JD.com Founder Richard Liu Drops $279M in Company Stocks

After successive reductions of more than HK$440 million ($56.06 million) worth of JD Health shares in late April and early May, JD.com founder Richard Liu on June 17 reduced his holdings of about $279 million worth of the firm’s shares.

Prior to the reduction, Liu held more than 12% of shares in JD.com and had more than 70% of the voting rights. This reduction in holdings will not affect his control of the company.

JD Group announced on April 7 that Xu Lei, President of the Group, would succeed Liu as CEO and would assume responsibility for daily operations and management. He would also join the Board of Directors of JD Group as an executive director. Liu remains as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of JD Group, putting more effort into long-term strategy design, major strategic decision deployment, young leading talent training and rural revitalization.

In fact, Liu stepped back in 2018, and since last year, he resigned as the legal representative, chairman or other executive roles of companies, including JD Group, JD Digits Technology, and JD Logistics, including stepping down as president of JD Group in September 2021 and as CEO of JD Group in April this year. Both positions were handed over to Xu Lei, who currently serves as the chairman of JD Group.

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For the first quarter of 2022, JD.com‘s net revenue as an e-commerce platform was 239.7 billion yuan ($34.73 billion), up 18.0% year-on-year. The non-GAAP operating profit was 4.7 billion yuan in the period, up 32.8% from 3.5 billion yuan year-on-year. JD.com showed a strong performance in the recently-concluded 618 shopping festival. As of 23:59 on June 18, the cumulative amount of orders made during the 2022 JD 618 Shopping Festival had exceeded 379.3 billion. JD.com expressed that this is the proof of the recovery of consumer confidence and the continued improvement of manufacturing and distribution industries.