KE - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for KE Holdings' fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. Please note that today's call, including the management's 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'll now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Siting Liu, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead, Siting.

Siting Liu (IR Director)

Thank you, Operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to KE Holdings, or Beike's, fourth quarter and fiscal year 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 developments, 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. Certain statistical and other information relating to the industry in which the company is engaged to be mentioned in this call has been obtained from various publicly available official or unofficial sources. Neither the company nor any of its representatives has independently verified such data, which may involve a number of assumptions and limitations, and you are cautioned not to give undue weight to such information and estimates. For today's call, management will use English as the main language. Please note that the Chinese translation is for convenience purposes only.

In the case of any discrepancy, management's statements in their 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 (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Siting. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Beike's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. Over the past year, China's real estate industry has matured fast. We have seen accelerated changes. Some changes are abrupt. For the past 30 years, the decision-making process for buying a home was relatively simple, and the risks of making the wrong decisions were low. The main concerns for buyers were speed. When a home became available, the question was simple: whether they could secure it. In this kind of market, brokerage companies grew by scaling up because the larger the network, the easier it was to access information, connect buyers and sellers, and close deals. Buyers didn't worry much about who they were buying from. Getting the home was what mattered.

Now that home prices are no longer on a one-way upward trajectory, there is more uncertainty in customer decision-making, and the costs of making the wrong decision are much higher. Because of this, buyers' needs have changed. First, they want to minimize the risks of buying a home and seek greater certainty in their purchasing decisions. Second, they prioritize living well, a subjective experience, and a feeling that's harder to capture and measure. Everyone is looking for the best possible solution. Our job, first and foremost, is to build the capability to reduce customer decision-making risks and help them find the best option. This is also how we see AI technology, both in terms of its potential and how we apply it.

Whether through AI or other tools, our goal is to help customers make the best decisions and guiding them to address various life challenges through better living solutions. Second, from the service provider's standpoint, a lot of the experience and knowledge they have built up in the past no longer applies. Consumers are asking us more questions, and their concerns are more complex. They also care more about who they are buying through, how knowledgeable they are, and whether or not they are reliable industry professionals. Service providers must be able to address these issues for their customers. The old approach of merely pushing listings to sell homes is no longer viable. Our assessment on the industry is that customers will become more selective about who they work with.

Top-tier agents will increasingly replace low-performing ones, and technology will give the best service providers an even greater edge, accelerating industry changes. These three forces will reshape the market faster than ever. Top-tier service providers will reap the rewards of greater brand premium and increased efficiency gains. At the same time, the industry will invest more in those service providers to ramp up their skills. The future isn't about relying on past experiences. The growth potential of the industry lies in the new power digit, enhancing service quality and empowering top-performing agents. This presents both an opportunity and a new demand for the platform, requiring us to more effectively support service providers and store owners in improving efficiency. Over the past years, we have achieved scale and met efforts to improve efficiency. On one hand, we are strong in our scientific management approach.

We set clear goals, break them down into precise steps, and focus on key factors that are driving results. We have embedded this in our system and use digital tools to streamline management and boost efficiency. Now, we need to bring these capabilities to store owners and our new businesses. On the other hand, while the industry's digitalization still has a long way to go, breakthroughs in AI technology have opened up exciting possibilities. We now see future potential to reshape service providers' capabilities, enhance the customer experience, and significantly improve our platform's operational efficiency. In 2024, we launched an active platform growth strategy. As a result, the number of IT stores grew by 80.3% year over year, reaching nearly 49,700. Our agent count rose to 445,000, increasing 12.1% year over year.

Despite major fluctuations in the real estate market, the number of stores and agents connected to our platform both reached record highs in 2024, allowing us to reach more customers than ever before. In 2024, we served 8.6 million customers. That means, on average, every hour of the year, approximately 1,000 families across the country both rented or renovated a property with our help. Helping Chinese people to live well is a mission that truly matters. For the full year, our GTV total RMB 3.35 trillion. Total revenue hits a record high of RMB 93.5 billion, growing over 20% year over year. Notably, our existing home transactions businesses also reached an all-time high, with GTV rising nearly 11% year over year to RMB 2.25 trillion.

Meanwhile, despite market adjustments backed by strong trust from developers and customers, our new home transaction business generated RMB 917 billion in GTV for the year, down just 3.3% year over year, while total revenue grew by 10% year over year. Our One Body Three Wings strategy has achieved interim success. For our home renovation and furnishing businesses, we continue to pursue scale growth in 2024 while establishing a positive cycle of scale, quality, and efficiency in Beijing. We completed renovation services for nearly 60,000 homes across more than 40 cities nationwide in 2024, connected with over 70,000 home renovation workers, 8,000 designers, and 5,000 project managers. Our home renovation and furnishing business achieved total revenue of RMB 40.8 billion for the year, a year-over-year increase of 36%.

By enhancing supply chain fulfillment management and improving our system's order dispatch capabilities, in Q4, we successfully reduced the home renovation construction timeline by over 10 days compared with last year. Additionally, our enhanced in-house after-sales maintenance capabilities enable us to continuously elevate customer experience. In our home rental services, the number of rental units under management surpassed 430,000 in 2024. Our revenue surged by 135% year over year to RMB 40.3 billion. In terms of quality and efficiency, we have improved the experience of property owners and tenants by reshaping roles and responsibilities through refined operations. We saw significant improvements across various efficiency metrics, including the efficiency of second-time rentals and the average number of rental units managed per property manager. Regarding our Beihang Jia business, we acquired land in several cities last year. We do not intend to become developers and build many houses ourselves.

Our business logic aligns closely with our insights about the industry. By exploring this business, we aim to address the high decision-making risks faced by both developers and customers during the home buying process while meeting customer demand for living well. We are committed to promoting the development of major high-quality homes within China's residential industry while mitigating critical level risks for developers and other participants in the industry. This requires us to build capabilities in areas such as precise customer demand insights, deeper user engagement, and data-driven decision-making. For instance, by aggregating characteristics and needs of home-seeking customers, we provide developers with targeted customer demand, enabling them to tailor their offerings accordingly and apply C2M customization. We will also set limits on heavy asset investment and gradually shift our business model towards a more ideal platform-based light asset model.

In November last year, we successfully launched our product solution services project in Xi'an, the first case in which we generated service revenue through our product solution services. In 2024, we have also made substantial efforts in improving our relationships with various partners throughout the entire ecosystems. I believe these efforts will lay a solid foundation for our long-term success. Looking ahead, we need to be more technology-driven and more human-centric. On the technology side, the rapid advancement of technologies, particularly AI, is set to transform many aspects of work, study, and daily life, including reshaping relationships with others, altering organizational structures, and changing hiring philosophies, all of which may undergo transformations. As the interactions between people become more increasingly valuable, the essence of genuine services embodying the interests of our own standard will become even more crucial.

Addressing the industry's current pain points, such as the shifting needs of customers for residential services, heightened decision-making uncertainty, and increased expectations for service providers' capabilities, we firmly believe that advancements in AI and other technologies will effectively help us tackle these challenges. With these tools, we will be better equipped to understand customers' personalized needs, broaden the knowledge and information available to individuals, and comprehensively enhance our service quality. We will apply AI more intensively across both external and internal operations, supporting service providers in achieving high-quality interactions. This approach will enable us to deliver genuine services while also upgrading the interface through which we provide such services. On the humanistic side, we recognize that we operate within a service industry where the value of empathy, customer care, and a commitment to services are paramount, while technology can facilitate these values.

It is essential that each service provider actually embodies the spirits of self-reliance, self-improvement, and self-respect by providing exemplary support to frontline agents who, in turn, take excellent care of customers. We can affirm our self-worth through customer satisfaction and recognition of their needs. The virtual cycle translates into practices that are not only ethical but also creative. This humanistic quality will offer a new dimension to industry evolution and development, making it possible to elevate consumer experience to 10 times better, increase service providers' efficiency tenfold, and enhance the value created by our platform 10 times greater. Thank you. Next, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Tao Xu, to review our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 financials.

Tao Xu (CFO)

Thank you, Stanley, and thank you, everyone, for joining us.

Before we dive into our Q4 performance, I'd like to briefly touch on some updates for the housing market in the past year. In 2024, although the annual transaction volume of the new home sales market was estimated to have declined by around 18%, the Chinese real estate market witnessed a significant recovery in the fourth quarter following the stimulus package policies in September. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, new home sales rose by nearly 30% quarter over quarter and achieved a 4% year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, resisting home demonstrates home buyers' preference, which is the proportion in total real estate market transactions continues to rise, thanks to readily available features as well as flexible supply and price adjustment mechanisms.

According to Beike Research Institute, the proportion of the new home GTV in total market GTV has risen from 40% in 2023 to 46% in 2024, following an increase of nearly 30% year over year in 2023, and the number of transactions in the existing home sales market further grew by more than 10% in 2024. Although the national transaction price of existing homes still declined year on year in 2024, the price rose by only 0.2% sequentially in the fourth quarter, indicating a changing trend. With the support of the policy aimed at stabilization of the market, home upgrade demands have become stronger. For solid existing homes, the average area and the proportion of homes with three bedrooms and above both have increased year on year in key cities.

The opportunities in the market and the Beike positive long-term growth strategy enabled us to continue making the big stews in scale in 2024. Our full year revenue reached RMB 93.5 billion, up 20.2% year over year. Revenue from existing and new home transaction services both grow year over year, reflecting our home transaction service solid fundamentals. Our home renovation and furniture, home rental services, emerging and other services act as a new growth engine, with combined revenue rising by 64.2% year over year, contributing 33.8% of our total revenue in 2024, up 9.1 percentage points from 2023. In particular, revenue from the renovation and furniture business was RMB 14.8 billion, growing by 36.1% year over year, and the revenue from our home rental services reached RMB 14.3 billion, up 135% year over year.

While achieving big stews in scale, we also continuously increase our investment in improving the service quality, infrastructure, and researching and developing advanced technologies. We believe these efforts will lay a solid foundation for our long-term development and continue to yield returns going forward. In 2024, our gross margin was 24.6%, and our adjusted operating expense ratio was 70.7%, with an adjusted operating margin of 7.4% for the year. Our adjusted net margin reached 7.7%, bringing our full year adjusted net income to RMB 7.21 billion. Earnings quality improved as well. Our net operating cash inflow in 2024 was RMB 9.4 billion, 1.3 times of our adjusted net income for the year, and the DSO filled by three days year over year to 42 days. Turning to our financial performance in Q4, our total GTV was RMB 1,143.8 billion, representing a year over year increase of 55.5%.

Net revenue reached RMB 31.1 billion, up 54.1% year over year. Gross margin declined by 2.4 percentage points year over year to 23%. Net income was RMB 578 million, showing a year over year decrease of 13.8%. Adjusted net income reached RMB 1.34 billion, reflecting a year over year decrease of 21.6%. Looking at our housing transaction services, revenue from existing home transactions reached RMB 8.9 billion in Q4, up 47.5% year over year and 43.5% quarter over quarter. GTV was RMB 744.8 billion, rising by 59.1% year over year and 55.9% quarter over quarter. GTV growth surpassed revenue year over year, largely as a result of downsizing of value-added services for the homeowners. GTV outperformed revenue sequentially, mainly due to the structural changes. That is, the revenue share of the rental brokerage service declined due to the seasonality.

The contribution margin from both existing home transaction services was 40.4% in Q4, representing a decline of 4.1 percentage points year over year, primarily due to the increased labor costs related to our effort to improve agents' welfare and a decline of 0.6 percentage points quarter over quarter, mainly resulting from the strategic initiatives that increased agents' incentive and variable costs. In terms of the new home transaction services, we significantly outperformed the market across various metrics. CRIC shows that the sales from the top 100 developers were relatively stable year over year and increased by around 60% sequentially in Q4. In comparison, our new home GTV reached RMB 355.3 billion in Q4, up 49.3% year over year and 56.2% quarter over quarter, consistently and significantly outperforming the industry.

This was mainly due to the deepening of our collaboration with developers as well as our robust and finely tuned operational capability. Revenue from new home transactions was RMB 13.1 billion in Q4, rising by 72.7% year over year and 69.2% from the previous quarter. Revenue outperformed GTV both year over year and sequentially, once again demonstrating our strong and steady demonetization capabilities in new home transactions. The contribution margin from the new home transaction services fell by 0.8 percentage points year over year to 25.6%, largely resulting from the strategic increase in variable commissions as we placed greater emphasis on building a harmonious ecosystem and delivering better rewards to the agent. Sequentially, the new home contribution margin grew by 0.9 percentage points thanks to the leverage we gained from the revenue growth. In Q4, SOE developers contributed 58% of our new home sales revenue.

Revenue from the home renovation and furniture, home rental services, emerging and other services grew by 38.7% year over year in Q4, amounting to 29.3% of our total revenue. The contribution profit of Zinn accounted for 24.3% of our total gross profit. Our home renovation and furniture business maintained steady growth. In Q4, contracting sales reached RMB 5.3 billion, up 34.7% year over year. Revenue reached RMB 4.1 billion, increasing 12.8% year over year. Our contracting sales growth rate outpaced our revenue growth rate, driven by a sharp increase in contract sales with the real estate market recovering this Q4. While revenue recognition lagged behind, the contribution margin for the home renovation and furniture business reached 29.8%, up 1.9 percentage points year over year, led by gross margin improvement in our furniture and home furnishing retails.

Sequentially, the contribution margin for the home renovation and furniture business declined 1.5%, mainly due to the decline in the proportion of high-margin home renovation revenues. Contracting sales of furniture and housing furnishing retails, which are not included in our home renovation package, reached RMB 1.7 billion in Q4, making up approximately 31.7% of the total contracting sales, an improvement of 4.2 percentage points from the same period of 2023. Our home rental service business continued to grow at an accelerated pace in Q4, as revenue reached RMB 4.6 billion, up 108.7% year over year, benefiting from the rapid growth in the number of rental units under management. By end of Q4, the number of rental units under management exceeded 430,000, compared with over 200,000 in the same period of 2023. The contribution margin for home rental services held relatively stable at 4.6%, compared with the previous quarter.

In Q4, our revenue from emerging and other services decreased by 41.1% year over year and 9.9% quarter over quarter to RMB 433 million. Next, let's move on to our other costs and expenses in Q4. Our store cost reached RMB 786 million, remaining generally stable year over year and growing by 11.8% quarter over quarter. This quarter over quarter increase was mainly due to the increase in the cost associated with the store renovation and maintenance. Other costs were RMB 747 million, up 36.3% year over year and 48.8% quarter over quarter, primarily driven by the increase in tax and surcharge, financial service reserves, and credit losses. Gross profit rose by 39.4% year over year to RMB 7.2 billion. Gross margin was 23%, down 2.4 percentage points year over year.

The primary reason for the decline was the year over year decrease in contribution margins from emerging and other services and existing home transaction services. This was partially offset by stronger leverage from the relatively stable store cost and increased total revenue. Gross margin climbed by 0.3 percentage points sequentially in Q4, mainly due to the increased contribution margin from the new home transaction services. In Q4, our G&A operating expenses totaled RMB 6.2 billion, up 15.8% year over year and 39.7% sequentially. G&A expenses were RMB 3 billion, increasing 11.8% year over year due to the increase of the personnel expenses. G&A expenses by 55.8% quarter over quarter, mainly due to the high personnel expenses and increased the bad debt provision. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 12.7% year over year to RMB 2.3 billion, as the increase in sales and marketing expenses for home renovation and furniture business.

Quarter over quarter, sales and marketing expenses rose by 21.2%, mainly due to the growth in marketing expenses for housing transaction services and the increase in the personal expenses. Our R&D expenses were RMB 739 million, up 38.4% year over year and 28.9% sequentially, primarily attributable to the increase in R&D for our housing transaction services and the increased investment in some pioneer research projects. In terms of the profitability, GAAP income from the operations totaled RMB 1 billion in Q4, turning positive from a loss in the same period of last year, an increasing of 39.1% sequentially. GAAP operating margin was 3.2%, increasing 4.1 percentage points from Q4 2023 and remaining flat sequentially. Non-GAAP income from operations totaled RMB 1.8 billion, growing 105.1% from the same period of last year and increasing 28.7% quarter over quarter.

Non-GAAP operating margin reached 5.6%, up 1.4 percentage points from Q4 2023 due to the decrease of our operating expenses year over year and down 0.4 percentage points from Q3 2024, attributable to the increase of operating expenses quarter over quarter. GAAP net income totaled RMB 578 million in Q4, decreasing 13.8% year over year and 50.5% quarter over quarter. Non-GAAP net income was RMB 1.3 billion, down 21.6% year over year and 24.6% quarter over quarter. Moving to our cash flow and the balance sheet, net operating cash inflow was RMB 5.2 billion in Q4. The new home DSO was 34 days in Q4, which is a testament to our effective risk management. On top of approximately $132 million allocated to the share repurchase during Q4, our total cash liquidity remained at a high level of RMB 78.7 billion, which excludes customer deposit payable.

With our robust cash reserves, we continue to reward our shareholders who have our ground reserves through the active share buyback, enhancing capital operating efficiency and sharing the benefits of our development with investors. In 2024, we repurchased around $760 million worth of shares, which accounts for around 3.9% of the company's total shares outstanding at the end of 2023. We have consistently delivered our promise to reward shareholders. Since the launch of our share repurchase program in September 2022, we have repurchased roughly $1.63 billion in shares at the end of 2024, accounting for about 8.6% of total company shares outstanding before the program began.

Building our commitment to shareholder returns, we are pleased to announce that our board approved a final cash dividend for 2024 of $0.12 per ordinary share or $0.36 per ADS to ordinary shareholders and ADS holders of record as of April 9, 2025. The total expected dividend payment will be approximately $0.4 billion and will be funded from our surplus cash on our balance sheet. With this, our total shareholder returns for 2024 will significantly exceed our net income, representing around 113% of our net income of the year. We intend to provide shareholders with comprehensive returns in a long-term, proactive, and stable manner, aiming to share the value we create together with our long-term shareholders. As we advance through 2025, our financial strategy will accelerate value creation through three imperatives.

First, ensure we make effective capital allocation to drive investment to one body through wins, strategy initiatives, and technology advancement, and drive sustainable growth. Second, better deploy technology to drive high financial and risk management efficiency. Third, deliver consistent and sustainable returns to our shareholders, ensuring that our growth translates into tangible value to those who invest in our vision. This is how we envision durability. We make sure the money we return gets filtered through this framework. It will simultaneously fuel innovation engines, hearten competitive motives, and compound value to all of our shareholders. This concludes my prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are ready to take questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press Star 2.

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 re-enter the queue. If you're going to ask the question in Chinese, please follow with an English translation. Your first question comes from Jae Zhao Dong with Nomura. Please go ahead.

Zhao Dong (VP)

Many thanks, Management, for taking my question. My question is about the utilization of the technology for Beike. Just now, Stanley has mentioned that Beike is able to empower its offline stores and increase its operational efficiency through technology tools such as AI property consultant, property sourcing assistant, etc.

Can I ask, is the management considering further introducing or collaborating with advanced AI large models such as DeepSeek to enhance and optimize the business operations of the company? Like, for example, how can AI be leveraged across the different business areas such as home renovation, property recommendations, and customer services to further increase the user experiences? Thank you.

Stanley Peng (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you for the question. For how AI might impact our industry by enhancing efficiency and the user experience, we can think about this from three perspectives. The first is the service side, the second is the supply side, and the third is the platform side. From a consumer service perspective, buying and selling real estate has become more challenging for today's clients due to increased uncertainty and risk in decision-making. As a result, clients need access to data, knowledge, know-how, and what we now refer to as intelligence.

AI can effectively address this issue customer-faced, leading us to conclude that AI can significantly optimize the customer experience and greatly improve the quality of service on the demand side. Secondly, from the supply side perspective, we believe that AI will enhance the capabilities of skilled agents and accelerate the industry's focus on high-quality supply. For the third one, from platform perspective, AI provides platforms with more opportunity to address efficiency changes through innovation. We often emphasize that the core elements of the industry are quality, scale, and efficiency. Historically, our strategies through authentic property listing, building housing dictionaries through standardization, and our platform model have resolved quality issues on the service side. We also tackle challenges of scalability on the supply side through adoption of platform business models. However, the industry's most significant challenges remain efficiency.

If efficiency issues are not resolved, the profitability will also be a challenge. The emergence of AI can be seen as a production factor integrated into the value chain, potentially helping us tackle quality and scale problems while also addressing efficiency challenges. This can create new opportunities for the entire platform and increase its value. Given these conclusions, we place great importance on the capabilities and the potential of AI, and we have initiated a series of explorations. We have integrated our own residential industry data with advanced foundational models to develop our next language model, Chatham, and our image and light model, Dream Home. We are iterating on these models and expanding our capabilities to support a variety of applications. Here are a few examples of the applications I can show for you.

For the customers, we are currently conducting gray box testing for putting an AI-powered home syncing assistant built on DeepSeek R1 and Beike data and our own knowledge graph, with plans to open for trial in March. This 24/7 home syncing AI assistant combines deep industry expertise with rapid, accurate understanding of user demands and the ability to customize real-time solutions. It will help users to overcome the initial challenges or high early-stage decision-making costs in home searching, while also helping the agent clarify client needs and improve operational efficiency. It will see VR home tour scenario through the combination of the high-precision imaging of the new generation of Jia Lihua P4 camera and the DeepSeek-driven intelligence model. We can leverage a more refined spatial understanding capability to enhance the intelligence assessment ability for houses and improve the user experience in VR home selection and home tour.

For the business partners, we have built comprehensive solutions. For example, for property agents, we have conducted great box testing for AI assistants like AI property selector and AI property listing maintenance assistant in several cities. We have also launched AI power tools like AI marketing assistant and the Xiaobei training camp to enhance agent capabilities in client acquisition, demand identification, and personalized solutions. For home renovation and furnishing businesses, we have implemented Shi Miao, the AI design tools that can automatically generate design plans for marketing visuals, and we have our self-developed BEAM system with AI-driven delivery management. We also have our cloud-based intelligence construction system that can carry our AI automated construction management monitoring, AI intelligent inspection, and acceptance tools, creating an almost fully AI-embedded digital loop.

For organizational efficiency, we have deployed five digital AI agents, including Sun Xiaosheng, achieving efficiency breakthroughs in areas such as business analysis and operational strategy support. Let me also share some results of these applications. The first, our AI property service management manager already automatically handled 60% of rental property owner management tasks during the testing. The second, digital AI agents like Sun Xiaosheng have analyzed 75% of their time and nearly 20% of time for operational strategy teams. The third, AI programming tools also assist in generating 30% of R&D codes. For 2025, we plan to increase our AI investment to further strengthen the foundational capabilities of our model, data, and solutions while accelerating its relative applications, research, and development. These steps will make our various AI assistance models and further promote AI integration and AI native innovation capabilities throughout the organization.

Finally, AI facilitates a more efficient flow of information and knowledge, which will speed up the end of old models that rely on scale to exploit information gaps. We must also break our reliance on scale. On the other hand, AI achievements make it possible for us to enter a new era. We are far from where we need to be with the developments on our advantages lines and years of accumulated industry data assets, intensive application scenarios, and business validation development, and then earliest strategic planning in the industry. In the future, we will continually expand AI's role in deeply reshaping the entire residential service process. We believe this is both Beike's responsibility as an architect of the residential industry digital infrastructure and crucial to creating long-term value for the industry. That's my answer. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Timothy Zhao with Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead. 好的，感谢关宇层接受我的提问。那我的问题是关于房地产市场的一个情况。那我们看到9月份以来，我们市场反弹非常的强劲。那想请教一下关宇层怎么去看待市场复苏的一个可持续性。那今年以来的趋势是怎么样子的？那我们在现在如何展望2025年的一个房地产的市场大盘？那关宇层是否会更加的乐观呢？那我很快翻译一下。

Timothy Zao (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, Management, for taking my question. My question is regarding the property market outlook. As we have seen a pretty strong rebound of the property market since last September, just wondering if Management can share any insights on the recovery sustainability issue regarding the trend year to date and how would Management team think about the market outlook for this year and are we going to turn more optimistic about the market? Thank you.

Stanley Peng (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Timothy. In 2024, the market saw many changes. This can be summarized on presented policy stimulus, new positive signals in Q4, and accelerated structural changes. Let's look at these changes in more detail. On positive fronts, 2024 has seen a stronger than expected policy impact.

Particularly, the central government had a policy pivot on September 26th for stabilizing the property market with more intense, systematic, and swiftly implemented measures than before being rolled out. These policy efforts brought market resilience. In 2024, the existing home market nationwide saw decreased price for the increasing volume. According to estimates from the Beike Research Institute, in 2024, the number of existing home transaction units in China rose by around 15% year over year, while total GTV rose by around 2% due to the price factors. Particularly, with the release of these new policies on September 26th, the transaction recovered quickly. In Q4, existing home GTV on our platform rose around 60% year over year, making a stronger and more sustained rebound than ever before. Also, the price stabilized somewhat, picking up 0.2% in December compared to September, making the first quarter increase in nearly two years.

In 2024, the new home market nationwide continued to face challenges. According to the official data, national new home sales declined by 18%, while the new home GTV of CRIC's top 100 developers dropped by 28% in 2024. However, a robust rebound in the new home GTV during Q4 helped bolster the market throughout the year. Regarding the transaction structure, it is increasingly dominated by the existing home. In 2024, the proportion of existing home GTV nationwide increased to 46%, up 5 percentage points compared to the year of 2023. Notably, this percentage exceeded 50% in the 30 top-tier cities. This was mainly due to the rapid decline in existing home prices, which made it more attractive to home buyers. Meanwhile, readily available existing homes have diverted demand away from the new home.

On the demand mix, the rise of nearly new existing homes met increased demand of home upgrades, which is the largest segment of buyers. According to Beike transaction data, the percentage of existing home sales with three bedrooms and above grew from 40% in 2020 to 55% in 2024. The proportion of nearly new homes built within the last 10 years jumped from 27% in 2020 to 43% in 2024. Regarding the recent market updates, let me talk about existing home market first. Based on our platform data, the existing home market has sustained the momentum with the transaction volume rebounded the most expected after the Chinese New Year.

To specifically look at the existing home transaction volume, during the four weeks following the Spring Festival, the transaction volume of existing home rose by around 40% year over year, among which the tier one cities grew by 50%, while the tier two cities such as Chengdu, Yingbo, and Pingjin also had a robust growth. Notably, the big weekly transaction volume surpassed the October high following the September 26 policy stimulus, reaching the highest level since March 2023, when the market experienced a pent-up demand during the rebound. Overall, the market followed the seasonal trends, with the momentum starting to moderate in the fourth week after the Spring Festival, while decline was marginal, sustaining a high level. Regarding the home prices, in February, existing home prices slightly decreased by 0.4% month-over-month, with the difference between the notable smaller-than-average amounts declining in 2024.

We can refer to Beike's Sentiment Index, which we compiled based on the proportion of price increase adjustments among all listing price adjustments made by homeowners. The index rebounded rapidly in October last year. After reaching a low point during the Spring Festival, it has been gradually recovering, with four-tier cities showing relatively higher sentiment levels and Shenzhen exceeding 15%. New home market recovered mildly in a traditional off-season. During the four weeks after holidays, new home subscriptions increased over 10% year over year. Price-wise, the new home price stabilized sequentially in September. Regarding the market outlook in the year of 2025, we believe the market may start to boat in March in 2025. In our view, the prerequisite of overall market stabilization is achieving stability in existing home price. According to our survey, insufficient confidence in housing price expectations is the biggest obstacle preventing people from purchasing homes.

We believe the stabilization of existing home price depends on two factors. First, a balanced supply and demand dynamic with healthy market liquidity. Second, improved homeowners' confidence with fewer people cutting prices deeply due to the urgent sales. The Beike Sentiment Index as a leading indicator would be a useful tool in this regard. The index above 30 for at least six months would demonstrate a market consensus on the price stabilization. The further policy refinements will stimulate home buyers' demand, driving transaction volume recovery. In some cities, the market will shift from price hunt for volume to increased transaction with stable prices. Our recent survey indicates that the proportion of buyers planning home purchase within a year has risen to a two-year high. This reflects stronger market confidence in the short term. We will continue to monitor home viewing activity and the transaction volume as the key indicators.

At last, stable existing home price will also help stabilize the price of new homes. Coupled with the policy optimizing new home supply and the housing repurchase program, this will support new home sales and investment recovery, helping to restore developers' investment and development capability. Achieving this stabilization trend will require more conventional countercyclical policies in the macroeconomy and the real estate sector to restore consumers' confidence and expectations. In a neutral scenario, we expect the existing home market to realize a modest recovery in 2025, while the new home market adjustment may continue due to some complexity of the risks, but its year-over-year decline may narrow. Meanwhile, we expect further structural divergence in the housing transaction in 2025, reinforcing the dominance of existing homes. In particular, larger relatively new secondary new homes that meet buyers' home upgrade needs will become top choices.

The new home market will accelerate supply-side innovation, offering upgraded products that better match the evolving demand. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Griffin Chan with Citi. Please go ahead.

关宇层好，我是花旗股票研究部的 Griffin 陈俊磊。我这边的提问是关于一体业务的。那贝壳平台经纪人和门店数量呢，其实是持续增长。那公司呢，其实做了很多投入啊，也看得出来呢，总体运营方面是比较进取的一个态度。那24年贝壳在这样的投入以下，其实换取了怎样的增长呢？然后2025年，我们会否以同样的方法来实现这个增长呢？或者是我们会用其他的，比方说AI这种方法来提升一些增长或是效率呢？这个是第一个提问。然后呢，

Griffin Chan (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

oh yeah, I'm going to translate my questions. So it's about the agency business. The number of agents and stores on Beike platform continues to grow. The company has made a lot of effort and investment, and it is quite aggressive. What kind of growth has the company achieved in the year of 2024 with such investment? For the year of 2025, will Beike follow the same path for growth, or will we reconsider some other, like AI, improving the efficiency as well as having a higher growth? Thank you.

Stanley Peng (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Griffin. In 2024, the main focus of the housing transaction services was promoting growth and optimizing the ecosystem.

With that in mind, we achieved remarkable growth in our performance, demonstrating our ability to continuously outperform the market. Our success also helps agents and store owners in our platform partially offset the impact of market transactions. One of our key focuses last year was expanding the agent and store network. We introduced the target incentive package tailored to stores of different sizes to attract industry players. By the end of 2024, the number of active non-Lianjia stores on our platform exceeded 44,000, and the depth of active non-Lianjia agents reached 331,000, up 20% and 11% year over year, respectively. Notably, four big new brands joined the platform, each with over 100 stores. Our goal in expanding our network is to enable industry participants to enhance our operational efficiency.

That is, by leveraging our customer traffic, cooperation network, particularly true for operations and management, and the diversified business opportunity within the broader residential service sector. Within three months of joining, the per-agent efficiency of newly connected stores reached over 80% of the efficiency level of those already connected stores. Also, around 13% of newly connected stores could double the average productivity level of the platform existing stores within six months when they joined the platform, becoming high productivity stores. Thus, our store network function has delivered strong investment returns. The payback period for the investment for the new store connecting the first half of the year was at six months, with a cumulative store attrition rate of only 5% within the six months after the connection.

With a larger network of store agents, we leveraged the digitalized scientific measurement to help store owners expand the home listing coverage and improve the conversion rate. As the scale of our agent store network continues to expand, it becomes even more critical to deepen ecosystem governance and strengthen our relationship with all stakeholders. On our governance mechanism, we expanded the operation of our regional co-governance council, enabling store owners to better practice in decision-making of some platform rules and enhancing engagement. Additionally, our store point-based reward program was successfully rolled out in like-pillar cities. By end of year-end, 46% of connected stores received award benefits, averaging RMB 10,000 in equivalent value per store. We also created tools like online store owner workshops to simplify their management process, with functions such as dashboards and the traffic lead management.

The satisfaction level of the connected stores and the stores improved throughout the year, rising by 4% from Q1 to Q4. Additionally, the monthly store attrition rate in cities including Beijing and Shanghai declined by 0.2 percentage points in 2024 compared with the year of 2023, while monthly agent attrition rate dropped by 1.7 percentage points year over year. As the Lianjia continues to serve as the key growth engine, Mattayan Ha, an innovation leader in the industry, reportedly solidified the positioning of Lianjia in 2024. By the end of the year of 2024, Lianjia had over 114,000 active agents, making a net increase of over 16,000 agents, up 17% year over year. The average monthly attrition rate of Lianjia agents nationwide decreased by 0.7 percentage points year over year to a lower level of 3.4%.

As transactions slowed and the requirement for agents became more demanding, our solution was to leverage the large store model to enhance organization efficiency. This model was first implemented in Lianjia, with the average number of agents per store rising to 20 by the end of 2024. Store structure continued to optimize, with the proportion of the large store reaching over 50% and an increase of 8.6 percentage points year over year. The average commission per Lianjia store reached 2.53 times that of the connected stores, reflecting a 5.9% year-over-year growth. Talent development remains a key investment area for Lianjia. We launched a three-year leadership development program for Lianjia store managers. This initiative is to strengthen store efficiency and help enhance the platform ability to retain top-performing store managers. In 2025, growth and ecosystem will continue to be the key words for our housing transaction services.

Meanwhile, we also strive to enhance efficiency. We will continue to ensure the steady growth in our store and agent network. Meanwhile, we'll increasingly drive business growth through efficiency improvement, leveraging ecosystem collaboration and digital tools. This includes implementing a comprehensive long-term store incentive program, such as a point-based reward system, to convert the skilled advantage to efficiency again. Also, by utilizing more refined management tools, we will empower store owners with enhanced operational capability, improving regional penetration and helping more agents and stores to increase their income. Regarding Lianjia development, we will continue to strengthen the large store model by getting its scalability with Lianjia and promoting it to those connected stores. At the same time, Lianjia will further support growth of our three-way business, achieving the BRICS tools in the community-focused model for home renovation and rental services in Beijing and Shanghai. That is industry benchmark.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Eddie Wang with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

感谢管理层接受我的提问。那我的问题是关于咱们租赁业务的，因为看到四季度，包括整个2024年吧，我们公司的这个租赁业务在规模上实现了非常高速的增长。那请问这个主要是由什么优势带来的啊？然后我们看到整个租赁市场啊，相对来说还是颇有一些挑战啊，整个的租金其实一个下降的趋势，然后供大于求也在持续。那请问如何在这种情况下我们来保持业务的稳定性，以及实现盈利能力的提升啊？那我自己翻译一下。

Eddie Wang (Stock Analyst)

Thank you, Management, for taking my question. my question is about the home rental business. we have achieved rapid growth in the home rental business. what's the key advantage to drive this strong growth? we observed that the home rental market remained challenging with declining rents and the persistent oversupplies. how can we maintain the stability of the home rental business and at the same time to enhance the profitability under such conditions? Thank you.

Stanley Peng (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Eddie. In 2024, our home rental business achieved a significant scale-up and operational breakthroughs, particularly in our carefully run services. Centered in the service and efficiency, we established a solid fundamental framework for our business model.

By year-end, nighttime service orders accounted for over 16%, aligning better with the tenant schedules. We also deployed AI emotion reader tools to detect tenant distraction and proactively improve the service mechanisms. With that, our property managers can focus on the rental unit sales and occupancy without being distracted by the rental affairs. By end of 2024, their efficiency for the unit sales increased around 29% year over year, driving rapid growth in total housing units of carefully rent. Beyond organizational capability, we have developed the intelligent AI system, utilizing AI technology to empower operations. From the pricing strategy for the property acquisition into remanagement to leasing strategy, we deployed intelligent algorithms to dynamically manage traffics, pricing, and the marketing strategy, enhancing labor efficiency and assets turnover.

For example, in prior cities, the system has increased operating efficiency of the service providers and the managers by around 40%, improved the property turnover rate by 7.7%, and shortened the turnover cycle by 11.3% since its launch. From a financial perspective, our rental business saw a sequential improvement in contribution margin in Q4. As the impact of the Q3 summer rental peak faded, the carefully run experienced a quarter-over-quarter decline in new home sales and the leasing. This led to a decline in expense for the operational staff as a percentage of net rental income, resulting in a marginal improvement. On a three-year basis, core operational metrics of the carefully run improved significantly. Enhanced tenant service boosted the customer retention. The customer complaint rate at the end of the year decreased by more than 20% compared to the beginning of 2024.

We also conducted cost structure optimizing, improved the service quality, drove the 2024 tenant renewal rate to 54.4%, and a 2 percentage point increase year over year, reducing the channel cost of releasing. Regarding the management of the rental cost due to the vacancies, on one hand, we focused on enhancing re-renting capability. This helped significantly reduce turnover time. Even in the Q4 off-season, the average vacancy period decreased from nearly 15 days at the beginning of the year to under 12 days in Q4. On the other hand, we continuously upgraded our product model. The coverage of new product model, which increased no vacancy period, continued to rise in Q4. This model enhanced our resilience against the rental price volatilities and reduced the vacancy risks. The deposit cost per unit of our carefully run model also dropped.

This was mainly due to the increased initial leasing success rate, which rose to over 80% in 2024, up by 8 percentage points year over year. For the year of 2025, first of all, we still have the high hope for the number of rental units managed under carefully run. Meanwhile, we will continue to balance skill and operation. To that end, we need to strengthen our value proposition for both tenants and property owners. This key lies in heightening our service quality and boosting re-renting efficiency. For tenants, we will further refine our role specialization model and tailor the service standards for different customer segments. For leasing efficiency, we will focus on the talent development in leasing channels, leverage AI to enhance in-sector leasing efficiency, and expanding small traffic channels and value-added services such as cosmetic housing decoration to increase the leasing certainties. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Sophie Jiang with CICC. Please go ahead.

感谢管理层接受我的提问。我是中金的分析师张孝丹。那我的问题是关于家装业务。我们看到家装业务在2023年越过了百亿的收入门槛之后，其实过去一年还是保持了比较快的增长。那能否请管理层帮我们拆解一下家装业务规模持续突破背后的一个核心的驱动因素？那也想请管理层分享一下2025年对于家装业务的一个战略规划。谢谢。那我快速翻一下我的问题。

Thanks, Management, for taking my questions, and my question is regarding the home renovation business. The home renovation segment has maintained solid growth during the past year after surpassing the revenue threshold of CNY 10 billion in 2023. Can Management share the main drivers behind the growth and also the strategic plan for the business segment in 2025? Thank you.

Stanley Peng (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Sophie. In 2024, our home renovation and furniture business achieved robust growth. In terms of scale, our revenue reached CNY 14.8 billion in 2024, up 36.1% year over year. Contracted sales amounted to CNY 16.9 billion, making a year-over-year increase of 27.3%. Contracted sales exceeded CNY 3 billion in Beijing, CNY 2 billion in Hangzhou, and CNY 1 billion in Shanghai and Chengdu.

Five other cities also achieved contracted sales over RMB 500 million each. As for the profitability, the contribution margin for the home renovation furniture business reached 30.7% in 2024, an improvement of 1.7 percentage points compared to the same period last year. Taking Beijing as a showcase, in 2024, the contribution margin for the home renovation furniture business reached approximately 35%, and the pre-tax profit margin, excluding headquarter cost charge, reached over 5%. The BRICS tools in our home renovation and furniture business are primarily attributable to the highly efficient synergies between our housing transaction services and the new business, as well as our enhanced construction delivery capability and support from our underlying digital platform. Let me share some additional details. First, deeper integration of our housing transaction services and the renovation services significantly strengthened our customer acquisition ability and drove the rapid growth in contracted sales.

We encouraged our agents to recommend our new business by a point-based incentive model. As a result, there has been an increase in the proportion of the contract sales by agent referrals to the total contract sales. Second, as our contracted sales grow, we need to strengthen our delivery capabilities. To accomplish this, we optimized dispatch efficiency and workflow, further shortening the construction timelines. Our average construction timeline is around 94 days in Q4 2024, representing a decline of over 10 days in the same period last year. Meanwhile, we continue to iterate our home sales system and launched version 2.5 nationwide. By standardizing the product management and unifying draw rules, we have improved the system underlying data foundation. This ultimately enables us to produce ultimate BIM design construction drawing and the price codes, and the unified online material scheduling.

About the business outlook for the year of 2025, we have achieved further BRICS tools in business scale last year. In 2025, our core goal for our full-service renovation business is to enhance product strength and improve delivery quality with a customer-centric approach and improve management and operational efficiency. To that end, we intend to implement the following key initiatives. First, improve the product strength with this model iteration and the showroom upgrade. We plan to establish a strong brand image as a full-service home renovation provider. Based on our insight into the customer needs, we aim to provide comprehensive renovation solutions rather than simply selling the different products. At the same time, we expect to upgrade our showrooms. We plan to implement a showroom as a core display of our offline store.

We will collaborate with professional designers to create a realistic showroom and display various renderings to enhance the offline experience for the customers. Second, enhance delivery capability and promote the professionalism of the product managers. We believe that long-term stable cooperation with product managers is the fundamental guarantee for the quality of the home renovation delivery. We intend to take the full-time product manager as a core to enhance delivery quality, and we will motivate their initiatives through the order allocation incentive mechanism to improve the service provider delivery satisfaction and reduce customer complaint rates. Meanwhile, product managers should be responsible for the delivery quality and orders recommended by previous customers. Third, we enhance the operational efficiency. We have found previously there were two risk providers connecting with the customer or the leading key person in charge.

With that, we have defined the store manager as the first manager who is fully responsible for the customer needs, contract commercial, cart delivery, and business management, achieving an end-to-end management loop. We further define the designer as the first person in charge of the renovation solutions and the conversation. We will strengthen designer training and conduct a professional certification to enhance their capability of the full-service home renovation design skills. We also define the product manager as the first person in charge of the cart delivery. There will focus more on the overall management of the project construction period and the construction quality. At the same time, we place great emphasis on calculating business districts.

We intend to focus on key business districts, gain thorough understanding of the house layout structure and the common renovation problems in the month, and make the service scope of designers and the project manager more concentrated, thereby improving the service efficiency and quality. We have always believed that quality is the foundation of the home renovation and furniture business. Only on a solid foundation can a strong and long-lasting building be constructed. We will continue to move forward in our pursuit of quality with even greater determination and competence in our future development path. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We are now approaching the end of the conference call. I'll now turn the call over to your speaker host today, Ms. Siting Li, for closing remarks.

Siting Liu (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'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.