Once the food delivery war pauses, Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan's stock prices skyrocket.

Ask AI · Regulated Crackdown on the Takeout “Delivery War” — Why Could It Boost Hong Kong Stock Tech Shares?

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On March 25, 2026, the Hong Kong stock market welcomed a long-awaited celebration. Meituan rose nearly 14%, JD.com rose nearly 5%, Alibaba rose more than 4%, and the Hang Seng Tech Index surged collectively under the leadership of the “three giants of delivery.” The enthusiastic reaction from the capital markets was driven by an opinion piece published that day and reposted by the State Administration for Market Regulation — “The Takeout Delivery War Should End.”

At the beginning of 2025, as JD.com boldly entered the fray, the previously relatively stable delivery market structure between Meituan and Ele.me’s “dual oligopolies” was completely upended. To capture market share, major platforms rolled out the most疯狂（craziest） subsidies in history: 1-cent milk tea, 3-yuan coffee, and marketing campaigns with “free orders” on a regular basis, with cumulative subsidies totaling as much as 80 billion to 100 billion yuan.

On the surface, consumers really did pull money out of the system. But this boom was like quicksand—first to be swallowed were the millions of small and mid-sized restaurant merchants at the very end of the chain.

Research by a team led by Zhang Jun, a professor at Fudan University, revealed the essence of this “false prosperity”: after the subsidy intensity increased in July 2025, merchants’ average daily total order volume grew by 7%, but the average daily cash received fell by about 4%, and the average total profit decline reached 8.9%.

“According to Meituan’s observations, this war directly pushed the average spend per diner for dine-in back to 10 years ago.” An opinion piece in the Economic Daily pointed out the seriousness sharply. Since takeout prices have long been below cost, consumers have formed a 固化认知 that “low prices are reasonable.” And the catering industry is a typical “easy to cut prices, hard to raise prices” sector—once the pricing system collapses, the repair cycle is extremely long.

Even more seriously, to survive in low-profit conditions, merchants had no choice but to pass cost pressure upstream. The data shows that 39% of merchants started switching to suppliers with lower material prices, and 30% strengthened the pricing negotiation game with suppliers. This means the quality of ingredients is being quietly sacrificed.

Even the chain brands viewed as “beneficiaries” are hard to escape the fallout. Luckin Coffee’s financial report for Q4 2025 showed that its revenue growth rate fell to the lowest level in nearly three years, and its net profit decreased by 39% compared with the same period last year.

Platforms are also hard to escape. A Goldman Sachs research report indicates that in Q3 2025, price competition in the delivery industry caused the overall profitability of China’s internet sector to decline for two consecutive quarters, and the year-over-year decline expanded to 31%. Estimates show that the subsidy war reduced the combined profits of the three platforms by nearly 70 billion yuan, with tax revenue losses exceeding 10 billion yuan.

Recently, the Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation, together with multiple departments, held discussions with 12 platform companies. The stance is already very clear: the “burning-money” game must be shut down. The delivery war is, in essence, a negative-sum game.