Pinduoduo's performance "hits the brakes," as it plans to spend hundreds of billions to create another "Pinduoduo"

Radar Finance produced | By Ding Yu | By Meng Shuai

Revenue growth slowed, profit declined year over year, and faced with performance challenges, Pinduoduo has chosen to remake “itself” to break the deadlock.

On March 25, Pinduoduo released its 2025 fourth-quarter and full-year financial reports. The report shows that in 2025, the company achieved revenue of 431.85B yuan, up 9.65% year over year; it recorded attributable net profit of 99.36B yuan, down 11.62% year over year.

Focusing on last year’s fourth quarter, Pinduoduo posted single-quarter revenue of 123.91B yuan, up 12.03% year over year, setting a record high; it recorded attributable net profit of 24.54B yuan, down 10.59% year over year, and down 16.32% quarter over quarter.

Pinduoduo said that the decline in net profit was mainly due to Pinduoduo’s “trillion-yuan support” strategy driving ongoing investment on both the supply and demand sides, which to a certain extent weighed on this fiscal year’s performance.

Pinduoduo CEO Zhao Jiazhen said, “As we have emphasized multiple times, compared with near-term performance, we would rather focus on the long-term value brought by giving back to the ecosystem.”

At the earnings call, Pinduoduo also unveiled a major piece of news: it announced the formation of the “New Pindang,” launching brand self-operation, and continuing to heavily invest in China’s supply chain.

Pinduoduo CEO Zhao Jiazhen announced that “focusing on, and re-investing in, supply-chain upgrades, and achieving high-quality development” is the group’s strategy for the next phase, and proposed “striving to recreate another Pinduoduo in three years.”

As of the close on March 27 in U.S. Eastern Time, Pinduoduo’s share price was $99.81 per share, with a market capitalization of approximately $141.7 billion.

Revenue up but profits not up; asset-liability ratio hits a new low in nearly a decade

According to Pinduoduo’s latest disclosed financial report, in 2025, the company’s annual revenue first surpassed the 400-billion-yuan mark, increasing by nearly 10% to 431.85B yuan.

However, compared with 89.68% in 2023 and 59.04% in 2024, Pinduoduo’s revenue growth rate has shown a continuing slowdown trend.

Pinduoduo’s revenue growth mainly benefited from the growth in online marketing services and transaction services revenue.

For the full year last year, the company’s revenue from online marketing services and other businesses was 217.78B yuan, up 10.03%; in the same period, the company’s transaction services achieved revenue of 214.06B yuan, up 9.27%.

However, Pinduoduo’s cost and expense growth last year was more pronounced, which to some extent weighed on the company’s profitability.

Specifically, the company’s cost of sales increased 22.68% year over year to 188.8B yuan, with the increase mainly coming from higher fulfillment fees, bandwidth and server costs, as well as higher payment processing fees.

Meanwhile, the company’s operating expenses were 148.42 billion yuan, up 12.86% year over year, mainly due to higher selling and marketing expenses.

The financial report shows that last year, Pinduoduo’s selling and marketing expenses were 125.29B yuan, up 12.57% year over year, mainly because spending on promotions and advertising increased.

In 2025, Pinduoduo also continued to invest in research and development expenses; this expense increased 30.31% year over year to 16.5B yuan, mainly due to increases in employee-related costs, bandwidth, and server costs.

General and administrative expenses were the category where only a few expenses were reduced last year; they decreased 12.14% year over year to 6.64B yuan.

Due to the overall increase in cost of sales and operating expenses, in 2025, Pinduoduo’s operating profit was 94.62B yuan, down 12.73% year over year.

For the full year, Pinduoduo’s attributable net profit was 99.36B yuan, down 11.62% year over year; attributable net profit under Non-GAAP was 107.3B yuan, down about 12.3% year over year.

In addition, because net profit declined, cash flows from operating activities also decreased 12.29% year over year to 106.94B yuan.

However, Radar Finance noted that as of the end of 2025, Pinduoduo’s total assets increased 24.75% year over year to 630.04B yuan, a historical high.

Among them, the company’s cash and cash equivalents were as high as 108.9B yuan, up nearly 90% year over year; the company’s short-term investments also increased 14.47% to 313.41B yuan.

As of the end of 2025, Pinduoduo’s asset-liability ratio was 34.15%, down nearly 4 percentage points year over year, the lowest level in nearly ten years.

Investing 100 billion yuan over three years; Pinduoduo builds a self-operated brand

With ample capital, Pinduoduo was ready to “open new frontiers and expand territory.”

At the earnings call, Pinduoduo formally announced the formation of the “New Pindang,” extending upstream into the industrial chain, kicking off the road to self-operation of its own brands, and continuing to heavily invest in China’s supply chain.

Zhao Jiazhen said, “In the next stage, the company’s strategic focus is not business diversification, but to concentrate on the high-quality development of the supply chain, continue to leverage the advantages we have accumulated over the long term in the supply chain, and realize the remaking of the platform.”

“We believe that in the next three years, we will have the opportunity to recreate another Pinduoduo,” Zhao Jiazhen said, “Reinvest in the supply chain and recreate another Pinduoduo—that is our duty.”

To reinvest in supply-chain upgrades, back in April last year, Pinduoduo officially launched a major merchant-benefiting program under the “trillion-yuan support” initiative, planning to invest more than 100 billion yuan in resources such as funds and traffic over the next three years.

With the ongoing investment under “trillion-yuan support,” Pinduoduo’s special initiatives such as “Duo Duo Good Specialty,” “new-quality supply,” and “e-commerce going west” were rolled out one after another, and the scope of support for the supply chain also deepened from leading merchants and SMEs to various links across the industrial chain, greatly improving supply-chain efficiency and the comprehensive capabilities of the industrial sector. This created more room for profit and innovation for agricultural production areas and industrial belts.

The launch of the new brand “New Pindang,” meanwhile, is the key to Pinduoduo’s next step.

At present, the “New Pindang” has already set up a new dedicated subsidiary in Shanghai. In Phase I, it has received a cash capital injection of 15 billion yuan. Over the next three years, it plans a total investment of 100 billion yuan.

According to Tianyancha, in February this year, Pinduoduo registered and established Shanghai New Pindang Hongqiao E-commerce Co., Ltd. and Shanghai New Pindang Pudong E-commerce Co., Ltd. The registered capital amounts are 10 billion yuan and 5 billion yuan, respectively. The legal representatives of both companies are Zhao Jiazhen.

According to the introduction, the “New Pindang” will rely on the dual-engine drive of Pinduoduo’s domestic e-commerce and Temu’s cross-border platform to connect supply-chain resources at home and abroad.

Over the past three years, Temu has entered more than 90 countries and regions worldwide, achieving leapfrog growth enabled by China’s supply chain.

On that basis, the “New Pindang” will further promote self-operated branding, pushing Chinese manufacturing from contract manufacturing and scale export toward standard output and brand export, aiming to capture the high ground of value in global industrial chains.

Zhao Jiazhen said that in 2026, China’s domestic supply chain will enter a critical window period for transformation and upgrades. Pinduoduo will mobilize the strength of the entire group—people and resources from top to bottom will focus through one channel—striving within three years to drive the “New Pindang” to achieve a high-quality transformation into a domestically self-operated brand, and to help China’s supply chain achieve transformation, upgrades, and a leap in value.

According to the iResearch network and markets (Net Economic Society), Liu Xuewen, associate professor at the School of International Law, Northwest University of Political Science and Law, believes that “New Pindang” is meaningful not in recreating Pinduoduo in a simple sense, but in providing a new paradigm for China’s cross-border e-commerce—starting from industrial belts, centered on branding, and ending in global distribution.

Liu Xuewen emphasized that its prospects are certainly promising. But whether it can move steadily and go far ultimately depends on three points: whether manufacturing advantages can truly be converted into brand advantages; whether institutional dividends from Shanghai can be turned into global operating capabilities; and whether it can hold the bottom line of fair competition between platform self-operation and co-existence with merchants.

If all three are met, it may become an important example of China’s e-commerce moving from selling and exporting overseas to brand exporting. If any one of them fails, heavy reinvestment may not necessarily lead to high-quality growth; instead, it could evolve into a testing ground where high frictions, high costs, and mounting regulatory pressure coexist.

A United Nations trade law commission observer and Yang Lifeng, associate professor at East China University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that the “New Pindang” project also faces complex and severe external challenges: growing global trade protectionism, continued pressure from U.S. tariff policies, the EU strengthening regulation of low-value cross-border small parcels, and regional conflicts intensifying supply-chain volatility and layout adjustments worldwide.

Anchoring China’s supply chain; recreating another “Pinduoduo” in three years

Radar Finance noted that Pinduoduo’s current leader, Zhao Jiazhen, is also a co-founder of the company. He has led the advancement of multiple key businesses during Pinduoduo’s development, such as “Duo Duo Buy Vegetables.”

According to publicly available information, Zhao Jiazhen, born in the 1980s, is from Shaoguan, Guangdong, and graduated from the School of Electronic Commerce Management at South China University of Technology.

As early as 2009, Zhao Jiazhen followed Pinduoduo founder Huang Zheng and worked together to operate the digital e-commerce platform Ouku. After that, from Leqi incubated by Ouku to Pinhop and then to Pinduoduo, Zhao Jiazhen has never been absent.

Pinduoduo’s official appraisal describes him as “a down-to-earth practitioner who grew up from the fields and village roads.” He was initially responsible for the overall operation of Pinduoduo’s agricultural product category and the construction of an upstream supply chain for agricultural products. In the second half of 2020, he led his team to open cities first, creating and leading regional business. In the second half of 2023, he again led the team to drive an upgrade of Pinduoduo’s supply chain system.

Zhao Jiazhen served as Pinduoduo’s senior vice president from 2018 to 2023. Starting in April 2023, he has served as a director and co-CEO of Pinduoduo.

In December last year, Pinduoduo announced an upgrade to the company’s corporate governance structure at its annual general meeting of shareholders and implemented a system of a dual chair. Zhao Jiazhen was appointed as co-chair, serving as group co-chair and co-CEO together with Chen Lei.

In addition, Pinduoduo appointed Wang Mi as the group’s senior vice president of engineering, and Li Jiong as the group’s chief financial officer.

At the time, Chen Lei said, “Since Zhao Jiazhen has served as our co-CEO, our supply chain has developed into a key capability supporting the entire platform and related ecosystem. Over three years, Temu has taken the same path of growth that Pinduoduo took for about a decade—this is not easy. At the beginning of the group’s new decade, we must return to our original intention and stay true to our roots. This is both the prerequisite and foundation for everything, as well as the fundamental driving force for realizing new leaps.”

Newly appointed co-chairman Zhao Jiazhen also said, with emotion, that 2025 is the tenth year since Pinduoduo’s founding. The company has continued to accumulate in business, technology, and services, and its business has already reached most countries globally.

At that time, Zhao Jiazhen also put forward a bold ambition: “We believe that in the next three years, we will have the opportunity to recreate another Pinduoduo,” and emphasized the strategic determination of Pinduoduo to “heavily invest in China’s supply chain.”

Zhao Jiazhen said, “After repeated discussions, in the next stage the company has anchored China’s supply chain as the core of its business development. We will continue to pursue high-quality development, All in on the high quality and branding of China’s supply chain, realize the remaking of the platform and the industry, and drive the ecosystem to achieve a leap in value.”

However, Zhao Jiazhen also acknowledged that the development of corporate governance and the talent system has not kept pace with business expansion, and the company faces many challenges. “We must conduct systematic changes to the organizational structure, culture, and governance system. The dual chair system implemented by this board and the appointment of two young leaders are precisely the beginning of this change.”

As the “top priority” after Zhao Jiazhen was appointed co-chairman, whether the “New Pindang” can carry Pinduoduo’s “ambition” in the future and help the company achieve new performance breakthroughs—Radar Finance will continue to pay close attention.