Real estate picked up in March 2019. Driven by immediate demand and credit easing, China's real estate market began to recover in March 2019, and sales in Tier 1 and 2 cities began to rise. In March 2019, the three leading real estate developers and other major real estate developers all recorded year-on-year increases. Country Garden (2007 HK, buy), Vanke (2202 HK, buy) and Evergrande (3333 HK, unrated) recorded year-on-year increases of 2%, 13% and 11% respectively in March contract sales. As a leading first-hand housing agent, we expect E-Ju to regain its growth momentum in 2019. We forecast that in 2018-21, first-hand housing agency business revenue will be 6.53 billion yuan, 6.88 billion yuan, and 7.64 billion yuan (RMB, same below), respectively, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.1%.
Profit for 2018 was 10% lower than our forecast. In 2018, the company's revenue and net profit increased sharply by 28.4% to $5.95 billion and 170.0% to $9.5 billion. Total sales of the first-hand housing business increased 22.8% to $532 billion, and the city coverage expanded to 204 at the end of 2018. Furthermore, the reserve project area increased from 206 million square meters at the end of 2017 to 281 million square meters at the end of 2018, providing the company with a solid foundation for profit growth. Although Yiju achieved good performance growth in 2018, net profit for the full year of 2018 was 10% lower than our forecast due to the downturn experienced in the real estate market in the fourth quarter of last year.
The housekeeper business is improving, but accounts receivable have risen. By the end of 2018, the number of stores for houseguests reached 10,210, compared to 10,000 at the end of August last year, and 4,075 by the end of 17. As a result, real estate brokerage platform service revenue increased from 77 million yuan in 2017 to 421 million yuan in 2018. However, segment losses continued in 2018, but were reduced from $125 million in 2017 to $94 million in 2018. We expect the business to turn a loss into a profit in 2019 as an effect of economic scale.
On the other hand, accounts receivable increased from 3.31 billion yuan at the end of 2017 to 4.16 billion yuan at the end of 2018, and accounts receivable from related parties also increased from 379 million yuan at the end of 2017 to 1,576 million yuan at the end of 2018. This probably reflects the tight liquidity of developers in the fourth quarter of last year.
Lower forecasts and target prices. Due to slowing business growth assumptions, we lowered our 2019 revenue forecast by 7.3% to $8.44 billion, and our revenue forecast for 2020 by 13.9% to $9.40 billion. Additionally, we lowered our 2019 earnings forecast by 3.0% to $1.45 billion and by 5.4% to $1.69 billion for 2020. As a result, we lowered our target price from HK$16.41 to HK$16.30, which is equivalent to 14.2 times our predicted price-earnings ratio for 2019. The potential increase is 47.4%. Keep buying