Hui Jin
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, Dan
[Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Thank you, Qi Ji. Firstly, please turn to page 3. Let me briefly review our key achievements in the third quarter. Number one, our China business RevPAR recovery continues despite COVID's impact. Number two, continued network expansion with a focus on sustainable quality growth. Number three, on track for the development of upper middle scale and upscale segment. Number four, successful launch of new H World App with enhanced features. Number five, Deutsche Hospitality's business is on its recovery path. Now, I will then discuss for each of above points in details in the following pages. Please turn to page 4. Although the continuous resurgence of COVID, we still achieved a relative good RevPAR recovery in the third quarter in China, with the RevPAR recovered to 90% of 2019 level. This was mainly driven by pent-up leisure demand in July and August, as well as gradual recovery of business traveling in the late September. However, we saw more sporadic resurgence of COVID in October, with strict restriction was imposed again. Our RevPAR in October only recovered to 74% of 2019 level. Please turn to page 5. Our hotel network further expanded and the GMV also continuously increased in the quarter. At the end of the third quarter, our number of hotel rooms grew by 10% year-over-year to 797,000, with China hotel rooms grew 11% year-over-year to 772,000. Our total GMV in the third quarter increased by 24% year-over-year to RMB 15.2 billion, where China GMV grew 22% year-over-year to RMB 13.5 billion. Our lower-tier cities penetration strategy continuous progressing. Please turn to page 6. As of the end of the third quarter, hotels from lower-tier cities contributions further increased to 41% and 59% of total hotels in operation and pipelines respectively. Moreover, as you may notice that our number of new signings during the quarter was still lower than a year ago, and still shows that our franchisees' confidence level has not yet fully returned due to resurgence of COVID. Please turn to page 7. Looking back the last few years post-COVID, based on the China lodging industry data, we observed that branded chain hotel were showing better resilience than independent hotels. A lot of independent hotels with weaker anti-risk capabilities were actually closed with roughly 22% and 13% of independent hotel actually closed in 2020 and 2021, respectively. During the same period, our hotel network, were still expanding. We also showed our closure ratio in the figures. Our closure ratio was 10% and 7% in 2020 and 2021, which were much lower compared to independent hotels. China lodging industry’s chain hotel ratio continuously improved from only 19% in 2018 to 35% in 2021. Therefore, we think the trend of the further industry consolidation post-COVID remains unchanged. Moreover, as Mr. Ji mentioned in the beginning, more and more independent hotels started to prefer joining branded chain hotels, which could further bring more consolidation opportunities to us in the long run. Please turn to page 8. We still need to insist on our sustainable quality growth strategy for our long-term business development. For example, our Hanting brand, we continuously upgrade our Hanting products over the past few years. We found out that after upgrading to newer versions, the RevPAR would improve by roughly 20% than older version in average, at the end of the third quarter Hanting 2.7 versions and above accounted to roughly 59% of total Hanting Hotels in operation improved by 25 percentage points in 2020 -- compared to 2020. At the same time Hanting's customer satisfaction score also improved loan with product upgrading from 4.5% in 2020 improved to 4.67 in the third quarter. Please turn to page 9 not only Hanting brand, but also all our brands in our portfolio, which improve the overall hotel qualities. As you can see low-quality soft brand economics hotels and Hanting 1.0 version contribution were gradually declining over the years. As of the third quarter, it only accounts for roughly 14.3% of our total hotels in operation. Hotel product quality improvements also led continuously customer satisfaction score improvement. It improved from 0.54% in 2020 to 4.68% in this quarter. Please turn to page 10. Our Orange brand hotel achieved its 500 hotel milestone during the quarter, reaching 505 hotels by the end of the quarter. It becomes the third brand of Hanting and JI Hotel in our group to achieve over 500 hotels. However, up from mid-scale segment is also steadily progressing. Please turn to page 11. We introduced a new version of InterCity brands during the quarter. InterCity will be mainly located in traffic hub or commercial centers location that brings in German simplicity and pragmatism to hotels in China to provide high efficient service to customers. Our two newly opened InterCity hotels are located in Shenzhen and Wuhan. For our upskill segment, we saw our Blossom House brand is quickly tapping into leisure traveling market. Please turn to page 12. Since our acquisition, we successfully transformed its business model from previously 90% of hotels are under lease model to roughly 67% of the hotels are under asset-light franchise-based model. Moreover, the brand also expands from a single Blossom House brand to Blossom Lifestyle Community and Blossom Collections, achieving a multi-brand developed model. Please turn to page 13. We further upgraded our H World app and successfully launched its 4.0 version. This upgrade focus on our two service, and the full digitalization guest experiences and further strengthening the interactive service experiences with guest at different touch points on the basis of consistent highly efficient services. For example, our Intelligent Laundry function, it allows customers to make reservation remotely and attract the laundering process and status in real time. Such function could strengthen the perception of members' privileges and benefits. In the first nine months of 2022, there were totally 99 million customers have experienced our online service compared to only 27 million customers a year ago. Usage of online service also improved to 71% in October from 21% last year [Foreign Language], above, our key business development update third quarter. With that, I will now turn the call to our CEO of International Business Mr. Jihong to discuss our DH business development during the quarter.