The National Bureau of Statistics reported 5.8% cumulative YoY growth for online retail sales (physical goods) from January 2022 through August 2022. This suggests August e-commerce sales rose ~7% YoY. This was 1.2% points better than my expectations, despite COVID-19 lockdowns across the country and heatwave/drought hurdles. Note that August comps were very easy at 4.0% - lowest comp since Jan/Feb 2020. Comps get a lot more difficult in September with 10%. Consumer spending definitely was more resilient in August. However, as I'll share next week in my Scoop and Algo presentation, the performance was uneven among the operators.
January-August 2022 online sales accounted for 25.9% of total retail sales, which was the same as January-July 2022 levels. Meanwhile, August total retail sales (including offline) rose 5.4% YoY which easily beat consensus (+3.2%). Urban growth (+5.5%) outperformed rural (+5.0%). Good for JD and DADA.
For January - August 2022 period
- Online food grew 16.5% YoY (80bps acceleration from Jan-July 2022) - great for PDD
- Usable products grew 4.8% YoY (20bps deceleration from Jan-July 2022)
- Online clothing sales grew 4.0% YoY (60bps acceleration from Jan-July 2022).
Note: while the NBS doesn't provide monthly stats, it's also incorrect to use last year's absolute values to calculate YoY change, given the seasonal adjustments every month by the government. Thus, I'm using purely growth rates to estimate monthly growth rate. Regardless, there is no perfect math here.
