(Bloomberg) — JD.com Inc.’s revenue grew at its fastest pace in three years after stimulus measures from Beijing and an aggressive drive to compete with Meituan in food delivery helped revitalize consumer spending.
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Its American depositary receipts rose as much as 3.5% in New York after the company reported a 16% rise in sales to 301.1 billion yuan ($42 billion) for the March quarter. JD is now handling close to 20 million food orders daily, executives said Tuesday, surging from just a month ago and already about a fifth of Meituan’s 2024 peak of about 98 million.
That rapid expansion underscores concerns about JD’s entry into a hyper-competitive — and low-margin — arena dominated by Meituan. Since joining the field this year, JD has introduced coupons to attract new users. In April, it vowed to recruit 100,000 full-time riders over three months.
Losses doubled in its new business segment in the quarter, reflecting that outlay. Still, improving consumer spending on big-ticket items such as electronics drove a 53% leap in overall net income. On Tuesday, China’s market watchdog disclosed it had recently summoned executives from Meituan, JD and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to deliver a warning about unruly competition.
“Food delivery is a natural extension of our retail business,” Chief Executive Officer Sandy Xu told analysts, reiterating the company’s stance. “China’s food delivery market is big and has room for multiple platforms.”
JD’s overall business has held up well despite growing concerns about the fallout from global trade tensions on a rickety Chinese economy.
Beijing this year has doled out purchase or trade-in subsidies on products from appliances to smartphones and cars, aiming to revitalize anemic consumption.
The subsidies, which began last year, have proven popular with belt-tightening consumers looking for bargains. In May, policymakers announced a slew of new stimulus measures including monetary policy easing, seeking to counter the potential fallout from a global trade war. Progress in trade talks between Beijing and Washington could also ease some of the pressure.
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JD.com’s narrower 1Q adjusted operating profit beat vs. consensus estimates for retail and new businesses, which exceeded projections by 17%, down from 18% in the prior four quarters, heightens the risk that the firm will struggle to deliver stronger-than-expected earnings of the same magnitude as it spends more to expand into food delivery and grab share from incumbents. Such expenditures already doubled 1Q losses from new businesses vs. a year earlier to surpass 37% of market estimates.
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– Catherine Lim and Trini Tan, analysts
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Net income jumped to 10.9 billion yuan in the first quarter. That’s even as losses from new initiatives soared to 1.3 billion yuan from just 670 million yuan a year ago.
Investors have called JD’s investment into food delivery “unsustainable,” and worried that the battle with Meituan will hurt earnings — long a focus for a company accustomed to competing with aggressive rivals such as PDD Holdings Inc. and Alibaba.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimated that, at the current scale, the business could generate as much as 18 billion yuan in annualized losses, wiping out 36% of its parent’s operating profit for 2025.
–With assistance from Charlotte Yang and Vlad Savov.
(Updates with stock reaction in the second paragraph.)
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