Contextlogic Inc (LOGC) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to WISH's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions)

I would now like to turn the conference over to Randy Scherago WISH's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to WISH's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I am Randy Scherago, VP of Investor Relations. And joining me today are interim CEO, Jun Yan; and our CFO and COO, Vivian Liu. Today's prepared remarks have been prerecorded. There is also a slide deck that has been posted to our IR website, which is available for your reference. Once we are finished with Joe's and Vivian's remarks, we will hold a live Q&A session.

The remarks made today include forward-looking statements that are related to and among other things, our financial expectations, business and turnaround plans, the turnaround time line, consumer experience and engagement, expectations regarding merchant relationships and strategic partnerships, the potential impact of our strategic marketing and product initiatives, including ad spending and the rebrand and the anticipated return on our investments and their ability to drive future growth. Our actual results may differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements as certain risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are described in today's earnings release and our periodic reports filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our beliefs and assumptions today, and we disclaim any obligation to update them.

Also during the call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial numbers and metrics. A reconciliation of our non-GAAP to GAAP results is included in today's earnings release, which you can find on our Investor Relations website and which is also filed with the SEC. A replay of this call will be posted to our Investor Relations website.

I will now turn the call over to our WISH's Interim CEO, Jun Yan.

Thank you, Randy. I would like to thank everyone for joining our third quarter 2022 earnings call. This is my first earnings call since I joined WISH 2 months ago. I'm excited to be part of the wish team at this important moment in the company's evolution. I joined wish as I see tremendous growth opportunities for the company as one of the world's largest mobile e-commerce platforms. WISH's vision is to unlock the vast potential of e-commerce for the underserved, value-oriented consumers around the globe.

I believe that WISH is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the growth where cross-border e-commerce and the emerging trends in social commerce intersect. Today, I will start by highlighting some of the major accomplishments by the team. My observations on how the macro environment conditions are affecting which then share our Q3 financial highlights, followed by updates on the foundational pillars of the business. Vivian will then comment on our operational efficiencies, provide a deeper dive into our third quarter financial results and share the fourth quarter guidance.

Lastly, I will provide additional closing remarks before opening up the call to your questions. Stepping into the interim CEO role 2 months ago, I was immediately impressed by how much the WISH team has done in strengthening the foundation of WISH over the course of 1 year, improved app experiences, reduce shipping time and improve on-time delivery rate, adopted new pricing practice for buyers, implement new commission structures for merchants, launched a rebrand campaign, we launched our women's fashion category and the list goes on.

Many of these foundational fixes are in full swing, improving by experiences on the WISH platform and deepening our relationships with global merchants. We have received positive feedback from both of merchant and bio communities, reflecting by our improved customer NPS and the merchant NPS results this year over last year. At the macro level, we experienced a higher level of economic uncertainty that emerged in both of North American and our European markets, which we believe to help impacted consumer buying behavior.

Our value on added consumers, particularly in Europe, have been impacted by the dramatic rise in energy cost, which translates to a slowing of discretionary spending across the region. We expect this uncertainty to continue, potentially impacting our buyers behaviors in the upcoming holiday season and even into 2023. During these challenging economic times, we will remain committed to our value-oriented consumers who seek out to WISH shopping experience to get more for their money.

At this time, I will share some high-level financial highlights for the third quarter. Total revenues were $125 million, down 66% from the third quarter of 2021, mostly driven by lower ad spend and our new pricing practice, which was fully effective in Q3. However, I'm glad to know that our order volume grew from Q2 to Q3, the first sequential quarterly growth since Q1 2021. Our adjusted EBITDA in Q3 was a loss of $95 million, which was favorable compared to our previous guidance of a loss of $110 million to $130 million. Our balance sheet remains healthy with a balance of $837 million of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities and no short-term or long-term debt.

I will now quickly highlight some of the progress we have made on 2 of our foundational pillars, improving the consumer experience and the deepening merchant relationships. Over the past 12 months, we have made tremendous investments to upgrade the mobile app, improve listing quality, reduce delivery time and enhanced customer services and better address our buyers standpoint. Those improvements were first reflected in customer NPS results.

As previously shared, we have seen customer NPS improved compared to last year. Next, we have seen significant improvements in refund and order consideration rate. Our monthly customer refund rate have fallen 34% from January to September of this year. And the customer order consolidations dropped 68% within the same time period as well. I would also like to update you on our relaunch of women's fashion offering, which was started in mid-August. The new experience is now available across both enjoy and iOS platforms.

Data so far shows that both asset care rates and average order value are improving within the new women's fashion experience. We also now have over 2,700 women's fashion merchants onboarded in this experience, providing a wide range of over 160,000 women's fashion governments and accessories to our consumers. As we continue on our path to improve the customer experience, we will focus on the areas that enhance the ease of use. The interactivity and the entertainment value of the platform. One example is our new logo experience.

Under this new design, consumers on iOS enjoy, mobile and the deck top web will no longer be required to download and install the app and create a new account in order to browse the products available on WISH. We have made great strides in deepening and enhancing our merchant relationships. Throughout the year, the WISH standards program continued to improve the quality of merchants and listing on wish. We also enhanced the transparencies in our pricing practice with both our buyers and the merchants globally.

Additionally, we began implementing a new commission structure in Q2 to align with the industry practice and bring greater clarity and a more competitive commission rate to our merchants. We rolled out the new rate cards for European markets in Q2 and successfully completed the global launch by deploying to the rest of the world, including U.S., in Q3. We now also offer our merchants more tools to merchandise their products on which we already have standards, collections and the storefronts, but will be adding in certain markets as dedicated deals hub where merchants can showcase their products even more.

During the month of November, we will be running every day track Friday campaign, where we will have daily deals and weekly fresh sales for our popular categories such as electronics, accessories, home, toys, gift and fashion. For the month of December, we will continue to run daily and weekly holiday sales. We intend to partner closely with our merchants in providing great value and satisfying holiday shopping experiences to which customers.

At this time, I would like to turn the discussion over to our CFO and COO, Vivian Liu, to discuss our operations as well as our third quarter financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Jun. First, to comment on the third pillar of achieving operational excellence. We believe that our competitive logistics offering is a critical differentiator to our global merchants. Therefore, we are committed to improving our logistics operations in terms of time to door and on-time delivery rate. During the third quarter, we overcame multiple Covid related lockdown in China. The average time to door in 5 of our major markets has improved by 5 days since the beginning of the year.

Our on-time delivery rate was around 92% in the third quarter, an improvement from approximately 80% during the third quarter of last year. We're also taking steps to expand our merchant base outside of China. In Q3, we officially launched our merchant operations in Vietnam with a highly capable and given team on the ground. We will continue to expand and strengthen our merchant bases in Europe, Southeast Asian countries and Americas. Over time, we expect this initiative to enhance our product variety in categories important to wish and reduce our reliance on any particular country for merchandise supply.

Now I would like to discuss the financial results for the third quarter of 2022. I will also be providing adjusted EBITDA guidance for the fourth quarter. In Q3, we had 24 million monthly active users, MAU and 16 million last 12 months active buyers, which was a decline of 60% and 65%, respectively, year-over-year. This decline was mainly driven by the cumulative reduction in marketing spend over the past year. Our total marketing spend during the past 4 quarters, Q4 2021 through Q3 2022 was approximately 85% lower compared to the marketing spend of the 4 quarters prior.

Marketing spend was the most important driver of our top line performance from a year-over-year standpoint. We noticed that the decline in MAUs has started to stabilize. Further, Q3 was the first quarter since Q1 2021, where our MAUs increased quarter-over-quarter. As Jun mentioned earlier, order volume also increased in Q3, the first sequential quarterly growth since Q1 2021. We are cautiously optimistic that over time, more operational metrics will show similar improvement. Total revenues in Q3 were $125 million, a decline of 66% year-over-year. The decline was across core marketplace, product boost and logistics. The revenue performance was attributable to lower marketing spend, as mentioned above, and the new pricing practice implemented throughout Q1 and Q2 this year.

As communicated during the previous earnings call, we expected those pricing changes to drive better customer engagement and the pricing transparency with our merchants. But for the near term, it creates downward pressure on both revenues and profit. Q3 was the first quarter where the new pricing practice was fully effective at a global scale. Thirdly, we believe that the high inflation rate and the market uncertainty in most of our buyer markets, particularly the European market also contributed to the revenue decline year-over-year. Q3 gross profit was $34 million, a decline of 80% year-over-year.

Gross margin was 27% versus 45% in Q3 2021. The gross margin decline was driven by the aforementioned pricing changes as well as the logistics business, which has a lower margin, now contributing a higher percentage to the total revenues Total operating expenses were $162 million in Q3 2022, a reduction of 30% year-over-year from the $230 million in Q3 2021. Net loss was $124 million compared to a net loss of $64 million in the third quarter of 2021. Our Q3 adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $95 million compared to an EBITDA loss of $30 million from Q3 2021.

The EBITDA performance year-over-year was mainly driven by the movement in the revenues and the gross profit described earlier. However, the Q3 2022 EBITDA result does compare favorably to our guided loss of $110 million to $130 million. The more favorable EBITDA outcome versus our guidance was due to lower-than-expected marketing and outside services spend as well as higher-than-expected gross profit. Our Q3 free cash flow was negative $100 million, a significant improvement from a negative free cash flow of $344 million in Q3 2021. We ended Q3 with $837 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities with no debt.

Now turning to our outlook. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be a loss in the range of $90 million to $110 million for Q4 2022. As a reference point, our estimated revenues in October 2022, the first month of Q4 is expected to be flat or slightly down when compared to our revenues in July 2022, the first month of Q3. As the global economy continues to experience uncertainty due to geopolitical risks, high inflation and interest rate hikes, we will remain focused on operational efficiency and unit economics. Built upon the much strengthened with foundation and with a strong sense of urgency.

We are actively working to acquire and retain customers more efficiently, drive organic growth and improve the lifetime value of our core customers. Before turning the call back to Jun, I'd also like to address another topic for investors. On October 28, 2022, we received a letter from NASDAQ that we were in 9 compliance with the NASDAQ listing rule that requires listed securities to maintain a minimum beta price of USD 1 per share. The company has been provided 180 calendar days or until April 26, 2023, to regain compliance. The management team will be considering a number of alternatives, including the possibility of a reverse stock split to bring the company back into compliance with the NASDAQ's listing requirements.

We remain committed to creating shareholder value. First, through the successful execution of our turnaround plan and developing a strategic path to long-term sustainable growth and profitability.

Now I will hand over the call to Jun for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Vivian. To close, I'll leave you with a few final thoughts.. During the past 2 months, I have been able to assess the situation, draw up plans and begin to drive execution. I was able to hit the ground running since I was previously at WISH as VP of Merchant Services in 2020, and I have spent most of my career in operations of e-commerce companies. So I would like to share a few notes with you that are based upon what I have seen these last 2 months as interim CEO. First off, it's a simple fact that turnarounds are hard.

I have met with all of our teams and am tremendously impressed with the dedication everyone has shown to make the turnaround successful. What I have seen over and over is that WISH employees have been making top decisions over the last year to make sure we are building for long-term success implementing simplified pricing, changing the commission restructure and significantly reducing our spend with a difficult decision that we are clearly reflected in our short-term numbers. But those fundamental changes have also set us up with a strong foundation for us to leverage for the next stage of the turnaround. What's ahead of us is to use this platform now to accelerate our pace of innovation and to drive the product towards our mission, Bargains Made Fun, Discovery Made Easy. That's why I'm excited.

Discovery is a completely different approach to solving search and relevancy in e-commerce. It's like more in real life. We take people who have a general intent to purchase something and inspire them to build a basket of interesting items that delighted at a reasonable price. This is the fun experience for buyers and of course, we are working hard to make this more fun with gamification and incentives. This is also fun for which employees to build as we are a technology company and a listed cutting-edge data science and the personalization at scale, along with both user experience and design innovation. Where I'd like to end my discussion today is to highlight what my focus will be for the next several quarters.

My plan is to build much stronger operational muscles across all of our teams. Our vision is amazing, but that is not where we need to focus. What we are going to find for inch by inch is making sure that we can drive business results using all of the tools and the capabilities we have built or can build as a technology company. This is what I join WISH to do, and I invite all of you to join me as we push forward with the transformation of this company.

At this time, operator, could you please open the call for the analysts and investor questions.

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Kunal Madhukar with UBS.

A couple, if I could. One could be on EMV side. So you saw an uptick in MAUs and you saw an uptick in order volumes, get that the commission rate is maybe lower now. But what was the GMV trend on a Q-o-Q basis, if you could get a sense of that. And the second thing is, you spent $80 million in marketing, and you generated $40 million of core marketplace revenue. That's 2x the revenue -- so can you help us understand where that marketing spend went, how much of that was rebrand building versus performance marketing in order to help us understand what's happening with the marketing spend?

This is Vivian. Thank you very much for the question. So first, on the GMV. We don't share a lot of details at the GM at this time. But what I would concur on your comments is that the GMV was impacted by the pricing change that we implemented in the first half of the 2022, which was fully effective for Q3. So when we -- as we previously shared, when we changed our pricing practice, which is mostly to simplify and to be more in compliance or consistent with the market practice, that was expected to drive downward pressure on the revenue and the GMV as well. So GME certainly was impacted by that. And -- but going forward, this will be the -- it's already implemented since Q3 and going forward, this will be a constant factor in our GMV performance and the revenue performance. Your second question is about the marketing spend.

Again, it's a detail of how much we spend on performance marketing versus the rebranding investor detail level, we don't disclose. But it is true that the total marketing spend that you see in the financials include both -- and we started our rebrand campaign 2, 3, and it will actually continue throughout Q4. And obviously, it's very hard to quantify how much GMV is driven by the rebrand marketing. Usually, there is a delay effect of the rebranding marketing. But we do believe that it's the right thing to do and convey the new image of the WISH and drive the brand awareness and customer acquisition, all that. Having said all that, I do agree that we may still -- we have done a lot to improve the efficiency of added spend overall.

And we will continue to do so, right? And it's a very high focus for us to make sure that wherever we spend the ad dollar, whether it's digital or anginal spend, we make sure we have -- we spend on the areas that provide higher return for the dollars. So we will continue to focus on marketing efficiency for the foreseeable future.

Our next comes from Laura Champine with Loop Capital.

I'm a little confused at the spread between marketplace revenues and logistics revenues. I did not expect the logistics revenues to outpace marketplace. What's driving that dynamic? And how -- with that in mind, the comments that -- where I think the GMV in October was flat or slightly down versus July. Is that true? Or are you talking about overall revenues?

Yes. So thank you for the question. First, on the logistics versus the core marketplace. So there are drivers that kind of impacted both such as volume, right? And I think, as Jun mentioned, I mentioned as well, Q3 to Q2, we actually experienced increase in order volume. So that's a tailwind for both core marketplace revenue and the logistics revenue.

However, the pricing changes that we mentioned earlier, that has much more impact on the core marketplace revenue versus logistics because that's a price -- changing the pricing practice and mostly kind of impact on the product price, right, on the platform and with very little impact on the logistical revenue. So that's the main reason why the logistics revenue performed a lot stronger than the core marketplace revenue in Q3. Again, as a reminder, we started to implement the pricing changes in Q1 and Q2. And Q3 was the first quarter where the new price is fully effective globally. So this is the first quarter where we see arguably a major impact on the core marketplace revenue for the first time. I'm sorry, can you repeat the second question, if you don't mind?

Sure. The question was about the spread between logistics versus marketplace. And really, when you talk about the trend in October being flat to slightly down versus July, are you talking about total revenues? Or is that GMV?

Oh sorry, I was talking about total revenue. That's a comment on the total revenue, October versus July.

Okay. Would you expect longer term for logistics revenues to be higher than marketplace revenues?

We expect longer term net of all the pricing changes and the changes in the commission structure, which should impact more on the core marketplace versus logistics in the near term. Now longer term, we expect both to be highly correlated with the volume of the platform. So as we continue to improve the user experiences and the overall platform features and as we continue to drive volume, we expect both to start to show much stronger momentum, both core marketplace and the logistics.

(Operator Instructions) And our next question comes from Michael McGovern with Bank of America.

This is Steven McDermott for Michael McGovern. I was just wondering, on the last call, you mentioned about aggressive recruitment. Kind of 3 months later, the macro has only secured further. So how should we think about managing G&A and costs in the last quarter and going into 2023? Thank you.

Thank you for the question. So we have been working very hard on managing our G&A and marketing just general OpEx. And I think if you recall, at the beginning of the year, we not only reduce our marketing spend pretty aggressively. We also announced the limited restructuring on the workforce, and we reduced our headcount by 18%. So -- and I think a lot of people share the news in the market in the past few days. And as a company, we were actually ahead of the curve. And over the year, we have managed our employee expenses pretty efficiently and effectively, and that stays pretty low.

But in some of the critical areas, we do need to recruit and attract high-quality talent because end of the day, we are a high-tech company, and we're -- we continue to drive innovation and build the important product features for the customers and our merchants. So we will continue to be very, very focused on cash flow optimization, cost attainment, operational efficiency. And that's why in my prepared remarks, we highlighted all the 3 things and unit economics that will continue to be our focus for 2023. But we started this journey, arguably a lot earlier than many other companies, and we'll continue to focus on efficiency.

Great. And then if I could add another question. How many points of pressure do you guys estimate the pricing changes affected revenue? And how should we think about comps going forward? I know you said it started in Q1, but just kind of like the magnitude of these pricing changes.

Yes. Thank you for the follow-up question. It really varies by product category and also even product level. It was a pretty complex pricing practice we had before, which was why it was -- it's -- to some extent, it could be a little bit confusing to the buyers and the merchants and which was the reason why we simplified it and make it more straightforward, transparent and building to improve the user trust and engagement of our merchants.

So it was very -- a long way it's hard to quantify, but it's very -- I would say it's very material impact overall. If you look at the -- what we did in the first 6 months, 2022, and the impact is definitely material. As I said, Q3 is the first quarter where that new pricing practices implemented globally. And going forward, it will be consistent. But if you compare our Q3 and Q4 performance to last year for us before we started this change, it would be apples to oranges in terms of top line performance.

(Operator Instructions) This concludes the question-and-answer portion of today's call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to WISH's CEO, Jun Yan, for closing remarks.

Thanks, everyone, for joining our earnings conference call, and we look forward to talking to you throughout the quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. You may all disconnect, and have a wonderful day.