On March 6th, JD Group released its fourth-quarter and full-year financial reports. JD's fourth-quarter revenue reached 306.1 billion CNY, with full-year revenue reaching 1.0847 trillion CNY. Despite vigorous support measures such as commission reduction and fee waivers for small and medium-sized merchants, service revenue for the fourth quarter still reached 59.6 billion CNY, with annual service revenue reaching 213.4 billion CNY, a year-on-year increase of 17.8%.
The financial report shows that by the end of the fourth quarter, JD's supply chain infrastructure asset scale reached 153.8 billion CNY, a year-on-year increase of 16%. Leveraging digitalization, intelligence, and scale of supply chain infrastructure, JD achieved a global leading level of inventory turnover days at 30.3 days for over 10 million SKUs of self-operated goods. Earlier this year, JD became the only Asian enterprise to receive the 2024 Gartner Supply Chain Technology Innovation Award.
Continuously, JD Technology empowers the high-quality development of the real economy in the virtuous cycle of "technology-industry-finance" using smart supply chain technology in manufacturing, agriculture, and other sectors. Finance is the lifeblood of the real economy. The combination of technology and finance effectively utilizes data elements to facilitate the efficient operation of capital flow, information flow, logistics, and commercial flow, unleashing industrial value.
In 2023, JD Technology continued to develop in both supply chain finance and agricultural finance through technological innovation and scenario expansion, creating tangible value for real industries. In terms of supply chain finance, JD Technology, based on abundant industry practice, proposed the "Four Integration" strategic direction for the next decade. In agricultural finance, it centered on the digital platform for biological assets called "Jingji", achieving digital supervision and operation of agricultural assets, making it easier for farmers to access financial services.
The "Four Integration" strategy lays out the future of supply chain finance for the next decade
JD's supply chain finance technology has evolved over the past decade, expanding from internal operations to external industry chains, covering retail, the internet, manufacturing, energy, transportation logistics, bulk supply chains, and new energy fields. In October 2023, JD Technology announced the "Four Integration" strategic direction for supply chain finance technology, namely: internal + external, technology + finance, upstream + downstream, and B-side + C-side integration.
According to relevant officials, with the trend of stronger dependence of supply chain upstream and downstream enterprises, higher digitalization of business processes, more complex intertwining of different industrial chains, and more agile response of supply chains to changes in market demand, the supply chain finance ecosystem is entering a golden development period for the next decade. This is the starting point for JD Supply Chain Finance Technology's new strategic release.
Specifically, "internal + external" integration aims to naturally extend from JD's internal operations to the core enterprises' own operations, while also extending from the core enterprises' operations to JD's operations. "Technology + finance" integration aims to use technological capabilities to bridge the effective information link between finance and industry, stimulating the service potential of financial institutions. "Upstream + downstream" integration aims to provide specialized solutions spanning upstream and downstream for different industrial customers, achieving "one chain, one strategy" or even "one enterprise, one strategy." "B-side + C-side" integration aims to integrate bottom-level data and provide highly integrated B-side + C-side solutions, including supply chain finance, payment technology, and consumer finance.
Based on the "Four Integration" strategic direction, JD Supply Chain Finance Technology has also launched products such as the JD Enterprise Finance App and the Supply Chain Finance Platform Gold Pivot System, providing more comprehensive and high-quality services to hundreds of core enterprises and millions of small and medium-sized enterprises upstream and downstream in the industrial chain.
Digitizing biological assets helps rural areas out of industry bottlenecks.
Agriculture and rural areas have been a bottleneck for industrial finance in the past. Due to the difficulty in quantifying agricultural biological assets, it is difficult to form data-guided management and provide credit basis for financial institutions. This has led to a lack of funds in rural areas for industrial construction, resulting in incomplete industrial chains and insufficient competitiveness of agricultural products.
To address this, JD Technology has successfully promoted the digitization of projects such as Guangzhou Donghai Island white shrimp, Henan Huangchuan softshell turtle, and Ningxia high-quality beef based on its self-developed biological asset digitization platform "Jingji".
Specifically, JD Technology has established an agricultural production and circulation data sharing platform based on the digitization and traceability system of biological assets, and used digital means to solve the difficulties in agricultural financial supervision, allowing agricultural breeding and planting enterprises to obtain low-cost credit services.
JD Technology has assisted local enterprises such as Hengxing Aquatic Products in Zhanjiang, Guangzhou, which supplies three-fifths of the domestic "South American white shrimp", to establish a full industry chain of marine ranches from production, sales to traceability with the help of JD Technology.
In the production side, Hengxing Aquaculture utilizes smart devices to collect data such as water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH levels. These devices are deeply integrated with JD Biological Asset Digital Platform, enabling real-time monitoring of aquaculture conditions for guiding farming and operations. The biological assets can also be accurately inventoried, serving as the basis for financial credit. On the sales side, Hengxing Aquaculture's golden pomfret and shrimp are already available on various JD channels including JD's self-operated stores, POP shops, and JD Fresh. On the traceability side, consumers only need to scan the traceability code to access information about the aquaculture, farming practices, storage, and processing of the seafood products.
Huángchuān County in Xinyang, Henan Province, is a hub for domestic turtle farming. JD Technology plans to help Huángchuān County establish a modern traceability system for turtles. With consumer trust, local shared brands can build reputation and achieve agricultural product upgrades featuring "high quality and fair price".
In Tongxin County, Wuzhong City, Ningxia, high-end beef cattle are raised. The main local challenges include insufficient funds and difficulty in inventorying agricultural assets, leading to high operational risks that traditional financial institutions tend to avoid. JD Technology employs its Biological Asset Digital Platform to digitally tag each cow and install AI cameras in the cattle sheds. This not only enables full monitoring of beef cattle farming but also provides trustworthy credit data for financial institutions using technologies like blockchain.
In the current landscape, the digital economy and the physical economy are accelerating their integration. JD, leveraging its own digital supply chain technology and industry experience, serves various sectors of the physical economy. With unwavering confidence, powerful innovation, and clear strategies, JD will unleash stronger growth potential in terms of cost, efficiency, and user experience.
