Pinduoduo Falls as Founder’s Departure Overshadows Robust Earnings

Pinduoduo (NASDAQ:PDD) shares fell 8% in premarket trading Wednesday as the news of its founder and chairman Colin Huang Zheng stepping down eclipsed its impressive December quarter performance.

The 41-year-old Huang, who owns about 30% of Pinduoduo, will also give up his super voting rights, Reuters reported.

Pinduoduo is a China-focused online marketplace for agricultural products.

Total revenue rose to 26.55 billion yuan ($4.08 billion) in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, topping analysts’ estimates of 19.22 billion yuan, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

As per Reuters, the Shanghai-based company reported 788.4 million annual active buyers for January-December, overtaking rival Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) Group to become China’s largest e-commerce platform by users. Alibaba recorded 779 million annual active buyers during the same period.

The company recorded more than 270 billion yuan ($42 billion) in agriculture-related gross merchandise value in 2020, up from 136 billion yuan in 2019.

Pinduoduo shares had a good run Tuesday, rising over 4%, on news that Cathie Wood’s ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (NYSE:ARKW) has bought almost 200,000 shares of the company.