SEC Filings Show PDD Registered in Dublin, Ireland

BEIJING, May 5 (TMTPOST) PDD Holdings, the parent company of Temu and Pinduoduo, has listed Dublin, Ireland as its businss address, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

PDD Holdings explained that the Dublin address for correspondence of the listed company was used to primarily meet the need of communicating in regulatory letters as a U.S. listed company. "It is an arrangement purely out of convenience, " said the person in charge of PDD Holdings.

In response to recent rumors that "PDD Holdings' headquarters has been moved from China to Ireland", PDD Holdings responded that the news is grossly inaccurate and purely misinterpreted. "As a company born in Shanghai and growing up in China, Temu's headquarters is always in Shanghai, China, and will not be changed," said the person in charge.

PDD Holdings said Temu, the cross-border e-commerce platform of PDD Holdings, chose Dublin, Ireland as the legal domicile due to the need to conduct business in Europe and meet the requirement of compliance. Ireland has attracted multinational companies from around the world due to its 12.5% corporate tax, including many technology companies such as TikTok and Huawei.

Temu, launched by PDD Holdings in 2022, has already landed in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and has expanded its reach in six European countries in April such as the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, and Spain.

However, Temu's rapid overseas expansion has been placed under close regulatory scrutiny. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a subcommittee of the US Congress, issued an analyst report on April 14, saying that Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms SHEIN, Temu, and other Chinese e-commerce companies have problems with data security, procurement violations and the use of trade loopholes, suggesting further investigation and punishment.

The name of Temu comes from the slogan "Team Up, Price Down", which is a similar term to Pinduoduo in Chinese. Temu is currently facing regulation and accusations related to its parent company, PDD Holdings. Google announced that it had taken Temu down from the Google App Store on March 21 because it found security risks in the app.

A person from the data compliance department of a multinational Internet company said that if it is a concern related to data security, it still depends on whether there is a data center in Dublin. In September 2021, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced it would conduct an inspection of TikTok's compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In response to European regulation, TikTok is upgrading its data security operations.

As to whether the data is transferred, PDD Holdings said that Pinduoduo China's data are stored in China, and data generated in other countries are stored according to local laws and compliance requirements, and there is no such thing as data transfer.

Formerly known as Pinduoduo, PDD reorganized the company as its e-commerce business grew. It rebranded and changed its name to PDD Holdings this year, which has become the parent company of Temu and Pinduoduo.