Behind 8 consecutive years on the list: Where does Huitongda's (09878) cross-cycle value come from?

Title context: Behind 8 consecutive years on the list: Where does Huitongda's (09878) cross-cycle value come from? Text: Recently, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce released the "2026 China Top 500 Private Enterprises" list in Tianjin, and HUITONGDA NET (09878) was once again included. This is the company's 8th consecutive year on this list, while also retaining its place among China's Top 100 Private Service Enterprises, ranking 48th among the top 100 service enterprises with operating revenue of 52.3 billion yuan. A list records the operating scale of a certain year, but eight consecutive years on the list record more than just scale. The retail sector has not been calm over the past eight years: product structures and consumer market trends have rapidly shifted toward high-frequency fast-moving consumer goods, retail formats have gradually differentiated into bulk snack stores and hard discount supermarkets, and technological tools have moved from basic informatization to AI-driven development. Each round of change reshuffles the deck, and among peers there has been no shortage of those who rose and fell. On a retail track where "each leader has its day for only three to five years," what has Huitongda relied on not only to remain steadily at the table but also to continue finding new growth? Looking back at Huitongda's strategic choices, its starting point was not chasing trends, but actively diving into the "difficult but correct" lower-tier market. Today this network covers 21 provinces and 26,000 townships, serving more than 250,000 member stores. In its view, scale itself is not a moat. What is truly scarce is the operating scenarios accumulated around these township mom-and-pop storesproducts can be replaced and tools can be iterated, but once "whom to serve and in what scenarios to serve them" has been repeatedly validated, it forms an anti-cyclical foundation. This also explains why, amid the parade of e-commerce, community group buying, bulk retail, and others, Huitongda's industry position has instead continued to strengthen. If the revenue figures show Huitongda's scale value and industry position, then the following three layers of repeatedly reusable capabilities are the foundation supporting this network's continued stable operation and iterative upgrading. The first is end-to-end supply chain operating capability. The company's categories have shifted from the early "three highs" goods to today's high-frequency fast-moving consumer goods such as snacks and convenience products, but the full-chain capability of delivering goods from factories to terminal stores has never changed. Once new categories are connected to the existing network, they can gain Huitongda's mature channel operating efficiencythis is the direct reason Huitongda's category upgrading is faster than that of its peers. The second is customer service capability. Lower-tier merchants have a weak digital foundation, and system launch does not equal actual use. Huitongda's offline teams covering county-level areas handle promotion, training, and operations, enabling each upgrade to land in the actual business actions of stores. Because of this, its promotion costs and customer retention are better than those of pure online models. The third is technological capability. From lower-tier market e-commerce to industrial internet and then to AI technology, the technology stack has changed three times, while the users and scenarios accumulated in the first two layers provide ready-made entry points for each round of technology. Technology can be purchased, but the user scenarios that can carry technology and the data accumulation behind them cannot. When these three layers of capability are combined, the foundation remains unchanged while capabilities thicken period by periodthis is the essence of crossing cycles. As the retail industry enters a new cycle jointly defined by smart supply chains and AI, the value of the above three layers of capability becomes even clearer. The implementation of AI in the lower-tier market faces three thresholds different from those in urban markets. The first threshold is scenarios. The corpus of general large models is mostly drawn from standardized urban supermarkets, while non-standardized lower-tier retail rarely enters training sets, and real operations themselves are scarce resources. The multi-format store network covered by Huitongda, as well as daily operating actions such as inventory management, product selection, and promotions, provide conditions for the model to be repeatedly calibrated in real operations. Companies without scenarios can only output tools, while companies with scenarios can directly deliver results. The second threshold is the data closed loop. Within Huitongda's system operate three types of customer groups: member stores, chain stores, and e-commerce merchants. The product selection and operating experience accumulated by member stores are reused in chain stores, the high-frequency transactions of chain stores feed back into the model, and e-commerce scenarios fill in online samples. Scenarios produce data, data optimizes the model, and the model flows back into scenarios, with closed-loop efficiency improving period by period. Even if competitors build models with comparable capabilities, they lack the scenarios and data to keep them continuously calibrated. The third threshold is delivery. The digital foundation of lower-tier merchants determines that AI tools cannot rely only on online distribution; deployment and continued use both depend on offline services. Huitongda uses county-level operating teams to complete promotion, training, and operations, making its AI business service-oriented rather than traffic-oriented, with user renewals and retention more predictable. This is the natural extension of user service capability in the new cycle. Eight years on the list measure operating scale, while the foundation formed by the superposition of users, scenarios, and capabilities measures sustainability, which is precisely the scarcest source of cross-cycle investment value. Huitongda has incorporated more than 250,000 township mom-and-pop stores into its digital operating network, creating a positive cycle between being "needed" commercially and being "needed" socially. The thicker the foundation, the higher the certainty of returns. As the penetration of smart supply chains represented by snacks + convenience and AI applications accelerates in the lower-tier market, the superposition of capabilities on this foundation is expected to operating results and shareholder returns at a faster pace.