Chinese online retailer JD.com’s revenue growth slows amid trade war concerns

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com today reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth since its 2014 initial public offering.

The company, which is backed by Walmart, Google and China’s Tencent, reported a 25 per cent rise in revenues for the last quarter, totalling 104.8bn yuan (£11.75m).

But the growth was well below previous rates, which hit 60 per cent in 2015, and reportedly missed analysts’ forecasts, prompting shares to drop as much as 4 per cent this morning.

Operating loss also grew by nearly 23 per cent year on year, at 650.7m yuan for the quarter compared to 502.4m yuan for the same period in 2017.

Despite the slowdown, JD’s chief financial officer Sidney Huang said the company had put in a “strong performance across the business,” driven by a focus on improving customer experience.

“We will continue our disciplined strategy of investing in key technologies as we focus on optimising operations and driving economies of scale over the coming quarters,” he added

JD.com has seen shares dive by more than 44 per cent this year amid growing concerns over the Sino-US trade tariff war. It’s bigger rival in the Chinese e-commerce space, Alibaba, has had similar fortunes, albeit to a lesser extent, with an 11 per cent drop.

The company has also had to contend with the arrest of chairman Richard Liu, who spent a night in a cell in Minnesota, US, for alleged sexual misconduct earlier this year. JD.com has called the allegations unsubstantiated.

Liu said the third quarter results were solid, pointing out JD.com had made steps forward in “retail infrastructure solutions”.

The company rolled out its logistics network to consumers in the quarter, offering its own parcel delivery service first to users in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzho, which included a points system for customers who chose recycled packaging for their orders.

Despite the slowing growth, JD.com a 14.6 per cent in annual active customer accounts to 305.2m in the year ending September 30, from 266.3m in the same period last year.