Behind Huolala's over 455 million fulfilled orders in half a year: Building a technological engine and an ecological moat
Hualala is once again at the door of the Hong Kong stock market.
On October 27, Hualala, under the main name of "Lala Technology", submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange again and updated its financial report data.
The latest data shows that in the first half of 2025, Hualala's global GTV reached $5.967 billion, a year-on-year increase of 17.7%. Against this backdrop, the company achieved an operating income of $935 million in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 31.8% compared to the same period in 2024.
Although it has not yet been listed on the secondary market, Hualala's outstanding performance has attracted market attention. In the freight market, Hualala has been the logistics trading platform with the largest global closed-loop freight GTV for many consecutive years.
01 Continuous Increase in Order Volume: 455 million Orders Completed in the First Half of the Year
In addition to the GTV data, according to Frost & Sullivan's statistics, Hualala was also the logistics trading platform with the largest average monthly active merchants and the largest number of completed orders globally in the first half of 2025. The prospectus shows that in the first half of 2025, Hualala had an average of 19.7 million monthly active merchants and about 2 million monthly active drivers, and completed about 455 million orders, a 34% increase compared to the same period last year.
The number of platform merchants and orders forms the basis of the GTV scale, and the growth of the GTV scale is ultimately reflected in the platform's own revenue growth rate.
The latest prospectus shows that in the first half of 2025, Hualala achieved an operating income of $935 million, a year-on-year increase of 31.8% compared to the first half of 2024.
Looking at the longer term, Hualala's performance has been growing rapidly in the past three years. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, it achieved revenues of $1.036 billion, $1.334 billion, and $1.593 billion respectively, with a compound annual growth rate of 24% during this period.
Figure: Details of Hualala's operating income from 2022 to the first half of 2025, from Hualala's prospectus
While Hualala's revenue has been growing continuously, the monetization rate of its freight platform services in the Chinese mainland has been declining for three consecutive years. The prospectus shows that in 2023, the monetization rate of Hualala's freight platform services in the Chinese mainland was 10.3%, which dropped to 9.6% in 2024 and further decreased to 9.2% in the first half of 2025.
In contrast, the monetization rate of Hualala's overseas brand, Lalamove, for freight platform services has been gradually increasing. The prospectus shows that in 2023, the monetization rate of Hualala's overseas freight platform services was 15.2%, which increased to 15.9% in 2024 and remained at a high level of 15.9% in the first half of 2025.
Hualala's prospectus states that the decline in the monetization rate is mainly due to the impact of the platform's policy of reducing fees and commissions for drivers in 2025, which led to a lower revenue growth rate.
The continuous growth of the number of drivers, users, and orders has made Hualala's GTV growth quite remarkable. The prospectus shows that Hualala's global GTV increased from $7.307 billion in 2022 to $11.137 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.5%.
The above performance also verifies to some extent the correctness of Hualala's development strategy - the expansion of the scale of drivers and merchants has consolidated its market leading position and brand influence, resulting in a significant increase in the platform's GTV, which in turn has laid the foundation for the platform's sustainable growth and profitability.
02 AI Empowers Efficiency Improvement: Safer and More Transparent Freight
The improvement of the platform's business capabilities depends on expanding the user base and increasing revenue sources externally, and improving operational and fulfillment efficiency internally.
In terms of the latter, Hualala has significantly improved its efficiency in recent years. The percentage of operating expenses to revenue decreased from 57.8% in 2022 to 34.1% in 2024 and further dropped to 26.1% in the first half of 2025. Among them, technological capabilities have become the main driving factor for efficiency improvement.
The prospectus shows that Hualala has maintained a relatively high level of R & D investment in the past three years. The R & D expenses from 2022 to 2024 were $196.8 million, $174.8 million, and $178.6 million respectively.
Figure: Screenshot from Hualala's prospectus
Meanwhile, thanks to the large GTV scale, Hualala has also accumulated various proprietary data insights. From 2022 to the first half of 2025, the platform completed more than 2.25 billion transactions in total. Through these transactions, the platform can better understand the preferences and needs of various users and master data in multiple niche areas, such as supply and demand data for different vehicle models in different cities. These resources have become the data basis for continuously optimizing its technological capabilities such as AI algorithms.
With R & D investment on one hand and data resources on the other, Hualala has been able to develop advanced pricing, matching, and allocation algorithms to optimize the freight matching and order completion between merchants and drivers. Specifically, in terms of fulfillment, in 2024, Hualala's average order response rate exceeded 85%, and drivers usually responded within about 20 seconds after receiving a transportation order.
In terms of the user experience of both merchants and drivers, based on the AI - powered pricing algorithm, Hualala can capture real - time changes between merchant demand and driver supply, thereby optimizing transaction pricing and reducing potential pricing disputes between the two parties in fulfillment; by applying AI - driven navigation and route planning technology, platform drivers can optimize routes, reducing delivery time and fuel costs.
Based on these advantages, according to Frost & Sullivan's data, Hualala currently has industry - leading freight matching capabilities in terms of response speed, response time, and specified capacity during peak hours.
03 19.7 million Merchants + 2 million Drivers: Building an Ecological Moat
If technological capabilities play the role of improving timeliness and reducing costs, then the number of users and orders forms the foundation of the core performance of the freight platform.
The latest prospectus data shows that as of June 30, 2025, Hualala has established a large - scale business network in the Chinese mainland, covering 363 cities including all first - tier cities.
Along with this trend, Hualala's order volume increased to 455 million in the first half of 2025, and the number of monthly active drivers was about 2 million. In the three years from 2022 to 2024, Hualala completed 428 million, 588 million, and 779 million orders respectively, with an average of 10.4 million, 13.4 million, and 16.7 million monthly active merchants, and an average of 916,500, 1.2123 million, and 1.6821 million monthly active drivers.
As the order volume in these networks grows, the platform can attract more drivers and merchants to join - directly strengthening the network effect and at the same time optimizing the AI algorithm - which in turn helps improve fulfillment efficiency and driver income.
As a result, the platform has entered a positive cycle of "increased orders drive increased driver income, attract more drivers to join, and drive improved fulfillment efficiency", and Hualala's moat in the market competition has also been gradually consolidated.
As a freight platform operating a large - scale network, in addition to strengthening its own moat, Hualala has also invested more resources in protecting the rights and interests of drivers. The prospectus shows that Hualala has continuously carried out the "pilot project for occupational injury protection of new - format employees". As of June 30, 2025, Hualala provided occupational injury protection for more than 685 million transportation orders facilitated on the platform.
In addition, since 2025, Hualala has joined hands with the Shenzhen Prevention and Treatment Center for Occupational Diseases to establish the first "Driver Health Center" in the Internet freight industry and launched a driver health intervention project; in terms of increasing driver income, Hualala has taken two measures of reducing commissions and providing subsidies to relieve the burden and increase the income of drivers.
Against the background of social calls for strengthening the safety protection of various emerging occupations such as delivery workers, the above - mentioned investments are expected to play a positive role in attracting more driver users to the platform.
04 Continuous Growth of Overseas Business: Vast Potential in the Overseas Market
Hualala's leading position in the domestic freight market is reflected in multiple indicators such as GTV. According to its prospectus, based on Frost & Sullivan's data, as of December 31, 2024, Hualala was the only digital freight platform in China that operated large - scale (i.e., the annual closed - loop freight GTV of both intra - city and inter - city businesses exceeded $100 million) intra - city and inter - city freight services.
Looking towards the broader overseas market, Hualala's overseas business has been growing continuously in recent years.
As of June 2025, Hualala's global business has covered 14 major markets, including the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong (China), Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, Bangladesh, Japan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. In the first half of 2025, its overseas market revenue was $88.94 million, accounting for 9.5% of the total revenue, a 0.2 - percentage - point increase compared to the same period in 2024.
This shows that the contribution of Hualala's overseas business to the group's performance has further increased.
In terms of service monetization ability, in 2023, the monetization rate of Hualala's overseas freight platform services was 15.2%, which increased to 15.9% in 2024 and remained at a high level of 15.9% in the first half of 2025. The prospectus states that Hualala has better pricing power in the overseas market.
Actually, since its establishment in Hong Kong (China) in 2013, Hualala started to enter the Chinese mainland and Southeast Asian markets simultaneously in 2014 - globalization has been in its genes since its founding.
The ability to support its global expansion comes from its industry knowledge and infrastructure reserves. For example, in the process of local promotion, in all the cities where Hualala has a presence globally, the English car sticker "Lalamove" has been seen on the streets with platform drivers. Through this strategy, Hualala was able to quickly build brand awareness locally.
Another example is in the business aspect. When it first entered the Southeast Asian market, Hualala started with two - wheeled vehicle delivery because two - wheeled vehicles are the most popular means of transportation there, which enabled it to quickly gain market share. In the future, as the business expands, Hualala will gradually replicate its strategy in the Chinese mainland and provide more four - wheeled vehicle delivery services.
On the other hand, aside from Hualala's own strategic factors, the current low digital penetration rate in the international market has opened up a dividend period for such platforms to go global.
Figure: Hualala's prospectus
According to Frost & Sullivan's data, as of 2024, only 2.4% of the global road freight GTV was facilitated through digital platforms, and this figure is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years, reaching 3.4% in 2029. The institution also predicts that the global closed - loop freight GTV of online freight service platforms is expected to increase from $19.3 billion in 2024 to $35 billion in 2029.
In addition, compared with the scale of the Chinese market, the total GTV of the overseas intra - city road freight market in 2024 was about three times that of China. This indicates that the overseas market has greater growth potential compared with the domestic market. In the past decade or so, Hualala has developed into the logistics trading platform with the largest global closed - loop freight GTV, mainly focusing on the Chinese market. In the future, as its global layout is further deepened, it is expected to seize the growth opportunities in the overseas market and achieve a remarkable growth curve.