees and the accumulated users that we have seen in the past few years. We will keep expanding on the basis of these large amount of users, and we will have more than 1,000 stores added every year. In terms of the strategy of expanding, we will also intensify the stores in the first-tier and new first-tier cities as well as lower-tier cities, even though we have a 57% of lower-tier stores in total. But in terms of the car park, the penetration rate is still quite low. We will keep developing our lower-tier market and open more stores. In terms of this impact on the growth profit and operating revenue, of course, the contribution of the lower-tier market is lower compared to the first-tier cities.
That is the reason why the revenue increase is lower than the growth rate of the number of stores we add. Before we reach 10,000 stores in the future, we will follow the same trend. In the lower-tier market, in those stores, we find there is a much lower operation cost and store opening cost. Also, the customers and clients in lower-tier cities, they have more focus on cost and the price. This can help us to control the cost very well. In the long term, lower-tier stores will give us a better performance. No matter from which channels, the user side and the store side, we have a lot of franchise stores to help us to expand more in the future. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Zhang Zhisong, for your answer. Thank you, Ren Danling, for your question.
Now, I will give the floor to Miranda Zhuang from BofA Securities. Miranda Zhuang , if you can hear me, you can answer the question directly.
Thank you. Thank you for giving me the chance to ask question, and congratulations on the successful performance. You just mentioned one out of seven EV drivers, they use TUHU's product and the services. I would like to use this opportunity to ask you, how does the company view the impact of new energy trend in the industry? Please also introduce the company's progress and future planning in the new energy business development. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Miranda, for your question. I will ask the CEO of the company, Chen Min, to answer this question for you.
Thank you for your question. The fast development of New Energy Vehicle has definitely impacted the whole industry.
Based on the fundamentals of the industry, we can see about 290 million of the car parc of passenger car parc and about 217 million of EV cars. We see that the age of those fuel vehicles has also been increasing. It does not have quite good impact on our aftermarket. The after-sale system of energy vehicle need to be iterated more and more cars while flooding to after car market with relatively old age. TUHU, as the leader of the industry, can gain the maximum benefit out of it in terms of the consumption per car. Purely Electric Vehicle have less service related to combustions. We have a lot of extended range cars and also hybrid cars. There will be more and more services out of it.
For ordinary repair, maintenance of chassis and quick repairing, for example, the tire repair, investment, car wash, detailing, spraying. We have seen more and more categories of services emerge, and we see the proportion of car models in terms of hybrid and also the range-extended vehicles will give us more benefits in terms of these two type of cars. We have considerable proportions, and we can see a large number of OEMs starting to working with us in terms of EV. The new energy car have more or less the same penetration rate of fuel vehicles, but fuel vehicles have older ages compared to EV. So EV, they have not entered a period of getting warranty services. Even in this background, our penetration rate of EV is the same or almost the same as the fuel cell vehicles, and we are customizing our products and services for energy vehicles.
I think the opening of the aftermarket of EV still takes time because we have a shorter time of use of vehicles, and we have less amount of EVs. In the future, fuel vehicles will be the dominant players in terms of the open market of an automobile industry. We will put in more effort to train technicians, repairmen. The EV has quite different electric systems compared to fuel vehicles. As the independent aftermarket service provider, we have trained our technicians. Over 400 of them can do repair and maintenance of EVs. In terms of the service range, we have been exploring the possibilities of getting more innovation in service and product for EV. We will also add more services in terms of the incremental product and services, in terms of car wash detailing. We are also customizing the environmental location for EV.
In the upstream, we are working with our partners, no matter the battery providers or spare parts providers. We want to help those EV cars have more supply upstream and downstream.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chen Min.
Thank you, Miranda, for your question. Let us see if any questions asked online. Next, I will give the floor to Wu Pingyue from CITIC. If you can hear me, you can ask directly.
Thank you, Chen Zhe . Thank you the management. I have a question. We see that workshop of TUHU can provide proprietary products, 95% of products are self-controlled. I understand it is a really important parameter for us to oversee our performance. So I would like to know the proportion of goods controlled by the company is really much higher. Is there any way for other peers to imitate your practice?
I will ask our CFO, Zhang Zhisong, to answer the question.
Thank you, Pingyue. It is a very good question. I do not want to focus on our peers. I just want to start talking about it with us. We can see that from the perspective of users. In the beginning, because we started from our car owners, so the design is that we should realize a close circuit. Like from the people, goods, and yards, and money. There should be no stones unturned. But it took us 10 years. It is a very difficult thing. We have built our system, and to talk with and negotiate with a lot of the upstream suppliers. 10 years, we are now here. I think that not many other competitors can do this because they are not equipped with their fundamental business logic.
Because many of them, they are using their minimum cost in system, in products, and in supply chain to compete for a potentially bigger market to tell a good capital story. That is the fundamental logic. Actually, we have a different one. Also for the controlling capacity of your goods, I think that is something corresponds of, B, the selection of franchisees, and also the business coverage, and the selection of products, and supplying capability. I think that is an overall testing of how good you are, and those are all essential. Currently, maybe in one link or certain one or two links, there are some competitors. They have their own uniques. But we do not see any competitors that can do this as good as us in the goods control.
Also, it all boils down to the trust. If they trust us for the franchisees, then we can do a good job. If they do not see our commitment, they will not collaborate with us so well. Our trust is from the value we have delivered to our franchisees for a long time. Let's say, right now, of course, we have many competitors, but TUHU is the only one with the net profit. We give the shares of profits to them. Why do we do this? Because first of all, I have this ability, I'm capable of that, to learn about all products and services of the stores.
Because I have a good understanding of our inventory, then because we have the system so that we know the detail of the operation costs, so that we are very confident to portion some of our profits to them. Then we are really earning profits for our franchisees, not making money from the franchisees. Also, we see many competitors, maybe the existing one and the newcomers. Most of them, they do not control strictly as we are of the goods. But for us, I attract some franchisees, and I lay trust between them. I think that as what I've mentioned before, it's about the overall capability. So for these franchisees, maybe they do not act as the same as our franchisees. This is my answer to this question, if that answers your concerns.
Thank you very much. Also, we thank you for your question.
We see many questions online, so we will just select a few more. Next, Shelley Wang from Morgan Stanley. Please share your question, if you can listen to me. If you can hear me, please get started.
Hi. My name is Shelley Wang from Morgan Stanley. Thank you for the opportunity. I'd like to ask that, actually, from our business side, for the chassis parts, the tires, maintenance, and repair, we are doing a good job. But for other business like the fast or rapid repair, accident repair, and the car body spraying, do they have any plans on that?
I think that is more about the planning and strategy of our company, so Mr. Chen Min.
Thank you, Shelley Wang. Of course. Because in our platform, we have lots of users of car owners, and the network of stores across China is already there.
We have covered China also in terms of the warehouses. So for car owners, we are the best choice for them in terms of convenient access and availability. We will also expand our categories. Right now, in many new business lines, we are doing some development. Let's take some example. The first is enhanced detailing for car bodies. We have this team of technicians for refined detailing. We will have the system of certification of film applying, technicians, and provide training for them. Also, we will have the new standards being applied for the new stores. We also have a special workstation for the filming or the film applying service. Right now we have close to 400 stores which are capable for this service. Also, we provide our self-owned branded products. We will have this benchmarking system for products inside, outside of the different workshops.
We also will provide this service that if you have a scrape on your car, you can have a replacement. The second category is on the rapid repair. It will be the next growth point. Right now, we are diversifying the categories. In this part, based on existing like braking products, right now we are adding axle assembly, clutch kit. In total, 8,000 SKUs for six new service categories. Also, we will match with different category with the best campaigns. We have this online operation and improved sales strategy. We also, in the spring, car body spring service, we improved that for the repair of the different accident cars in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan. We have built 10 stores for the business of accident car-related services. Also, NEV.
If you drive the EV, you will know that APP has a different requirement or request than the ICE vehicles, internal combustion V- engines. That's why we have launched the customized pages for the apps, especially for the NEV car owners. We also are providing many new products and services with better price. The repair of power batteries in China right now, in 2023, we fulfilled 22,000 orders of NEV power batteries repair. The market share was 2.8%. That is the basic situation for that.
Thank you, Chen Min, for your answer, and also Shelley for your question. Next, we will connect Brian from Citibank. If you are with us, please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. First, congratulations. You have achieved a very solid performance. My question is about the increase of user base.
You've done a very good job in the history, but now in the future, what are your main strategy and directions for gaining new users of transaction?
Thank you for your question. I think that Zhang Zhisong talked earlier about the driving powers, the driving forces of our company. He mentioned some little about it, and now I will ask him to explore more on this question.
I think, Brian's question, maybe you're talking about the user of transactions, right? Okay, for the users who've made transactions, I think that in our platform, we will have two types of customers, the new customers and also existing customers. We have different strategies for different type. We would like to convert the new users and to retain the regular customers. For new customers, our focus will be the conversion and the retaining based on the traffic management.
We also will provide many different channels for that information feed and application market, and also the search engines. We will specifically pay attention to CAC, ROI, and payment users conversion. Those parameters will be our key. The back-half phase algorithm will also be improved so that it can enhance the number of purchase and also improve the quality. That is the basic situation for new customers. Then for the regular ones, they account for a large share of our total customer base. We have the app push and sending short messages, and WeChat for public account or the official account. With different channels, we continue to provide feeds for them to activate and convert the users based on the data technology, big data, and also our algorithm. We will provide also the personalized advertisement.
We also increase the efficiency of our membership system. We will launch also in the future, the membership card, to retain more regular customers, users. For brand promotion, we also explored the new channels like TikTok, live streaming, e-commerce, and we have built many accounts with several billion of fans. We also have this GMV. The turnover of live streaming in TikTok, it is like 80% out of the total sales of live streaming in TikTok. We all have ranked the top in the GMV list. In terms of a brand, we have tried a lot of brand cooperation. It is the first time that we work together with Chinese Super League, and we are also working with some newly launched films, a joint promotion for the domestic brands, and also leading ToB to enhance brand exposure and market expansion.
Thank you, Zhisong, for your question, and thank you also for answering it. Now I will give floor to SWS Research , Mr. Dai Wenjie .
Congratulation on the performance you have achieved. In terms of the new business expansion, for those non-standard businesses, for example, the tires and chassis, the product and services are all standardized. If you get into the after-sales repair and maintenance market, the process of product and service are not standardized. In the rapid development of your company, how can you balance out the rapid expansion and the standardization to make sure the customers and client can have the best experience?
Thank you, Wenjie, for your question.
This question is about strategy and business, so I ask Mr. Chen Min to answer this question as well.
The after-sales product and services are quite diversified. You can say standardized, but we have a large amount of services and products, so it is very complex. For workshops we have, we use platform management, strict control. In principle, product and services can be standardized by applying platforms to control. Most of them can be done this way, but for non-standardized product services, we need some distributors or franchisees to help us do that. We need to maximize the lean management by using platforms. To put it simple, we use our systems to fully manage our product and services. We have job division between TUHU and franchisees.
TUHU focus on supply chain pricing, full process management system, operations supervision, customer claim management, profit calculation, qualification reviews, the guidance of on-site location selection, and all these can be systematic and can be standardized. Our franchisees can have power over the site location, environment assessment, management control, labor management, and all these non-standardized reaches of the value chain will be managed by our franchisees. For the parts that can be standardized, we will increase our efficiency to lower the cost and to accelerate turnover rate. For our franchisees, they will help us to do some non-standardized thing, help us to win faster and better. How can we make sure the standardization can be put into place? I think the most important thing is for us to realize the full link of all links management.
People, product, locations, all the things are managed seamlessly through our digital systems. I think digital management and operation actually are embedded into the management of stores, customers. We have CCTV, we have operation ratings, we have online tech supports. All these processes are quite in place, and we are really detailed in management, and we are customer-centric. We try to correct the problems we find immediately. The overall operation system keeps iterating and head towards the better way, in a lean way. In the management of franchisees, we also have make the whole system systematic, no matter the location selection, store building, supervision of managers of stores. We made them all online. It will become more transparent and efficient for us to increase the level of our service.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chen Min, for your answer. Thank you, Wenjie, for your question.
In the interest of time, we only have one last question. The last question is Zhu Lin from TF Securities. If you can hear me, you can ask your questions directly.
Thank you very much. I'm Zhu Lin from TF Securities. Congratulations on your good performance, and I see the gross profit margin has increased largely in 2023. Is there any way for us to increase it further, and what are the main methods for you to realize it?
Thank you very much, Zhu Lin, for your question. It's the finance question, so I ask Zhang Zhisong to answer it, our CFO.
Thank you for your question. In the past two to three years, we've been asked this question frequently. In the process of performance improvement, you can see the main methods for us to increase the gross profit margin has been the same as before.
We try to optimize our supply chain, no matter from perspective of a quantity increase or by adjusting the categories of product service to get more profit. The profit, of course, can be increased even further, and we have a large room for us to increase our profit. I have a few figures to share with you. The proprietary products and the products that are dedicated to us actually contribute to our overall business by about 58.1%, and we still have much room to grow. In terms of our bargaining power on the upper chain, on the upstream, we can strengthen it even further. For the management, we think more about how to balance the users, franchisees, vendors, and company's employees benefits at the same time. This is the first item on our agenda, and this is our priority.
Higher than the priority of gross profit margin. We will think about the industry-wise, not just from the perspective of our company. We think we are the leader in the industry. We should have this kind of mindset.
Thank you very much, Zhang Zhisong, for your answer. In the interest of time, we do now invite other investors and analysts to ask questions. Thank you very much for joining us online. If you have any questions, you are welcome to send your question to our email address. You can see the email address on the screen. If you want to know more about our company, you are welcome to browse our official website to know more. Thank you very much. Hope to see you-