Currently, the Chinese autos market is shifting from incremental driver to stock competition. However, under the stimulus of preferential procurement tax, new energy subsidies, and local consumer promotion policies, the Chinese autos market still demonstrates great resilience, with changes in consumer demand driving structural changes in the automotive market. In this process, Autohome (02518), as a leading automotive internet service platform, adopts a "responding to changes with change" strategy to 'embrace change', actively explore new models, and solidify long-term development momentum.

On November 6th, Autohome released its financial performance for the third quarter of 2024. The announcement shows that the company's total revenue in the third quarter was 1.77 billion yuan, with online marketing and other business income growing by 3.1% year-on-year, and the revenue proportion continues to increase. Revenue from new energy brand continued to grow in the third quarter, with a year-on-year growth rate of 54%, consistently outpacing industry sales growth. The company's adjusted net income for the quarter was 0.497 billion yuan.

The above data reflects that Autohome has been continuously transforming, seeking breakthroughs in changes, looking for new endogenous driving forces - through the 'online + offline' ecological strategy, upgrading the new retail network, innovating data products, actively responding to the 'trade in old for new' automotive policy, promoting the release of automotive consumption potential, and creating a new development situation.

The ecological strategy has been effective, and the long-term fundamental stability is solid.

According to Quest Mobile data, in September 2024, Autohome's daily average number of users on the mobile end exceeded 70 million for the first time, reaching 72.87 million, a 5.6% increase compared to the same period in 2023. User stickiness continues to increase, indicating that Autohome's influence among user groups is steadily strengthening, and the company maintains a long-term solid foundation.

Autohome has become the choice of millions of users, mainly due to the increasing rigidity of Chinese consumers' demand for autos. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in January-September 2024, China's passenger vehicle production and sales reached 18.643 million and 186.79 million units respectively, up by 2.6% and 3% year-on-year. During the same period, new energy vehicles produced and sold reached 8.316 million and 83.2 million units respectively, up by 31.7% and 32.5% year-on-year.

Zhitan Finance App noticed that as the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continues to rise, new brands, new series, and new models emerge in an endless stream, resulting in a significant increase in the time for consumers to make car purchase decisions. This means that consumers need to have more cutting-edge and professional knowledge reserves for car viewing, purchasing, using, and replacing, at this time, a professional, neutral, and objective automotive internet platform will play a crucial role in automotive marketing and consumption chain.

In response to many pain points in car consumption, Autohome has created a content strategy covering the pre-mid-post period of new car launches around the new car release activities, from early exclusive 3D model speculation, to mid-term in-depth analysis, to late-stage customized evaluations. These measures not only extend the exposure window of the core selling points of new cars, help B-side customers efficiently communicate product value, but also assist C-side users in making car purchase decisions quickly.

Autohome has also continuously deepened user content, refreshing content in two directions: "Professional" and "General Car Category", and expanded into live streaming, short videos, and other content formats. At the content conference held in August, three major new contents and two major co-creation plans were heavily released, providing users with a professional, diverse, real, and easy-to-understand automotive content ecosystem. This content ecosystem construction not only meets the needs of users in viewing, selecting, and using cars but also through cultural columns and global IP, deeply explores brand history and stories, sparking discussions among users about Chinese car culture, and helping Chinese car brands to go global.

In terms of tools, based on user needs and mainstream product trends for visual scene exploration, Autohome has newly launched a scenario-based image library, covering three core car viewing scenarios: night, space, and smart scenes. This greatly improves the efficiency and convenience of users in choosing cars. As of now, it has launched and covered 36 mainstream models on sale. Additionally, to address three major pain points in the industry: incomplete product information dissemination, the invisibility of the intentions in car manufacturing, and insufficient communication efficiency, Autohome has released an industry partner co-creation plan, allowing users to deeply understand product strength through professional content, using professionalism to help users understand good cars.

Building an "Online + Offline" service ecosystem, embracing "Trade-in for New".

In the view of Zhitan Finance App, as an innovation-driven automotive internet platform, Autohome's performance growth is not passive, but actively embracing new trends in industry development, winning the recognition of a large number of car consumers with innovative business models.

Online, Autohome has broken through in the sea of traffic by building a content matrix and expanding traffic openings. Offline, Autohome focuses on the sinking market, actively responds to the "Trade-in for New" policy, and a series of implementation actions, also bringing broad growth space for the company's business expansion and strategic upgrade.

Since the beginning of this year, the policy of "Trade-in for New" automobiles has received strong support. In April 2024, the Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Finance, and other seven departments jointly issued the "Implementation Rules for Subsidies for Trading in Old Cars for New Cars", stimulating automotive replacement consumption demand through fund subsidies, and unleashing domestic demand potential. In August, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the "Several Measures to Strengthen Support for Large-Scale Equipment Updates and the Trade-in for New Policy for Consumer Goods", announcing the arrangement of approximately 300 billion yuan of special national bond funds, and distributing 150 billion yuan to local governments, greatly enhancing the financial strength of local governments. By increasing subsidies and other means, jointly boosting car market consumption from multiple levels.

Since the introduction of the 'Cash for Clunkers' policy, Autohome promptly launched a special channel for the trade-in policy, promoting related policies, gathering nationwide preferential policies, automakers, platforms, etc., to provide consumers with real benefits and welfare.

Offline, Autohome and Ping An Property Insurance jointly organized the 'Revitalize in One Hundred Cities' series of activities, dedicated to integrating the advantages of the Autohome platform, Ping An Property Insurance's online resources, and offline service team advantages, penetrating products and services into third and fourth-tier cities, gathering in core business districts to create a one-stop convenient car buying event focusing on 'seeing, buying, using, and changing', targeting the sinking market to create trading scenes, bridging the 'last mile' of transactions, and supporting the implementation of the 'Cash for Clunkers' and new energy fund policies in rural areas. In the first three quarters of this year, the 'Revitalize in One Hundred Cities' series of activities has held over 500 offline car shows, nearly 2000 single-store activities, covering nearly 250 cities nationwide, with an average attendance of over 0.01 million at car shows, empowering single store activities to increase store-side transactions by over 60%.

In May of this year, Autohome's Space Station also launched the 'Satellite Plan', with the space station as the core, setting up satellite stores in surrounding lower-tier cities, building a '1+N' collaborative ecosystem, deepening service coverage to a wider area. Currently, the total number of Autohome's Space Station and satellite store franchisees has exceeded 50, marking the initial scale of the sinking channel construction. Through the close collaboration of the Space Station and satellite stores, a tight sales service network is formed, achieving comprehensive penetration from core to regional areas. At the same time, Autohome's used car business uses the Space Station as an offline service support point, collaborating with Tiantian Paiche and Ping An Certified Car Owner Service Center to provide service guarantees, improve the replacement business process, stimulate consumer demand.

According to the Wise News Finance APP, in terms of automobile consumption, there are 'sufficient conditions' for the 'Cash for Clunkers' policy at the consumer end. The Zhoushi Consulting report shows that the average age of passenger vehicles in China reached 6.2 years in 2022 and is expected to reach 8 years by 2027. This means that the Chinese automobile market is entering a stock era, indicating that the proportion of 'buying replacements' in automobile consumption will increase. In this context, Autohome has taken a series of effective measures to promote 'Cash for Clunkers', not only actively responding to national policies stimulating consumption, but also helping activate automobile consumption, foster new productive forces, and promote the high-quality development of the Chinese automobile industry.

Against this backdrop, Autohome has adopted a series of effective measures to promote the 'Cash for Clunkers' program in automobiles, not only actively responding to national policies stimulating consumption, but also helping activate automobile consumption, cultivate new quality production, and promote high-quality development of the Chinese automobile industry. For consumers, Autohome brings the 'Cash for Clunkers' promotion to consumers' 'doorsteps', making car replacement easy, time-saving, and cost-effective. For automakers, Autohome helps them accurately reach customers, maximize customer acquisition and conversion. Within Autohome, the company has entered a new stage of integrated collaboration with Ping An Property Insurance through jointly hosting activities, showcasing the complementary advantages of both parties in the automotive consumer ecosystem, empowering partners, facilitating efficient transactions, providing worry-free car buying service to users.

It can be seen that although the Chinese automobile market is facing the challenge of transitioning from incremental to stock, the industry also contains abundant structural opportunities. By joining forces with Ping An Property Insurance, Autohome has created an online + offline one-stop closed-loop service ecosystem, focusing on the sinking market, supporting the opening up of new automobile consumption through 'Cash for Clunkers', establishing the core competitiveness of enterprise development. With many innovative initiatives, Autohome is expected to create a new type of automotive marketing ecosystem and brand awareness, creating greater value for users and generating significant investment returns for investors.