After Liu qiangdong took the helm of Jingdong for 23 years, Xu Lei, who has been ups and downs in Jingdong for 13 years, finally took over.
On the morning of April 7, Jingdong group announced in the Hong Kong stock exchange that Liu qiangdong would no longer hold the post of CEO of Jingdong group, and Xu Lei, President of Jingdong group, was promoted. Liu qiangdong will continue to serve as the chairman of Jingdong's board of directors. The reporter of "daily economic news" noted that it is only seven months since Xu Lei was promoted to President of Jingdong group in September 2021.
In the future, Xu Lei will be fully responsible for the daily operation and management of jd.com and report to Liu qiangdong, chairman of jd.com's board of directors. Liu qiangdong himself will devote more time and energy to long-term strategic design, major strategic decision-making and deployment, young leading talent training and rural revitalization, "leading the company to do the most difficult but valuable thing".
However, it is not hard to imagine that under the new situation of the Internet Jianghu and the treacherous e-commerce retail battlefield, there are still many challenges and new topics left to JD and Xu Lei.
Choose to retreat behind the scenes at this time. On the one hand, the external environment is unpredictable, and the Internet has entered the era of strong supervision. From the perspective of the internal management and future strategic direction of Chinese giants such as Alibaba, pinduoduo and byte, the "No. 2 position" of the company is particularly necessary and urgent at present. The founder's bow to explore the deeper and wider routes of the giant ship under the overall situation may not be another good way to steer.
why Xu Lei? What is the intention of handing in the stick at this time
It's not a surprise to meet Xu Lei.
In July 2018, Xu Lei became the rotating CEO of Jingdong Mall. In the next four years, the "rotation" was erased. From then on, the CEO of Jingdong retail until he was promoted to the president of Jingdong group in September last year, Xu Lei became the real "No. 2 position" of Jingdong and has been playing the role of Liu qiangdong's successor.
At that time, Jingdong retail, Jingdong technology and Jingdong Logistics have been interpreted by the outside world as the "troika" driving the development of Jingdong group. Xu Lei, Chen Shengqiang and Wang Zhenhui, the former corresponding principals, were regarded as strong candidates for Jingdong's "No. 2 position". Today, Jingdong technology and Jingdong Logistics have changed their command successively, and Xu Lei officially takes the helm of the giant ship Jingdong.
"Literature and art, rock and roll style, no Costume" is Xu Lei's distinctive personal color and label, put it under the management of the company, and Xu Lei is a "steady and cruel man".
In 2019, at an internal meeting of JD executives, Liu qiangdong said: "Whoever refuses to obey Xu Lei will refuse to obey me." Liu qiangdong's full trust is a guarantee that Xu Lei has been able to show his strength in Jingdong.
Of course, behind this, Xu Lei is also very prominent in company management, strategic vision and performance.
Xu Lei joined jd.com in 2008 and was introduced to Liu qiangdong as an external market consultant by Xu Xin, the "Queen of venture capital". The "fierce general" was the external perception of Xu Lei at that time. In April 2017, JD established the group CMO system and appointed Xu Lei as the group CMO, reporting directly to Liu qiangdong and fully responsible for the integrated marketing of various businesses.
In 2018, jd.com as a whole fell to a low point, with performance under pressure, revenue growth falling below 30% for the first time, growth of active users decreasing month on month for the first time, and stock price downturn, just like a large ship running at high speed suddenly hit the rocks and stalled. Also at this time, Xu Lei was ordered in the face of danger, and Jingdong slowly recovered its rhythm as a whole.
Especially under the epidemic situation in 2020, JD handed over a good answer. The annual net profit in 2020 was 49.4 billion yuan. Over the past three years, JD has gradually recovered, its revenue growth has always maintained a high growth rate of 25% - 29%, and the number of active users has jumped from 300 million to 570 million, nearly doubling.
In 2021, even under the high loss of new business, through the rapid growth of JD retail's main engine, JD still achieved a small profit for the whole year after adjustment.
In addition, Xu Lei's outstanding performance is to create an e-commerce Festival "618" at the same level as the "double 11" and with the distinctive mark of JD. Com, and to carry out drastic organizational structure reform.
The difference between Xu Lei and the CEO of Jingdong group lies in two aspects. Li Chengdong, an e-commerce analyst, told the reporter of daily economic news that one is different rights. The CEO is equal to "President + director" and has greater decision-making power; The president usually just acts as a senior executive. Another is that the institutional settings are different. There is only one CEO and multiple presidents. In fact, the CEO has the right to speak on the board of directors, and the president may not have.
"Specifically, being promoted to CEO is mainly to check the strategic direction of the company and manage the coordination of the whole business line at different stages, including investment relations." He said.
However, Liu qiangdong did not "retire". It is understood that Liu qiangdong still retains the dominant position of voting rights in Jingdong group. Compared with the announcement of Xu Lei's promotion to President of Jingdong group in September last year, Liu qiangdong was responsible for one more "major strategic decision-making and deployment". After taking the post of CEO this time, Xu Lei will be responsible for daily operation and management and report to Liu qiangdong. At the same time, it is understood that Liu qiangdong will still participate in JD's monthly sec (Strategic Executive Committee) meetings and business analysis meetings, and will not be completely away from the company's business.
Why choose the current time node for handover?
From the external environment, new production factors represented by digital technology are playing an increasingly important role in industrial transformation. JD has found the positioning of "new entity enterprise" in the past two years. Jingdong has entered a period of stable business and management; Xu Lei's practice as president in the past six months has also been recognized, which can ensure the smooth transition of JD's operation.
JD wants to win in the next decade
The Internet has not started smoothly. There are still many challenges for Xu Lei and JD in the next decade.
In March, jd.com released its 2021 annual report, which is also the first semi annual report of Xu Lei taking over as president of jd.com group.
According to the financial report, in 2021, the sales revenue of Q4 JD commodity reached 192.19 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.1%. Among them, the revenue of daily necessities was 93.74 billion, a year-on-year increase of 22.7%, slightly lower than the growth rate of 29.4% in the third quarter. On Q4, the problems of reducing the speed of 100 categories and weakening revenue were also prominent.
Compared with 3C home appliances, Shangchao Ribai is not an advantageous category of JD. Therefore, JD has made a lot of efforts in the past year, but the growth rate seems not ideal in the last quarter. Xu Lei also said that Omni channel is one of the strategic priorities of JD retail in the future. JD has been continuously optimizing the supply chain, reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and improving the profit level. At present, this category is close to break even.
In addition to categories, it is worth mentioning that in March, JD retail also carried out a new round of organizational structure adjustment, split V business group, and further focused and strengthened pop (platform open plan) business, which is also a non proprietary business of JD platform, which is very obvious to benchmark Alibaba.
On the other hand, the financial report shows that Q4 Jingdong's new business revenue reached 8.21 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 44%, but the loss also reached 3.22 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 230%. According to Citic Securities Company Limited(600030) 's estimate, the single quarter loss of Q3 Jingxi Pinpin and Jingxi business is likely to reach 2 billion ~ 2.5 billion yuan.
The competition for the sinking market and the competition for new businesses with uncertain conditions are also the direction that JD needs to continue to fight nextP align = "center" source: forward looking economist
At the end of last year, Tencent issued about 460 million shares of jd.com to shareholders in the form of medium-term dividend, and its shareholding in jd.com will be reduced from 17% to 2.3%. Since then, Tencent is no longer the largest shareholder of jd.com, and Tencent president Liu Chiping will also step down as a director of jd.com. Jingdong officially tore off the Tencent label and became a more pure "Jingdong".
From the tiktok electricity retail war for many years, the competition between the three traditional e-commerce platforms has officially entered the stage of chess playing by Zhang Yong, Xu Lei and Chen Lei. In addition, including Jingdong, they still need to respond to the rise of the Kwai Chung business, the rise of the fast hand, and the group that wants to stabilize the electricity supplier's fifth position and constantly release the idea of independent electric business.
In view of the challenges faced by Xu Lei after taking over, Li Chengdong told the reporter of the daily economic news that first, the pressure on performance caused by external macro changes, especially the whole retail environment is greatly affected by the epidemic, and the pressure is greater to maintain the growth of the whole business. This includes the control and balance of human efficiency and loss. Second, the growth of new business and the sustainability of growth need to be solved urgently.
From the perspective of single business results of individual enterprises, Li Chengdong believes that Xu Lei has some advantages in the operation ability of the overall business compared with Zhang Yong, the "No. 2 position" of Alibaba, and Chen Lei, the "No. 2 position" of pinduoduo.
"Because when Xu Lei took over the offer, the whole Jingdong business was down. Later, under the epidemic, he slowly returned to the current situation of stable overall growth, which is relatively optimistic." "In addition, it also has something to do with the background - Zhang Yong is from finance, Chen Lei is from technology, Xu Lei is from marketing and is in charge of business growth, so the pace of business control may be stronger."
In fact, the era of the rapid development of the Internet over the years and the dominance of a single business has passed. How to win the "ticket" and continue to maintain its seat on the eve of the next decade will be a major proposition to be answered by the "No. 2 position".
If JD wants to win in the next decade, in addition to maintaining the stable operation of the existing basic market, allowing the management, shareholders, consumers, young people and other groups to jump out of the existing, rigid and fixed perspective to re-examine JD and ensure that the development path does not deviate, it can point to a new quadrant of JD's development.
The arrival of this new quadrant requires an in-depth management scheduling and change at this time. At the same time, this new quadrant gives strong confidence and new signals that JD wants to win in the next decade.
