At around 22:40 on November 29th, Beijing time, 10 minutes after the U.S. stock market opened, Pinduoduo's stock price continued the momentum of the previous day and continued to rise by 3.7%, with an intraday market value of US$191.429 billion. At the same time, Alibaba's stock price fell by 1.9%, with an intraday market value of US$191.074 billion. Pinduoduo’s intraday market capitalization exceeded that of Alibaba.
On November 28, Pinduoduo released its financial report for the third quarter of 2023 as of September 30. In this quarter, Pinduoduo achieved revenue of 68.84 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 93.9%. Among them, Pinduoduo’s transaction service revenue reached 29.152 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 315.15%. Such a rare and huge increase surprised investors.
It is reported that Pinduoduo’s revenue growth may mainly benefit from the rapid development of overseas business. In September 2022, Pinduoduo launched Temu, a cross-border e-commerce platform, which is known as the "overseas version of Pinduoduo". Temu was loved by European and American users as soon as it was launched, and it "dominated" the APP market in many countries.
After the release of Pinduoduo's financial report, the stock price rose against the wind, rising 18% at the close of trading on Tuesday, and the increase for the year expanded to 70.45%. After the close, Pinduoduo’s market value reached US$184.7 billion, only one step away from the US$195.4 billion of the established “e-commerce leader”.
The "little brother" who only came online in 2015 has become popular by "helping me cut a knife". Eight years later, he will be able to compete with the "big brother" who has been deeply involved in the e-commerce industry for 20 years. The e-commerce world is changing.
Of course, those who are more sensitive to the impending storm are Alibaba’s own people. It is rumored that Alibaba employees were discussing the surge in Pinduoduo's market value on the company's intranet on Wednesday, and even "exploded" Jack Ma, who rarely appears in public. Alibaba founder Jack Ma expressed congratulations on Pinduoduo’s “decision-making, execution and efforts” over the past few years in a reply to a related post. Regarding Ali's own situation, Jack Ma said: "I firmly believe that Ali will change, Ali will change."
From the perspective of merchandise transaction volume (GMV), Alibaba’s industry-leading position has not been shaken. Alibaba's GMV in 2022 will be 8.3 trillion yuan, while Pinduoduo's GMV will be 3.05 trillion yuan, which is roughly equivalent to Alibaba's 2016 level. But Pinduoduo’s growth in the number of users is truly amazing. At the beginning of 2021, Pinduoduo mentioned in its financial report that as of the end of 2020, its annual active buyers reached 788.4 million, surpassing Alibaba's 779 million. As early as 2018, Pinduoduo’s annual active buyers had surpassed JD.com, another major e-commerce company.
In recent years, domestic e-commerce has inevitably entered the stock era from the incremental era. Other types of friendly businesses, such as content platforms and local lifestyle apps, are also trying to get a piece of the pie. Traditional e-commerce companies, which are most capable of involution, are gradually unable to “roll up”.
Although traditional e-commerce companies were also developing cross-border businesses before the internal war, they did not make a splash. AliExpress, Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce platform, was established as early as 2010, but its user base in the United States is still tepid. As of March 2023, AliExpress's number of unique visitors (UV) in the United States was 22.9 million, while Temu's UV has reached 70.5 million only half a year after it was launched, which is even 70% higher than Shein, another domestic cross-border e-commerce upstart. After Temu went online, Amazon's UV has dropped from approximately 217.5 million people in September 2022 to approximately 211 million people in March 2023. Temu's ferocity is clearly evident by being able to snatch meat from the Amazon's mouth. This has indeed given a small domestic shock to the European and American markets. No wonder U.S. stock investors are so optimistic about Pinduoduo. The competitive pressure of the Colosseum is now not only given to the established domestic e-commerce companies, but also to European and American friends.