JD.com Stock Drops 6% After Failing to Meet Q2 Earning Expectations

JD.com Inc, China’s second largest e-commerce platform, reported a 31.2 percent rise in its second-quarter revenue on Thursday, falling short of analysts’ estimates after a worse-than-expected sale season.

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On August 16th, JD.com announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ending June 30. The e-commerce giant posted a net revenue of 122.3 billion yuan (about $18.5 billion), which was a 31.2 percent rise from the same quarter last year. However, this rise was just shy of the 122.91 billion yuan estimate forecasted by financial analysts.

The net services income in the second quarter was 11.8 billion yuan, a 51.0 percent rise compared to the same period last year. This was in large part thanks to the contribution from logistics included in the net services revenue that grew by 151 percent during the first half of the year.

Along with the steadily rising total revenue, the net revenue from services also brought about a period of high growth. Specific profitability numbers, however, did not look as optimistic as the firm expected.

According to the report, its net profit of 478 million yuan this year is about half of the impressive 976.5 million yuan attained during the same period last year. Similarly, based on non-U.S. GAAP, its operational profit of 113.2 million yuan was also a dip from the 581.9 million yuan achieved during the same period last year.

According to analysts, the company’s operational methods did not change drastically. The numbers and the profitability is a clear sign of the additional funds injected into technology R&D. Data have shown that JD’s investment in technology R&D during the quarter was 2.78 billion yuan, a substantial rise of 79.8 percent compared to the same period last year.

However, JD.com was unable to escape the massive plummet in stock price. After the financial report was released, the company’s stock prices fell more than 6 percent. The e-commerce giant may find itself in the same shoes as Tencent which recently went through a financial storm.