使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the OneSmart Unaudited Financial Results for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year Ended August 31, 2020, Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, today's event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Ida Yu, IR Senior Director. Please go ahead.
Ida Yu - IR Director
Thank you, operator. Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining OneSmart International Education Group Limited Fourth Fiscal Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. The company's earnings results as well as supplementary slide presentation were released earlier today and are available on the company's IR website at ir.onesmart.org. Joining me in this call are Mr. Steve Zhang, Chairman and CEO; and Mr. Greg Zuo, our CFO and CSO.
I will remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the company's control, which may cause the company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties and factors is included in the company's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under the law.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Steve. Please go ahead, Steve.
Xi Zhang - Founder, Chairman & CEO
Thank you, Ida. Hello, everyone. As we started our new fiscal year 2021 from September, we are excited to announce our Go Premium strategy. The 3 pillars of the Go Premium strategy will lay a solid foundation while accelerating growth path in the next 5 years.
Number one, continuous launch of innovative new products with higher price, such as Elite VIP, SVIP and et cetera, and constantly upgrades premium teaching and services.
Number two, focus on key cities to maximize the market shares and enhance the premium learning center experience through continuous center upgrade.
And number three, premium brand building to gain consumer recognition of OneSmart being the representative of China's premium education sector.
Our Elite VIP program addressing our premium customers core needs of one-stop school admission planning is well received by our customers after launching in fiscal 2020. The recently robust sales growth encourages us to accelerate the upgrade of learning centers and enhanced quality of teaching and services to catch the growing premium needs.
In addition, we also launched a premium VIP product for Young Children Education, which is expected to drive the incremental growth and the margin improvement in fiscal 2021.
With the consumption upgrade in China's education sector, the premium K-12 education sector is an enormous underserved market. We will continue to launch innovative products and services in response to customers evolving needs. As a leading premium tutoring service provider, we are confident to expand our market share in the faster-growing sector.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Greg, who will provide you more details of our growth plan and the updates on the company's performance in Q4. Greg, please go ahead.
Honggang Zuo - Chief Strategic Officer, CFO & Director
Thank you, Steve. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Before I walk you through the Q4 earnings presentation, which will be uploaded onto our website earlier today, I would like to comment on our recent financial performance. We are proud to overcome the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19 and achieved fiscal Q4 net revenue growth of 35.7% from the prior quarter, which exceeds the high end of the guided range.
We completed fiscal year 2020 with net revenue decrease of only 13.9% from the pre-pandemic fiscal year 2019. More meaningfully, our new students and cash sales growth has been extremely robust during fiscal quarter 4. In addition, for the latest period during September to mid-November 2020, the average purchase ticket size for OneSmart VIP business unit has grown by 74% compared to the same period last year, driven by a strong demand and customer commitments and a more premium product mix.
This indicates the full recovery of our operations and a strong revenue growth in the next few quarters when the new students gradually consume their class units in the peak tutoring seasons, particularly March to June entrance exam period. We expect our revenue in fiscal year 2021 to reach above fiscal 2019 level.
Now let's start the earnings presentation. First, to add more details to Steve's comments earlier on our growth strategy, please turn to Page 6 of our presentation slides. The China premium K-12 after-School tutoring sector continues to grow up to RMB 216 billion and RMB 309 billion in 2023 and 2026 respectively, according to the latest market study by Sullivan & Frost.
This means that our current strategy and business plan will lead us to expand to 5% and 10% in 3 years and 6 years in terms of market share from today's 3%. Based on our in-depth understanding of consumer needs and market trend, we launched new products following Go Premium strategy. You will further differentiate OneSmart from the mass market and strengthen our competitive advantages.
OneSmart will reaccelerate our growth and reach RMB 10 billion sales by 2023 and RMB 30 billion sales by 2026 through the 2 primary growth drivers: product innovation and city scale up.
On Page 7, we provided more details on the growth drivers for our core VIP business division. By 2023, we expect the higher-end Elite VIP product take up 60% of our VIP business sales to open a total of 150 to 200 flagship centers, and our average ASP to double by then. The growth will be achieved in high-quality and improved profitability, as we will focus on the top 20 cities to achieve economy of scale in addition to increased sales price.
Now move on to the performance update for the fiscal Q4 and the latest progress. In fiscal Q4, our off-line operations continued to rebound. 98% of learning centers opened by September. As shown on Page 9, we achieved fiscal Q4 net revenue growth of 35.7% from the prior quarter, which exceeds the high end of the guided range.
Cash sales for the fiscal Q4 increased by 45.3% from the prior quarter. Please note that as cash sales typically take 1 to 2 quarters to turn into class consumptions, we expect incremental sales growth to drive full recovery of revenue growth in the next few quarters.
More meaningfully, our new students and cash sales growth have been extremely robust during fiscal Q4 as shown on Page 10. The number of OneSmart VIP new students increased by 79% in Q4 from Q3 and 89% sequential growth for Young Children Education business units.
The strong growth is achieved through increased marketing efforts to catch up new student support. Average monthly student enrollment for fiscal Q4 totaled 171,000, improving 6.8% sequentially, and turning into 8.0% year-over-year increase from the negative 8.2% year-over-year growth decline in fiscal Q3.
Page 11 summarizes the key business focus for OneSmart VIP, Young Children education and OneSmart Online for the new fiscal year 2021. In general, we will continue to launch premium products, focus on key cities and improve center environment for off-line operations. Online operation is complementary to off-line business with same price in form of OMO takeout services.
Next, I will report the update for each of our 3 businesses. Let's first start with our core OneSmart VIP business on Page 12. For pure 1-on-1 program, average enrollment increased by 14.8% and cash sales increased by 52.6%, sequentially. During September to mid-November 2020, the average purchase ticket size for OneSmart business unit has grown by 74% compared to the same period last year, driven by: one, strong demand to support price increase for all product lines. Note that we have not systematically increased our ASP for more than a year. And two, higher sales contribution from Elite VIP program. And three, more subjects per average new student.
We expect a strong momentum in price increase and sales growth to gradually translate into revenue recognition the next few quarters.
We have resumed our learning center expansion, and in particular, we plan to open 27 high-end flagship VIP centers for the Elite VIP program in fiscal year 2021, which will set a new standard for the industry.
As shown on Page 13, the upgraded study rooms are equipped with smart teaching system and the center environment is more premium and enjoyable. The first batch of flagship center will open in December 2020. In the fiscal Q1 to date, about 13% of cash sales for OneSmart VIP business was generated by Elite VIP program, up from 3% in fiscal year 2020, and we expect this ratio will grow to 20% in fiscal 2021.
Please turn to Page 14. To support the launch of Elite VIP program, we continue to invest in future talent for and teaching services. The VIP teachers are certified by OneSmart star teacher framework with expensive teaching experience. The interview acceptance rate is only 3%. They are graduate from key university in China by project 985 and 211 and ranked top 5% in our nationwide on-job subject examinations.
By leveraging our dedicated R&D experts and the powerful OneSmart Online teaching bank, our Elite VIP program offers a one-stop top school admission planning comprising of top score oriented curriculum and upgraded premium services. Elite VIP program is expected to generate higher margin compared to regular 1-on-1 program. We illustrate the key financial comparison on Page 15 for the 2 products at stabilized sizes, with 80% higher in price and 50% higher in teachers cost, we expect the gross margin will expand by 3 percentage points and center level operating margin to expand by 9 percentage points. This indicates that an improved operating leverage will be released for the premium product.
Let's turn to Page 16 for update of our Young Children Education businesses. During the fiscal Q4, both HappyMath and FasTrack English have been a steady recovery in enrollment and in particular, achieved strong sequential growth of 43.5% in cash sales. As the key part of the business plan for the new fiscal 2021, we have launched premium VIP products, namely Practical Math Program and MBA Kids English for HappyMath and FasTrack English as part of the Go Premium strategy.
We believe a more premium product mix will structurally improve the business model and unit economics of our Young Children Education businesses. Likewise, we also upgrade centers and teachers' profile. We plan to open 5 flagship centers in 2021. We adopt OMO model for young kids to increase their class consumption through weekdays to enhance the teaching effect, cultivate good study habits and to relieve parents from tutoring by themselves.
Practical Math Program is designed to enlighten early math interest for kids. This program is priced at 1.5x of regular product, taking up 7% shares of total cash sales for HappyMath to date since launching in September. MBA Kids English is designed to broaden international vision for kids. It is priced 70% higher than regular product, taking up 13% share of cash sales for FasTrack English to date since launch in September.
Moving on to OneSmart Online on Page 18. As explained in previous earnings calls, we are committed to a healthy growth path for OneSmart Online by sticking to positive cash flow and avoiding burning cash for scale. It charges the same hourly rate as our off-line program, but provides value-add in terms of convenience and the complementary services through the OMO takeout business model.
We constantly improve the online functionalities to enhance customer experience. The upgraded live online platforms meet the requirements of multiple class formats and enhance the interactive teaching results and the visual effect.
The technology improvements also simplifies our online class scheduling and administration as well as optimize the online teaching platform. In Q4 of fiscal year 2020, online business generated RMB 72 million in cash sales, a sequential increase of 22%, accounting for 8% of total cash sales in the quarter.
Net revenue from online business totaled RMB 52 million, a sequential increase of 13%, accounting for 5% of total net revenues. The pure online enrollment increased 15% sequentially to 15,000 in Q4.
Before Ida walks you through the financial results in more details, I would like to comment on our anticipated margin expansion. Although our originally expected margin expansion is delayed by several quarters due to the pandemic, we now expect our margin to return to pre-pandemic level and expand in second half of fiscal 2021, driven by top line growth momentum, strong ASP increase and operating leverage, as our city and center level ramp-up continues.
In the past fiscal Q4, our gross margin year-over-year decrease was primarily caused by one-off revenue drop due to the COVID-19, coupled with increased teachers' profile and improved learning centers to support our premium product innovation. But we have already seen a sequential recovery trend in margins as the top line rebounds.
We also strategically increased marketing spending in fiscal Q4 to catch up student acquisition efforts after center reopened, which helped generate robust cash sales growth.
With that, I will turn the call over to Ida. Ida, please.
Ida Yu - IR Director
Thank you, Greg. Before we go through the key financial results, let's review the performance of our OneSmart VIP centers ramp-up as shown on Page 21. The performance has been solid and has a consistent trend as before. Even the results are partially generated from migrated existing students online. For VIP centers in Shanghai that have been operating for over 2 years, the center level operating margins turned 19% and high as 29% on the third year.
For VIP learning centers in our top 10 cities outside Shanghai, we have achieved a center level operating margin of 18% for those that have been operating for over 2 years and 15% on the third year.
While taking a view from city level, Shanghai has a higher percentage of matured centers with normalized operating margin. The VIP centers in the other top 10 cities are maturing after year's operations and enhanced brand awareness following what we have achieved in Shanghai for more than 10 years. We are optimistic that the solid growth in our existing key cities will optimize our group level profit growth and margin expansion as we take a more focused growth strategy.
In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, net revenues were RMB 1 billion, a sequential increase of 35.7%, exceeding the high end of guided range. The sequential increase was mainly due to a strong recovery after the resumption of our off-line learning centers.
Cost of revenues decreased by 3.9% year-over-year to RMB 641 million. Due to our lean cost structure, we managed down the staff cost, partially offset by the increase in teacher costs, the rental costs and depreciation and amortization costs related to our premium product offerings and new center expansion and upgrade after the off-line business is gradually back to normalcy.
In Q4, gross profit increased by 41% to RMB 370 million from the prior quarter. The gross margins stood at 36.6%, up 1.4 percentage points from the prior quarter. Non-GAAP selling and marketing expenses, which excludes share-based compensation expenses, were RMB 290 million, an increase of 11.6% from RMB 260 million during the same period last year.
We increased our sales and marketing efforts in fiscal Q4 since most of our learning centers started to reopen in late June in order to catch up on new student acquisitions, as centers were closed in fiscal Q3. Strong growth achieved as new students grew 79% and 89% sequentially for the VIP and Young Children businesses, respectively.
General and administrative expenses decreased by 29.7% year-over-year to RMB 216 million. Non-GAAP general and administrative expenses, which excludes share-based compensation, were RMB 186 million, a decrease of 34% year-over-year. We continued to control our G&A spending at headquarters as well as regional offices.
The expense ratio in fiscal Q3 and Q4 successfully maintained at low level, while revenue impacted by COVID-19.
Let me now move on to cover some other key financial points for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2020. Operating cash flow for Q4 were RMB 254 million, a strong rebound from slightly negative RMB 22 million for the prior quarter.
Capital expenditures for Q4 were RMB 16 million, a year-over-year decrease of 79% from RMB 76 million in the same period last year. Capital expenditures accounted for 1.6% of net revenues in Q4, representing a year-over-year decrease of 420 basis points from 5.8% in the same period last year. The decrease was mainly attributable to our adequate leasehold improvements and technology investments in prior quarters and a disciplined cash flow control policy during the fiscal Q4.
OneSmart's prepayments from customers balance, which represents cash collected from enrolled students for courses, recognized proportionately as the training sessions are delivered, was RMB 2.5 billion at the end of fiscal year 2020, representing a sequential increase of 7.7% from the end of fiscal Q3 and a year-over-year increase of 17.1% from the end of fiscal Q4 last year.
As of August 31, 2020, the company had cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash short-term investments of RMB 1.8 billion. Based on the latest estimates, we expect to generate net revenues of RMB 600 million to RMB 700 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2021. As September to November is a traditionally low season for personalized tutoring services and recent solid new customers, students and cash sales will typically take 1 to 2 quarters to translate into revenue recognition. We expect our full year revenue to reach above fiscal 2019 level. However, this outlook represents OneSmart's current view, which is subject to change.
This concludes our prepared remarks. I will now turn the call to the operator and open for Q&A. Operator, we are ready to take questions.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Today's first question comes from Sheng Zhong with Morgan Stanley.
Sheng Zhong - Associate
I have 3 questions. The first one is about sales and marketing costs in this quarter. I understand you mentioned that is your strategic investment, but can you give us some details about what the student acquisition cost for each new enrollment for this quarter? And what do you think the customer acquisition cost trend will be given (inaudible) it seems like -- so just wondering if the online's CAC competition will impact your sales and marketing as well?
And secondly is for your online path, the GT margin in this quarter is about 20%. So wondering why this quarter's GT margin is so low? And what should be the normal margin for online business?
And third one is about your FY '21 revenue guidance. Actually, you mentioned it will be back to 2019 level. But if we look at your average monthly enrollment in Q4, is already higher than Q4 of 2019. So wondering why the revenue is at this level? And what's your expectation of the revenue contribution from your Elite program?
Honggang Zuo - Chief Strategic Officer, CFO & Director
Thank you, Zhong Sheng. Let me take your question one at a time. So the first question is regarding the sales and marketing spending in Q4. Let me start by expanding a little bit more for the past Q4 performance, and then I will give you an outlook for the new fiscal year 2021. So for the fiscal Q4, as we noted, the sales and marketing percentage of revenue was 28.7% in Q4 versus the 20-ish percent historical level, that's because strategically, we increased our marketing spending and sales activity during the quarter after center reopened in late June.
So that's the reason why we achieved 45% cash sales growth and close to 80% new student growth quarter-over-quarter that we explained earlier. So that's precisely what we try to do intentionally to build up the new student pool after a long -- a few months of lockdown.
Now there's also an impact by the summer spend -- spending, as we all noticed by a lot of industry players. They burned a lot of cash in various channels during the summer. So that increased the spend -- our cost structure as well. However, starting the new fiscal year in September, that's part of our Go Premium strategy, we have a much more clear marketing strategy, and we're targeting the more premium sector, which will help us precisely avoid those competitions.
So we have started a well-organized marketing campaign starting in September for the new fiscal year. We have a clear slogan and in order to gain customer recognition of us being the premium player, as we noticed that we explained as well in the previous earnings call, the percentage of success rates, especially for those of our students getting into the higher top ranked, either high school or college has reached historical level for this entrance exam seasons, that helped us to acquire students as well.
We also have a much more improved marketing channel strategy by targeting more precisely customer base in a more focused channels. Especially we're going to promote more local premium seminars and PR activities to acquire students.
To summarize, going forward, we have a clear ROI-based marketing approach in managing our sales and market expenses. And as you know, starting new fiscal year, our product price has increased materially, not only for the Elite VIP product, but also for the regular product. So that will offset the increased marketing spending and generate a much reasonable ROI going forward.
So I have to say, for the full fiscal year 2021, our market -- sales market spending as a percentage of revenue will go back closer to the historical level. That's your first question.
I think your second question regarding online gross margin. As you mentioned, that is currently at 20% level. Let me give you an overall picture, and then let me specifically comment on Q4. On the overall picture, we mentioned that we will have a quality growth class for the OneSmart online, especially for the profitability.
So we are charging the same price going forward for our product. But as you noticed, during Q4, which is from June to August, the summertime on, first, on the top line, we are currently still at relatively small scale to offset any initial investment and to have a reasonable level of gross margin.
And secondly, during the summertime, the ASP of OneSmart Online still relatively low in order to attract students study online. That's part of the competitive strategy as well as we noted during the COVID-19 period, there's lots of summer promotional activities on the online space in China.
On the cost structure side, we are still at early stage where we need to spend in relatively high proportion to build up the OneSmart Online during the Q4 period. We are very proud and glad that our online platform has received very good customer feedbacks.
And as we explained in the earlier presentation, we have continuously improved the functionality of OneSmart Online to gain market recognition and customer satisfactions. So going forward, we do not expect to spend more money for the online platform. As a result, we think as the scale gradually increase and the cost maintained at a reasonable level, we will have a much reasonable and attractive gross margin going forward. I think by the second half of 2021, you will see the number will change materially from the current level.
I think your third question is regarding the new fiscal year 2021 guidance. While it's relatively low, we said earlier that we believe for the new fiscal year, our revenue will reach above the level of fiscal year 2019.
Let me give you some background here. On the one hand, as you noticed, we provided a very strong and robust recovery of our cash sales ticket sizes and that we are launching our Elite VIP product, which has been well received by the market. So we're very optimistic about the outlook of our top line growth in the next few quarters.
But on the other hand, as we all know, the COVID-19 situation in China, especially during this current winter, is still evolving. It has unpredictable nature. So we tend to be a little bit more conservative, providing a -- we think, a normalized or aggressive guidance for the new fiscal year.
So on the -- a little bit more detailed, we believe our top line growth will start lower in the near term. That's why we provided the current Q1 top line growth, but it will accelerate the increase materially for the second half of the year. I think a couple of reasons. One is seasonality. As we noticed, Q1 is September to November, which is snow season for our students who take classes. And the demand typically will start up in the midterm exam, which is in November, and it will accelerate during the entrance exam season from March to June.
And secondly, as we explained earlier, there is a gap of 1 to 2 quarters between cash sales and the revenue recognitions. So as you've seen, the current robust sales growth, including our premium products growth that will translate into the revenue recognition later on during the year.
In addition, as we noticed, we told you earlier that the ticket size growth of 74% was phenomenal. We will continue to see the trend. We believe that will translate into robust growth in a few quarters. So net-net, we are very opportunistic for the fiscal year 2021, and we believe while there's a little bit more challenged in the near term, but on a full year basis, especially for the second half of the year, we will have a very strong top line growth as well as margin expansion. Thank you, again for your questions.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our next question today comes from Felix Liu with UBS.
Felix Liu - Research Analyst & Graduate Trainee
I just want to follow-up, firstly, on the COVID-19 situation, I see your revenue guidance for the first quarter of FY '21 is a revenue decline. Could you just remind us the reason behind because I think, if I recall correctly, most of the learning centers should be back to full operations in September?
My second question is on the economics. I see your Slide 15 showed, I'd say, pretty impressive economics for the 1-on-1 and the VIP business. Understand it takes time for the business to recover to fully reflect due to the economics. So could you just give us a mid- to longer-term outlook? Say how will the overall company level of margin catch up with the unit economics of close to 30% or even 40% for 1-on-1 and VIP.
And thirdly, I want to discuss our longer-term strategy on the VIP side. I see your Slide 7. Page 7 implies a very strong growth for the VIP side until FY '23. So could you just elaborate a little bit on the driver behind the VIP growth? What gives you the confidence that the VIP can give this much momentum in the midterm?
Honggang Zuo - Chief Strategic Officer, CFO & Director
Thank you, Felix. There's a little bit background noises on your question. I think I get most of the questions. So for the 3 questions, the first one, your question is regarding the guidance for Q1 that we provided, which was RMB 600 million to RMB 700 million. So your question is regarding why is this lower than you would think, right?
Felix Liu - Research Analyst & Graduate Trainee
Yes. Why it's declining year-on-year?
Honggang Zuo - Chief Strategic Officer, CFO & Director
Yes. So yes, that's -- thank you. So as you know, the Q1 is a bigger seasonality. If you look at our financials in the past few years, it's always been that our revenue will have a much lower level if we move on from Q4 to Q1. Q4 is a peak season, as it's in the summer. So as you witnessed from many of our industry players, their revenue are at pretty high levels during the summer.
But Q1, when the new semester starts in September, but before any major exam kick in, which is, the first one was the midterm example, which is November. So during this period, it's more a low season for us. So that's why if you look at historically, the revenue level will drop by about 40% to 50%.
So for this particular fiscal year 2021 Q1, for this particular range of RMB 600 million to RMB 700 million guidance, that's because in the short term, we think there's still a short-term impact, near-term impact by COVID-19. As you know, our Beijing operation only started in September. The [Wuxi] our number -- one of our top 10 cities is still being closed today.
So -- and as you know, the -- for the Younger Children space, there's still impact for -- and also concern for parents to send their kids to our many centers. For those reasons, that's why they will still have some prolonged impacts from the COVID. So with that, we think RMB 600 million to RMB 700 million represent a pretty decent level of revenue for us.
And as you probably noticed our recent robust cash sales growth, especially the robust sales of our VIP product, as I mentioned in the earlier question, that would take a quarter or 2 to translate into revenue to which we believe will be Q2 and Q3.
So with that 3 reasons, that explains to you why we provide such a range of RMB 600 million to RMB 700 million guidance for Q1.
Your second question, I think, is regarding the Elite VIP program's unit economics. As we lay out on Page 15 of the slide, this is a result of a much more comprehensive financial analysis we did when we designed this product. So we took quite a couple of months with our CEO and the rest of the team, exploring the opportunities.
And we -- at the end, we fixed the price at 1.8x. As you know, in the previous year, we priced at 1.4x, but with the strong demand we received and also the market study and a positive parent feedback, we believe 1.8x is a good price range to justify a much improved product.
So -- at the same time, as you noticed, we price -- we increased our teachers' profile by offering more salaries and hourly rates for the teachers -- for better teachers. So the teacher cost increased by 1.5x. So as a result, teacher costs were dropped from regular products 30% to 22%. And the rents were increased. As you know, we will open more flagship stores and then open more VIP learning special rooms, larger rooms for our students. So rental costs as a percentage of revenue, we increased from 5% to 11% of the VIP product.
So net-net, our gross margin will have a 3 percentage point increase, and operating margin will have a 9 percentage point increase. That's because we will see much -- some more operating leverage were coming out of this higher price, but a relatively lower number of students operations. So we will save on acquisition cost for each of these students as well as we will save more on G&A cost to run this product.
Your -- I think your third question is regarding the growth driver picture we provided on Page 7, which we showed a clear 3-year growth drivers for OneSmart VIP business. I think you comment that these are pretty positive and optimistic projection we have. To be honest with you, we think this is very reasonable projection to support our growth strategies we laid out earlier by our CEO and Chairman, Steve.
To be more specific, there will be 2 fundamental drivers for us going forward. One is product innovation. So we showed you already the Elite VIP, how it looked like, the features. So we are confident that we're going to generate about 20% cash outs from this product within this year. Within 3 years, we believe this product will take up to 60% of our total VIP sales. This is based on our comprehensive market study we did, and a lot of the interviews we've done with our parents.
So we're confident throughout organization, not only the top management here, but also our school level management, they're very optimistic that they can achieve the 60% within 3 years. As I mentioned, within first year, we'll get 20%. So 60% looks very reasonable.
And flagship centers, we'll open up to 150 to 200 flagship centers. For the first year, we're going to open 27 flagship centers. But 200 flagship center is only about 40% of our current center base of 480. So that's why I believe within the next 3 years, that's a reasonable growth rate we have.
And in terms of ASP increase of 2x by 3 years, that's a combination of 2 factors. One, there was a higher percentage of Elite VIP products, which I mentioned, it will be 60% by year 3. As you know, we're charging 1.8x higher price, and we believe the price will further go up in the next few years as we further improve our products. As also, the other factor is the ASP increase by regular VIP product, which we already increased it about 20% this year so far. We believe as we further enhance our products and features and learning center experience, we will be able to increase our ASP for regular products as well. So on a combination basis, we believe ASP will increase 2x by year 3.
And the second point of the driver is city scale up, as we mentioned earlier that we will focus on the key cities to maximize the shares, put those cities and then reach a quarterly growth and profitability level that we think will be attractive. As a result, we lay out operating margin here. This market, as you know, is supported by the existing center's performance we provided in the financial sectors. That is quite in line with our current performance.
But again, we'll further improve as we promote more premium products as well as focus more on the top cities to maximize the scale. So we believe, in summary, this drivers of economics are much reasonable, much -- is a result of our focused strategy. So we are very optimistic for the new strategy, the Go Premium strategy we have. It's clearly the right strategy for us. It meets the customer needs and differentiates us from the rest of the market. So we're very, very, very confident that this strategy will help us to reach the scale we mentioned earlier and also the economics that we lay out here.
Operator
And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to the management team for any final remarks.
Ida Yu - IR Director
Thank you, operator. In closing, on behalf of the entire management team, we would like to thank you again for your participation in today's call. If you have any further inquiries in the future, please feel free to contact us. Now you are free to disconnect. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.