Operator
女士们、先生们,大家好,欢迎参加满帮集团2021年第四季度及全年业绩电话会议。今天的电话会议正在录音。现在,我将会议交给投资者关系主管毛毛。请开始。
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Full Track Alliance’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mao Mao, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Mao Mao
谢谢主持人。请注意,今天的讨论将包含与公司未来业绩相关的前瞻性陈述,这些陈述旨在符合美国《私人证券诉讼改革法案》确立的安全港条款。这些陈述并非对未来业绩的保证,并受到某些风险、不确定性、假设和其他因素的影响。其中一些风险超出公司的控制范围,可能导致实际结果与今天新闻稿和讨论中提及的内容存在重大差异。关于可能影响满帮业务和财务业绩的风险因素的一般性讨论包含在公司向美国证券交易委员会提交的某些文件中。除非法律要求,公司不承担更新这些前瞻性陈述的义务。在今天的电话会议中,管理层还将讨论某些非公认会计准则财务指标,仅用于比较目的。有关非公认会计准则财务指标的定义以及公认会计准则与非公认会计准则财务结果的调节表,请参阅今天早些时候发布的业绩公告。今天参加电话会议的满帮高级管理层包括创始人、董事长兼首席执行官张晖先生,以及首席财务官蔡西蒙先生。管理层将首先进行准备好的发言,电话会议将以问答环节结束。提醒一下,本次会议正在录音。此外,本次电话会议的网播重播将在满帮投资者关系网站ir.fulltruckalliance.com上提供。现在,我将电话会议交给我们的创始人、董事长兼首席执行官张晖先生。请开始,先生。
Mao Mao
Thank you, operator. Please note that today’s discussion will contain forward-looking statements relating to the company’s future performance, which are intended to qualify for the Safe Harbor from liability as established by the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions and other factors. Some of these risks are beyond the company’s control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today’s press release and discussion. A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect FTA’s business and financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. During today’s call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only. For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. Joining us today on the call from FTA’s senior management are Mr. Hui Zhang, our Founder, Chairman and CEO and Mr. Simon Cai, our CFO. Management will begin with prepared remarks and the call will conclude with a Q&A session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast replay of this call will be available on our FTA’s Investor Relations website at ir.fulltruckalliance.com. I will now turn the call over to our Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Mr. Zhang. Please go ahead, sir.
Hui Zhang
大家好。感谢各位今天参加FTA 2021年第四季度及全年业绩电话会议。过去一年,FTA在中国快速扩张的物流行业中进一步巩固了其领导地位,我们很高兴以第四季度出色的财务和运营表现为成功的一年画上圆满句号。FTA的持续增长反映了我们持续的变现能力提升和服务优化,以及我们具有韧性和可持续性的商业模式。通过扩大物流网络、利用大数据储备并强化平台的积极网络效应,我们在2021年为不断增长的卡车司机和货主用户群体提供了日益高效便捷的产品功能。我们还利用数字化能力将FTA转型为不断增长的低碳物流服务提供商,并通过提高效率、促进节能和减少排放,自豪地履行了我们的社会责任。在为用户和投资者提升价值主张的同时,我们致力于让整个行业和社会受益。2021年全年,我们的总交易额达到人民币2,623亿元,较上年增长50.9%,履约订单数同比增长78.8%至1.28亿单。2021年第四季度,GTV同比增长22.1%至人民币695亿元,延续了全年的强劲势头,履约订单数同比增长41.6%至3,480万单。此外,我们观察到平均货主月活跃用户数显著增长,同比增长20.6%至157万。因此,我们的总净收入同比增长68.1%至人民币14.3亿元,并在第四季度实现了人民币2.43亿元的非GAAP调整后净利润。2022年,我们还将利用庞大的用户基础、数据资源和AI能力推动各垂直领域的增长,加速数字化进程——我们相信这是我们行业的未来。为支持长期健康发展,我们将继续探索新的商业模式,加强变现体系以优化盈利能力,同时全面提升用户体验。此外,我们将增加研发投入,巩固技术创新能力,创造新的增长机会,同时促进中国的双碳目标。最后,我们将不遗余力地建立更全面的数据安全保护体系,扩大安全高效的全域物流网络。在迎接数字时代的同时,我们不忘初心,致力于让物流更智能。FTA将不懈努力,推动创新,促进可持续发展,为所有利益相关方创造价值,继续引领中国公路运输行业。接下来,我将把电话会议交给我们的首席财务官Simon。他将详细阐述我们第四季度的进展,并更详细地介绍我们的运营和财务业绩。Simon,请开始。
Hui Zhang
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining FTA’s fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call today. Over the past year, FTA has further solidified its leadership position in China’s rapidly expanding logistics industry and we are pleased to have capped a successful year with an excellent financial and operating performance in the fourth quarter. FTA’s continued growth reflects our consistent monetization improvements and service optimization as well as our business models that is resilient and sustainability. By broadening our logistics network, utilizing our big data reserves and intensifying our platform’s positive network effects, we served a growing user base of truckers and shippers with increasingly efficient mentoring and convenient product functions in 2021. We also leveraged our digital capabilities to transform FTA into a growing and low carbon logistics service provider and proudly fulfilled our social responsibilities by improving efficiency, promoting energy conservation, and reducing emissions. We seek to benefit our industry and the society at large as we enhance our value proposition for our users and investors. For full year 2021, our gross transaction value reached RMB262.3 billion, an increase of 50.9% compared with the prior year and the number of secured orders rose 78.8% year-over-year to RMB128 million. For the fourth quarter of 2021, GTV increased 22.1% year-over-year to RMB69.5 billion, extending the year’s robust momentum and the number of fulfilled orders climbed 41.6% year-over-year to RMB34.8 million. Also, we witnessed a significant increase in average shipper MAUs, up 20.6% year-over-year to RMB1.57 million. As a result, we grew our total net revenues by 68.1% year-over-year to RMB1.43 billion and realized a non-GAAP adjusted net income of RMB243 million in the fourth quarter. Also in 2022, we will leverage our massive user base, data resources and AI capabilities to drive growth across verticals and accelerate digitalization, which we believe is the future of our industry. To support our long-term healthy development, we will continue to explore new business models and strengthen our monetization system to optimize profitability as we holistically improve user experience. In addition, we will increase our investment in R&D to fortify our technological innovation capabilities, creating new growth opportunities that also promote China’s dual carbon goals. And finally, we will spare no efforts to establish a more comprehensive data security protection system and enlarge our safe yet efficient nationwide logistics network. As we welcome the digital age, we remain true to our original aspirations to make logistics smarter. FTA will work tirelessly to drive innovation, promote sustainability, and create value for all of our stakeholders as we continue to lead China’s road transportation industry. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Simon. He will elaborate more on our fourth quarter progress and go over our operational and financial results in more detail. Simon, please go ahead.
Simon Cai
感谢张先生、毛毛,大家好。我们很高兴再次交出了一份稳健的运营和财务业绩。现在我想带大家详细了解我们第四季度的运营情况,首先从我们的平台开始。第四季度通常是旺季。然而,自9月底以来,新用户注册暂停、疫情反复以及电力短缺导致的生产限制,对我们的业务造成了影响。幸运的是,这些障碍都是短期的。我们坚实的基础和对提升用户体验的关注有助于缓解宏观影响,我们成功将履约率同比提升了5个百分点,达到约26%。此外,平均匹配时间持续下降,12月降至不到10分钟,这一显著改善主要归功于我们先进的大数据技术和算法能力。我们在第四季度将匹配效率提升到了新水平,改进了用户的搜索功能,并生成了更多、结构更优的优质货主和司机数据。例如,我们增强了搜索功能,基于司机履约概率的排序逻辑,并从结果中提取未来嵌入信息,以最大化司机获取货运订单的机会。我们还推出了基于微信的匹配服务,以多样化匹配方式。我们推行并鼓励采用更合理定价的
Simon Cai
Thank you, Mr. Zhang, Mao Mao, and hello, everyone. We are glad to have delivered another quarter of solid operational and financial results. I would now like to walk you through some details of our fourth quarter operations, beginning with our platform. The fourth quarter is normally the peak season. However, the suspension of new user registration, COVID recurrences and electricity shortage induced production constraints since the end of September, impacted our business. Fortunately, these obstacles are short-term. Our solid foundation and focus on improving user experience helped to mitigate macro impacts and we successfully improved our fulfillment rate by 5 percentage points year-over-year to reach approximately 26%. In addition, the average rate matching time continued to decline, falling to less than 10 minutes in December, a substantial improvement primarily attributable to our advanced big data technology and algo capabilities. We took matching efficiency to a new level in the fourth quarter as we improved search functionality for users and generated more and better structured superior and trucker data. For example, we enhanced our search features, sorting logic based on driver fulfillment probability and future embedded information out of the results to maximize truckers’ access to shipping orders. We also introduced a WeChat based matching service to diversify matching methods. We went and encouraged adoption of our tap-and-go model with more reasonable pricing to further streamline matching and combine algo to accurately predict and distribute user rewards to guide transaction habits. We continuously strive for more accurate matching to truly optimize the allocation of logistics resources. Looking forward, we will remain focused on upgrading our logistics ecosystem to strengthen our comprehensive end-to-end platform and closed loop business model. Supported by our revolving big data and algo and cutting-edge AI technology, we are confident that these efforts will lead to stronger network effects as our business grows. Moving on to our users, throughout 2021, we continue to enhance user experience and promote user activity, retention and satisfaction by innovating products and services to upgrade our platform’s one-stop service capabilities,. Because the suspension of new user registration persisted throughout the fourth quarter, we focused on increasing user frequency with refinements to our freight matching and fulfillment process as well as reactivating dormant users through targeted marketing. Furthermore, we encouraged new users to engage more deeply with our platform by offering improved services for novices such as manual assistance and increased traffic exposure. Thanks to those efforts, average shipper MAUs in the fourth quarter swapped to RMB1.57 million, an increase of 20.6% year-over-year, while average trucker MAUs, including those fulfilling and responding to orders, remained stable, with 3.54 million active truckers fulfilling shipments in the past 12 months. We also witnessed excellent user stickiness with both 12-month retention of paying shippers and next month retention of truckers who responded to shipping orders on our platform remained high at around 85%. Furthermore, our entrusted shipment program for direct shippers and other user composition optimization also continued to drive progress across our business. Direct shippers are a critical part of our strategy to improve our fulfillment rate and we expect the overall number as well as GTV contribution of direct shippers to continue to increase steadily, especially after new user registration resumes. Our online transaction service continued to be a powerful growth engine. It’s net revenue were RMB267.5 million in the fourth quarter, up 6.6x year-over-year and 46.8% quarter-over-quarter, representing 18.7% of total net revenue in the fourth quarter. The increase was largely due to further implementation of our commission model, which we rolled out in 105 cities as of end of last year, compared with 95 cities as of September 2021. User activity remains high in both cities, with truckers’ next month retention reaching nearly 90%, a clear sign of commission modest scalability. We tailored our commission model to the unique characteristics of different businesses and regions with diverse commissioning methods, such as by time period and by distance. Going forward, we plan to optimize the commission rate and extend our commission coverage, while providing additional value-added services and improving product functions to enhance our truckers’ user experience. To further protect the interest of both truckers and shippers since the fourth quarter, we have continuously devoted more resources to upgrading our safeguard service and industry governance measures, reaffirming our position as the industry’s most responsible, welcoming, user-friendly digital platform. Our safeguard service protected the financial interests of 140,000 users in the fourth quarter encompassing total compensation of more than RMB16 million. Additionally, we established a professional service team of more than 100 personnel to assist truckers with late payment collection. Along with third party legal aid, we helped truckers recover and aggregate RMD250 million in freight charges from over 117,000 orders in the fourth quarter. The improved transaction stability we imposed restrictions on shippers who frequently cancel orders, which has gradually improved shippers fulfillment rates and reduced cancelation losses for truckers. With respect to industry governance, in the fourth quarter, we rolled out a system for assessing shippers credit worthiness in certain regions based on shippers behavior, truckers feedback, and other data. This system enables us to conduct hierarchical management to match truckers with trustworthy shippers and prime orders protecting the rights – their rights and interests. Meanwhile, we began building a trucker credit system during the first quarter of this year to promote standardized services and enhance benefits for high quality truckers. And we plan to start strengthening controls on truckers who receive a high number of complaints limiting their rights on a platform. FTA remains committed to improving outcomes and creating value for each participant in the logistics ecosystem, as we lead the industry’s healthy development. Before we move on to financials, I’d like to touch on our new business initiatives and latest strategic investments. Both are interested and less than truckload shipping business, which are a natural extension of our existing food truck business, record stable overall performance in the fourth quarter with steady GTV quarter-over-quarter. Also, we launched monetization pilots for our interested business in certain cities through trucker membership and commission model this quarter. Because new user registration will remain suspended in the fourth quarter, these services are still in a trial period in a limited number of cities. However, existing users retention rate on the platform is high and the demand for repeat service is also strong. We’re going to seize this positive momentum and extend the services to additional regions to meet shipper’s one-stop shipment needs as soon as new user registration resumes. As we assess the industry’s landscape, we see enormous opportunities in China’s trillion dollar road transportation market and its various verticals to create value for all of our stakeholders. To catalyze, we will selectively make investments and acquisitions across verticals to augment our platforms existing strengths, enabling us to provide highly customized services to a broad range of specialized industries. We have established a team to research and conduct business development activities in different verticals and have already identified several investment candidates with industry insights, customer bases, and service capabilities complementary to ours. For instance, in the fourth quarter, we invested in a leading domestic heavy lift cargo transportation platform focusing on the engineering machinery and special project cargo transportation industry. Both are valuable verticals with large addressable market. Over the years, FTA has accumulated massive reserves of customers, brands, and data, as well as deep experience in online operations. We believe that by joining forces with partners in new verticals, we will discover new touchpoints, increase growth and deliver a better user experience to our customers. Now, I’d like to provide a brief overview of our 2021 full year and fourth quarter financial results. Given the limited time today’s call, I will be presenting some abbreviated financial highlights. We encourage you to read through our press release issued earlier today for more details. Our total net revenue for the year were RMD4.7 billion, representing a 80.4% increase year-over-year. Net revenue for the fourth quarter were RMB1.4 billion, representing a 68.1% increase year-over-year. For 2021, our net revenue for freight matching services, including service fee from freight brokerage model, Membership fees from listing models, and commissions from online transaction services were RMD3.9 billion up 102.7% from 2020 and RMB1.2 billion for the fourth quarter, up 85.7% year-over-year, primarily due to an increase in revenue from freight brokerage services, as well as rapid growth in transaction commissions. Revenue from freight brokerage service reached RMB2.5 billion for 2021, up 83% year-over-year. On a quarterly basis, net revenue increased 61.1% to RMB760.9 million in the first quarter, primarily driven by significant growth in transaction volume, partially offset by a decrease in average fee rate to attract more shippers to our service. Revenue from freight listing service were RMB753.0 million for the full year, up 39.8% year-over-year and rose 30% year-over-year in the first quarter – in the fourth quarter to reach RMB200.5 million, primarily attributable to an increase in total paying members increased shipper demand for our services as our business continues to expand. Revenue from transaction commissions amounted to RMB696.1 million in 2021, compared with RMB43.1 million in 2020. On a quarterly basis, net revenue amounted to RMB267.5 million in the fourth quarter, an increase – an increase of 6.6x for the prior year period, primarily driven by a rapid ramp-up of commissioned GTV penetration. Revenue from value added services for RMB710.1 million in 2021, compared with RMB633.8 million in 2020. For the fourth quarter, net revenue increased to RMB200.4 million from RMB188.5 million in the prior year period, mainly attributable to increased revenue from project solutions and other value added services. Loss of revenue in the fourth quarter was RMB658.2 million compared with RMB398.4 million in the prior year. The increase was primarily attributable to an increase in VAT related tax surcharges and other tax costs. Net of tax refunds from government authorities. These tax related costs net of refunds totaled RMB555.5 million, representing an increase of 67.4% from RMB331.8 million in the same period of 2020, primarily due to an increase in transaction activities involving our freight brokerage service. Our selling and marketing expenses in the first quarter were RMB239.4 million compared with RMB161.3 million in the prior year period. The increase was primarily due to an increase in salary and benefits, driven by an increase in sales and marketing headcount, as well as an increase in advertising and marketing expenses related to the promotion of new initiatives, partially offset by a decrease in share-based compensation expenses. General and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter were RMB1.6 billion, compared with RMB3 billion in the prior year period. The decrease was large – was largely due to a lower share-based compensation expenses. Our commitment to innovation and broadening our technological capabilities through in-house R&D remains the cornerstone of our business. In the fourth quarter, R&D expense as a percentage of total revenues, or 16.3%, compared with 14% in the prior year period. Both loss from operations and net loss further narrowed in the fourth quarter totaling RMB1.35 billion and RMD1.32 billion, respectively, compared with RMB2.81 billion and RMB2.78 billion in the prior year period. Under non-GAAP measures, our adjusted operating income in the fourth quarter was RMB159.1 million compared with RMB121 million in the prior year period. Our adjusted net income in the fourth quarter was RMD242.8 million, compared with RMD147.9 million in the prior year period. Basic and diluted net loss per ADS were RMB1.23 in the fourth quarter compared with RMB16.97 in the prior year period. Non-GAAP adjusted basic and diluted net income per ADS were RMB0.23 in the fourth quarter compared with non-GAAP adjusted basic net income per ADS of RMB0.16, and non-GAAP adjusted diluted net income per ADS of RMB0.03 in the prior year period. Our cash position remains strong at the end of 2021. Our cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments are RMB26 billion, compared with RMB18.9 billion as of the end of 2020. For the fourth quarter, net cash provided from operating activities was RMB433.9 million. Looking at our business outlook for the first quarter of 2022, we expect our total net revenue to be between RMB1.04 billion and RMB1.09 billion, representing a year-over-year growth rate of approximately 19.8% to 25.3%. These forecasts reflect the company’s current and preliminary view on the market, operational conditions, and the impact of the pending cybersecurity review, recurring COVID related disruptions, extreme weather conditions, and production constraints brought about by electricity shortage in parts of China, which are subject to changes and cannot be predicted with reasonable accuracy as of the date hereof. We’re excited to enter 2022 on an upbeat note and expect our increasing – increasingly efficient matching technology, solid user base and multi-faceted strategic initiatives to help us continue to deliver strong results and value for our users, shareholders alike. That concludes our prepared remarks. We would now like to open the call to Q&A. Operator, please go ahead.
Mao Mao
接线员,请开放问答线路。
Mao Mao
Operator, please open the line for Q&A, please.
Operator
[接线员指示] 今天第一个问题来自高盛的Ronald Keung。请提问。
Operator
[Operator instructions] Our first question today will come from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.
Ronald Keung
谢谢。谢谢,张辉和Simon。谢谢管理层。首先祝贺取得稳健业绩。我想问的是,本季度我们的委托发货计划自去年推出以来进展如何?该计划未来的推广计划是什么?谢谢。
Ronald Keung
Thank you. Thank you, Hui Zhang and Simon. Thank you, management. I have – and congratulations on the solid results. Going to ask, this quarter on how has our entrusted shipment program progressed since its launch last year? What are your future rollout plans for this program? Thank you.
Hui Zhang
所有平台持续增长。我们看到发货商竞争格局逐渐变化,更广泛的中小型发货商选择我们的平台。因此,我们推出了委托发货计划以更好地满足他们的需求,并于去年6月进行了初步试点测试。截至今年1月底,我们已在江苏、苏州、上海和安徽的29个城市成功推出该计划。我们计划在本季度末前在更多地区推广这些调查,预计其收入贡献将持续增加。我们的委托发货计划主要针对中小型企业。目前的运营数据显示项目运行良好,平均履约率超过70%。委托发货计划迄今的成功推出使我们能够进一步完善用户生态系统,优化用户竞争,同时为平台创造额外的变现机会。截至目前,我们已在三个城市为该计划实施了佣金模式。展望未来,通过利用我们广泛的交易数据和先进的算法能力,我们将继续改进产品功能,提供更合理、更准确的定价,以提升用户粘性,并提高整体匹配效率和消费率。好的。请下一个问题。
Hui Zhang
All platforms continues to grow. We have seen gradual changes in the shipper competition with a broader range of small to medium size drop shippers choosing our platform. So, we introduced our entrusted shipment program to better meet their needs and conducted our initial pilot testing in June last year. And as of the end of January this year, we had successfully launched the program in 29 cities in Jiangsu, Suzhou and Shanghai and Anhui provinces. And we plan to roll out these surveys in more regions by end of this quarter, and we expect that its revenue contribution will continue to increase. And our interest in shipment program mainly targeted the small and medium sized companies. Current operating data shows that the project is running well, with an average fulfillment rate of over 70%. The successful launch of the entrusted shipment program so far enables us to further improve our user ecosystems and optimize user competition while creating additional monetization opportunities for the platform. As of now, we have implemented a commission model for this program in the three cities. So going forward, by leveraging our extensive transaction data and advanced algo capabilities, we will continue to improve the product functions and provide more reasonable and accurate pricing to drive user stickiness and enhance our performance overall matching efficiency and consumer rate. Okay. Next question please.
Operator
谢谢。今天下一个问题来自华兴资本的Charlie Chen。请提问。
Operator
Thank you. And our next question today will come from Charlie Chen with China Renaissance. Please go ahead with your question.
Charlie Chen
谢谢回答我的问题。平台未来GTV和履约订单数量在第四季度均保持同比增长,但季度环比与去年同期相比有所下降。那么,这一下降的关键驱动因素是什么?您认为第一季度履约GTV和履约订单数量将如何变化?谢谢。
Charlie Chen
Thanks for taking my question. The platform for future GTV and a number of fulfilled orders both maintained year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter, but quarterly – quarter-over-quarter gross declined compared with the same period last year. So, what are the key drivers of this decline? And how do you think for fulfilled GTV and a number of fulfilled orders will trend in the first quarter of this year? Thank you.
Simon Cai
谢谢,Charlie。我是Simon Cai。我将直接用英语回答您的问题。第四季度平台总交易额和已完成订单数量的同比增长主要归因于市场渗透率的持续提升,以及我们平台的履约效率。截至第四季度,平均发货方月活跃用户数达到157万人民币,同比增长超过20%,而响应货运订单的平均卡车司机月活跃用户数也超过了300万。因此,考虑到本季度新用户注册仍处于暂停状态,如此强劲的数据充分证明了FTA在行业中的稳固领导地位。随着平台网络效应的增强,越来越多的发货方和卡车司机依赖我们的平台进行货运。从运营角度来看,本季度我们持续优化用户体验并完善运营能力,以提高新用户的货运使用频率和转化率,同时提升现有用户的活动水平和留存率,形成双引擎效应,推动我们整体业务的持续增长。关于您提到的环比趋势问题,第四季度通常是货运旺季,因此整体货运需求呈现环比增长。然而,2021年的季节性上涨部分被外部因素所抵消,例如新用户注册暂停、疫情反复以及与电力短缺相关的生产限制,导致环比增长略有放缓。不过,我们认为所有这些外部因素都是暂时的,不会对平台的长期增长产生实质性影响。至于第一季度,它处于货运旺季之外,货运需求往往较低,尤其是在春节期间。这解释了第一季度总交易额和订单数量相对于全年其他季度较低的原因。
Simon Cai
Thank you, Charlie. This is Simon Cai here. I will address your question directly in English. The year-over-year growth in the platform’s GTV and number of fulfilled orders in the fourth quarter was primarily attributable to sustained increase in market penetration, as well as our platform’s fulfillment efficiency. As of Q4, average shipper MAUs reached to RMB1.57 million, growing over 20% year-over-year, and average trucker MAUs who responded to shipping orders also exceeded MAU3 million. So, given that new user registration was still suspended during the quarter, such a robust numbers are a strong indication of FTA’s solid leadership in the industry. As the platform’s network effect grows, more and more shippers and truckers are relying on our platform for shipment. From an operational perspective, we continue to optimize the user experience and refine our operation capabilities during the quarter to raise new users use of freight usage frequency and conversion rate, while elevating the activity level and retention rate for existing users, creating a dual engine effect to drive the continued growth of our overall business. Regarding your question on the sequential trend, the fourth quarter of the year is typically a peak freight season, so overall shipment demand increase is on a quarter-over-quarter basis. However, in 2021, the seasonal upside was partially offset by external factors, such as the suspension of the new user registration, the COVID recurrences and production constraints related to electricity shortage, that lead to slightly lower quarter-over-quarter growth. Unfortunately, we believe all these external factors are temporary and we will not have a substantial impact on the platform’s long-term growth. And as for Q1, it is outside of the peak freight season, and the demand for shipping always tends to be lower in Q1, especially during the Chinese New Year period. This explains the relatively low GTV and number of a few orders in Q1 compared to the rest of the year.
Charlie Chen
非常感谢。
Charlie Chen
Thank you very much.
Simon Cai
谢谢。
Simon Cai
Thank you.
Operator
我们的下一个问题来自花旗集团的Brian Gong。请提问。
Operator
Our next question will come from Brian Gong with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Brian Gong
我自己来翻译。2021年第一季度用户构成和用户活动发生了怎样的变化?另外,正如刚才提到的,12月份的平均货运匹配时间降至10分钟以下,是什么推动了这一下降?谢谢。
Brian Gong
I will translate it myself. How did a user composition and the user activity changed during the first quarter ‘21 and is a medium average freight matching time in December dropped to below 10 – as mentioned – just mentioned, what drove the decrease? Thank you.
Simon Cai
谢谢,Brian。在用户构成和行为方面,过去一个季度与第三季度相比没有明显变化。尽管受到多重外部因素的影响,我们的卡车司机和货主月活跃用户数保持稳定。与此同时,现有用户继续表现出很强的粘性。第四季度货主——货主12个月留存率环比保持稳定,约为85%。在用户构成对总交易额的贡献方面,第四季度直接货主的贡献与第三季度相比保持稳定。我们预计直接货主对总交易额的贡献将稳步增长,特别是在新用户注册恢复之后。我们用户构成和行为变化的主要驱动因素包括我们平台日益增强的网络效应、持续改进的数据算法以及增强的产品功能,如点击即发和委托发货。这些都提高了匹配效率。再加上我们持续优化用户体验的努力,这些功能增强了用户对我们平台的依赖。第四季度平均货运匹配时间的减少主要归因于我们持续的算法优化。例如,我们通过考虑司机履约概率来优化搜索和排序逻辑。我们还通过过滤无效订单来提高定向推荐的准确性,并进一步改善用户体验。优化搜索过程和推荐结果显著提高了我们第四季度的整体匹配效率。
Simon Cai
Thank you, Brian. In terms of user composition and behavior, there was no obvious change in the past quarter versus Q3. Despite the impact of multiple external factors, our trucker and shipper MAUs remained steady. In the meantime, our existing users continue to exhibit strong stickiness. For Q4 shippers – shipper remembers 12 months of retention rate remain steady quarter-over-quarter at approximately 85%. With respect to user composition to GTV, contribution from direct shippers in Q4 were stable compared to Q3. We expect that the GTV contribution from direct shippers to increase steadily, especially after new user registration resumes. The major drivers of changes in our user composition and behavior include our platform’s growing network effect, consistently improving data algo and enhanced product functions such as tap-and-go and entrusted shipment. These are all increased in matching efficiency. And coupled with our continuous efforts to optimize the user experience, these features intensified a user’s dependence on our platform. The reduction in Q4’s average freight matching time was primarily attributable to our ongoing algo refinement. For instance, we optimized either searching and sorting logic by taking drivers fulfillment probability into account. We also improved the accuracy of the targeted recommendations by filtering out invalid order placements and further enhanced user experience. Optimizing both the search process and recommended results substantially heightened our overall matching efficiency in Q4.
Brian Gong
谢谢。这非常有帮助。
Brian Gong
Thank you. That’s very helpful.
Operator
我们的下一个问题来自中金公司的李硕尧。请提问。
Operator
Our next question will come from Shuyao Li of CICC. Please go ahead.
Shuyao Li
谢谢您回答我的问题。我只有一个问题。自第四季度暂停新用户注册以来,您是否看到竞争格局发生任何重大变化?谢谢。
Shuyao Li
Thank you for taking my question. I just have one question here. Have you seen any significant change in the competitive landscape, since the suspension of new user registration in the fourth quarter? Thank you.
Simon Cai
谢谢。自第四季度以来,我们尚未看到整车运输市场竞争格局发生实质性变化。一个有效的整车运输网络通常涉及数百万托运人和卡车司机以及数十万条运输线路之间高度复杂且动态的组合,这使得复制变得非常困难。一旦全国性网络完全建立,它将对行业产生巨大影响,并为新进入者形成非常高的壁垒。我们的全国性平台和高匹配效率自然吸引托运人和卡车司机,这是我们的竞争优势。与传统渠道相比,我们帮助托运人节省10%至15%的运输成本。这是新进入者从零开始时无法匹敌的优势。在卡车司机方面,即使有短期补贴或促销活动,新行业进入者也无法与我们平台的显著规模经济效应竞争。与其他平台不同,我们在卡车司机方面的真正竞争对手是线下模式的经纪人和合同承运商,我们相信我们的品牌声誉、标准化服务以及更合理的运价将继续吸引用户使用我们的平台。在业务早期阶段,我们通过部署本地销售团队在线下物流园区招募用户,以极低成本积累了全国性用户基础。我们的用户获取系统建立在优质用户体验和良好的用户口碑推荐基础上,从而实现了高留存率和极低成本。展望未来,我们将努力保持数字货运平台在行业中的领先地位。我们将继续扩大网络,利用大数据能力和技术优势推动行业数字化进程,为用户创造更大价值。
Simon Cai
Thank you. We have not seen any substantial changes in the FTL market’s competitive landscape since the fourth quarter. And effective FTL network typically involves a highly complex and dynamic combination of millions of shippers and truckers and hundreds of thousands of transportation rails, making it very difficult to replicate. Once a nationwide network is fully established, it has enormous impact on the industry and forms a very high barrier for new entrants. Our nationwide platform and high matching efficiency, which naturally attract both shippers and truckers, are our competitive edge. We have – we help shippers save 10% to 15% of shipping costs compared with traditional channels. This is an advantage new entrants cannot match when they start from scratch. On truckers side, new industry entrants are unable to compete with our platforms significant economies of scale, even with short-term subsidies or promotions. Rather than other platforms, our true competitors on the truckers side are offline model brokers and contract carriers, and we are confident that our brand reputation, standardized services, and more reasonable freight prices will continue to attract users to our platform. In the early stages of our business, we accumulated a nationwide user base at a very low cost by deploying local sales teams to recruit users at offline logistics parts. Our user acquisition system is built on our premium user experience and good word of mouth referrals among users, resulting in the high retention rate at very low cost. Going forward, we will strive to maintain our digital freight platforms leading position in the industry. We will continue to expand our network and leverage our big data capabilities and technological advantages to advance industry wide digitalization and create greater value for our users.
Shuyao Li
谢谢,非常清楚。是的。
Shuyao Li
Thank you very clear. Yes.
Operator
女士们、先生们,现在我们将结束问答环节。我想把会议交回给毛毛做结束发言。
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mao Mao for any closing remarks.
Mao Mao
再次感谢大家今天参加我们的会议。如果您有任何进一步问题,请随时直接联系满帮集团或TPG投资者关系部。我们在中国和美国的投资者关系联系方式可在今天的新闻稿中找到。祝您有美好的一天。
Mao Mao
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at Full Truck Alliance directly or TPG Investor Relations. Our contact information for IR in both, China and U.S can be found in today’s press release. Have a great day.
Operator
女士们、先生们,会议现在结束。感谢您参加今天的演示。您现在可以断开线路了。
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded. We thank you for attending today’s presentation. And you may now disconnect your lines.