Anniversary promotion helps boost JD.com's second-quarter earnings
JD.com the mainland's second-largest business-to-consumer e-commerce platform operator, could well be on the fast track to profitability as its net margins improve on the back of a steady increase in mobile users and transactions.
Analysts forecast Nasdaq-traded JD, in which internet giant Tencent Holdings is a major investor, to post second-quarter revenue of US$4.36 billion in its first earnings results announcement as a public company this Friday, before the market opens in the United States.
In a report yesterday, Barclays estimated JD would narrow its net loss in the second quarter to US$10 million, compared with US$13 million in the quarter to March.
Ricky Lai, a research analyst at Guotai Junan International, said JD's strong performance was anchored by its successful "6.18" anniversary promotion, which celebrated the founding of the Beijing-based company in 1998 by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Liu Qiangdong.
"Other e-commerce providers also launched their own campaigns to counter that promotion, but JD was helped by mobile campaigns with Tencent's widely popular social platforms Mobile QQ and Weixin," Lai said.
Weixin is the mobile messaging application known outside the mainland as WeChat, which has about 400 million users worldwide. Like Mobile QQ, WeChat provides mobile payment services based on Tencent's online payments platform.