BEST Inc (BEST) 2022 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the BEST Inc. Second Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Johnny Chou, Chairman and CEO of BEST Inc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining BEST's second quarter earnings call today.

In the second quarter, the pandemic resurgence and the impact of overall economic growth in China and Southeast Asia, with our operational resilience and the continuous efforts in process improvements and cost reductions, BEST prevailed and became even stronger. I'm pleased that in Q2, BEST SCM has achieved the profitability while BEST Freight has significantly narrowed its losses. In addition, our U.S. operations continue to be profitable for the quarter.

As we refocuses on our core business, we are continuing the process of winding down BEST Capital, and we incurred additional costs as expenses related to this winding down during the quarter. We anticipate the winding down of BEST Capital will be substantially completed by the end of this year, and we should see a lift to our bottom line.

Now let's take a look at each of our business units. BEST Freight continued to maintain its leadership position in service quality, its on-time delivery rate has improved by 11.4% quarter-over-quarter in Q2. We continue to develop our BEST Freight e-commerce business and e-commerce volume has reached 20.4% of the total Freight volume, up 1.2 percentage points year-over-year.

As the logistics industry was severely impacted by the pandemic during Q2, our total freight volume was down by 8.8% year-over-year. However, we have seen a recovery of the Freight volume since mid-June.

In Q2, Freight net loss has narrowed substantially by RMB 115.7 million compared with the first quarter of 2022. As we further reduced the costs, and improved operating efficiency. Going forward, we will continue to improve our service quality and network capability as well as continue our efforts in synergizing with BEST SCM and BEST Global for new business opportunities. We are confident that with the ease of the pandemic restrictions, we are on the path of future growth and profitability.

Moving on to BEST Supply Chain Management. Due to the pandemic and its related controls, many of our warehouses were restricted during the second quarter, particularly in Shanghai, which is our main hub for BEST Supply Chain services. Six main warehouses were shut down for over 3 months. This has a very impacted number of orders fulfilled by our B2B2C fulfillment network.

The total number of orders fulfilled by Cloud OFCs decreased 22% year-over-year to 94 million in the second quarter, while the total number of orders fulfilled by franchise Cloud OFCs decreased by 19.4% to 58.9 million. However, Supply Chain Management service gross margin improved by 3.9 percentage points to 8.2% compared with Q1 2022.

As a result of our cost reduction efforts and discontinuation of low gross margin accounts, we see a strong growing demand for third-party supply chain management services for both international and domestic companies. Our SCM remains our key differentiator as it empowers our customers with digitized end-to-end logistics solution.

For the first half of 2022, we have signed 34 new key accounts -- customers with contracts representing over RMB 0.5 billion in the first year revenue. Going forward, we will continue to deepening our presence in apparel and fast-moving consumer goods, auto parts and the pharmaceuticals industries as well as maximize the synergies with BEST Freight and the Global as we provide the global and transportation services for our existing key accounts.

Now let me talk about BEST Global. We had a tough quarter with our Global business unit in Q2. The pandemic and its related controls significantly impacted our Southeast Asia e-commerce business and restrained the cross-border activities between Southeast Asia and China.

Global's parcel volume was 30.8 million in the second quarter, a decrease of 20.6% year-over-year. As the pandemic restriction ease, we have seen a slow recovery on Global's volume since mid-July. In addition, during Q2, we significantly improved the quality in our global operations during its on-time delivery rates.

Going forward, along with serving its major e-commerce key accounts customers, BEST Global will focus on expanding SME coverage within Southeast Asia by reinforcing our network stability and service quality as well as improving our franchisees' operational capabilities. We will accelerate our B2B2C and cross-border businesses in PRC, Southeast Asia, and the U.S. by synergizing with BEST Supply Chain Management and Freight. We have established our initial cross-border warehouses in Thailand, and the B2B business provides a foundation for expanding our freight network to Southeast Asia.

We are optimistic about the long-term growth of Southeast Asia e-commerce business with synergies among Global SCM and Freight as well as our cross-border initiatives. We are confident that BEST Global will return to its growth trajectory by the end of this year.

In summary, we believe information technology-driven and integrated supply chain and logistics solutions will be in high demand to support the growth of e-commerce and cross-border businesses. Since implementing our strategic reinforcing plan, we have made significant progress in quality improvement, cost reductions and improving our financial results.

As the pandemic eases, we are confident that BEST strength in technology, domestic and global supply chain management and logistics capabilities will allow us to rebound strongly and on the path of profitabilities.

Now I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Gloria, for further review of our second quarter financials. Go ahead, Gloria.

Thank you, Johnny, and hello to everyone. Our second quarter revenue reflected industry-wide headwinds, with revenue declining by 12.5% year-over-year, excluding BEST UCargo and Capital. Our net loss from continuing operations, excluding the one-off expenses, associated with the Capital wind-down and the ADA ratio change has narrowed by 27.1% to RMB 235.1 million compared with Q1 2022, benefiting from our consistent efforts to streamline our cost and expense structure.

We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments of RMB 4.4 billion and a net cash position of RMB 1.4 billion at the end of the second quarter. Now let me walk you through our financial results of the second quarter of 2022. Our revenue for the second quarter was CNY 1.9 billion compared with CNY 3.1 billion last year. The decrease was primarily due to the winding down of our UCargo business unit.

UCargo's Q2 2022 revenue was approximately RMB 215,000 compared to RMB 860 million in Q2 of last year. Due to the higher oil prices and additional costs, resulting from the pandemic, our gross loss for Q2 was CNY 93.8 million compared to a gross profit of CNY 86.2 million for the same quarter of 2021.

Gross margin was negative 4.9% compared to a positive 2.8% last year. Net loss from continuing operations for the quarter was RMB 337.1 million compared to RMB 146.9 million last year. Importantly, we narrowed our net loss by RMB 42.8 million on Q1 2022. Excluding the one-off expenses associated with the Capital wind-down and the ADS ratio change that took place in May, we achieved a net loss reduction of RMB 87.5 million or 27.1% compared with Q1 2022. Adjusted EBITDA for continuing operations was negative CNY 267.3 million compared to negative CNY 50.6 million for the same quarter of 2021.

Next, moving on to key financial highlights for our business units. For BEST Freight, its second quarter revenue was approximately CNY 1.2 billion compared with CNY 2.3 billion for the same period of last year. The decline was primarily due to the decreased UCARGO revenue of approximately CNY 860 million. Excluding UCargo, Freight revenue decreased by 13.6% year-over-year, primarily due to an 8.8% decrease in Freight volume and 5% decrease in ASP.

Freight's gross margin was negative 7.8%, 10 percentage points lower year-over-year due to the higher oil prices and additional costs associated with the pandemic. Adjusted EBITDA for BEST Freight was negative CNY 34.5 million compared with CNY 41.4 million for the same period of last year. Compared with Q1 2022, the net loss of Freight was narrowed by CNY 115.7 million resulted from our continuous effort in expense controls and operating efficiency improvement.

Q2 revenue for BEST Supply Chain Management decreased by 6% year-over-year to RMB 451 million, primarily due to the disruption caused by the pandemic. However, Q2 gross margin has increased by 3.9 percentage points to 8.2% compared with the prior quarter as we continue to focus on high-margin accounts and the use digitized information system to improve our efficiency.

Adjusted EBITDA for Supply Chain Management was CNY 23.2 million compared with CNY 22.4 million in the same period of last year. For BEST Global, Q2 revenue decreased by 23.3% year-over-year to RMB 241.2 million, primarily due to the market challenges resulting from the pandemic.

This gross margin was negative 14.7% decreased by 10.3% year-over-year. Q2 adjusted EBITDA for Best Global was negative CNY 97.7 million compared to negative CNY 47.3 million for Q1 last year. Our operating expenses, excluding share-based compensation, totaled CNY 348.5 million or 18.1% of the revenue compared with CNY 280 million or 9.1% of revenue in the same period of last year. Our Q2 operating expenses included one-off charges associated with capital wind-down and ADS ratio change. Excluding such one-off expenses, our operating expenses would have been CNY 253.7 million, which was a 3.2% year-over-year decrease.

Selling, general and administrative expenses for continuing operations, excluding Capital wind-down and ADS ratio change, expenses were RMB 212.8 million in the second quarter, which was an approximately 2% decrease year-over-year, reflecting the effectiveness of our cost control measures. R&D expenses for continuing operations were RMB 40.9 million or 2.1% of revenue compared with RMB 45.4 million or 1.5% of the revenue in the same quarter of last year.

To close, we are encouraged by the improved financial results from BEST Freight and the supply chain management. As we drive quality and value for our customers by consistently enhancing our capability in freight, integrated supply chain management and global logistics solutions, we are confident that we are on the right path to deliver future sustainable growth and profitability.

With that, we will now open the call to questions. Thank you. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) And our first question will come from [Tong Gi with Northeast Security Company].

(foreign language)

Okay. So to repeat your questions. Thank you for your questions. To repeat the question is that you're saying that pandemic and the general macro is under pressure. And the question is, how is the Freight business on the future on the Freight business and what is our core competency? That was the question.

The answer is that, yes, certainly, the macro pressure from the pandemic down in some of the economic growth will impact the Freight business. The Freight is basically very much of manufacturing and consumption-driven on business. However, on transportation, China logistical shoot, right, is about over a trillion -- over tens of trillions of RMBs. The transportation is about more than RMB 5 trillion to RMB 6 trillion. So the Freight business we are doing now is a very small segment of the total Transportation business. So we are doing a less than truck load and very small truckload -- less than truckload business.

So as the economic growth to the certain fourth-tier cities and as well as multichannel marketing and the consumption channels. More and more the transportation will be being towards the less than truckload, the Freight business. So overall, we are still seeing overall market and total size will still grow for the Freight because of the general -- the trend of the consumption and the order -- as well from the full truck load to less than truck load.

So that is our belief that the Freight business has 3 or 4 -- are the 4 major benefit. One is the still in large the pool of the business. Second is as an Express business, the concentration of the business will be more as the time goes. So as we've already seen that the top players has been gradually taking more and more market shares and improve there. Third is also a -- business is very much of the volume-driven economic of scale is already very obvious, not as obvious as Express, but still as the volume goes then you should have a lower cost structure in terms of your labor, the rental space as well as the transportation cost.

So I guess our -- I'm confident that our major competency and core -- our core competency industry business, is from a few areas. One is that we have started this business very early. So we accumulated a very well-established know-how in terms of the technology -- information technologies, the core network layout as well as our franchisee networks. So that is one of our core competencies in terms of the -- going forward.

As there are no more questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining our call, and we appreciate your support of BEST. Please reach out to our Investor Relations team if you have any further questions. We look forward to speaking with you soon. Thank you very much.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.