Pinduoduo Inc. (NASDAQ:PDD) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Chen Lei: Hi, Ellie. So let me take your question on industry transfers. So for this question, we always start from consumers’ fundamental need. And we hope to create value for consumers each single day throughout the year. And I think it is the core driver for the industry and also for ourselves. And we also fully understand that to improve consumer experience and deepen their trusting us, it takes time, and it is a gradual process. And for shopping festival and promotions, they are just one of the many ways to serve our consumers well. And we hope that consumers can get more savings and more fun from shopping on Pinduoduo. So when we plan shopping festivals and events, we remain consumer-centric and we use simple rules to provide consumers with an enjoyable shopping experience.

This year, we have incorporated with many brands as well as merchants to bring more quality products to consumers in order to satisfy their diversified needs across different categories and different consumption scenario. And at the same time, if we look at the industry, we do see the competition remains intense and we need to invest patiently in the supply side. And we need to step up our investment in technology and innovation to further improve the overall supply chain efficiency. We need to support the development of the agriculture sector and also the manufacturing sector. This would essentially enable us to better serve our consumers’ increasing demand for quality products. Thank you.

Liu Jun: Thanks, Ellie. I will take your question about the financial statements on our international initiatives. Well, first of all, our international business currently in a very early stage. It is still going through constant trials whereas we focused on how to create unique value. We believe that financial metrics are the natural results from the value that we create. And the international business still very early, as I just mentioned. So if current impact on our financial numbers is small. And as with any other part of the business, we carefully evaluate the ROI of our investments. Thank you.

Unidentified Company Representative: Operator, we can move on to the next question.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Kenneth Fong from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Kenneth Fong: Thank you management for taking my question. Management shares about the latest thoughts and developments in agriculture. Are there any cases or projects that you’re putting resource into? What are the latest financial impact on your financial statement? And also for your 10 billion agricultural initiative, is there any update to share? And my second question is about profitability. We have delivered profitability for six quarters in a row. We have also noticed that many of your peers have started to focus more on cost control and efficiency improvement. So that your profitability for the past 3 quarters means we have started to pursue a similar strategy? And should we expect a similar level of profitability to continue over the next quarter. Thank you.

Chen Lei: Kenneth. So let me address your question on agriculture first. So we have shared with you before that agriculture is over a long-term strategy. We hope to promote agricultural development through technology. And for many of our efforts, we are still in the early stage of our agricultural strategy but we already see a lot of areas to create value. And we are also very happy to take this chance to introduce more about our latest developments in this area. First of all, we see technical background. We help improve the distribution efficiency of agriculture products. During the third quarter, in our dedicated promotional events such as the harvest festival and agricultural festival we cover thousands of production regions and help farmers broaden their market access.

This also helps our consumers enjoy pleasure and high-quality agriculture produce within a shorter amount of time. On top of that, sales volume can also help commercialize agritech solutions and supports research efforts and improve the — how commercialization happens. So for example, in our harvest festival event, we introduced many agricultural products created with the help of agritech and with resources that we devote into agriculture. We can help the products roll out to the market quickly and help turn more agritech breakthroughs and innovations into consumer products. As for our 10 billion agricultural initiative, we recently introduced a few new wheat varieties developed by China Agriculture University with support from this initiative.

In agriculture, we will continue to remain down to earth and make long-term patient investment as well as bring more agritech results to the market. Going forward, we will continue to share updates with you in the future. Thank you.