The epidemic has brought a surge in online consumer demand, and the number of users of e-commerce platforms has grown significantly.
On May 22, Pinduoduo (Nasdaq: PDD) released its financial report for the first quarter of 2020 (the first three months ended March 31, 2020) During the reporting period, Pinduoduo’s operating income was 6.541 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44%, exceeding analyst expectations.
In terms of buyers and GMV (transaction volume), the number of annual active buyers in Pinduoduo reached 6.28 in the first 12 months ended March 31, 2020 Billion, an increase of 42.9 million in a single quarter. The average monthly active users of the app reached 487 million, an increase of 68% from the same period in 2019, or an increase of 198 million. In the first 12 months to the end of March, Pinduoduo’s GMV reached 1,157.2 billion yuan, an increase of 108% over the same period in 2019.
In fact, not only is there more, but JD.com ’s number of active buyers in the first quarter has also increased significantly: As of March 31, 2020, JD.com In the past 12 months, the number of active purchase users increased by 24.8% to 387.4 million from 310.5 million in the same period of the previous year, and there was also an increase of more than 25 million in a single quarter. Alibaba’s annual active consumers in China’s retail market increased to 726 million, an increase of 15 million from the 12-month period ended December 31, 2019.
Although user growth leads, compared with the other two platforms, Pinduoduo is facing loss pressure. Pinduoduo ’s net losses attributable to ordinary shareholders under non-GAAP this quarter were 3.17 billion yuan, compared with 1.379 billion yuan in the same period last year. In 2019, Pinduoduo ’s net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was 4.27 billion yuan.
There are two main reasons for the increase in losses. On the one hand, during the epidemic period, in order to help merchants on the platform, Pinduoduo maintained a zero commission basis On the initiative, we continued to reduce the marketing costs of merchants on the platform, and gave a large amount of free traffic resources to the medical supplies that users need most. Therefore, in the case of doubled transaction volume, revenue only achieved 44% growth.
On the other hand, Pinduoduo continues to increase its continuous investment in direct subsidies for technology, products and commodities. At the same time, Pinduoduo ’s tens of billions of subsidies continued to be invested. In this quarter, the platform ’s sales and marketing expenses reached 7.297 billion yuan.
Pinduoduo is still in the first quarterPromote the live broadcast service “Duo Duo Live”. More and more stores use live broadcast to communicate with consumers, which also brings higher broadband costs to the platform.
The good news is that the investment in various subsidy strategies, various functions and infrastructure has brought about a continuous increase in the number of orders.
Huang Zheng, founder, chairman and CEO of Pinduoduo wrote in the financial report: “Despite the unprecedented challenges in the first quarter, Pinduoduo continued to grow and has now grown Serving 600 million active buyers. “
“ Despite the epidemic and seasonal factors, we were able to have an average of 50 million orders per day in March to meet the needs of users We are very happy to see more and more users use our platform and give us trust, “said David Liu, Vice President of Pinduoduo Strategy.
According to Pinduoduo, since May, the average daily number of logistics packages on the platform has exceeded 65 million, up 30% from March this year.
As of the end of the first quarter, Pinduoduo accounted for cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments totaling 42.6 billion yuan (excluding restricted funds).
In many ways, the company has sufficient cash reserves, and the tens of billions of subsidies will continue, and the number of categories and commodities will continue to expand.