Meituan: First Quarter Revenue 910.4 Billion Yuan, Year-on-Year Growth of 5.6%
Meituan's financial report is like a carefully calculated stanching of bleeding. Revenue reached 91.04 billion yuan, a 5.6% year-on-year increase, while operating losses narrowed sharply from last quarter’s alarming 16.1 billion to 6.5 billion yuan. Losses in both core local commerce and new business segments have narrowed. The numbers look pretty, and the story is standard: against the backdrop of the main theme of "cost reduction and efficiency improvement," everything seems to be "improving."
Analysis
Meituan's financial report is like a carefully calculated stanching of bleeding. Revenue reached 91.04 billion yuan, a 5.6% year-on-year increase, while operating losses narrowed sharply from last quarter’s alarming 16.1 billion to 6.5 billion yuan. Losses in both core local commerce and new business segments have narrowed. The numbers look pretty, and the story is standard: against the backdrop of the main theme of "cost reduction and efficiency improvement," everything seems to be "improving."
But the question is: What is the standard of "improvement"? Is it merely bleeding less compared to the previous quarter’s excessive hemorrhage, or has the company truly found a healthy path to growth? When a company that once raced toward "everything retail" at rocket speed now centers its core narrative on "narrowing losses," that itself is a dangerous signal. It means the story of offense is no longer tenable; now, the focus is on defense and survival. R&D spending hit 7 billion yuan, up 22% year-on-year, raising its share to 7.7%. This sounds like a polished narrative about pivoting to a technology-driven future. But in a quarter where revenue growth was in the single digits, this spending seems more like paying for future efficiency stories—such as "unmanned retail" and "AI dispatch"—that remain in the clouds, rather than serving as a direct engine for current operations. Don’t forget how last quarter’s 16.1 billion yuan loss came about? It was simply because new business operations were burning too fiercely and the subsidy frontlines were stretched too thin. Now the fire has subsided—not necessarily due to tactical adjustments, but likely because ammunition (cash) needs to be reloaded. The "moat" of local commerce appears solid, but under the sustained pressure of Douyin’s local life services, this 64.1 billion yuan in revenue likely has seen its growth slow from triple digits in the past to a flat single-digit pace. Meituan is transitioning from an exciting disruptor to a mature company that now needs to prove to capital markets it can still "manage" profitability. Such transformations often come with the fading of a growth-driven soul.
Turning attention to the automotive sector: BYD’s brand Fang Cheng Bao has established a sales company in Pingxiang, with a registered capital of 1 million yuan. The move is so small it barely makes a splash, but behind it lies BYD’s terrifying channel penetration. While the industry still debates whether the electrification era is in its first or second half, BYD has already spread its channel network like capillaries into third- and fourth-tier cities like Pingxiang. This isn’t high tech; it’s the hardest, most unglamorous kind of "grunt work," and also a scale barrier that countless brands find insurmountable. For premium brands to penetrate downward, it’s not about black tech on a PowerPoint—it’s about sales and service points that reach county-level towns. From this perspective, BYD’s terrifying aspect isn’t the dazzle of any single model, but its systematic, all-encompassing ability to harvest market share. Other competitors still fighting tooth and nail for booth space in first-tier cities would do well to study this "Pingxiang plan."
A glimpse at the fragmented information on trending lists pieces together an even more bizarre picture. Tianya Community, which had been offline for three years, is now accessible again—like an internet fossil unearthed, its sentimental value far outweighs its practical utility. Zhipu and MiniMax rushing to list on the A-share market is a clear signal that AI companies urgently need to build their own "blood-making" capabilities. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley tech giants have begun limiting employees’ token usage, revealing the cost pressures of this AI carnival from a humorous yet real angle—even the giants can hardly afford to keep burning cash. And the explosion and differentiation of "one-person companies" mirror how individuals are currently struggling to survive amid the squeeze of giants and the tide of AI: some have leveraged new tools to amplify their impact enormously, while many others find themselves merely equipped with a few faster "cyber coworkers."
Connecting all these clues, a strong sense of dissonance emerges. On one side, traditional enterprises (like Meituan) are艰难地 waking from growth fantasies, learning to be frugal. On the other, emerging fields like AI, driven by capital, display a near-frenzied expansion and rush to go public. The "increased R&D share" in Meituan’s report and Silicon Valley’s "token usage limits" form a wonderfully ironic contrast: one side is doubling down on a technology narrative that may not be so advanced, while the other is grappling with skyrocketing "tech" costs. Perhaps this is the reality of 2026: the old world’s kings are seeking new balance points amid contraction, while the new world’s players are calculating the end of the track even as they sprint. Everyone is changing—some toward pragmatism, others toward panic. And true "growth" is likely no longer an upward curve, but who can endure longer and more composedly in the midst of the fray.
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