Momo Com Inc

TWSE:8454

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to momo.com conference. Terrisa, please begin your call, and I will be standing by for the question-and-answer session. Thank you.

[Terrisa Liu, executive]

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to momo's second quarter earnings conference call. It's great to see everyone once again. This is Terrisa, momo's Head of Investor Relations. Today's event is being webcast live through momo's website, where you can also download the earnings report and presentation. The format for today's event will be as follows. First, President Jeff will provide company key message, followed by outlook. Afterwards, I will jointly share operations updates for the second quarter. Next, Jeff will take your questions during Q&A session.

As usual, I would like to remind everyone today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to the safe harbor notice that appear on our presentation.

And now, I would like to turn the microphone over to Jeff.

[Jeff Ku, executive]

Hello. Thank you for joining us today. I will begin with the industry status and our second quarter financial performance and then touch upon the outlook for the second half of the year.

Consumer spending continues to favor digital activities such as dining out, travel and vacations. We have observed a trend of trading down in some product categories and a low demand for durable goods, such as PCs, notebook PC, smartphones, home appliances and the luxury items. During the second quarter, the overall retail industry posted a modest 2.7% year-over-year growth, the lowest in past 3 years. The e-commerce sector reported a [ 2.33% ] year-over-year, slightly lower than last quarter's 3.65%.

In terms of competitive landscape, the new entrant is employing a similar strategy of keeping prices low on targeted products, mainly FMCG items. Although this compressed profit margin on those product lines, it is expected to ship more customers from offline to online, thereby boosting future Taiwan's e-commerce penetration. Our e-commerce revenue growth slowed to 2.2% year-over-year in second quarter. However, after adjusting for different accounting treatment of mo-coins, the adjusted e-commerce revenue growth was 3% year-over-year, largely surpassing the industry growth rate.

Despite this, our 5 major product categories exhibited various degrees of growth. Leading the way was beauty and health care, with an 8.3% year-over-year, followed by sport and leisure at 7.1%. In 3C and home appliance space, although the growth rate has hovered around 2% year-over-year, we outperformed most of the industry peers. Despite customer preference for low-price alternatives, which negatively impacted the average selling price, our strong customer engagement remains evident.

Active users and buying frequency increased year-over-year. Additionally, our mobile and Fubon co-branded credit cards saw an 11% year-over-year rise in active users, reinforcing our market-leading position.

Our media business, however, declined by 12% year-over-year, contrasting with a 3% year-over-year increase in the previous quarter. This decline was primarily due to the long-term downward trend in the TV shopping business. Given the higher take rate on TV shopping products, the decline in media sales also negatively impacted the company's gross margin in second quarter.

As we review our second quarter performance, it's clear that we faced industry headwinds and challenges, while our gross margin experienced a Y-o-Y decrease due to increased customer incentives and discounts. We managed to improve our operational efficiency and keep operating expenses in check. We generated TWD 1.1 billion in free cash flow for the quarter, driven by increase in our operating cash flow to TWD 1.4 billion.

Regarding logistics, Southern Distribution Center entered the trial phase in July, and it will be fully functional in the [ fourth ] quarter. In the meantime, we are expanding our delivery service in Southern Taiwan. Together with Southern Distribution Center, we are upgrading customer service and delivery speed in the region.

Turning to our new business initiatives, including [indiscernible] cross live streaming and [ IMM ], we are seeing promising results. Initial response from both customers and the merchants are positive. We will continue developing related systems and platform to meet business requirements.

Finally, the outlook for the retail industry is not clear yet. While current consumer consumption patterns may persist, particularly during the summer holiday season, we remain cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year, especially for the [ fourth quarter ]. We will maintain high customer engagement, product competitiveness and operational efficiency. In the meantime, we believe our ongoing investment in new initiatives will drive long-term growth. Thank you. I'm happy to address any questions you may have later.

Now I will turn the call over to Terrisa.

[Terrisa Liu, executive]

Thank you, Jeff. The company revenue for second quarter reached TWD 26.7 billion, marking a 1.7% increase over the same period in 2023. E-commerce, representing 97% of our total revenue, demonstrated a year-over-year growth of 2.2%, while media declined by 12% year-over-year. Weak product consumption, increased promotional discounts and the slowdown in media business led to a decline in gross margin to 9.1% versus 9.9% in second quarter 2023. Despite these challenges, improvement in operational efficiency drove our EBITDA margin to 4.7%, a slight decrease from 4.9% during the same period last year.

For the first half of this year, the company revenue totaled at TWD 53.5 billion, up 4.3% from last year's. EBITDA margin hold up well at 5.1%, while OP margin reached 3.8%. Net income to parent was TWD 1.7 billion and EPS came in at TWD 6.98.

On balance sheet, we ended second quarter with net cash position stood at TWD 7.6 billion compared to TWD 6.9 billion in the first quarter and TWD 5.2 billion in the second quarter of 2023.

Regarding cash flow and CapEx, during the first half, we generated about TWD 2.7 billion in cash from operations, spent TWD 779 million in CapEx. Overall, our free cash flow increased to TWD 1.9 billion from TWD 800 million during the same period in 2023.

Moving on to the e-commerce business. The leading 5 product category show consistent market share gains. Beauty and Healthcare continued to outperform and increased 8.3% year-over-year, followed by sports and leisure at 7.1%. Household increased by 2.4% year-over-year. However, fashion and luxury and 3C and home appliance experienced more modest growth, affected by increased discretionary spending on leisure activities such as travel and vacation.

Key customer metrics demonstrated positive trend with a 15% year-over-year increase in cumulative APP download and a 12% increase in order volume. Buying frequency also increased on a yearly basis.

The number of quarterly active users grew by 8% compared to last year. These represent the strongest growth in the past 6 quarters, driven particularly by gains among male and young user, [ among ] our rising product assortment and SKU. On the other hand, the ticket size trend down year-over-year, owing to product mix on more 3P products and low ASP items.

Regarding logistic infrastructure, SDC is expected to be fully operational in fourth quarter. Therefore, its depreciation will start at a time, amounting to TWD 180 million per year. The depreciation period for the building spans 50 years, while the automation equipment has the depreciation range of 5 to 12 years. In the meantime, we are strategically expanding our delivery service in the Southern Taiwan to enhance our market presence and operational efficiency.

In conjunction with the development of our SDC, the [ extension ] is a crucial component of our commitment to enhance customer service standard to next level. This initiative will significantly improve the delivery speed, reliability, and also overall customer satisfaction, reinforcing our position, as the market leaders in the region.

Next, let me touch on award and ESG recognitions. momo continues to advance corporate governance to enhance sustainability development and strengthening its competitive edges. Recently, we received the 10th Corporate Governance Award by Stock Exchange, maintaining its position in the top 5% for the 8 consecutive years. Last year, we also earned several prestigious international award, including FTSE4Good Taiwan Sustainability Index four times, achieving MSCI ESG rating AA for the first time, winning the AREA [ Asia ] (sic) [ Asian ] Corporate Sustainability Social Award and placing second in the Institutional Investor Asia Internet Best ESG Category.

This [ includes ] our key message, and thank you for your attention.

Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

[Operator]

Thank you, Terrisa. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Bill Lin with JPMorgan.

[C. Lin, analyst]

I have 2 questions from my side. First of all is the low price preferred purchase behavior, do you expect that will linger into second half? And how is the company's strategy to drive up the ticket size of the purchase?

And my second question is about -- recently, Taobao has launched a new free shipping promotion plan for the cross-border product. How do you think this will impact your operations, especially you are ramping up your 3P [ business ]?

[Jeff Ku, executive]

Okay. Your first question regarding whether the current consumer consumption pattern will linger on to the third quarter or even the rest of the year, I think it will impact partially because we have seen the evidence, say, the government number shows the Y-o-Y increase in overseas travel is almost 90% for the first few months of the year. And now we are entering to the summer holiday season, I think that trend will continue. So that we are competing part of the customers wallet. However, we think the situation were getting better throughout the time. And we think in the traditional promotional season for e-commerce in the [ fourth quarter ] will still drive up the consumer spending.

Plus, if we can have some new product launch to help to stimulate customer spending, for example, new iPhone or AI-based PC, so that can help the slow demand we have witnessed in the first half of the year that factor or that [ worked up ]. However, I have to emphasize that it's -- so far is not very clear to see through. So -- and there are a lot of other factors will impact consumer consumption. So that's probably my short answer.

And regarding how we're going to increase the ticket size, I would say our priority, of course, the ticket size is important, but I think the more important is the frequency. We want to see them buy more, no matter is uptime or downtime, no matter [Technical Difficulty] spending to travel. As long as they visit our store frequently, we still have a very good engagement with those customers that will lead to the future business.

And your second question regarding Taobao, Taobao cross-border trade has been existing for a long time in this market. However, it used to be done by customer direct place order in their website or they are agency, who will take your order on some marketplace, and they will [ replace ] the order on Taobao's site.

Now, they lowered the threshold for free shipping, I think it would directly impact those agents, who is doing those cross-trading transactions. I think to momo that impact will be very limited because most of the items we sold is quite different from those popular items, [ partners who ] would like to buy from Taobao. So -- and because that low shipping threshold, what I mean to say is the impact of the -- they lowered the shipping threshold need to see. And I don't think the overall pie will increase that much, but will change the different places you place your order. That's my answer to your questions.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from Daniel Chen with UBS.

[Daniel Chen, analyst]

Hi, Jeff and Terrisa. My first question is regarding the top line. So it's our full year revenue growth guidance is unchanged, which is above 10.36%. And are we seeing any recovery or improvement so far in Q3 compared to Q2?

[Jeff Ku, executive]

As I mentioned before, the -- it's not clear for us to see through the rest of the year. But the only thing we are pretty certain is the [ fourth ] quarter will be better than the third quarter. However, we don't have any firm answer or firm number to give you some guidance.

[Daniel Chen, analyst]

And second question is regarding the new business. Could you give us the update like the latest number of supplier and number of SKU for 3P business? And also, could you share with any differences you notice between 1P and 3P customer behavior like their order frequency, their ticket size?

[Jeff Ku, executive]

It's still too early to give you that answer. However, at the current stage, our goal is to prove we have a basic working model and then we achieved that. We have a basic running business model and platform launch that we have received some positive response both from the customer and the merchant. However, in terms of the full blown 3P platform, our SKU is still very small, and we need to recruit more merchants, and these are more of the product to let our customers to choose from. However, always need to have a platform and the system to support it. So we have proven the concept of doing those can bring in the new revenue and the new business. Now we just need to work harder to get our system and platform completed to meet the future business requirements. And overall, the contribution from those new initiatives is still small, but we think the potential is huge.

[Terrisa Liu, executive]

All right. Jeff, thank you and everyone, this concludes our Q&A session. Before we conclude today's conference, please be advised we just update -- upload our 2023 ESG report and video. You can visit our website at www.fmt.com.tw. So thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We hope everyone continues to stay well, and we hope you to join us again next quarter. Goodbye, and have a great day.

[Operator]

Thank you. Thank you for your participation. This concludes the conference. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.