JD.com, Inc.

Hello, and thank you for standing by for JD.com's 21st, 2021 second quarter and interim earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Mr. Shawn Zhang, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Leslie. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our 2021 second quarter and interim result conference call. Joining me on the call today are Mr. Lei Xu, CEO of JD Retail, and Ms. Sandy Xu, JD.com CFO. For today's call, Lei will kick off with opening remarks, and Sandy will discuss the financial highlights. Both Lei and Sandy will define the Q&A session. Before we continue, let me refer you to our safe harbor statement in earnings press release, which applies to this call, as we'll make forward-looking statements. Also, this call will include discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release, which contains a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable gap measures. Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. And now, I would like to turn the call to the CEO of JD Retail, Mr. Lei Xu. Mr. Lei Xu, please.

Hello, investors and speakers. I am the CEO of JD Retail, Mr. Lei Xu. Thank you for attending the second quarter of JD Retail in 2021.

Hello everyone, this is Xu Lei, CEO of JD Retail. Thank you for joining our earnings call today. I believe you have all paid attention to and been concerned about the recent regulatory changes. As shared two months ago on JD's Investor Day, our observation is that these changes are essentially adaptive efforts made by the government as the industry undergoes high-speed growth. Regulators are working to bring platform economy-based enterprises into a standard regulatory framework. which can effectively rectify and regulate misconduct, such as disorderly capital expansion, monopolistic conduct, and so on.

Therefore, we believe these policies are not intended to restrict or suppress the Internet and relevant industries,

but rather to create a fair and orderly business environment and to promote long-term and sustainable development of these industries. We believe that the regulatory goals are conducive to JD's long-term business growth. So far, our business maintains steady growth while committing to best compliance practices. Looking at JD's development in the past 18 years, our business model and strategy are proof to better position us moving forward in line with the general direction of regulations in China and even global markets.

First of all, Jingdong has long-term adhered to the principle of positive success and commercial value, which is fundamentally in line with the principle of commercial prosperity. From the first day of the startup, Jingdong has insisted on using the user experience as the center, respecting every employee and providing them with perfect protection, realizing the co-sufficiency of joint partners, and continuously creating value and sharing value for users and joint partners in the industry, and taking on greater social responsibility than their own size in the near future. This is worth affirming.

First, JD's longstanding business principle of doing business the right way echoes the movement towards the principle of business for good. Since day one, our priorities have remained the same. We always put customers' needs at the core, respect every employee, and provide them with all-around safeguards, open up our capabilities to fully empower our business partners to achieve win-win results. On this journey, we keep on creating and sharing value for our stakeholders while doing our utmost to take on as much social responsibility as possible, some of which is even beyond our scale. We believe these acts are worthy of recognition in China and across the world.

Along the supply chain, Jindong has served more industry chains. It is not limited to providing technical support in the marketing and trading sectors, but also to the warehouse and warehouse management, product pricing, production and manufacturing sectors, and other industries. It has all the capabilities that Jindong has achieved over the years, such as providing a series of solutions and improving the efficiency of the supply chain, and bringing true value co-creation for users and partners.

Second, JD.com is a new type of industrial enterprise that has both the traits of real economy and digital technologies, which inherently differentiates us from the platform economy model. JD creates value along the entire industry value chain, from providing marketing and transaction technology supports, delivery and after-sales services, all the way to the industry upstream of warehousing, inventory management, product selection, pricing, and manufacturing. By opening up our various capabilities accumulated over years to the real economy, offering one-stop solutions and continuously enhancing supply chain efficiency, we can truly achieve a non-zero-sum value co-creation with our users and business partners.

同时京东也是实体经济的一部分, 在全国运营和管理着超过2300万平米的仓库, 900多万SKU的自营商品。 At the same time, Citi.com itself is part of the real economy, operating and managing more than 23 million square meters of warehouses nationwide and over 9 million self-operated SKUs. We also operate tens of thousands of offline stores,

including franchise stores of home appliances, digital products, pharmacies, seven fresh omni-channel supermarkets, convenience stores, JD auto car maintenance service stores, and more, while at the same time leverage our omni-channel model and supply chain capabilities to connect with nearly one million brick-and-mortar stores out there on the market.

In addition, we have close to 400,000 employees, including those in our enlisted subsidiaries and affiliates, and a majority of them work on the front lines in delivery, warehousing, customer service positions, and more.

The services they provide cover more than 550,000 administrative villages across China, enabling the country's 92% counties and 84% rural customers to enjoy same- or next-day delivery services.

Here, I would like to use Jingdong Songhua Xiaoge as an example. Unlike most courier companies, Jingdong, including Songhua Xiaoge, has nearly 300,000 employees, all of whom are full-time employees, who sign regular labor contracts. And we have not only been helping Jingdong Xiaoge Take our delivery personnel as an example.

Different from many express delivery companies, we offer full-time jobs with formal employment contracts to nearly 300,000 blue-collar workers. In addition to social insurance and housing fund, we also provide accident insurance, subsidies for working under special environment, COVID insurance, employee relief fund, and more. These demonstrate the vast social value that JD creates, which sets us apart from platform economy model companies that reap ultra-high profits out of traffic and transaction flow.

JD's business logic is to insist on quality shopping and rational consumption. By bringing better shopping experience and guarantee to consumers, it drives the growth of brands and businesses, and promotes the healthy development of excellent companies, thereby creating stable, larger-scale, high-quality employment. JD's business philosophy is to promote quality products and rational consumption.

Through providing best-in-class shopping experience, we are driving healthy growth of brands and merchants, which in turn helps to create stable and large-scale high-quality jobs. This enables us to form a virtuous cycle between commercial and social values. This is also fundamentally in contrast to driving the economy into a vicious circle in which normal market competition is disrupted by excessive price subsidies and merchants' profits are unreasonably squeezed.

It can be seen that the business model and strategy in the capital are in line with the policy of supervision. Therefore, under the new supervision environment, we believe that the business model in the capital can achieve a healthier development.

With all that in mind, we believe JD's business model and strategy position us well to move forward in line with the general direction of regulatory policy and will foster healthier growth in the future. Now I would like to walk you through some of JD Ratio's business highlights in Q2.

First of all, JD Ratio continues to achieve high-quality growth in Q2. Not only did our income continue to grow on the same level as last year, but at the same time, through the continuous improvement of supply chain efficiency and transportation efficiency, our profit margin has also been steadily improved. In the face of a complicated competitive environment, this year's 618 anniversary event has still achieved a 27.7% growth, which has also led to the continuous recovery of the entire retail market and the upstream industry. This once again proves that in a market environment full of challenges, consumers, suppliers and retailers

JD Retail continued high-quality growth in Q2. Not only did we achieve continued top-line growth from a high base last year, but also maintained steady margin expansion on a comparable basis, thanks to our improved supply chain and operating efficiency. Despite the complex competitive landscape, we achieved a GMV growth of 27.7% year-on-year, during the 618 grant promotion, sustaining the recovery momentum of the entire retail market and the upstream industries in China. In a challenging market environment, such result is solid proof of JD's rising recognition and mindshare among customers, suppliers, and brands.

This is a proof of the high quality of our active users. After selling 500 million Li Cheng Pei on April 1st, after the second quarter, The number of annual purchases has increased by nearly 32 million compared to the previous quarter. The number of single-segment purchases has once again refreshed the historical record. At the same time, through the observation of the loss rate, shopping bottles, and other aspects, we can see that the quality of new users is constantly improving. In addition, the growth of old users and all users of ARF has been maintained. This shows that the number of users in the capital and the value of the total sales life cycle of users in the capital are constantly improving. There are also a lot of operations and financial highlights in this quarter. Cyborg 3D will analyze them for you in detail.

This is also evident in the high-quality growth of active users in Q2, following the milestone of 500 million active users that we achieved on April 1. We are excited to see our annual active users increase by nearly 32 million, setting a new record of single quarter net increment. At the same time, we see the quality of new users continue to improve on the aspects of retention rate, shopping frequency, and more. Furthermore, the average revenue per user of existing users, as well as all users blended, continue to grow. This means that both the user base and their lifetime value on JD increased. There are many other operating and financial highlights in the quarter that Sandy will elaborate on later.

Second, we press ahead on the omnichannel strategy. I've shared during the investor day that the rationale behind our omnichannel strategy is to break the glass ceiling for JD's long-term growth. I'd like to reiterate that only JD's business model

has the ability to truly land the omni-channel plan. This is because the strategy is founded on JD's supply chain capabilities, which we have built and honed over the past 18 years. With our supply chain, digital operation, and integrated marketing capabilities in various shopping scenarios, both online and offline, we can synergize with suppliers and partners to effectively meet the customer's needs that cannot be met by a pure online platform or B2C model. Moreover, we have built an open platform to adapt to the ever-changing market with the ultimate goal to sell products from all over the world and sell products everywhere in the world.

By the end of 2015, Jingdong's all-terrain business has covered the fast-selling products, computer numbers, telecommunications, home appliances, health, clothing, home, life services, cars, and other industries through O2O, supply chain, and all-terrain marketing.

As of Q2, through O2O's supply chain solutions, omni-channel marketing, and other models, JD's omni-channel business has covered millions of unbreakable merchants. And our goal this year is to further expand our universal capabilities in omni-channel, making breakthroughs in key areas and then introducing these capabilities into more business formats and regions.

第三,在POP生态赋能上,今年以来我们致力于为商家减负提效,推出了一系列的智能化运营工具,例如集减入住,智能化客户工具,集减广告投放,商家市场中心等,以及一体化的工业解决方案。

Third, empowering merchants on the third-party marketplace. We have been working to alleviate burdens and improve efficiency for merchants this year. We introduced a series of smart operation tools, such as simple onboarding process, intelligent customer service management, Simple Advertisement Placement, Merchants Growth Center, as well as our Integrated Supply Chain Solution, which helps to lower the entry barriers for new merchants and improve their operating and growth efficiency.

商家的经营效率、经营满意度和续约率在持续提升。 3. 平台业务的NPS也在不断提升。

In this quarter, our marketplace business made progress in three main areas. First, the overall number and types of merchants grew both year-on-year and quarter-over-quarter. Second, merchants' operating efficiency, satisfaction level, and retention rate further improved. And third, the net promoter scores of our marketplace business continued to improve. These all speak to the increasing recognition of merchants and customers and healthy business growth.

In terms of brand cooperation, I would like to give some examples. In the second quarter, Jindong has continued to attract more and more brands. Not only does it include more brands under RVMH Group, such as Borgheri and men's clothing brand Bluti, but it also cooperates with Jindong in the form of innovation. We also continue to see more and more brands returning to Jindong, including Vitoria MiMi and Yifli.

We're encouraged to welcome a number of new brands on JD.com, including Bulgari, menswear brand Berluti, and other brands under the LVMH group, as well as many returning brands, including Victoria's Secret, Ifini, Maniform, and Erdos. 希望通过以上这些方面的分享能够帮助大家更好的理解,无论是京东的商业模式和商业价值观,战略方向,还是京东零售的业务发展,

Thank you for your support and hope. We especially hope that through our efforts, we can give you a high-quality development in a time of uncertainty, and not let you down. That's all I'm going to share with you today. First, I'll give the microphone to Jingdong Group CFO Sanbin.

I hope the Bob sharing can help you better understand that JD's business philosophy and model, strategies, and development are moving ahead in line with the general direction of the regulatory and market development. In the current market environment, we believe JD is set to have more strategic advantages and development opportunities over the long term. Finally, I'd like to reiterate that JD is committed to delivering certainty and high-quality growth in a time of uncertainties. and living up to everyone's support and faith in us. This concludes my remarks today. Now I'd like to give the floor to Sandy for more details.

Thank you, Lei. Hello, everyone. Today, GDE is reporting a very solid quarter with healthy growth across many of our operations and financial metrics, as well as many exciting progress along our new strategic direction. This is particularly encouraging amid the dynamic competitive landscape I'd like to echo what Lei has said, that our persistence performance has clearly been guided from day one by our business philosophy of value creation for all and supported by our unique business model that is deeply rooted in the real economy. As you may recall, we demonstrated the resilience of our business model and execution a year ago at the height of the COVID challenge. I believe we will continue to show resilience and thrive in the current changing environment as well. Before going through the financials, let me share a few convincing business progress we have delivered and some of the positive trends we saw during the quarter. First, I want to add some color on user trends. We are encouraged by the continued growth of our active user base. With our LTM total active users reaching 532 million in Q2, up 27 year-on-year on a high count from last year, we are excited to welcome 32 million new users this quarter, which is the largest quarterly addition in our history. We are heartened by the fact that this is driven by the increase in trust and engagement from users with different demographics and diverse demands. we continue to win over price sensitive users with our broad selection of value for many products and diverse services. Users from lower tier markets not only continued to contribute nearly 80% of our new users in Q2, they also accounted for over 70% of our total active users in the last 12 months by shipping address. Along with the healthy growth of our new users. We are also encouraged by the higher engagement from our existing users. More notably, the number of paying members in JD Plus programs grew 30% year-on-year during the quarter, further strengthening its position as the largest paid e-commerce membership program in China. As Plus members now enjoy a broader array of benefits on the JD app and in offline stores, their approval continued to increase, reaching over nine times that of non-PLUS users. So for our brands and merchants, JD Plus creates both effective engagement with JD's high-value users and meaningful incremental sales. Overall, the improving engagement of our users was reflected in the higher average number of orders per user and the acceleration of total order volume growth to over 40% in Q2, which is faster than our LTM active user growth. We believe our strong user growth is healthy and sustainable. Now let's turn to our financial performance in the second quarter. We set a new quarterly revenue record of 254 billion RMB in the second quarter, up 26% year-on-year against a high comparable base from last year and maintained a robust 30% two-year kick-up. Our net service revenues continue to grow rapidly at 49% year-on-year, more than double the 23% year-on-year growth of net product revenues in the quarter. Net service revenues were mainly driven by 72% year-on-year growth, of logistics and other service revenues and 35% year-on-year growth of marketplace and advertising revenues. Note that within logistics and other services, the near triple-digit growth of JD Logistics' external revenues was partially offset by the deconsolidation of cloud and AI business. Net service revenues contributed 13.4% of total revenues in Q2 up 200 business points from a year ago, demonstrating the potential of our diversifying revenue growth. Turning to the segment performance, our core business daily retail revenues reached 233 billion RMB in Q2, with 23% young year growth on a high count, 33% growth in Q2 last year. The two-year revenue CAGR was 28%. We continue to see successful category expansion as general merchandise revenues grew 29.5% year-on-year and 37% two-year CAGR in Q2. This was led by our supermarket categories, including food and beverage, cleansing, and personal care categories. Meanwhile, our electronics and home appliance revenues grew 20% year-on-year, on the high comp, with a two-year CAGR of 24%. Furthermore, our third-party marketplace business continued to grow faster than our 1P business in terms of both the young year and the two-year CAGR in the second quarter, especially during our June 18th anniversary sale, holding well for the healthy improvement of our marketplace ecosystem. It's worth highlighting that JD Retail's long LTM active users grew 27% year on year and remained the predominant driver for our new user growth, thanks to its superior user experience and strong user man-share. The solid revenue growth of our core retail business was accompanied by remarkably resilient margin performance. In the second quarter, JD Retail fulfilled growth margin, improved 30 basis points year-on-year, and operating margin remained stable at 2.6%. Considering the one-off COVID-related impact, resulting in less resources spent on marketing activities, as well as the Social Security benefit we received in the second quarter last year, the operating margin of JD Retail actually improved in Q2 this year on a comparable basis. mainly thanks to technology-led overall operating efficiency improvement. Our core retail business is set to maintain its trajectory of sustainable healthy growth and steady margin improvement. Our JD Logistics business remains in a high secular growth stage. JD Logistics revenues grew 46% year-on-year and 45% two-year CAGR to 26 billion RMB in the second quarter. It's worth highlighting that JD Logistics is a great example of JD's commitment to investing in long-term value creation for the benefit of society and taking on more social responsibility. This includes not only creating high-quality employment, but also providing sufficient protection and social as well as commercial insurance coverage for all of our frontline employees. These genuine efforts deeply resonate with our employees, who then provide best-in-class services too and build personal connection with our customers. Our efforts have also resonated with the government and regulators, evidenced by the social insurance reduction benefits and other supportive measures from the government we received last year. JD Logistics has reinvested these investments, these benefits in logistics infrastructure and technology to expand its total addressable market and support e-commerce development in the less developed regions. While these long-term focused investments continue to weigh on near-term profitability, it's encouraging to see that JD Logistics' operating loss has largely narrowed sequentially. JD Logistics currently operates over 1,200 warehouses with an aggregate floor area of 23 million square meters. Our new business segment revenues reached 7 billion RMB in the second quarter, with both year-on-year and two-year CAGR accelerating to approximately 60%. The revenue growth of new businesses was primarily driven by triple-digit growth of CNC business and partially offset by the deconsolidation of our cloud and AI business. Operating loss in new businesses was 3 billion RMB as compared to 2.3 billion in the first quarter, mainly driven by the investment in infrastructure and capabilities in lower-tier markets. Xinxi Business is on track to meet its long-term goals of improving agricultural supply chain and retail infrastructure efficiency in lower-tier markets, serving price-sensitive customers under the Xinxi brand, and creating value for the local economy. During our June 18th anniversary sale, Xinxi sold a total of 22.5 million kilograms of agricultural products with orders delivered from over 200 industrial cells. We are in a better position to empower local SMEs, including the mom and pop stores, by providing supply chain support for their businesses and creating diverse revenue streams for them. Overall, we will continue to pursue new growth opportunities with financial discipline for the long-term sustainable growth for our business. Now turning to the consolidated margin, non-GAAP net income achievable for ordinary shareholders was 4.6 billion RMB, with non-GAAP net margin of 1.8%, down from 2.9% in the same quarter last year, mainly due to the social security reduction we received last year and increased investments in our logistics and new business opportunities to position us for the long term. Our inventory turnover days further shortened to 31 days in the last 12 months, remaining at the lowest level among leading global retailers. Thanks to our continuously improving operating efficiency, even as the total number of SPUs directly managed by us under the 1P model continued to expand to over 9 million in the second quarter, up from 8 million last quarter. As of June 23, 21, cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term investments added up to a total of 178 billion RMB, up from 139 billion at the end of Q1. Our free cash flow for trillion 12 months was 31.9 billion, up from 22.7 billion a year ago. In summary, we achieved healthy user and top-line growth with diversified growth drivers, while maintaining solid profitability in our core retail business. Going forward, we will continue to balance growth and investments while remaining committed to our business philosophy, shouldering our responsibilities as a corporate citizen, and creating long-term value for shareholders and the society. With that, let's now open the call for Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you, Mam. The question and answer session of this conference call will start in a moment. In order to be fair to all callers who wish to ask questions, we will take one question at a time from each caller. If you have more than one question, please request to join the question queue again after your first question has been addressed. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the pound or the hash key. Once again, it's star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. We have the first question from the line of Ronald Kyung from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.

Thank you, and congratulations on the strong results, Shiletong, Sandy, and Sean. My question will be on new businesses, and we have seen the new business loss have widened sequentially. So I just want to hear can management share some of the latest developments in this segment, mostly, I believe, the Team C business unit? Any user trends or overlap with city retail that you touched slightly on? the user trends just then versus on JD Retail and the group. And our expectations into say the second half of this year, particularly on our ROI-focused investments, but also earlier we commented in the past on a six-month lag of the ramp-up of investments versus some of the community group purchase peers. Let me translate my question if that helps. Thank you for your sharing today. I want to ask a question about a new product. This is Sandy. Let me take this question. Since we are on track with long-term goals of better serving the price-sensitive customers with value for many products,

In Q2, we are seeing some initial results of our efforts. CCPP expanded by over 300 quarter-over-quarter in both daily order volume and GME in the second quarter, with active users growing even faster. I want to emphasize that we believe cost efficiency and customer experience are always the key to the long-term success of retail industry, which translates into the supply chain and logistics capabilities, rather than merely competing through subsidies to expand scale at whatever cost. To reflect this, we made some strategic adjustments for this business recently, as you may have seen from the media. First, we focus on building capabilities in certain selected regions with strategic superiority, i.e., in the regions that we can achieve better customer experience and operating efficiency based on our Phase 1 business development results. We will continue to drive efficiency in these selected regions. through the increasing order density and enhance the local supply chain and the logistics network. And second, on the supply chain side, we will collaborate with local governments to better promote the vegetable basket project and better integrate with and leverage our existing retail supply chain. Third, we will explore to better integrate our customers' interfaces of WeChat mini program and our Jingxi app. And then we will also further integrate our logistic network for the launching, short-chain, and B2B network to drive better efficiency and user experience. We will also increase the penetration of Jingxi Pimpin's business in the mom and pop stores that are already our customers. for our B2B convenience store business, creating more traffic and value for these store owners. So last, Ping Ping Business is a good supplement of JD Retail's Albany Channel Strategy, which can provide users with different product selections and shopping experience. So we have more confidence in this business model under the current macro environment if everyone competes on building capabilities and driving efficiency instead of competing on subsidies. On the investment side for this new business, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, going forward we will continue to balance growth and investments and find growth potentials for our long-term sustainable growth. At this stage, we will continue to focus on customer experience and service quality for the new business. The investment level will be somewhere relatively consistent with what we communicated with the market before.

Thank you, Sandy.

Over to the next question, please.

We have the next question from the line of Thomas Cheung from Jefferies. Please ask your question.

Good evening. Thank you for introducing my question. Congratulations on your long-term performance. My question is about JD Retail. I see that JD Retail is doing very well in Q2 growth and margin. I would like to ask how we should look at the second half of JD Retail in terms of revenue Thanks management for taking my questions and congratulations on a very strong set of results in particular JD Retail that we are seeing the growth and the margin are very solid. Just want to get a sense about JD Retail second half outlook. on the revenue and margin side, given that we have seen the recent outbreak of COVID. Thank you.

This is Xu Lei from JD Ratio to give you a brief introduction of the outlook for the second half of the year.

We have seen that in July, we have kept a steady growth momentum, which is thanks to our years of accumulated capabilities on the blockchain and services.

Many of the new epidemics that occurred recently and the recent international economic situation are still quite complicated, including the price of general goods. The price is still fluctuating, so we see that the overall environment is indeed full of challenges. The country and various industry companies are also working hard. In the Middle East, we have always been deep in the business model of the real economy, so we will still use the open supply and service capabilities, but at present,

At the same time, we also see that in Q3, we are faced with multiple challenges from the microenvironment, including some extreme weather, the reoccurrence of COVID cases, and complicated international economic situation, such as the commodity price fluctuations at a high level. So these are all the challenges we're facing, and we all see that for the government and all the companies, we're making our efforts to face these adverse factors. And for JD.com, JD's development is deeply rooted in the growth of the real economy. So for the second half of the year, we will continue to open up our capabilities in supply chain and services to provide more stable and certainty support for our customers and the partners under a time of uncertainty. So on this point, we are optimistic on our performance in the second half of the year.

In the second half of the year, although the changes in the external environment brought some uncertainties to Hongguan, the overall income and consumption of the residents will still maintain a trend of continuous recovery and improvement. The opportunity we see is that the major public policy is still encouraging and supporting consumption, including encouraging the improvement of the industry's efficiency through digital intelligent transformation, including encouraging the development of full-scale air-conditioning online and offline, and the support of internal demand will be further improved. But at the same time, we also found that some consumer industries, such as travel-related consumption and

Despite all these uncertainties from the external environment, we also see some coming back of the consumers' shopping demands and consumption power. So overall, I think the macro policy is in favor to support the domestic consumption and to encourage the digital transformation of old industries to strike a balance of development both online and offline and to promote the capability construction of the modern industrial chain. So all this has also, as well as the promotion of the promote domestic consumption So overall, we think it's on the right track. However, we also noticed that for some consumption areas, such as those related to travel and the physical contact-related areas, their coming back will be slower.

At the beginning of the year, we said that for 2021, we expect our retail business to largely maintain the growth momentum from 2020 on an IPO to IPO basis. That means we need to take out the impact of some COVID-related non-recurring sales. At this stage, our expectation for JD Reto's full year growth remains unchanged for the second half. And then on the user side, we continue to see healthy user growth and improving engagement. So for the second half, we expect to see continued momentum in user order frequency and order volume from both new and existing. Category-wise, we expect to see that the category makeshift will continue. General merchandise categories to grow faster than electronics and home appliance. In particular, the supermarket and healthcare categories. On the bottom line, looking ahead, we remain confident that we can deliver steady improvement in net margin in the long term for JD Retail. So first, the margin for most of our key categories is still much lower than the industry level and our business partners. So we have a healthy upside for sustainable margin improvement. And second, the underlying drivers for our margin improvement are the technology-driven improvement in scale economies and operating efficiency. Again, I want to emphasize we don't manage the short-term or quarterly profitability due to the dynamic market condition and the flexibility required to manage our growth strategy. including to adjust our promotion and marketing strategy from time to time. If you look at a relatively longer time period, we have been delivering and are well on track of our long-term margin trajectory for our retail business.

Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas.

We have a question, please. Mine is for Eddie Leung. from Bank of America. Please ask your question.

Good evening. I have a question on the gross margin for the second quarter. We understand that there must be different factors at work. Because I think Sandy also mentioned that you got JD Logistics, you got Revenue Mixed Shares. We have some of the new pieces such as JD Jingxi are growing. So could you talk a little bit more about the different factors behind the trend of gross margin in the second quarter and perhaps in the upcoming couple of quarters? So that's my first question. And then just a follow-up question on the accounting side. Cindy, should we expect any change in the forward tax rate given some of the other Internet companies mentioned that potential change in policy of some of the preferential tax policies? My question is mainly about the net profit. I also heard Sandy talk about some factors behind it, including some changes in income ratio and some new investment projects. So I want to hear if there are more colors or net profit situations. Thanks, Eddie, for your question. For gross margin, I guess let me walk you through segment by segment.

I mentioned in my opening remarks that for JD Retail, if you look at the fulfilled growth margin, it actually went up by 30 basis points this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. So it's a positive, improving trend. And this was driven by our technology-driven scale economy and fulfillment efficiency. Because of the category mix shift, internally we don't manage and we don't look at the gross margin movement. On one side, it is the category mix shift that will affect the overall gross margin trend. And secondly, as we are adopting our omnichannel strategy, because we are leveraging warehouse and inventory resources of offline business partners, In this case, sometimes we would share some of the gross profit with them, but at the same time, it helps us save the fulfillment cost. So the fulfilled gross margin improves while you may see a decline in gross margin under the omni-channel strategy. So gross margin is no longer very meaningful for retail business. So going forward, I would also encourage the investors and analysts to look at the fulfilled gross margin for retail business. And then secondly, on logistics, I talked about their operating margin a little bit. It's mainly due to the Social Security refund that we received last year. So on the consolidated financial statements, this refund is going to actually affect two financial statement line items. One is our cost of sales for logistics business, and second is the fulfillment cost for retail business. So for the margin of logistics, it is also affected by the pace of investments in capacity, because in the first half year, last year, we didn't make investments in capacity to support their future growth as normal. So really, now we've made some forward investments in the second half year, which will be gradually absorbed. as we grow in scale. And then third, on the new business, at this stage, it is operated under a relatively lower gross margin compared to our core retail business, as we are still in the process of building our supply chain capabilities. So these investments are for future growth potentials, as I mentioned, and so that's why on the consolidated level, you see our gross margin may affect it a little bit. And on your second question regarding the effective tax rate, I'll say, first of all, JD has been generating very thin profit margin compared to some other technology companies. We had significant accumulated losses at the consolidated level until the end of 2019. And you can see from our disclosure in the annual report, as of December 31st, 2020, some of our subsidiaries still had pretty significant net operating loss carried forward, which can be used in the future for tax deduction. And then second, most of our subsidiaries in China are subject to an income tax rate of 25%. While certain subsidiaries benefit from the preferential tax rate treatment under the relevant tax law and regulations, including the high-end new technology enterprises, software enterprises, and encouraged industries in the western regions. Certain R&D expenses of our subsidiaries are also qualified for super deduction of 175%. These were all disclosed in our annual report. As of today, we have not received any notice that the existing tax preferential treatments we applied have been rejected. I mean, we have not received any notice. So the recent news regarding tax rebates from other companies you have heard is focused on the key software enterprises. So none of JD subsidiaries have ever applied for the key software enterprise in our history. So we believe going forward JD is a new type of real economy based enterprise with revenue mainly coming from retail and logistics business as well as supply chain related service fees. Therefore our tax treatment won't be affected by the change of the policy of the key software enterprises.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question please.

We have the next question from the line of Jerry Liu from UBS. Please ask your question.

data and user experience. Secondly, if the supervision has a greater impact on our business, will we have a certain benefit in the near future? For example, in the second half of the year, will we have a greater impact on our GMV My question is related to regulation. I just wanted to get a little bit more color around the puts and takes on potential impact. For example, relating to either user data or ability to invest in the second half of the year and on potentially the positive side. If regulation has a bigger impact on our peers, it could affect, for example, user or GMB growth in the second half of the year. Thank you.

I'm Xu Lei. Regarding the issue of supervision, the recent government has indeed issued a series of supervision policies regarding the field of logistics. We believe that for the industry, it is a long-term issue. We believe that this is a healthy development for the entire industry, including for Jingdong.

Shili, undoubtedly, we believe that the introduction of regulation policies on the Internet industry recently is a good thing for the long-term and healthy development of the industry. In JD's development history, we have suffered from unfair market behaviors such as peak 1 from 2, excessive price subsidies, and disordered capital expansion and more. JD welcomes the stepping up of regulations in this industry. We firmly believe this will be good for the long-term development of industry and related companies.

According to our attention and continuous learning, national supervision is mainly focused on a few aspects, such as the expansion of capital, monopoly of operations, data security, the abuse of technology and algorithms, and the closure of systems. For us, we are also self-investing according to these requirements. From the current point of view, it should be said that we have completed the self-inspection and verification content. At the same time, we have also established this kind of monitoring system inside to avoid violating the clear regulations of this country. Then, we also contacted the supervision department to communicate with us about the progress of the entire self-inspection. We have also received positive feedback, so in general, it has an impact on us.

Based on our observation and the studies, the recent wave of regulations focused on the following main areas. Disordered expansion of capital, market monopolies, data security and privacy, misuse of technologies and algorithms, closed systems that disrupt fair market competition, and so on. So for now, we have completed a round of our internal self-review and rectification according to the regulatory requirements. And we have also set up our internal supervision system to work on the big data security safeguard system. And we also carry out active communications with the regulators and got their public feedback. So for now, we don't see a major impact on our business operations so far.

I would like to focus on the privacy and data protection of users. And also I want to mention that JD has always played great importance on the data security and personal information.

So the arrival of the new regulations are not making a big impact on us in terms of our advertising business and so on.

But we expect that this kind of protection of employees' privacy will continue. So it is more consistent, in fact, it is a global event in the industry. We judge that the impact of advertising as the main platform will be greater.

And we can perceive that this will be a main trend to strengthen the regulations on personal data, personal information, not only in China but on the global horizon. And this will have a greater impact on those advertising-driven platforms.

Let me answer the question about the 2.1 brand return. In fact, from the beginning of this year, we will have some new brands. and other 2-in-1 brands to return to the capital. For example, new brands such as Simbark and Ashlander. New brands such as Barclay, and some new brands in China. They should work with the capital in various ways. We are also working with these new brands to establish a support plan for different levels of business. including the plan for new business owners, including the growth path for KA. Of course, as I said in the last episode, all the new returns or new brands and business owners, on a new platform, their growth should take a certain amount of time. Also, their use of this new platform, including in front of the consumers, they all need a period of time to achieve their consumers' mindsets. Of course, we will do more cooperation.

And more words about the P1 from 2. Actually, we've seen since early this year, we have welcomed a number of new products and also some products, some brands are returning to our platform. Those returned brands include Starbucks, Estee Lauder, and more. And for the new products, as I mentioned in my remarks, that there were Bulgaris and a number of emerging Chinese brands. They are also carrying out a number of innovative ways to collaborate with us. And for us, we are also providing different supportive initiatives for this brand to better operate on our platforms. For example, we have a special initiative to support new brands to grow and thrive on our platform. And we also plan out some growth routes and mapping out their growth routes for the KA merch here. As I mentioned earlier in our earlier call that for these new brands, they're joining or they're rejoining to our new platform. It takes time for them to adapt to JD's platform in terms of their operating styles and how they interact with their customers. So this will take a bit of time and to help them, we will also make our efforts to help them to build up their brands and their mind shares among our JD customers.

Another thing I would like to share with you is that during the 618 period, the overall increase of the bubble business was higher than the 9 points of our own business. It has also become an important driving force for our second quarter's business growth. Especially, I think, including many analysts, including many consumers, think that Jingdong is a standard product, a product with electricity, a product with its own advantages. The two products, mobile phones and laptops, are actually We have a very, very high increase in our pop-up business. The pop-up business of mobile phones has even exceeded 100% during the 618 period. So it can actually prove that this kind of ecological ability of the Jindong 015 platform is constantly improving. So in fact, in the future, on the Jindong platform, including our B2C self-publishing, including B2C's pop-up, and including our whole channel. Also, I want to mention that during this year's 618 grant promotions, we have seen a big growth on our marketplace platform.

The growth rate of our pop business or the marketplace platform has a nine basic points higher growth rate than our self-operated platform. Actually, the pop business has become a main force, the main driver for our business growth. And a lot of analysts and consumers might believe that JD is a platform to better sell for our self-operated products, those standard products such as mobile phones or PCs. Actually, for this quarter, we have seen that on our marketplace platforms, the sales of, for example, the mobile phones has increased 100%, which also confirms the healthy growth trend of our ecosystem for our marketplace platform. And in the future, JD will continue to commit to building multiple-channel platforms that involve our B2C models, our marketplace platform, omni-channel, and our on-demand consumption models. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are... We are approaching the end of the conference call. I will now turn the call over to JD.com's Shawn Zhang for closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us today on the call and for your questions. If you have any further questions, please contact me and our team. Thank you for your continued support in JD, and we look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.