Walmart and JD.com Announce Strategic Alliance to Serve Consumers across China
June 20 2016 - 12:30PM
Business Wire
Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and JD.com (Nasdaq:JD), China’s largest
e-commerce company by revenue, today announced that they have
formed a strategic alliance to better serve consumers across China
through a powerful combination of e-commerce and retail.
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Neil Ashe, president and CEO of Walmart
Global eCommerce, and Haoyu Shen, CEO of JD Mall, sign strategic
alliance between their companies. (Photo: Business Wire)
The agreement between the companies includes a wide range of
business initiatives, covering both online and offline retail. For
Walmart, the alliance greatly expands its opportunity in China
e-commerce and provides its stores and Sam’s Clubs with potential
traffic from JD.com’s significant base of online customers and vast
same-day delivery network to serve its customers. JD.com will
leverage Yihaodian’s strong brand and business in eastern and
southern China and in key product categories such as high-quality
grocery and household goods, both of which complement its own
geographical and product strengths. In addition, JD.com’s customers
will gain access to a wide range of new and imported items from
Walmart and Sam’s Club.
As part of the agreement, Walmart will receive 144,952,250 newly
issued JD.com Class A ordinary shares, amounting to approximately 5
percent of total shares outstanding and the companies will partner
in several strategic areas, including:
- JD.com will take ownership of the
Yihaodian marketplace platform assets, including the Yihaodian
brand, website and app. Walmart will continue to operate the
Yihaodian direct sales business and will be a seller on the
Yihaodian marketplace, leveraging its global supply chain to
provide customers a wide range of products. JD.com and Walmart will
work together on growing the Yihaodian brand and business under its
current name and market position.
- Sam’s Club China, which has proven
tremendously successful within the markets it operates in China,
will open a flagship store on JD.com, vastly expanding the
availability of Sam’s Club’s high-quality imported products across
China. It will offer same- and next-day delivery through JD.com’s
nationwide warehousing and delivery network, which covers a
population of 600 million consumers.
- Walmart and JD.com will work together
to leverage their supply chains to increase the product selection
for customers across China, including broadening the range of
imported products.
- Walmart’s China stores will be listed
as a preferred retailer on JD.com’s O2O JV Dada, China’s largest
crowd-sourced delivery platform, driving online traffic to Walmart
stores and allowing customers to order fresh food and other items
from Walmart stores for 2-hour home delivery, while significantly
broadening the product selection available to Dada’s customers.
Walmart will continue to operate its own physical stores.
“We’re excited about teaming up with such a strong leader in
JD.com, and the potential that this new relationship creates for
customers in China, as well as for our businesses. We thank the
Yihaodian associates for creating a strong brand and business that
has helped lead to this opportunity with JD.com,” said Doug
McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart. “JD.com shares similar
values in making the lives of customers better. It also has a very
complementary business and is an ideal partner that will help us
offer compelling new experiences that can reach significantly more
customers. We also look forward to offering customers a tremendous
number of quality imported products not previously widely available
in China through Walmart and Sam’s Club.”
“We are very happy to announce this landmark agreement between
two leading retailers, which we are confident will help bring
e-commerce in China to the next level and benefit millions of
consumers,” said Richard Liu, CEO of JD.com. “Walmart is synonymous
with trusted-quality efficient retailing, and we believe that this
tie up will increase both product selection and overall user
experience. We look forward to further developing Yihaodian, which
has tremendous strength in important regions of eastern and
southern China. Yihaodian will continue offering the outstanding
user experience its customers have come to expect, which we will
further augment by leveraging our unparalleled logistics
capabilities and breadth of product categories.
“We are also delighted to welcome the Sam’s Club flagship store
onto the JD.com platform. Sam’s Club’s unique, high-end product
selection meets the demand from China’s increasing affluent
consumers for high-quality, imported products and has already
proven popular in the Chinese cities where it has stores. JD.com’s
reputation for authentic products and superior customer experience
make it an outstanding home for these iconic businesses to reach
hundreds of millions more customers in China.”
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as Walmart’s financial
advisor and Morrison & Foerster LLP acted as Walmart’s legal
advisor on this transaction. Orrick Herrington Sutcliffe LLP and
Han Kun Law Offices acted as JD.com’s legal advisors on the
transaction.
About JD.com
JD.com, Inc. is China’s leading online direct sales company and
the country’s largest Internet company by revenue. The Company
strives to offer consumers the best online shopping experience.
Through its content-rich and user-friendly website jd.com and
mobile applications, JD.com offers a wide selection of authentic
products at competitive prices and delivers products in a speedy
and reliable manner. The Company believes it has the largest
fulfillment infrastructure of any e-commerce company in China. As
of March 31, 2016, JD.com operated 7 fulfillment centers and 209
warehouses, and in total 5,987 delivery stations and pickup
stations in 2,493 counties and districts across China, staffed by
its own employees. JD.com is a member of the NASDAQ100.
About Walmart
Walmart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) helps people around the world
save money and live better – anytime and anywhere – in retail
stores, online, and through their mobile devices. Each week, nearly
260 million customers and members visit our 11,527 stores under 63
banners in 28 countries and e-commerce websites in 11 countries.
With fiscal year 2016 revenue of $482 billion, Walmart employs more
than 2.3 million associates worldwide. Walmart continues to be a
leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy and employment
opportunity. Additional information about Walmart can be found by
visiting http://corporate.walmart.com on Facebook at
http://facebook.com/walmart and on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/walmart. Online merchandise sales are available
at http://www.walmart.com and http://www.samsclub.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
JD.com and Walmart may also make written or oral forward-looking
statements in their respective periodic reports to the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), in their respective
annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written
materials and in oral statements made by their respective officers,
directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not
historical facts, including statements about the companies’ beliefs
and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking
statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of
factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those
contained in any forward-looking statement, which are often beyond
the companies’ control. Further information regarding these and
other risks is included in JD.com’s and Walmart’s filings with the
SEC.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160620006084/en/
MediaJD.comJosh Gartner, +86 (10)
8911-6155Press@JD.comorWalmartDan Toporek,
+1-650-837-5607dtoporek@walmart.comorWalmartJo Warner,
+1-479-802-9588Jo.Warner@walmart.comorInvestor RelationsJD.comRuiyu Li, +86 (10)
8912-6805IR@JD.comorWalmartSteve Schmitt,
+1-479-258-7172Steve.schmitt@walmart.com
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