Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com exceeded market expectations for quarterly revenue on Thursday, as deep discounts and price cuts encouraged customers to spend, driving up strong year-end sales.
U.S.-listed shares of the company rose more than 5% in premarket trading.
“We head into 2025 with more optimism, as consumption sentiment steadily picks up,” CEO Sandy Xu said, adding JD.com saw double-digit growth in key metrics including quarterly active users and shopping frequency, as well as strong growth across most of the company’s product categories.
China’s e-commerce leaders such as JD.com and Alibaba have slashed prices on everything from toys to tech appliances to lure shoppers at a time when consumption in the world’s second-largest economy has slowed sharply.
The country’s government has also ramped up fiscal stimulus to bolster domestic consumption, which includes incentives for consumer goods trade-ins, had encoveraged consumers to purchase updated appliances.
JD.com is a major retailer of home appliances in China. SPDB International raised fourth-quarter revenue forecast for the e-commerce giant to 333.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%, helped by the government’s trade-in policy.
“We expect a significant improvement in the growth of electrified product categories, mainly benefiting from the national subsidy-driven sales growth of home appliances, computers, and other categories,” the securities house said in the report issued before the company reported its earnings.
JD.com reported total revenue of 346.99 billion yuan ($47.91 billion) for the fourth quarter, a 13.4% increase over the year earlier. Analysts were expecting revenue of 332.35 billion yuan, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Net income attributable to JD.com‘s ordinary shareholders was 9.9 billion yuan for the quarter ended December 31, compared to 3.4 billion yuan a year earlier.
Reuters
