JD.com Reports Beats with 5% Q1 Revenues
By Reuters | 12 May, 2026

China's number 3 ecommece platform hopes Beijing's subsidy programme will help it regain momentum in electronics and home appliance which fell 8.4% on year.

JD.com beat first-quarter revenue and profit expectations on Tuesday, and investors will be watching to see if Beijing's subsidy programme will help it sustain this momentum as tariff and consumer-demand pressures mount.

U.S.-listed shares of the Chinese e-commerce giant were up slightly, after surging as much as 3.4% in premarket trading.

Sandy Xu, CEO of JD.com, told analysts that revenues of electronics and home appliances in the quarter were down 8.4% on the year, though it still represented a sequential improvement.

"While we navigate ongoing external headwinds in Q2, we remain confident in stronger performance in electronics and home appliances in the second half of the year," she added.

China, the world's second-largest economy, has long struggled with weak consumer confidence, weighed by a prolonged property slump and higher tariffs imposed by the United States on many Chinese goods.

The U.S.-Iran war, as well, has raised fuel prices and the cost of living, curbing consumers' spending power.

Still, subsidies from local governments that encourage consumers to trade in old appliances and electronics may have helped limit declines in revenue for JD.com, the biggest retailer of such goods.

Quarterly revenue ended March was 315.7 billion yuan ($46.47 billion), which beat an LSEG consensus estimate of 311.8 billion yuan drawn from 15 analysts.

HIGHER COSTS DRAGGED DOWN NET INCOME

Net income attributable to JD.com's ordinary shareholders was 5.1 billion yuan, exceeding expectations for 3.37 billion yuan, but down 53% from a year earlier, because of massive increases in expenses including fulfilment costs, research and development as well as marketing.

In the previous quarter, there was a net loss of 2.71 billion yuan, partly due to heavy investments in food delivery.

The company has sought to develop new revenue streams due to stiff rivalry in e-commerce. It entered the food delivery market last year, going head-to-head with incumbents Meituan and Alibaba, even as the high costs of doing so pressured profits.

"JD food delivery business is already providing its strategic value, contributing an incremental 3% to advertising revenues in Q1," Xu said.

The company said investment in "JD Food Delivery further narrowed significantly on a sequential basis."

($1 = 6.7938 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru and Sophie Yu in Beijing; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Bernadette Baum)