(Yicai Global) Nov. 13 -- Pinduoduo’s shares climbed to an all-time high after the Taobao rival turned a profit in the third quarter amid an accelerated shift in China to buying daily staples online in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

Pinduoduo [NASDAQ: PDD] closed 20.4 percent up at USD134.21 in New York yesterday, after touching a record USD138.27. The company’s market cap is now USD160.7 billion, placing it just after China’s other big internet giants Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings, and Meituan.

The bulk-buy platform’s had a non-GAAP net profit of CNY466.4 million (USD68.7 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a net loss of CNY1.7 billion (USD256.7 million) a year ago, the Shanghai-based company said in an earnings report published yesterday. Revenue beat expectations to jump 89 percent to CNY14.2 billion (USD2 billion).

On an earnings call with analysts, Chief Executive Chen Lei noted that Pinduoduo had “become China's largest online platform for agricultural products by enabling direct selling from farms to the dining table.

“Post-pandemic we have noticed that consumer habit of grocery shopping in a wet market or supermarket are shifting,” he said. “Many of our users have shifted to online channels for their daily staples.”

Pinduoduo has been optimizing its product offering. In the quarter, the company “started Duo Duo Maicai to address the structural changes we see in how consumers fulfill their daily grocery needs," Vice President David Liu said in a statement, referring to its new fresh food channel. “We are committed to continued investments into the agricultural supply chain and ecosystem,” he added.

Pinduoduo had 643.4 million monthly active users in the quarter, a 50 percent increase from the same period last year, while the number of active buyers rose 36 percent to 731.3 million in the year ended September.

“We continued to invest in user engagement,” Chen said, “which resulted in strong growth of MAUs and active buyers.”

Pinduoduo's total user time doubled to 531 billion minutes in the third quarter, accounting for 41 percent ofthe time spent on all Chinese e-commerce apps, Goldman Sachs wrote in a report, citing QuestMobile. That portion was a significant increase of 7 percentage points from a quarter earlier, it added. 

Users were also spending more money on the app. Gross merchandise value jumped by 73 percent to CNY1.5 billion in the 12 months ended September. Each active buyer spent CNY119 (USD18) on the platform on average over the year, a 27 percent gain.

Editor: Emmi Laine