JD.com's net revenue fell 2.9% year over year to RMB346.4 billion, against an unusually strong Q2 2025 built on heavy 618 promotions and trade-in subsidies. Sequentially, though, revenue rose 9.7% from Q1's RMB315.7 billion, and operating income rose about 18% from Q1 to RMB4.5 billion, reversing a RMB0.9 billion operating loss a year ago. The swing was overwhelmingly a New Businesses story: that segment's operating loss narrowed from RMB14.8 billion to RMB9.9 billion year over year, accounting for roughly 90% of the total operating-income improvement. JD Retail itself earned slightly less than a year ago, RMB13.5 billion versus RMB13.9 billion, even as its margin ticked up. Free cash flow reversed from a RMB6.5 billion Q1 outflow to a RMB31.8 billion Q2 inflow. The real test ahead is whether year-over-year revenue growth returns while New Businesses hold this improved loss trajectory.
A high-base comparison drove the year-over-year revenue decline. Net revenue fell 2.9% to RMB346.4 billion against Q2 2025's RMB356.7 billion, a quarter that included an unusually strong 618 promotional period and government trade-in subsidies that pulled electronics demand forward. Sequentially, revenue still grew 9.7% from Q1. Section 3 breaks down which categories actually declined.
New Businesses' losses narrowed materially, both year over year and sequentially. The segment's operating loss shrank from RMB14.8 billion in Q2 2025 to RMB10.4 billion in Q1 2026 to RMB9.9 billion in Q2 2026. Section 4 quantifies how much of the group's profit swing this explains, and what else sits inside that segment beyond Food Delivery.
JD Retail stayed profitable and defended its margin, but earned less in absolute terms. Operating income was RMB13.5 billion, down from RMB13.9 billion a year ago, even as margin rose to 4.6% from 4.5%. JD Retail protected profitability on a smaller revenue base; it did not grow absolute operating profit.
The decline is concentrated in product revenue, particularly the electronics and home-appliance category most exposed to last year's trade-in subsidy push, which likely pulled some demand into Q2 2025 that would otherwise have landed later. Service revenue, higher-margin and including logistics and marketplace commissions, kept growing. A high-base explanation is consistent with the data, but it is not proof that underlying consumer demand is healthy; it only shows that this specific comparison was unusually difficult.
JD operates in an intensely price-competitive Chinese e-commerce market alongside Alibaba and Pinduoduo, and remains exposed to the broader pace of Chinese consumer spending. A revenue decline against a subsidy-inflated prior year does not by itself indicate JD is losing market share; neither does it confirm demand has fully normalized.
Segment results do not sum exactly to the group total; the difference is unallocated corporate items and intersegment eliminations. Using these figures, of the roughly RMB5.4 billion year-over-year improvement in group operating income, New Businesses' narrower loss contributed approximately RMB4.9 billion, roughly 90% of the total. JD Logistics added a smaller RMB0.3 billion. JD Retail was a modest drag, contributing negative RMB0.5 billion, since its own operating income declined.
Management identified Food Delivery as the leading contributor to the lower New Businesses loss, but the reported segment also contains Jingxi, JD Property, and overseas operations including the European Joybuy and JoyExpress rollout. JD does not disclose Food Delivery's standalone loss, so the RMB4.9 billion improvement cannot be attributed to Food Delivery alone. Part of the swing also reflects a structural change: on-demand and crowdsourced delivery capacity was absorbed into JD Logistics in October 2025, which is one reason New Businesses revenue nearly halved year over year (RMB13.9B to RMB7.3B) while JD Logistics revenue grew 24% (RMB51.6B to RMB64.1B). Some of what reads as New Businesses improvement is activity that moved to a different segment, not purely operating discipline.
Q1's RMB6.5 billion free cash outflow reversed sharply: Q2 alone generated RMB31.8 billion, and H1 2026 as a whole was positive at RMB25.4 billion, well above H1 2025's roughly flat RMB0.4 billion. The combined RMB235.1 billion cash, restricted cash, and short-term investments balance is not all freely deployable; restricted cash (RMB13.4 billion) is set aside for specific obligations, and short-term investments (RMB132.6 billion) would need to be liquidated to be spent immediately.
Liquidity dipped to roughly RMB215.7 billion in Q1 before recovering to RMB235.1 billion in Q2, and part of that recovery reflects financing, not only operations: in April 2026, JD completed a CNY10 billion senior notes offering (CNY7.5 billion at 2.05% due 2031, CNY2.5 billion at 2.75% due 2036), with proceeds earmarked partly for repaying existing debt. Separately, JD repurchased 69.9 million Class A ordinary shares (34.9 million ADS-equivalent) for US$1.0 billion in the six months ended June 30, 2026, about 2.5% of shares outstanding at year-end 2025, from its official Q1 disclosure rather than third-party tracking; US$1.0 billion remains under the original US$5.0 billion authorization running through August 2027. A Q2-specific repurchase split was not separately disclosed.
JD is funding Food Delivery, international expansion, logistics investment, dividends, and share repurchases at the same time. The relevant question is whether free cash flow, not the large headline cash balance, can sustainably support all four without leaning further on debt.
JD does not publish formal quarterly guidance. With the toughest year-over-year comparison now behind it, the practical bar is whether net revenue returns to year-over-year growth in Q3, whether New Businesses' operating loss keeps narrowing rather than plateauing near RMB9.9 billion, whether JD Retail's absolute operating income stabilizes or grows rather than continuing to slip, and whether free cash flow stays positive across a full quarter rather than swinging back negative.
Q2 proved that JD can grow revenue and operating income sequentially, and that New Businesses' losses can keep narrowing for a second consecutive quarter. It also proved JD Retail can defend its margin even as its own revenue contracts.
It did not prove that year-over-year growth has returned, that JD Retail can grow absolute profit rather than just protect margin, or that New Businesses' improvement is fully organic rather than partly a function of shifting delivery operations into JD Logistics. Those remain open questions for Q3.
Some wire distributions of this release converted RMB346.4 billion in net revenue to "US$151.1 billion." At the exchange rate implied elsewhere in the same release, RMB346.4 billion is approximately US$51.1 billion, the figure used throughout this report; other reproductions of the release, including JD's SEC filing exhibit, show the correct conversion.
Can JD restore year-over-year revenue growth while keeping Food Delivery and the rest of New Businesses on their current downward loss path?