Tuniu Corporation

Hello and thank you for standing by for 2NEWS2024 second quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are released anonymously. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference has been recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference call, Director of Investor Relations, Mary.

Thank you, and welcome to our 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are Donald Yu, 2NEWS founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, and Anqiang Chen, 2NEWS financial controller. For today's agenda, management will discuss business updates operation highlights, and financial performance for the second quarter of 2024. Before we continue, I refer you to our safe harbor statement in earnings press release which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements. Also, this call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release which contains a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Finally, please note that, unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. I would now like to turn the call over to our founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, Donald Wu.

Thank you, Mary. Good day, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. In the second quarter, our business continued to maintain healthy growth, with revenue from package tours to new school business increasing by 29% year-over-year. We also saw further improvement in our profitability with net income reaching a quarterly record high since our listing, up to 43 million RMB. During this quarter, the domestic travel market maintained steady growth, with the number of trips booked during the three holiday periods increasing year-over-year. And with the full opening of overseas destinations and availability of diverse product offerings, the outbound travel market continued to grow rapidly compared to last year, with new popular destinations and roads emerging. It is clear that tourism has increasingly become an essential part of many people's lives. CUNY continues to steadfastly adhere to our mission of making travel easier and focusing on customer needs. We will continue to enhance our products, services and sales to offer more travel options, ensuring customers have an exceptional trip experience. In the second quarter, we continued to strengthen our in-house product development. Our new tour products maintained their high-quality service adding more destinations and new roads. In the second quarter, the transaction volume of new tour products increased by more than 40% year-over-year. The primary customer base for our new tour products are middle to upper-class customers, many of whom are senior travelers who value experience over price. Focusing on this group, we have continuously upgraded new tools, offering small groups, higher standards for accommodation and dining, and more local sightseeing and restaurant options. For some of our outbound products, we employ local tour guides who speak Chinese, providing a more authentic cultural experience for our guests. By providing a constantly excellent customer experience, new tour products help build a large base of high-quality repeat customers with a repurchase rate twice that of regular products. At the same time, we continue to partner with third-party suppliers who have made significant contributions to diverse our products and destinations, especially for outbound travel markets. In terms of sales, we focus on our own channels while maintaining open cooperation with various partners. As a customer-focused company, Tuning has long had a membership program specifically designed to serve our repeat customers. In addition to regular benefits, we hold a monthly membership day and occasional offline events to interact with our customers and gather feedback on our products and services. In the second quarter, repeat customers contributed over 65% of the company's transaction volume. Meanwhile, we continued to attract new customers through various channels. such as new media, offline stores, and partnerships with high-traffic online platforms. During the second quarter, our live streaming channels maintained triple-digit growth, and the transaction volume of our offline stores increased over 80% year-over-year. Additionally, we collaborated with Jingdong Travel Alipay transport, and others to boost the sales of other travel-related products. Regarding live streaming channels, as the Internet continues to develop and user demands evolve, information is increasingly consumed via video content as opposed to text and images. With users now frequently watching live streaming shows and short videos, adapting to these changes in behavior is essential to maintaining our competitive edge. In the second quarter, we expanded our live streaming channels on both 2 new apps and mini programs. to adapt to changes in user habits. Also, we strengthened the expansion of new media channels, such as more content placement on the Little Red Book. In terms of products, we broadened the variety and the destination coverage of our live streaming product offerings. such as organized tour products at destinations and theme park package tours For technology, our products now use system-based verification which significantly improves speed and accuracy compared to manual verification and enhancing the customer experience. Leveraging our optimized product selection process and improved verification capabilities, the verification and sales rate of our live streaming products has increased significantly. During the quarter, Both the total payment volume and verification volume from our live streaming channels increased over 200% year over year. The contribution of live streaming channels to the company continued to rise and achieve quarterly net income again. We have also been pleased to share our expertise and accumulated experience in new media operations with our partners and jointly promote the development of the travel industry. We have assisted some destinations in using new media tools for marketing. And we have also collaborated with schools to establish internship programs providing practical opportunities for students and jointly cultivating talent with skills in both tourism and new media, providing employment opportunities and benefiting the industry as a whole. In conclusion, with the arrival of the summer peak season, the travel industry is entering its busiest time. 2NEW is excited to meet the opportunity with more diverse products and higher quality services as we look forward to deliver strong value for our shareholders going forward. I'll now turn the call over to Anqiang, our financial controller, for the financial highlights.