Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by for Autohome's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. A live and archived webcast of this earnings conference call will also be available on Autohome's IR website. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Sterling Song, Autohome's IR Director. Mr. Song, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. I'm Sterling, and welcome to Autohome's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Earlier today, Autohome distributed its earnings release, which can be found on the company's IR website ir.autohome.com.cn. Joining me on today's call are Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Song Yang; and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Craig Yan Zeng. Management will go through their prepared remarks, which will be followed by a Q&A session where they will be available to answer all your questions. Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to those outlined in our public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Autohome doesn't undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Please also note that Autohome's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of certain unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. I'll now turn the call over to Autohome's CEO, Mr. Yang, for opening remarks. Please go ahead, Mr. Yang.

Thank you, Sterling. Hello, everyone. This is Song Yang, CEO of Autohome, and thank you for joining our earnings conference call today. Today is my first time to join the earnings conference call as the CEO of the company. We suppose you have read the update filing by the company earlier today, Haier Group has become the new controlling shareholder of Autohome. Autohome as China's leading online automotive consumer platform is supported by the core foundation of data plus technology, both a broad user base, deep industry insights, professional content, a strong network of OEMs and dealers and a strong financial system. Haier's strategic investments reflects recognition of Autohome's business model and market potential and will inject new vitality into Autohome's long-term development. In the future, Autohome will serve as a key hub in Haier's automotive industry ecosystem, continuing to solidify and develop the existing businesses while leveraging advanced management experience of Haier and operational systems of CARTECH in deeper user experiences, smart software connectivity and new automotive retail to continue to strengthen Autohome's O2O intelligence exchange and comprehensive service capabilities, further driving innovation and growth for the company and better serving every user. At the same time, Ping An Group will remain as a key shareholder of the company and will continue to strongly support Autohome's long-term development. Next, let us take an overview of the company's financials. We concluded 2024 strongly with significant breakthroughs across each of our innovative businesses. Total revenue for the year reached RMB 7.04 billion, with revenue from online marketplace and others increased by 8.1% year-over-year and accounted for 33.8% of total revenue. Notably, our NEV business maintained strong growth momentum with revenues in 2024, increasing by 55.2% year-over-year. Adjusted net income attributable to Autohome in 2024 reached RMB 2.05 billion, yielding an adjusted…

Thank you, Mr. Yang. Hello, everyone. I'm Craig Zeng, the CFO of Autohome. In 2024, we continue to make progress in content development, leveraging our professional evaluation capabilities and a deep understanding of our user needs. We focus on two core technological areas, smart vehicles and AV. With this in mind, we've developed a series of professional IP matrices that are both useful for users and beneficial for the industry. For example, in December last year, we launched the first winter dual temperature test program focused on NEV. This initiative directively addressed three major industry pain points under low temperature conditions, short range, slow charging and high energy consumption. We conducted comprehensive tests on the reliability and comfort of vehicles in a low-temperature environment, covering more than 50 models across 30 brands, generating over 600 million views across various platforms. Multiple OEMs shared our content, underscoring the industry's broad recognition of our expertise in professional content creation. Additionally, our content localization strategy was successfully implemented in several pilot cities such as Chengdu and Xi'an. In this location, we adopted an open platform model to create localized content channels that integrate services and promotional activities from local automotive partners. This approach connects regional user needs with local resources, forming a complete closed loop from user demand to serving and merchant cooperation. This initiative not only helped us acquire traffic from low-tier markets, but also lays a foundation for the further expansion of our regional businesses. According to QuestMobile data, the number of our average mobile DAUs in December 2024 reached 77.48 million, an increase of 13.6% from the same period in 2023, reflecting our leading position in the automotive media vertical. Turning to NEVs. During the fourth quarter, our new retail business focused on strengthening operations in online live streaming and…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] First question comes from the line of Thomas Chong of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

So, thanks, management, for taking my question. I will transfer my questions. So I have two questions. First is for the transaction with CARTECH. So what's the background and the purpose of this transaction? And how it will impact our business in the future and in what areas plan to cooperate. And my second question is we saw the recovery in the fourth quarter in 2024. So how's the reason the positive policies will impact auto market and Autohome? And what's the management outlook for the auto market in 2025? Thanks.

Thank you for the question. My name is Yang Song. Firstly, we cannot comment on Haier's investment decision making, but we believe that Haier CARTECH strategic shareholding in Autohome is a decision based on multi phased consideration. As you know, stated in the news release for Haier, as China's leading online service platform for automotive consumers. Autohome takes data plus technology as its core support, and it has a wide user base. In-depth industry insights, professional content, as well as strong network of vehicle manufacturing, OEMs, and the dealers, and a stable financial system. Haier strategic shareholding reflects its recognition of Autohome's business model and the market potential, and we are also injecting vitality into the long-term development of Autohome. In the future, as a key hub in Haier's automotive industry ecosystem, Autohome will continue to consolidate and develop its existing business, and at the same time, draw on Haier's advanced management experiences on the CARTECH operating system to further promote the company's innovation and growth, with aim to better serve every users and the customers. At the same time, Haier will utilized its leading advantages in technological innovation, user insights, consumer services system, and the human and order combination management model integrate the online, offline integrated upgrading of CARTECH, especially its advanced store management, inventory management experiences, and comprehensive empower Autohome. It will also develop in synergy in the field of in-depth user experience, intelligent hardware connection, and automotive new retail, and continuously strengthen Autohome's O2O intelligence integration, and interaction and the comprehensive operating and service capability. So overall speaking, we firmly believe that by combining the resources and the professional knowledge of the two parties, more synergy can be created, providing users with more high quality and innovative solutions. In addition, I have a supplementary notice. After the…

Thank you for the questions. Next question comes from Brian Gong from Citi. Please go ahead.

I will transfer myself. Thanks management for taking my question. I have two questions. First is regarding our lead generation business. How is the contract renewal, the situation so far? And any areas to further explore potentials for this segment? And the second question is about the outlook 2025 outlook for used car market. And when does - how much do you expect - will management expect this - the industry and our business to recover for used car business? Thank you.

Thank you very much. I would like to take your question. Talking about the renewal of the [DealerConnect]. Actually, it started at the end of 2024 as usual, and it was basically completed after the spring festival in 2025. The renewal situation is very good. Actually, it exceeds 85%, which is better than previous year. Why we can achieve such success is, because of the two factors. One is the product to operate full scale AI implementation, integrating on platform, information data, and workflow. Through AI operation reduction, AI flow efficiency improvement, and AI decision making assistance. It reduces cost and increase the revenue for dealers. And secondly, the brand advantages. We have very strong brand influence, high user traffic. And also we have the optimized operating experience, and the comprehensive service guarantee continuously attracts a large number of customers to renew. And also, I want to talk about the business potential in the following three aspects. The firstly is the Chinese auto market. Although maybe different source may have different projection, but we believe the overall trend would be up growing. If the total sales go up, the leads would also go up. That is for sure the trend. And, also, we can do more on digitization and intelligent validation. For example, we can further optimize the AI technology to achieve more accurate customer, portraits and personalized recommendations, helping the dealers to reach targeted customers in a more effective way. We can also analyze the user's car, and using big data and AI to better achieve, more efficient targeted market strategy, suggested for dealers. And also, we do see more opportunities and more coverage. In the past, our market is more focused on the big cities. And in the future, we can get into the down market, which is…

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from the line of Xiaodan Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead.

So thanks management for taking my questions. And could you please share your outlook on 2025 revenue and margin outlook for, on the NEV's new retail model? And how should we think of its expansion pace going onwards? Thank you.

Well, thank you very much for the question. As you know, the renewable energy vehicle is one of the key development strategy for Autohome. And we believe that the new retail business, we would focus more on O2O, the online and offline collaboration. We believe that this would be the major driver, for the future growth of the business. Actually, with our past experience shows that this is a very good strategy. For example, in 2022, we only have one space store in Shanghai. By the end of 2023, we have 28 space station franchise stores. Since we started testing the satellite stores in May, and also the total number of the space station, and the satellite franchise station has now exceeded 150. So it can be seen that the construction of our offline channels have taken initial shape, achieving the wide coverage, of the high and the low tier cities. And this year, we will continue to explore, especially in the lower tier cities. We want to have a wider coverage in the smaller and the lower tier cities. In terms of the profit, we believe the profit would be reasonable, and it is not a cash burning business for the renewable and the new retail business. And we want to see that our franchisees, can achieve the balance in terms of its financial, recovery imbalance in the short-term. So in this way, our 2025 business will continue to grow. Operator?

Thank you. One moment for the next questions. Our next question comes from the line of Ritchie Sun from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Thank you, management, for taking my question. I want to ask - how should we think about, or what is your view on further lifting the payout ratio, or shareholder return? Thank you.

Well, thank you very much for the great question. Actually, if you look at the past three years. In 2022, we had already paid US$500 million dividend payout. In 2023, this number reached to RMB1 billion. And in 2024, it further reached to RMB1.5 billion. And also, our Board of Directors also made a promise that in the future, in next three years, we would pay out no less than RMB1.5 billion. In addition to the dividend payout, we also find other ways to for example, for the share buyback policies, to better boost our share price. It helps the investors to reduce its risk. Actually, out of these 200 million share buyback plan, as for now, we had executed approximately US$88.5 million. So in the future, in addition to the dividend payout, we would continue to do more share buyback policies and other effective way, to help to better giving back to our shareholders. Operator?

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the conference back to management for closing.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us today. We appreciate your support to the company, and we look forward to updating you on our next quarter's conference in a few months' time. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.

This will conclude conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.