KE - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for KE Holdings, Inc. first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Please note that today's call, including the management prepared remarks and question and answer session, will all be in English. Simultaneous interpretation in Chinese is available on a separate line for the duration of the call. To access the call in Chinese, you will need to dial into the Chinese language line. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Suting Li, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead, Suting.

Suting Li (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to KE Holdings for Beike's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. The company's financial and operating results were published in the press release earlier today and are posted on the company's IR website, investors.ke.com. On today's call, we have Mr. Stanley Peng, our Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Tao Xu, our Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Peng will provide an overview of our strategies and business development, and Mr. Xu will provide additional details on the company's financial results. Before we continue, I refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements. Please also note that Beike's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information, as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures.

Please refer to the company's press release, which contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures. Lastly, unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. For today's call, management will use English as main language. Please note that the Chinese translation is for convenience purpose only. In the case of any discrepancy, management statements in this original language will prevail. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Stanley Peng. Please go ahead, Stanley.

Stanley Peng (CEO)

Thank you, Suting. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Beike's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. In the first quarter of 2024, the transaction volume of existing homes on our platform prevailed, surpassing that of new homes in 74 cities, despite the high base phase in the first quarter of last year. The existing home transaction continued to show year-over-year growth in 15 cities. The steady growth in the existing home RMB 630 billion in the first quarter, down 35% year-over-year. At the same time, GTV of existing home and new home transactions declined by 32% and 45% year-over-year, respectively. The overall performance is expected to improve in the coming quarters.

At the end of the first quarter, the total number of active stores on our platform reached over 42,500, an addition of nearly 3,000 stores compared with last year, primarily attributable to a substantial increase in number of connected stores. In particular, our strategy on active partnering with connected stores has paid off, with additional key partner brands joining us across Wuhan, Xiamen, Nanjing, Jilin, and other cities. It also demonstrated that more industry partners are finding inroads to improve efficiency nowadays. Since the fourth quarter of 2023, the performance of newly connected stores has also exceeded our expectations. There has also been a positive surprise in agent productivity in the new connected stores, with only a handful of employees compared to those of large stores, can heavily stores, major city, major market fluctuations.

These small, smaller stores boasted operational efficiency and community outreach capabilities far beyond our expectations. Their performance also motivated us to improve our in-service competencies to better service, serve the diversify types of stores. The scaling up of agent and store network also further enhances the most fundamental infrastructure of our one-stop residential services. On the agent and store front, Lianjia Shanghai has adopted innovative business formats to achieve growth. Looking back at 2022, our home listing coverage rate in Shanghai was around 35%. This told us there was room for improvement in our community outreach, and that our traditional large store model was too heavy-handed and impersonal.... We are the advocate for a limitless agent store model. We are stores and service providers with strong community ties are indispensable strategic components.

Over the years, we have explored many ways to make improvement on agent side, and in 2023, Lianjia in Shanghai discovered more possibilities on store front, exploring various innovative practices under the large store model, with introducing nearly 60% of community mini services outlets derived from these large stores, which we call community mini stores. This streamlined approach, including providing local convenience services such as printing at various small stores or mobile service kiosks and reception points located in high-traffic areas like community centers, shopping malls, and subway stations. By deepening our embedding in neighborhoods and establishing a close community operational presence, we strengthened customers as well as agents' sense of security. We have achieved deeper community coverage and better identify local customer needs.

In 2023, our coverage of the 3.5 million target residential households rose to 95% compared to eighty-seven percent in 2022, and our home listing coverage rate in Shanghai soared from 65%-84%. We also made many new attempts to enhance the customer experience in housing transactions. In terms of online operations, the rise of new media platform over the past few years has led more agents to leverage those channels to acquire and engage customers. Capitalize on this trend, agent and store owners of our platform also began using tools like short videos and live streaming to present home listings, introduce residential neighborhoods, and share real estate knowledge. Despite this, these early efforts, the lack of a new media strategy resulted in inconsistent customer acquisition efficiency.

In response, we kicked off the Galaxy initiatives in 2022, incubating and empowering more agents and store owners to acquire customer through short videos and live streaming. By the end of the first quarter of this year, our influencer network has grown to over 12,000, with almost 36 million followers, making it one of the largest real estate MCN networks nationwide. The traffic led to thousands of transactions last year. More importantly, this can better satisfy customer needs. Those providers can connect with a wide audience via those new media platforms, which offer potential customers a more impartial interaction compared with traditional online methods. This approach gives agents an edge in uncovering hidden customer needs. Plus, the emergence of this real estate content influencers is not just a trend of a result of technological advancement.

Rather, it reflects and results from the further specification of buyers and sellers agents within the industry. As for our offline operations, we have been advancing the iteration of a series of services that directly improve customers' experience. This includes a direct connection with the housing provident fund to facilitate easier access. We also implemented measures that enhanced customer experience by elevating our business partners' engagement, such as public supervision and control program to enhance ecosystem governance and entire agent operations. Taking the one-stop transaction services model we implemented in Suzhou as an example. Historically, customers need to go to four separate places to complete the required procedures for existing home transactions, and are often time-pressed to schedule appointments in advance. This internalized process also hinder our ability to ensure a seamless experience throughout the entire transaction.

So we thought ways to streamline this experience by promoting collaboration among local government agencies, banks, and related enterprises in Suzhou, alongside our technology support. All this effort providing one-stop post-sale services for existing home transaction, covering transaction funds, funds escrow, face-to-face bank mortgage sign-ups, home title transfers, tax payments, and collection of property ownership certificates. As Suzhou successfully pioneered the one-stop services model with an end-to-end post-sales transaction process for existing homes, we plan to replicate this model in more cities and significantly improve customer experience going forward. Regarding customer experience in our new initiatives. There is still ample room for improvement as we delve deeper into customer needs and then iterate our service products.

For example, in home rental services, last year, we conducted a survey involving the needs of 100,000 tenants, and it identified several major pain points, such as delayed service response, non-standard housing and amenities after moving in, the high cost of changing rentals, and a lack of lease term-termination guarantees. As a response, on March 16, 2023, we upgraded our services to include seven service offerings: timely repair, housekeeping, broadband setup, smart door lock, worry-free rental change, flexible payments, and dedicated butlers. Also, we implemented for our service communities, three-day unconditional refund upon lease termination, guaranteed refund for rental change, a home security guarantee, compensation for unsatisfactory rental experiences, and timely deposit refunds. These services, benefits, and guarantees are specifically, specifically designed to address customer most critical pain points.

We have created a standardized service fulfillment processes based on best practice in this area. The result has been a notable improvement in the standardized services, fulfillment rate, high customer satisfaction rates three days after moving in, and a better customer recommendation rate. The area I have just touched on covers some of the key initiatives we have been exploring over the quarters. What we are working toward is assembling a group of people to forge a better pace forward that enables us to navigate the changing times. We are looking to involve our agent store model for housing transaction services, enhance the quality and efficiency of our new initiatives, and elevate overall Beike platform to new heights, striving to meet and address the opportunities presented by the new era in China's housing market. Thank you.

Next, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Tao Xu, to review our first quarter financials.

Tao Xu (CFO)

Thank you, Stanley, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. Before we dive into the performance of Q1, I would like to briefly touch upon some updates on recent housing markets. The housing market saw a year-over-year decline in Q1, primarily due to the high base effect from the release of the pent-up demand early last quarter, early last year following the pandemic. However, compared with the typical first quarter market performance, the existing home market was fairly stable in this Q1. Some cities' transaction volumes exceed those of the same period last year. This improvement can be partly attributable to the city-specific policy optimization that further relax the criteria of the homebuyer's eligibility. Another reason is the active entry of the first-time homebuyers into the market, primarily driven by the reduced mortgage rates and the housing price adjustments.

This factor further lowered the home purchase threshold and the costs. At the same time, due to homebuyers' preference for readily available existing homes, more demand was met by the existing home market. Turning to our performance in Q1, our revenue reached RMB 16.4 billion, compared with RMB 20.3 billion in the same period last year. Gross margins stood at 25.2%, compared with 31.3% in Q1 last year. GAAP net income reached RMB 432 million, compared with RMB 2.75 billion in the same quarter last year. The non-GAAP net income was RMB 1.39 billion, contrasted with RMB 3.56 billion in the same period last year. Our Q1 performance was weaker than the same period last year, mainly due to the higher base performance from the one-time impacts.

It can be partly attributable to the concentrated release of pent-up demand in the same period last year. The other reason was the optimistic expectations for housing market continued to surge a demand in Q1 last year. At the same time, the new home market continues to experience depression. We believe the first two factors are one-time impact, and our future performance will be better reflect our business operations. Regarding the home transaction services in Q1, both new and existing home markets saw a year-over-year decline, primarily due to the high base performance from the one-time impact, as I previously mentioned. Revenue from existing home transactions reached RMB 5.7 billion, down 37.6%, with GTV reaching RMB 453.2 billion, down 31.8%, also on year-over-year basis.

GTV outperformed the revenue year-over-year, mainly due to a higher contribution from the GTV of the existing home transaction services, facilitated by its connected agents. Their revenue was recorded on a net basis. Our strategic expansion of the more connected stores played a key role in driving this growth. The contribution margin from the existing home transaction services reached 44.5%, remaining steady quarter-over-quarter, but dropped 4.6 percentage points year-over-year. This change was mainly due to the increase in fixed labor costs related to the growth of the number of Lianjia agents and the negative leverage impact from the reduced revenue. In terms of new home transaction services, the industry is still in a risk clearance phase, with supply and demand dynamics remaining subdued.

CRIC shows that the sales from the top 100 developers decreased by nearly 50% year-over-year in this Q1. Through the sustained refinement of our new home business operations, we have expanded our channel partnership with upholding our risk control code. In Q1, new home GTV reached RMB 161.8 billion, down 45.4% year-over-year. Revenue from new home transaction was RMB 4.9 billion, dropping by 41.5% year-over-year. The outperformance of revenue over GTV year-over-year was due to our strong monetization capabilities. The contribution margin for new home transaction services was 22.3%, falling by 4.1 percentage points quarter-over-quarter, and 4.8 percentage points year-over-year.

The decline was attributable to the rise in the variable commission and the negative leverage inference due to the relatively stable fixed labor cost and the lower revenue. In Q1, the commission income percentage from SOE developers was around 49%, maintaining a relatively high level. Revenue for home renovation and furniture business, home rental services, emerging and other services grew by 112.9% year-over-year in Q1, accounting for an increasing portion of our total revenue at 35% and Increasing by 21.7 percentage points from the same period of 2023. Our home renovation and furniture business continued to grow at a fast pace. In Q1, contracted sales reached RMB 3.4 billion, up 26.1% year-over-year. Revenue reached RMB 2.4 billion, rising by 71.1% year-over-year.

The growth rate of revenue outpaced that of the contracted sales. This was primarily due to the concentrated release of the pent-up demand after the lifting of the pandemic restrictions in the same period last year, leading to a substantial rise in contracted sales and creating a high base of GTV. But due to insufficient delivery capacity, the revenue recognition was slow in the same period last year, led to a lower base of revenue. In terms of the highlights in the first quarter, total contracted sales in March reached nearly RMB 2 billion, up around 53% year-over-year. Particularly noteworthy was the record-breaking March contracted sales in Beijing, surpassing RMB 400 million. The contribution margin for the home renovation and the furniture business was 30.6%, remaining flat year-over-year and up 2.8 percentage points sequentially.

This was mainly attributable to the rebound in gross margin of furniture and home furnishing quarter-over-quarter. The percentage of contracted sales contributed by our home transaction services continued to increase, representing around 51% of total GTV in Q1, making an 11 percentage points increase year-over-year. This further highlights the synergy between our housing transaction and other residential services. Moreover, our home renovation and furniture business has grown more diverse. Furnitures and the home furnishing sales reached around RMB 940 million in Q1, accounting for around 27.8% of total contracted sales, representing a 5.1 percentage point improvement from the same period of 2023.

The contracted sales of the furniture and the home furnishing retail, which are outside of our home renovation package, reached around RMB 882 million in Q1, accounting for around 26% of total contracted sales, representing a 4.7 percentage points improvement from the same period of 2023. Starting from this year, we have begun to disclose the financial of our home rental services due to their growing scale and the significance in our business, and the revenue from this service accounted for over 10% of total revenue in the first quarter. In Q1, revenue from our home rental services reached RMB 2.6 billion, up 189.3% year-over-year, mainly due to the rapid growth of the numbers of the re-rental units under our management.

By end of Q1, the number of units managed by our home rental services exceeded 250,000, reflecting a 159.1% rise year-over-year. With the revenue generated from our home rental services, our decentralized rental management services, Carefree Rent, contribute to more than 95% of the total.... Other revenue sources include centralized rental apartment services, monetization of platform traffic, and online rental management services. In Q1, our net revenue from emerging and other services increased by 85.3% year-over-year to RMB 700 million. Next, let's move on our other costs and expenses in Q1. Our store costs totaled RMB 685 million in Q1, remaining stable overall compared with the same period of 2023.

Other costs decreased by 10.7% year-over-year to RMB 379 million, primarily due to the reduction in taxes and the surcharges. As a result of a decreased operating leverage, our gross profit dropped by 35.1% year-over-year to RMB 4.1 billion, with gross margin of 25.2%, down 0.3 percentage point quarter-over-quarter, remaining relatively stable. Year-over-year, gross margin fell by 6.1 percentage points, mainly due to the lower contribution margin from the existing and the new home transactions, along with the decreasing share of the revenue from the existing home transactions. This decline in gross margin was partially offset by the larger portion of revenue from our home renovation and furniture business.

In Q1, our GAAP operating expenses totaled RMB 4.1 billion, showing a 21.9% year-over-year increase and a 22.7% quarter-over-quarter decrease. Specifically, G&A expenses climbed by 24.5% year-over-year to RMB 2 billion, driven by the higher personnel costs associated with our home renovation and home transaction services. The rise in G&A expenses on year-over-year basis was mainly due to the provision for the bad debts, totaling approximately RMB 19 million in Q1. Whereas, around RMB 127 million of the provision for bad debts were reversed in the same period of last year. Sales and marketing expenses grew by 25.5% year-over-year to RMB 1.6 billion, propelled by the rapid expansion of our home renovation and furniture business.

Our R&D expenses amounted to RMB 467 million, with only slight change compared with the first quarter last year. In terms of the profitability, GAAP income from operations totaled RMB 12 million in Q1, compared with RMB 2.98 billion from the same period of 2023. GAAP operating margin was 0.1%, compared with the 14.7% from the Q1 2023. Non-GAAP income from operations amounted to RMB 960 million, compared with RMB 3.83 billion from the same period of 2023. Non-GAAP operating margin was 5.9%, compared with 18.9% from Q1 2023. The year-over-year decline in operating margin was mainly due to the lower gross margin and the higher operating expenses ratio.

GAAP net income totaled RMB 432 million in Q1, compared with RMB 2.75 billion from the same period of 2023. Non-GAAP net income amounted to RMB 1.39 billion, compared with RMB 3.56 billion from the same period of 2023. Shifting to cash flow and the balance sheet metrics, we realized a net operating cash outflow of RMB 950 million in Q1, largely due to the seasonal impact of the bonus payment during this Q1. On top of that, $200 million allocated towards share repurchase during the first quarter. Our total cash liquidity, which excludes customer deposits payable, reached RMB 75.6 billion. This year, the external market remains challenging, and internally, this is the year we will increase our strategic investment.

Under the circumstance, we remain committed to enhancing shareholder returns, refining the company's capital structure, and optimizing capital operations. Our goal is to provide shareholders with consistent returns, enabling them to navigate the economic cycles along sellers. Our actions demonstrate that we have delivered on our promise. Throughout 2023, we allocated around $700 million to the share buyback program, and recently completed the payment of the final cash dividend plan, distributing around $400 million in aggregate. Our total shareholder returns from repurchase and the dividends significantly exceeded our net income, accounting for around 159% of our net income in 2023.

In 2024, as of May 10, we have allocated around $344 million for the share repurchase, and the number of the repurchased share accounted for around 2% of the total shares at the beginning of the year. This year, we are focusing on strategic investment to expand our store network, enhancing training for the frontline service providers, iterate the product technology, upgrade content services, and improve the middle to back office operations for our emerging business. These initiatives require more efficient financial management. As such, we are committed to supporting our business in optimizing financial resources allocation and making every effort to help our business achieve long-term development. Simultaneously, we will maintain our high standards for risk management and the capital allocation efficiency to ensure our investment generates better returns in the future, and to create long-term value to our shareholders. Thank you.

Suting Li (Head of Investor Relations)

Operator, we can move to Q&A session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. As a reminder, we only accept questions on the English language line. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to one question, and if you have additional questions, you can reenter the queue. If you are going to ask the question in Chinese, please follow with an English translation. Your first question comes from Sophie Zhang with CICC.

Sophie Zhang (Analyst)

Hey,

[Foreign Language].

So thanks, management, for taking my questions, and I got two questions here.

First of all, could you please share your views on recent policies as well as market outlook? And secondly, since the customer acquisition channels are becoming increasingly diverse for real estate agencies, how are you gonna ensure your efficiency in online traffic acquisition, and especially regarding the new home transaction services? Developers started to allocate part of their sales and marketing budget on emerging media platform. So I wonder, if the company has considered about investing more in video-based products or content to better reactivate the unused traffic. Thank you.

Stanley Peng (CEO)

Thank you, Sophie. Regarding your first question, despite ongoing price adjustment in the existing home market, the overall transaction volume has remained relatively stable. The market performance in some cities even exceeded the expectations, which made us cautiously optimistic about the future existing home market.

Nevertheless, the new home market is still somewhat sluggish, with the roll out of the policies aimed on inventory reduction. We anticipate improved liquidity on the new home market supply side and a recovery in market confidence. Let me have some further elaboration. Regarding the policies in this year, the party policies can be classified into three categories. Firstly, policies aimed at releasing and attracting buyers buying power, such as the consolidation or the optimization of the purchase restrictions in cities like Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Shenzhen, and removing the minimum mortgage rate. Secondly, policies facilitating sell old homes for new ones, and government buying unsold homes to help depress inventory. Thirdly, policies to optimize the supply of new homes, such as directive to limit the residential land supply in areas with high inventory levels.

Those policies are supportive to the existing housing market. Since the beginning of the year, GTV for existing homes has remained largely stable, although not matching the higher base set by the release of the pandemic demand in the first quarter last year. It also has showed the recovery in March after the Spring Festival, followed by a normal seasonal adjustment in April. In April, the number of existing home transactions on our platform did not experience a rapid decline than in the same period of last year. Instead, recording a year-over-year increase of 14%. Cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, and Xiamen saw the notable increase. At the same time, the recent trend indicates that the weekly transaction volume has not continued to decline sequentially.

The total number of existing home transactions on our platform increased by over 20% year-over-year for the first three weeks of May, while the GTV increased by over 10%, higher than the level of the decline from the higher base in the same period of last year. Meanwhile, existing home prices are still in deep adjustment, while the market in a state of decreasing price or increasing volume. Looking at the leading indicators, Beike's volume of the home tours were higher than last year's average, indicating that buyers are actively seeking to purchase homes. Meanwhile, so far in this year, the growth rate of both month-over-month and the year-over-year existing home listings in the top 50 key cities have slowed down.

Unlike in September of last year, when numbers of listings surged under the more policy loosening, there has been no similar surge in this year. Overall, people in the market have become more rational. In terms of the transaction structure, the proportion of the home purchase by the first-time buyers has increased in the short term, rising from around 30% to around 35%. This is partly due to the price adjustments and the easing policies, which have lowered the barriers and the cost for buyers, which need to like school enrollment for their kids or the residential permit re-registration. In addition, issues with new home pre-sales, making of effective supply and a trend towards luxury housing have pushed some first-time home buyers out of the new home market.

Positive trends in the first-time buyers entering the market are also aiding at the front end of the housing upgrade trend, increasing the customer accumulation and activation. For new home market, the new home market continue to see weakness in supply and demand with low expectations. From January to April, GTV of top hundred real estate developers declined by around 47% year-over-year. This is historical low. On the demand side, potential buyers with home upgrade demand are more focused on large-sized homes. Data from China Index Academy indicates that in key cities, the proportion of the new home units with four or more rooms has increased from 21% in 2020 to 25% this year. Additionally, a substantial demand for other type of new homes is flowing into the existing home market.

On supply side, in light of sluggish new home sales, developers are adopting pro-cyclical business strategy, getting back from the land auction and project launch, with insufficient new effective supply and the high inventory levels at the end of March 2024. For the CRIC data shows that the average inventory turnover period for the new homes in 80 cities was extended to 24.4 months. With the strengthening of policy, we believe that the expectation for new home market will improve. For your second question, this year, one of Beike's key focus area is the construction of online infrastructure at the customer front end and the business needs acquisition. In the past, we firmly invested in solving the pain points that the customers encounter were actively searching for homes through our authentic listing and the home listing centric emphasis.

In today's various market, customers have a wider range of choices and longer decision-making periods, making it even more crucial to start from the customer perspective. We aim to provide the real and effective information and better understand and translate customer needs. Therefore, we are updating our ways of connecting with customers, our service models, and the online content that we provide. Regarding the user connection methods, previously, user would only connect with us on our APP when they need it. Now, we have added proactive ways to connect with users, hoping to better utilize both internal and external traffic channels to proactively reach out to them. For example, we use live streaming and short videos which better align with user habits.

In terms of the service models, we are making service providers, rather than the house itself, the first online contact point for the customer. We believe that only by doing so, can we better explore and understand customer needs and provide better services. Based on this approach, we have introduced the new online roles for the service providers, such as streamers, house selection consultant. These roles help build personal brands and attract customers. On the content front, in addition to share first their information display, we have diversified our content, including market trends in commercial areas, land auction information, and the property analysis. We expand property listing and provide professional home buying consultation services through short videos and the live streaming.

One of our initiative is, Galaxy Plan, just as our, chairman introduced in, letter, which aims to, cultivate new media talents from the store owners and agents on our platform.... helping them acquire customers through short video and, live streaming on external video platforms, enhancing both agent and the platform transaction activity. Currently, the Galaxy Plan covers the 63 cities nationwide, empowering a total of over 12,000 people. The influencer network has, accumulated tens of millions of the followers, with more than 600 agents having over 10,000 followers each. In the first quarter of 2024, a total over 2,000 housing transactions were, achieved by the influencer through the new media customer acquisition, increasing by 103% year-over-year.

We have also established a comprehensive empowerment system for the online influencer, including online and offline courses system and the mentorship program. This system covers the various stage of empowerment from the account incubation to long-term operation and business lead efficient conversion. In terms of the content, Beike's massive housing resources provide a strong content support for the agents. Meanwhile, we empower agents to improve their online influence through the various methods such as the sector analysis, property evaluation, dynamic maps, and skills in popular tools, and also the copyright. We also graded accounts based on the indicator, such as the followers numbers, conversion rates, and the performance matching with their traffic support and other incentive mechanism to give more streamers sustained growth and the long-term return opportunities. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from Timothy Zhao with Goldman Sachs.

Timothy Zhao (Research Analyst)

Hello.[Foreign Language]. Thank you very much for taking my question.

I have two questions here. The first one is regarding our investments into the core home transition business. Just wondering, could management share any color on what is our key focus for this year in terms of investments and how to evaluate the ROI of investments? And we used to mention that for this year, one of the big key focuses is to increase the number of connected stores. Just wondering, what is the latest updates, and how to think about the efficiency, the efficiency impact on the existing stores from increasing connected store number? And the second question is on our outlook for the new home sales or the new home GTV on the platform after a relatively weak first quarter. Just wondering, what is your outlook here? Thank you.

Stanley Peng (CEO)

Yes, thank you, Timothy. For your first question, in this year, we are major focused on the growth with enhanced quality and efficiency with our housing transaction business. Actively connecting with more high-quality brands, stores, and agents is one of our main investment directions. The results have surpassed our expectation in both scale and efficiency. On store connection, we have been proactively connecting with the stores to our network since September last year. By end of the first quarter, the number of active stores increased by 1.4% compared to the previous quarter. In addition, over 1,000 new stores, including those being prepared for opening, were signed in the first quarter. The 90-day retention rate of those newly connected stores remains at a high level of around 98%.

Our market penetration has further improved, showing considerable gains in cities, for example, in Ningbo and Yantai. Regarding efficiency, we have not lowered the entry barrier or the threshold, or so-called to sacrifice quality of the, for the sake of each function. The average number of agents per new store is slightly lower than that of the platform is in stores, but it can maintain steady growth. The efficiency of newly connected stores continued to rise rapidly. For the stores connected since last September and up to March of this year, the average revenue per store increased by 100% within six months of the operation. Moreover, by end of March, the productivity per agent in these newly signed stores reached over 90% of that in the existing stores on the platform.

In addition, we are seeing that in the newly connected stores, some small stores, such as family-operated stores with around two agents, have performed well due to their deep community involvement, especially considering per capita efficiency. Within three months of the connecting to the network, the agent productivity in those small stores was 16% higher than the average of agent productivity of stores connected during the same period. Those competitive small stores also inspire us to further connect with the various type of stores, enhancing our ability to serve them on the platform. We aim to implement more refined stores tier management. We also achieved better than expected ROI for those investments. For overall perspective, the stores newly connected in Q4 2023 achieved a positive ROI by March of this year. In supporting our growth and scale, we are also very cautious with our investment strategy.

We primarily provide performance-based support, such as funding, storefront renovation, and business development to newly connected stores, rather than increasing personnel. This ensures the flexibility in our investment and streamlines our operations. For your second question, the new home market has remained tough since start of the year. In Q1, our new home GTV reached RMB 151.8 billion, a 45% drop year-over-year, but still better than the market. Revenue from new home transaction was RMB 4.92 billion, down 41.5% from the same period last year. This smaller decline compared to the GTV shows our stronger monetization capabilities. We believe our new home business will continue to show greater resilience and a solid performance. In Q1, we showcased this strength in multiple ways.

Number one, we made a significant breakthrough in our channel service operation capabilities. This year, the number of developers that achieved the strategic cooperation increased by 20% from the same period of last year, and the quality of those collaborations continue to improve. As we are expanding our coverage to most core and large-scale state-owned developers, we have already established strategic partnerships with the six out of the top 10 developers. Those high level of in-depth cooperation have facilitated our local teams to more actively pursue regional business expansion. We also made new breakthroughs in our cooperation terms. This includes not only strategic initiatives from the past, but also the new guaranteed payment terms that ensure the improved cash collection from our new home business. Based on those improvements, our new home cooperation project coverage ratio was 55% in Q1, an increase of 25% year-over-year.

This has also led to a more stable supply of the new homes. Number two, regarding our channel sales capability. As I mentioned earlier, we integrate our new and existing home business to develop an in-innovative model that make it easier for consumers to replace their old apartment with new ones. Considering customer needs, we also introduce a service like worry-free repayment and the care-free renovations, collaborating with developers, banks, and others to boost new home sales and address customers' home purchase challenges. Number three, we also strictly adhere to the risk control and the business management. In Q1, new home DSO was 69 days. The commission in the once model covered 46% of the total commission, being at a high level. The percentage of commission from SOE developers remained at high, at around 50%. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from Griffin Chan with Citi.

Griffin Chan (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, management, for taking my question. So my question is about home replacement policies. Local governments rolled out replacement policies to support upgrade demand. How does the management view the effect on overall housing demand, and how will Beike as a service leader in the new and existing home market to participate? Thank you.

Stanley Peng (CEO)

Thank you, Harry. For policy on inventory reduction, everyone is very focused on the inventory reduction or so-called de-stocking policies, which is a positive approach. In response to evolving supply and demand dynamics, the de-stocking policy has been re-introduced since its last implementation in the year of 2016. A new round of inventory reduction efforts is expected to help rebalance market supply and demand and improve market sentiment, also stabilize the price system in the market. It will also help developers sell off inventory and improve the liquidity, supporting stabilization in the new home market and ensuring project completion. Government-led repurchase of the homes for the conversion into affordable housing will also better meet the housing needs of the new urban residents. Currently, the relevant supporting policies are still in the formation stage.

For example, the central bank will provide RMB 300 billion in relending funds to support the local governments in acquiring some unsold homes and to convert them into affordable housing. More time is needed to observe the scope and impact of this policy's implementation. The other one is the major policy innovation this year regarding the destocking is initiatives to encourage residents to replace their old homes with new ones. This is the first time a policy has a link to previously independent decision and the new homes market. This is intent to stimulate the transactions and contribute to the stability of the market going forward. As of now, over 60 cities have introduced the housing old for-new policies, generally falling into two categories. That is, brokerage agency-led models and the government-led models.

So the subsidy of the acquisition of the old homes through the state-owned enterprise or developers. Regarding to Beike's participation and opportunities, we would like to say where developer agent and the home buyers sign the agreement, and also under this, this model, this will promoting the old homes and the buyer locking in the new home listing. We have been deeply involved and actively promoting this implementation. We pioneered the old for new models in Qingdao in the year of 2022, in collaboration with developers and the stores on our platform. This initiative brought innovative practice to local governments by activating transactions, and has inspired other city governments and the industrial or association to reference and to promote the Qingdao models. In Qingdao, our model has also received government endorsement and a substantial support in the form of one-stop administrative services.

With our strong capabilities in existing home sales through, and the courage of the homeowners for sell-one-and-buy-one transaction, we help developers attract additional and incremental buyers to accelerate the sales of new homes and collect back funds, offering a more efficient and a lower rate housing exchange experience to the client. Under our innovative sell old homes for new ones model in Qingdao, in the year of 2023, we completed nearly 200 transactions. Originally, these dormant deals were activated under this model. Currently, our such model, known as the barrier-free exchange, has already been introduced in 12 cities. We are also engaging with developers in more cities to iterate and innovate on this model. Looking forward, we hope to explore more new methods with the governments and developers to accelerate the inventory reduction. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from John Lam with UBS.

John Lam (Managing Director, Head of Asia Property Research)

Tao, Stanley,[Foreign Language] could management share a bit about the decoration business and also the rental business in terms of the progress and also any highlights?

Thank you.

Stanley Peng (CEO)

Thank you, John. Let me talk about the home renovation and the furniture services. We achieved strong growth in our home renovation and the furniture business in Q1. As for scale, our contract sales reached RMB 3.4 billion, up 26% year-over-year, with revenue growing by 71% to reach RMB 2.4 billion. In March, the total contract sales reached nearly RMB 2 billion, up around 53% year-over-year. The March contract sales in Beijing achieved a historical breakthrough. On the operation side, the contribution of the contract sales attributable to the customer referral from our real estate agent in Q1 also hit historical highs. This achievement resulted from the improvement of our customer acquisition ability and also the stronger delivery capabilities. Let me elaborate on that.

First, better integration for our housing transaction and the home renovation services highly improved our customer acquisition capabilities. In 2023, we aligned with our organizational structure, enabling each renovation business unit to work with brokerage stores. In return, renovation business also helped some home transactions. Customers receive a rough plan and budget for the home renovation before the housing transaction are completed. Our one-stop residential service model is taking initial shape. Meanwhile, the improving customer acquisition requires strong delivery capabilities. Our great efforts in delivery capability over the past few years have paid off. For instance, our average construction timeline dropped to 104 days in this Q1, decreasing by around 18 days compared to the same period of last year... We use a strategy that encourages healthy competition to ensure sufficient labor capabilities.

We also manage key process points strictly, including identifying potential delay risks ahead of time, to resolve the problem quickly and avoid delays. In this year, while ensuring steady growth in our business scale, we will focus on enhancing the quality. By implementing one-stop site management services and online quality control, we aim to proactively prevent issues, reduce their occurrence, and improve customer satisfaction. Regarding the Beike rental business, in Q1, revenue from Beike rental services reached RMB 2.63 billion, increasing by 189.3% year-over-year, mainly due to the rapid increase in scale of rental property management services. Under our Carefree Rents model, we are managing over 240,000 units by the end of this Q1, compared to over 90,000 in the same period last year.

As of now, we have a total of nearly 270,000 units managed by Carefree Rents. The number of units managed under the centralized long-term apartment exceeded 11,000 by end of Q1, compared to around 7,000 in the same period last year. In terms of efficiency improvements and the operational waste control, the occupancy rate for Carefree Rents model increased by around 2.7 percentage points year-over-year to 96.5% at the end of Q1. We significantly reduced the rate of the vacancies by increasing coverage of the low rate Carefree Rents model and clearing out a batch of long-term vacant properties. Also, at the end of the first quarter, the occupancy rate of our self-operate apartments that have opened for over six months increased by around 3.8 percentage points year-over-year, reaching 94.8%. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We are now approaching the end of today's conference call. I will turn the call over to your speaker host today, Ms. Suting Li, for closing remarks.

Suting Li (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact Beike's investor relations team through the contact information provided on our website. This concludes today's call, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you and goodbye.