Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

Editor | Huang Yu More than half a year ago, e-commerce giants began to follow in the footsteps of PDD to launch "refund only". However, the drawbacks of "refund only" gradually emerged, and now Taobao is correcting its course. On July 26th, Taobao announced that it would optimize the "refund only" strategy, improve the seller's after-sales autonomy based on the new version of the experience score (store experience score), the higher the experience score, the greater the seller's disposal rights, and stores with a score of 4.8 or higher will receive more autonomy. The relevant policies will be officially implemented on August 9th. It's easy to see that Taobao is trying to strike a new balance between user experience and seller rights. Over the past few years, the biggest change in the e-commerce industry has been the rise of PDD. In addition to low prices, "refund only" is also a core factor in PDD's success. Therefore, e-commerce platforms have gone from questioning and understanding PDD to learning from PDD. At the end of last year, in order to strengthen consumer rights, Taobao began to support buyers for refund only, and JD.com also revised its guidelines to add standards for user refund only. However, while "refund only" protects consumers, it is also vulnerable to abuse by "wool party" and causes harm to seller rights. For example, during this year's June 18th promotion, many clothing merchants stated that the return rate can reach 80% or even 90%. Since consumers can apply for a refund without returning the goods for quality issues, a large number of merchants are experiencing significant losses. Insiders at Taobao told Wall Street News that Taobao is taking a beneficial exploration between users and sellers by optimizing the "refund only" based on the store experience score. "By guaranteeing consumer rights, it also significantly optimizes the business environment and forms a more benign and healthy e-commerce ecology." This also conforms to the current tone of Taobao's adjustment of the business environment. Recently, Taobao launched a round of scale modification for merchants, such as clarifying that "experience score" is the core basis for traffic distribution. In addition, from September 1st, Tmall will cancel the annual software service fee for the platform. However, Taobao's relaxation of the "refund only" rights of sellers is only to a certain extent. The premise for sellers to obtain autonomy is to continue to improve their service capabilities. At the beginning of the year, Taotian announced the upgrade of the new store comprehensive experience rating standard. After the upgrade, the rating focuses more on consumer-related indicators such as "refusal rate for refund" and "platform help rate." In addition, services that affect consumer shopping decisions, such as "return insurance", will also be a bonus for merchants. In other words, if sellers want to get high scores, they really need to serve consumers well. Of course, Taobao also provides practical rewards such as traffic to high-quality merchants, and this time it has also ceded some after-sales rights. Wall Street News learned that after the optimization strategy of "refund only" is launched, Taobao will not actively intervene through Wangwang or support refund only after receiving goods for sellers whose store experience score is greater than or equal to 4.8. Instead, Taobao encourages merchants to negotiate with consumers first. In short, Taobao will reduce or cancel after-sales intervention for high-quality stores, and the platform will give different degrees of autonomy to merchants according to the experience score and industry nature. In addition to giving merchants more autonomy, Taobao will also provide multiple after-sales service solutions for merchants to choose from, guiding merchants to continuously optimize after-sales services and reduce disputes and losses caused by "refund only". It is worth mentioning that Taobao has also optimized the appeal process for "refund only". After the user initiates an appeal, the platform will invite a third-party testing agency to sample the product. If the test passes, the platform will compensate the loss to the seller. As Taobao adjusts the "refund only" policy, it is time for the industry's grand "learning from PDD" campaign to reflect. In the increasingly fierce e-commerce competition, true innovation and differentiation can bring greater competitiveness than copying and learning from others.

Today is the day when JD.com and Walmart have come to a breakup.

After the U.S. stock market closed on August 21, informed sources revealed that Walmart (WMT.N) is transferring its stake in JD.com in order to raise funds of no more than $3.74 billion. According to Bloomberg, Walmart plans to transfer 0.1445 billion shares of JD.com stock with a quote range of $24.85 to $25.85 per share for this bulk trade.

According to Wall Street News, this time Walmart will sell all of its JD.com shares, which also means that the intimate relationship between the two parties for the last 8 years has come to an end. However, this liquidation does not affect their business cooperation.

Liu Qiangdong highly admires Walmart. He believes that Walmart is the Shaolin Wudang in the retail industry. To a large extent, JD.com's emphasis today on inventory turnover, categories, costs, and efficiency in business operations has been inspired by Walmart.

In 2014, JD.com was officially listed in the United States. Two years later, Walmart began to strategically invest in JD.com. In 2016, Walmart acquired newly issued Class A common stock from JD.com by selling its equity in Yihaodian, accounting for about 5% of the total share capital. The estimated price of this transaction was $1.5 billion.

In 2018, the cooperation between the two parties deepened further, jointly investing in Dada. By leveraging Dada's integrated end-to-end instant fulfillment services for warehousing, picking, and distribution, Walmart and Sam's Club effectively solved pain points such as complex and numerous SKUs, significant weekend peak demand, and high requirements for flexible capacity, overall improving fulfillment efficiency and average picking efficiency.

These series of actions have formed a close cooperation relationship between JD.com and Walmart.

Now, with Walmart selling off its shares in JD.com, the alliance between the two retail giants has come to an end.

From the information disclosed by all parties so far, this appears to be a very dignified parting.

According to analysis from insiders close to this transaction, this deal seems to be a necessity for Walmart to alleviate its own financial pressure.

Walmart's second-quarter performance shows that despite a global revenue growth rate of 4.8%, Walmart China still maintains a double-digit sales growth rate of 17.7%, with net sales growth from e-commerce business reaching 23%. The penetration rate of e-commerce has reached 49%, an increase of 200 basis points from the same period of the previous year.

At the same time, Walmart has been actively exploring incremental business in China, especially the expansion of Sam's Club, which has become an important performance support for Walmart China. E-commerce is a key focus for the growth of Sam's Club.

According to statistics, there are currently 46 Sam's Club stores in China. The year-on-year growth rate of Sam's Club's online sales in the first half of 2024 has reached 29%, accounting for about 50% of total sales. Walmart's International President and CEO, McLeod, has previously stated that they will continue to expand operations in China and actively develop omni-channel retail business.

Walmart stated that JD.com has always been an important partner, and the company is committed to establishing a sustainable business relationship with JD.com. "The divestment decision allows us to focus on the strong business of Walmart China and Sam's Club stores in China, and allocate funds to other priority matters."

According to sources close to JD.com, both sides have achieved significant results in their respective established strategic goals over the 8 years of cooperation. Walmart has completed its domestic e-commerce layout, while JD.com has also expanded its global supply chain capabilities, and the business cooperation between the two parties has always been very smooth.

In order to boost confidence in the capital markets, JD.com announced that it will spend approximately 0.39 billion dollars to repurchase its stocks on August 21, 2024, and has fully utilized the repurchase limit of the 3 billion dollar share buyback plan approved in March 2024.

In the past few years, with the rise of platforms such as PDD Holdings, Douyin e-commerce, and Kuaishou e-commerce, JD.com's market position has been threatened, prompting the company to launch a counterattack.

JD.com is reshaping its strategy for low stock price, aiming to establish differentiation capabilities through solidifying its supply chain and user experience, and reclaim market share. Based on the performance in the second quarter, JD.com's counterattack has already shown initial success.

According to JD.com's second-quarter financial report, the quarterly active users and user shopping frequency continued to maintain double-digit growth momentum in the second quarter, and the number of new third-party merchants increased by 46% compared to the first quarter, driving the revenue in the second quarter to reach 291.4 billion yuan. Non-GAAP net income reached 14.5 billion yuan, a 69.0% year-on-year increase.

In particular, JD.com's supply chain advantage continues to be consolidated. In the second quarter, JD.com's inventory turnover days continued to maintain a global leading level of less than 30 days.

Although no longer a shareholder of JD.com, Walmart will remain a partner. From the perspective of actual business operations, the impact is not significant.

According to sources close to JD.com, the changes in equity investment will not affect any business cooperation between the two parties. They are still important strategic partners to each other and have the intention to maintain close business cooperation and expand their business in domestic and international markets.

The e-commerce market is constantly engaged in hidden battles, and this time, JD.com is going to fight alone.