
Photo: VCG
Thursday was a big day for China tech, with online travel giant Trip.com, Tesla challenger Nio and social networking app Momo, all announcing first-quarter results. All three took a hit from the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept most Chinese at home for much of the quarter.
Trip.com reported revenue of 4.7 billion yuan ($669 million) for the quarter, down 42% year-on-year, with its four major businesses of hotel reservations, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel all falling, according to its latest earnings report. Net losses amounted to 5.4 billion yuan in the quarter, compared with net profits of 4.6 billion yuan in the same period of last year.
The online travel firm attributed the results mainly to the coronavirus pandemic which “drove a significant decline in travel demand resulting in reservation cancellations and reduced new orders.” And despite many of the restrictions associated with the pandemic being lifted domestically, Trip.com still expects its second-quarter revenue to decrease by between 67% and 77%, due to continued fallout from the pandemic, which shows little signs of leveling off in places outside of China.
The outbreak also took a toll on Nio in the first quarter, when the young electric carmaker saw its revenue drop 51.8% year-on-year to 1.37 billion yuan, according to its latest financial report. But there was also good news for Nio as its net loss narrowed by 40.9% year-on-year to 1.69 billion yuan.
The first quarter has seen rapid growth in traffic to apps favored by people under lockdown. However, social networking app Momo failed to capitalize on the trend and saw its revenue drop 3.5% year-on-year to 3.59 billion yuan during the quarter, while its monthly active users decreased to 108 million in March 2020 from 114.4 million in March 2019. But its net profit increased to 537.7 million yuan from 286.6 million yuan in the same quarter of last year, according to the company’s quarterly earnings report.
Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)