A delivery worker outside a JD.com Inc. sorting center in Shanghai, China. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
CHINESE e-commerce giant JD.com beat market estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, signaling resilient consumer spending on its platform fueled by price cuts and government subsidies.
U.S.-listed shares of the company rose about 3% in premarket trading.
Consumer demand in China has remained muted amid persistent economic pressures and trade uncertainty, but retailers like JD.com have leaned on deep discounts, promotions and government stimulus to spur sales.
Facing sluggish consumption and fierce rivalry at home, JD.com is tapping new opportunities.
Last month it offered to buy electronics giant Ceconomy in a bid that values the German company at 2.2 billion euros ($2.57 billion), seen as a strategic step for JD.com to expand its footprint in Europe and strengthen its global presence in the retail industry.
In February it entered the food delivery business, a field that has been mainly dominated by Meituan and Alibaba's Ele.me, offering incentives to consumers to gain an edge.
JD.com also benefited from record sales logged during the 618 festival, China's largest mid-year shopping bonanza. Total gross merchandise value, a measure of sales, jumped 15.2% to an all-time high of 855.6 billion yuan, according to retail data provider Syntun.
The company said the number of users placing orders for the 618 event more than doubled from last year, with more than 2.2 billion orders across its online, offline and food delivery platforms.
Total revenue rose 22.4% to 356.66 billion yuan ($49.73 billion) during the second quarter ended June, compared with analysts' average estimate of 331.63 billion yuan, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Net income attributable to JD.com's ordinary shareholders was 6.2 billion yuan for the quarter, compared to 12.6 billion yuan a year earlier.
($1 = 7.1714 Chinese yuan renminbi)
($1 = 0.8562 euros) - Reuters
