Jane Sun
Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead
Thanks, James. Good morning everyone. I would like to start with a quick overview of Q4 and the full year of 2020. Despite the industry fluctuations and a weaker seasonality in the winter in Q4. we are glad to see that Trip.com Group delivered solid performance and consistently outgrow the industry average across the product lines. Total net revenue saw a further narrowed year-over-year decline in Q4 to 40%. As domestic accommodation reservation, air ticketing business, ground transportation and other domestic travel products recovered nicely in Q4. In addition, we achieved positive non-GAAP profit margin of 10% in the fourth quarter. On a full year basis, our core OTA brands delivered GMV of RMB395 billion, or USD61 billion, again leading the industry worldwide. For full year 2020, thanks to our efficiency improvement and a strong cost control, we were able to achieve 2% non-GAAP operating profit margin. Today, I would like to share some operating highlights in four areas: first, mid-to-high end travel market; second, low tier city penetration; third, our new strength in higher frequency categories; and forth, improvements of our content capabilities. First, we continue to improve our product competitiveness and increase market share in the fourth quarter, especially in the middle-to-high end market. Our middle-to-high end hotel bookings reached the double-digit growth year-over-year far exceeding the industry average by 15% to 20%. In addition, high quality niche and boutique travel has become an important alternative for our previously outbound customers. We saw an average spending on domestic package tours grew significantly year-over-year in the fourth quarter, especially for our mobile users. Second, we gained further market share in the low tier markets. In 2020, more than 40% of our new customers came from third tier cities and below. Transportation products have become important channels to acquire new users with whom we can cross-sell other products. Third, as James mentioned, we worked hard to unlock our new streams in highly frequent categories such as short-haul and staycation. We attracted more diverse and high-quality partners to our platform to expand our product offerings and also broaden the scope of collaboration with existing partners. The number of our in-destination activity and suppliers increased by over 25% year-over-year by the end of last year. As a result, short-haul and the local travel has become a key contributor to our recovery. In the fourth quarter, our hotel GMV for the same province space increased by over 20% year-over-year and reservation for attraction and activities increased almost 100%. Such strong performance for short-haul and local travel extended into the past Chinese New Year holiday. Compared to the same period in 2019, our hotel GMV for the same province space achieved 20% year-over-year growth and reservation for local attractions and activities more than tripled. Over the past year, we focused on improving our content offering. We believe that content will generate unique and long-term, long-lasting value in user engagement as well as the new earnings power. By the end of 2020, our content channels contributions to the total app traffic more than doubled compared to the beginning of the year and the visit time of our information seems more than tripled during the year. Our livestream and special deals channel have now become a place where people come to find attractive deals, which contributed approximately 5 billion GMV during the past year. We are also glad to see the initial development in advertisement revenue opportunities. Our domestic advertising and marketing revenue increased significantly year-over-year in the fourth quarter and maintained an overall positive growth throughout the year. In the future, we will continue to build our content ecosystem with concerted efforts. The ecosystem will enable our users’ engagement and make our platform a comprehensive marketplace. Turning to the year of 2021, the domestic travel demand remains resilient despite industry headwinds due to the small outbreaks and tightened travel restrictions during the Chinese New Year holiday. Our domestic hotel and air reservation quickly rebounded post the holiday and reached full recovery recently, compared to the same period in 2019. We are fully confident that the domestic market will come back with the growth trajectory in the year of 2021, due to the effective pandemic control and wide distribution of vaccines. Around the world cross-border travel is still under pressure. However, the domestic travel under Trip.com has started its recovery. According to China Tourism Academy an increased distribution of effective COVID-19 vaccine worldwide, global travel were resumed its order in the new year. We are optimistic and will be fully prepared to take advantage of upcoming recovery in the international travel. Finally, I would like to thank our team again for their dedicated efforts and commitment in maintaining quality service during this challenging time. As always, we are committed to leading the best in industry practice for all our stakeholders, including our customers, business partners, employees, shareholders, and communities. Lastly, we released our first ESG report, which cover our approaches and efforts in developing an inclusive work place, promoting responsible travel and providing quality user experience. Going forward, we'll continue to improve our efforts in ESG to lead our sustainable growth in the long-term. With that, I will now turn the call over to Cindy.