JD.com, Inc. (JD) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, and thank you for standing by for JD.com's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Sean Zhang, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good day, everyone. Welcome to JD.com's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are CEO of JD.com, Ms. Sandy Xu; and CFO, Mr. Ian Shan. Sandy will kick off the call with her opening remarks, and Ian will discuss the financial results. Then we'll open the call to questions from analysts. Please note, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our results from the comparable period of 2025. Before turning the call over to Sandy, let me quickly cover the safe harbor. Please be reminded that during this call, our comments and responses to your questions reflect management's view as of today only, will include forward-looking statements. Please refer to our latest safe harbor statement in the earnings press release on the IR website, which applies to this call. We will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures also in the earnings press release. Please also note that all figures mentioned in this call are in RMB, unless otherwise stated. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Sandy. Sandy, please.

Thank you, Sean. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We closed the second quarter with steady performance in line with our expectations, maintaining strong operational resilience amidst macro and industry headwinds. We are navigating a high trade-in comparison base, upstream price pressure in consumer electronics and evolving macro dynamics. Our commitment to high-quality development translated to robust profitability. Most notably, Q2 marked a definitive turning point for our profitability trajectory. Our non-GAAP net income attributable to ordinary shareholders surged by 21% year-on-year to RMB 8.9 billion, driven by both JD Retail's healthy margin expansion and JD Food Delivery's loss reduction. In particular, both JD Retail gross margin and operating margin hit historic highs for peak promotional seasons, and JD Food Delivery narrowed its losses by over 50% year-on-year in the quarter. This performance underscores the unique strength of our business model. Even in a complex external environment, it continuously enables us to deepen our supply chain capabilities, unlock operational efficiencies across our business ecosystem and drive sustained profit expansion. Moving to our operational highlights. I would like to share three key developments for the quarter. First, we maintained healthy user momentum while dramatically improving marketing efficiency in the quarter. Across key metrics, including MAU, quarterly active customers and Plus members, we sustained double-digit year-on-year growth. Our June 18 grand promotion also set a new record for purchasing users. Crucially, we achieved this user expansion while streamlining group level marketing expenses, supported by enhanced operational efficiency and marketing optimization across JD Food Delivery and JD Retail. We maintained high-quality user momentum in Q2, primarily driven by deeper engagement among existing users. Notably, our efforts to provide diversified services catering to our users' life needs such as health care, home services and auto aftermarket services resonated strongly with our users, contributing to deeper user engagement and stickiness. In health care, we provide users with a full set of online and offline services from consultation to pharmacy and on-site care. In home services, revenues increased exponentially year-on-year in Q2. And in auto aftermarket services, our JD Auto service offline stores have covered over 1,000 districts and counties across China as of Q2. Overall, this reflects our strategic shift from rapid user acquisition toward elevating user quality and lifetime value. Through disciplined life cycle management, we are successfully converting new users into highly sticky loyal customers. Second, core JD Retail delivered a resilient top line performance in Q2, while continuing to unlock profitability upside. Heading into Q3, we expect JD Retail to hit a turning point, reaccelerating into positive top line expansion while sustaining healthy bottom line. Looking at category performance, while revenues from electronics and home appliances were moderated by a high comparison base and upstream price increase in Q2, but momentum picked up in June. Our market position and user mindshare remain firmly intact amid these market dynamics. Looking into the second half of the year, we expect top line growth for this category to accelerate from the first half as the high comparison base from the trade-in program fades, and our strong supply chain strength allow us to navigate consumer electronics price cycles more effectively. General merchandise maintained healthy growth in the second quarter. In particular, our supermarket category remained a key standout, delivering near double-digit year-on-year revenue growth. With a proven multiyear track record, JD Supermarket has established itself as the most trusted platform for both users and suppliers. This success is a powerful example demonstrating how our core philosophy, the relentless pursuit of superior user experience, cost optimization and operational efficiency translates into sustainable market leadership. Other general merchandise categories such as health care and industrial products also delivered solid double-digit growth in the quarter. As we further tap into massive TAM, supported by our supply chain efficiency and strong user mindshare, we remain confident in our execution for the remainder of the year and beyond. In addition to delivering resilient top line performance, JD Retail achieved further profitability improvement in the second quarter. Its gross margin expanded by 1.3 percentage points year-on-year to 18.5%, mainly attributable to two drivers: deepening supply chain scale benefits and a favorable revenue mix supported by high-margin marketplace and marketing revenues, particularly the rapid growth in advertising revenues. JD Retail's operating margin increased by 7 basis points to 4.6%, setting a new record for a peak promotional quarter. Beyond the gross margin expansion, this performance also reflects our ROI-driven marketing spend. This allowed us to direct more resources towards R&D capabilities, which is fully aligned with our long-term business strategies. Moving on to New Businesses. Through our focus on operational efficiency, we substantially reduced losses in New Businesses, particularly in JD Food Delivery, while maintaining disciplined execution against our strategic road map. During the second quarter, JD Food Delivery maintained healthy order volume momentum while narrowing total losses by over 50% year-on-year. Within just 1 year of execution, JD Food Delivery has achieved a dramatic fast-paced improvement in unit economics, driven by our relentless focus to drive operational efficiency and revenue diversification. Moving forward, we see substantial runway for further UE optimization in our Food Delivery business, while we continue to unlock its cross-segment synergies with our core retail business. Operations at our Joybuy and Jingxi businesses advanced steadily along their strategic path with strict ROI discipline. During the quarter, Joybuy sharpened its competitive edge in Europe through its fast, reliable fulfillment and premium localized services, such as integrated delivery and installation service for home appliances. By directly addressing local consumers' pain points, Joybuy is building increasing user retention and has doubled its revenues within 2 quarters. Jingxi continued to deepen its penetration in lower-tier markets with QAC increasing over 40% year-on-year and contributing 40% of new active customers in Q2, unlocking valuable incremental user pools for our ecosystem. While both businesses saw a sequential step-up in strategic investment, all spend was executed with rigorous discipline and strictly within our expectations. Beyond operational execution, we accelerated the integration of AI and physical automation deeper into our core value chain in the second quarter, spanning demand forecasting, product sourcing, intelligent customer services and full stack logistics automation. Next-generation shopping and conversion, we are proactively upgrading our search, recommendation, ad targeting engine, along with our proprietary AI shopping agents by leveraging AI to sharpen precision in user intent, matching and traffic allocation. We have driven tangible improvements in user engagement, conversion and ROI for our brand partners. On enterprise productivity and efficiency, internally, we are seamlessly integrating generative AI into automated customer service and cross-departmental workflows. This deep integration is delivering measurable progress, enhancing customer satisfaction while structurally refining our cost structure and driving long-term operational efficiency. On the logistics automation, our progress in physical logistics automation gives us substantial headroom to further optimize our cost structure and operating efficiency. In warehousing and sorting, JD through JD Logistics expanded deployment of our proprietary LangzuTech Goods-to-Person solution across more warehouses and product categories. In autonomous delivery, JDL scaled thousands of unmanned ground vehicles across more than 20 provinces as of Q2. We are launching our first 24/7 overnight autonomous delivery routes in Shenzhen. Powering this automation is our Jingdong Logistics MetaBrain LLM, which drives real-time intelligent decision-making within our exclusive automated operating framework. In summary, our teams executed with strategic consistency and resilience throughout the second quarter. Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, we remain fully committed to our strategic priorities while responding with agility to evolving macro trends. Our core JD Retail business will continue to drive efficiency gains across every link along the supply chain and New Businesses will unlock strategic potential while maintaining strict financial discipline. Combined with our integrated AI capabilities, we are confident in building a resilient business that delivers high-quality, sustainable development through all market cycles. With that, let me turn the call over to Ian.

Thank you, Sandy. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. In the second quarter, we delivered a high-quality financial performance anchored by robust bottom line expansion, while electronics and home appliances performance was temporarily tempered by a high comparison base, leading total revenues to decrease slightly by 2.9% year-on-year. Our core secular growth drivers, including general merchandise categories and marketplace and marketing revenues maintained healthy momentum. Meanwhile, facing external challenges, we sharpened our focus on supply chain capabilities and operational efficiency, and this move paid off clearly on our bottom line. Our non-GAAP net income rose 20.8% year-on-year to RMB 8.9 billion in Q2, with net margin expanding by 0.5 percentage points to 2.6%, backed by robust profitability of JD Retail and the ongoing financial optimization of JD Food Delivery. As we headed into the second half of the year, we're confident to return to positive growth on the top line while unlocking further profitability through our supply chain strength and robust execution. Alongside our resilient financial performance, we remain committed to shareholder return. During the first half of the year, we repurchased a total of approximately 69.9 million Class A ordinary shares, equivalent to 34.9 million ADS for a total of USD 1 billion. This represents around 2.5% of our ordinary shares outstanding as of December 31, 2025. Now let's go through our Q2 financial performance. Total revenues were RMB 346 billion in Q2, reflecting a 2.9% year-on-year decline as we navigated near-term category dynamics. Breaking down the mix, our product revenues reflected divergent performance across categories. Electronics and home appliances managed through the combined headwinds of a high trade-in base and upstream component price increase. General merchandise remained a resilient growth anchor led by supermarket category, which sustained rapid near double-digit revenue growth for the quarter. This performance highlights the strength of our multi-engine growth model across different market cycles. Looking into Q2 -- second half, we expect growth momentum to accelerate across categories as we continue to elevate user experience through our superior product selection, price competitiveness and service quality. Service revenues grew by 6.8% year-on-year in Q2. Within this line, marketplace and marketing revenues were up 8.3%, primarily driven by higher growth in advertising revenues. Although growth moderated relatively to previous quarters against a high user traffic base, marketplace and marketing revenues consistently outpaced the product sales. We expect this structural divergence to continue, serving as an important driver for our margin expansion over time. Logistics and other service revenues increased by 5.9% year-on-year in the quarter. The pace normalized as our food delivery business lapped its initial launch and entered a full comparable year-on-year period starting this quarter. Now let's turn to our segment performance. JD Retail revenues came in at RMB 295 billion in Q2, down 4.7% year-on-year in the second quarter, in line with expectations as we navigated category-specific base effects and market dynamics. Notably, as our continuous efforts in supply chain and user experience gained traction, momentum picked up in June. We expect this recovery trajectory to build further into Q3, making a pivot back to positive revenue growth for JD Retail. In terms of profitability, JD Retail delivered exceptional results in the second quarter. Gross margin expanded by 1.3 percentage points year-on-year to 18.5%. This marks JD Retail's 17th consecutive quarter of year-on-year gross margin expansion, a strong testament to our ability to consistently unlock profit potential across market cycles. In addition, JD Retail's non-GAAP operating profit reached RMB 13.5 billion in Q2, with operating margin up 7 basis points to 4.6%, a record high for promotional seasons. We achieved this milestone amid increased investments in research and development capabilities, thanks to gross margin expansion and improved marketing efficiency, which provided us great financial flexibility to steadily reinvest for long-term growth. In particular, JD Retail's marketing expense ratio dropped year-on-year for the fourth consecutive quarter. Overall, this set of results is a clear proof of our business model resilience. Our deepening supply chain capabilities and favorable revenue mix can effectively cushion short-term top line fluctuations, driving better profitability through operational quality rather than simple scale expansion. Moving on to JD Logistics. Its revenues grew by 24.3% year-on-year to RMB 68.1 billion (sic) [RMB 64.1 billion] in Q2, primarily driven by incremental contribution from on-demand delivery service. JD Logistics non-GAAP operating income reached RMB 2.3 billion, up 15.6% year-on-year, representing an operating margin of 3.5%. JD Logistics' near-term margin fluctuations were mainly attributable to Deppon, while the rest of JD Logistics' business maintained a healthy profitability trajectory. Turning to our New Businesses. Revenues came in at RMB 7.3 billion in Q2. The year-on-year decline was driven by the shifting of recognition of on-demand delivery revenues from New Businesses to JD Logistics, which took effect in Q1 2026. Profitability in this segment improved notably. With operating loss narrowing significantly year-on-year to RMB 9.9 billion. This was primarily driven by a more than 50% loss reduction in JD Food Delivery, highlighting our strong execution in optimizing its unit economics through streamlined operations, revenue diversification and strict ROI discipline as market competition normalized. We are confident that our food delivery business will continue to see meaningful year-on-year loss reduction throughout the rest of the year. Meanwhile, investments in Joybuy and Jingxi progressed in line with our strategic road map. Notably, Joybuy delivered encouraging sequential revenue growth in Q2 as our overseas supply chain strength and differentiated service offerings continue to gain traction among European consumers. While absolute operating loss expanded as Joybuy entered a rapid scaling phase, its loss margin narrowed sequentially, demonstrating our disciplined approach to business expansion and continuous operational refinement. Turning to our consolidated profit performance. Group level gross margin expanded meaningfully by 1.2 percentage points year-on-year to 17.1% in Q2, reaching a near all-time high. This expansion was primarily driven by JD Retail's remarkable margin performance. On operating expense, total operating expense decreased by 4.4% year-on-year in the quarter with the expense ratio decreasing by 0.3 percentage points. This operating leverage was largely driven by optimized marketing spend, which was partially offset by stepped-up R&D investments, particularly scalable AI applications. This leaner OpEx structure reflects our strategic focus on operational efficiency and bottom line quality over low ROI volume expansion. As a result, our consolidated non-GAAP net income attributable to ordinary shareholders expanded by 20.8% year-on-year to RMB 8.9 billion in Q2, lifting non-GAAP net margin by 0.5 percentage points to 2.6%. Q2 marks a definitive turning point for our consolidated profitability, and we are confident in sustaining this expanding profit trajectory as we move forward. Turning to our liquidity. Last 12 months free cash flow as of the end of Q2 reached RMB 31 billion, representing a significant improvement compared to RMB 10 billion in the prior year period. This was primarily driven by disciplined working capital management, specifically a healthy acceleration in account receivable collections and normalized cash outflows associated with the trade-in program. By the end of Q2, our cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments totaled RMB 235 billion. In summary, the second quarter once again demonstrated the fundamental resilience of our business and the discipline of our strategic execution. Despite top line headwinds, we unlocked further margin upside in JD Retail while maintaining disciplined ROI-driven investments in New Businesses. Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, we believe we have reached a clear inflection point. Top line growth is reaccelerating. Profitability continues on an upward trajectory and deep AI integration is actively redefining both user experience and enterprise efficiency. With solid operational momentum and a strong balance sheet, we remain fully committed to delivering sustainable long-term value to our shareholders through high-quality growth, expanding profitability, a disciplined approach to capital allocation and consistent shareholder returns. With that, I will turn it back to Sean. Thank you.

Thank you, Sandy and Ian. For the Q&A session, you are welcome to ask questions in Chinese or English. And our management will answer your questions in Chinese and will provide English translation for convenience purpose only. In case of any discrepancy, please refer to our management statement in original language. Operator, we are opening the call for a Q&A session now.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

[Foreign Language] Despite the high base in second quarter, JD Retail still achieved an outperforming performance given the macro uncertainties, the front-loaded demand for 3C electronics and home appliances categories and continued price hike. Could management share the outlook for this category for the growth trend in the second half of the year? And my second question is about the general merchandise growth rate, which have experienced slowdown in the second quarter. What were the core factor driving this? And can management share your view for the growth trend for the general merchandise categories over the upcoming quarter, please?

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] Let me translate the answer to the first question. Hi, Kenny. Thank you for your question. As you said, in the second quarter, JD Retail once again showed strong operating resilience. The performance of our electronic home appliance revenue was in line with our previous expectation despite the category faced some short-term pressure in the quarter, mainly due to last year's high base and the price hikes in electronics driven by the higher raw material costs. Even so backed by our strong supply chain capabilities and solid user mindshare, we continue to strengthen our market position. Notably, our market share across all major home appliance categories grew steadily in the second quarter. Especially our omnichannel effort also paid off with our offline business growing at a much faster pace. As a result, our overall performance remained more resilient in home appliance and electronics category than the industry. As you already know, we opened JD MALL in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and we welcome analysts and investors to pay a visit. Looking into the second half, while the ongoing rising consumer electronic price may continue to weigh on consumer demand, we remain confident that this category growth will improve meaningfully in the second half for three reasons: Number one, the base effect start to gradually normalize. Starting from Q3, the drag from last year high trading base will gradually ease. Growth in electronics and home appliance is expected to reaccelerate as comparison base normalize. Second, supply chain capabilities mitigate -- we are using our supply chain capability to mitigate the price pressures. We continue to strengthen our supply chain capabilities, which is our strong competitive advantage. Through proactively planning and agile inventory management, we can effectively cushion the impact of rising consumer electronics prices. This helps us maintain robust operating resilience while delivering competitive price to our users. Third is our product innovation. Rapid AI growth is unlocking opportunities for our product and category innovation. We work closely with brands to co-develop new products using these new technologies. Our Joy Inside has partnered with nearly 200 brands, leveraging JD's AI capability to enable smarter interaction across home appliance and robots, delivering a smarter and more convenient user experience. So over the long term, we remain highly confident in our leadership in the electronics and home appliance category, while sales may fluctuate in the short term, JD's unique value to brands become even clearer in uncertain times. We will continue to leverage our 1P supply chain efficiency to deliver more competitive prices and service to our customers while providing brands with a highly predictable and efficient sales channel.

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] To your second question, yes, our general merchandise category was also impacted by the high base in last Q3. At the same time, not only did the trade-in program directly boosted the sales of home goods, it also joined forces with our food delivery business to drive notable traffic to our platform and drive cross-sell to a certain extent. So while general merchandise growth moderated somewhat in Q2 this year, in fact, we continue to steadily gain market share across all general merchandise subcategory. Notably, supermarket, our largest category within general merchandise, delivered a near double-digit resilient performance, while health care and industrial products maintained solid double-digit growth.

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] Okay. Looking ahead, we are confident that general merchandise category will maintain healthy growth backed by several key drivers. Number one, category operational excellence is enhancing user experience. We are seeing further upside in our 1P supply chain capability for general merchandise category, especially in supermarket. By expanding product selection, building price competitiveness and elevating service quality, we will enhance user experience and solidify JD's user mindshare in general merchandise category. Second, we see sustained user growth momentum. As user mindshare for our general merchandise category deepens, our user base continues to grow healthily. New business, including food delivery and Jingxi are bringing notable incremental traffic and new users. Moving forward, we will enhance our user operation to boost conversion and drive cross-sell, and we see meaningful upside in general merchandise category sales. Third is our improving platform ecosystem. We continue to onboard high-quality merchants and incubating emerging brands while helping them optimize end-to-end operations. This allows merchants and brands to achieve more certain growth on JD while also bringing incremental sales to our platform at the same time. JD Retail's 3P GMV growth has outpaced 1P for the past 3 consecutive quarters with its contribution to total GMV expanding Q-on-Q in Q2. So overall, we expect JD Retail's growth to accelerate quarter-by-quarter in the second half of the year. Our electronics and home appliance should steadily recover while general merchandise category maintained healthy growth. We also see as conversion efficiency improves, our advertising revenue has meaningful room to pick up speed. Thank you for your question, Kenny. We can go to the next analyst.

Your next question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.

[Foreign Language] So two questions. One is on your free cash flow. We're seeing entering into a much healthier free cash flow cycle in contrast to other mega-caps in the Internet, which are seeing CapEx exceeding operating cash flow for all of the mega-caps. So with this unique positioning of JD, yet I see some incremental investments, including some real estate. So will management consider setting a more official percentage of annual profits for shareholder returns? Second is on Joybuy, see a very fast growth there and is still pending the acquisition of the German retailer. So how do you differentiate or plan to differentiate your price users experience or logistics experience further? And what is your investment budget for the second half and next year?

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] Thank you, Ron. In the first half of this year, we repurchased around 69.9 million ordinary shares for a total amount of USD 1 billion. This represented 2.5% of our ordinary shares outstanding as of December 31, 2025. Under the previously announced 3-year USD 5 billion share repurchase program, the remaining amount is around USD 1 billion. We are executing on the program as planned. Our shareholder return ratio, we remain firmly committed to creating value for our shareholders. We will continue to invest in business operations and supply chain capabilities to enhance JD's long-term competitiveness and value. We will return value to shareholders through multiple forms, including healthy and sustainable business development, dividends and share repurchases. Our goal is to maximize long-term total shareholder returns. Third, our track record also shows our strong commitment to shareholder returns. Since 2023, we have repurchased -- returned around USD 13 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. On dividends, we have maintained annual dividend payments since 2022 and kept dividend per share stable even when profits fluctuated in 2025, providing shareholders with steady cash returns. On buybacks, we have repurchased around 17% of our outstanding shares since 2023. So going forward, we will remain committed to shareholder returns.

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] Hi, Ronald. Let me answer your second question. So Joybuy's core strength lies in taking JD's long-standing supply chain capabilities overseas and localizing them in Europe, particularly in home appliance and electronics, where we have a clear edge. Driven by our efficient 1P retail and logistics fulfillment capabilities, we offer a highly differentiated user experience, including integrated delivery and installation services. This has helped Joybuy gradually win stronger user recognition and mindshare across Europe, increasing user retention and doubling Joybuy's revenue within 2 quarters.

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] First, Joybuy is starting to establish a clear edge in user experience and retention, powered by our own warehouse network in Europe. Joybuy now offers same-day and next-day delivery across major European cities, bringing 'place order in the morning, receive in the afternoon' hyperfast delivery services to over 40 million customers in Europe.

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] You can see unlike other so-called traditional cross-border e-commerce platforms, JD leverages our supply chain to build a localized e-commerce model. We are strengthening our product offering, proactively partnering up with top-tier brands and suppliers and delivering high-quality products to our local customers in Europe. During Joybuy's recent summer Black Friday sale in June, our 211 same-day delivery and one-stop delivery and installation service drove strong electronics and home appliance sales. Notably, during the heat wave in Europe, we saw strong sales of air conditioners where our one-stop delivery and installation service truly deliver a differentiated experience, further boosting Joybuy's brand reputation and customer satisfaction in Europe.

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] Of course, Joybuy is still in very early stage of capability building. So as we fortify our core supply chain strength across product selection and logistics fulfillment, in Q2, our investment in Joybuy grew modestly Q-on-Q, but its loss or loss margin improved sequentially. Over the coming quarters, we expect as the order volume of Joybuy continue to grow quickly and logistic fulfillment efficiency improves and service coverage expands, investment in Joybuy is expected to increase accordingly. However, our investment will remain very disciplined and manageable. In addition, Joybuy's business model is consistent with JD's core model with supply chain at the center. So as Joybuy scale expands, economic scale will kick in and drive a continuous improvement in Joybuy's unit economics. Thank you. We can take the next question.

Your next question comes from Alicia Yap with Citigroup.

[Foreign Language] So for questions, first is related to food delivery. So with the landscape stabilizing, what is JD's latest plan for your market share user growth and also the cross-sell synergy target? Second question is for marketplace and also marketing revenues. How can JD sustain faster growth rate amid the competitions and also the slower consumption? What is your view on the growth expectation for this line item into the second half?

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] Alicia. Let me answer the first question regarding JD Food Delivery. JD Food Delivery has made solid progress in the second quarter, order volume maintained healthy growth while narrowing total loss by over 50% year-on-year. So within just 1 year of execution, the unit economics improved meaningfully for this business, driven by refined operations and higher subsidy efficiency. We saw subsidy per order notably decreased year-on-year, enhanced delivery efficiency at scale and growing contribution from commissions and advertising revenues.