China's Temu owner sees profit plunge as trade tensions linger
SHANGHAI: Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings saw net profit almost halve in the first three months of the year as the Temu owner prepared for a blistering trade war between Beijing and Washington.
The Shanghai-based company said net profit came in at 14.7 billion yuan (US$2 billion) in the three months ending Mar 31, down 47 per cent year on year.
The drop came as the economic superpowers are locked in another bruising trade standoff that saw US President Donald Trump last month scrap a customs exemption for goods valued under US$800.
The exemption was long a vital part of the business model supporting platforms offering low-cost goods like Temu.
In a statement with the earnings release on Tuesday, PDD Holdings' co-chief executive Lei Chen said the company made "substantial investments ... to support merchants and consumers" and deal with "rapid changes in the external environment".
"These investments weighed on short-term profitability but gave merchants the room to adapt", he said, insisting they were focused on "strengthening the (platform's) long-term health".
The firm also saw revenue growth slow for a fourth straight quarter.
It said revenue in the first quarter rose 10 per cent year-on-year to 95.7 billion yuan.
But that was down on the 24 per cent growth recorded in the previous three months - and a severe drop from the 131 per cent growth it saw at the start of 2024.
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The family's lawyers are in the process of reviewing the facts and putting the case together. When contacted, the lawyer who represented Fang in his criminal case had no comment on the matter. The victim's father stressed they were not suing Fang for the money. 'I will never touch a single cent from him. Everything will be donated to a charity. "But I want to make this guy learn his lesson, and why we sue him is because there is no rotan,' he said, referring to the Malay term for cane. '100 PER CENT TRUST' BROKEN The family has become closer through this ordeal, said the father, though he and his wife must reckon with their daughter breaking the trust they placed in her. Before, the girl had never given them reason to worry, and was a good student. So as parents, they took her at her word, he said. But the secrecy of her relationship with Fang meant she would lie to them about her whereabouts, making it difficult for them to find out what was happening. 'If she tells us she's going to school or she's going for her lessons, we'll just (say) 'okay, sure'. We never go and CSI really what's going on," the father told CNA. 'We always gave our full 100 per cent trust to her. So we didn't know that that's how she went out with him and stuff like that. We didn't know at all.' The parents have become more vigilant about their daughter's activities, and now keep track of her whereabouts using the Find My app on her iPhone. She feels regret about her actions under Fang's manipulation, said her father. 'She's getting better, definitely, but it takes time … now we just spend more time with her, focus on her studies, focus on what she enjoys doing." 'However she's feeling, we can't really know what is going (on) you know," he said. "But as a parent ... we are trying our best to make her happy again.'
