By Tracy Qu


Meituan, China's top food-delivery company, stayed in the red in the first quarter as it continued to be buffeted by a brutal price war in the world's second-largest consumer market.

The result marked the third consecutive quarter of net losses for the Chinese shopping-and-delivery platform. It comes as Meituan remains locked in a battle for supremacy with Alibaba Group and JD.com, aggressively offering discounts to attract customers and maintain its market leadership.

The Beijing-based company's net loss came to 6.83 billion yuan, equivalent to $1.01 billion, for the first three months of the year, compared with net profit of 10.06 billion yuan a year earlier. Revenue rose 5.6% to 91.04 billion yuan.

Analysts had expected a net loss of 8.51 billion yuan on revenue of 90.76 billion yuan, according to a FactSet consensus estimate.

Ahead of Monday's results, shares in Meituan rose 6.5%, outperforming the Hang Seng Tech Index's 1.65% gain. Still, the Hong Kong-listed stock remains down by nearly a quarter this year, weighed by concerns about its near-term earnings outlook.


Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-01-26 0501ET