Amber International Holding Ltd (AMBR) 2020 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for iClick Interactive Asia Group Limited's Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Today's conference call is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Lisa Li, Senior Manager of Investor Relations. Lisa, please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to iClick's Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. The company's results were issued earlier today and are posted online. You can download the earnings press release and sign up for our distribution list by visiting the IR section of our website at ir.i-click.com. Jian Tang, TJ, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of iClick will first provide a high-level review of the third quarter results and share his thoughts on our execution strategy. Chief Financial Officer, Terence Li, will follow and give us additional insights on the financial results for the third quarter of 2020 and provide guidance for the remainder of 2020. He will then turn the call back over to TJ for closing remarks before the call is opened for Q&A.

Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's 20-F as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law.

Please also know that iClick's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. iClick's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable unaudited GAAP measures.

I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Jian Tang. TJ, please go ahead.

Thank you, Lisa and welcome to the call, everyone.

Despite the continued uncertainty brought on by both a global pandemic and the political unrest, I'm excited to share that iClick reported another record quarter of financial results, including record revenues and gross profit. These results continue to underscore the value of our innovative data analytics to our customers and our ability to meet the needs of rapidly changing online consumer behaviors in China.

Our total revenue reached $68 million in the third quarter, an increase of 27% from the third quarter of last year. We are also pleased to have reported record gross profit of $20 million, an increase of 48% from the third quarter of last year. Our adjusted net income for the third quarter of 2020 was $2.4 million versus a loss of $0.5 million in the third quarter of 2019.

We have now achieved 4 consecutive quarters of positive adjusted net income. The record financial performance in the third quarter demonstrates that our data-driven solutions are resonating with brand customers and that we enjoy significant operating leverage in our business model, allowing us to be increasingly profitable as we achieve additional economies of scale.

China's economic recovery continues, and people are beginning to resume traveling within the country. This is in stark contrast to Europe, which is experiencing a resurgence of the coronavirus. Such demonstrates demand now clearly drives China's recovery, and our business continues to grow based on the belief of China's economy will pave the way for a global recovery.

We have previously commented that we are now at the intersection of the continued digitalization of China and the changing behavior of China's consumers given the impact of the coronavirus. And we maintain that belief. Our unique data analytics provide insights to these consumer patterns and such insights are proving quite valuable to our branded consumers.

With this, I would like to now update you on the 2 key segments of our business: Marketing Solutions and Enterprise Solutions. Improving the profitability of our Marketing Solutions business has been a key focus for us in 2020, and I'm happy to report that we have indeed organically grown by double digits year-over-year. The Marketing Solutions business line has been the foundation of our success and represents a large majority of our total revenue. The continued growth of this segment reflects the shift of marketing budgets into performance-based solutions that focus on online penetration, which needs to be tracked and followed in order to accurately reflect consumer behavior and preferences. Amid macro uncertainties, branded customers want higher ROI to ensure their marketing expenses are being spent efficiently. Keeping this in mind, we reported revenue $60 million in our Marketing Solutions segment for the third quarter of 2020, an increase of 17% from $51 million for the third quarter of last year.

While the recovery has been broad-based in China, as we stated in our second quarter earnings call, we have become strategically more selective in bringing on clients in order to account for a still uncertain macro environment and to better manage any associated customer risk. This business segment continues to scale and to contribute materially to our profitability. Furthermore, we remain optimistic about the demand for our performance-driven Marketing Solutions as we end 2020 and head into 2021 given the double-digit growth of the online marketing market in China and the continued shift to programmatic advertising that benefits our performance-based and programmatic advertising solutions.

Our second important initiative for 2020 and beyond has been to continue developing our Enterprise Solutions business. I'm very proud to share with you that the revenue of $18.3 million from this segment in the first 9 months has already surpassed full year 2019 revenue, and the third quarter contribution of $8.8 million showed a 236% increase year-over-year versus the comparable third quarter in last year. Therefore, we see this business segment is on track to at least double the revenue of $10 million in 2019.

Moreover, even more encouraging is that the quarterly revenue contribution from Enterprise Solutions already hit over 10% of total revenue for the first time in the third quarter of 2020. It is worth reiterating that gross margins in the Enterprise Solutions segment are almost 3x that of our core Marketing Solutions segment. As a result, we remain very optimistic regarding the growth potential for this business segment to drive both our top line and bottom line in the future. We are extremely pleased with our solid execution in launching these initiatives from the ground up in early 2019 and the success starts from -- confirms our customers' robust demand for these services and reflects the superior quality of our execution.

Overall, I am extremely confident that we are moving in the right direction toward becoming the leading marketing and enterprise cloud platform in China that helps brands acquire traffic, maintain consumers and optimize customers' lifetime values. We are quite optimistic that our strategy and future execution will lead to strong financial results that really highlights our operating leverage.

With a healthy cash position at the end of the third quarter and following the public offering in the third quarter, we are now able not only to better execute our business plan of growing our business organically, but also to accelerate our inorganic growth strategy through seeking new opportunities to speed up the development of our Enterprise Solutions segment, complement our product offerings, expand the scope of our business and reach new customers in innovative ways.

The third quarter was quite busy with respect to partnership and M&A discussions aimed at addressing these strategic initiatives. We recently announced an increased controlling interest in Changyi, a leading independent software vendor that provides intelligent retail and CRM solutions. We believe the increased stake will accelerate the integration of Changyi's products and services into iClick and further strengthen our Enterprise Solutions offerings that allow us to provide the industry-leading smart retail solutions to our clients.

Subsequent to the quarter end, we announced a collaboration with Tencent International Business Group, in which we will co-develop smart retail and smart travel SaaS solutions that will begin in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand and then expand into other APAC countries. Also, as part of our Enterprise Solutions offering, these programs will use our data solutions with Tencent's WeChat Mini Programs, which utilize Tencent's AI, chatbot and facial recognition technologies. As one of the largest global social media companies, Tencent has tremendous reach into the preferences of consumers, and we are excited to overlay our data analytics on such a platform for the retail and the travel industry in the Asian market as it continues to rebound.

We also recently acquired CMRS Group, a leading marketing automation company that provides SaaS-based solutions to help brand [companies] manage KOL and social media resources. CMRS also has a strong and high-quality client portfolio, which we believe should generate even further synergies between the 2 companies through further upsell or cross-sell opportunities. This is also an impactful strategic move that further expands our product offerings to the KOL and social media segment of the consumer market, which is clearly a trend that brands will rely on more in the future.

We continue to seek new M&A targets, which reach beyond the WeChat ecosystem or has the capability to manage and integrate with multiple touch points on behalf of brands. For instance, we see key opinion leaders, short-form video and influencer platforms as attractive markets for us. And we believe the integration of these platforms into a data analytics solution platform would be seen as significant value-adding by our branded clients.

Brands could find it challenging in managing various media channel touch points, interfacing with the end consumers and look to us to effectively manage the consumer experience. We are also seeking additional capabilities in consumer analytics to provide our customers with more comprehensive and consumer-centered smart retail opportunity beyond the WeChat ecosystem, but that also offers integrated omnichannel management.

I would like to provide a brief mention of some industry awards and the recognition we received in the third quarter: Top 50 Most Admired Companies to Watch 2020 by The CEO Views; Most Innovative Marketing Technology Solution Provider 2020 at the Global Excellence Awards by AI Global Media; Merit winner, Smart Retail Tech Award at Smart Retailing Awards by Hong Kong Retail Management Association; Big Data & Smart Solutions Company of the Year at the Tiger Roar Award 2020; Top 10 Private Traffic Service Providers at China Private Traffic Industry Award 2020; best marketing, gold, at the Creative Award Innovation 2020; best marketing case study, gold, and the most valuable digital marketing company of the year at ADMEN awards; Best Audience Measurement Platform, The Drum Digital Advertising Awards APAC 2020. It's always very gratifying to be recognized as an industry leader. These awards complement our fine execution and are a tribute to the hard work and the perseverance of our entire organization even in these challenging times.

This concludes my opening remarks, and I would now like to turn the call over to our CFO, Terence Li, to discuss the third quarter 2020 financials. Terence?

Thank you, TJ. I'm happy to report another successful set of financial results for the company. As TJ mentioned earlier, we reported record revenues and gross profit in the third quarter. Furthermore, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income also reached record levels for any third quarter in our company's history.

Our revenue for the third quarter of 2020 grew to $68.9 million, an increase of 27% from $54.2 million for the same period of the prior year. As TJ mentioned earlier, these results are attributable to the increased contributions from existing Marketing Solutions and Enterprise Solutions segments for the third quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

The revenue from Marketing Solutions grew to $60.1 million for the third quarter of 2020, an increase of 17% from $51.6 million for the third quarter of 2019, primarily as the result of growing market demand from marketers. The revenue of our core business has steadily increased over time and have given us the ability to improve our platform and branch out into other opportunities.

The revenue from Enterprise Solutions was $8.8 million for the first quarter of 2020, an increase of 236% from $2.6 million we reported for the third quarter of 2019. The robust growth was driven primarily by the increasing immediateness for online and off-line customers' behavioral data integration. We continue to build on our success as revenues in this division continue to increase. As stated before, the higher gross margins in Enterprise Solutions may continue growth in this division, a strategic priority for us.

The gross profit for the third quarter of 2020 was $20.1 million, an increase of 48% versus $13.6 million for the comparable year-ago period. Driving the higher gross profit was revenue growth from both the Marketing Solutions and Enterprise Solutions segments, the latter of which generates significantly higher gross margins.

I would like to provide further color on the GAAP net loss of $7.1 million in the third quarter. The net loss result primarily from the one-off fair value losses of convertible notes and derivative liabilities of $7.8 million as our stock price performance remained strong during the third quarter 2020. We expect no such fair value losses in the near term as all convertible notes were fully converted in the third quarter. As of September 30, 2020, the company has cash and cash equivalents, time deposit and restricted cash of $128 million comparing with $61.1 million as of December 31, 2019.

For the rest of my discussion, I will focus on our non-GAAP results. You can find reconciliations of these non-GAAP results in the press release we post earlier today and which can be accessed at our Investor Relations website. The adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2020 was $4.7 million, an increase of 225% year-on-year compared to $1.4 million in the third quarter of 2019. The results were primarily due to the increase in gross profit. The adjusted net income for the third quarter of 2020 was $2.4 million compared with an adjusted net loss of $0.5 million in the third quarter of 2019. As stated earlier, this is our fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted net income. We reported gross billings of $167.1 million for the third quarter of 2020, which represent a 7% decrease compared with $180.2 million in the third quarter of 2019. This stable performance reflects our strategic focus in risk management and netting good quality clients amid economic uncertainty. For further information, please see the detailed recap of other financial measures in the press release we issued today.

On January 15, 2020, we announced a share repurchase program in which we may purchase up to $10 million of our own ADS through December 29, 2020. As of September 30, 2020, the aggregate purchase value remain unchanged at approximately $0.7 million. In September, we completed a public follow-on financing that was oversubscribed by many investors. The follow-on size is around 8.5 million ADS priced at $8.50.

Such strong demand for this financing is reconfirmation of our strategic direction and continued execution in growing our core Marketing Solutions segment, and ramping revenue and higher-margin contribution from our younger Enterprise Solutions segment. We view this financing as a re-IPO as it not only improved our share liquidity, but also brought multiple prestigious institutional investor into iClick, who are holding long-term view on the company's success.

Moreover, we now have a healthy cash position that give us more flexibility, not only in funding the working capital needs to support the growth of both Enterprise and Marketing Solutions, but also in accelerating our M&A planning and execution. This was the first time the contribution from our Enterprise Solutions did over 10% of total revenue. With the resources to implement multiple growth strategies, we expect this initiative to further propel our profit growth in 2021.

I would now like to conclude my remarks with our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2020. Please note that our outlook for revenue is based on current market conditions and reflect our current gauges of the COVID-19 pandemic impact. These are subject to change.

For the fourth quarter of 2020, revenue is estimated to be between $73 million and $76 million. Revenue from Enterprise Solutions is estimated to between $8.5 million and $10.5 million. Gross profit is estimated to be between $20.5 million and $23.5 million. For full year 2020, revenue is estimated to be between $240 million and $260 million. Gross profit is estimated to be between $70 million and $75 million. We have further revised up the guidance of adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA is now estimated to be between $14 million and $17 million.

With that, I now turn the call back over to TJ for closing remarks.

Thank you, Terence. These results represent significant hard work that, despite the challenging environment, has once again brought us to record-setting performance. We continue to execute on our major objectives and continue to grow our client base. We expect to have our Marketing Solutions business to continue on its stable path, growing organically toward profitability.

At the same time, we will continue to grow our Enterprise Solutions business as our -- as we continue to develop the appropriate resources to promote its development. We expect that in the near future, we will launch a suite of standard products associated with Enterprise Solutions to help us tap into the midsized client. This initiative will help us expand our overall market share, while also pursuing a new client base.

Also, as we continue to be recognized as leading in integrated enterprise and marketing cloud platform for China's consumer market through our tailored digital analytics services for branded customers, we will integrate on the launch products on 4 key platforms: programmatic marketing platform, consumer experience platform, social commerce platform and the consumer life cycle data management platform. These new initiatives will empower clients to boost sales from different combinations of product lines. We will continue to update you on our progress when we launch any products.

Overall, we are very proud of our achievements in the third quarter as we reached record revenue and gross profit, made product enhancements and upgrades to further benefit our branded customers and was recognized by industry awards and accolades for our capabilities, which indicates we are on track to reaching our ultimate goal.

This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for joining us on today's call. We will now open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Thomas Chong from Jefferies.

(foreign language) Congratulations on a solid set of results.

My first question is about the 2021 business outlook which is that in the press release, we have highlighted that the COVID may still have some impact coming into 2021. So just wonder any thoughts about Q1 next year or the full year 2021 across the online Marketing and Enterprise Solutions?

And my second question is about our M&A strategies. Can you comment about the M&A on CMRS? On top of SaaS as well as online marketing, it seems that it is also complementary to our online Marketing Solutions business. So just want to get a sense about how it can generate synergies to iClick.

[Interpreted] I am TJ. Thank you very much for your first question. I would just like to briefly sum up my points here.

So first, as you can see, the pandemic in China is actually under control, and the economy of China is being recovered very rapidly. So we can see that starting from quarter 3, a lot of the sectors that were impacted by the pandemic in the first half actually started to coming back to the normal track. So for example, for the travel sector, it was hard hit in the first half but now, we can see it is regaining business. It is slightly increasing in the quarter 4.

And for the sectors, like games, which were increasing quite well in the first half, it is still increasing. So we expect this trend of the fast-growing sectors to continue into 2021. So overall, we think, last year, for the outlook of last year, if the pandemic doesn't bring any new change, hopefully, the economy of China will be back to the prepandemic level. Thank you.

Okay. So to answer your second question, first, I would like to emphasize again on our M&A strategy. So like we mentioned in the past, right now, we mainly focus on the M&A with the Enterprise Solutions SaaS solution providers, and there were 4 major divisions that we focus on.

First, we will mainly look at the providers which are about customer behavior data analysis and also big data analysis and also AI technology. And second, we will look at enterprises that provide services or products about KOL or livestream, because we think that this can better help -- this can better help our clients achieve more consumers in the future. And the third direction is the customer experience management, which is CEM for short. And (inaudible) direction is the market product and service. So as we know in the U.S., there is a very well-known market company, which called the Hotspot. They are oriented by email marketing. But in China, we don't -- still people to use WeChat here more than e-mails. So here, for the market products, we will focus on WeChat. So this is the first point I will make.

And the second, talking about the rationale and the strategy of the CRM app. So I will say this company is very similar to our business and services. It focuses on the KOL. And also it's very market-oriented, so it can provide a supplementary services to our company. And right now -- and besides that, it can also help us expand the overseas market that because they have been better operating in the overseas market. They also have very strong capabilities of data analysis. And more importantly, they have a very strong client base, including [KTMT], (inaudible) and also [panorica]. So we hope that in the future, this company will have more joint cooperation with us and better integrate their services and products into our ecosystem. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) The next question is from Brian Kinstlinger from Alliance Global Partners.

I'm curious how many enterprises you have built many apps for in the third quarter year-to-date in your total installed base. And then what percentage of your enterprise revenue today is recurring, and talk about the successes you're having in selling second and third applications to these customers?

Brian, this is Terence. During the quarter, we add around 40, 50 new clients. And the total installed base was already over 100 clients, within which around 20% was recurring. Thank you.

And your ability to sell second and third applications with these customers?

Pardon. Can you repeat the second part?

Yes, I was curious, your ability to sell -- cross-sell new applications into your existing client base.

We are currently working on some standardized and new applications. Maybe TJ can add more color on that. TJ?

[Interpreted] So there were 3 major strategies that we are taking. So for the expanding of Enterprise Solutions, first, we will mainly focus on the organic growth of the old clients that we have already got in 2019. We will try to have them use the previous products and services that we have been providing to them for a while. So we can see that during this process, there was a huge space for the upsell.

And second, we will also try to transition more Marketing Solutions clients to be the Enterprise Solution clients. But of course, because the Enterprise Solutions, right now, mainly focus on the consumer goods industry, so when we transition the Marketing Solutions clients, we will also focus more on this sector. And with the development of our new products and also the capabilities that we integrate from our M&A partners, in the future, we expect to see a bigger transition of the clients.

And also third is our development of the standard products. We hope that in the future, after we develop the standard products, we can hopefully acquire more mid-end clients. Yes.

The next question is from Fawne Jiang from Benchmark.

(foreign language) My question is really on your relationship with Tencent, particularly with the recent strength in relationship. How should we look at the potential growth for your Enterprise Solutions heading to next year?

[Interpreted] Okay. So Tencent company and our company have been maintaining a very good cooperation relationship for a long time, whether in the purposes of Marketing Solutions or in Enterprise Solutions. We are actually 1 of the big -- 1 of the 6 very (inaudible) providers for Tencent company, including Tencent's Smart Retail, enterprise WeChat, WeChat payment, Mini Programs, Tencent Cloud and also Tencent livestream. So we have a lot of touch points with Tencent company in the cooperation.

So for the first point, we have co-developed a new sales product with Tencent Cloud platform together. And second, earlier, we also have worked with Tencent tourism and cultural recommendation platform together to develop an automatic recommendation system, which can help our Enterprise Solutions.

And also, third, in terms of the cooperation with Tencent Advertising segment, we have some very successful case like the [Kans], K-A-N-S, case we had earlier. So we believe that with more successful cases like this, we can easily touch more new clients in the future and expand our market.

And also fourth we are also working with Tencent International Business Group to provide a SaaS solution in terms of the small retail and smart travel. And we expect to expand our market share in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand markets. Yes. So these are -- this is the brief of our cooperation with Tencent company.

The next question comes from Darren Aftahi from ROTH Capital Partners.

Just on the Enterprise Solutions growth, could you kind of talk about what the relative mix is between existing clients contributing to growth versus new? And I'm just curious about what retention rates are right now.

[Interpreted] Okay. So for the Enterprise Solutions, this year, we have acted about 100 clients, which we almost achieved our annual target. And that will start at the beginning of this year. And last year, we have acquired about 100 clients, and some of them are -- have already recurred. And for those who started working with us later, and they still haven't recurred yet. So I would say, in total, the recurring rate of the existing clients is about 10%. And the other clients are -- they were in the first tier area of trials.

The next question comes from Colin Liu from China Renaissance.

(foreign language) So I'll just fully translate for myself. I just want to ask about if there's any -- there are timetable of potential integration timetable that management can share with us regarding the CMRS acquisition? And about what time from now on we can see the very clear financial impacts? And also operational-wise, when are we going to see the company start capitalizing the cross-selling opportunities from these 2 sides, please?

[Interpreted] Okay. I'm TJ. To answer your first question, so why we briefly introduced our rationale and launch it of M&A of CMRS. First, about the time line, we expect to finish the integration of CMRS for -- in about 2 to 3 quarters. So hopefully, by mid-2021 or at least in the quarter 3 of 2021, we can finish the integration with CMRS and also become more adjusted to their team and products.

The next question is from [Kevin Lye] from Bank of America. .

And congratulations on the terrific results. I was wondering, looking at the gross billings, is down slightly, down 7% year-on-year because we are trying to optimize client base in regard specifically to credit control. Now with a strong cash position, particularly after the capital raise in a couple of months ago, are we done with that optimization? And what should we expect in terms of the traditional business and gross billings going forward?

And secondly, looking at the strong growth in Enterprise Solutions. Looking at the ASP trends and looking at the client base -- strong client base of 100-plus clients probably in the fourth quarter, how are we comfortable with the upcoming year and the makeup of the Enterprise Solutions as a percentage of revenue?

[Interpreted] I'm TJ. Thank you very much for your question. So to briefly answer the question of gross billing. I would say, because of the pandemic of China, some of the sectors have been hard hit, including the automobile sectors and the travel sector. So that's why we intentionally selected the clients who are performing better than the average of their industry. So right now, what we focus most is the quality of clients, not just the number of gross billing. So we really hope that we can develop more clients and sectors that can match the strategies of our Enterprise Solutions who can develop a sustainable -- sustainably with our business development. So overall, I will say, although we have seen slight decrease in the gross billing, our revenue in total is still growing quite healthy. Thank you.

So to answer your second question, it's like what will be the growth rate of the Enterprise Solutions. So we expect it to still be growing at a very fast pace. So hopefully, we want our -- meet the contribution of Enterprise Solutions to the total revenue up to 20%. But it depends on the specific condition -- market conditions next year.

Due to time constraints, we will be taking no more questions. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Lisa Li for closing remarks.

Thank you once again, for joining us today. Due to the time constraints, we need to wrap up the call today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact iClick's Investor Relations department through the contact information provided on our website. Thank you.

This concludes this conference call. You may now disconnect your line. Thank you.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]