Peer Hunting (06100) First half of 2026: AI empowers the “BHC ecosystem”, and the inflection point of performance is fully evident

The Zhitong Finance App learned that on August 21, Peer Recruitment (06100) released its financial report for the first half of 2026, with revenue of 989 million yuan, an increase of 5.6% over the previous year, stopping the decline and turning an increase. It was mainly driven by resilient growth in the business and positive growth of cash repayments for four consecutive quarters under the full power of AI. In terms of profit, through continuous optimization of product structures and improvements in human efficiency brought about by AI, gross profit of 781 million yuan was achieved during the period, up 7.4% year on year, and net profit to mother was 88 million yuan, up 9.6% year on year.

The company's BHC ecological barriers are strong, self-developed models and three-terminal AI products have been fully implemented. The number of users has maintained steady growth, and the willingness to pay and stickiness have been significantly enhanced.

In the first half of 2026, the number of verified companies on the company's platform was 1,5116 million, up 5.4% year on year. The number of verified headhunters was about 231,300, up 6% year on year, and 122 million registered job seekers, up 9.6% year on year. Both of its major business models maintained steady growth. During this period, revenue from talent services from enterprise users was 820 million yuan, up 6.7% year on year, and talent service revenue from individual users was 169 million yuan, up 0.2% year on year.

Peer recruitment seizes the opportunities of the AI era, continues to advance the “AI+ recruitment” strategy in 2026, and relies on AI products and self-developed model systems to build accurate and efficient intelligent job matching links to effectively open up BHC ecological human resources supply and demand channels, and achieve a perfect closed loop on the data side and scene side with AI to achieve a performance flywheel effect.

On the B-side, the main AI products include platform AI accounts (including AI Pro accounts), intended candidates, and multi-faceted products. In the first half of 2026, the customer coverage rate of B-side AI accounts (including AI Pro accounts) further increased to nearly 100%. Among them, the AI Pro account penetration rate rose rapidly to nearly 40% since its launch in the fourth quarter of last year, and the AI Pro account coverage rate for newly introduced customers exceeded 70%; the entire process of AI-driven candidates had nearly 60% of the job order delivery time shortened from two hours to one hour, and the monthly repetition rate increased to 76%. The number of orders initiated and downloaded resumes increased by more than 70% year on year; AI interviews “multi-faceted” enabled accurate quantification of multi-dimensional talent capabilities Evaluate and create an integrated talent evaluation solution.

These AI products are gradually being implemented in the B-side scenario. Due to scarce industry supply and product efficiency, they have been widely recognized by customers. The number of enterprise customers increased year-on-year in the first half of 2026, and the number of effective positions posted by enterprises increased 6% year-on-year.

On the H side, the AI agent “Xiaoyi” embedded in the headhunting delivery and management platform “Multi-Hunting” covers the entire internal and external headhunting recruitment chain. Xiaoyi integrates the dual capabilities of the general model and the self-developed model “Connect Talents Together”. The delivery speed was further accelerated, and human efficiency was greatly improved over the same period last year. The H side is an integral part of the ecosystem. The number of job seekers verified to be reached by headhunters increased 10.6% year over year in the first half of the year.

Meanwhile, on the C-side, Workmate AI continues to promote the iterative upgrading of product capabilities, and relies on a multi-skill tandem technology architecture to create an integrated job search solution, effectively lengthen user interaction links, enhance user inertia, and continuously optimize the overall terminal user experience. In the first half of the year, the number of registered C-side users reached 122 million, maintaining a growing trend. During this period, the number of core talents recalled increased rapidly over the same period last year, and the number of monthly active users (MAU) reached a record high.

In the BHC ecosystem scenario, comprehensive cash payments for AI products hired by peers increased nearly 100% year-on-year in the first half of this year. Its investment in AI technology continues to be converted into revenue contributions, and it has become the most impressive new growth pole. More importantly, the company is one of the few targets in the industry that integrates self-developed AI models (peer talent) and recruitment ecology. The closed-loop scenario effectively feeds back the AI transformation of the business and drives ecological transformation.

It is worth noting that the company fully empowers its profit level through AI. On the one hand, it drives product structure optimization and increases gross margin levels through AI products, and on the other hand, it also effectively reduces costs and increases efficiency through AI empowering operations. In the first half of 2026, the company's gross profit margin was 79%, an increase of 1.4 percentage points over the previous year; while the comprehensive operating expenses ratio declined to 72.2% during the period, a decrease of 0.5 percentage points.

Looking at industry prospects, 2026 is the year the “15th Five-Year Plan” begins, and there are policy opportunities for structural adjustments in the industry.

The recruitment market is showing a trend of K-type differentiation. Strategic emerging industries represented by the AI industry chain and high-end manufacturing continue to expand, boom is rising, peer recruitment keeps up with the trend, and continues to deeply cultivate strategic key industries. At the same time, AI is being fully applied to the recruitment industry to reshape the recruitment ecosystem. According to the Huajing Industry Research Institute report, the AI recruitment market will reach 12.2 billion yuan in 2025, maintaining high growth.

The company adapted to structural industry opportunities, combined with BHC's ecological advantages, fully deployed AI products and accurately anchored the booming circuit. The number of new jobs on the recruitment platform continued to grow during the period, with a 14% year-on-year increase. The number of new jobs requiring mastery of AI tools has increased dramatically. “AI+ recruitment” has become mainstream in the industry, and the company is a leader in middle and high-end recruitment. Using the brand mentality of “AI talent hunting, AI recruitment for recruitment”, it will consolidate its competitive advantage in the middle and high-end recruitment field, which will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the recruitment industry in the AI era.

Taken together, revenue from peer hunting resumed growth in the first half of the year, thanks to the establishment of BHC ecological barriers that are difficult to shake in the industry. Third-end AI products have been fully implemented, further stabilizing ecological advantages, and promoting continuous data growth and increased willingness to pay for corporate customers and individual customers. With the full power of AI, the company's profits have increased dramatically. As the scale grows, there is still room for profit to rise.

The company attaches importance to shareholder returns. It paid a special dividend in 2025 and implemented a share repurchase with a shareholder return of over 10%. In 2026, it also paid a final dividend of HK$0.2 per share in 2025. Furthermore, in 2025, the company promised to the market that it will pay annual dividends for the next three years at no less than 50% of the adjusted total net profit to mother, and also explore various types of shareholder return methods. Currently, the company has sufficient cash reserves, the PB value is only 0.33 times, the valuation is low, the dividend ratio is high. It has future growth prospects under structured opportunities, achieved a double hit between performance and valuation, and continues to share development dividends.