JD.com's Healthcare Unit Prepare for Next Battle Affected heavily by recent technological advancements, the sector may soon attract Chinese regulators' attention.
Background
2021 turned out to become a positive year for China's healthcare industry, where the gigantic demand stems from the aging population, growing individual wealth, and – more importantly – the COVID-19 crisis' aftermath. The market has grown consistently; in 2020, the growth rate slumped to 7.2% due to the massive lockdowns, although it is expected to rise back to 17.6% in 2021 with a total market size of CNY 8.7 trillion. Despite this, the market remains relatively undeveloped – since 2016, the Chinese authorities have been working on creating a CNY 16 trillion healthcare ecosystem by 2030.
Online healthcare is in the limelight
The pandemic challenged people's sense of well-being and facilitated their desire and determination to become more active and engaged in managing their health, which also boosted the need for remote medical consultations and online medicine sales. According to Deloitte, the portion of consumers who have used virtual visits rose from 15% to 19% from 2019 to early 2020, then jumped to 28% in April 2020. In fact, consumers plan to continue using the – 80% of the Deloitte survey respondents are likely to keep using other online services even post COVID-19.
Jessica Tan, co-CEO of Ping An Group, once said that around 20% to 25% of healthcare services in China could be moved to the online space. This will present new opportunities to the most competitive businesses in this field. Among these, JD Health (6618:HK) and Alibaba Health (0241:HK) are two tech giant-backed companies that have ridden this surging wave quite well.
The latecomer, JD Health, is moving really fast – only four months' independent operation since May 2019 before it filed a public offering. In August 2020, JD Health ranked 35th on Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020 with a valuation at CNY 50 billion, which crowned it as the world's youngest unicorn. Different from traditional platforms, JD Health has established various online and offline integrated businesses, including JD Pharmacy, JD Health Internet Hospital and Pharmacy Alliance.
How does JD.com compare in healthcare endeavors?
Financial performance
In September 2021, JD Health released its interim financial report with relatively strong results. Its total revenue increased by over half (55.4%), from CNY 8.8 billion in H1 2020 to CNY 13.6 billion in H1 2021, which was primarily due to the increase in revenue from sales of pharmaceutical and healthcare products within the reporting period. In fact, this continuous upward trend also shows in its gross profit for the past four fiscal years, although the loss enlarged even further in 2020 when compared with the previous years. Another catalyst for the growth could be the increase in JD Health's number of Annual Active User (AAU) accounts. As of June 30, 2021, the AAUs in the past 12 months reached 109 million, representing a net addition of over 18.8 million as compared with that of 2020. The growing number also shows that the stickiness of users has been well improved as well as its brand awareness. In other words, JD Health's constant investment in marketing activities – its selling and marketing expenses almost doubled for two consecutive fiscal years – finally began to work.
JD's supply chain infrastructure casts its core barrier
Although JD Health is relatively inferior to its competitor in terms of annual active users – 109 million as of June 30, 2021 – JD Health's revenue is all the way higher than that of its closest competitor, Alibaba Health, more specifically, the revenue as nearly two times higher. One booster is its complete business structure. Integrating B2B/B2C/O2O businesses, JD Health can have more wings – for example, along with the retail pharmacy, JD Health also offers its own family doctor services, online hospital services as well as smart healthcare solutions. Through the integration of pharmaceutical retail businesses and online healthcare services, the medical products users also become target customers for other consumption healthcare units, and vice versa; a closed cycle hence is developed and can also be seen in its ever-growing operating income at a CAGR of 11%.
JD Logistics is another catalyst supporting the healthcare unit's strong performance, being one of the leading supply chain players in the field of medicine now. Through JD Logistics, JD Health is able to connect with upstream, midstream and downstream enterprises: from industrial enterprises and healthcare institutions to offline pharmacies and dental clinics. This absolute advantage over comparable companies enables JD Health to further cut its fulfillment costs to around 10% of total revenue, which is related to warehousing, logistics and customer service expenditures incurred by the self-operated pharmaceutical business.
Future in the mist
The future won't be easy for both Alibaba Health and JD Health, as the competition is intensifying. Except for the 'peer pressure,' some inherent problems exist in the essence of most healthcare services – those are mainly related to professionalism, trust and quality.
It is partly because of the particularity of healthcare services and pharmaceutical drugs along with the recent market chaos, the government has tightened supervision increasingly, more than ever before. Rory Green, a China economist at TS Lombard, said that the healthcare sector is the only one not hit by regulatory scrutiny yet but is particularly vulnerable, which may possibly make it the next target.
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