New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc (EDU) 2021 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good evening, and thank you for standing by for New Oriental's FY 2021 Second Quarter Results Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Ms. Sisi Zhao. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to New Oriental's Second Fiscal Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Our financial results for the period were released earlier today and are available on the company's website as well as on Newswire Services.

Today, you will hear from Stephen Yang, Executive President and Chief Financial Officer. After his prepared remarks, Stephen and I will be available to answer your questions.

Before we continue, please note that the discussion today 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, our results may be materially different from the views expressed today.

A number of potential risks and uncertainties are outlined in our public filings with the SEC. New Oriental does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call will be available on Oriental's Investor Relations website at investor.neworiental.org.

I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Stephen. Stephen, Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sisi. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call. Although the impact of the pandemic continues to risk hurdles for business across the globe, we're pleased to announce a settled financial results in the second quarter of this year that are in line with our expectations while reflecting strong signs of recovery in some of our business lines as certain cities began path to normalization.

Total net revenue was $887.7 million, representing a 13.1% increase year-over-year, which is increasing results despite these challenges. Our key revenue growth driver, K-12 after-school tutoring business, achieved year-over-year revenue growth of approximately 26%. Our U-Can middle school/high school all-subjects after-school tutoring business continued its momentum with a growth of approximately 27%, while our POP Kids program recorded a growth of approximately 24%.

Our industry-leading OMO system has been vital in the previous quarters to ensure our classes run smoothly and it has once again proved to be instrumental in this quarter. As it provides our operation with strong flexibility to help vast majority of our students migrated from OMO online class back to off-line learning centers, which have gradually resumed the service and easing of the pandemic restriction measures.

Encouraged by its effectiveness, we have been committed to expand the reach of our OMO system and are delighted to say that we have talented OMO online course invest majority of existing cities and around 20 new surrounding satellite cities in autumn semester, attracting a promising number of new customers and students, while the OMO system contributed single-digit to the overall revenue in this quarter.

With this ability to virtually reach both major and satellite cities across China, we have no doubt that it will grow rapidly in the coming quarters and become a major driver to our business growth in the future.

Cost control has become a key feature in our operation as we aim to cushion the impact from pandemic. We focus on the cost-effective strategies that would deliver strong return and outcome and avoid spending of strategies or promotions that would have little business impact. While online education is a growing trend in China, pure online platforms tend to require substantial spending on marketing and promotion. Hence, with the OMO system, we have been able to achieve constantly high number of enrollments with cost-effective promotions because of our strong on-ground presence and online channel supplement each other, which enable us to more effectively recruit new customers and deliver better service to our students.

Total student enrollments in academic subjects tutoring and test prep courses in the second fiscal quarter of 2021 increased by 10.4% year-over-year to approximately 4,183,100, which is in line with our expectations.

In terms of pricing, per program blended ASP, which is cash revenue divided by total student enrollments, increased by about 13% year-over-year in dollar terms. As for hourly blended ASP, which is GAAP revenue divided by total teaching hours, was flat year-over-year. To provide a breakdown of the hourly blended ASP, please note that U-Can classed increased by 8%. U-Can VIP increased by 5%. POP Kids increased by 0.3%, and overseas test prep programs increased by 13%, all year-over-year in RMB terms.

Comparing with our normal price increase of 5% to 8%, this quarter's hourly blended ASP flat was mainly because of the bigger decline of overseas test prep program, which hourly blended ASP was much higher than the other programs.

Now I'd like to spend some time to talk about the quarter performance across our individual business lines in detail. As pandemic became largely under control in China, recovery momentum continued to pick up in this quarter across our business lines. Our key revenue driver, K-12 all-subjects after-school tutoring business achieved year-over-year revenue growth of approximately 26% in dollar terms. Breaking it down, the U-Can middle/high school all-subjects after-school touting business recorded a revenue increase of approximately 27% for the quarter. Student enrollment grew approximately 15% year-over-year for the quarter.

POP Kids program delivered outstanding results with revenue up by about 24% in dollar terms for the quarter. Enrollment increased by 14% for the quarter. Our overseas-related business, including test prep and consulting business showed encouraging signs of recovery despite facing the most difficult challenge due to the cancellation of the overseas test exams and restrictions on travel as well as the end predictability of the pandemic situation in different parts of the world, erasing the students' hesitance to study abroad.

The overseas test prep business reported a revenue decrease of about 29% in dollar terms for the quarter in comparison to a decrease of 51% in the last quarter. While the overseas consulting and overseas study tour business recorded a revenue increase of about 6% in dollar terms year-over-year for the quarter, recovering from last quarter's 31% decreased.

And finally, VIP personalized class business recorded the cash revenue increased by about 20% year-over-year in dollar terms for the quarter. We carried out capacity expansion in cities where we see potential for rapid growth and strong profitability in this quarter. We opened 5 new off-line training schools in the city of Langfang, Kunshan, Dongyang, Danyang and Zhejiang. Altogether, this increased the total of square meters of classroom area by approximately 21% year-over-year, 4% quarter-over-quarter by the end of this quarter. This increase is in line with our expectation as we gradually ramp up our expansion efforts throughout the academic year to prepare us for recruiting more new student enrollment at the start of the following academic year.

The expansion in our off-line education network has also made sure that we are fully prepared for when pandemic is over and our service can resume with strong presence across different Chinese cities. We rolled out dual-teacher class model for POP Kids program in 58 existing cities, for U-Can programming in 27 existing cities. With satisfactory customer retention and scalability, we will continue to use the model to increase our market penetration in those markets we have tapped into.

As outbreak of COVID has highlighted the importance and demand of the online education, we have placed more resources in this area and invested $54 million in this quarter to improve and maintain our OMO integrated education ecosystem. Our success in piloting the OMO system in around 20 new cellular cities through the nearby major cities this quarter is yet another testament of how this low-cost but high-return OMO business model can rapidly become one of the most far-reaching education service in China.

Leveraging the presence of the off-line school and learning centers and brand visibility in major cities, we're able to reach nearby solid cities and continue to bring in a high number of enrollments without the need to spend a huge sum of money on promotion marketing. More importantly, this is a model that we can easily and cost effectively replicate in different parts of China. Hence, we are very optimistic about the growth potential of our OMO system in the next few quarters.

Apart from the OMO infrastructure, we have allocated part of the resources in advance the teachers' training program for our teachers to enhance their online/off-line integrated teaching skills in response to growing demand. At the same time, we continue to upgrade our technology platforms and will broaden the usage of the online tools and content in our OMO system for all business lines throughout the whole network as well as to further develop the best teaching contents and courseware to cater to online/offline education method.

It's important to highlight one of the key aspects that made our OMO system stand out from the industry is the localization of our teaching content. OMO teaching material for each city are developed by the local schools rather than mass-produced centrally, which means our content is tailored with local ones in reference for help -- to help students understand the materials better and encourage them to be more engaged in classes.

On the promotional front, the nature of OMO system enable us to implement cross-selling strategy, whereby we promote the courses through both online and offline channels, reaching the broader range of the customer from different locations. We're glad to see that our industry-leading OMO ecosystem has not only successfully managed to cushion mostly impact on our service penetration caused by pandemic, but we also see our customer retention rates remain stable, which further demonstrates our customer satisfaction and effectiveness of our online course through our OMO system. We believe these OMO initiatives will effectively boost the enrollment and speed up the recovery of business in the coming quarters.

To capture the huge opportunity in the online education space, we continue to invest in more resources in executing new initiatives in online K-12 after-school children business in fiscal year 2021.

During the COVID, Koolearn did a large-scale market promotion by offering free large online live broadcasting class to the public and attracted several more -- several times more traffic than normal time. To capture this new market opportunity, Koolearn also added a meaningful number of customer service representatives and marketing staff to support the new initiatives in K-12 tutor.

These moves have consequently raised our spending on the marketing front, but we believe these are necessary and understandable measures as we found ourselves in unusual situation. Our Dongfang Youbiao DFUB small size class currently enjoy a significant first-mover advantage and stand to benefit from the increase in demand in low-tier cities. Koolearn large-sized K-12 courses are able to offer the best-in-class learning experience through the investments in upgrading the app and online platforms, introducing new education technologies and adding more new interactive features on online classes.

Koolearn also continued to establish teaching training centers in other geographic locations to attract more qualified teachers and tutors and provide a systematic training programs. At the same time, we will be very cautious in identifying high ROI marketing channels and evaluate their unit economics in real time, which well in return, keep the average user acquisition cost at a relatively low level.

We believe as a result of the improvements to operational teams as well as positive word of mouth promotion and brand loyalty, Koolearn will continue to quickly acquire new users, while enhancing the strand retention rate.

Now I will turn the call over to Sisi to walk you through the other key financial details for the second quarter.

Okay. Operating cost expenses for the quarter were USD 919.8 million, representing a 21% increase year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating cost and expenses for the quarter, which exclude share-based compensation expenses, were USD 901.4 million, representing a 20.4% increase year-over-year.

Cost of revenue increased by 26.4% year-over-year to USD 453.7 million, primarily due to the increases in teachers' compensation from more teaching hours and higher rental costs for the increased number of schools and learning centers in operation.

Selling and marketing expenses increased by 23.9% year-over-year to USD 133.6 million, primarily due to the addition of a number of customer service representatives and marketing staff with the aim of capture the new market opportunity during COVID-19 period, especially for the new initiatives in K-12 tutoring on our pure online education platform, koolearn.com.

G&A expenses for the quarter increased by 13.5% year-over-year to USD 332.6 million. Non-GAAP general and administrative expenses, which excludes share-based compensation expenses, were USD 319.8 million, representing a 13.4% increase year-over-year.

Total share-based compensation expenses, which were allocated to related operating cost and expenses, increased by 64.8% to USD 18.5 million in the second fiscal quarter of 2021. Operating loss for the quarter was to USD 32.1 million compared to an increase of USD 25.3 million. Non-GAAP loss from operating -- operations for the quarter were USD 13.7 million compared to an increased income of USD 36.5 million.

Operating margin for the quarter was negative 3.6% comparing to 3.2% in the same period of the prior fiscal year. Non-GAAP operating margin, which excludes share-based compensation for the quarter, was negative 1.5% compared to 4.7% in the same period of the prior fiscal year.

Net income attributable to New Oriental for the quarter was USD 53.9 million, representing a 0.9% increase from the same period of the prior fiscal year. Basic undiluted earnings per ADS attributable to New Oriental were $0.33 and $0.33, respectively.

Non-GAAP net income attributable to New Oriental for the quarter USD 69.1 million, representing a 21.3% increase from the same period of the prior fiscal year. Non-GAAP basic and diluted earnings per ADS attributable to New Oriental were $0.43 and $0.43, respectively.

Net operating cash flow for the second fiscal quarter of 2021 was approximately USD 410.7 million. Capital expenditures for the quarter were USD 62 million, which was primarily attributable to the opening of 78 facilities and renovations at existing learning centers.

Turning to the balance sheet. As of November 30, 2020, New Oriental had cash and cash equivalents of USD 2,643.2 million as compared to USD 915.1 million as of May 31, 2020. In addition, the company had USD 416.1 million in term deposits and USD 3,035.3 million in short-term investments.

New Oriental's deferred revenue balance, which is cash collected from registered students for courses and recognized proportionally as revenue as the instructions are delivered at the end of the quarter -- second quarter of fiscal year 2021, was USD 1,987.1 million, an increase of 26.5% as compared to USD 1,570.4 million at the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2020.

Now I'll hand over -- hand back to Stephen to talk about the outlook and guidance.

Looking ahead into next quarter and the rest of fiscal year 2021, despite the continued challenges from pandemic and the concerns over the new wave of outbreak emerging in China, we are more clear about the recovery trend of the company's near-term financial performance and the market opportunity over the long run. Our strategic focus and investment approach this year aim at improving product quality, increasing teacher salaries and enhancing our industry-leading system, which fully reflects our ease of focusing on the essence of education.

In view of market competition and opportunity to take advantage of post-COVID market consolidation, we firmly maintain a stable and balanced investment strategy that will improve the quality of our education service with aim to achieve sustainable and long-term growth as opposed to unhealthy short-term growth that often requires excessive investment and higher cost to acquire customers.

As such, we will continue to focus on the following key areas. First, we will continue to expand our off-line business. We aim to add around 20% to 25% capacity, including new learning centers and expanding classroom area of some existing learning centers for K-12 business in this fiscal year. We believe our capacity expansion will prepare us to further take market share from other players post-COVID as we believe some smaller players without strong financial position and online class capability may be able to sustain its business during this period. We expect the industry will undergo a wave of market consolidation upon the pandemic phase. The fact that we are a major player with strong financial capacity and fresh offline facilities enable us to further strengthen our market-leading position and penetration.

Second, we will continue to leverage our investments into digital technologies and introduce our OMO system in more offline language training and test offering, especially our K-12 tutoring and overseas test at key business. The usage of online tools and content in our OMO system for all business lines throughout the whole network will be enhanced. To uplift the whole OMO teaching experience, we will place more efforts in developing the best teaching content in courseware and also developing more advanced training programs to our teachers. With all the above-mentioned infrastructure in place, we will continue to pilot our OMO online initiatives in major cities with high demand and higher operational efficiency and its surrounding cities.

We believe that our OMO initiatives will be one of the -- our growth engines to increase our customer acquisition post-COVID. Also, it can quickly replicate in different parts of China, enabling us to capture the market consolidation opportunity.

This revamped new business model will also accelerate our margin recovery when pandemic is over and further expand our long-term margin target. Here, I have to highlight all of these OMO products are supported by our offline classes, they supplement each other in a hybrid format. All the teaching content, coursework materials as well as the teachers are developed and originated from our existing offline centers and resources. Furthermore, we will continue to invest in and implement new initiatives, including product content development, teachers recruiting, training, R&D as well as sales and marketing expenses in pure online K-12 after-school tutoring business on our koolearn.com platform.

Third, our top priority will remain as the focus on controlling costs and reducing expenditures across the organization to minimize the negative impact from pandemic on bottom line. We believe we will resume the expansion of overall non-GAAP operating margin year-over-year as COVID-19 subsides gradually.

Here, I would like to stress that we have great confidence in the fundamentals of our business, which we believe will continue to remain strong. Although we are facing various short-term negative impacts from pandemic, we have been increasing our investments in different strategies, and we remain optimistic of a brighter prospects of our business and believe our investments now will bring us fruitful returns in the long run.

Due to the concerns that the new wave of COVID-19 outbreak is emerging in North China, as of today, we have moved our offline classes to small-sized online broadcasting classes through the OMO system in over 10 cities, including the major cities, such as Beijing, Xian and Taiwan. Despite these challenges, our OMO system enable us to migrate classes between offline and online platforms swiftly and seamlessly. And therefore, the impact on our business will be cushioned, should there be a significant outbreak. In the meantime, the unpredictability of the pandemic has also reminded us to plan ahead of the future as we continue to build new learning centers to ensure we will be ready to accommodate a large number of students when situation normalized.

When looking ahead near term our expectations for the next quarter, we expect total revenue to be in the range of $1,098.6 million to $1,144.8 million, representing year-over-year increase in the range of 19% to 24%.

To provide a breakdown of the expected top line growth for the key business units, K-12 after-school tutoring business is expected to grow in the range of 27% to 32%. Overseas test drive program is expected to decline 25% to 20%. Overseas study, consulting and study tour business is expected to be declined 5% to 0%. And the growth of the koolearn.com pure online education platform is expected to accelerate, all year-over-year in dollar terms.

Despite the effect that our overseas test drive and consulting service for the second quarter fairly better than the first fiscal quarter, we still expect the overseas-related business to continue to behave the harder due to the pandemics around the globe caused by the cancellation of the overseas exams, suspension of the overseas schools and restriction on travels. The negative impact on this overseas-related business will affect the entire education industry in China, not only in the rental and may last over the coming 1 or 2 quarters.

That said, we're pleased to see that China has been controlling the pandemic situation relatively well, which had a more positive light on our business domestically.

To conclude, we are now taking all kinds of the operational actions to boost the enrollment and platform utilization for the autumn semester and speed up the recovery of business after the resumption of the schools and learning centers. We're confident that the demand for after-school tutoring will gradually pick up and trend toward a normalized level gradually.

I must mention that these expectations reflect our considerations of the latest pandemic situation as well as our current and preliminary view, which is subject to change.

At this point, Sisi and I will take your questions. Operator, please open the call for this.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Tian Hou of T.H. Capital.

Sisi, Stephen, congratulations on the good quarter. So in your opening remarks, you talked about OMO and it also shows some positive -- shows the positive result in your last quarter's earnings and your offline enrollment growth, revenue growth is much more higher than peers. So I wonder, can you elaborate how important OMO strategy is for you in fiscal 2021 as well as the next couple of years? And by the end of this year, this fiscal year or next fiscal year, what's the portion of OMO is going to be in your total enrollment or revenue? So basically, it's -- elaborate on your OMO strategy for the future?

Tian, this is a great question. On the market front, actually, we are seeing the great business opportunity originally because more old players disappear from the market. And we put more efforts on our offline business, combined with the OMO model. And we have piloted the market-leading OMO model in a vast majority of the cities and to set up the OMO business in 20 new satellite cities, nearby by the core city. And the key is, I think, the student retention rate and the satisfaction from the customers are better than we expected in the summer, okay? And -- so this quarter, the OMO contributed the single-digit to the overall revenue contribution. But we believe the OMO model will grow rapidly going forward and will become a major driver to our business growth. So that means that OMO will help the top line growth of our traditional -- the off-line business.

And let me repeat the -- some advantage of the OMO model, okay? The OMO model typically has the lower customer acquisition cost. That means we do have the very strong ground marketing teams. And so that means we do need to spend crazy good money on (inaudible) unlike the channels -- the online channels.

And second, I think it's very easy for us to replicate the OMO model in the other provinces in China. And third, I think our content of our OMO model are more localized than the -- like the typical super large, the online broadcasting classes. I think this is our advantage. And all the course work, all the materials are originally from the local -- our local staff. So I think this makes the students love our OMO courses more and put them to more engaged in the classes.

And then last one is, I don't believe the OMO model will bring us even the opportunity of the cost value. We can cross-sell the OMO, the online course and the offline course each other. So I spend too much time on the OMO model, but I think that's very important. Tian, is it clear?

Yes. I give the floor to others.

Yes. I think the revenue contribution, yes, in fiscal year -- in next fiscal year, will be more than that of this year. And I think we will see 1 or 2 more quarters to estimate the revenue contribution. But I do believe the revenue contribution from the OMO model will be a meaningful number next year.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Li of Citi.

Stephen, this is -- and thanks for the presentation. I want to ask, at this point, could you give us some color for the FY '22 guidance, like in terms of the revenue growth or the capacity expansion or the lower tier city penetration? Any color would be helpful.

Yes. I think the -- I think we have done very well to run the business during the, we call that, the hard time. And we -- we expand our capacity by 20%, 25% and also, we raised the salary of the teachers during the hard time. And I think we are ready for the new year. And so in the fiscal year 2022, I think the revenue growth will be booming, okay?

And in the fiscal year 2022, I believe the margin will be expanded. Because first of all, we have a low base this year. And second, I do believe the China will control the pandemic relatively well. And I do believe that most of the students can go back to our learning centers and some new cities -- low-tier city students can enjoy the service of our OMO model. And yes, Mark?

Sure.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question is from Felix Liu of UBS.

Congratulations on the results. My question is on COVID-19 impact. I know your guidance of 15% to 24% revenue growth for the next quarter. Has that reflected in the current level of COVID-19 lockdown? Or are we expecting potentially more cities to roll out similar measures? And for this round of COVID-19, you mentioned that you're better prepared than last time. I know -- will the new enrollment growth for the May quarter be impacted? Or are we okay with new enrollment throughout this time?

Felix, due to the concerns of the new wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in North China, I think we -- today, we have moved all the off-line classes to online in over 10 cities, such as the major city like Beijing, Xian and Taiwan and all these cities in Northeast Dongbei region. And so I think the -- yes, well, I think there's -- in, the negative impact. But the key is despite the challenge, I think our OMO system enable us to migrate class between offline and online. And I think this time, we prepare better to face the challenge compared to that of last year.

And the one more point, the Q3, because of the late Chinese New Year holiday, the Q3, the cost scheduling will be a negative impact to some extent. But anyway, even we face to the challenge of the new wave of COVID. I think the Q3 revenue growth will be accelerated than the Q2, and we're quite optimistic about the business performance in Q4 and next year.

And the last one I want to add is, we're using the conservative way to make the guidance forecast because the environment changes almost every day.

Next question comes from the line of Alex Xie of Crédit Suisse.

So my first question will be about OMO. Stephen, you have mentioned, you covered 20 satellite cities. May I ask how many core cities but that involved to cover 20 satellite cities? And what will be your plan to expand in the next fiscal year for this kind of or no model to cover more satellite cities and core cities?

And secondly, congratulations Stephen on your new role as the Executive President. Would you please share with us what's the responsibility with this new role and your thoughts about the implication for the corporate governance about this new role?

Okay. Thank you, first of all. I think -- yes, I'm happy to take the role of the Executive President and the CFO. And yes, I believe I will spend more time on my job. And -- but the good news for me, as you know, I have very strong teams. We worked together for so many years. And I think the old managers and my staff like, Sisi will support me stronger than before.

And also -- actually, since 2 years ago, I've spent some time on the operations side. I think some investors knew that. So I would love to spend more time with the business -- with the operational team because it makes me to more familiar with the business and to give them the better instructions and guidance. And yes, I think I was on my back to do this new job and to create more value to the shareholders and our customers.

And the -- yes, the OMO worth it. The OMO worth it. Yes, I think we are running these 7 provinces of the OMO model, we call this (foreign language). We started from the Hangzhou in the Zhejiang province and like the Shandong and Xishi and some of the key provinces followed. I think so far, so good. Actually, most of the provinces performed better than we expected. So I believe they will do better going forward. And we will pilot the new OMO model in more provinces going forward.

Your next question comes from the line of Sheng Zhong of Morgan Stanley.

Just one question about your off-line price. You mentioned that it increased very strong. So wondering the reasons of the price increase, especially, there are a lot of competition from the online. And also, we see the -- the more institutions, they also provide price discount. Is it because you see the off-line supply decreased post-COVID-19 or for some other reasons that your pricing strategy?

Zhong, I think our price strategy has been very consistent. And this quarter is already blended ASP was flat. And yes, we're were surprised of the U-Can program by 5% -- by 8% and VIP -- U-Can VIP price increase was 5%. POP Kids, we keep the same price. I don't think the online platforms competition will impact our price strategy. I'm not sure you remember clearly or not, we did the very good successful summer promotion half a year ago. And during the summer, we got more than $1 million the summer promotion enrollment. And we charge RMB 400, I think it's much expensive than the other -- the online players, most of them are providing the free course (foreign language). And -- but our retention rate was over 60%. So I think the Chinese parents and students, they care more about the teaching quality and the study result of their kids and rather than price. So going forward, I think our price strategy will be consistent.

Your next question comes from the line of Lucy Yu of Bank of America.

I just got a very quick question. You mentioned that in the third quarter, there will be some negative impact from cost scheduling. Could you please quantify that for us, please?

Yes. Technically, the -- technically, the delayed Chinese New Year will impact the revenue by 5% to 6%. Because -- yes -- of the K-12 business. Because last year, the first word, first 2 courses in the spring semester, what happens in the Q3. But this year, we started all the courses in March, okay? So that means we sacrifice 5% to 6% revenue of the POP Kids and U-Can, but it's just the onetime impact, just the timing difference.

So -- and if -- just to make sure that your guidance on the third quarter K-12 is 26% -- sorry, 27% to 32%. So if we're adding the 5% to 6% back, it should be like low 30s to high 30s kind of growth, right?

Yes.

Your next question comes from the line of Christine Cho of Goldman Sachs.

So I know with your dual listing, you've built quite a substantial net cash position. So could you give us some color as to your capital allocation strategy going forward? And then secondly, just very quickly, Stephen, do you have any thoughts on your midterm guidance of 17% to 18% operating profit margin, any plans to revisit that?

Yes. Christine, the capital allocation, yes, we raised money last year in November in Hong Kong's market from the second listing. And we'll love to pay the capital allocation to investors. Historically, with these several times, special dividends and several times share buyback. And the use of the money, I think we prefer to use the money to make some -- the potential valuable investments. If we can find some potential synergy between the targeted company and us, we'll do it, but we will do it very carefully.

And second, we will have to pay the investors, okay? And this is your number 1 question. Number 2 questions about the long-term margin. Yes. We want to change our mid- long-term margin guidance. I think the -- let me start with the revenue first. I think the revenue growth recovery is in the process. And I think we still need 1 to 2 quarters to go back to the normal. And on the market front, we're seeing the great opportunity everywhere because the small players disappear from the market. And I do believe it's a great opportunity for New Oriental going forward. So that's why we tend to firmly make more investment now. We make the learning center expansion by 20%, 25% during a hard time, and we raised the teacher salary. And we hired more ground marketing staff to do the ground promotion, which is more effective than the online channels. And also we spend some R&D on the OMO model.

And -- so all the above the investment plus the negative impact from the overseas type path and the Koolearn attracts margin for time. But we're confident that we'll be able to deliver the continued margin expansion upon the pandemic phase. And that's why I said, I don't want to change our mid and long-term guidance.

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Liu of China Renaissance.

I think you kind of just answered my question, but actually, my question was that in terms of margin, if you look at the non-GAAP operating margin, I think this quarter was still a slight decline year-over-year. But just how fast or specifically around what time should we expect the margin to bottom out in the next few quarters?

I think -- yes, as I said, to answer the question from Christine last round. And because -- I think our revenue recoveries still need to go back to normal, it still need maybe 1 or 2 quarters. You know the top line, it will draw -- like to be a very bottom line. And also, we're in the investing phase to hire more -- to spend more on teachers, on the expansion. And -- but -- yes, especially for the impact of the new wave for COVID in North China like Beijing, Xian and Taiwan and all provinces in Dongbei, I think will hit us a little bit in the Q3, but I think it's just 1 time. I do believe the China will manage the COVID relatively well in the -- going forward. And I do believe will -- our performance in the coming quarters and in the next year will be better than the Q2.

Okay. I actually have a quick follow-up. Just on the teacher compensation, I think we changed the future compensation structure a bit in the past -- in this fiscal year. I'm just wondering how should we think about the teacher compensation growth in the next few quarters? Is it fair to say that given we might be already past the time when the competition pressure on teacher compensations is already -- is the most severe from those online players?

Yes. I think it's a great question. You know the reason that we raised the teacher salary is not because of the competition from the online players. The online players just need like a few teachers, and we have a lot of teachers. And I think this decision was totally made by Michael, okay? He think -- he discussed a lot internally with all the managers and school has just raised the teacher salary. Because this is our most advantage, not only for the short time, but also for the long time.

So we fully -- internally, we fully support the Michael's decision. And even during the hard time, our top line growth was negatively impacted to some extent, but we firmly raised the teacher salary. I don't think it will drag the margin because I think the -- we pay the teachers higher, will bring up the higher the utilization rates. And the student retention rates in the mid and long-term.

We are now approaching the end of the conference call. I will now turn the call over to New Oriental's Executive President and CFO, Stephen Yang, for his closing remarks.

Again, thank you for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or any of our Investor Relations representatives here. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect.