Meituan Q1 Earnings Preview: Is the narrowing of meal-average loss in food delivery the key point to watch?
0xBroomberg
Meituan reports Q1 2026 on June 1; the market expects roughly RMB 91.1 billion in revenue. The real question is whether per-order food-delivery losses narrow as management promised.
Food-delivery revenue is still shrinking — but why?
Last quarter food-delivery revenue came in at RMB 23.6 billion, down 9.9% year-on-year — but order volume did not fall.
In plain terms = the revenue drop happened because heavy subsidies were booked as revenue offsets, meaning Meituan effectively pushed its own top line down.
This trend is expected to continue into Q1. This means → judging the delivery business by headline revenue alone is misleading; profitability is where the real story sits.
Why is "losing a few cents less per order" the biggest signal?
CEO Wang Xing stated on the last earnings call: "We expect to see a more meaningful sequential improvement in per-order food-delivery losses in Q1."
Citi forecasts per-order operating loss narrowing from -RMB 1.92 in Q4 2025 to -RMB 1.54 in Q1 2026.
This means → if the disclosed unit economics (UE) recovery beats expectations, it will be the single strongest positive signal from this earnings report.
JD and Alibaba already reported — what did they reveal?
JD slashed new-business marketing spend from RMB 27 billion to RMB 15.4 billion in Q1; Alibaba's flash-delivery losses fell from RMB 26 billion to RMB 18 billion.
This reflects that the peak of the "food-delivery war" spending has passed; industry-wide subsidy intensity is pulling back.
UBS and Daiwa Capital go further: per-order losses could keep narrowing in Q2 and approach breakeven, with full-year core local commerce reaching profit-and-loss balance.
Has Meituan held its market share?
In March, Meituan maintained roughly 50%–60% of the food-delivery market.
Key rivals began cutting subsidies from April onward; Meituan's share is expected to tick up by 1–2 percentage points in the near term.
Put simply = as competitors pull back on spending, Meituan's share may actually recover.
In-store services: the most profitable segment — but Douyin is here?
In-store remains Meituan's most profitable segment, its "cash cow."
New threat: Douyin launched a standalone group-buying app, "Dou Sheng Sheng" (抖省省), in February, targeting redemption rates — the industry pain point of whether users actually use the coupons they buy.
Meituan's defensive moat: over 14.5 million active merchants across 200+ sub-categories. This means → that supply-network density is something a short-video platform cannot replicate quickly.
KeeTa overseas: how fast can it go from cash burn to profit?
Wang Xing singled out Saudi Arabia: "KeeTa will reach profitability in Saudi much faster than in Hong Kong, and will definitely do so before year-end."
In plain terms = if the overseas business converts on schedule from a "cash-burn story" into a verifiable profit model, it will meaningfully reshape Meituan's valuation thesis.
This reflects management's effort to prove that international expansion is not just buying growth with cash, but a strategic investment with a clear profitability timeline.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.