JD’s Special Dividend Doesn’t Imply Long-Term Commitment to Recurring Dividend

Business Strategy and Outlook

JD.com has emerged as a leading disruptive force in China’s retail industry by offering authentic products online at competitive prices with speedy and high-quality delivery service. JD’s mobile shopping market share increased from 21% in 2016 to an estimated 27% in 2020. JD adopted an asset-heavy model with self-owned inventory and self-built logistics, while Alibaba has more of an asset-light model. JD is a long-term margin expansion story driven by increasing scale from JD direct sales and marketplace, partially offset by the push into JD logistics in the medium term. JD is the largest retailer in China by revenue. Among listed Chinese peers, JD’s net product revenue in 2020 was 2-3 times higher than for Suning, the second-largest listed retailer. JD’s increasing scale in each category will allow it to garner bargaining power toward the suppliers and volume-based rebates. Since 2016, JD no longer fully reinvests its gains from improving scale and is committed to delivering annual margin expansion in the long run. The increase in mix from higher-margin third-party platform business and efficiency of scale will also help lift margins.

In the medium term, investment into community group purchase and JD logistics is anticipated, and the higher mix of lower-margin supermarket categories will hold back some of the margin gains. Starting in April 2017, the logistics business became an independent business unit that opened its services to third parties. Management is squarely focused on gaining market share instead of profitability at this point, and to do so, it has invested heavily in supply chain management, integrated warehouse, and delivery services to penetrate into less developed areas. As the logistics business gains scale and reaches higher capacity utilization, gross profit margin improvement is projected. Management believes it is not time to turn profitable in the supermarket category in order to be a category leader in China.

Financial Strength

JD.com had a net cash position of CNY 135 billion at the end of 2020. Its free cash flow to the firm has continued to be positive at CNY 8.1 billion in 2020. JD has not paid dividends. JD.com has invested heavily in fulfillment infrastructure and technology in recent years, leading to concerns about its free cash flow profile and margin improvement story. Management will put more emphasis on growing revenue per user, expansion into lower-tier cities and the businesses’ profitability. Therefore, JD will not invest in new areas as aggressively as before, so JD will be able to maintain a positive non-GAAP net margin versus being unprofitable before. Its financial strength will improve in future. Most of the initial investments in the third-party logistics business have been carried out, and utilization of the warehouses has picked up. Its technology team is already in place without the need to add substantial head count. JD will also be cautious in its investment in the group-buying business and new retail, given a profitable business model has not been established in the market. JD has tried to improve its asset-heavy model by transferring a portfolio of warehouses to establish a CNY 10.9 billion logistics property core fund in partnership with the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, GIC. JD will own 20% of the fund, lease back the logistics facilities, and receive management fees for managing the facilities. The deal will be completed in phases with the majority of them completed in 2019.

Bulls Say’s

JD.com’s nationwide distribution network and fulfillment capacity will be extremely difficult for competitors to replicate.
The partnership with Tencent could allow JD.com to gain significant user traffic from Tencent’s dominant social-networking products in China.
JD is now the largest supermarket in China; the high frequency FMCG categories have attracted new customers from less developed areas and can drive purchase of other categories.

Company Profile

JD.com is China’s second-largest e-commerce company after Alibaba in terms of gross merchandise volume, offering a wide selection of authentic products at competitive prices, with speedy and reliable delivery. The company has built its own nationwide fulfilment infrastructure and last-mile delivery network, staffed by its own employees, which supports both its online direct sales, its online marketplace and omnichannel businesses.

(Source: MorningStar)

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