JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce platform, announced on Wednesday a 12-month plan to buy back US$1 billion shares – worth around 3.5% of the firm’s total market cap – in a move to reverse its share price downswing. The company’s stock price rose 6.84% on Nasdaq upon the announcement.
2018 has proven to be a turbulent year for the Beijing-based company, with its share price plunged 52.3% so far this year as a result of a series of mishaps, from falling profits, financial woes from investors, under-performing fintech and unmanned shelf projects, intensified competition from new startups such as PDD (links in Chinese), to the company founder Richard Liu’s alleged sexual misbehaviour. And the fact that Liu controls nearly 80% of JD’s voting shares aggravates market concerns, pushing his company’s share prices further towards the downslide trend.
Editor: Ben Jiang