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Pinduoduo Inc. was listed on the Nasdaq exchange in New York on July 26, 2018. /VCG
Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo has reported a bigger second quarter operating loss as it grappled with pandemic-related costs.
Pinduoduo's second quarter operating loss widened to 1.64 billion yuan (236.87 million U.S. dollars) from 1.49 billion yuan a year earlier as the cost of maintaining its cloud services and call center operations during the COVID-19 pandemic rose.
Its 12-month gross merchandise volume (GMV), a measure of business growth, was 1.27 trillion yuan. Although up almost 10 percent from the end of the first quarter, it failed to meet some analysts' expectations.
Vice President David Liu told Reuters that given the pandemic's impact, it was not "meaningful" to compare second quarter GMV growth with the first.
"In Q2 this year we observed consumers' spending to be more value conscious," he said. "Users tend to associate Pinduoduo as their go-to platform for great savings every day, so we also tend to have less of a concentrated spike in GMV and user activity around shopping promotions."
China has largely emerged from coronavirus-induced lockdowns, but demand is still picking up in many sectors.
Pinduoduo's stock has more than doubled this year, driven by robust growth in the number of monthly active users. Its shares went down nearly 13 percent before Friday's Wall Street bell.
Swiss bank UBS said Pinduoduo's Q2 GMV was below its expectations, and the operating loss ratio of 5.9 percent was the lowest in over two years.
However, "active buyers of 683.2 million grew 41.4% year on year, beating UBS' estimate by 1.7%," the bank said in a report.
Revenue surged about 67 percent to 12.19 billion yuan (1.76 billion U.S. dollars) in the second quarter ended June 30.
(With input from Reuters)