111 Inc (YI) 2024 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining 111's conference call today.

On the call today from the company are Dr. Gang Yu, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman; Mr. Junling Liu, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO; Mr. Luke Chen, CFO of 111's major subsidiary; and Mr. Harvey Wang, COO.

As a reminder, today's conference call is being broadcast live via webcast.

The company's earnings press release was distributed earlier today and together with the earnings presentation are available on the company's IR website.

Before the conference call get started, let me remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1990.

Such statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, all of which would cause actual results to differ materially.

For more information about these risks, please refer to the company's filings with the SEC. 111 does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise as required under applicable law.

Please note that all numbers are in RMB and all comparisons refer to year-over-year comparisons unless otherwise stated.

Please also refer to the earnings press release for detailed information of the comparative financial performance on a year-over-year basis.

With that, I will turn the call over to 111 CEO, Mr. Junling Liu.

Please go ahead.

Good morning and good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings call.

The information we'll be discussing here is also available in the slides posted earlier today on the company's website, and I encourage you to download the presentation as well as the earnings report from our Investor Relations website at ir.111.com.cn.

For the first quarter of 2024, we are thrilled to kick off the year with solid performance, notably a return to quarterly operational profitability for the first time after years of dedicated effort towards long-term resilient growth with strategic operational refinements.

In this call, I'll provide an overview of the macro environment, highlights some exciting opportunities ahead that will follow with financial highlights and updates on our ongoing technology empowerment as well as the supply side efforts.

Finally, I'll delve into our future growth strategy before our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Luke Chen presents the full analysis of our financial performance.

Looking into the macro environment for our industry, the national anti-corruption campaign in the healthcare sector that began in late 2023 is continuing this year.

Recent developments indicate a deepening of this campaign.

The regulatory and ethics enforcement efforts targeting the entire industry chain.

The industry anticipates that stricter scrutiny on ethical practices is becoming the longer process.

Now they will foster transparency and integrity in healthcare transactions, particularly in hospital procurement, which will ultimately promote healthy industry competition and development.

As a result, more drug sales are expected to transition to retail pharmacies that are more accessible and transparent compared to the hospital system.

This transition is encouraged by the state and is poised to benefit us as a specialized in the outside hospital pharmaceutical market, we expect huge potential and prospects.

Considering the current economic and capital market conditions, entry barriers for new startups in this growing industry are formidable, especially when we're adding the healthcare industry's high regulatory standards and requirements.

We are, however, strategically positioned to adopt a market oriented approach for the outside hospital pharmaceutical market.

We aim to empower the entire industry chain through a business model that emphasizes superior operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Our goal is to capture greater market share in this thriving sector by offering a comprehensive cost-efficient product range with unparalleled focus on customer experience.

To achieve this, we have introduced various mechanisms, including enabling first-party teams to deepen relationships with pharmaceutical companies and incentivizing merchants to offer competitive price products on our digital platform.

Combined with advanced technology, these mechanisms drive robust traffic, operational efficiency, and higher sales volumes.

By utilizing leading edge technology, rich data insights and innovative service models, thus strengthening 111's value proposition to both upstream and downstream customers.

Also of note is the digital transformation over the entire value chain in the healthcare industry.

As we are in a leadership position and the [status] of evolution, we are committed to reshaping the healthcare industry value chain through our fully digitized operating system.

By empowering the upstream and downstream segments with highly efficient digital solutions, we are driving continuous operating cost reductions.

Our high-quality digital technology facilitates effective sales, procurement, and operations management, including customer demand analysis, product inventory management, and warehouse allocation.

In the first quarter, we continued to generate positive strides in digitization, which I will discuss further later on.

Excitingly, our company achieved a qualitative change on operational efficiency after years of development.

In the first quarter, we realized income from operations for the first time, validating the efficacy of our growth strategies and business model.

Our income from operations reached RMB3.7 million during the period compared with the loss from operations of RMB21.7 million a year ago.

Non-GAAP income from operations even more than tripled to a record high of RMB8.9 million.

The achievements are particularly significant considering a slight 4.6% year-over-year decrease in the first quarter revenue.

This fall was attributed to a higher baseline set in the first quarter of 2023 during the peak of the pandemic, which led to increased market demand for health-related products and medications.

However, the market has stabilized and normalized.

The profitability largely stems from ongoing improvements in operational efficiency, driven by continuous enhancements across pretty much all business functions.

Our total operating expenses for the first quarter accounted for 5.8% of net revenue down 120 basis points from the previous year.

Specifically, we've achieved noteworthy reductions in various expense categories.

We've managed to cut fulfillment expenses to 2.5% of net revenues this quarter, down from 2.8% in the same quarter last year, reflecting a decrease in fulfillment costs by 13.8%.

Our general and administrative expenses have fallen to 0.5% of net revenues from 1.1% a year ago.

Technology expenses were 0.5% of net revenues as well, down from 0.7% a year earlier.

Selling expenses have slipped as a percentage of net revenues to 2.2% in this quarter from 2.4% in the previous year.

Excluding share-based compensation, our operating expenses as a percentage of net revenues have decreased 60 basis points to 5.7%.

Additionally, our operating cash flow also turned positive.

Our operational efficiency was achieved through strategic investments in infrastructure and staffing as we continue focusing on key areas for long-term and sustainable growth.

The digital capability we have built over the years is at a very sophisticated level to deliver value and quality performance to end customers, allowing us to reduce technology and staffing expenses.

Our ambition has always been to become the most efficient healthcare, e-commerce operator in the industry.

With our relatively small scale and current revenue level, we have already demonstrated our exceptionally high operational efficiency, which even surpasses that of large traditional [pop] players.

This makes us very proud, and we will continue this effort towards setting the industry benchmark for efficiency as our goal, while sustaining profitability.

When we grow in scale and refine our operations, operating costs are likely to further grow, contributing to higher efficiency.

Our effort in this area will be relentless as we firmly believe this is going to be our competitive advantage and we are not afraid of any competition.

Next, let's delve into operational accomplishments of the quarter, which was marked by continuous progress in technology empowerment.

These advancements not only bolster our operational efficiency, but also pave the way for enhanced returns in the future, a testament of our commitment to innovation and excellence.

We're seeing the initial benefits of transitioning from a product intermediary to becoming a tech powered healthcare platform.

Through the digitization of various business models such as the DBP and marketplace, coupled with the introduction of the joint venture and the franchise warehouses as well as a self-built logistics network to connect upstream and downstream customers, they're propelled -- we have propelled 111 into a new platform that's widely recognized by both upstream and downstream partners.

The shift has effectively ramped-up cash flow, slashed inventory turnover, and enriched partnerships.

This has fostered a synergistic ecosystem with shared knowledge, resources, and capabilities, net cloud input growth, and success.

Our AI improvement initiatives have already yielded positive results in our operations.

By utilizing AI and large language models and advanced algorithms to optimize load price strategies and the traffic allocation mechanism of order conversion rate saw encouraging improvements.

These results highlight the success that our technology team's efforts in our application development.

One major challenge we faced was Bitcoin.

Due to the lack of common standards in the industry and the multiple names a single [data] kind of have across different companies and the regions.

AI proved to be invaluable in ultimately in this labor intensive task, enabling us to contribute industry data to the Shanghai beta exchange were also impressed by the impact of 111 Health, our AI power to developed by our tech team.

It effectively addresses both internal and external customer issues, reducing the need for additional staff and cutting expenses.

Although it is still early days, we anticipate further AI applications will to continue to streamline our operations and drive innovation.

Additionally, we continued digital empowerment for merchants with the launch of mercantile mobile tools.

These stores provide digital features such as merchant mobile report, business campuses, and sales management, enabling our partners to access real-time business performance anytime anywhere.

We already saw the daily average usage rate of over 70% for these innovative features, which is very encouraging for further innovations.

For the [mall], we can also use our competitor's system to match the most optimal carriers, which cuts costs and enhances delivery efficiency.

For every single order before it goes out for delivery, our system can make real-time decisions on which carrier to use based on logistics info collected as well as volume and date.

Every single order is selected by the system and assigned to a carrier with the order automatically allocated to the most suitable warehouse for delivery.

Starting deeper into our supply side efforts, we empower our assortment team through our forefront intelligent data platform by analyzing the best-selling categories and products.

With big data and a sales forecasting algorithms combined with online and off-line transaction data and industry data, as of Q1 2024, the broadband catalog included a total of 6,567 new products contributing to approximately RMB460 million GMV cumulatively, while reducing the group's pop product out-of-stock rate to 2.8% from 5.2%.

Moreover, in a move to optimize operations and add value to the supply side, we launched a new delivery and [candidate] model to streamline logistics, not only for us, but also for merchants.

We have established the [Hong Kong] pharmaceutical logistics network to provide professional logistics service.

Our Hong Kong project optimizes internal cost reduction with 20% lower distribution costs compared to traditional logistics.

Secondly, it empowers the external supply chain.

Previously, each merchant had to send their product samples to various warehouses individually.

Now they can consolidate their shipment to [going to house] first and then our system will intelligently distribute them to the respective locations.

This makes for major improvement in efficiency as well as provides a service to merchants which we can charge for separately.

Merchants using the service and save costs and the damage rates resulting from transportation can fall as much as 60%.

With the support over the Hong Kong product, strengthen the business negotiations and our intelligent selection of the most optimal areas, logistics expenses dropped.

This together with lower delivery costs, less warehouse labor costs, and generated from enhanced the work efficiency and decrease of our hosting expenses primarily led to a 14% year-over-year reduction in fulfillment costs to RMB89 million in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the company has innovated its supply chain model by unveiling joint venture warehouses.

The new model is poised to revolutionize our expansion strategy, [slashing] investment timelines and capital expenditures while accelerating nationwide coverage.

Previously, we invested in and built our own warehouses, which may take at least two years to see profitable operations.

The new model allows us to partner with the strategic warehouse owners to achieve growth and reduce intensive CapEx expenditure by leveraging partners existing assets and our proprietary digital assistant.

We've also got a significant accolades on the new patent all demonstrating valued recognition from government agencies and professional institutions for our business practices, operational performance, and dedicated innovations.

These affirm our pioneering role in digital commerce transformation.

Notably, we were honored as 2023 Shanghai Industrial Internet Demonstration platform by the Shanghai Municipal commission of the economy and informatization, solidifying our position as a digital service platform for the pharmaceutical industry chain.

This recognition validates our commitment to digitization, enhancing service capabilities and driving technological innovation.

We earned the prestigious title of 2023 to 2024 Shanghai E-commerce Demonstration Enterprise from the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, showcasing our pivotal role in advancing high-quality e-commerce in the city.

In April, we secured a new patent for our voice service enhancement system, expanding our technology portfolio to 24 patents.

This reaffirms our ongoing commitment to innovation, enabling more intelligent responses to customer inquiries and then maintaining our technological leadership in the industry.

Next, I'm going to discuss our strategies for future growth, revenue margin and profits.

We remain committed to delivering efficient, cost-effective, one-stop shopping experiences that meet customer needs and secure our competitive edge.

Utilizing data analytics and market research, we can anticipate customer preferences and shorten our offerings align with demand while prioritizing low pricing through advanced digital capabilities.

This commitment ensures exceptional value without compromising quality, fostering long-term loyalty and recognition from customers.

Another cost strategy is to deepen our partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.

By closely collaborating with these partners, we aim to better serve the needs of our customers with a diversified medicine portfolio and drive mutual growth.

We've made significant strides in this area and will continue to do so, particularly by leveraging our digital marketing network to promote sales, especially in lower-tier cities.

Our extensive digital marketing network provides us with a powerful platform to showcase the product of our pharmaceutical partners.

Through targeted campaigns and promotions, we'll be able to increase brand visibility and drive sales in previously underserved markets.

This benefit not only our partners, but also enhances our position as a leading e-commerce platform in the pharmaceutical sector.

Amid the evolving market situation, our private label business demonstrates impressive results.

Its revenues surged 89% from the previous year in the first quarter, while gross profit rose 55% with a gross margin of 29%.

This line of business currently encompassing three distinct brands enable us to offer a diversified product portfolio that significantly contributes to our gross margin.

Additionally, this strengthens our brand equity and enhances customer class.

Moreover, we will accelerate our investment in the JDD platform which has been attracting an increasing number of partners, which substantially increased our product range.

The growth to that service model is particularly exciting as it indicates the growing value proposition of our innovative business model and its ability to draw up interest from a diverse range of stakeholders.

Looking ahead, our efforts for the JDD platform will include enhancing its features and functionalities to address the needs of our partners as well as expanding its reach to a wider partner base.

We believe that JDD will continue to be a key driver of our growth and the competitiveness in the years to come.

In addition to driving top-line growth, we're also focused on optimizing our operating costs to improve efficiency and ultimately our profitability.

We will step up our efforts to advance several initiatives implemented for achieving this goal.

For example, we aim to onboard half of our merchant partners on planned [new] delivery and [independent] model.

We will use upgraded by house network to enhance inventory management and fulfillment capabilities, thereby reducing lead times and improving customer satisfaction.

Additionally, we are adopting AI sales representatives to automate and optimize the sales process driving higher platform traffic and the conversion rates follow reducing operational costs.

Operational efficiency is central to our strategy, and we will continue investing in advanced technologies to streamline processes, reduce waste, boost productivity, and ultimately solidify our leading position in the marketplace.

An important aspect of our technology investment is in our AI innovations and digitization.

Many parts of our operations are embedded in AI, and we fully embrace digital transformation across our business to drive operational efficiency, customer engagement, and product innovation unlocking future growth opportunities.

It is important to note that digitization is vital to our vision for the future.

With a 100% digital operating system internally, we have achieved industry-leading operational efficiency.

This performance has not only enhanced our bottom line, but also positioned us as a catalyst for transformation across the entire value chain, granting in both upstream and downstream customers access to our technological ecosystem and expertise.

By doing so, we are not just improving our own processes, we are revolutionizing the way our industry operates and reshaping the traditional value chain.

We are confident in our ability to remain at the forefront of this digitization and how it will empower us in higher revenue and profit levels.

With that, I'll hand the call to Mr. Luke Chen to walk through our financial results.

Thank you.

Thank you, Junling, and good morning or evening, everyone.

Moving to the financials, my prepared remarks will focus on a few key business and financial, highlights, for details on our first quarter 2024 results, please refer to slides 16 to 19, section 2 of our presentation.

Again, all comparisons are year-over-year and all numbers are in RMB unless otherwise stated.

I'll start with the first quarter results.

Considering the sudden sales surged during the pandemic in Q1 last year, we managed to maintain our net revenue base for the quarter, which decreased 4.6% to RMB3.5 billion.

Gross segment profit for the quarter amounted to RMB208.5 million while gross segment margin was 5.9% for the quarter.

Total operating expenses for the quarter decreased 20.6% to RMB204.8 million.

As a percentage of net revenue total operating expenses for the quarter were down to 5.8% from 7% as we continue to enhance our operating leverage and optimize our operational efficiency.

Fulfillment expenses as a percentage of net revenue for the quarter were down to 2.5% from 2.8% in the same quarter of last year.

Selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of net revenue for the quarter was 2.3%, down from 2.4% in the same quarter of last year.

General and administrative expenses as a percentage of net revenue accounted for 0.5%, down by 1.1% in the same quarter of last year.

Technology expenses accounted for 0.5% of net revenue, down from 0.7% in the same quarter of last year.

As a result, income from operations was RMB3.7 million compared to loss from operations of RMB21.7 million in the same quarter of last year.

Non-GAAP income from operations was RMB8.9 million compared to RMB2.5 million in the same quarter of last year.

As a percentage of net revenues, non-GAAP income from operations account for 0.3% in the quarter as compared to 0.1% in the same quarter of last year.

Non-GAAP net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was RMB8.6 million compared to RMB7.6 million in the same quarter last year.

As a percentage of net revenues, non-GAAP net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders account for 0.2% in the quarter of which is same as last year.

As you can see, we are improving our financial performance quarter by quarter and have achieved operating income on a quarterly basis for the first half.

Please refer to slides 20 to 24 of the [appendix] section for select financial statements.

A quick note, our cash position as of March 31, 2024, we had cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments of RMB627.3 million and we were pleased to report that we have achieved positive operating cash flow during the quarter.

As of the date of this earnings release, the company had a total outstanding amount of RMB1.1 billion, which has been included in the balance of redeemable non-controlling interest and accrued expenses and other liabilities owing to a group of investors of one pharmacy technology pursuant to the equity investment made in 2020 as previously disclosed.

As of the date of this earning release, we have received redemption requests from certain of such investors for a total redemption amount of RMB0.2 billion in accordance with the terms of their initial investment in non-pharmacy technology.

Furthermore, we have entered into written agreements and all commitment letters with investors are representing a majority of the total carrying amount for the total [lease] scheduled redemption payment.

This concludes our prepared remarks.

Thank you.

Operator, we are now ready to begin the Q&A session.

(Operator Instructions) Edwin Zu, individual investor.

Good evening.

This is Edwin Zu.

I would like to extend my congratulations on the outstanding results achieved this quarter.

The impressive performance is a clear testament to the collaborative efforts and strategic initiatives taken by the company.

I have two questions.

The first is that I have observed a significant [double] digital sequential decrease in the FG&A expense and IT expense this quarter.

What is the potential for further reduction in operating expenses?

The second one is the -- has the company initiated any new attempts in IT technology such as AI relative to project?

Please elaborate on any particular application.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Let me just answer the first question with regards to the reduction in SG&A and the operating expenses.

Obviously, we have been pursuing the goal to be the most efficient operator in our industry.

So with the current resources in hand, we feel that we absolutely can continue to scale our business.

When we grow in scale -- let's say, when we cross the RMB20 billion threshold, we're very confident we can operate at 24% to 5% range, which means a lot to our business.

So this quarter with RMB3.5 billion in revenue, we are already operating at 5.7%.

And obviously, mind you, we have a lot of potential to grow our gross margin over time as we gain the upper hand in the market and then, of course, our ability to deliver profit to spend out in the industry.

So fundamentally, our competitive edge will depend on our operational efficiency and we're going to pursue this relentlessly and we're very confident that we [have] growth in scale and that when we further refine and streamline our operations, the confidence that the overall operational efficiency will continue to improve.

Thank you.

Let me take the second question, Edwin.

You ask about what advancement the company has made in technology, especially related to AI, let me just mention a few.

First of all, as you can see that we have made some initial success in transitioning to [platforming] -- our platform, our total GMV reached over 70%, and certainly, we have made several progress in several fronts, [first], the launch of the JDD, and we'll have to speed up our warehouse in development to joint venture and franchising warehouses.

And also we established the Hong Kong logistics services to upstream and downstream partners.

All these need a strong support from IT.

And a lot of the new warehouses use our systems and we provide these services to SaaS.

And second is that, we use the large language models to -- an algorithm to improve our traffic allocation as well as conversion.

So this process also improved cross-selling.

And you can see that our conversion rate has significantly improved.

Also we have a launch [where] it's a supply chain finance services.

Certainly we have lots of partners to -- the banks and financial institutions provide the services.

But we will have to do the optimization -- for our customers how to match them to the best service and the best providers.

And that's also done through our technology and our data service.

And Junling just mentioned that we [signed] this year [called Bogwan] data platform.

Such a platform uses not only our internal data -- online data, but also offline data to our customers and then industry data.

And through this process, we have introduced -- this data help us to introduce over 6,000 new products.

These products gave us much higher margin rate and sales rate.

So that -- and we just mentioned these few that enable toward IT and AI technology.

Thank you.

I'm looking forward to witness continued success and even greater achievements in the next quarter.

Thank you.

Victor Yang, individual investor.

This is Victor Yang.

I'm an individual investor.

First of all, congratulations to Gang, Junling, Luke, and the whole staff of 111 on the impressive performance.

I have two questions first is, in achieving operating profitability and net profit this quarter, can you give more details on the strategic initiatives and operational changes that lead to this milestone?

And what are you expecting for the rest of the year 2024?

We last [kept] this pace being profitable?

This is the first question.

And the second question is about the supply chain cost.

We have noticed a significant reductions in costs in 111's supply chain.

Can you explain what measures and actions the company has taken to achieve this result?

Thank you.

Yeah, so when it comes to achieving profitability, as an Internet company, it is a real major milestone.

Companies in this space have to spend lots of capital and resources to build out the infrastructure and systems.

Our strategy has always been clear.

Our first step is to build infrastructure and secondly, we have to build scale, and thirdly, we're going to achieve profitability.

So that in our previous years of ECU [strips] and earnings calls, we have elaborated on that strategy and we actually delivered.

So the fundamental driver to achieve the profitability comes from really [hard] operational efficiency by leveraging our digital technology.

Of course, our goal is to be the most efficient operator in our industry.

And we are well on our way.

When it comes to the future, we feel very confident to sustain our profitability with the foundation we have built, the trend of [good] sales outside of the hospital space and the focus on value delivery to our customers.

We'll be very excited by the opportunities lying ahead of us.

Okay.

That looks very promising.

(technical difficulty) Let me take the question on supply chain.

You can see that last quarter, even last couple of years, supply chain efficiency improvement has been highlighted at the very core of our business.

We're very proud of it.

As you know that the supply chain contains many components, including the sourcing, the warehousing, the storage, the warehouse operations, the packaging, the delivery, handling downstream returns, also all our

[RTVs].

So all these are very important parts of the supply chain.

So we have made the progress on all of these aspects.

First of all, Junling mentioned about sourcing.

We will go more and more direct to source from the companies.

And then about warehousing, not only we are -- through process improvement, not only improve there, our own warehouse costs (technical difficulty) joint venture and franchising warehouse, we speed up our Class B expansion.

Also of OEM, we have [new] negotiations towards reducing our rental cost as well as the packaging costs.

Regarding the delivery cost, we have made several improvements.

Why is that?

So we have a system that chooses the best optimal assignment of the delivery of each package to the best logistics service providers.

Also, we established the so-called the Hong Kong logistics service.

So the service was started by -- serving our own internal needs.

So by tight shipping tools from our fulfillment centers.

As you know that we have a total of 11 FCs, fulfillment centers, which you saw already in a very large volume.

And we expect all those routes that not only reduce our internal transshipment cost by 100%, by drastically reducing the damage costs -- that damage cost reduced by 60%.

So that we extended our service to our partners in all the KBP partners and all the [auto] companies.

We enable them to just ship out one fulfillment center we make for the distribution.

And we start to expand that line because that line has a truckload capacity, but as well as lower cost, much, much lower damage cost.

So that helps us in the delivery cost.

Also, as you know, since our damage is reduced, also help us in reducing the RTBs.

So all these together help us to reduce the total fulfillment costs by a very remarkable amount.

We feel that we are becoming the most efficient operator in the industry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for the answers.

And I'm looking forward to seeing continuous growth and more success in the coming months.

Thank you.

James Bonsor, individual investor.

Good evening.

This is James Bonsor, an individual investor.

I would like to congratulate the company on achieving impressive results this quarter.

Evidently a lot of hard work and persistence has gone into this and I have two questions as well, if I may.

Firstly, you mentioned China's anti-corruption healthcare campaign is expected to boost the retail pharmaceutical market.

How does the company plan to capitalize on this to increase market share?

And what specific competitive strengths does the company possess in this growing industry?

And then secondly, 111 is known for leveraging digitalization, both upstream and downstream in the healthcare sector.

Are there any forthcoming plans or measures aimed at further enhancing online engagement for both in the upcoming quarters?

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, James.

I'm glad you noticed the anti-corruption campaign in the healthcare sector in China.

Obviously, we absolutely want to grab this golden opportunity to grow our market share.

Today, our scale is still relatively small compared to some of the well established players, especially those traditional players.

However, we have already built up our core competency, which is our operational efficiency.

We don't have the resources and access to free capital -- or pretty much close to free, like some of the state-owned enterprises.

What we rely on is really our ability to operate this business with the utmost efficiency.

A big competitive advantage enable us to offer the widest selection of very competitive prices and overtime customers recognize this value and buying more and more from us.

Hence our market share and wallet share will grow.

And I believe that our internal 100% digital operating system has proven its value when it comes to operational efficiency.

And we are in a position to really enable both the upstream and downstream customers.

An estimation is pushing digitization.

This competitive advantage is going to really create momentum to our business.

Thank you.

Let me talk about the enabling business.

We have launched and then what we are planning to do.

Junling mentioned that we provide a lot of tools for our partners.

As we are moving towards a platform business, we are launching a lot of mobile tools for merchants.

And the (technical difficulty) they can see daily reports, their [ink canvas], and they're

-- [commence their cells].

So they can see their product flow.

They can see the profile of the customers and the price they sell of their products, so on and so on.

Both those important metrics come have been seeing and revived through the platform, and we are going to launch many more new digital tools for our partners.

That's one.

Second, I mentioned about simple logistic network.

Right now we have more than -- like 30 or so routes and we are definitely expanding those routes, especially where we see the huge demand from our partners.

We can also see a very remarkable cost reduction as well as expense reductions.

And those are welcomed by our partners.

So we're definitely expanding those.

We also go through a very rigorous training and communication activities to improve the overall supply chain responsiveness and the efficiency.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate the extra color and good luck with for future implementation.

Kiran Wang, private investor.

Good evening.

This is Kiran Wang from Hong Kong.

I'm an individual investor.

Congratulations on the big progress in this quarter.

I have two questions.

First question.

The private label business at the company has shown rapid growth.

Do you envision this becoming one of the primary growth drivers in the coming years?

And what strategies are in place to develop this business further throughout 2024?

Second question is how do you make any strategic adjustments post COVID to strengthen revenue streams?

Are these adjustments expected to have an impact in the upcoming quarters.

Thank you.

I will take the question regarding private label and I think Junling will take your second question.

And for private label, we already have a couple of private label registers.

We have a (spoken in foreign language) that is for our chain store customers.

And also we have another brand called (spoken in foreign language) translated directly will be a Royal Owner.

This is for our individual store customer.

And also we have a [landing gear] that is for dietary supplements and also some others like for medical device, et cetera.

As Junling just mentioned in last quarter, our private label products kept a very strong momentum and grown 89%, close to 90% YoY.

Most of these private label products have been very well accepted by our pharmacy customers.

And currently, I think they are now sold in various pharmacies across the country, including in very remote areas like [Shin Yang] and [Shi Jang] et cetera.

There are more and more SKUs in our pipeline.

Yes, we will keep our investment in these private label, including OTCs including [our] medical device battery supplements, et cetera.

Why we put so much effort on is the private label?

I think if you know, private label products have been very key margin contributor and also revenue contribution of both top chain stores, which has been disclosed.

You can find this detail in financial reports.

As our customer, our 111 customer looks for pharmacy, they are basically small, medium chain or even individual store.

They don't have such a capability to build up their own brands.

So our (spoken in foreign language) has become a very attractive solution for these pharmacy customers.

Because they also need a [low-cost] product to compete with those top chain stores.

To conclude, this private label product will bring us a sustainable profit to 111.

They also bring sustainable profit to our pharmacy customers.

They are not only high-margin for us, they're also emerging for our customers.

And literally, they also help us build out a long-term relationship with those customers because if they want to buy those (spoken in foreign language), they only come to 111.

So we will continue our investment in this area.

Thank you.

Hey, Kiran.

Let me just take that question about the adjustments post COVID.

Obviously, COVID, generally the demand is modest.

It's not really sustainable.

Our sales went through the roof during the peak of the pandemic, but we always assume that the market will normalize fast.

As I spoke earlier, our mindset has always been to have the assortment that really meet customer needs.

And I spoke about having [Bog Wan] as our guide for assortment management.

So Bog Wan is really the tool we use to constantly seek feedback from customers, what they really need.

And our objective is to offer the broadest selection at the competitive price, including the private-label products.

So we should really anticipate that we'll be adding more and more categories and there should be more and more revenue sources in the future.

Thank you.

(technical difficulty) Virtue Capital.

Good evening.

This is Nick from Virtue Capital.

And I have two questions.

My first one is about Hong Kong IPO.

So the Chinese authority has been encouraging domestic companies to go public in Hong Kong.

I'm wondering if the company has been considering a dual listing in Hong Kong?

And my second question is about our cash burn rate.

Specifically, can you talk about our current cash status versus our redemption expectations?

And what measures are we going to take to improve our cash status?

Thank you.

Yes, Nick.

We are actually open to all listing options, including domestic site change as well as the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

So we will evaluate the options, which will be most suitable for the growth of the company as well as the benefits of our shareholders.

Of course, on secondary listing -- our second -- primary listing in Hong Kong is an option into consideration, and we will make the appropriate disclosure regarding any lifting initiatives according to SEC rules.

Regarding your second pair of questions on the cash position and the cash position improvements, as we just disclosed as of March end of 2024, we had cash and cash equivalents, and we said cash and short-term investment of RMB600 -- around RMB630 million and we have achieved positive cash -- operating cash flow for the fourth quarter.

Now you have noticed that we are turning to profitability -- profit from [quarter] this year and we're no longer burning cash.

Now we believe our cash at hand are sufficient to support our business expansion.

Junling mentioned, we are improving our operation efficiency.

We want to be the most efficient operator in this industry.

It's also relating to our working capital management.

We have very high working efficiency -- working capital management.

If you look at our accounts payable days, around 45 days, our inventory turnover is around 25 days and our accounts receivable is around 10 days, that gives us a positive on cash flow.

So we will continue to monitor very closely our working capital, including the initiatives to better utilize [division] of supply chain finance, so that we will create actual cash at hand.

In terms of redemption, we have also disclosed that we are in the process of negotiating with our investors on the rearrangement of those redemptions.

As a matter of fact, we have already entered into written agreements or commitment that matters with the investors to rearrange the redemption schedule, of which already representing the majority of the total recurring amounts.

Nick, hope I answered your two questions.

Yes, thank you.

Jack Wang, Water Tower Research.

Hi, this is Jack with Water Tower Research.

Thank you for taking the question and congrats on the solid results.

It's really interesting to see that 111 has innovated the joint venture warehouse model.

So my first question is how will this model supported the company's growth?

And are there plans to establish additional warehouses under this model in 2024?

And my second question is that we see that your operational expenses are just below 6% of revenues.

So do you believe this figure is already the lowest within the industry or would there be opportunities to further enhance operational efficiency?

Or is your goal just maintaining this level going forward?

Any color you can share on that would be great.

Thank you.

Hi, Jack.

Regarding the joint venture this warehouse, I'll take this question.

Yes, besides our first party managed warehouse, we reset our warehouse and local operation by a joint venture model with our -- in certain provinces with local partners and this province, including -- like [Tanzu], [Lingan] and [in Mongolia], et cetera.

So our JV partner, they are basically local leader in pharmaceutical business.

They have run this business in 10 or 20 years locally, and they have actually capacity in warehouse and they already have their logistics network to cover local customer demand and all this capability can help us better serve our customers.

You can imagine, this diluting the traditional first-party model.

We will -- if we want to set up our local warehouse in those remote province, it'll take very long time.

So with the help from our partner, we will set up a JV warehousing model, which provide local sourcing and also faster delivery lead time and also a very load balancing and also damage rate has been reduced compared to long distance shipments.

So with the launch of these JV warehouse, we are seeing business growth in this remote provinces.

In 2024, we do have plans to expand this model and actually, our [Sing Jang] joint venture is already in a setup process.

Thank you.

Yes.

So I've just realized we run out of time, so I'll make my answer fast.

So 6% -- less than 6% increased the best in the industry from our internal research and intelligence -- I believe, it is.

I also wanted to give some references.

We are still relatively small compared to some of the established players.

The biggest player in the industry has a revenue of RMB700 billion and last year we only did 15 billion.

And the value of one shipment from the traditional guys to the hospitals is probably a few hundred thousand at least, and our shipments sometimes it runs as low as 300 [yen].

And to give you that comparison to illustrate how efficient our operation is, as I said earlier, that we definitely still have room to continue to optimize, staying at a status quo is never in our culture.

Thank you.

(multiple speakers)

Thank you.

In closing on behalf of the entire 111 management team, we'd like to thank you for your interest and participation in today's call.

If you require any further information or have any interest in visiting 111 in Shanghai, China, please let the company know.

Thank you for joining us call today.

This concludes the call.