- Analysts estimate the leaders chalked up single-digit gains
- Newer platforms like PDD and Douyin may have far outpaced them
Sarah Zheng / Bloomberg:
— China’s Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com reported sales increases for Singles’ Day, after the e-commerce giants offered steep discounts
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc. reported sales increases during China’s most important shopping festival, yet likely lagged newer entrants from social media platforms like ByteDance Ltd.’s Douyin during a muted year for consumer spending.
Analysts scrambled for clues after China’s two e-commerce leaders again failed to disclose overall revenue numbers during Singles’ Day, the annual bargains extravaganza built around a Nov. 11 event that Alibaba popularized over a decade ago. Historically a barometer for Chinese consumer sentiment, it’s become much harder to parse since companies stopped providing precise figures during the turmoil of the Covid era.
Online transactions across the three largest platforms — Alibaba’s Tmall, JD.com’s main portal and PDD Holdings Inc.’s China-only Pinduoduo service — likely slipped about 1% to 923.5 billion yuan ($127 billion) during the festival, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ada Li estimated, calculating based on retail channel data tracked by Syntun. While a smaller piece of the pie, streaming platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou Technology grew transactions by 19%, according to Li’s analysis.
Others painted a slightly rosier picture. Alibaba and JD likely managed 1% to 3% growth in gross merchandise value over the three- to four-week period leading up to Nov. 11, when merchants embarked on their discounting spree, Goldman Sachs estimated. PDD, which targets lower-income and rural markets, racked up growth of 20%, analyst Ronald Keung estimated.
Alibaba and JD.com report earnings this week and should offer more insight into whether domestic consumption has recovered.
“The slowing growth shows we need to roll out large-scale economic stimulus measures that are strong enough to lift market confidence and drive up the economy,” Ren Zeping, a well-known economist who was formerly a researcher at the State Council’s Development Research Center, wrote Monday.
“Consumers are becoming more mature and rational as they go after high value for money. Their perception of brands is also changing, and domestic brands with high value for money are rising.”
Read more here:
— Techmeme