【英语财经】美团-大众点评融资33亿美元 Chinese online group Meituan Dianping raises $3.3bn

China’s largest food delivery and group buying company announced on Tuesday it has raised more than $3.3bn in one of the country’s largest internet funding rounds.

The fundraising by Meituan Dianping, created in October by a merger, is the latest sign that money is still pouring into China’s “online to offline” sector despite the lack of concrete profits.

A Meituan Dianping spokesman confirmed the amount of the fundraising but would not say what valuation it represented. Tencent, the Chinese social media and gaming company, took a 20 per cent stake in Meituan last year and was understood to be aiming to increase it.

The group, which functions as China’s equivalent of Yelp and Groupon combined, has previously been backed by Alibaba, but the Chinese ecommerce group said in November it planned to sell its stake in the company. However, an Alibaba spokesman declined to comment on the fate of its shareholding on Tuesday.

QQ Tech, a news portal owned by shareholder Tencent, posted a series of PowerPoint slides on Tuesday that were said to be from the company’s roadshow. They said that Meituan Dianping had been seeking to raise $3bn at a valuation of $18bn, up from a prior valuation of $15bn. A Meituan Dianping spokesperson declined to comment on the slides.

The slides also stated that the company, which was referred to by a new name of “China Internet Plus”, would seek to list in two to three years. Total sales on the company’s platforms — known as gross merchandise value — were expected to be Rmb184bn ($28bn) in 2015 and rise above $1tn by 2019, according to the slides.

Meituan’s merger with Dianping took place despite concerns that both companies were spending too much on subsidies and discounts. The “online to offline” sector, which includes food delivery, restaurant reviews and online hire of manicurists and transport, is the fastest growing part of China’s internet economy.

A report by HSBC bank in Hong Kong said that Chinese online to offline companies were all making heavy losses because they charged low commissions to attract merchants — often less than 5 per cent — and were subsidising users to boost market share.

Nevertheless, the bank concluded that the potential upside was still large. It estimated that the total potential market for online to offline services in China is Rmb10tn ($1.6tn) a year, and said the online portion of online to offline revenues had surged 80 per cent year-on-year to Rmb300bn ($47bn) in the first half of 2015.

Additional reporting by Ma Fangjing

中国最大的送餐和团购公司美团-大众点评(Meituan Dianping)周二宣布融资逾33亿美元，完成中国金额最大的互联网融资回合之一。

美团-大众点评于去年10月合并后成立，此轮融资是最新的迹象，表明资金仍在涌入中国的“线上到线下”(O2O)领域，尽管该领域还未产生实在的利润。

美团-大众点评的一位发言人证实了融资金额，但没有说这意味着公司的估值达到了多少。中国的社交媒体和游戏公司腾讯(Tencent)去年收购了美团20%的股份，此前据信该公司有意增持股份。

美团-大众点评的功能相当于结合中国版的Yelp与Groupon，此前该公司曾受到阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的支持，但去年11月这家中国电商集团宣布计划出售所持股份。不过，阿里巴巴发言人周二拒绝对其所持股份的现况置评。

腾讯旗下新闻门户网站腾讯科技(QQ Tech)周二发布了一系列PPT幻灯片，据说是美团-大众点评的路演资料。这些幻灯片显示，腾讯美团-大众点评寻求筹得30亿美元，将公司估值从原先的150亿美元提升到180亿美元。美团-大众点评的发言人拒绝对这些幻灯片置评。

幻灯片还声明，新名称是“中国互联网+”的该公司寻求在两到三年后上市。幻灯片显示，2015年该公司平台的总销售额——即总商品交易额(GMV)——预计达1840亿元人民币（合280亿美元），2019年将提升到1万亿元人民币以上。

尽管有人担心美团和大众点评在补贴和折扣方面投入太多，但两家公司还是完成了合并。“线上到线下”市场包含了送餐、餐馆评论以及在线聘请美甲师以及租用交通工具，是中国互联网经济中增长最快的部分。

汇丰(HSBC)香港的一份报告称，中国的线上到线下公司全都严重亏损，为了提升市场份额，它们不但收取低佣金来吸引商家——往往不到5%——还补贴用户。

但汇丰的结论是该市场潜在上升空间仍然很大。据估计中国线上到线下服务潜在市场规模达每年10万亿元人民币（合1.6万亿美元），并表示2015年上半年线上部分的收入同比剧增80%，至3000亿元人民币（合470亿美元）。

马芳婧补充报道

译者/何黎