BEIJING, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com posted strong sales growth in a mid-year shopping festival that ended on Thursday, grossing a record high 269.2 billion yuan (about 38 billion U.S. dollars) in online orders.
The company's annual 18-day promotion has been the first major online shopping bonanza in China since the COVID-19 epidemic began in January. The company realized a 33.6-percent year-on-year growth in "618" festival sales, compared with the previous record of 201.5 billion yuan set in 2019.
JD.com saw its share price surge by 3.54 percent on Thursday, the first trading day of the company's secondary listing in Hong Kong, to close at 234 HK dollars (about 30 U.S. dollars) per share, bringing JD.com's market value to 720 billion HK dollars.
The public offering came at the time of JD.com's 618 online shopping festival, which was created by the company to mark its anniversary in June. The Beijing-based e-commerce firm was founded 17 years ago, against the backdrop of the outbreak of the SARS epidemic. The company has since capitalized on the country's fast development of e-commerce to grow into a technology and service enterprise.
The company's data suggested that sales of 187 brands sold on JD.com exceeded 100 million yuan during the shopping festival. Food and beverages, mother and infant products, beauty makeup and skincare are the categories with the largest number of consumers. Fresh food, medical care and kitchen utensils are the sectors that recorded the strongest growth.
Meanwhile, the products that consumers are most willing to spend money on are mobile phones, household appliances and computers. The cities with the highest consumption enthusiasm are Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
The company said through big data analysis, its logistics subsidiaries had made early preparations to deploy more than 1 billion items to 730 warehouses to facilitate distribution.
"JD.com's online promotion is a favorable opportunity to promote consumption after the epidemic," said Wang Wei, director of the Institute of Market Economy affiliated to the Development Research Center of the State Council.
Wang said the large number of orders via e-commerce platforms would stimulate the development of production, manufacturing, logistics and other industries in the entire national economic cycle. Enditem
