Yalla Group Ltd (YALA) 2021 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for attending -- standing by for Yalla Group Limited's First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded.

Now I would like to turn the call over to your speaker host today, Ms. Kerry Gao, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Yalla's First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. We released our earnings earlier today and the release is now available on our IR website as well as on Newswire services.

Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, our future results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our earnings release and our registration statements filed with the SEC. Yalla does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Please also note that Yalla's earnings press release and this conference call include discussion of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Yalla's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures.

Today, you will hear from Mr. Tao Yang, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide an overview of our recent achievements and growth strategies. He will be followed by Mr. Saifi Ismail, the company's President, who will make a brief review of our recent developments. Mrs. Karen Hu, our Chief Financial Officer, will then provide additional details on the company's financial results and discuss financial outlook. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open up the call to questions. Our Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Jeff Xu, will join the call for our Q&A session.

With that said, I would now like to turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tao Yang. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Kerry, and thank you, everyone, for joining our 2021 first quarter earnings conference call. 2021 is off to a remarkable start. Yalla Group's total revenue increased almost by 40% Q-on-Q and reached USD 67.6 million, exceeding the upper end of our guidance range by 7.4%. This stellar performance was driven by our continued efforts to grow our user community, the effective conversion of active users into paying users and the further advancement of our monetization capabilities and initiatives.

In the first quarter of 2021, we also maintained robust profitability as demonstrated by our non-GAAP net margin of 49.7%. With the strong execution of our efforts to raise brand awareness across the Middle East and North Africa region and our effective marketing campaigns tailored to the local culture, monthly active users for our group increased by 14.6% Q-on-Q and reached 18.8 million. In addition, increasing user engagement on our platform drove Yalla Group's paying users up by 11.5% quarter-over-quarter to 5.8 million, leading to outstanding paying ratio of 31%. Our ability to monetize also continued to improve at our group revenue -- our group's ARPU grew roughly by 25.5% quarter-over-quarter, reaching $11.6 in Q1.

During previous earnings calls, we announced 4 new products in our pipeline. 3 of them are casual game platforms, including Baloot for users in Gulf countries, 101 Okey for Turkish users and Yalla Parchis for South American users. The beta version of all the 3 casual game products have been made available online, and we have also made great progress in refining the technological and user interface details of this new products over the past quarter. Our President, Saifi, will share more details with you in his part later.

Our fourth new product is YallaChat, an instant message for IM product designed specifically for Arabic users. We are pleased to share that we launched the beta version of YallaChat in March. With this strategically significant product, Yalla Group aims to build and strengthen connections among our individual apps and create an integrated and synergistic ecosystem. To this end, we have adopted measures to attract the right talent to join our R&D and product team. This beta version supports basic instant messaging functions, such as messaging, voice chatting and video chatting. Since its launch, our development team has continued to refine and enhance the product based on future feedback. And we will gradually roll out new design features and function on the platform based on the local user feedback and desires.

The improvement and the iteration of IM product is always an ongoing process. And the initial beta stage can take more than several months. We are dedicated to perfecting the details of the product before the team decides to officially launch the new product and start full promotion.

As we mentioned in our last earnings call, Yalla's top priority this year is to expand our user base. With new product lined up for official launch, we plan to increase our sales and marketing activities to build our initial user base for this product.

For our existing 2 products, Yalla and Yalla Ludo, we will maintain our strategy for steady user growth and don't expect to see much change in exact phase related to these 2 products. Furthermore, as we continuously enrich our portfolio, we aim to amplify synergies among our various products and gradually build and develop a comprehensive Yalla ecosystem. Our President Saifi, will elaborate more on his idea in a few minutes.

We had an outstanding first quarter marked by strong growth across our primary operational and financial metrics. In just a few days, Yalla is going to have its 5th anniversary. 5 years ago, we identified the voice chat to be uniquely suitable for online social networking and entertainment in MENA and pioneered the development of Yalla. And the first was voice-centric mobile social networking and entertainment platform in the region. Over the past 5 years, our leadership in this field was from strength to strength, and we gradually enriched and enhanced the product we offer to better serve local users while affirming our mission to build the most popular destination for online social networking and entertainment activity at MENA.

Looking ahead, we continue to closely watch trends in MENA's local cultures, expand our friendly community and build Yalla's ecosystem with various products and services tailored to local users' needs.

Now I will turn the call over to our President, Mr. Saifi Ismail, for a closer look at our recent development.

Thanks, Tao. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As we continue to enrich our product portfolio, including Yalla, Yalla Ludo and the 4 new products in the pipeline, we are looking to boost synergies among individual apps to develop a more integrated ecosystem, which will help us improve efficiency in acquiring new users going forward. With this move, we expect to see an increase in the flow of users from application to application, especially between the chat rooms available on each of our products. We also anticipate seeing an increase in users' awareness of the multiple products and services provided by the Yalla Group, which will, as a whole, lead to a larger user base, longer time spent in Yalla's ecosystem and deeper brand loyalty in the long run.

We recently tested the effectiveness of advertising Yalla on Yalla Ludo in a few regions and the result in traffic gain for Yalla was solid. While we have observed good potential for cross-selling on Yalla Ludo before we decide to launch this project officially, we plan to run more trials. Essentially, we will test the concept in a few countries first, progressively apply it to all other countries that we operate in and potentially replicate the same process to help promote our upcoming new products or even collaborate with other apps in the future. Another exciting update we would love to share with you and our investors here is about our new products, Yalla Parchis. As UAE's first technology unicorn listed on the NYSE, besides focusing on serving our MENA user needs in the Internet era, Yalla is also exploring overseas opportunities in the South American market. Our first product customized for South America, Parchis, has received very good user feedback in its beta trial. And we are very encouraged by its user metrics that we are constantly evaluating. We will keep monitoring the trend, and we will share more updates for Parchis' development with you next time.

Yalla will continue to leverage the team's deep local insights to provide MENA local users with various products tailored to their needs and preferences. As it remains dedicated to building and developing the Yalla ecosystem, our mission is to become the #1 provider for online social networking and entertainment in the MENA region. And we are well on our way to achieve it.

With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Karen, who will discuss our key financial and operational results.

Thank you, Saifi. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Our strong performance sustained into the first quarter as we steadfastly executed our growth strategy that priority is user experience and community development.

Our first quarter revenues grew by 221% year-over-year to USD 57.6 million, while our non-GAAP net income reached USD 33.6 million with a growth rate of 363.7% year-on-year. Our non-GAAP net margin remained elevated at 49.7%, reflecting our unique monetization strategy, marketing positioning and strong operational efficiency.

Now I would like to walk through our financial details for the first quarter of 2021. Our revenues were USD 67.6 million in the first quarter of 2021, a 221% increase from USD 21.1 million in the same period last year. The increase was primarily driven by the widening of both Yalla and Yalla Ludo user base and the enhancement in Yalla Group monetization capability.

Our average MAUs increased by 206.9% from 6.1 million in the first quarter of 2020 to 18.8 million in the first quarter of 2021. Yalla's MAUs increased by 81.6% to 7.3 million in the first quarter of 2021 from 4 million in the same period of last year. And Yalla Ludo's MAU increased by 445.4% to 11.5 million in the first quarter of 2021 from 2.1 million in the same period of last year. In addition, another primary contributor to our solid revenues growth was a significant increase in the number of paying users, which grew from 1.6 million in the first quarter of 2020 to 5.8 million in the first quarter of 2021.

Now let's look at our costs and expenses. Our cost of revenue was USD 24 million in the first quarter of 2021. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, cost of revenue in the first quarter of 2021 was USD 22.3 million, a 227.2% increase from USD 6.8 million for the same quarter last year. The increase was primarily due to an increase in commission fees for third-party payment platform resulting from our expanding business scale. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, other components of cost of revenues as a percentage of our total revenues remained relatively stable at 33% in the first quarter of 2021 compared with 32.3% in the same period in 2020.

Our selling and marketing expenses were USD 8.4 million in the first quarter of 2021. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, other components of selling and marketing expenses for the first quarter of 2021 were USD 5.1 million, an 81.7% increase from USD 2.8 million for the same quarter last year. The increase was primarily due to higher advertising and marketing promotional expenses as a result of our continued acquisition efforts.

Excluding share-based compensation expenses, other components of selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of our total revenue decreased from 13.4% in the first quarter of 2020 to 7.6% in the same period in 2021 primarily due to strong growth in organic user acquisition through word-of-mouth referrals as well as brand effect and enhanced marketing efficiency.

Our general and administrative expenses were USD 11.7 million in the first quarter of 2021. Excluding share-based compensation senses, other components of general and administrative expenses for the first quarter of 2021 was USD 3 million, a 124.4% increase from USD 1.3 million for the same quarter last year, which was primarily due to an increase in salaries and other benefits for our general and administrative staff, which was in turn driven by an expansion of our general and administrative staff. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, other components of general and administrative expenses as a percentage of our total revenues decreased from 6.4% in the first quarter of 2020 to 4.4% in the first quarter of 2021 due to economies of scale.

Our technology and product development expenses were USD 3.3 million in the first quarter of 2021. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, other components of technology and product development expenses for the first quarter of 2021 was USD 3.2 million, a 277% increase from USD 0.9 million for the same quarter last year. The increase was primarily due to an enhancement in salaries and benefits for our technology and product development staff, which was in turn driven by an expansion of our technology and product development arising from higher investments in new products and services.

As a result of these reasons, other components of technology and product development expenses as a percentage of our total revenue grew from 4% to 4.7% year-over-year. As such, our operating income was USD 20.2 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared with an operating income of USD 9.2 million in the same period last year. Excluding share-based compensation, non-GAAP operating income for the first quarter of 2021 was USD 34 million, a 267.8% improvement from the same quarter last year.

Our income tax expense was USD 0.43 million in the same -- in the first quarter of 2021 in comparison to USD 0.19 million in the first quarter of 2020.

Moving to the bottom line. Our net income was USD 19.8 million in the first quarter of 2021, a 114.6% increase from USD 9.2 million in the same period last year. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, non-GAAP net income for the first quarter of 2021 was USD 33.6 million, a 263.7% improvement year-over-year.

Next, I would like to briefly go through our liquidity and capital resources. As of March 31, 2021, we had cash and cash equivalents of USD 261.7 million as compared to cash and cash equivalents of USD 236.9 million as of December 31, 2020. This improvement demonstrates our resolve and capabilities to improve Yalla Group's operations on a consistent basis.

As we enter the second quarter with the Ramadan fasting period taking place across MENA between 13 April through 12 May in 2021, we expect to have a relatively moderate revenue due to potentially reduced social and entertainment activities, which is an annual seasonal impact. We expect our revenues to be between USD 65 million and USD 71 million in the second quarter of 2021, taking the seasonality into consideration.

Looking ahead, we will leverage our team's deep local insights, continue to develop the Yalla ecosystem and enhance our brand building to further pave the runway for long-term growth. As we are committed to delivering a super experience to our users and the meaningful returns for shareholders. The above outlook is based on the current market conditions and reflects the company's management current and preliminary estimates of marketing and operation conditions and customer demand, which are all subject to change.

This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

(Operator Instructions) The first question today comes from Feiya Zhao with Haitong International.

(foreign language) I will translate for myself. Thank you management for taking my questions and congrats on a strong quarter. So my question is mainly related to the Yalla Parchis. Could you please provide some color to the current stage of Yalla Parchis such as MAU revenue, user profile, time spent and user paying behavior? And what is the most active country for Yalla Parchis now? And when are you going to officially launch the product?

Feiya, those are very good questions. Based on the feedback we received, which clearly showed love for Yalla Parchis from users in South American market, we believe Parchis has the potential to become a popular product in this region. We have already started the promotion of the Yalla Parchis in Q1. And according to the App Annie's data, it is already among the top 5 in 6 countries under the board-game category in Android. And we will continue to monitor the engagement trend and look forward to sharing more feedback and data with you next quarter. I think we are starting to strengthen our campaigns in Q2. The numbers like the MAUs, the other options there, we will provide -- we prefer to provide you later -- next earnings call.

The next question comes from Bo Pei with Oppenheimer.

So I do have 2 quick questions here. So first is I guess our non-GAAP margin actually improved sequentially in 1Q. I guess that's because we haven't started spending on sales and marketing year. So my question is when do we plan to spend more on sales and marketing for -- especially for our new products, right? And then if we -- when we do that, what's going to be the impact on our net income margin? And then the second question is about our MAU growth outlook. So last time we talked about 10% to 15% sequential growth for the -- for each quarter of this year. So can management comment on that? Any update on that? And then how should we think about the MAU outlook for the new products, for example, by the end of this year, like what's going to be the user size for the new products?

Thank you, Bo. Thank you for your question. So for Q1, Yalla achieved a very good net margin gain. And for Q2, since we have gone to full promotions of our new products, we will see some influence from that to our margins. In terms of how much we are going to spend in the sense -- and marketing, it really depends on users feedback and marketing dynamics. We will adjust our promotion strategy accordingly and in time to maximize the efficiency of spending. For the Yalla Ludo's MAUs outlook, as we mentioned last quarter, we think that both products MAU will grow by 10% -- 10% to 15% quarter-over-quarter in 2021. And for the new products, MAUs outlook, we think that it will depend on the user's feedback and for the sales and marketing progress. Thank you for your question.

The next question comes from [Ka] Chen with CITIC.

Congratulations for the quarter. So my question is about the Yalla Chat. So in terms of the instant message product, how to see the compensation from other products like WhatsApp? And what is your re-growth strategy and time line for Yalla Chat?

I'd like to answer the question. As a company with local teams based in UAE, we are dedicated to offering an IM product that's tailored to Arabic users life scenarios, using habits and preferences, which is the main difference between Yalla Chat and WhatsApp. We will build many localized features for this product and continue to refine it based on our local user's feedback. And in terms of user growth strategy, when we think the product is ready, we will introduce Yalla Chat users in our Yalla community from Yalla and Yalla Ludo and other products and encourage them to give it a try. In this way, we will be able to leverage the community we have built and the social connections we have fostered over the past years.

The next question comes from [Chicky G] with CICC.

First, I would like to congratulate for the -- another strong quarter. I have a question regarding your product pipeline. Currently, both of Yalla's products are video-centric since -- are voice-centric since video entertainment applications have gained a lot of attention these days. Do you have any plans to launch video-centric products in the future? Can you please share more color about that?

Thank you, [Chicky]. At this point, we don't have video-centric product in our pipeline. But it doesn't mean that we will only focus on voice-centric product. We will keep motoring MENA users' needs and change in social networking and entertainment, and we will continue to adjust our strategy accordingly. Thank you.

The next question comes from [Fiona Fan] with Jefferies.

Congratulations on the great results. So I have 2 questions. So the first question is about the strategies of user acquisitions. So I would like to ask are there any differences of user acquisition, strategies for different products and in different regions? So like, for example, we launched a new product in South America, so what will be the marketing strategies there? And my second question is about mid- to long-term outlook. So could management share some colors about outlook for 2 to 3 years from now, like geographic expansion and business line expansion and product offerings?

Thanks, [Fiona], for the question. This is Jeff. I'll be answering the question. Through running marketing campaigns on Yalla and Yalla Ludo over the past 5 years, our team has gained valuable experiences and gradually built strong stability in marketing. Our high user acquisition efficiency can be demonstrated by our expense control in sales and marketing and the consistent increase in our MAUs. Beside the traditional user acquisition through our advertising on media both our Yalla and Yalla Ludo has also shown strong organic growth. And at the same time, because of the high quality of the product and deep localization, our products have also been recommended for free by top platforms like Apple and Google. This all contributed to our successful user acquisition.

For every new product, we will design marketing plans based on our understanding of the products, special characteristics. And we will always follow our own pace in execution and adjust our strategy according to the feedback and the metrics that we keep monitoring. And it's always a very dynamic process. We also have different trends tailored for different regions to maximize the efficiency of paying. So for the upcoming promotion of our new products, we're very confident in our team's capabilities to achieve strong results. Thank you for the question again.

And I'll be answering the second question. Since for the next 2, 3 years, MENA will certainly be our main focus. And with the Yalla Parchis launch, we will keep our eye on the South American market and see if there are any other potential opportunities. In addition to Yalla, Yalla Ludo and the 4 new products we introduced earlier, we will continue to monitor local users' needs and preferences and identify further opportunities to serve MENA users. At the same time, as we introduced earlier, we will gradually start to drive traffic from 1 product to another with the dedication to build and develop our Yalla ecosystem, which will, as a whole, lead to a more integrated user community, longer time spend in Yalla's ecosystem and deeper brand loyalty in the long run. Thank you, [Fiona].

As there are no further questions now, I'd like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you in the next quarter. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact Yalla's Investor Relations through the contact information provided on our website or The Piacente Group Investor Relations.

This concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for attending.