JD.com 2025 Financial Report: A "Strategic Bloodletting" for a Capital Frenzy?

File photo.

JD.com 2025 Financial Report: A “Strategic Blood Loss” for Capital Frenzy?

Wu Nan

On one hand, a quarterly loss of 2.7 billion yuan; on the other, nearly a 10% surge in stock price—JD.com recently delivered a double surprise to the market.

After market close on March 5, 2026, JD.com released its Q4 2025 and full-year results. The financial report shows that the company’s net loss attributable to shareholders in Q4 was 2.7 billion yuan, turning from profit to loss year-over-year; Non-GAAP net profit was 1.1 billion yuan, a 90.3% plunge compared to the previous year.

However, the performance in the capital markets was unexpected: the next day, JD.com’s Hong Kong stock price surged against the trend, closing up 9.95%, and U.S. stocks also rose over 6%.

What deep signals does this “divergence” between performance and stock price convey to the market? Amid huge losses, where does investor confidence come from?

“Strategic” Blood Loss

Looking solely at JD.com’s financial performance in Q4 2025, the data is indeed not optimistic.

First is growth slowdown. In Q4 2025, JD.com’s total revenue increased by only 1.5% year-over-year, a significant slowdown from the 15.78%, 22.4%, and 14.85% growth rates in the previous three quarters.

The core reason lies in the fundamental setback: JD’s core categories are home appliances and 3C products. These categories benefited from policy subsidies in Q4 2024 and the first half of 2025, achieving rapid growth. But by Q4 2025, subsidy policies in many regions tightened or were adjusted, with some provinces switching to lotteries or limited-time coupons, weakening the stimulus effect. Coupled with the high base from the same period last year, revenue from electronics and home appliances declined by 12% year-over-year, directly dragging retail revenue down 1.7% to 301.9 billion yuan.

Second is the shift from profit to loss. In Q4 2025, net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was 2.7 billion yuan, compared to a net profit of 9.9 billion yuan in the same period last year. Operating profit also turned from 8.5 billion yuan profit to an 5.8 billion yuan loss. For the full year, net profit attributable to shareholders was halved to 19.6 billion yuan.

But revenue slowdown is not the main cause of losses. In fact, JD.com’s core retail business remained profitable in Q4. The real “bleeding point” lies in massive investments in new business segments.

The financial report shows that new businesses, including JD Waimai (JD Food Delivery), JX (Jingxi), and overseas operations, achieved revenue of 14.085 billion yuan in Q4, a 200.9% increase year-over-year, but with an operating loss of 14.8 billion yuan. For the full year, new business revenue reached 49.282 billion yuan, up 157.3%, but with an annual operating loss of 46.641 billion yuan.

Within these new businesses, the biggest loss undoubtedly comes from the food delivery segment.

In 2025, JD.com announced a high-profile entry into the food delivery market. To carve out a space amid Meituan and Ele.me, JD chose the most primitive yet effective approach: burning cash through subsidies.

To quickly establish scale effects, JD adopted an aggressive pricing strategy: offering large discounts and free shipping coupons to consumers, implementing low or zero commissions for merchants, and providing delivery fees higher than industry average to couriers. The results were remarkable—over the past year, JD Waimai garnered more than 240 million orders from users, with a market share exceeding 15%.

But the cost was equally staggering.

A set of data in the financial report illustrates the subsidy intensity: in 2025, JD’s marketing expenses totaled 84 billion yuan, a 75% increase from 48 billion yuan in 2024. In Q4 alone, marketing expenses rose 50.6% year-over-year to 25.3 billion yuan, accounting for 7.2% of revenue, up from 4.9% in the same period last year. Most of this additional investment flowed into user subsidies, courier incentives, and merchant expansion.

Besides explicit subsidies, hidden costs are also rising rigidly. Last year, Liu Qiangdong proposed paying social security for full-time couriers, and at year-end, the “Courier Home” apartment project was launched. These initiatives, aimed at increasing courier loyalty and strengthening fulfillment capacity, also significantly increased costs—JD’s fulfillment expenses grew 25.2% year-over-year to 88.2 billion yuan in 2025, with Q4 fulfillment costs up 20.7% to 24.3 billion yuan. By the end of 2025, JD’s total personnel exceeded 900,000, with annual HR expenses reaching 157.2 billion yuan, an increase of 33.7 billion yuan from 2024.

In addition to food delivery, multiple new business lines and AI technology R&D further diverted resources and deepened short-term losses. JD X (Jingxi), targeting lower-tier markets, is still in market cultivation; European e-commerce Joybuy has just launched trial operations in the UK, Germany, and other countries. Both require ongoing funding for marketing and supply chain development. Meanwhile, management’s strategic focus on AI has driven up R&D expenses. In Q4 2025, JD’s R&D spending reached 6.7 billion yuan, a 52.0% increase, accounting for 1.9% of revenue, up from 1.3%. The full-year R&D investment totaled 22.2 billion yuan, a 30.5% increase, mainly for AI technology development and talent recruitment.

What is the market optimistic about?

Despite JD.com’s less-than-ideal Q4 2025 results, the capital market responded quite positively. The day after the earnings release, the Hong Kong stock price surged nearly 10%, and U.S. stocks gained over 6%. This indicates that the market is not solely focused on the quarterly losses but sees more positive signals behind the performance.

Based on various analyses and broker opinions, market confidence mainly stems from the stable performance of JD’s core retail business. Although Q4 was affected by the home appliance and 3C categories, the continued growth in daily necessities and platform marketing services offset some cyclicality in electronics.

Data shows that in Q4 2025, revenue from daily necessities increased 12% year-over-year to 119.7 billion yuan, marking five consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. Fashion and health categories also maintained strong growth; platform and advertising service revenue rose 15% to 30.6 billion yuan, with an 18.9% annual increase, achieving double-digit growth for several consecutive quarters.

Profitability-wise, JD’s retail segment achieved an operating profit of 9.8 billion yuan in Q4, with an operating margin of 3.2%, roughly flat compared to 3.3% last year. Full-year retail operating profit reached 51.4 billion yuan, with the operating margin rising from 4.0% in 2024 to 4.6%, continuing a steady upward trend since 2019’s 2.7%. Research reports from securities firms like CICC noted that JD’s retail profit performance exceeded market expectations, and the resilience of core business profitability has boosted confidence in the company’s long-term operational capacity.

Furthermore, the ongoing optimization of revenue structure indicates potential for improved profit quality. In 2025, JD’s service revenue grew 23.6% year-over-year to 285.3 billion yuan, accounting for 21.8% of total revenue—an all-time high. Among these, logistics and other services increased 26.6%, and platform and advertising services grew 18.9%. The rising proportion of high-margin service revenue suggests JD is gradually shifting from “selling goods” to “providing retail services.”

Narrowing losses in new businesses also alleviates some market concerns about long-term profit pressure. For investors, short-term losses are not the main issue; what matters is whether losses are controllable and efficiency is improving. JD’s new business losses narrowed from 15.736 billion yuan in Q3 2025 to 14.801 billion yuan in Q4, mainly because the total investment in food delivery decreased nearly 20% quarter-over-quarter, and JD Waimai has seen four consecutive quarters of narrowing losses since launch. At the subsequent earnings call, JD CEO Xu Ran explicitly stated that if market competition remains stable, total investment in food delivery in 2026 will decrease compared to 2025.

Additionally, shareholder returns also boost market confidence. Despite quarterly losses, JD did not cut back on shareholder returns. In 2025, the company repurchased about $3 billion worth of shares, representing 6.3% of circulating shares, and plans to continue repurchasing $2 billion before August 2027. It also announced a dividend payout of approximately $1.4 billion, with an annual shareholder return rate of about 10%. Even amid performance pressure, JD persists in creating value for shareholders through dividends and buybacks, reflecting confidence in its long-term cash flow and profitability.

Of course, part of the positive market reaction is also emotional recovery. Before the earnings release, JD’s stock had declined over a year—from its October 2024 peak to March 5, 2026, with a maximum drop of nearly 50%. Many negative factors had already been priced into the stock. After the report, some funds entered after the negativity was largely priced in, amplifying the single-day rally.

2026 Strategic Focus

If 2025 was about JD’s strategic layout and investment in new businesses and AI technology, then 2026 marks the phase of strategy implementation, efficiency improvement, and value realization.

As JD’s “cornerstone,” management expects retail revenue in 2026 to still grow in single digits, with more diversified growth drivers.

For home appliances and digital categories, management predicts that in the first half of 2026, high base effects and rising storage chip costs will continue to exert pressure. JD plans to strengthen supply chain capabilities, expand offline channels, and improve service experience to consolidate customer loyalty. Meanwhile, leveraging AI to develop new product forms to meet niche demands aims for a recovery in the second half.

For daily necessities, JD will continue exploring the huge potential in supermarkets, fashion, and health sectors, while accelerating internal collaboration and cross-selling through new businesses like food delivery and Jingxi, driven by user growth and supply chain advantages.

On new business development, management appears more rational.

For food delivery, future focus will be on healthy scale growth, unit economics optimization, and leveraging synergies with core retail, such as driving traffic and creating cross-sales and ad revenue. JD plans to deepen integration with innovative formats like “Qixian Xiaochu” (Seven Fresh Kitchen) and supply chain, emphasizing “quality delivery,” with plans to cover all first- and second-tier cities by the end of 2026.

Jingxi will continue focusing on lower-tier markets, supplying white-label products to penetrate lower-tier cities. Management expects a slight increase in investment in 2026 and ongoing optimization of unit economics to achieve healthy, sustainable growth.

Internationally, JD’s “future key strategy” involves a “heavy asset + localization” self-operated model. In 2025, JD fully acquired German consumer electronics retailer Ceconomy (including MediaMarkt, Saturn, and 1,030 stores) for €2.2 billion (about 1.85 billion yuan), and accelerated logistics network expansion in Saudi Arabia, the UK, and other regions. While these investments enhance global fulfillment capacity, they also bring short-term cost pressures.

Entering 2026, JD’s international expansion accelerates further. Its full-category e-commerce platform Joybuy plans to officially launch in six European countries in March, relying on its self-built Joy Express logistics network to offer same-day and next-day delivery in major European cities. Management emphasizes gradual investment increases while maintaining disciplined spending to keep scale manageable.

Beyond detailed business planning, AI remains a core strategic focus for 2026. Over the past year, JD’s self-developed large model “JoyAI” has supported over 2,000 business scenarios, with initial results in AI-guided shopping and autonomous driving.

In 2026, JD will continue increasing technological investment, fully deploying AI capabilities in core operations: upgrading AI-guided shopping and intelligent recommendations to double AI-driven user scale within the year, further improving conversion and shopping experience; using AI to optimize procurement pricing, inventory management, and warehousing, reducing costs and improving efficiency; expanding autonomous delivery deployments and advancing overseas unmanned delivery scenarios; and collaborating with brands to explore AI hardware consumer potential, creating differentiated new products. The goal is to turn technology into growth drivers and accelerate building an AI-driven retail ecosystem.

Although management is optimistic about 2026’s performance recovery, it is undeniable that JD still faces multiple operational pressures: on one hand, the high base effect from last year’s home appliance and 3C categories, coupled with rising upstream costs like storage chips, will continue to test core retail growth momentum; on the other, integration in Europe, ongoing AI R&D “funding,” and efforts to reduce losses in food delivery all imply that investments and returns will have a time lag.

The question remains: will investors be willing to give this “long-distance runner” enough patience?