China’s ZTO Express has seen parcel volumes grow by 88.5% by comparison to the same financial quarter in 2020. It now has a market share of 20.4%, a 1.5% increase on last year.
Parcel volumes grew to 4.475 billion in the first quarter of 2021 as the company grew beyond market expectations. Mr. Meisong Lai, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ZTO Express, commented, “For the first quarter, China’s express delivery industry benefited from the steady recovery and growth of domestic economy and achieved a 75% parcel volume growth against a low comparative base last year. With 4.5 billion parcels, ZTO grew its volume 13.5 percentage points faster than the industry average and expanded our market share by 1.5 percentage points to 20.4% from last year.”
Mr. Lai added, “The competitive dynamics of China’s express delivery industry continued to evolve. While profit level declined for the industry due to price competition that remained intense, those with stronger capacity and more stable partner network delivered better performance results. Since its early years, ZTO has devoted resources towards continuous development of infrastructure and cultivation of trust and loyalty by its network partners. Relying on our leading throughput capability and effective incentive policies across our network, we achieved healthy levels of market share expansion and earnings as we remained number one in customer satisfaction ranking. We firmly believe, our consistent strategy and execution through high quality of service backed by leading scale and efficiency will provide the winning edge going forward.”
Ms. Huiping Yan, Chief Financial Officer of ZTO Express, commented, “We achieved RMB 782 million adjusted net profit that increased 23.1%. Our core express delivery business ASP declined by 12.4%, the least amount of drop compared with industry peers, yet we have achieved the most market share gain. The combined unit sorting and transportation costs efficiency gain was 5.2% despite the absence of favorable effects of ETC toll waiver policy that expired May last year, and our lean corporate structure continued to contribute positively to the bottom line.”
Ms. Yan added, “Cash flow from operating activities increased 168.3% to reach RMB 477 million in the quarter. Capital expenditures was RMB 2.3 billion as we focus more on building comprehensive logistics service capabilities. We have set distinctive targets towards differentiating products and services across logistics landscape to serve a greater array of consumers and businesses in the next 3 to 5 years.”
