(Yicai Global) March 30 -- Shares of JD Health International surged as China’s largest online pharmacy operator reported soaring user numbers in 2020 despite its widening losses due to a large-scale conversion of its preferred stock to common stock.

The equity price [HKG: 6618] rose as much as 9.6 percent to HKD117 (USD15.10) intraday today and was 8 percent up in the afternoon. The Beijing-based company went public last December, raising USD3.5 billion, making it Hong Kong’s largest initial public offering of the year. It priced its stock at HKD70.58 apiece.

The platform's number of annual active users jumped by more than 60 percent to 89.8 million by Dec. 31, 2020, from a year ago, JD Health said yesterday in its first earnings report released after its listing.

And those people were not online just to browse. The spinoff of JD.Com, China's second-largest e-commerce player, earned CNY19.4 billion (USD3 billion) in revenue over the year, rising by 79 percent from a year earlier due to its widening user base.

But the platform operator's listing triggered a profit eliminator. The firm made a loss of CNY17.2 billion (USD2.6 billion) as the fair value of its convertible preferred shares changed due to its rising equity price. Its convertible shares were transformed to common stock with a 1:1 ratio.

Before deducting the losses, the firm had earned a profit of CNY750 million (USD114.2 million) on non-IFRS terms.

Drug sales were the biggest contributor to JD Health's enlarging revenue streams, followed by online healthcare services. JD Pharmacy's sales increased by 78 percent to CNY16.8 billion as new and existing users bought more medicines.

The platform had over 12,000 third-party merchants who offered more than 20 million products. Moreover, it featured more than 110,000 medical workers who consulted over 100,000 clients per day, up by more than five times from a year ago.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi