Breaking Out of "Involution": The Long-term Resilience Behind Meituan's Q2 Financial Report

Deep News
Aug 29

In the second quarter of 2025, MEITUAN-W delivered closely-watched financial results: revenue of 91.84 billion yuan, up 11.7% year-over-year, maintaining steady growth momentum. However, adjusted net profit fell 89% to 1.493 billion yuan, reflecting intense competitive pressures in the food delivery industry. Behind this seemingly contradictory report lies Meituan's multi-faceted growth strategy through flash purchase business breakthroughs, accelerated international expansion, and strengthened ecosystem infrastructure, demonstrating the company's strategic resolve to seek breakthroughs amid industry involution.

**Core Local Commerce Revenue Reaches 65.3 Billion Yuan, Flash Purchase Business Shines**

Amid fierce competition in the food delivery market, Meituan's core local commerce segment demonstrated remarkable resilience. This quarter's core local commerce revenue reached 65.3 billion yuan, accounting for 71.1% of total revenue with 7.7% year-over-year growth. Despite dual pressure from JD.com and Alibaba, Meituan maintained its market foundation through refined operations. By the end of Q2, Meituan App's monthly active users exceeded 500 million, with annual transaction frequency per user reaching new highs, establishing a deep user moat.

The continuous improvement in user scale and stickiness stems from Meituan's enhanced fulfillment efficiency. In July, Meituan's instant retail daily order volume peaked at over 150 million orders, with average delivery time for all orders at just 34 minutes. CEO Wang Xing emphasized during the earnings call: "After all the fancy things, we must ultimately return to fundamentals and basics, ensuring continuous enrichment of quality product selections, providing fast and reliable delivery services, and maintaining affordable prices." This user experience-centered competitive strategy has strengthened core user loyalty while maintaining order growth.

Additionally, the flash purchase business became this quarter's biggest highlight. During the "618" shopping festival, Meituan Flash Purchase helped nearly one million physical stores serve over 100 million users, with high-value items like smartphones, liquor, infant formula, and home appliances seeing transaction volumes double year-over-year.

Meituan continues to improve its merchant empowerment system. The company persistently implements "anti-involution" measures through direct cash subsidies and continuous model innovation to support healthy merchant development. As of July, Meituan's assistance fund has covered over 300,000 food and beverage merchants. Nearly half of merchants reported significant order growth, while 40% saw notable revenue increases.

According to UBS reports, Meituan's market share declined from 74% to 65%, while Ele.me rose to 28% and JD.com captured 7%. Despite competitive pressure, Meituan maintained its leading market position without falling into pure price wars, instead consolidating its user base through service quality upgrades.

**Overseas Market and New Business Breakthroughs, Middle East Market Now Covers Saudi Arabia and Qatar**

The new business segment achieved a balance between growth quality and scale this quarter, becoming Meituan's key lever for breaking through growth bottlenecks. Financial results show new business revenue (including Meituan Select, Xiaoxiang Supermarket, Kuailu, Keeta, etc.) reached 26.5 billion yuan, up 22.8% year-over-year, with losses narrowing to 1.9 billion yuan quarter-over-quarter. This "high growth + loss reduction" combination marks the new businesses entering a harvest phase of refined operations after initial exploration.

Notably, Meituan's international business achieved breakthrough progress, opening new growth space. Meituan's international food delivery brand Keeta further consolidated its leading position in Hong Kong, expanded coverage to 20 cities in Saudi Arabia, and officially launched in Qatar. Wang Xing revealed during the call that Meituan remains open to international markets and is preparing to enter Brazil, though without rushing, planning to act after thorough market research and preparation. The goal is to increase Keeta's operating GMV to $100 billion within 10 years. This cautious yet determined international expansion breaks out of domestic involution and actively leverages Meituan's experience advantages in local life services in international competition.

Continued R&D investment is converting technological advantages into commercial value. This quarter's R&D expenses reached 6.3 billion yuan, up 17.2% year-over-year, focusing on frontier areas like autonomous delivery and intelligent scheduling. As of June 2025, Meituan's drones have opened 64 routes across six cities including Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Dubai, completing over 600,000 cumulative orders.

**Beyond Competition, Meituan Continues Investing in Ecosystem Building**

Behind performance fluctuations, Meituan increased investments in rider protection and food safety.

Starting July 1, Meituan began fully covering work injury insurance for all riders across 17 provinces and cities nationwide. Additionally, rider pension insurance subsidies will cover the entire country by year-end, benefiting over one million riders and addressing their concerns. With instant retail order volumes continuing to grow, a stable rider workforce is the core element ensuring fulfillment quality. Meituan continuously improves rider job satisfaction through enhanced labor protection, optimized delivery routes, and safety incentives.

Furthermore, Meituan actively promotes the "Internet + Open Kitchen" model. Since February 2025, 117,000 merchants have launched "Open Kitchen Live Streaming," covering various formats from mall chain restaurants to community mom-and-pop shops and delivery stores. By the end of 2025, participating merchants are expected to exceed 200,000.

Wang Xing clearly stated: "Meituan firmly opposes involution. Regardless of competitive intensity, we always focus on doing the right things: ensuring quality supply, stable fulfillment, and reasonable prices to create good user experiences." This strategic resolve is reflected in persistence amid short-term performance volatility—despite significant net profit decline, Meituan still increased R&D investment by 17.2% year-over-year and expanded investments in rider protection and food safety. Long-term, competition will normalize. The instant retail market is much larger than most initially envisioned, with real incremental demand lying not just in subsidies, but in supply-side optimization and cultivation of consumer mindset and habits.

**Conclusion: Resilient Growth After Short-term Pressure**

Meituan's Q2 2025 financial report demonstrates an industry leader's strategic resolve and innovative vitality in a complex environment. Despite short-term net profit pressure from intensified food delivery competition, data including 11.7% revenue growth, 500 million monthly active users, and 150 million daily peak orders confirm the strong resilience of core businesses. The explosion of flash purchase business, international breakthroughs, and scaled autonomous delivery constitute multiple growth engines, while continued investments in rider protection and food safety establish an ecological foundation for long-term development.

Industry insiders note that Meituan's growth logic is shifting from "scale expansion" to "quality improvement": core businesses developing steadily while internationalization and technological innovation will break growth ceilings. With continued overseas market expansion and technology investments, new growth curves are forming. As Wang Xing said: "Meituan grew up in competition, and we achieved today's leading position through continuous competition."

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