This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk07: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by for Baozong's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the meeting over to your host for today's call, Ms. Nicole Zhao, Investor Relations Manager, For Baozun, please proceed, Nicole.
spk10: Thank you, Operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our first quarter 2021 earnings release was distributed earlier today, and it's available on our IR website at ir.baozun.com, as well as on global newsletter services. On the call today from Baozun, we have Mr. Vincent Chu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Arthur Yu, Chief Financial Officer, and Ms. Tracy Lee, our Vice President of Strategic Business Development. Mr. Chu will review the business operations and company highlights, followed by Mr. Yu, who will discuss financials and guidance. They will all be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call contains overlooking statements within the meaning of the Security Exchange Act of 1934 and the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based upon management's current expectations and the current market and operating conditions, and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict, many of which are beyond the company's control. which may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties, or factors is included in the company's valuing with U.S. SEC and in the company's announcements, notice, or other documents published on the website of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable law. Finally, please note that, unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. It is now my pleasure to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Vincent Chu. Vincent, please go ahead.
spk04: Thank you, Nicole, and thank you all for joining us. We are pleased to announce another solid quarter of high-quality growth. Our total net revenues increased 33% year-over-year to $2 billion, and our non-GAAP income from operations more than doubled to $76 million. We added a net total of 15 brands, including luxury apparel, cosmetics, food, and health brands, as well as brands from the Fujet acquisitions. We believe these numbers reflect the quality and trust of the relationships we have developed with brand partners. And now please turn to slide three. Overall, we are on track to deliver our immediate term strategic plan. Let me provide some highlights about how we are progressing with our three key initiatives. Now please turn to slide four. For customer first to drive growth, Our luxury sector is an example in which we've made continuous progress this quarter. In addition to selling our new brand, we also provided more value-added services. This includes interactive digital marketing, IT customization, and premium warehouse and logistics services. They all have greatly improved the user experience and generated a higher profit contribution. Luxury has become a significant profit contributor, accounting for 15% of GMB in apparel and accessories category and growing over 50% year-over-year. In addition, we enhanced our leading position in luxury and strengthened our consulting and brand insight capabilities through the acquisition of Fujet and strategic alliance with Fuxing Fashion Group. In late April and early May, the core Fujia team made a visit to Europe and generated a number of promising business leads. Overall, we remain optimistic that the luxury sector will be one of our key growth drivers in the year ahead. On our omnichannel strategies, we are helping brand partners to obtain incremental sales and customers from a variety of emerging channels. This quarter, we integrated additional SaaS functions in our Tencent mini program packages and helped several sportswear brands run their Douyin platform. We also tested new PDD stores for certain brands in apparel and accessories. and FMCG categories. Additionally, we made great progress working more closely with JD. Our efforts translated into tremendous progress, and we accumulated extensive know-how in setting the right go-to-market strategies for each platform. During the quarter, 90 more channels accounted for 35% of total GMB. a meaningful increase from 25% for the full year of 2020. More encouragingly, based on our initial assessment, consumer overlap for our multi-platform stores is less than 10%. This indicates that we are successfully helping our brand partners incrementally expand their businesses. It also shows that we have great potential to further expand our addressable market. On the cost structure optimization front, tech-driven business process, re-engineering, and business model innovation continue to show results. Operating efficiency metrics, unit fulfillment costs, and sales and marketing costs per GMB have all improved compared with a year ago. This is also true for technology and the content spending. Our centralized integrated operating platform, BOC, has helped over a dozen brands drive significant cost savings over the past six months. At the same time, our ROS infrastructure supports our BOCs through process re-engineering. As an example, ROS includes integrated functions for one-stop content design, which help us standardize workflow, improve teamwork, enhance data accuracy, and improve communication efficiency. On average, brands have been able to reduce their operating costs by over 10%. We have expanded this service package to a broader apparel and accessory category. and we anticipate that this will be an important driver for operating efficiency and cost saving going forward. In addition, our remote service centers in Nantong and Hefei are both on track and started trial operations in March. We believe that after they both ramp up, there will be meaningful cost savings from the second half of 2021. Now let's turn to slide number five. Technology has constantly helped us to widen our competitive advantage. We launched significant upgrades to our IT infrastructure to support and adapt for evolving omnichannel strategies. For example, we integrated into over 20 platforms, including Tmall, Tencent, MiniPrograms, Douyin, JD, and Pinduoduo. Pre-integration helps our brand partners launch on these platforms quickly, literally on a plug-and-play basis. We keep enhancing our raw services to help brands deploy differentiated strategies across multiple platforms. This sustainably improves efficiency and reduces our brand partners' working capital. our efforts in technology innovation will never stop. In addition to promoting greater cost efficiency, we are also developing an innovative top-line growth engine for our brand partners. Recently, we launched a series of data-driven toolkits to optimize brand sales. Internally, we call this SEMA, or Selling Machine. By mining extensive data sets, and leveraging machine learning capabilities, SAMR maximizes conversion rates and overall shopping experiences. It does this by recommending products and assortment planning and display strategy. On the front end, SAMR is currently in beta testing and effectively improving traffic utilization. We have identified a few key brands for which we plan to deploy our sum-up toolkits across Tmall and Tencent mini programs. We expect broader deployment in the coming quarters. In relation to digital marketing, we are also making progress on our content marketing, live streaming, and data services. During the quarter, we expanded our live streaming studio to 2,000 square meters and established a dedicated studio for Douyin live streaming workforce. We are happy to see that a few brand partners have achieved top ranking events with high ROI on the Douyin platform. Meanwhile, we completed several equity investments in the digital marketing arena. This included a top 10 Tmall MCM, a fast-growing Douyin MCN with data and news feed analytics, and a content marketing partner. We believe these equity investments will enhance our digital marketing flexibility across different ecosystems. This will reinforce our value proposition by facilitating the digital marketing success of our brand partners. On the warehouse and logistics side, we expanded capacity in apparel and accessories, beauty and cosmetics categories. By the end of 2020, our infrastructure capacity had grown to 640,000 square meters, including specially designed warehouse for the luxury sector where demand is ramping up sharply. We also focused on providing more customized services, for example, We launched a comprehensive B2B business, as well as more budget-friendly service offerings. We always approach everything with a customer-first mindset and will continue to launch differentiated services based on the needs of our brand partners. Meanwhile, we will actively look for opportunities to enhance our logistics capabilities through strategic alliance with third parties. Now on slide 6, early this May, we published our first Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, report. It reflects our commitment to long-term sustainable development. We view ESG as a commitment to our shareholder-stakeholder communities and was rated BBB by MSCI in 2020. This is a top ranking in the e-commerce industry. We believe good governance is important to sustain commercial success in the long run. We appreciate the participation of many of our shareholders in our survey while we were preparing this report. We will strive to set new benchmarks in the brand e-commerce service industry as well. Meanwhile, we deepened our investments in human resources and look forward to enabling our people to exceed their potential and develop their careers together with Baozong. Overall, we are optimistic about the e-commerce sector continuing to create new opportunities. We will keep innovating to capture them and drive growth drive growth both organically and through selective M&A. We believe we are well on track to achieving sustainable and profitable long-term growth. I will now pass the call over to Arthur to go over our financials. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Vincent.
spk06: Hello, everyone. I will start on slide number eight. We saw strong growth in total GMV. which increased by 44% to $13.2 billion. Our distribution GMV rose by 37% to $1.1 billion, and our non-distribution GMV increased 44.4% to $12.2 billion. Breaking it down by category, we continued to see strong growth momentum in the apparel and accessories. and FMCG categories. The strong performance of the luxury sector helped apparel grow nearly 30% year-on-year with new luxury brands on board on PMO. However, we faced some temporary headwinds in March due to the concerns raised by better quoting initiatives. This negatively impacted the growth of the apparel and accessories category, especially sportswear brands. Electronics grew nearly 40% year-over-year, while FMCG contributed triple-digit year-on-year growth from a low base last year. FMCG now accounts for about 15% of overall GMB. On the other hand, we still see slow year-on-year growth from the appliance category, but the trend is improving significantly compared with Q4 2020. We believe the healthy and balanced growth of our GMV demonstrates the resilience of our business model, backed by our diversified brand portfolio across a wide range of categories. Now please turn to slide 9. Total net revenues increased by 33% to $2 billion. Product sales revenues increased by 39% to $972 million. And service revenues increased by 28% to $1 billion. While the growth in service revenues was not as fast as product sales revenues, Remember that our service revenues in Q1 2020 were not badly impacted by COVID-19. When we look at the overall revenue growth across a longer period from 2019 to 2021, the CAGR for product sales revenue and service revenue were both around 25%, which we think demonstrates a healthy growth trend. The product sales gross margin was 15.4%, a slight decline from 15.8% a year ago due to a change in category mix. But it improved from 12.7% last quarter. Our overall gross profit margin was 59.3%, slightly down from 61.3% a year ago due to higher revenue from product sales. The take rate for the non-distribution model was 8.6%, down from 9.8% a year ago. This reduction in take rate was expected as we made progress in our omni-channel strategy. As Vincent mentioned earlier, for the first quarter of 2021, non-Chemo platform accounts for approximately 35% of our total GMV. The take rate of some of the new emerging channels is not comparable to Tmall, at least in the early phase. So it will somehow dilute our blended take rate. As we continue to scale our business and service model in new channels, getting more mature, we believe the ultimate take rate and profitability will improve in the long run. However, as the contribution from new emerging channels grows, we anticipate the dilution of the take rate will continue over the next few quarters. Now let's turn to operating expenses on slide number 10. In line with our growing business, fulfillment expenses increased to $508 million, and as a percentage of GMB improved to 3.8% from 4.5% a year ago. This was mainly attributable to improvement in product efficiency and increased use of lower cost last mile delivery carriers. Sales and marketing expenses were $471 million and as a percentage of GMB improved to 3.6% from 4% a year ago. mainly due to the improved effectiveness of our digital marketing services and efficiency gains from deploying the latest technology in our operations. Technology and content expenses were 93 million and as a percentage of GMV improved to 0.7% from 1.0% last year. Most of this was attributable to more effective cost control, efficiency improvement, and better prioritization of our system development pipeline. G&A expenses increased to $18 million. The increase was expected and mainly reflects a variety of investments we made to support our long-term growth. Firstly, we recruited new talent, especially for our growing omnichannel services. We also upgraded our compensation packages for our critical roles in order to attract and retain the best talent in the industry. Secondly, we saw an increase in professional fees related to our increased M&A activities. And thirdly, we have started to incur additional expenses related to our new headquarters. As a percentage of GNV, G&A expenses increased slightly to 0.6% from 0.5%, primarily due to the above factors. These were partially offset by efficiencies from the third-party procurement and more discipline cost control. Now please turn to slide number 11. Income from operations increased by 313% year over year to $53 million. On a non-GAAP basis, income from operations increased by 106% to $76 million from $37 million last year. Operating margin for this quarter was 2.6%, while non-GAAP operating margin was 3.7%. And then on slide number 12, non-GAAP net income attributable to ordinary shareholders totalled $61 million, an increase of 136% year-over-year. Basic and diluted non-GAAP EPADS were $0.83 and 0.82 respectively for the quarter. As of March 31, 2021, we had $4.5 billion in cash, cash equivalent, and short-term investment. Lastly, earlier today, we announced our $125 million share repurchase program over the next 12 months. starting from 18th of May 2021. This program is consistent with our disciplined approach to capital allocations and focus on better use of cash to increase shareholder value. Overall, we are pleased with our financial results. Despite some short-term headwinds from the concerns raised by better quoting initiative, Our business has shown great resilience. Looking ahead, we will continue to execute our strategies throughout the year and deliver sustainable and profitable growth to our shareholders. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you, everyone. Operator, you are now ready to begin the Q&A session.
spk07: Certainly, ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and please wait for your name to be announced. Once again, it is star followed by 1 to ask a question. We have the first question coming from the line of Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hi. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a question regarding the upcoming June 18 promotion. So with one month approaching that event, can management share reverse? Compared to last year, what are the biggest difference in terms of the consumer sentiment and also the merchants' readiness in terms of the preparations for these June 18 campaigns? Have the merchants already started to prepare? And are they more willing to spend the marketing budget for promotion? Or actually, have you seen any scale back on the promotion that they will be more prudent this year? Thank you.
spk06: So maybe Tracy, if you have a question.
spk09: Yes. The whole company right now, we have going to the Fiverr model to prepare for the 2018 is only one month left. I think we can take the question from two point of view. First, from the brand part, actually, I think we prepared this much longer time compared with last year. And from the merchant-wise and also the commercial cadence part, our brands are more mature than before. And you can see TML actually and also other platform has released their cadence this year, and all of our preparation is corresponding for this. And another point I want to highlight is from the, actually from the platform itself, after regulation you can see actually the Alibaba will have been more closer and friendly to our brands and merchants. And this has been demonstrated by providing new tools to merchants with lower cost, especially by willing some of the deposit fees and lower the entry buyers for new brands. which means I think for this year, 6-18, for the smaller and middle-sized brands, their opinion are going to be a little more improved. And for our larger brands, we've been collaborating right now. We are finding multiple ways besides the TML platform and other platforms like Emerging Channels to realize the growth. Yeah.
spk02: I see. Thank you so much. Thank you.
spk07: Yeah. The next question comes from the line of Ashley Xu from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
spk08: Thank you, management, for taking my questions. I got two questions. First is that you have mentioned about the selling machine. Could you please elaborate more on this and what's the latest progress and what we should expect in next stage? And my second question is about the impact from the white cotton issue. how should we see the impact for both 2Q and 4E in terms of how large the impact would be and how long that would continue? Thank you.
spk04: Okay. Actually, I will take the first one about the selling machine thing, and then I'll ask Arthur to answer your second question about BCI. As what we mentioned, I think the results generated now is quite encouraging, but it's still in a quite early stage. So I think the major task today for the team is that we just want to deliver a deeper and more solid result before we can roll out these toolkits to other brands. But anyway, we are quite optimistic for the potential of this tool. And we think this will be instrumental for a lot of brands to generate their incremental sales in the future. Yeah, I think we can see this in the near future, not very long. Now the second one about BCI.
spk06: Let me share some thoughts on the BCI. For the BCI, I think it's mainly impacting the apparel categories. and for us is mainly the sportswear and fashion brands. It's a sensitive issue and very difficult, very hard to predict what's going to happen next. Therefore, the brands are keeping low profile and Baldwin is helping brands to manage the customer and manage the communication properly and helping brands to decide when to make the investment into the advertising to generate the best of return. We start to see the impact since the end of March and throughout April, which we have seen some impact to our top line of the growth. But starting from May, we have seen a sign of recovery. So we are waiting to see what the 618 outcome looks like to decide the true impact for the full year. Our base scenario for planning the business forward is we think the impact will be in Q2 as a one-off hit, but our second half of outlook will kept unchanged. So that's our view for the BCI.
spk08: Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. We have the next question coming from the line of John Stu from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk03: Good evening, gentlemen. Congrats for the solid results this quarter. Just want to have a first follow-up question on the June 18th event. I just want to check. So for this year, given that we've actually seen greater exposure in some two more channels, so for this year, for our 2018 promotions, do we have any new initiatives?
spk06: Joyce, I'm sorry. You are breaking up a little bit. Not very clear.
spk03: Oh, sure. Is it better now?
spk06: Yes. You can give it a go. Yes.
spk03: Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, given we actually see an increasing exposure in non-TMOR channel, could you share with us a little bit more in terms of this year what changed or like what incremental in our, you know, services provided to the customers to prepare for the June 18 given, you know, we now have like, you know, more other platform promotions need to be prepared? I need to prepare. And the second question is actually we're seeing this quarter significant increase of our non-t-more percentage GNV. Just try to understand which platform contributes most to this incremental growth and how we should expect this ratio to change over the short-term and also the long-term. Thank you.
spk06: So maybe we should talk about the non-t-more and then I will talk about the
spk09: Sure. I think regarding the, how to say, the only channel landscape right now, I also would like to take this from two points of view. For the longer term, actually, you see from the brand point of view to have a healthy and sustainable growth. The brands need to continue building their relationships and the future proofing their business by constantly adopting to China sophisticated online commerce environmental. So from this point of view, you can see, even in the coming, I mean, 2018, they've been trying to split their budget and also to try different angles on the promotion part, use different tools and different platforms. You can see some of our categories, fashion in fashion, and also luxury, they've been utilizing some of the live stream ways as a pop-up, even as the May 20th campaign, right before the 618 to test the order, I mean the business model and also the consumer landscape in that platform. And also I think the second point from the platform itself, they're a strong DAU in those especially content-oriented platforms, as shows they have a great I think, potential to realize a close-loop e-commerce business there. So which means we look good on this. That's why from our own efforts, we've been trying to act quick and make progress in the emerging channels to build our workforce and also investments here to make sure when the environments come up, we can do better in there. Yeah.
spk06: Okay. Now I will make some comments about the mix of the ominal channel increase. So basically for the increase of the non-Tmall of the channel of the percentage, we saw the increase from all channels outside of Tmall and most significantly from the mini program. But not falling far behind is our brand store, Dotcom. So this is further proof that in the market people are looking for an omni-channel solution where Baozhen, as we enhance our technology capability, we can offer this service in a very fast pace to our customer. And also I want to to repeat that even though we made progress in the non-PMO kind of channel, PMO itself is actually growing healthily. We delivered over 20% year-over-year growth from the PMO channel, which is ahead of Alibaba's PMO channel year-on-year growth. So it's actually a demonstration of Baozun's capability to help the brand to be successful in the PMO channel as well. Going forward, we will keep making the investment into our strategy to go for the omni-channel and helping our partners to deliver more incremental growth for their business.
spk03: Just a quick follow-up, could you remind us what the economics for other channels Are they similar to Tmall, or they are actually very different? And also, with higher percentage of GNV coming from other channels, should we expect our tech plan that take rate margins having a different trend?
spk06: OK. So we are in the early days in terms of omni-channel. So we are still in the stage of making the investment. Therefore, the take rate for other channels is not as good as Tmall. And also, as we talked about in the past, the different channels have a different cost model. So for example, if you look at the mini program, it actually has a much simpler operation, which requires significantly less cost compared with the Tmall operation. Hence, our take rate charging model will be different compared with the Tmall channel. But having said that, What we don't want to do is to go for the growth in expense of profit. We are looking for sustainable long-term growth. So every new channel we develop, we will aim for making that channel profitable in the medium and the longer term.
spk03: Got it. Thank you very much.
spk07: We have the next question coming from Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
spk11: Hi, I have two questions. So the first question is, can we talk more about our M&A strategies? And my second question is, can management elaborate more cost-based optimization and trend operating expenses things?
spk06: Okay, so I heard two questions. One is on M&A strategy, and secondly, it's on the cost base, kind of how we optimize the cost base, right? So I will go for the M&A strategy first. So basically, we laid out our medium-term plan last time. So we want to become a 150 billion GMV company in three to five years' time. So in order to do that, we're actually looking at our growth driver. We think if we only go for the organic growth, we will not be able to deliver our medium-term objective. Therefore, we are actively using M&A as a way to grow our top-line. So that's the first direction we are aiming for through our M&A. And secondly, as the requirements of our customer expanding, and we need to enhance or improve our own capability, so in that way, we will be able to service our customer better. So therefore, on one hand, we're looking at use our internal capability to do it, And at the same time, we look at external to acquire the capability to help us to do it faster. So for example, if you think our strategic alliance with iClick is actually helping us to catch up on the SaaS capability very quickly in the mini program. So which help us to actually to provide a better service for the customer. So that's the second one. And then the third one, so we have seen some new channels, we have seen some channels where the growth has a huge potential. So for example, So in this quarter, we actually made some equity investments into some live streaming company, which help us to enhance our live streaming capability. So with that all in mind, we actually will actively looking at the different targets and using the M&A as a driver to grow our business. So that's our M&A strategy. On the cost optimization, So this is one of our strategic pillars. So there are two ways we want to do this. One way is we are a technology company. What we are doing is to use the technology to drive efficiency. In the earlier we mentioned, we have a BOC, Business Operating Center, which is based on our roles platform and also a lot of the system tools we developed. With all that, we actually can deliver a significant saving through automation and through a better process management. And at the same time, the second enabler for the cost optimization is through our initiative of RIC, what we call a remote service center. which we start to build from early this year in Nanchong and in Hefei. The goal of achieving that is actually to enhance our customer service by moving operations in a very structured way from high cost location Shanghai into lower cost location where at a lower cost we actually can acquire higher skilled labor to do the work for us. So in that way, without compromising the customer service, we will be able to see something between 15% to 25% cost efficiency just from a labor rate perspective. And if you think about if we're adding the technology process re-engineering and the location-driven labor cost efficiency, we'll actually see a bigger impact on our cost base. From some early trial we have seen, we actually see something between 30% to 35% overall efficiency if we're adding those two things together. So we are now expanding those two initiatives to the wider business unit within Baldwin, and we think we will systematically improve the cost base of Baldwin going forward.
spk11: Okay? Thank you.
spk06: Thank you.
spk07: We have the next question. This is coming from from CICC. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions. First one is, Regarding to new brands, I want to know our new brands. You know, this quarter we have many new brands. I want to know the number of new brands coming from our investments or cooperation with iClick or Fujet or, you know, Fuxing, those corporations to have better understanding to our brand portfolio. And also, what is our same store sales growth for this quarter? This is my first question. And my second question is, what is management view on Tmall platform post-regulation? Will it be more friendly to merchants or more to local brands, etc.? Thank you.
spk06: Okay. I will take the first one, and Tracey and Vincent can talk about the second one. Firstly, the 15 brands is actually a mix of both the organic growth and also the acquisition from 4GAS. So basically, Full Jet contributed six brands within the 15 brands we actually have acquired. And secondly, for the same store growth, if we look at the same store, it's actually 27% year-over-year same store growth. But if we look at the same brand growth year-on-year, it's actually go up to 31% to 32%. which means our omni-channel strategy is actually helping the brands to grow the channels as well, on top of the same stock growth year-over-year.
spk09: Regarding the TML post-regulation, I think there's a lot of published address right now, and also we have a lot of closed-door events with TML. You can see actually Alibaba has been more closer and more friendly to the merchants. They have been demonstrated by providing new tools to merchants with lower costs and by waiving some of the deposit fees and lower the entry buyers to new brands, I think they will have direct improvement on brand P&L, especially for the small and the middle-sized companies and local brands. And also, I think one thing we would like to point out is about the Shanghai Hub. So in, I think, last month in April, in the TML closed-door event top talk, and the team leader has expressed their first priority this year will be to improve the consumer experience further and create a better marketplace environment for merchants and also the service provider like TP. So the relocation will help Tmall to better serve international companies sending goods on the site and also the relocation will in fact Tmall a lot of categories starting from beauty and other spots, and also their consumer operation units will move to Shanghai in the first wave, and some of the other units will follow. And since Baozhen's headquarters is also located in Shanghai, so I think this movement will also further strengthen our collaboration with brands and also Alibaba Group together. Thank you.
spk01: Very helpful. Thank you.
spk07: We have the next question, which is coming from Charlie Chen from China Renaissance. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you. This is Charlie. Thanks, management, for taking my question. So I have one question about the take rate. So you just mentioned that the take rate for emerging channels are not comparable to T-more channels. So can you share with us more details about whether those low take rates from the new channels are because of the product category that you are selling in the new channels are naturally having lower take rate or you are giving some sort of subsidies or helping those brands to grow initially so that you are voluntarily taking a lower take rate. And also the follow-up question is how do you think the take rate trend in the new channels going forward? Thank you.
spk06: Okay, Charlie, thanks for the question. I think from a take rate in the new channel perspective, it's actually a mix of both factors you were just mentioned about. One is on the different categories. So for example, we have seen the FMCG category, which has a stronger potential in the platform like JD, like the mini program, which has historically comparable lower take rate. But most importantly, it's like I mentioned earlier, it's actually the cost structure difference. When we do a business, we don't do a business because of the cost rate. We do a business by looking into the revenue we generate and also the cost we incur to do that business in order to see how much profit we contribute to the bottom line. So by looking at the different models in the new channels, we're actually not purely focused on the GMV. We're actually focused on the revenue. So, for example, if it has a bigger GMB with a lower kind of take rate, but generates a significant revenue, which deducted the cost, gave us a high OC margin, then we think it's a business we should be doing going forward. So we are not focused on take rate, but we are focused on the bottom line probability. So that's number one. Number two is we did make some investments in the early phase. So, for example, as Vincent mentioned earlier, technology investments into our system, which is on a plug-and-play basis, we actually preset a lot of channels. When a brand has a new request, we can actually very quickly take it on board. So that's an investment, and that's an investment area we will keep investing in the next few quarters. But after that, After we have built a scale and after our technology investment has given us the efficiency, we will be able to see the benefit from the scale of the business, which will increase the profit margin and also the take rate of the new channels. So that's the plan going forward.
spk05: All right. Thank you very much. Very clear. Thanks. Thank you.
spk07: Once again, ladies and gentlemen, it is star followed by one if you wish to ask a question. As we have no further questions at this moment, I would like to hand the conference back to our host. Nicole, please take over.
spk10: Thank you, operator. In closing, on behalf of the Baozhen management team, We would like to thank you for your participation in today's call. If you require any further information, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you for joining us today. This concludes the call.
Disclaimer