On the evening of November 6, Beijing time, Autohome, China's leading automobile Internet service platform (NYSE stock code: ATHM; HKEx code: 2518), released its financial results for the third quarter of 2024. The total revenue of the company in the third quarter was RMB 1.77 billion, with online marketing and other business revenue increasing by 3.1% year-on-year, and the proportion of revenue continued to increase; The revenue from new energy brands continued to grow in the third quarter, with a year-on-year increase of 54%, consistently outperforming the industry's sales growth rate; The adjusted net profit of the company is RMB 497 million.
Wu Tao, Secretary of the Party Committee and CEO of Autohome, stated that in the third quarter, the company continued to promote the ecological strategy of accelerating the integration of online and offline, and achieved sustained results, continuously optimizing its business structure. Looking ahead to the future, we will still be committed to deepening localization and sinking markets, focusing on enhancing brand influence, pursuing product innovation around market and customer demand changes, actively expanding business scope, and leading industry development. At the same time, we will fully utilize Ping An Group's abundant offline resources and professional after-sales service capabilities, strengthen collaborative cooperation between businesses, and further consolidate our differentiated competitive advantages.
Build a professional and diverse content ecosystem centered on users
As a one-stop service platform, Autohome adheres to the principle of "user centeredness" and actively observes the latest consumer trends of users. At the content conference held in August, it released three new contents and two co creation plans, providing users with a professional, diverse, authentic, and easy to understand automotive content ecosystem.
Around the needs of users for viewing, selecting, and using cars, Autohome has created an AH+content brand and original content matrix, covering over 13 categories and four core tracks: new cars, reviews, culture, and industry. The cultural columns "A Mirror of Automotive History" and "The Road to Rise" delve into the brand's history and stories, sparking discussions among users about Chinese automotive culture; The global IP "Guoche Worldview" has helped Chinese car brands go global, with over 20 million views on the entire network so far. To address users' anxiety about purchasing smart cars, Autohome has launched the "AH-IT" intelligent evaluation system. Through authoritative and professional testing resources, innovative and differentiated testing methods, rigorous and objective testing methods, and intuitive and cool visual presentations, the system visualizes intelligence, evaluates scenarios, and realistically presents experiences, comprehensively analyzing what is useful intelligence for users.
In terms of tools, based on user needs and mainstream product trends, Autohome has released a new scene based image library that covers three core car viewing scenarios: nighttime, spatial, and intelligent. This greatly improves the efficiency and convenience of user car selection. As of now, 36 mainstream car models have been covered online. In addition, to address the three major pain points of incomplete product information transmission, invisible car manufacturing intentions, and insufficient communication efficiency in the industry, Autohome has launched an industry partner co construction plan. By building professional content, users can gain a deeper understanding of product strength, create understanding with professionalism, and make good cars understandable to users.
At the same time, Autohome is actively seeking cross platform collaboration and has reached brand cross-border partnerships with platforms such as Ctrip Car Rental, Youku's "Memories of the Border Water", and the movie "Hot selling Good People", continuously exploring ways to break through barriers and attract more fans in areas such as self driving travel, film and entertainment. The continuous investment in the content ecosystem has led to a sustained increase in user traffic for Autohome. According to QuestMobile data, in September, the daily active users of Autohome's mobile app exceeded 70 million for the first time, reaching 72.87 million, an increase of 5.6% compared to the same period in 2023. This also proves that Autohome's influence among user groups is steadily increasing.
Continuously responding to the comprehensive upgrade of the "trade in" new retail network
The current automobile market has shifted from incremental driving to stock competition, and consumers lack confidence in purchasing cars. Faced with the difficulties of acquiring customers and channels for car companies and dealers, Autohome has diversified its marketing strategies to layout online and offline markets, helping consumers save time, effort, and money, and further unleashing the potential of car consumption. This year, Autohome's "818 Global Auto Festival" has been upgraded, collaborating with CCTV to create a new paradigm of ecological marketing empowered by technology and entertainment. It provides a series of high subsidy benefits and innovative marketing activities to stimulate consumer demand and boost industry confidence. Within 24 hours of the broadcast of the grand ceremony, the viewing volume of long videos reached 290 million, the barrage interaction exceeded 10000, and the global exposure reached 14.8 billion.
In response to the national "trade in" policy, Autohome has teamed up with Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance and fully connected car dealers, and government enterprise cooperation to launch the "Hundred Cities Renewal" series of activities. By integrating the advantages of Autohome's platform, Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance's online resources, and offline service teams, products and services will penetrate into third - and fourth tier cities, gathering core business districts to create a one-stop convenient car buying event of "see, buy, use, and exchange", focusing on creating transaction scenes in the sinking market, and helping to implement the "trade in" and new energy to rural areas policies. In the first three quarters of this year, more than 500 offline car shows and nearly 2000 single store events were held, covering nearly 250 cities across the country. The average passenger flow at car shows exceeded 10000, and single store events enabled store transactions to increase by more than 60%.
In the third quarter, Autohome's new retail model was upgraded and the "satellite plan" was fully implemented. At present, the total number of franchise stores for Autohome space station and satellite stores has exceeded 50, indicating that the construction of sinking channels has begun to take shape. The "Satellite Program" focuses on the Autohome space station as a key node, radiating to surrounding secondary sales outlets. Through the cooperation between the space station and satellite stores, a close collaborative network is formed to achieve resource sharing and complementary advantages, truly helping OEMs to "fill in" sales channels, reduce operating costs, improve sales efficiency, and open up the "last mile" closer to the sinking market. In the future, the company will deeply explore the potential of regional satellite stores, leverage platform advantages, integrate industry chain resources, and make more attempts and innovations in business models.
Meanwhile, the cooperation between Autohome and Ping An Group has also made phased progress. With the unique resources of Ping An Group, Autohome has piloted the launch of financial and insurance in store services, expanding the company's business scope. For example, by integrating Ping An's car owner service capabilities and launching the industry's unique "Price Protection Warm Heart Rights Package", it provides car purchase protection and health care for consumers who purchase cars through Autohome offline stores.
Data products help improve quality and efficiency, strengthen collaboration in the second-hand car business
In the field of digitalization, in response to the pain points of low efficiency, high cost, and limited customer acquisition channels for after-sales enterprises to invite/visit customers, in the third quarter, Autohome and Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance jointly created the after-sales digital product "Juxiu Hui" and launched a signing ceremony in Beijing, marking the official launch of Autohome's after-sales market service business. Currently, it has landed in Chengdu, Chongqing and other places. Based on Autohome, Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance, and external cooperative ecological drainage systems, "Juxiu Hui" collaborates with brand authorization, unified promotion, and other supporting measures to create new growth points for after-sales enterprises. In terms of specific functions, the "outbound platform" can help comprehensive repair factories reduce customer acquisition costs and improve invitation and follow-up efficiency. The "repair assistant" utilizes Autohome's digital capabilities to provide support for business tracking and management in accident car scenarios for merchants. Through transparent management methods, the ultimate goal is to improve customer retention indicators in store.
In addition, Autohome has partnered with Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance to innovate a new model for CPS commercial products, combining Ping An's exclusive resources of high traffic, multiple touchpoints, and frequent linkage to create a replacement car single store product called "Ke Lai Yi", which provides a one-stop solution for users' replacement core needs. It has also launched an innovative car buying solution of "conversion first, delivery later, no transaction fee", targeting the pain points of the automotive market where there are many leads, difficult conversion, more car views, and less car purchases, and providing true potential car buyers for businesses. It aims to create professional services that are worry free, time-saving, and cost-effective. At present, business cooperation has been carried out in multiple cities including Shanghai, Zhejiang, Shenzhen, and Guangdong, and special cooperation has been established with multiple brands to explore high-quality potential customer opportunities through customer circle cities. In the first nine months of this year, Autohome's overall data product revenue increased by 8% year-on-year.
In the second-hand car business sector, Autohome integrates resources with Ping An Group and strengthens business collaboration with Tiantianpaiche. Through the "satellite stores" of Autohome, the second-hand car team, and Ping An's offline team, the number of auctioned cars from 4S stores has increased every day, and the number of merchant buyers from across the country has continued to increase. This has stimulated the demand for purchasing cars in different locations on the platform, effectively increasing the transaction volume and price in different locations, and improving the efficiency of cross regional circulation of second-hand cars. The above series of measures will help Tian Tian Pai Che improve its service capabilities and achieve business expansion while controlling costs.
Actively fulfilling ESG commitments and gaining recognition from professional institutions
While ensuring the quality and efficiency of business development, Autohome also actively implements carbon reduction actions and fulfills its corporate social responsibility. The "Youth Car Unlimited Creative Collection Activity" supported by Autohome for four consecutive years successfully concluded at the end of September, receiving more than 9000 works from home and abroad. Mr. Wan Gang, Chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology and Chairman of the World New Energy Vehicle Conference, personally presented awards to the award-winning youth at the scene, and Autohome was awarded the honorary title of "Annual Science Popularization Unit".
Autohome's practice in the ESG field has also gained recognition from professional organizations both domestically and internationally. Recently, Autohome has won the "2024 Asian Corporate Social Responsibility Award" hosted by the Asian Chamber of Commerce and the "2024 Best Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Award" presented by the Hong Kong International ESG Alliance.
Overall, Autohome's performance in the third quarter showed steady growth. The company actively promoted its ecological strategy layout of "online+offline", and achieved initial results in innovative business development, driving the growth of online marketing and other revenue in this quarter. With the continuous deepening of cooperation with Ping An Group, more distinctive products are gradually being integrated into the company's various business scenarios. At the same time, the company actively gives back to its shareholders through continuous dividend and stock repurchase plans. Looking ahead to the future, Autohome will continue to improve operational efficiency and service capabilities to support the company's long-term high-quality development.