Tom's e-commerce JV makes big gains
Tom Group, which narrowed its net loss in the first half, will step up investment in its e-commerce venture with China Post after the unit made record gains in the first six months of this year.
Tom chief executive Ken Yeung Kwok-mung estimated yesterday that Beijing Ule E-Commerce, the nascent online shopping services platform set up by Tom and China Post in late 2010, recorded up to 300 million yuan (HK$368 million) in gross merchandise value (GMV) - the total worth of goods sold across the e-commerce service - from January to June this year.
That surpassed the 240 million yuan in GMV that Ule posted in its first year of operations ended December 30. Ule also had close to two million users as of June 30, compared with one million last year.
'We've been following through with what we've talked about [in] this venture,' Yeung said. 'We aim to deepen our collaboration with China Post.'
He said Ule's monthly average value per transaction rose 16 per cent to 330 yuan from last year.
Tom's chief financial officer Angela Mak Soek-fun said the firm 'will put in more investments where there is more growth' and that Ule was one of those business 'growth drivers'.
China Internet Network Information Centre data showed there were 210 million domestic online shoppers at the end of last month. Yeung said Ule, backed by China Post's extensive infrastructure, was also able to serve the needs of the 1.1 billion mainlanders who had not yet shopped online, but wanted to.
Tom's first-half net loss narrowed 21 per cent to HK$102 million, from HK$129 million a year earlier, as income from publishing, television and entertainment and outdoor media rose. Its total revenue was up slightly to HK$1.134 billion from HK$1.122 billion the previous year.
