On March 21, 2025, Meituan unveiled its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024, revealing a fourth-quarter revenue of 88.5 billion yuan, marking a 20.1% year-on-year increase.

For the entire year of 2024, Meituan's total revenue amounted to 337.6 billion yuan, reflecting a 22% year-on-year growth.

Within its business segments, Meituan's core local services segment generated 65.6 billion yuan in revenue during the fourth quarter, up 18.9% year-on-year.

Notably, focusing on overseas operations, Meituan's new business segment reported a revenue of 22.9 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, albeit with a loss of 2.2 billion yuan, translating to a loss margin of 9.5%. Compared to the previous quarter, this loss margin widened by 5.3 percentage points, primarily due to increased expenditures on overseas ventures and seasonal declines in revenue from other new businesses. These factors combined met market expectations.

Since its launch in Riyadh last October, Keeta has further extended its reach to all major cities in Saudi Arabia. In 2024, Meituan's exploration of the Middle East for its overseas business provided a satisfactory response to the market. Morgan Stanley's research report on Meituan's expansion into the Middle East also indicated a current bullish stance on the company.

As the world gradually demystifies Meituan's overseas expansion, the company is now setting its sights on AI for the year ahead.

01. The Conclusion of Meituan's Middle East Journey in 2024

Venturing overseas was undoubtedly the most significant new vision for Meituan's valuation in 2024. Following its Hong Kong pilot in 2023, Meituan Keeta's exploration in the Middle East gained significant momentum in 2024.

According to Meituan's earnings call, since its inception in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, in October 2024, Keeta has expanded to all major cities in the country, witnessing a rapid surge in user numbers and order volumes.

Meituan's success is intertwined with the unique characteristics of the Middle East market. The takeout market in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries is currently characterized by low penetration, high average order value, and low labor costs (largely due to the low labor costs of expatriate populations). Morgan Stanley estimates that the GCC takeout market will grow at a compound annual rate of 15% from 2024 to 2028, reaching a size of $30 billion with a penetration rate of 31%.

Within this, Saudi Arabia's market size is projected to reach $16 billion, accounting for over 50% of the total. The United Arab Emirates follows closely, with an expected size of $7 billion by 2028.

A previous article in "New Position," titled "Meituan Elephants and Drones Set Off for the Middle East: Why Platforms and Transportation Capacity Are Deployed Abroad," analyzed Meituan's strategic layout and negotiation tactics in the Saudi and UAE markets: establishing Keeta's Middle East headquarters in Saudi Arabia and pioneering third-party drone delivery in the UAE, thereby avoiding offending either country while simultaneously advancing both takeout expansion and drone development.

In summary, Meituan has discovered a viable path for survival in the Middle East, and major GCC countries are also leveraging multinational companies to forge new narratives for the post-oil era.

However, regarding the local lifestyle market in the Middle East, despite sufficient openness, not everyone can master the rules of the game.

The aforementioned "New Position" article also mentioned that news of Meituan's Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Dingdong Maicai expanding into Saudi Arabia emerged in November 2024. However, just four months later, Dingdong Maicai's CEO recently announced internally that the Saudi expansion plan had been shelved. The construction of front-end warehouses emerged as one of the obstacles to Dingdong Maicai's Saudi plan. Some estimates suggest that maintaining the operation of 30 front-end warehouses in Riyadh could consume 45% of Dingdong Maicai's cash flow.

Beyond concerns about imbalances in business and cash flow leverage, the vision and timing of multinational companies' entry are also critical factors. In the early stages of Meituan's Middle East layout, as early as the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, it began inspecting and communicating with the Saudi royal family, coinciding with the royal family's quest for a "post-oil narrative."

The insufficient scalability of customer group positioning was the reason why some other local lifestyle platforms exited Saudi Arabia in 2024. Social media users reported that Wukong Overseas, founded in Singapore, also exited Saudi Arabia before the end of the year. Wukong Overseas, which provides high-quality one-stop lifestyle and travel services for overseas Chinese, entered Riyadh earlier than Keeta.

Prior to Keeta's entry, Saudi Arabia was primarily dominated by the three brands "Hunger Station," "Jahez," and "Marsool," which are either local or localized versions of multinational platforms, occupying a significant portion of the region's food delivery market.

Morgan Stanley's research report predicts that Keeta will enter the UAE market in the second half of 2025 and subsequently expand into Kuwait and other GCC countries, potentially accounting for 20% of the market share and achieving a GMV of $6 billion by 2028.

It believes that by 2028, Meituan is expected to generate incremental revenue of RMB 1.15 billion from its GCC market takeout business and achieve break-even that year.

02. Taking Over Overseas Expansion in 2025, Meituan's AI Arrives Just in Time

In 2025, AI will also become a pivotal focus for Meituan. Reviewing relevant market trends over the past three years, Meituan's strategic emphasis has been clear.

From late 2022 to early 2023, large models were just gaining popularity, and the development focus of AI-related fields throughout 2023 centered on model technological capabilities and AIGC application modes. In the local lifestyle and OTA fields where Meituan operates, this coincided with Douyin targeting Meituan's core business areas to vigorously engage in local lifestyle group-buying and takeout services. In 2023, Meituan's primary external narrative was defense, while also intensifying its inspection of overseas markets.

2024 was a year when AI-to-C applications saw widespread implementation. Among the two major To C commercialization directions for AI, AIGC and AI Agent, the market initially favored AIGC. The primary difference between AIGC and Agent is that the former generates content based on content, while the latter can also assist users with process operations. The leading large model player, OpenAI, proposed launching an AI Agent as early as last November.

By mid-January 2025, OpenAI did indeed unveil the Agent tool, but this coincided with the global popularity of DeepSeek, overshadowing attention on the OpenAI agent. However, 2025 is indeed considered the inaugural year for Agents. Just in early March, the Chinese Agent brand Manus also garnered significant public attention in China.

OpenAI, which once brought significant publicity benefits to itself, was not always able to capitalize on them. In the past six months, OpenAI and Tongyi have steadily occupied the model settings of domestic and foreign "Wang Feng." At this juncture, the centripetal force of AI marketing has been influenced by some latecomers.

In the realm of local lifestyle and OTA×Agent, as early as 2024, relevant platforms had already begun exploring this space.

A September 2024 article in "New Position," titled "Service + Agent, 'ZhiXiaoBao' Reconstructs Alipay," analyzed Alipay's Agent layout, development, and current status. At that time, Alipay's Agent service application "ZhiXiaoBao" had just been released, and the author also compared it with Meituan's search Q&A assistant "WenXiaoDai."

Furthermore, the OTA representative platform Ctrip released its first vertical large model for the tourism industry, "Ctrip Asks," in the second half of 2023, helping users address more personalized travel needs in the form of a smart assistant. However, essentially, such applications still primarily rely on AIGC, despite Liang Jianzhang also mentioning AI Agents in 2024.

Following the release of Meituan's financial report this time, external attention has gradually shifted from overseas expansion to Meituan's AI business plans. Meituan stated: "While continuing to implement our strategy as a retail technology company, we will increase investment in cutting-edge technologies and related applications such as AI, drone delivery, and autonomous delivery vehicles."

On March 24, it was reported that Wang Puzhong would personally lead the AI race and initiate a new project called beam, focusing on the Agent track. Later, it was reported that Wang Puzhong responded: "It's not a 'top-secret' project," "I initiated the project, and I will actively participate and contribute ideas, but I'm not the 'leader,'" and "We (Meituan) are developing a Native AI product, with the vision that 'everyone can have a dedicated personal assistant for life.'"

In fact, the external definition of lifestyle Agents is not as straightforward as outsiders might imagine.

Last November, two months after its launch, ZhiXiaoBao evolved in terms of product concept. The term "Agent" is too industry-specific and lacks localization, making it challenging to convey the product concept more effectively to the core customer group. Therefore, "Service AI" and "AI Lifestyle Manager" became the evolutionary anchor points for ZhiXiaoBao users.

Now, Meituan's positioning for its own Agent is "a dedicated personal assistant for life." In reality, this is still a description when the Agent product is in a less mature form.

However, based on previous "New Position" articles analyzing the application and landing of lifestyle Agents, both ZhiXiaoBao and Meituan have the potential to become leading domestic lifestyle Agent platforms.

In past articles, the key conclusions I drew about lifestyle Agents are as follows: 1. (Last year) Both ZhiXiaoBao and Meituan's built-in WenXiaoDai are still some distance away from being true Agents capable of executing order placement and payment; 2. The biggest pain point for users utilizing AI Agents is the diversity, completeness, and interconnectivity of services within the ecosystem; 3. The richness and completeness of the platform's own ecosystem are the core competitive advantage for lifestyle service platforms developing AI Agents.

From this perspective, in terms of the richness of lifestyle services, which is the competitive advantage for developing Agents, both Alipay and Meituan are leading domestic platforms. Additionally, with JD.com now intensifying its efforts to develop takeout services, it will also have the potential to enter this track in the future.

However, regarding the product form of lifestyle Agents, current industry explorations are still relatively nascent. Meituan's timing for entering AI may seem slightly delayed, but entering the Agent track appears well-timed.

03. Conclusion

Starting in 2025, alongside the popularity of DeepSeek and Chinese AI and technology stocks, the capital market has witnessed an endless stream of discussions about the "rise of the East and fall of the West." From this angle, Meituan's current high-profile entry into AI arrives just in time.

Moreover, in its core business areas, Meituan has also welcomed a new competitor, JD.com. JD.com initiated its takeout business last year. The October 2024 article in "New Position," titled "While Meituan is Busy Expanding Overseas, JD.com Begins Delivering Takeout," already mentioned the nascent state of JD.com's takeout business, which utilized chain fast food and 9.9 coffee as entry points and leveraged JD.com and Dada's transportation capacity. However, at that time, takeout was still just a trial for JD.com.

On March 24, JD.com Takeout announced that its daily order volume had surpassed 1 million within 40 days of its launch. However, following Douyin's disruption in 2023, both the market and Meituan will likely be more cautious in the face of such a direct "heartland" attack.

At this juncture, the three key focuses of Meituan's business this year have been established: once again defending its core business, further expanding its overseas operations, and commencing the implementation of its Agent business.

*The lead image and images in the text are sourced from the internet.