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By Tang Guhan

China's leading on-demand online provider Meituan Dianping unveiled its earnings report for the Q3 on Thursday night, showing a 97.2-percent surge in revenue for the past three months when compared with the same period a year earlier.

The revenue of the company comes mainly from catering, brick-and-mortar stores discount consumption, hotels and travelling and the other new services it offers.

Catering is still the backbone of Meituan's earnings, accounting for 58 percent of the total revenue. Daily orders numbered around 19,400,000, up 8.5 percent. Moreover, the gross profit margin for its catering division reached 1.9 billion yuan (274 million U.S. dollars), doubling the figure a year earlier. The increase was due to the upgrading of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, according to the report.

It utilized an Online-to-Offline (O2O) real-time delivery system to automatically match orders and drivers by leveraging the AI and Location Based System (LBS) technologies.

The profit margin for the brick-and-mortar stores discount consumption (Group Purchase), hotel and travel services reached 4 billion yuan (576 million U.S. dollars) in the Q3. 

Meituan's new services' revenue in the Q3 quadrupled the number a year earlier to end at 3.5 billion yuan (504 million U.S. dollars), among which the restaurant management system (RMS) and supply chain management services have become the new drivers of the company's growth.

Analysts pointed out that Meituan might be under pressure soon as its counterpart Alibaba has been ramping up its efforts in its on-demand services recently.  

In spite of Meituan's high profile revenue, the company's profitability is rather lackluster as it invested heavily in ride-hailing and other new projects.