On May 27th, Pinduoduo released his first-quarter results for 2022. As of March 31, 2022, the number of multi-year active buyers reached 881.9 million, an increase of 7% over the same period last year. In this quarter, the average number of monthly active users of Pinduoduo APP reached 751.3 million, up 4 per cent from a year earlier.

Over the past year or so, under the helm of Chen Lei, chairman and CEO of Pinduoduo, the platform has continued to reduce marketing and increase investment in research and development. Marketing expenses under GAAP fell 14% in the first quarter compared with the same period in 2021. Research and development costs increased by 20% to 2.7 billion yuan compared with 2.2 billion yuan in the same period in 2021.

By reducing marketing and reinvesting in R & D and agriculture, Pinduoduo is gradually moving towards more robust and sustainable growth. In the first quarter, Pinduoduo's revenue was 23.8 billion yuan, an increase of 7 percent over the same period last year. The operating profit under American general accounting standards is 2.2 billion yuan.

"in the past few quarters, we have chosen to devote more resources and energy to areas such as digital technology, agricultural technology and agricultural logistics. Chen Lei said that at present, heavy warehouse technology and agriculture have gradually achieved results, which has strengthened our determination to be committed to agricultural digitization for a long time.

Research and development expenses reached a new high, and marketing expenses decreased by 14% compared with the same period last year.

The number of annual active buyers in the 12 months to March 31, 2022 reached 881.9 million, according to the financial report. Compared with the same period in 2021, there is an increase of 58.1 million, or 7 per cent. In the first quarter, the average number of monthly active users was 751.3 million, up 4 per cent from a year earlier.

In terms of revenue, Pinduoduo's revenue in the current quarter was 23.8 billion yuan, up 7% from 22.2 billion yuan in the same period in 2021, mainly due to the growth of revenue from online marketing services and trading services.

"the increase in revenue in the quarter was mainly due to the growth of platform merchant activity and transaction volume. Liu Jie, vice president of financial affairs of Pinduoduo, said that under the premise of slowing user growth, the platform has paid more attention to deep ploughing technology in the past few quarters, providing more diversified services for consumers and businesses with technological innovation, and greatly improving the production efficiency of the platform.

In the first quarter, under general accounting standards, Pinduoduo's marketing expenses fell 14% from a year earlier, and marketing expenses as a share of revenue fell further to 47%, compared with 59% in the same period in 2021. At the same time, Pinduoduo's R & D fees hit a record high in the first quarter, up 20% from a year earlier to 2.7 billion yuan, due to the growth of employees and the recruitment of more senior R & D personnel.

Driven by the strategy of reducing marketing and focusing on research and development, the platform is gradually moving towards sustainable growth. Under American general accounting standards, the operating profit for the quarter was 2.2 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to common shareholders was 2.6 billion yuan.

A total of 40,000 agricultural products have been put on the line with a total subsidy of 10 billion yuan, and the strategy of re-investing in agriculture has gradually achieved results.

Over the past year or so, under the leadership of Chen Lei, Pinduoduo has gradually completed the strategic transformation from marketing to research and development, continued to reinvest in the agricultural sector, and continuously invested 10 billion yuan in profits to set up a "10 billion agricultural research" project. At present, this long-term strategy has shown initial results.

Not long ago, the final of the second "Duoduo Agricultural Research Science and Technology Competition" came to an end, and the "Tomato Fast growing" team stood out from the four finals and won the championship for far exceeding the yield and quality of traditional cultivation.

It is understood that this team is composed of young "new farmers" from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, China Agricultural University, Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry, Star Agriculture, and Bayer crop Science, and adopts the algorithm strategy of "man-machine integration intelligence." the advanced planting experience is transformed into algorithms to assist growers to grow high-yield and nutritious fruits.

In October last year, the finalists remotely controlled the intelligent greenhouse at the Kunming competition base in Yunnan through software in Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang and the Netherlands, combining precision agricultural techniques such as nutrition, computer vision and deep learning to grow tomatoes.

"in the meantime, although we can't see these crops every day, the man-machine fusion algorithm helps us to modify our planting strategy in real time. Xu Dan, captain of the winning team Tomato Fast growing, said that this also confirms the future commercial value of the algorithm, that is, to help growers improve efficiency, reduce error rates, and break time and space constraints.

As an e-commerce platform based on agricultural products, Pinduoduo has also further increased its investment in infrastructure such as agricultural transportation, logistics and warehousing in the past few quarters, greatly improving the scale and efficiency of agricultural products upstream. Benefiting from this, as of March 31, 2022, nearly 40,000 high-quality agricultural products have been launched on 10 billion subsidized channels.

"over the past year, we have paid more attention to training our own internal skills, and have achieved preliminary results in the areas of digital technology, agricultural science and technology and agricultural logistics. Chen Lei said that this also reinforces our long-term commitment to agricultural digitization, and we believe that the opportunities and efficiency released by agricultural digitization will benefit the whole society.