By YU Hao

During only a year in charge, XU?Lei steered the e-commerce giant JD.com through an economic downturn and took?the company into profit. Xu became CEO following the abrupt resignation of founder Richard Liu last April.

Perfect candidate

In the company’s Q1 conference call, Xu Lei passed the baton to Xu “Sandy” Ran, describing her as the “perfect candidate” for CEO.

Before joining JD.com in 2018, Sandy was a partner at PWC Zhong Tian LLP, working with PWC for two decades in Beijing and San Francisco. She was the rainmaker behind the merger of JD.com with logistic firms Dada and Deppon. She also oversaw JD.com’s second listing in Hong Kong, as well as the IPOs of subsidiaries.

JD.com met market expectations throughout the pandemic lockdowns, while Xu with little experience in retail, was CFO.

Stalled growth

The platform’s growth has now stalled. In Q3 last year, JD.com only gained 7.5 million new users, compared with 20.3 million the previous year. Things are so bad that the company didn’t reveal any more data in Q4.

Meanwhile, rivals are circling. GMV growth of JD.com was only 5.6 percent last year. Pinduoduo’s GMV growth in 2021 and 2022 reached 67 percent and 46 percent, far faster than JD.com. Short video platform Douyin's GMV reached 1.5 trillion yuan, about half of JD.com’s.

‘Billions’ in subsidies

Since founder Richard Liu resigned as CEO, JD.com has launched a series of changes, emphasizing low prices. Like Alibaba, JD.com is also spinning off its subsidiaries.

JD.com rolled out a discount campaign in March, offering “billions” in subsidies to merchants and drawing concern from industry insiders. But according to its Q1 report, spending on marketing was down 8 percent last year to 8 billion yuan.