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The Meituan Dianping logo on the company's mobile application in an arranged photograph taken in Hong Kong on Sept 6, 2018. [Photo/VCG] |
Meituan's core business — food delivery — has been growing fast, with 2 percent increase in food delivery order market share in the last three months. It is close to breaking even, Wang said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
The company is going to become more profitable in a more mature business environment and seek to move up the food value chain, helping restaurants source organic ingredients and investing in new initiatives , Wang said.
Ben Harburg, managing partner of MSA Capital and an investor before the IPO, is quite optimistic about the company's long-term prospects.
"We think it is comparable to Amazon, not in terms of material goods but in terms of services and the United States today really doesn't have any company that comes close," Harburg said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. "In the long-term it can be a massive, massive business.
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Brochures for the IPO of Meituan Dianping seen during the listing of the company at the Hong Kong Exchange on Sept 20, 2018.[Photo/VCG] |
Meituan started with services such as food delivery, ride-sharing, restaurants and hotels and has also added all kinds of new services to the platform such as e-commerce and financial services, which are high-volume, low-margin but highly commoditized services that can easily be integrated to this core platform and make great profit in the long-term, Harbrug explained.
Wang Xing founded Meituan.com in 2010 as a group-buying site, and after a merger with Dianping in 2015, Meituan Dianping started to provide reviews of restaurants and other local businesses, according to Bloomberg.
Wang will remain controlling shareholder of Meituan Dianping, the second company to list with weighted voting rights in Hong Kong after Xiaomi, according to the company's prospectus.
