China’s JD.com struggles to shake off consumption weakness, misses revenue estimates

Bengaluru/Shanghai — Chinese e-commerce group JD.com missed market estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, as a persistent slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy pressured consumers to keep a tight hold on their purse strings.

JD.com’s US shares fell 1.2% in pre-market trading.

A prolonged property sector crisis, a macroeconomic slowdown and heightened job insecurity have hammered consumer confidence in China, hurting retail sales and resulting in a bruising price war among major e-commerce platforms.

JD.com has been working to improve its share of sales from high-growth live-streamed e-commerce, as well as exploring international business growth, but trails rivals such as Alibaba in live-streaming and Temu-owner PDD Holdings in tapping overseas sales.

While the Chinese government has outlined stimulus measures to prop up economic growth, the lack of solid steps to boost consumption has also weighed on sentiment.

JD.com said total revenue rose 5.1% to 260.4 billion yuan ($35.95bn) in the third quarter, compared with estimates of 261.45bn yuan, according to LSEG data.

Net income attributable to JD.com’s ordinary shareholders stood at 11.7bn yuan in the July-September period, an increase of 47.8% from a year earlier.

This period coincides with a traditional lull in Chinese consumption between major shopping festivals in June and November.

A bid to lure more customers in one of the year’s quietest shopping periods in China may be behind an increase of 25.7% for marketing expenses, which reached 10 billion yuan or 3.8% of net revenue for the quarter, compared to 3.2% a year earlier.

China’s Singles’ Day sales period, a nationwide sales promotion event typically seen as a gauge of consumer sentiment, ran from October 14 to November 11 this year, 10 days longer than last year. That resulted in a 26.6% rise in sales across all major e-commerce platforms, according to data provider Syntun.

This year’s sales saw larger ticket household appliances perform better than last year, benefiting from a national 150bn yuan trade-in subsidy scheme announced in July to help boost consumption.

JD.com has been a major proponent of the initiative and since August has launched trade-in programmes for over 20 provinces and cities across China as part of the central government’s initiative.

Reuters