By
Darya Rudz
November 1st, 2023
Pinduoduo is still one of the few Chinese companies that have its shares traded on a public bourse in America.
Chinese retail and agricultural-focused technology platform Pinduoduo Inc (NASDAQ: PDD) is looking for a big bold move outside of China and is on track to expand into the United States. As reported by Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources close to the matter, this will be the company’s first international expansion, and it is likely to launch its app as early as September.
Pinduoduo is not new to the US financial ecosystem as its shares are trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. According to industry intelligence outfit, EMarketer, the United States traded arm controls as much as 13% of the share of the Chinese online retail platform. In the past few months, Pinduoduo has stopped its heavy investment in its online retail outfit as it looks to focus on more productive ventures.
Pinduoduo penetrated the Chinese online retail scene in grand style. It was able to introduce a new market strategy dubbed social e-commerce. As described by Bloomberg, the social e-commerce venture works by letting shoppers create a “sort of WhatsApp-Groupon mashup, where consumers spot deals on products, like toys and fruits, and then recruit friends to buy at a discount.”
The model has proven quite acceptable to Chinese shoppers and has earned Pinduoduo an estimated 880 million annual active users. The US push will undoubtedly open up the Shanghai-based market to a more open market and bigger spenders in general.
Pinduoduo has proven to be more resilient than its major competitors, especially Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (HKG: 9988). While Alibaba’s Q2 revenue stayed relatively flattened, Pinduoduo has stayed resilient above its current economic headwinds and has been projected to record as much as a 2.5% growth in its revenue in the second quarter.
Potential Regulatory Push Backs for Pinduoduo
While Pinduoduo has not officially confirmed its push, there are factual permutations that it will have to withstand significantly higher regulatory pressures from both the United States authorities as well as the Chinese.
Pinduoduo is still one of the few Chinese companies that have its shares traded on a public bourse in America. With mounting pressures and tensions with respect to audit demands, chances remain high that the company will like to explore a Chinese listing in the near future.
The emergence of Pinduoduo has positioned the company as a formidable rival to the likes of Alibaba and JD.com (HKG: 9618) and briefly surpassed the latter in terms of market valuation back in 2019. Despite the criticisms, the company faced with respect to its employee welfare in January 2021, the firm has remained generally ambitious and is among the biggest beneficiaries in this time of global economic uncertainty.