KE - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by for KE Holdings Inc.'s Q2 2023 earnings conference call. 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. Siting Li, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead, Siting.

Siting Li (IR Director)

Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to KE Holdings or Beike's Q2 2023 earnings conference call. The company's financial and operating results were published in the press release earlier today and are posted on our 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. Please apply 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 on 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. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Stanley Peng. Please go ahead, Stanley.

Stanley Peng (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Siting. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Beike's Q2 2023 earnings conference call. In the first half of the year, our performance improved significantly compared with the same period last year, with 43% year-on-year growth of our total GTV and a 51% year-on-year growth of our total revenue. Although the housing market experienced a surge and a subsequent adjustment on a quarterly basis, compared to the same period last year, China's real estate and residential market as a whole still demonstrated recovery. In addition, during the market correction, we successfully retained service providers, effectively reduced costs, and raised our efficiencies, all while rapidly expanding our emerging businesses. This combination of initiatives has enabled us to capitalize more effectively on the market rebound and outperform the market.

In the first half of this year, for our primary business of home transaction services, we continued to retain our ACN, optimize ecosystem, and refine platform operations while exploring growth in Lianjia. This all propelled our organic growth. The capabilities of our service providers have also expanded. Our home renovation and furnishing services have gained rapid growth momentum. We constructed the industry competitive mechanisms to have the good get better and established capabilities in customer acquisition, conversion, project delivery, data, products, supply chain, and others. This has led to growth in our service quality and scale, as well as the economic performance of our home renovation and furnishing service businesses. While total contract sales in the first half of the year reached CNY 6 billion, and total revenue reached CNY 4 billion.

Going forward, we expect to replicate our success in leading cities to more areas and gradually establish a virtuous cycle across the board. Our rental property management services business has also achieved meaningful development. In the Q2, the scale of our Carefree Rent improved significantly to reach 120,000 units under management, and the occupancy rate reached 94.5%. Today's housing industry has reached an inflection point in the course of its development. The traditional golden age of real estate was accompanied by 30 years of reform and opening up, along with rapid urbanization and a substantial demographic dividend. As the per capita living area increased, houses have been in short supply, leading to a one-way increase in property prices.

Buying a house became the core goal of many people in China. In the process, real estate has gradually strayed away from its initial function to providing to provide residential homes. Instead, it has taken on the dual role of an investment asset and a speculative tool. However, all that deviation from their intended course will return to their original track, and today, the industry is reverting to its core value proposition. The essential function of real estate is once again serving people with quality living. The true golden age of focusing on people and living has just begun. Amidst this shift, customer rising demand for better living is far from being fulfilled. In other words... There is a central challenge in today's house market and the foreseeable future.

All of the disparity between customer demand for more joyful living and the inadequate supply of quality services and products. This contradiction motivates us to climb our next mountain and introduces substantial growth opportunities in our future. Our solution to resolve the supply and demand imbalances includes two essential components: providing joyful living for customers in China. In Chinese, we call it Anju, and facilitating fulfilling careers for service providers, which we call Leye in Chinese. This is also a continuation of our mission of admirable services, joyful living. Specifically, we have upgraded our corporate strategy to One Body, Three Wings, accompanied by our organizational alignment. This evolution represents the strategic intention and a deepening of our one body, two wings model, with a focus on our customers and frontline value creation.

We have, we have established four business lines, housing transaction services, home renovation and furnishing services, home rental services, and our newest addition, Beihaojia, where we are engaging in new home supply-side upgrades. Each of these tailored businesses caters to customers' residential aspirations and service providers' diverse career aspirations. In the process of providing joyful living, Anju, for customers, superior goods and services will see great benefits, whether they relate to the property itself or the provision of a wide range of residential necessities, such as renting, purchasing, trusteeship, home renovation, and furnishing, and so on. Next, I will go into more detail about how we define good products and services for joyful living within the context of our One Body, Three Wings strategy.

Regarding our one body, home transaction services businesses, its value will be more obvious after market normalizes, enabling more sustainable and healthier development. When identifying the right property becomes more challenging and emotional for customers, service providers must establish trust, emphasizing the importance of building emotional connections around these relationships. Foster this type of customer relationships, which allow service providers the opportunity to provide more value-added services and add value for communities around joyful living. It will also enable consumers to redefine how service providers are viewed and unleash the huge potential of our ACN. We also have significant room to further enhance customer experience with our home transaction services. On one side, the bargaining power of home buyers continue to rise. On the other side, homeowners are facing intense demand for quick property sales and exchange.

This will inevitably reshape the service dynamics of the brokerage industry and direct the way to better consumer experience in the next phase of industry evolution. Meanwhile, we see room for further value creation in deeper integration with communities and in the evolution of consumers and aesthetics. All these opportunities are allowing our core business to become a key force in joyful living. Next, we come to our first wing business, home renovation and furnishings. At a time when housing experience is becoming increasingly important, consumers have high expectation for housing improvements. As such, home renovation and furnishings are often top of mind when consumers require a better home experience. But the pain points for this industry are very clear.

To address these pain points, we are moving away from an assembling model and toward a product-centric philosophy that focuses on people. Customers should feel at ease when they undertake renovations, and we can help them through this process. This means providing one-stop services, which removes many of the complications felt by customers. We should also be able to help consumers pursue better living. For example, in addition to construction and installation, our refined capabilities, facilities, smart homes, maximizing the efficiency of a home's living area, and offering fluid designs that complement customers' preferences. To achieve this, we will continually push industry transformation through digitalization and complex working process reconstruction to enhance customer experience and increase service providers' efficiencies. Our second wing is Beike rental services.

Today, renting is gradually becoming a way of life, with houses are for living in, not for speculation... reshaping the market dynamics that previously favor property sales over rentals. The resilience between growing rental supply and demand represents a historical opportunity for us to expand our rental services. On the supply side, a substantial portion of Chinese assets is tied to real estate, making preserving and a reasonably appreciating property value crucial to families. More home owners want their properties to be better cared for, and rental property management services can be streamlined and more convenient. On the demand side, for tenants, we aspire to comprehensively elevate the rental experience through customer-centric products and services, transforming the concept of renting a house from a transitional compromise to an appealing option.

In turn, this can foster a balanced approach between renting and purchasing. We are pleased that our Carefree Rent has made initial strides in the rental space, and we will keep looking for ways to use our technological platform and operational advantages to create value for the marketplace and society. Moving to our newly added third wing, Beihaojia. The traditional model has been driven by first home buying demand, increased leverage, and attempt to rapidly acquire a house and enjoy asset appreciation. These driving forces are becoming outdated in a market with stabilizing housing prices. A new consumer trend is taking shape that prioritize quality and experience. As a result, there is an increasing evident demand for high-quality housing products. Going forward, market differentiation might come from the difference in the quality of houses being built.

This translates to a call for supply side improvements in the new home market. It's our responsibility and opportunity to heed this call. We will establish capabilities and explore innovative offerings in order to define quality houses based on customer demand, build good products and services, and enable value chain partners to promote the housing industry supply side upgrades. Moving to how we can let service providers have a full, fulfilling career, Lianjia. The residential service sector operator operates and revolves around agents and stores. Service providers are our core assets. Investing in their growth and guiding their self-improvement results in a steady increase in our corporate assets. As real estate resumes its fundamental purpose of providing a space to live, stores and agents will also shift from scale expansion to optimize efficiency. In this regard, several trends come into view.

Firstly, building a sustainable relationship based on professionalism and integrity is increasingly crucial for rental, for real estate agents. As properties return to the most fundamental residential function, the dynamic between customers and agents change from information-based to trust-based. A knowledgeable and reliable agent becomes more valuable when market transactions slow down, and it becomes harder to identify the right property. As such, agents' role and skills must evolve from transaction facilitators to long-lasting community housing service experts. We see many areas of this dynamic where we can help. For example, the operational efficiency of mid-level agents has the potential to be significantly improved. Additionally, there is great room for development in terms of community engagement. Our goal is to support our agents to become the bridges that connect community with better living conditions in the future.

Second, the trend toward a large store model is unquestionable. As more commission might be directed to agents who provide value to customers directly, store owners' profitability might decrease. As such, bigger stores with higher revenue potential are crucial to improving efficiency and realizing greater returns for both store owners and agents. To this end, we have persistently pursued a large store strategy since 2022. By the end of June this year, we have effectively restructured over 4,500 stores. Stores on our platform achieved an average efficiency improvement of 80%, year-over-year in the first half of this year. Certainly, the large store model fosters a new relationship between our store owners and agents that goes beyond a mere employer-employee relationship, evolving into a partnership or collaboration. Store owners must treat agents-...

as both employees and the management and clients who require support, empowerment, and services. On our end, we need to stimulate creative thinking among store owners in order to benefit from the new trend. With these changes, we hope not only to make a timely adjustment, but also to become a trendsetter. We have started by establishing entire rankings infrastructure for stores and agents, as well as standards for both stores and individuals. These are the first step to enhance the management and operational capabilities of the platform and store owners, helping to cultivate a robust agent talent pool. Our continuous efforts encompass seminars on values, rules, and a protocol-based management, training and empowerment programs, certification systems, and establishing a more rational payment distribution structure.

Through these initiatives, we can enhance the efficiency of store owners committed to taking good care of service providers, and facilitate service providers' transformation from taking a job to entering a professional and engaging in fulfilling careers. To close, I'm both energized and awed by the tremendous possibilities and the growing pain ahead. As the housing industry transforms from high growth to a focus on quality and stability, we will continue to solidify our core competencies. At the same time, we will have the courage to reform and break new ground, altogether creating new values while undertaking historical mission and social responsibilities. We are in the foothills of the next mountain on our quest, and we look forward to the exciting roadmap ahead. Thank you, everyone. I want to invite our CFO, Mr.

Xu Tao, to present the financial highlights for the Q2.

Tao Xu (Executive Director and CFO)

Thank you, Stanley, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. Before going into the details of our Q2 financial results, I would like to provide a brief update on the housing market over the first half of this year. The market trends for the first half of the year are in line with the projection that we made at the beginning of this year. Overall transaction volume gradually normalized following the post-COVID rebound, fueled by the pent-up demand. Since the Q2, the lingering effects of the pandemic have become more pronounced, with the pressure on household income and the employment expectations, sluggish export and declining FDI, posing challenges to the economy recovery. In the real estate market, divergent price expectation between buyers and sellers, along with the policy loosening speculations, have intensified the market wait-and-see attitude, leading to a deceleration in transaction cycles.

Meanwhile, in the high-tier cities, policy optimization targeting the unleashing of the home upgrade demand have yet to materialize, maintaining obstacle to the release of the reasonable demand. Under the various factors, the market underwent a noticeable quarter-over-quarter adjustment in transaction volume in Q2. Meanwhile, the home market continues to grapple with the debt risks of developers. Both supply and demand have remained weak due to the constraints of the effective new home supply and ongoing consumer concerns about project delivery, following a series of defaults by some top property developers. However, we also noticed that the leading indicators of the home demand have been relatively resilient. For instance, the number of the home choices made in Q2 remained above the historical average in recent years, which is indicative of the continued underlying strength in overall demand.

In general, the overall market saw notable year-over-year growth in the first half of the year. We have always maintained a neutral market view, and our persistence is bearing fruit. We have continuously enhanced the support for the service providers and store owners, implemented effective cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and fine-tuned our operations. These measures, coupled with the rapid growth of our emerging business, have resulted in our outstanding performance and have better positioned us to seize opportunities in the market recovery amidst the fluctuations. In the first half of this year, our GTV reached RMB 1.75 trillion, up 43% year-over-year. During the Q2, our GTV amounted to RMB 780.6 billion, reflecting a 22.1% year-over-year increase.

Furthermore, our net revenue in Q2 increased by a faster rate at a 41.4% year-over-year to reach RMB 19.5 billion, beating both high ends of our guidance and the street consensus. In addition, net revenue from the new home sales services have expanded quarter-over-quarter for the past five quarters. Our business, apart from the housing transaction services, which include the home renovation and the furnishings and the rental services, achieved significant on-year growth, contributing to a revenue share of over 20%. For the first time, in Q2, our gross margin stood at 27.4%, and the GAAP net income reached RMB 1.3 billion. On a Non-GAAP basis, our net income reached RMB 2.364 billion, compared with the net loss of RMB 690 million for the same period last year.

By business segment, in Q2, its in-home transaction GTV increased by 16% year-over-year, as the market recovered to a certain extent from the lower base last year, and thus through our continuing enhancements in the operation efficiency, which further supported our performance. Nevertheless, on a quarter-over-quarter basis, the in-home market experienced a considerable adjustment in Q2, following the intensive release of pent-up demand, resulting in a 31.3% sequential decrease in our in-home GTV. In particular, due to the more pronounced market sentiment adjustment in the first-tier cities, the sequential adjustment in its in-home GTV was notably higher than that of the connected brands. With a relatively stable monetization rate, in Q2, net revenue from its in-home transaction services amounted to CNY 6.4 billion, up 15.9% year-over-year and down 13.1% quarter over quarter.

While the overall new home market remains subdued, the willingness of developers to adopt external sales channel continue to increase, offering us a resilient target market. Building upon this foundation, our new home business maintained a robust operational momentum and a commensurable sales through rate, boosted by our ongoing refined operations, ecosystem optimization, and our commission in advance model, which is preferred by developers. In Q2, new home transaction GTV on our platform increased by 32.4% year-over-year, and 6.2% quarter-over-quarter. Net revenue from new home rose by 30.4% year-over-year, and 3.5% quarter-over-quarter. Total CNY 8.7 billion, of which commissions from SOE developers constitutes 46.8%, and the project with the commission in advance contributes 53% of total commission collected, remaining at a high level.

Our home renovation and the furniture business has taken off this year, with breakthroughs in both scale and efficiency, reaping the benefits of the steadfast investment in our capability over the past few years, as well as a successful integration with Chengdu. Starting from February, monthly contracted sales have consistently exceeded CNY 1 billion for five consecutive months, and the total contracted sales for the first half of this year reached over CNY 6 billion. In Q2, total contracted sales stood at CNY 3.4 billion, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 170%, and a sequential increase of 28.2%. Our pace of revenue recognition accelerated in Q2, as the seasonal factor from the spring festival subsided, and our delivery capability improved.

As such, we achieved net revenue of RMB 2.6 billion, up 157.5% year-over-year, and 86.4% quarter-over-quarter. Net revenues from the first six months of this year exceeded RMB 4 billion. In our leading cities, such as Beijing, we have established healthy operational cycles. In Beijing, our monthly contracted sales surpassed RMB 200 million in May and June, with the city level net margin exceeding the industry ceiling. The verified business model in Beijing provides a foundation for our rapid re-replication in additional cities. We will roll out this proven model in new cities we enter, which will gradually make higher contributions to our total revenue as we expand.

In Q2, our net revenue from emerging and other services increased by 213.9% year-over-year, and 36% quarter-over-quarter to reach RMB 1.7 billion, primarily driven by the growth of our rental property management services and the financial services. In terms of the profitability, contribution margin for our existing-home transaction services expanded by 8.9 points year-over-year to 45.6% in Q2, driven by the existing-home revenue growth, a decline in fixed labor cost, and a relatively stable variable cost ratio from previous years. On the sequential basis, despite the 30% quarter-over-quarter reduction in revenue scale, contribution margin for the existing-home transaction services only decreased by 3.4 points from Q1, remaining at over 45%. This signifies the sustained and robust profitability in our core business.

Contribution margin for the new home transaction services rose by 3.6 points year-over-year to reach 27.2%, resulted from the revenue expansion and the relatively streamlined personnel cost, making the highest point since our listing for 5 consecutive quarters. Our gross profit in Q2 registered 97.3% year-over-year growth to RMB 5.3 billion, as we benefited from the improved contribution margin of our major business segments.... as well as a decrease in store and other costs as a proportion of revenue, our gross margin stood at 27.4%, compared to 19.7% in the same period of last year. The slight 3.9 points decline from Q1's high, was mainly due to the change in our revenue mix, with the adjustment of existing home revenues.

In Q2, our GAAP operating expenses amounted to RMB 4.3 billion, among which sales and marketing expenses were RMB 1,649 million, increasing by 47.1% year-over-year, and a 27.5% quarter-over-quarter, due to the uptick in the marketing expenses for the home renovation and furnishing services and our home transaction business. General and other administrative expenses were RMB 2,105 million, down slightly from 2,250 million in the same period of last year, while increasing by 29.9% from Q1, primarily due to the lack of the bad debt provision written backs in Q2. The increase in the share-based compensation and the growth of emerging business.

While we have adopted a rigorous provision method over the past two years to fully provide for all foreseeable risks, we have encountered unforeseen instance of continued debt crisis faced by the top property developers, with a growing number of developers filing for the liquidation or bankruptcy. We have further raised the expected loss ratio for developers, with some being elevated to 100%. Especially in Q2, we set aside approximately RMB 64 million yuan as a bad debt provision for Country Garden, with a provision ratio exceeding 85%. We hope the industry can emerge quickly from this predicament and achieve stable and healthy development. Research and development expenses decreased by 39% year-over-year to RMB 475 million, primarily due to a headcount reduction, leading to a lower personnel cost and a share-based compensation.

Sequentially, R&D expenses remained relatively stable, with a slight increase of 4% from Q1. Our Non-GAAP operating expenses for Q2 amounted to CNY 3.3 billion, down 4.6% year-over-year. In Q2, revenue from operations amounted to CNY 1,081 million, a significant improvement from the loss from operations of CNY 1,580 million in the same period of last year. The operating margin increased to 5.5% in Q2 from -11% in the same period of 2022, thanks to our gross margin expansion and greater operating leverage. Our Non-GAAP income from operations for Q2 reached CNY 248 million, compared with the Non-GAAP loss from operations of CNY 690 million in the same period of last year.

Our Non-GAAP operating margin was negative eleven percent, compared to negative 5% in the same period of 2022. Q2 net income was RMB 1,300 million, compared with the net loss of RMB 1,866 million in the same period of last year. Non-GAAP net income for Q2 reached RMB 2,364 million, versus the net loss of RMB 690 million in the same period of 2022. Our balance sheet remains robust. As of June 30th, 2023, the combined balance of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term investments amounted to RMB 60.8 billion, or $8.4 billion. We spent approximately $346 million, or RMB 2.51 billion in the share repurchase in Q2.

On top of that, our total cash liquidity, which accrues customer deposit payable, amounted to RMB 79.4 billion, up RMB 680 million from Q1. Our net operating cash outflow was RMB 196 million in Q2. Excluding customer deposit payable, the operating cash flow, the operating cash inflow was RMB 1,754 million. We remain staunch in our commitment to rigorous receivable management. In Q2, our cash collection from new home business increased to RMB 10.06 billion, surpassing the new home revenue for the eighth consecutive quarter. New home DSO in Q2 was 52 days, making a new record low since we went public. Turning to our guidance for the Q3 of 2023.

We expect the total revenue to be between RMB 15.5 billion-RMB 16 billion in Q3, representing a decrease of approximately 9.1%-11.9% from the same period of 2022. This forecast consists the potential impact of the real estate-related policies and the macroeconomy recovery status, that constitutes the current and the preliminary view on our business situation and the market condition, which are subject to change. We have always placed great emphasis on the shareholder returns, leverage our robust cash reserves, and improved financial management, while enhancing shareholder value through the proactive shareholder return initiatives. We have maintained a strong share repurchase efforts. From the program initiation in September 2022, we have concluded a year of buyback.

Over this period, we cumulatively repurchased the share worth around $605 million, representing approximately 57% of our free cash flow during 2022. The ADS bought back totaled nearly 41 million, accounting for approximately 3%-3.24% of the company's total share prior to the launch of our 2022 repurchase program. These shares have already been fully canceled. This year alone, we have spent close to $414 million in buybacks, and the repurchased share amount for 2.12% of our total shares. Moreover, today, company's board approved the extension of the existing share repurchase program until August 31, 2024, with the repurchasing authorization being increased from $1 billion-$2 billion.

At the same time, we are pleased to announce that the board has approved a special cash dividend of $0.057 per ordinary share, or $0.171 per ADS, to holders of ordinary shares and to holders of ADS as of record September 15, 2023, respectively. The aggregate amount of the special dividend to be paid will be approximately $200 million, which will be funded by surplus cash on the company's balance sheet. We hope to share the benefit of the development with like-minded investors who accompany the company in the growth journey and transcend cycles. While distributing the dividends, we are also continuously expanding into the new business, seeking organic and sustainable growth.

At this stage, the primary contradiction in our society is the contradiction between the unbalanced and the inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life. The Politburo meeting, held in the late July, made an important assessment of the new situation, where supply-demand dynamics of the real estate market have undergone major changes. The real estate market is going through a rapid transformation from a seller's market to a supply-demand balance. Against this backdrop, the home upgrade-oriented demand is gaining prominence. This trend is accompanied by the elimination of excess capacity, consumers' strong demand for the better living, and the establishment of the long-term mechanism within the real estate market. All of these will all contribute to a more stable environment and sustain the impetus for the industry development.

Our financial strategy entails maintaining a robust balance sheet and a healthy cash flow while practicing stringent risk management. We will persistently enhance efficient capital allocation, concentrate on critical growth drivers, foster frontline endeavor, support continuously efficiency gain for our agent and store, expand our agent with a healthy platform ecosystem, increase income for the service providers, and solidify the fundamental capability of emerging business, including home renovations. Amidst the recovery of the real estate market and ongoing breakthroughs in our new business, we will make a reasonable investment in scale and marketing to further boost our business momentum. Furthermore, we will prudently explore transformation and upgrades in other areas related to better living.

On the cost side, we will have a clear total cost level, manage the efficiency of the investment, and ensure that money that should be spent must be spent, and the money that shouldn't be spent will not be spent, and the money spent should demonstrate the clear efficiency and effectiveness, thus supporting the business operation effectively. We believe that in the vast market of the residential services, we will gain huge potential and certainty of growth. We will always uphold neutral market perspective, while firmly believing that the Chinese economy will continue to adjust, consolidate, enrich, and enhance the long path of the high-quality growth. We still hold the strong belief that the next China is China. This concludes our prepared remarks. Now, we are open for the questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator (participant)

Yes, thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star, then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star, then two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to one question, and if you have additional questions, you can re-enter the queue. If you are going to ask a question in Chinese, please follow with the English translation. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. The first question comes from Alex Yao with JP Morgan.

Alex Yao (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you, management, for giving me this opportunity to ask a question. I have a question about the macro market. Just now, actually, in the prepared remarks, we also talked about the fluctuations in the market in the first half of the year, including the market supply and demand structure changes. Can you further elaborate and tell us how we view the half-year real estate market fluctuations? And how do we view the current residential transaction market's supply and demand structure? So with recent policy and this increasingly active statements, how do we look at the second half of the year outlook?

So let me translate it. Can you guys talk about the market volatility, property market volatility in the first half this year, and also whether the supply and demand structure has changed in the current home transaction market? And finally, how do you think about the market outlook after the recent positive policy statement? Thank you.

Tao Xu (Executive Director and CFO)

Yeah, thank you, Alex. Overall, we believe existing home market will improve this year from the trend conditions in 2022 at the bottom of the cycle. The recovery trend will strengthen confidence in the market. Both supply and demand side have become more responsible to the policy relaxation. The market's recovery and the supportive policies are expected to ease the lingering effect of the three years pandemic. We believe the China economy cycle has a strong vitality, and we believe the property market will usher in a new period of the recovery and growth. The new home market faces the risk of concluding the year with a year-over-year decline. Considering the current market economy pressure, unemployment rate, and the resident expectation, they still require further improvement and the impact of the continued debt crisis that are leading the private developer face.

The willingness of the developer to adopt additional sales channel continues to increase. Rather than fixate on the overall market scale, we place a great emphasis on the sustainable, healthy, and stable growth of the broker channel sales market. This is our target drive market and where we see more opportunity to benefit. In the first half of the year, we experienced a market surge and a subsequent fall. The rapid increase in the Q1 elevated the market expectations. Since April, the market has retreated notably, with existing home sales on our platform continuing to decline from April to June. New home sales also contracted on a sequential decline and showed a year-over-year decline in June for over 28%. The reason for this decrease is threefold. First, the market is normalizing. Second, the market's previous expectations were too high.

During the normalization, the gap between the reality and the expectations for the dampen the market confidence. Third, the macro economy has been under pressure since the Q2 of this year. This has shown in the employment rate and import, export data, which also caused the fluctuation in resident confidence. The 3-year pandemic has left a long-lasting impact on the economy, and it will take time and effort to force this prolonged effect to further eliminate. As for the market, in the first half of the year, first, the market trends have severely divergent. We are seeing this even in different districts within a single city. In recent 5 years, just take Beijing and Shanghai as an example.

The core area of Beijing and Shanghai has performed very differently than that in the outer suburbs, with the housing price index of the former to reach 40-50 percentage points higher than the latter. Second, in the, in terms of the supply, demand structure, the home upgrade demand is still the most essential force in the market. On supply side, the proportion of new latest homes with age under 5 years and the age over 20 years has increased the most significantly. The increasing supply of the high quality and the relatively new homes in the single market provides more choices for buyers. From demand perspective, in the first half of the year, the proportion of the transaction involving the demographic and the housing unit type of this home upgrade demand have further increased.

The proportion of customers aged 35-44 have increased by 2%-35% compared with the year of 2022. The proportion of the unit, about 90 square meters, has increased by three percentage to 37, compared with the year of 2022. Whether from supply or demand perspective, the houses in key city area and the homes from upgrade-oriented demand are still the primary market focus. Third, the existing home are playing a bigger role in satisfying the home upgrade demand, supporting the overall existing home demand to be stable. Whereas in the new home market, it will still take time to digest the cumulative risks related to developers, and the effective supply in core areas is limited.

While in a market with a strong performance of the existing home, and as the demand for the new home continues to be diverted to the existing home market. The comparative advantage of existing home remains significant, and existing home demand is also relatively stable. In June, our monthly existing home tours index fell only by 1.7% from April, and even recorded a rebound in July. According to our research, in the Q2, the number of the residents with a home purchase plan even rose by 1% compared to the Q1. The steady demand side data supports, supports our view that the market adjustments in the Q2 are shortened, normal corrections, not a, a in- not a implication point indicating a long-term trend.

For the second half of this year and going forward, we first want to emphasize that our market is not as suitable for linear extrapolation, linear extrapolation based on a single quarter's fluctuation. It has the inherent cycle and rooms for structure and the directional growth. In the future, we believe the active policies will bring better support for the market recovery. Based on our objective understanding of market dynamics and the neutral market perspective, we also believe the market will recover. The Politburo meeting, held on July 24th, emphasized that the need to effectively prevent and resolve risks in the key areas, particularly while adopting the significant change in the supply-demand dynamics of China real estate market.

It is necessary to adjust and optimize real estate policies in a timely manner, make good use of policy toolbox for city-specific measures to better meet the rigid and improvement-oriented housing demands, promoting the stable and healthy development of the real estate market. With the implementation of the relevant supportive policies, we expect the existing home market to be bottom in June and recover in the second half, while the new home market will find a bottom among the fluctuation in the Q3. Since the Politburo meeting, we have observed that in Beijing and Shanghai, the number of home tours, new customer demands, and the transaction volume are the first to pick up. The potential rollout of the improvement demand-related policies is expected to activate more than 50% of the population in demand structure for the amplifying and activating the home replacement chain.

At the same time, real estate is not only a steel and a concrete, but also a carrier of the economy, happy lives, and the inspiring dreams. In the long run, real estate assets, service, and efficiency needs to be comprehensively improved to better align with the customer demand for the better living. Recently, the government authorities issued measures on promoting home furniture consumption, focusing on smart homes, one-step, one-stop home furniture solution, old home renovation, et cetera. The recommendation put forward measure to comprehensively promote the house furnishing consumption, fully release the potential of the housing industry value chain, and facilitate the overall improvement of people's quality of life. We believe that in the future, the housing industry will be more mature and the comprehensive entering into a new stage of growth founded by higher quality. Thank you.

Miranda Zhuang (Equity Research Analyst, Internet)

Operator.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Miranda Zhuang (Equity Research Analyst, Internet)

Go ahead.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Timothy Zhao with Goldman Sachs.

Timothy Zhao (Equity Research Analyst)

好的，感谢管理层接受我的提问。那我想请教一下管理层，关于公司的这个核心赛道的业务，那包括新房和二手房的交易，那我们应该如何看待公司的长期的这个增长和提高的空间？那我们在这方面有哪些具体的这个战略举措，以及今年以来我们在这方面有哪些进展？ Could management share your thoughts on how we should look at the longer-term growth outlook for the core home transaction businesses, including the new home and secondary home transactions, as well as what is the room for the further efficiency enhancement in the core businesses?

What is your specific strategic actions in this regard, and any color that you can share on the progress year-to-date will be helpful? Thank you.

Tao Xu (Executive Director and CFO)

Yep. Thank you, Timothy. Benefiting from the better empowerment and the retention of the service providers, effective cost reduction and the efficiency enhancement measures during the market corrections, Beike achieved the rapid growth during the market recovery in the Q1 of this year. Our housing transaction services have built on this foundation and continue to more deeply refine form operations and drive breakthroughs of the Lianjia's business. This have led to the steady growth of our housing transaction services, while allowing Beike to better meet customer needs and elevate the service providers' efficiency and income. As for our core business, we are implementing policies according to the distinctive development status of different regions.

In the cities where our existing connected stores are insufficiently in scale, we aim to ramp up the connection with the high-quality stores, while supporting stores' ability to recruit agents, conduct suitable training and overall management. The number of our stores in the first half of this year increased by almost 10% from the end of last year, and the number of agents increased by 17%.... In the cities where we reached a certain scale, we are dedicating our efforts to enhancing our efficiency and quality, which are mutually reinforcing and inseparable. On the storefront, we are promoting a competitive mechanism based on store ranking, which has also been extended to our external new home sales channel.

We are also dedicated to promote our large store strategy and creating dedicated homepage for store owners, and are leveraging digitalized operation analysis tools to enhance their efficiency in business management and facilitate more intuitive interaction with our platform. Our next step will be help store owners elevate their business understanding and improve their management approaching, using online products and a dedicated operation support staff, thereby driving successful of store and brokerage brands. Tapping three more granular elements in our operation, the houses, customer, and agents. We continue to refine our recent operation and promote collaboration and a more focused operation by agents, ultimately achieving enhanced efficiency.

For instance, on the home listing side, in the first half of this year, underpinned by our systematic capabilities, we implement a home listing operation mechanism of home listing maintenance score and a store to home listing program, matching, nationwide. This allows agents to focus on specific, community while improving home maintenance capability and the transaction efficiency. On new home side, we are also implementing the focused project strategy to drive sales through efficiency. In terms of home customer matching, we launched a product called Point to Point as an inter-agent channel for the flow of the home listing, improving the home customer matching efficiency and the home listing inventory liquidity. As a result, the 14-day sell-through rate of our home listing through this tool improved from 6% to around 12%.

As for agent customer matching, we completed the comprehensive optimization of our online sales leads allocation for the existing home and new home transaction services, which take into account both fairness and efficiency to support junior agents' growth. With respect to the ecosystem governance, to address the issue of the private transfer orders that every platform in the this industry is facing, we achieved a new breakthroughs in our business conduct governance. We empower our client achievement team by creating digital tool and promoting closed loop management awareness, identify risk, and fix any issue found. Through our integrated online, offline governance system, service providers on our platform now engage in a proactive self-review instead of being passively supervised. Store owners and agents now hold elevated trust in our platform, and their sense of compliance has improved.

For new homes, we promote developers with all sales channel to jointly abide by the Sunshine Promise, a series of pledges on the transparent operations, and promoting industry-wide compliance. As of end of June, more than 5,000 cooperative real estate projects have been covered by this Sunshine Promise. Going forward, we will continue to focus on the enhancing our service capability to store owners and homeowners. In the context of the increased cross-district new home projects and the chain transaction of existing homes, we hope to further improve our customer targeting capability to match customer with the respective new home projects and enhance our understanding of the customer needs in a more systematic ways, thereby strengthening our collaboration network and improving matching efficiency. In the cities where our network coverage are already at a high level, we are further enhancing efficiency and quality of our ACN.

We are pursuing a growth of our core and emerging business and the breakthroughs of our emerging business. Meanwhile, despite the possible volume decline in the new home market, developers have been more willing to adopt external sales channels. Instead of the total addressable market, we put more emphasis on and benefit more from the sustainable, healthy, and steady growth of our addressable market. That is the brokerage channel sales market. For our direct operation Lianjia business, first, we continued to leverage our large store model to take our agent income to the next level. In the first half of this year, the average number of agents per Lianjia store reached 18%, up 16% year-over-year. Lianjia's average agent's income to average social income index, also improved by 14% year-over-year. Second, we continue to pilot innovative agent incentive mechanism.

Our goal is to create a working environment that benefits professional agents and managers' long-term development. Third, we will continue to enhance our service capability and increase investment in traffic acquisition to boost the brand momentum.... integrating the Lianjia brand. In the first half of this year, we refocused and centralized our service commitments, and then we will invest more brand cultivating going forward. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question comes from Harry Chen with Citigroup.

Harry Chen (SSA Trading)

Harry Chen, 你们好。我是花旗银行的分析师 Harry Chen。非常感谢有这个提问的机会啊。我想请王银成分享一下整装大家居业务的一个进展，和目前核心能力的一个建设进展，能否和大家梳理一下目前在咱们的一些标杆城市，例如杭州和北京的核心运营指标，以及单位经济模型的一个情况。我自己翻译一下。Thanks, management, for the opportunity. How's your home renovation and furnishing service business progressing?

Any updates on the development of your core capabilities? Could you share some key operating metrics and the unique economics model for the benchmark cities like Hangzhou and Beijing?

Tao Xu (Executive Director and CFO)

Thank you, Henry. The progress of our home renovation and furnishing business continue to exceed our expectations. In the Q2, our home renovation and furnishing service business sustained its growth momentum. The contracted sales reached around RMB 3.4 billion in the Q2, making the first half contracted sales volume to reach more than RMB 6 billion. The year-over-year growth rate in the Q2 continued to reach over 100%. Monthly, the home renovation order volume increased by over 90% year-over-year, contributing significantly to our expanding scale. As project completion and delivery accelerated, our revenue for the Q2 surpassed RMB 2.6 billion, making a 91% increase year-over-year, and eighty-six percent increase quarter over quarter.

In cities where we have the leadership, we have established a virtual cycle of the scale, quality, and economy performance. Beijing and Hangzhou were the first cities we entered and are leading the way in establishing a virtual cycle. Just take Beijing as a showcase. In terms of the scale, our contracted sales in the city exceeded CNY 600 million in the Q2, with monthly contracted sales surpassing CNY 200 million for two consecutive months, with the quarter revenue to reach over CNY 500 million. We expect Beijing's annual contract sales to exceed CNY 2 billion in this year. For Hangzhou, the contract sales volume for the Q2 also reached over CNY 500 million, and we expect their annual contract sales in this year to reach more than CNY 1.8 billion.

We can now simultaneously initiate and complete 1,000 home renovation units per month in Beijing. This is a significant breakthrough for the industry. In terms of the profitability, the quarterly operating profit in Beijing reached CNY 50 million, and the monthly operating profit exceeded CNY 10 million for five consecutive months. Using Beijing and Hangzhou as guiding examples, we are replicating the model and experience from this well-established city across the entire country. Shanghai is expected to break through the milestone of CNY 1 billion in annual contract sales, and to contribute annual revenue of CNY 700 million in this year, which mean it will reach the same scale as Beijing, trading one year ahead. We expect cities like Wuhan, Ningbo, Suzhou, and so on, to reach the same scale as Beijing and Hangzhou in our third wave of expansion.

As of middle of this year, after just 9 months of the integration of Wuhan, Shengdu and Beike, we achieved CNY 240 million in contract sales and CNY 120 million in revenue, each showing the growth rate exceeding 120% year-over-year, which is a strong testament to the effectiveness of our laser-focused sales strategy. Progress in the capacity development. The virtual cycle we have established at the city level is a result of our committed effort in developing capability, combined with consistent iteration for the improvement over years. Number 1, for the customer acquisition, we continue to empower agents to become the community expert and home advisor. Their effective and intensive customer acquisition and conversion has helped us break through the home renovation and furniture industry bottleneck at the top of the funnel.

This year, more than 45% of the home renovation customers were referred by our core business. Simultaneously, home renovation business is contributing to the growth of the home transaction and home rental services, the other way around. In Beijing, designers are involved in the management during the initial stage of the home transaction, and create the renovation design plan during the negotiation stage to facilitate the transaction completion. Our customer acquisition advantage frees us up from putting our main effort into acquiring the customer like our peers typically do. Instead, we can focus more on enhancing our core capabilities in home renovation and furniture business. This enable us to concentrate on the sense of the operation and overcome growth barriers.

Number two, for the management of the service provider, we have invested our resources in service providers, fundamentally redefine how they can earn the income and how they participate in the industry. This is achieved by the positive and the systematic order, dispatching, timely settlement, providing the incentive and the respect for the high-quality service providers, both financial and culturally. This shift has transformed the industry past practice of the bad money drives out of good money into the good quality wins. Number three, for the delivery capabilities, we invested technology and research, focusing on two things. First, we enhanced our reliance on the system and the rules for the progress management, not just on people. So we can build an end-to-end system that covers design, construction, materials, and supply chain.

Moreover, we installed AI-driven technology into improved customer acquisition and efficiency, which empower Beike to go beyond the traditional boundary of the project management, enable us scientifically and efficiently manage timeline, conduct the government and the service online. This ensure a high quality breakthrough in scale. Number four, for our product capability, we invested in product capabilities. Our products are based on the deep user insights, covering the rich SKU offers to meet specific user demand. As we keep developing our capabilities, we are confident that we can continuously improve our business towards a virtuous cycle of the quality, scale, economy return across various regions. Thank you.

Harry Chen (SSA Trading)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question.

Thank you. Next question comes from Miranda Zhuang with Bank of America Securities.

Miranda Zhuang (Equity Research Analyst, Internet)

Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. Can management elaborate more on the recent organization upgrade and structural change? What are the changes that have taken place, and what are the thoughts behind this upgrade? Thank you.

Tao Xu (Executive Director and CFO)

Okay, thank you, Miranda. The purpose of our organization structural adjustment is to establish a new formation to achieve our strategic goals. The strategies and business concepts requires new organization structure to undertake and implement them, focusing on joyful living, fulfill career, career services, and aspirated the call. We upgraded our strategy to one body, three wings. Our corresponding organizational adjustments is also the upgrade of our management philosophy and mechanism. The new organization structure is centered on customers and placing the front line at the center of our value creation. We have established four business lines. They are home transaction services, home renovation and furnishings, rental property management services, and Beihaojia, and nine function lines comprising finance, R&D, strategy, quality assurance, human resources, users, compliance, public affairs, and corporate collaboration.

Together, these are designed to provide joyful living for customers and fulfill careers for service providers. Our business lines will work to take care of customers, inspiring joyful living for customers in each city and fulfilling careers for different types of service providers. The function lines will leverage their professional capabilities to provide good services to home that defines and accompanies internal customers, and help different cities achieve the goals of the admirable services, joyful living. So these actions, we aspire to get rid of many of our creating and big company disease, and return to entrepreneurship in how we view ourselves, our customers, and internal partners. The adjustment of our organizational structure lays the foundation for company-wide consensus, and invite every individual to participate in very cool co-creation.

It will facilitate on unifying ideas and goals, help us grasp the essence of our industry throughout the cycles, and return to the natural that houses are for living in and in service of people and everyone demands a better living. Thank you.

Miranda Zhuang (Equity Research Analyst, Internet)

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We are now approaching the end of the conference call. I will now turn the call over to your speaker host today, Mr. Siting Li, for closing comments.

Siting Li (IR Director)

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

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect your lines.