ATRenew Inc (RERE) 2023 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to ATRenew Inc.'s First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, today's event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to the first speaker today, Mr. Jeremy Ji, Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations of the company. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to ATRenew's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Speaking first today is Kerry Chen, our Founder, Chairman and CEO, and he will be followed by Rex Chen, our CFO. After that, we will open the call to questions from analysts.

The financial results were released earlier today, the earnings release and investor slides accompanying this call are available at our IR website, ir.atrenew.com. There will also be a transcript following this call for your convenience in English and Chinese.

For today's agenda, Kerry will share his thoughts of the quarter's performance and the business strategy, followed by Rex, who will address the financial highlights. Both Kerry and Rex will join the Q&A session.

Let me cover the safe harbor statement. Some of the information you will hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements, and I'll refer you to our safe harbor statement in the earnings press release. Any forward-looking statements that management makes on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and that ATRenew does not take any obligations to upgrade our assumptions on these statements.

Also, this call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release, which contains a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP measures. Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference are in RMB and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis. I'd now like to turn the call over to Kerry for business and strategy updates.

[Interpreted] Hello, everyone, and welcome to ATRenew's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. During the first quarter, the rapid recovery of off-line retail and logistics led to a resurgence in consumer resulting and consumption demand. As a result, our year-over-year revenue growth rebounded to 30.2%, and we achieved total revenues of RMB 2,872 million, exceeding the high end of our guidance. Meanwhile, our non-GAAP operating income reached a new record of over RMB 44 million, representing an adjusted operating margin of 1.5%. Our first quarter growth demand profit both exceeded expectations in what is surely an off-season for the secondhand industry.

I'd like to share with you 3 main drivers, which contributed to our top-line growth rebound. The first is the growth momentum of 1P business, which geared up again, the recovery of face-to-face recycling fulfillment at our stores, the strengthened brand awareness of the AHS recycled brand, and an increase in compliant refurbished product sales to consumers - all contributed to the growth of product revenue.

If we zoom in a bit, we encountered a tailwind on the sourcing end which was generated by the rebound of consumer activity after the reopening, our e-commerce partners such as JD.com have increased their consumer subsidies, while brand manufacturers, including Apple have offered discounts and promotions on specific models. To add more color, Apple products account for 45% of our total businesses and 60% of our 1P business. Out of the popularity and resilience that Apple products have, our core recycling business remains stable and has been relatively less room to the headwind of decreasing new device shipments.

While capitalizing on these recent favorable developments, we also consolidated our own operational capabilities, especially on the sourcing front. We strengthened our competitive moat in off-line recycling via 1,935 physical stores across 269 cities nationwide, enhanced the brand awareness of AHS recycle and lock in more high-quality supplies from consumers. According to a recent survey, the net promoter score of our off-line store recycling services has steadily increased. We continue to identify suitable locations for new stores, and we aim to make our directly operated stores the benchmark for customer service in top tier cities.

Meanwhile, we have further expanded fulfillment coverage by empowering more franchisees, as a result, we have seen a rapid increase in 1P recycling transactions in the first quarter of 2023. The order volume increased by 13% sequentially and 42% year-on-year. Overall, 1P products revenue increased by 34.9% to RMB 2,575 million and continues to be our core main organic growth driver.

In terms of adding value to the supply chain, we continue to leverage our 1P sources to select products that are suitable for refurbishment. Through standardized compliant refurbishment practices, we brought more products into alignment with consumer standards and further consolidated the service capability for our RERE Refurbed business. In the first quarter, overall sales of refurbished devices increased to RMB 145 million, of which consumer sales increased to RMB 140 million. Mostly, the overall gross margin of refurbished devices were 25%. In addition, we duplicated such capabilities in our East China operation center to supplement our capacity in South China.

This upgrade was undertaken in tandem with an expansion of our refurbished product categories. We expect that this increase in total production capacity will allow us to satisfy the majority of user demand for high-quality pre-owned products nationwide.

Turning to our platform business, service revenue in the first quarter was nearly $300 million, which was basically flat compared to the same period last year, however, take rate increased from 4.15% to 5.46%. We have adopted a mixed approach to the platform businesses based on each services monetization rate.

On the 1 hand, we have increased take rates for key services like quality inspection, logistics, and warehousing. On the other hand, we have reduced both our investments into the spare stock business and merchant rebates for businesses with low monetization rates.

Our primary focus is serving high-quality, high-stickiness merchant users, while facilitating high-quality transactions. The number of registered users of PJT Marketplace, our B2B business, now exceeds 447,000 while our core business take rate has increased by 1.8% on a yearly basis.

For Paipai, the B2C business offering, we have further strengthened our platform governance. This is seen in improved product quality control for POP products and the timeliness of services. We collaborate with well-known inspection institutions for weekly spot checks -- spot check coverage of consumer products doubled. Ship-out efficiency was improved. For example, the late ship-out rate in the first quarter has decreased by 7% sequentially. This will ensure a stable growth in both the quantity and the quality for our POP business.

Furthermore, since we have built up capacity for compliant refurbishment, we provide consumers with highly satisfying shopping and after-sale service experiences. As a result, retail distribution as a percentage of core 1P business increased by 91 bps year-over-year to 22.2%.

The second growth contributor is the escalating new category reflecting business. As of March 31, we leveraged over 100 core AHS stores to successfully fulfill new category reflecting orders without extra investments. These stores are mainly located in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chongqing and we continue to improve our product mix, covering luxury, gold, prestigious liquor, et cetera.

When meeting consumers demand for cash back -- as we -- as our fulfillment network expand, we expect to further leverage the high-quality and accurate traffic from JD.com, thus amplifying our online to off-line capabilities. We also amplify AHS recycled brand influence with a safe and fairly priced and hassle-free offering. As a result, multiple new categories made delightful progress. For example, mostly GMV for non-electronics new categories reflecting had surpassed RMB 70 million.

The third driver is continued improvement in operational efficiency, mainly attributable to automated quality inspection technology upgrades. Non-GAAP fulfillment expenses as a percentage of total net revenue decreased by 3.7 percentage points year-on-year to 9.1% in the first quarter. We are proud of our operation centers, they deliver best-in-class operational efficiency and empower hundreds of thousands of merchants with standardized operational and transactional capabilities.

The automated operation centers in South China and East China are equipped with our industry-leading system. Its automated inspection lines incorporate AI and big data algorithms for inspection training, which achieved precise detection and labeling of scratches and then as well as identifying dismantlement and part replacement. All of these are factored into product grading and pricing results. Our unmanned production line avoid the majority of errors associated with manual operation, helping us reduce personnel training costs and losses related to manual inspection and disassembly.

Technology has improved our efficiency in processing non-standard products and ultimately reduces transaction disputes and losses from returns. Going forward, we believe that the application and continued development of automation technology, AI and big data will further optimize our cost structure.

Beyond this improvement, we have also made steady progress in reducing our selling and marketing costs. During the quarter, our non-GAAP selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of total net revenue decreased by 1.9 percentage points to 7.5%. Our CFO, Rex will provide more color on this.

We have had a good start to 2023 in large part thanks to our stable foundations of electronic recycling and re-commercialization businesses, middle-office operations and back-end core controls. The continued development of the circular economy has also served as a tailwind for our business.

During the second quarter, we anticipate June 18th promotions once again stimulating consumers' demand for recycling and trading services. In particular, we are working diligently in preparation for project kickoff in the second half, providing unique trade-in solutions through in-depth collaboration with a leading international brand, and this will potentially become a key growth driver in the second half.

As the circular economy evolves, we continue to amplify our industry influence by educating consumers and nudging industry standards. During World Earth Day on April 22, we launched the Cosmic Recycling Alliance initiative, partnering with the several leading consumer brands to promote green recycling and the circular use of consumer products. The initiative strengthens our brand assets and expand our product offerings by advocating for the recycling of idle daily necessities, bags, watches among others, that still retain some value.

Our World Intellectual Property Day on April 26, we joined forces with the Shenzhen Electronics Industry Association to explore industry development and to celebrate the anniversary of the compliant refurbishment guidelines’ publication. As a corporate representative, we participated in the formulation and implementation of multiple standards.

Furthermore, we regard the protection of both intellectual property and the user right as our responsibility. We are committed to working towards the standardized development of compliant refurbishment in the electronics industry. At the same time, we strive to enable the utilization of a wider range of pre-owned electronics.

With that, I will hand the call over to Rex, our CFO, to go over the financials.

Hello, we are pleased to report another profitable quarter as the total net revenues beat the top end of our guidance and non-GAAP operating income reached a new record. I will start by sharing some of our financial highlights before we go into a more detailed look at the numbers. Please note that all amounts are in RMB and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise stated.

In the first quarter, total revenues increased by 30.2% to RMB 2,871.8 million. This was primarily due to the continued growth contribution of our 1P product service revenues, which increased by 34.9% to RMB 2,575.2 million. In terms of profitability, we had another profit-making quarter with a non-GAAP operating income of RMB 44.4 million, this was primarily attributable to scale effects powered by automation inspection upgrades and improved cost efficiencies in sales and marketing.

Now let's take a detailed look at the financials. In the first quarter, total revenues increased by 30.2% to RMB 2,871.8 million. Net product revenues increased by 34.9% to RMB 2,575.2 million, while net service revenues were RMB 296.6 million, slightly decreased by 0.3%. Growth in net product revenues was primarily driven by an increase in the sales of pre-owned consumer electronics both through our online and offline channels.

In terms of service revenue, the PJT marketplace generated more compared with the same period last year. This was primarily due to the lessened consignment business of Paipai marketplace as we pivoted strategic focus, which was partially offset by an increase in the service revenue generated from PJT Marketplace.

Next, turning to our operating expenses to provide a greater clarity on the trends in our operating-based actual expenditures. We will also discuss our non-GAAP operating expenses, which better reflect how the management views our results of operations. The reconciliations of GAAP and non-GAAP results are available in our earnings release and the corresponding Form 6-K furnished with the SEC.

Merchandise costs were RMB 2,252.1 million representing an increase of 37.3%. This was in line with the growth in product sales. The gross margin at the group level was 21.6% in the first quarter, gross margin for our 1P business was 12.5%. Fulfillment expenses decreased by 10.1% to RMB 266.4 million, excluding share-based compensation expenses, which we will refer to as SBC from here on.

Non-GAAP fulfillment expenses decreased by 7.3% to RMB 260.9 million. Under the non-GAAP measures, the decrease was primarily due to first, a decrease in operation center-related expenses as we optimized our store and operation station networks and the second, a decrease in logistics expenses. As Kerry presented earlier, our quality inspection process has integrated the industry-leading AI and big data algorithms, minimizing expected errors and the losses from returns.

Our non-GAAP fulfillment expenses as a percentage of revenues was 9.1% compared with 12.8% in the same period last year. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 2.9% to RMB 299 million, excluding SBC expenses and amortization of intangible assets and further costs resulted from acquisitions.

Our non-GAAP selling and marketing expenses were RMB 216.7 million, which grew at a slower pace at 4.9% year-over-year. The increase was primarily due to the increase in marketing expenses and office-related expenses mainly composed of traveling expenses in relation to business development because of COVID pandemic faded. However, non-GAAP selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues decreased to 7.5% from 9.4% in the same period last year.

General and administrative expenses were RMB 76.4 million compared to RMB 45 million in the same period last year. Excluding SBC expenses, non-GAAP G&A expenses were RMB 57.4 million compared with RMB 28.4 million. The increase in non-GAAP G&A expenses was primarily due to an increase in professional services and consulting fees, non-GAAP G&A expenses as a percentage of total revenues were 2% compared with 1.3% in the same period last year.

Technology and content expenses decreased by 25.4% to RMB 47.4 million excluding SBC expenses and amortization of intangible assets and deferred costs resulting from acquisitions, non-GAAP technology and content expenses decreased by 26.3% to RMB 42.3 million. The decrease was primarily due to the change in technological personnel costs related to platforms as our platform matured. Non-GAAP technology and content expenses as a percentage of total revenues decreased to 1.5% from 2.6% compared with the same period compared to the last year.

As a result, our non-GAAP operating income was RMB 44.4 million in the first quarter of 2023. The non-GAAP operating margin was 1.5% compared with 0.2% in the same period the last year. As of March 31, 2023, cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and funds receivable from third-party payment service providers totaled RMB 2.5 billion, our sufficient cash on hand safeguards a sustainable growth outlook. As a recap, on December 9, 2022, we announced an extension of our existing USD 100 million share repurchase program for another 12-month period starting from December 28, 2022, based on management's strong confidence in our solid fundamentals and growth momentum.

During the first quarter of 2023 we repurchased over 1.4 million ADSs in the open market for a total cash consideration of USD 4.1 million. As of March 31, 2023, we have repurchased a total of 10 million ADSs for approximately USD 38 million under our share repurchase program.

Now turning to outlook for the second quarter of 2023 we currently expect the total revenues to be between RMB 2,850 million and RMB 2,950 million due to the seasonality of our business. As China's economy continues to normalize, and the impact of COVID-19 fades. We expect that our sourcing fulfillment functions will recover in tandem, we will continue to improve our cost efficiency, leverage our automated inspection facilities to further realize scale effects and accurately capture the cycling and shopping scenarios. We expect to further improve our non-GAAP operating margins in the coming years.

This forecast only reflects our current and the preliminary views on the market and the operational conditions, which are subject to change. This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question today will come from Joyce Ju of Bank of America.

(foreign language)

My first question is that during the first quarter we have seen very promising growth in the business accelerating from the previous quarter. So can you share a little bit more about the outlook for this year in terms of the economy currently in China as well as consumption of the electronics products, and my second question is on the progress of the multi-category recycling services. Do you see any categories that are showing potential for scaling up or contributing to the revenue and profitability in the future?

[Interpreted] Thank you for the question. I will take the first question. Since the reopening in the Chinese New Year, we have seen a rapid recovery offline, including in-person consumption at shopping malls, restaurants, and other local services. In line with these trends, our AHS stores have experienced a significant surge in business volume, while the number of 1P store products has grown by 42% year-on-year.

While durable goods consumption recovery is still on its way, we expect to see sustained trade-in service demand driven by the major promotions held by our e-commerce funders during the second quarter, by offering the option to upgrade devices in a cost-effective and eco-friendly way, our trade-in service provides value to consumers, who purchase new devices. It also serves to raise consumer awareness of circular consumption.

In addition to higher forcing volumes, we are refining our automation capabilities and integrating compliant refurbishment services to expand our inventory of high-quality pre-owned electronics. This improvement will provide consumers with a wider area of premium choices, we believe that consumers will always strive for better life and better products. Therefore, the demand for recycling and reusing pre-owned electronics is always there, and we are committed to working with phone brands for the betterment of trade-in experience and supply chain capabilities.

In the second quarter, we expect to achieve year-over-year revenue growth of 32.8% to 37.5%, while maintaining our annual target for non-GAAP operating profit.

I will answer the second question regarding the new category. We kicked off the recycling category expansion in the second quarter of 2022, starting with high-value bags and watches. Currently, the category has already established scale, in terms of trading volume, gold is another category that has achieved this level of development.

The development of these 2 categories is highly correlated with user trust in AHS recycle accumulated over the years. As of the end of March, all 100 AHS stores have fulfilled such recycling orders. Among them, the top 30 stores have an additional average monthly GMV of RMB 500,000. Recently, the monthly GMV for multicategory recycling has exceeded RMB 70 million, excluding camera equipment recycling, which is already on scale.

In terms of operations, we have been leveraging our own store brand fulfillment capabilities, while collaborating with merchant partners on quality inspection and distribution at the back end. It's clear that the transaction of used luxury goods including bags and watches has considerable potential for monetization.

The wide margin phase has laid the foundations for mutually beneficial collaboration with our partners. We will strive to achieve further breakthrough in scale and profitability by continuing to enhance our comprehensive capabilities in areas including service processes, user experience and structured data.

Our multi-category recycling business is built on the foundation of user trust in us and their AHS Recycle brand. We expect more users to become familiar with recycling and repeatedly return to our stores.

Multi-category recycling is an expansion of the capabilities we have built in our consumer electronics sector, and it represents our forward path for creating long-term value. Thank you for the question.

Our next question today will come from Weiting Tang of Goldman Sachs.

(foreign language) Thank you, management. I will translate for myself. What kind of strategic targets we have for our repair businesses? And what impact should we expect from our -- to our net profit from expanding our repair businesses?

[Interpreted] Thank you for the question. In the first quarter, compliant refurbished devices retailing increased for a fourth consecutive quarter and the corresponding ASP stabilized at RMB 2,600. We anticipate that the gross margin of the refurbished device retail business will remain stable, while its scale and its contribution to our 1P business will gradually increase. We believe that this will allow us to further close the value chain of the industry, obtain more profit based on the existing 1P sources and strengthen competitive edges.

By 2023, we aim to expand the coverage of our refurbishment operations to more regions, replicating the capabilities we have already established in East China and South China operation centers. In terms of product categories, we are going beyond mobile phones, while establishing refurbishment capabilities for tablets, smart watches and laptops, et cetera. At the same time, we will steadily improve our operations and enhance our brand-focused categories.

During the first quarter, the scale of our refurbished production remained at around 70,000 units, as we accumulate our refurbishment and supply chain capabilities for more product categories, we expect to add value to at least 160,000 units in the first half of 2023.

Our next question today will come from Jiajing Chen of CICC.

(foreign language) I will translate myself. What are the reasons for an improved adjusted OP margin? And do you have any plan to increase sales and marketing sales for new category recycling business and what's the outlook for the adjusted OP margin for the whole year?

Okay. Thank you for your question. I will take your question. So under the non-GAAP measures, we reported our new breakthrough in operating profit this quarter. Non-GAAP operating margin increased to 1.5% from 0.2% in the same quarter last year. This was mainly due to the optimization of cost efficiency of the fulfillment expenses both by improved automation capabilities in selling expenses as we further implement cost control measures.

In the first quarter, non-GAAP fulfillment expenses were RMB 261 million, accounting for 9.1% of total revenue. The non-GAAP fulfillment expenses decreased by [20.6%] year-on-year. The most evident reason is the scale effect of our automated facilities mentioned by Kerry. The 2 operation centers in Donghua and Changzhou handled over 40% of the total orders processed nationwide in the first quarter. Therefore, automation has a significant impact on the reduction of overall fulfillment costs.

At the same time, automation technology also brings about improvements in the accuracy of quality inspection and reduces the returns of goods and associated losses. In addition, we have optimized the deployment and operational efficiency of city-level operations stations. We started to take full control over operating stations in the third quarter of 2022 and optimizes the network, therefore, saving packaging and logistics fees due to distributed shipments.

The non-GAAP selling and the marketing expenses were RMB 217 million. Non-GAAP selling and the marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues was 7.5%, down 1.9 percentage points year-on-year. This was primarily due to a decrease of RMB 33.7 million in marketing expenses for Paipai marketplace, since we strategically downsized as a consignment business. And we are developing multi-category recycling, there was a corresponding fee increase of RMB 10 million in this quarter. We will maintain appropriate investment in new categories and brand building.

Looking into full year of 2023, we expect to continue improvements in cost efficiencies. At the same time, we will further amplify the positive impacts of our automation as we plan to automate 1 operation center every year. And for sales and margin, we keep our prudent spending pattern for mature businesses and selectively investing in new strategic initiatives. So we will -- we expect our non-GAAP operating margin to be increased at a healthy pace. Thank you for your question.

As there are no further questions, at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back to management for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you all again for joining us. A replay of today's call will be available on our IR website shortly, followed by a transcript when ready. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to e-mail us at ir@atrenew.com. Have a nice day.

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

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