(Bloomberg) -- JD.com Inc. plans to buy back as much as $5 billion of its shares, moving to appease investors worried about a potentially worsening Chinese consumer downturn.
The company on Tuesday outlined plans to repurchase stock from September through to August 2027. Its American depositary shares, down 8.2% this year, climbed more than 4% after trading opened in New York.
JD’s latest stock buyback plan emerged a week after Walmart Inc. announced it had sold its stake in the e-commerce firm, stoking concerns about the outlook for consumer spending in the world’s second-largest economy. Separately, Temu-owner PDD Holdings Inc. on Monday surprised investors with an unusually gloomy outlook, underscoring how China’s economic malaise is taking a toll on a broad swath of the retail industry.
Beyond e-commerce, a series of disappointing results have raised red flags about the Chinese economy. This week, popular fast food chain Din Tai Fung — one of the country’s most popular restaurant brands — revealed it was shutting more than a dozen locations. Last month, Starbucks Corp. disclosed a 14% plummet in Chinese revenue in the June quarter.
(Updates share price in the second paragraph.)
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