Recently, Internet companies have intensively released their fourth quarter and full-year financial reports for 2024. In the past year, companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, JD.com, Pinduoduo and Meituan have actively seized the opportunity of consumption recovery and launched an AI technology racing. All businesses have been empowered and reshaped, and the industry ecosystem has been continuously optimized.

  Seize the opportunity to recover consumption

  The financial report shows that in the past year, the overall operation of leading Internet companies has improved. In 2024, Tencent achieved revenue of 660.257 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8%; and achieved net profit attributable to shareholders of 194.07 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68%.

  JD Group's revenue was 115.88 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.8%; and achieved a net profit of 41.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 71%.

  Baidu's revenue was 133.1 billion yuan, and its net profit attributable to Baidu's core was 23.4 billion yuan, an increase of 21% year-on-year.

  Pinduoduo's revenue was 393.836 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59%; net profit attributable to common shareholders was 112.435 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 87%.

  Meituan's revenue was 337.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22%; and achieved a net profit of 35.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 158%.

  In the fourth quarter of 2024, Alibaba's revenue was 280.154 billion yuan, an increase of 8% year-on-year; net profit was 46.434 billion yuan, an increase of 333% year-on-year.

  The overall revenue of Internet companies is mainly due to the recovery of the consumer market, corporate cost control and operating efficiency optimization.

  Shan Su, chief financial officer of JD Group, said that in the fourth quarter of 2024, JD.com's revenue increased by 13.4% year-on-year. Many categories and business sectors have shown healthy growth momentum, reflecting the positive macro consumption trend and JD.com's expanding market share.

  In 2024, Meituan's transaction users exceeded 770 million, and the annual number of active merchants increased to 14.5 million, both hitting new highs. "Meituan adapts to changes in consumption trends, actively helps industry innovation, better serves more users and merchants, drives more consumption, and creates more jobs." said Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan.

  According to Xu Hong, chief financial officer of Alibaba Group, the strong financial performance in the fourth quarter showed that Alibaba is steadily and effectively revitalizing the group's core business, continuing to maintain financial stability, while continuing to optimize the operational efficiency of other businesses and gradually achieving profitability.

  Li Mingtao, chief e-commerce expert of China International E-Commerce Center, said that the performance growth of Internet companies is due to three major factors: First, the new market space is constantly expanding, and the prosperity of online consumption provides Internet companies with a stable market increase. At the same time, the accelerated integration of online and offline also provides Internet companies with opportunities for business innovation and service transformation; second, Internet companies continue to strengthen their core competitiveness, form differentiated and distinctive development paths, and maintain their competitive advantages in segmented markets; third, major platforms connect with each other's service ecosystem, open cooperation in infrastructure such as payment and logistics, expanding new user groups.

  Hu Qimu, deputy secretary-general of the China Digital Real Integration 50 Forum and chief researcher of the Digital Economy Think Tank, said that the "combination punches" of policies such as "two new" and "two heavy", issuance of ultra-long-term treasury bonds, and interest rate cuts and reserve requirement ratio cuts have achieved practical results, and investment and consumption have continued to recover in the past year. In addition, the deepening application of artificial intelligence technology has improved business innovation capabilities and consumer experience. Internet companies have increased their efforts to expand overseas markets and domestic sinking markets, and have continued to promote ecological interoperability, bringing new market growth, while promoting internal organizational structure adjustments and business integration, reducing operating costs and improving enterprise operation efficiency.

  AI empowers innovation and reshape

  Many Internet companies mentioned in their financial reports that the in-depth application of artificial intelligence technology has become a key driving force for performance growth.

  "Benefiting from the upgrade of advertising platforms empowered by AI, the increase in user participation of video accounts, and the growth of Evergreen Games, Tencent achieved double-digit revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2024." Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said that since 2024, Tencent's various businesses have accelerated the integration of AI technology, and the "self-developed + open source" multi-model strategy drives multi-service growth. Tencent Yuanbao, Tencent Documents and others are actively embracing the open source big model ecosystem to provide users and customers with better AI experience; WeChat Souyisou, WeChat stores and video accounts are developing strongly; basic sectors such as advertising, games, audio and video are also improving efficiency and renewing.

  Smart cloud is an important engine that drives the growth of Baidu's core business, with revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024 increasing by 26% year-on-year. "2024 is a critical year for Baidu to shift from Internet-centered to artificial intelligence first. As our full-stack AI technology is widely recognized by the market, the growth trend of intelligent cloud is becoming stronger." said Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu.

  In the past year, Alibaba has adhered to the strategy of "user first, AI-driven", focusing on the two core businesses of e-commerce and "AI+cloud", showing an accelerated growth momentum. In the fourth quarter, Alibaba Cloud's foreign commercialization revenue increased by 11% year-on-year, and AI-related product revenue maintained triple-digit year-on-year growth for six consecutive quarters.

  The key to the rapid growth and value transformation of AI technology is the key to R&D investment. In 2024, Meituan continued to increase investment in my country's consumer market and technological research and development based on the "retail + technology" strategy, with an investment of 21.1 billion yuan. Since JD.com's comprehensive transformation to technology in 2017, as of the end of 2024, its R&D investment has accumulated nearly 140 billion yuan, focusing on AI optimization of supply chain and warehousing efficiency.

  Li Mingtao said that Internet companies have increased their investment and application in research and development of large-model AI, covering scenarios such as intelligent search, audio and video editing, health management, intelligent customer service, and smart supply chain. At the same time, they have increased the intelligent upgrade of the industrial Internet. Enterprises optimize production plans and inventory management through AI, remote control of industrial equipment, personalized recommendation services, etc. have become the new normal.

  "In the past year, Internet companies have paid more attention to the efficiency improvement and model innovation brought by artificial intelligence, more attention to the coordination of the supply side, and more attention to the ecological interoperability of various platforms, making the industrial chain more coordinated with market demand, directly improving the efficiency of the supply chain and the industrial risk resistance, and the Internet ecology is more open." Hu Qimu said.

  Growth is expected to continue

  As the e-commerce industry enters the stage of intensive cultivation, various Internet companies have shifted from incremental expansion to deep cultivation of existing stocks, exploring greater value. This means that enterprises need to pay more attention to improving user experience and be committed to building a sustainable industrial ecosystem, so as to promote the industry to develop towards higher quality.

  In December 2024, Meituan launched a catering merchant support campaign, investing 1 billion yuan to help merchants explore and innovate. At present, 38,000 high-quality merchants have received real money support. Pinduoduo focuses on the high-quality development strategy, continues to make efforts in the platform ecology and industry depth, and implements multiple measures such as "reduction, exemption, support, and governance" to implement platform operation, merchant operation, logistics upgrade and other links.

  "Internet companies have gone from low-price battles at the beginning of the year, relying on homogeneous competition of platform rules such as refunds, freight insurance, and automatic price follow-up to optimizing rules to protect merchants' rights and interests, and have achieved ecological restoration under the guidance of platform rules, which is conducive to the sustainable development of the industry." Li Mingtao said.

  In 2025, with the efforts of a series of consumption-promoting policies to be effective and the iterative upgrade of artificial intelligence technology, the industry's continued growth trend is expected. Ma Huateng said that Tencent has increased AI-related capital expenditures and increased research and development and marketing efforts on native AI products, and believes that these investments will create longer-term value. JD Group CEO Xu Ran said that with the steady recovery of consumer sentiment and JD's strong implementation of strategic priorities, it will continue to release high-quality growth potential.

  But the risks cannot be ignored. "The changes in tax and fee policies in overseas markets and the improvement of compliance requirements will have a certain impact on the internationalization process of Internet companies. The competition in the domestic stock market is becoming increasingly fierce, the difficulty of innovation and development is increasing, and the compliance operation costs are increasing under normal supervision." Li Mingtao believes that in terms of opportunities, domestic policy dividends such as "old for new" are released in a concentrated manner, and the central government has deployed "special actions to boost consumption" to support the development of new consumption and low-altitude economy and accelerate the innovation of consumption scenarios; large-scale AI drives scenario innovation and efficiency improvement, and the large-scale application of generative AI in fields such as intelligent customer service and personalized recommendations can help enterprises optimize supply chain efficiency, reduce costs and increase efficiency.

  "This year, the policy of promoting consumption has been unprecedented, and domestic artificial intelligence big model technology has made breakthroughs, and Internet companies have better policy and tool support to improve their profitability. Enterprises must seize the policy dividends, give full play to their digital and intelligent capabilities, and jointly promote the prosperity of the platform's business ecology." Hu Qimu said. (Reporter Li Hualin)

[Editor in charge: Ran Xiaoning]