According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to June, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 23,596.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.7%. Among them, the year-on-year growth in June was only 2.0%.
The national online retail sales reached 7099.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.8%. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods reached 5959.6 billion yuan, an increase of 8.8%, accounting country code philippines mobile for 25.3% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods; among the online retail sales of physical goods, food, clothing, and daily necessities increased by 17.8%, 7.0%, and 7.8% respectively.
Looking around the world, sluggish consumption is a common situation. Temu has been the booster of Pinduoduo's rapid growth in the past few quarters, but in new markets outside the United States, especially in Southeast Asia, Temu has encountered more competitors. AliExpress, Lazada, Shopee, TikTok, Amazon and others have all joined in, hoping to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia.
In addition, cross-border e-commerce companies such as Temu are facing new challenges - the United States and the European Union may cancel the tax-free policy for cross-border small package direct mail.
In response, Temu launched a semi-custodial model to reduce fulfillment costs, respond to regulatory requirements, and strengthen compliance management. However, under the semi-custodial model, the proportion of revenue recognized by the platform in GMV is lower than that under the full-custodial model, which will affect Temu's growth rate to a certain extent.
However, Pinduoduo's profitability has further improved. In the second quarter, the company achieved an operating profit of 32.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 156%, 3.5 billion yuan higher than market expectations. The Q2 operating profit margin hit a new high of 33.6%, higher than 24.3% in the same period last year and 29.9% in the previous quarter.