JD continues major R&D push

Chinese e-commerce giant JD said it will continue to invest in technology research and development and promote infrastructure construction as part of its broader push to boost the in-depth integration of digital technologies and the real economy. 

JD has invested nearly 75 billion yuan ($11.8 billion) in R&D over the past five years, with annual active customer accounts rising to 552.2 million in the 12-month period ending on Sept 30, 2021.

The company reported its net revenues for the third quarter of 2021 reached 218.7 billion yuan ($33.9 billion), an increase of 25.5 percent year-on-year. Income from operations during the period was 2.6 billion yuan, compared to 4.4 billion yuan for the same period last year.

"With resilient business operations and core competences in technology and supply chain, JD has built a unique business model, enabling us to have better control across the entire business process," said Xu Lei, president of JD, adding this competitive advantage allows the company to navigate through economic cycles and increases its ability to create value as a new type of real economy-based enterprise.  

Xu noted JD will continue to create value for its users and business partners, especially the millions of small and medium-sized enterprises in the real economy it works with every day.

"Our growing consumer mindshare helped drive strong results for the quarter with more new and existing users purchasing high-frequency products such as supermarket categories on JD," said Sandy Xu, chief financial officer of JD. "Going forward, we will continue to focus on building high-quality businesses and investing in technologies and core capabilities to ensure JD's sustainable growth in the long term." 

In September, JD opened its first "JD Mall" offline store in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, offering an immersive omni-channel shopping experience.

As of Sept 30, JD Logistics operated approximately 1,300 warehouses covering an aggregate gross floor area of over 23 million square meters, including space in cloud warehouses managed under the JD Logistics Open Warehouse Platform.