JD.com - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, and thank you for standing by for JD.com's Q3 2024 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, Sean Zhang, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sean Zhang (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good day, everyone. Welcome to JD.com's Q3 2024 earnings conference call. For today's call, CEO of JD.com, Ms. Sandy Xu, will kick off with her opening remarks, and our CFO, Mr. Ian Shan, will discuss the financial results, and then we'll open the call to questions from analysts. Before turning the call over to Sandy, let me quickly cover the safe harbor. Please be reminded that during this call, our comments and responses to your questions reflect management's view as of today only, and we'll include forward-looking statements, and please refer to our latest safe harbor statement in the earnings press release on our website, which applies to this call. We'll discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please also refer to the reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures in the earnings press release.

Also, please note all figures mentioned in this call are in RMB unless otherwise stated. Now, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Sandy.

Sandy Xu (CEO)

Thank you, Sean. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to discuss our Q3 2024 results. We had a solid Q3 with improved operating and financial results. Our top-line growth accelerated sequentially. Our active user base and shopping frequency expanded with stronger momentum, and our bottom line achieved another substantial uplift. At the heart of these achievements is our relentless focus on building supply chain capabilities and logistics infrastructure, which enables us to continuously unleash strength in delivering lower-cost, higher-efficiency, and best-in-class user experience. This is the key competitive strength that we are focused on as we face an ever-changing macro and competitive landscape. JD has been dedicated to establishing core supply chain capabilities since day one, along with putting significant efforts into building out retail and logistics infrastructures around the country to better serve consumers and contribute to the real economy of local areas nationwide.

This enables us to play a key role in contributing in the trade-in program, both online and offline. JD is best positioned to support this program not only with our strong user mindshare in home appliance and 3C categories, but more importantly, with our supply chain capabilities and our fulfillment infrastructure. Consumers are attracted to JD's platform for the wealth of product selections, our integrated service covering every step from dismantling, shipment, to installation of the heavy bulky appliances, and smooth checkout process using trade-in subsidies. The trade-in program has proven to be very effective in unlocking consumption potential and driving the technological upgrade of the entire industry chain. And we expect to continue to play our role in this effort to better serve customers and suppliers, stimulate consumption, and promote healthy industry development.

Turning to general merchandise category, in Q3, its revenues increased by 8% year-on-year, a healthy momentum that has been sustained for three consecutive quarters this year. It was primarily attributable to our supermarket category, which delivered another double-digit revenue growth year-on-year in the quarter. As a key growth driver for us, the supermarket category continued to enrich its product portfolio in the quarter to cover different price tiers. It has also launched many initiatives, such as direct shipment from suppliers to customers, that gained strong traction among our users. As such, with improving user experience, we saw a healthy increase in both user base and user engagement in supermarkets, particularly with a robust 20% increase in shopping frequency during the quarter.

Also, notably, within our fashion category, apparel and sports and outdoors both recorded double-digit revenue growth year-on-year during the quarter, thanks to our efforts to enrich product selection, enhance user experience, and drive user mindshare shopping for clothing on JD. It's clear that our supply chain strength is at the core of our progress in operations and financials. In addition to that, going forward, we will continue to focus on a few key areas to drive our high-quality, sustainable growth in the long run. First, user growth and engagement. We've seen a set of encouraging results resulting from our efforts and investments in users. The number of our quarterly active customers has been growing at double-digit rates year-on-year for the last four quarters in a row, with Q3 being the highest. The growth was distributed across market tiers and user groups, including new and existing users.

In addition, in Q3, user shopping frequency maintained double-digit year-on-year growth, primarily driven by our increased price competitiveness, category mix shift, and wider coverage of free shipping service. Our JD Plus program is on the right track, as we saw a set of metrics, including active Plus member number and shopping frequency, continue to improve. All this progress in user growth and engagement really speaks to the fact that we've been providing best-in-class experience to users of different income spectrums and demands with the right products, price, and service offerings. On such robust momentum, we will continue to invest with discipline in user growth and user experience. In addition to users, let me share some progress we made on price competitiveness and platform ecosystem.

We further improved our price competitiveness as we continue to leverage on the strength of our 1P supply chain capabilities, as well as our enriched 3P product offerings and white-label goods. As a result, we are better able to serve both our existing users and new users, and our NPS for price competitiveness increased year-on-year for another quarter. Particularly, we saw a steeper trajectory of user base expansion and order volume growth in lower-tier markets compared to that of higher-tier markets on our platform. Low price is the very essence of retail, and our commitment to that will never change.

To reinforce our everyday low price user membership, we have launched a series of campaigns, such as the monthly Super 18 sales that offers a selection of discounted products on the 18th of every month, the weekly Black Friday offering deals that mainly cover supermarket categories, the daily late-night flash sales, offering deep discounts for a limited time and limited supply, as well as the half-price clothing promotions. These offerings are highly welcomed by our users. Last but not least, we also continue to make progress on our platform ecosystem. We onboarded more 3P merchants during the quarter, particularly SMEs and those from industrial belts, to expand our product offerings at different price tiers. As such, our active merchant base maintained a very healthy year-on-year growth.

More importantly, we also made solid progress in the quarter in user engagement, which led to accelerated year-on-year growth in 3P order volume and the number of users who purchased 3P products on our platform, both of which reached record-high growth levels in Q3. Our NPS for 3P offerings rose year-on-year as well. As to monetization, commission revenues returned to a positive growth in Q3, in line with our expectation as the impact of discounted commission fees fully lapsed. Advertising revenues in our retail business grew by double digits year-on-year, thanks to the healthy growth of our ecosystem and improving traffic allocation efficiency for both 1P and 3P merchants. That said, we are still at the very beginning of exploring the potential of our platform ecosystem to drive our business scale and profitability.

We will continue to prioritize further optimizing our tools and infrastructure to better empower merchants, hence further improving user experience on our platform. That's the wrap-up for our Q3. Moving into Q4, we've just concluded Singles' Day Grand Promotion. With this year's theme of "Cheaper and Better," our supply chain strengths were brought into full display. Our team did a great job expanding product assortment for both our 1P and 3P offerings, providing competitive prices and serving users with best-in-class experience. We saw users respond well with user number and order volume, both recording double-digit growth during the promotion. Finally, we are very encouraged by a more supportive policy environment that aims to realize the huge potential of consumption in China and, at the same time, drive industry upgrades, create employment, and lead household income, which will further fuel consumption confidence.

While we see consumer sentiment start to improve, we understand it takes time for the benefits of the policies to filter through. We will continue to focus on executing our strategies in place, building up supply chain capabilities, and fully tapping into our potential to drive lower-cost, higher-efficiency, and best-in-class user experience. We believe this will lead us to further expand our market share and profits. With that, I'll turn it over to Ian for our financial highlights. Thank you.

Ian Shan (CFO)

Thank you, Sandy, and hello, everyone. In Q3, our top-line growth accelerated from last quarter and outpaced the growth of domestic total retail sales, driven by strength across our major business segments and categories. Our general merchandise category continued with strong momentum in the quarter.

More importantly, we saw a turnaround in revenue growth in our electronics and home appliances category due to our comprehensive support for China's nationwide trade-in program. With our strong user membership, supply chain capabilities, and logistics services that we have built over the past two decades, we are able to provide superior customer experience and bring value to business partners and the society at large. We also achieved an increase in profitability during the quarter as we continue to improve cost and efficiency, especially on the logistics side. Both gross margin and non-GAAP net margin expanded at a solid pace year-over-year in the quarter. Moreover, we continue to return value to shareholders. During the quarter, we completed our share repurchase program announced in March this year and launched a new $5 billion share repurchase program for the next three years through the end of August 2027.

In detail, we repurchased a total of 31 million Class A ordinary shares, equivalent to 15.5 million ADSs, which accounted for 1.1% of our ordinary shares outstanding as of June 30, 2024. The total value of the shares repurchased in Q3 was approximately $390 million. During the nine months ending September 30, 2024, the total value of the shares repurchased was $3.65 billion, which accounts for 8.1% of our ordinary shares outstanding as of the end of 2023. The progress reflects our commitment to creating value for shareholders. With that, let me turn to our Q3 financial performance. Our net revenues grew by 5% year-on-year to RMB 260 billion in Q3, of which product revenues were up 5%. By category, revenues of electronics and home appliances grew by 3% year-on-year, with growth improving sequentially in each of these three months.

September was notably strong for home appliances and PCs due to our contribution to the trade-in program, which has been proven very effective in boosting overall consumption, and we've seen this upbeat momentum sustain our platform in Q4 quarter to date, including during the Singles' Day Grand Promotion. Of note, with our unparalleled supply chain capabilities and keen focus on user experience that set us apart from the peers in the industry, revenues of general merchandise recorded another solid growth of 8% year-on-year in the quarter, of which revenues of supermarket category, apparel, and sports and outdoors of fashion category also double-digit increase year-on-year. With massive trend and our investment in building user experience and user mindshare in the general merchandise category, we believe there is a significant headroom for us to drive further growth over time.

Service revenues grew by 7% year-on-year in Q3, of which marketplace and marketing revenues up 6%, and logistics and other service revenues up 7%. For marketplace and marketing, commission revenues returned to positive growth in the quarter as the impact of our discounted fees to merchants fully lapsed. Advertising revenues maintained solid momentum, with advertising revenues from JD Retail recording another double-digit year-on-year growth in Q3. Key operating metrics of our platform ecosystem showed positive progress in user engagement, including a steady increase in 3P order volume and active users who purchased 3P products on our platform. Now, let's turn to our segment performance. JD Retail revenues were up 6% year-on-year in Q3, thanks to the turnaround of electronics and home appliances and the robust growth of general merchandise.

Moreover, JD Retail recorded another meaningful gross margin improvement in the quarter as we continue to drive better scale benefits of 1P, favorable mixed shift towards higher margin categories, and higher contribution of 3P. As a result, we are able to pass over the savings to our users and offer them an enriched portfolio of quality products of different price tiers. The achievement in gross margin offset the increase in our operating expense, especially in marketing expense as we devoted efforts to drive user growth and user engagement. As a result, JD Retail's non-GAAP operating income increased by 6% year-on-year, and operating margin stayed stable at 5.2% in Q3 compared to the same period last year. Now, looking to JD Logistics, JD Logistics revenues increased by 7% year-on-year in Q3.

This was due to healthy momentum in both internal and external revenues, which increased by 8% and 6% year-on-year, respectively. As JD Logistics continued to unlock economies of scale and raise operating efficiency, it made outsized improvement across profit lines during the quarter. In particular, its Non-GAAP operating income increased by 624% year-on-year, and operating margin came in at 4.7%, up 400 basis points compared to a year ago. Going forward, we expect JD Logistics' higher efficiency and superior service will continue to benefit JD Group as a critical component of our integrated supply chain. Turning to new business, in the quarter, revenue of new business was down 26% year-on-year, mostly due to the adjustment of the Jingxi business. Non-GAAP operating loss of new business was RMB 615 million in the quarter compared to a loss of RMB 192 million a year ago.

The result was largely due to the increased loss in Jingxi. Moving on to our consolidated profit performance, in Q3, at the group level, gross profit grew by 16% year-on-year, and gross margin grew by 165 basis points to 17.3%. It's the 10th quarter in a row with our gross margin expansion on a year-on-year basis, a strong proof of our high-quality development path. Moreover, our non-GAAP operating income increased by 18% year-on-year, and operating margin came in at 5% in Q3, up 54 basis points year-on-year. Non-GAAP net profits attributable to ordinary shareholders increased by 24% year-on-year, and net margin came in at 5.1%, up 76 basis points year-on-year. We are well on track to achieve our long-term margin target, with some of the previous quarters already reaching it.

For the full year of 2024, we're confident to achieve double-digit growth of our non-GAAP net profit. Our last 12-month free cash flow as of the end of Q3 was RMB 34 billion compared to RMB 39 billion in the same period last year. The decrease was a result of the timing difference of our working capital and the impact of the trade-in program, which was partially offset by our increased profit and moderated CapEx. By the end of Q3, our cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments, added up to a total of RMB 197 billion. To conclude, we had a very solid Q3 with both top and bottom lines trending in the right direction. Looking ahead, we're more confident in the economic environment and the tenacity of domestic consumption.

We look forward to fully utilizing our core capabilities to play our role in the implementation of the government's stimulus measures. We will continue to execute our strategies in supply chain, price competitiveness, and platform ecosystem to create value for our users, business partners, and shareholders along the way. With that, I will turn it back to Sean. Thank you.

Sean Zhang (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Ian. For the Q&A session, you are welcome to ask questions in Chinese or English, and our management will answer your questions in the language you ask. We'll provide English translation when necessary for convenience purposes only. In case of any discrepancy, please refer to our management statement in the original language. Okay, now, operator, we can open the call for Q&A session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. 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 one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Ronald Keung from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Ronald Keung (Managing Director)

[Foreign language] Sandy [Foreign language] Sean, [Foreign language] Thank you, management, for taking the question. I have a question on our growth, and we've seen the trade-in appliance trade-in programs. Could you help us just quantify the boost to Q3 and potentially into the Q4? And how is the sustainability of this heading into next year for the policy-wide boost to appliance? And then excluding appliance, what are our strategies in supermarket general merchandise 3P and price competitiveness to sustain the strategy for next year if we want to keep the target of growing above retail industry growth? Thank you.

Sandy Xu (CEO)

[Foreign language] Ronald [Foreign language] Thank you, Ronald. To take your first question, so in recent months, the government has been rolling out a series of stimulus measures, including the trade-in policy nationwide to support economic growth and consumption, and these efforts have shown positive progress. And under the comprehensive planning of the government bodies, JD has swiftly responded by increasing inventory and enhancing service efficiency to support the program.

Leveraging our extensive experience in supply chain management, we are well positioned to offer quality products and convenience services at competitive prices to a broad base of Chinese consumers. So here, what I want to emphasize is that our swift response to the trade-in program is due to our years of experience in proactively providing trade-in services, which has made us technologically prepared and systematically compatible with such initiatives. Additionally, JD's unique supply chain capabilities, including our self-operated sales model, logistics and fulfillment capabilities, and large item services, and combined with our strong user mindshare in the home appliances category, have made us the preferred partner and preferred supplier for our customers in the trade-in program. [Foreign language] So on the effects of the trade-in program, we've seen promising outcomes so far.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported that September sales of household appliances and consumer electronics grew significantly compared to July and August. This trend is also mirrored on JD.com, where the trade-in program has driven our increased demand of sales for home appliances and computers in September. Our sales on these categories increased sequentially in each of the three months in Q3. [Foreign language] At the same time, it is also noteworthy that the full potential of the trade-in policy has yet to be fully realized in Q3. Partly, it's because some of the consumers haven't been fully aware of this policy. It takes some time for them to be educated and to take advantage of this trade-in policy.

On the other side, due to some limited production capacity, the high consumer demand for some subsidized products may not be fully met in the short term, and for the brands and the manufacturers, they may require time to ramp up production. Additionally, at the recent National People's Congress meeting, the government just unveiled to introduce more forceful fiscal stimulus plans based on next year's economic and social development objectives, and expanding the trade-in program in greater scale and categories of consumer goods is a measure included in this supportive plan. We believe extending the trade-in policy would further support consumer spending.

[Foreign language] We believe the government's trade-in program is not solely aimed at boosting short-term consumption, but also at fostering the healthy development of key industries, creating jobs and increasing household income, and to restore consumer confidence. To strengthen consumer confidence benefits the entire retail and all sorts of manufacturing sector. We hope the policy will continue and expand to other categories to sustain this meaningful momentum. Currently, this program remains attractive to consumers as reflected during JD's Singles' Day Grand promotion, where our home appliances and computers sales continue to grow steadily. Moreover, the trade-in program has increased the traffic and visits on JD's platform. We're committed to enhancing our supply chain across all categories: electronics, supermarket, and fashion, etc., focusing on cost efficiency and user experience to deliver cheaper and better shopping experiences to our customers.

[Foreign language] Regarding your second question on growth strategies, this year we have steadily advanced our strategic plans focusing on enhancing user experience, optimizing costs, and boosting efficiency. So, on enhancing price competitiveness, our ongoing strategies include our continuous lowering of our 1P procurement costs by scaling our supply chain and increasing efficiency. That allows us to offer products at more competitive price. At the same time, to increase the supplies of non-brand products, we are introducing more white label sellers and affordable products through our channels like 3P and Jingxi business models to cater to the diverse shopping needs across user groups.

At the same time, we strive to strengthen the everyday low price user mindshare by building our promotional metrics, as I mentioned in my remark, such as the monthly Super 18 sales, the weekly Black Friday deals on supermarket categories, and the daily late night flash sale events. [Foreign language] On the general merchandise category in Q3, it also maintained healthy growth and continued to outperform the market. Specifically on the supermarket category, we focused on our reform of the warehouse network for greater efficiency. This approach led to double-digit revenue growth in Q3, along with improved profitability. On the fashion category, since September, we have increased the investments on the user side, mainly focusing on reinforcing users' mindshare of shopping for clothing on JD. This focus contributed to double-digit year-on-year growth in clothing categories and other subcategories in Q3.

[Foreign language] So, and thirdly, on the strengthening of our platform ecosystem on the 3P part, I've already mentioned and won't repeat, there's a lot of healthy growth has been achieved across different metrics, whereas we see there's still plenty of room to improve in many aspects. So overall, we are confident in our ability to sustain a faster-than-market growth rate and continue expanding our market share. Thank you.

Ronald Keung (Managing Director)

[Foreign language] Sandy。

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Alicia Yap (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good evening. [Foreign language] thanks for taking my questions. There are two questions. First is that it's good that JD has been benefiting from the appliance trading stimulus and also with the stabilizations of the real estate sector, which likely have attracted the demand for appliance in the end of Q3 and also into the Q4.

But investors lately have a new concern about the growth driver into next year, especially for the H2 of next year, and worry that there might be a high base for appliance sales and also JD's growth might slow down. We would try to argue that if real estate actually stabilize, further stabilize, which could actually drive more sustainable demand for appliance, and it may not necessarily see a roll over of the growth for JD. So what is management view for these? Appreciate if we can address all the various JD growth drivers into the next year. Second question is one of the bigger boosts of better than expected profit beat the last quarter that we deliver likely to have driven by JD Logistics margin improvement and also JD Retail cost optimization and also the efficiency improvement.

Just, you know, JD also has delivered very good profit improvement already this year. As we head into next year, 2025, can management provide any preliminary thoughts in terms of the investment, the spending that you might want to invest, and how would overall margins and profit growth outlook heading into next year? Thank you.

Sandy Xu (CEO)

[Foreign language] Alicia, [Foreign language] Thank you, Alicia, for your question. I will address the first part on the growth. So, as I just mentioned, our belief is that for the trading policies the government introduced, is playing a role as a leverage. It is not only aimed at like short-term consumption increase for the home appliances categories, but more play a role to boost the consumption with the job created and increase the household income to restore consumption confidence.

In my opinion, the consumption confidence restoring is more meaningful to help JD's growth in terms of the specific categories and our targeted groups. For the next year, we remain cautiously optimistic for the overall economic and consumption growth trajectory. In terms of our company's growth drivers, we will continue to carry out our long-term strategic plans, mainly focus on first to continue to bolster our users' experience and user growth, and continue to invest on those categories that have a high growth potential and expand our product offerings and with a wider range of prices that cater to the needs of the lower-tier markets and introduce more products from the industrial belt, etc. We are making steady efforts to invest in these businesses. Thirdly, we continue to invest in our platform ecosystem to provide a thriving environment for everyone to continue growing.

Ian Shan (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Sandy Xu (CEO)

Regarding the prospects on profits, I'd like to share our thoughts. First, our long-term profit margin improvement will be driven by three key factors. JD's strength in supply chain scale and efficiency will continue to drive margin growth. As you can see in our Q3 earnings, we saw a continuous increase in our net margins, which is mainly due to the gross profit margin improvement in product supply chain and JD Logistics profit growth driven by cost management and the efficiency improvement. The second driver is the category mix. There is still significant potential for margin improvement in many categories, such as the supermarket category. Additionally, favorable category mix shift itself can also lead to higher margin. The third driver is our 1P versus 3P mix.

As the ratio of 3P business grows over time on our platform, it will also positively impact our margin growth.

Ian Shan (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Sandy Xu (CEO)

So in line with JD's long-term strategies and in response to the macroeconomic and market changes, we will continue investing in areas that enhance user experience, strengthen our core supply chain capabilities, and build user mindshare in specific categories. And maintaining strategic focus and long-term planning is crucial for our business success over the long run. Our profit margin will continue to improve alongside healthy business growth and increased operating efficiency. And JD's long-term profit margin goal will reach a high single digit. As for specific growth and profit guidance, we will share at appropriate time. Thank you.

Sean Zhang (Director of Investor Relations)

So next question, please. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong from UBS. Please go ahead.

Kenneth Fong (Managing Director)

[Foreign language] my first question is about competition and investment.

During Double Eleven, e-commerce platform has been investing aggressively on both user and merchants. Can management share your view on the current industry competitive landscape? Also for area for JD investment and for this investment, how should we think about impact on margin? My second question is on the expansion in the apparel and cosmetics category. Because in the news, we saw that we are investing RMB 3 billion and RMB 1 billion respectively on cosmetics and apparel category. Can management share more about that? Would it be 1P or 3P in terms of operation? Any results that we can share? Then more medium to longer term, what is JD competitive advantage versus peers in our positioning? It would be calculating. Thank you.

Ian Shan (CFO)

Kenny, [Foreign language].

Sandy Xu (CEO)

Hi Kenny. Thanks for your question. I will take the question on the industry competition and our investment.

First of all, I want to address that we hope that we continue to hold the view that China is a highly promising retail market supported by favorable demographic structure and distribution along with the world's most advanced e-commerce infrastructure, including robust logistics, payment systems, and social media integration, etc. There's still significant room for e-commerce to expand its market penetration. With the implementation of supportive measures to boost consumption, including the recent trade-in policy, we're seeing positive momentum that will inject fresh growth energy in e-commerce.

Ian Shan (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Sandy Xu (CEO)

Given this e-commerce development momentum, we will maintain focus on enhancing user experience and driving user growth, developing our differentiated supply chain capabilities based on cost efficiency and user experience, building our core capabilities and a competitive edge, making targeted investment in self-operated supply chain and logistics service for sustainable long-term growth.

At the same time, continuously strengthening user mindshare. Here are some specific updates on user experience over the past year. We focus on enhancing user experience by increasing price competitiveness, lowering the free shipping threshold for our self-operated products, and improving our free at-home return services, and now we have extended many services from 1P to 3P products, such as free shipping for order over CNY 59 and the free home return services. Additionally, we've introduced innovative services like compensation for delayed shipping to constantly exceed user expectations, and alongside these improvements on user experience, we are actively working to attract new users. In Q3, we achieved a double-digit year-on-year user growth with accelerated momentum, and we expect this growth to continue, and in terms of strengthening customer mindshare in key categories, JD has become the go-to destination for home appliances, computers, mobile phones, and electronic categories.

As we support the government's trade-in policy, we also take the opportunity to further integrate our services to reinforce user trust on these categories. In general merchandise categories like markets, supermarkets, and fashion, we continue to build a stronger user mindshare. Our promotional campaign on the apparel category launched this September. It's a prime example of enhancing user awareness and engagement in the apparel category.

Ian Shan (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Sandy Xu (CEO)

So here we are also pleased to share the Singles' Day Grand Promotion performance, which overall exceeded our expectation. So with JD's rising user mindshare, we've seen notable improvement in user traffic, with our APP's unique visit witnessing a significant increase during the shopping festival. And both the active users and orders during the shopping festival experienced a fast growth. The number of active users achieved a double-digit growth, and the average daily active customers increased by over 20%.

At the same time, user shopping frequency maintained double digits year-on-year. So all in all, we will continue to invest in reducing cost, improving efficiency, and enhancing user experience, focusing on our unique strength in supply chain and user-centered experience. At the same time, we will closely monitor GMV, profit, cash flow, and other key metrics to achieve a balanced high-quality growth. And for the full year, we're confident that JD Group's profit will exceed double-digit growth. [Foreign language]

So, Kenneth, thank you very much for recognizing our efforts in the fashion and the beauty categories. So we've seen and we've been steadily increasing our investment in these categories with the key goal to enhance user experience as part of our long-term strategy. And to build user interest and engagement with JD's apparel offerings, we're expanding our product selections, especially the good quality and fashionable product selections, and emphasizing premium services.

We've been launching and will continue to plan promotions, including the 50% off campaign on the apparel category to better appeal users and increase their recognition. Specifically on the beauty products, we are strengthening our partnerships with the domestic and emerging beauty brands. We express the high expectation to work together on exploring market potential for common growth in these categories, and so far, our CNY 10 billion discount program has expanded to cover the entire beauty category, gaining popularity among JD users, and on the apparel product, in September, we launched several initiatives to boost JD's presence in the apparel category, such as the 50% off campaign and the London Fashion Show, showcasing our brand, a broad brand selection and competitive pricing, and all these campaigns have attracted new users with high purchasing power, who showed greater order values and high repurchasing rates within a month.

And especially during the Singles' Day Grand Promotion, we see new active users in fashion and beauty, and their shopping frequency both achieved healthy growth. [Foreign language] And in terms of the operating models, currently most of fashion products on our platform come from 3P sellers. At the same time, we're also stepping up efforts on our 1P operational capabilities, but definitely the users will have the final say to choose between 1P and 3P. And in terms of the investments, we will continue to focus on the product price and the services, and we will continue to better our algorithms to introduce more tailor-made products to the relevant customers. And we will also invest in improving the price competitiveness and offer more affordable products on these categories, along with more differentiated services.

With that said, we welcome all the analysts and all our partners to use and experience our apparel and fashion categories. If there are any suggestions, we're very happy to hear from you. Thank you.

Ian Shan (CFO)

Thank you, Kenny.

Kenneth Fong (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thomas Chong (Managing Director)

[Foreign language] Good evening. Thanks, Management, for taking my question. My first question is about the macro. Can management comment about the recent macro policies measures have any positive impact to consumer sentiment? My second question is about capital return. Can management comment about the latest updates on shareholders' returns related to buyback and dividends? Thank you.

Sandy Xu (CEO)

[Foreign language] Thomas [Foreign language] Thank you, Thomas, for the question. My short answer is yes. Current macro policies have been taking a positive effect on the overall consumption sentiment, and we expect as these policies continue to take effect, this will help to improve the economic fundamentals and to help recover and improve household income, which will all provide more energy and vitalization to the consumption potential.

Ian Shan (CFO)

Thomas, [Foreign language].

Sandy Xu (CEO)

Regarding the shareholder return, we have constantly executed our shareholder return plan over the first three quarters of the year, and we remain committed to delivering returns through multiple channels based on sustained business growth. On our share repurchase progress over the first three quarters, we've repurchased $3.65 billion worth of shares, totaling approximately 255.3 million ordinary shares, or 127.6 million ADS, representing 8.1% of total shares outstanding as of 31 December 2023.

And in Q3 alone, we repurchased approximately $390 million worth of shares, and we have fully utilized the repurchase amount authorized under the $3 billion share repurchase program. And in Q3, we announced a new three-year repurchase program totaling $5 billion, which we'll execute with the aim of reducing the total number of shares in the long run. And on the dividend progress, we completed a $1.2 billion dividend distribution for 2024 in the H1 of the year and plan to continue with the steady annual dividend payment based on profitability. So, for the long term, we are dedicated to rewarding shareholders through share repurchase, dividends, and strong operational performance, sharing the value created by our business success. Thank you.

Sean Zhang (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Thomas. Let's take the last question, please.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Jialong Shi from Nomura. Please go ahead.

Jialong Shi (Head of China Internet Equity Research)

[Foreign language] So I have two questions. The first question is about JD Supermarket. So just wondering what is the size and the margin of JD Supermarket business, and what was the rationale to have decided to exit our previous investment in Yonghui Supermarket? The second question is about JD 3P. So just wondering what does JD think of its potential in 3P, and what are your strategies to further unleash the potential of 3P? Thank you.

Sandy Xu (CEO)

[Foreign language] Jialong Shi. [Foreign language] general merchandise [Foreign language] Thank you, Jialong, for your question. The supermarket category has always been a core part of our business and one of the most important drivers for our future growth. It represents the largest segment among our general merchandise categories and, by sales volume, surpasses any supermarket chain store in China.

While at the same time, it's also worth noting that China's supermarket sector is vast and highly decentralized compared with other developed countries. And in September, JD Super marked its 10th anniversary, and it emphasized during the celebration to the media that the supermarket business is one of the key battlefields that will shape JD's future in the coming decade. Admittedly, given its current scale and profitability, JD Super still has a way to go to meet our long-term expectations. However, we see significant potential in this category and remain confident in its healthy growth trajectory. And for this year, JD Super has achieved a double-digit year-on-year growth driven by our enhanced operational capabilities.

We will continue to strengthen our core capabilities in our 1P management in terms of the scales, our refined operations, and reform in warehouse network, etc., to drive up the profitability and continue to center on the product offerings, price competitiveness, and our differentiated services to improve user experience and users' mindshare in the supermarket category. [Foreign language] And our strategic investment in Yonghui matched the initial objectives we set at the beginning of the collaboration. The recent shareholding change reflects our proactive decision to sharpen our focus on JD's core business areas. [Foreign language] And regarding the question on our 3P development, our platform ecosystem development goal is centered around enhancing user experience. We aim to offer the best products, price, and services through a mix of sales models, with 3P playing a key role in expanding our selection of products and brands.

So eventually, this will be our users' natural choice. And building a robust platform ecosystem, there remains substantial room for improvement in 3P operations, business scale, and profit contribution to the platform. [Foreign language] And, for a quite period of time, we have been investing in the platform's infrastructures and providing all sorts of merchant tools. Of course, there's still a way to go to better our supplies to our merchants and to help them to better do the traffic allocations and the user acquisition, etc., to create a win-win situation. So over time, the platform's ecosystem, we aim to have it become a long-term growth driver, generating increased revenue and profitability. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We are now approaching the end of the conference call. I will now turn the call over to JD.com's Sean Zhang for closing remarks.

Sean Zhang (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you for joining us today on the call, and thank you for all the great questions at the wrap. If you have further questions, please contact me and our team. We really appreciate your interest in JD.com and look forward to talking to you again next quarter. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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