PDD Holdings, the parent company of Chinese e-commerce giants Temu and Pinduoduo, has the distinction of sitting on the largest net cash position of any public company that doesn’t pay a dividend or repurchase shares, according to an analysis by the Financial Times.
The cash pile totals $38 billion, more than double Tesla’s stash, which was the second largest among such companies.
In looking at MSCI’s Investable Market Index, the FT identified five companies without dividends or buybacks among the 151 companies that have net cash positions of more than $5 billion.
After PDD and Tesla, the others include Chinese EV company Li Auto, European payments group Adyen, and electric-turbine maker GE Vernova, which was spun off from GE earlier this year.
While PDD holds on to its cash, other publicly listed Chinese companies such as JD and Meituan have recently announced stock buybacks, the report noted.
PDD told Fortune that chairman and co-CEO Chen Lei said during an earnings call that the company is in an investment phase and faces significant competition as well as “external uncertainties.”
“As a result, the management team has unanimously agreed that this is not the right time for share repurchases or dividends, and such actions are not anticipated in the foreseeable future," a spokesperson said in a statement.
In a separate statement to the FT, PDD denied suggestions that the lack of repurchases raises questions about its accounting or balance sheet.
“Each company makes decisions based on its unique circumstances and strategic considerations. To imply that there is a ‘red flag’ simply because Company A does not follow the same approach as Company B is, quite frankly, absurd,” PDD said.
PDD stunned Wall Street on Aug. 26 with weak quarterly results and a warning that intense competition will dampen future earnings.
Shares sank more than 30%, wiping out $50 billion in PDD’s market value and ending founder Colin Huang’s short-lived reign as China’s richest man.
Before the earnings report, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations pointed to China’s cutthroat e-commerce sector as a symptom of Beijing’s economic policies that lead to chronic overproduction.
