BEST Inc

Good day, and welcome to the BEST, Inc. Second Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jonny Chow, Chairman and CEO of Best Inc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Best's second quarter earnings call today. In the second quarter, the pandemic resurged and the impact of overall economic growth in China and Southeast Asia. With our operational resilience and the continuous efforts in process improvements and cost reductions, BEST prevailed and became even stronger. I'm pleased that in Q2, BEST SCM has achieved profitability, while BEST Freight has significantly narrowed its losses. In addition, our U.S. operations continue to be profitable for the quarter. As we refocus on our core business, we are continuing the process of winding down Best Capital and we incurred additional costs as expenses related to this winding down during the quarter. We anticipate the winding down of Best Capital will be substantially completed by the end of this year and we should see a lift to our bottom line. Now let's take a look at each of our business units. Best Trade continued to maintain its leadership position In service quality, its on-time delivery rate has improved by 11.4% quarter over quarter in Q2. We continue to develop Best Freight e-commerce business, and the e-commerce volume has reached 20.4% of the total freight volume, up 1.2 percentage points year over year. As the logistics industry was severely impacted by the pandemic during Q2. Our total freight volume was down by 8.8% year over year. However, we have seen a recovery of the freight volume since mid-June. In Q2, freight's net loss has narrowed substantially by 115.7 million RMB compared with the first quarter of 2022. As we further reduce the costs, and improved operating efficiency. Going forward, we will continue to improve our service quality and network capability, as well as continue our efforts in synergizing with Best SEM and Best Global for new business opportunities. We are confident that with the ease of the pandemic restrictions, we are on the path of future growth and the profitability. Moving on to best supply chain management. Due to the pandemic and its related controls, many of our warehouses were restricted during the second quarter. Particularly in Shanghai, which is our main hub for best supply chain services, six main warehouses were shut down for over three months. This has severely impacted the number of orders fulfilled by our B2B2C fulfillment network. The total number of orders fulfilled by cloud OFCs decreased 22% year-over-year to 94 million in the second quarter, while the total number of orders fulfilled by franchise cloud OFCs decreased by 19.4% to 58.9 million. supply chain management service growth margin improved by 3.9 percentage points to 8.2 percent compared with Q1 2022 as a result of our cost reduction efforts and the continuation of low growth margin accounts. We see a strong growing demand for third-party supply chain management services for both international and domestic companies. Our SCM remains our key differentiator as it empowers our customers with digitized end-to-end logistics solution. For the first half of 2022, we have signed 34 new key account customers with contracts representing over half a billion RMB in the first year revenue. Going forward, we will continue to deepen our presence in apparel and fast-moving consumer goods, auto parts, and pharmaceuticals industries, as well as maximize the synergies with Best Trade and Global as we provide global and transportation services for our existing key accounts. Now let me talk about Best Global. We had a tough quarter with our global business unit in Q2. The pandemic and its related controls significantly impacted our Southeast Asia e-commerce business and restrained the cross-border activities between Southeast Asia and China. Global's parcel volume was 30.8 million in the second quarter, a decrease of 20.6%. over year, year over year. As the pandemic restrictions ease, we have seen a slow recovery on global's volume since mid-July. In addition, during Q2, we significantly improved the quality of our global operations during its on-time delivery rates. Going forward, along with serving its major e-commerce key accounts customers, Best Global will focus on expanding SME coverage within Southeast Asia by reinforcing our network stability and service quality, as well as improving our franchisees' operational capabilities. We will accelerate our B2B2C and cross-border businesses in PRC, Southeast Asia, and the U.S. by synergizing with best supply chain management and the freight. We have established our initial cross-border warehouses in Thailand, and the B2B business provides a foundation for expanding our Frey network to Southeast Asia. We are optimistic about the long-term growth of the Southeast Asia e-commerce business. With synergies among global, FDM, and Frey, as well as our cross-border initiatives, we are confident that Best Global will return to its growth trajectory by the end of this year. In summary, we believe information technology-driven and integrated supply chain and logistics solutions will be in high demand to support the growth of e-commerce and cross-border businesses. Since implementing our strategic reinforcing plan, we have made significant progress in quality improvement cost reductions, and improving our financial results. As the pandemic eases, we are confident that best strengths in technology, domestic and global supply chain management, and logistics capabilities will allow us to rebound strongly and on the path of probabilities. Now I would like to turn the call over to our CFO Gloria for further review of our second quarter financials. Go ahead, Rory.

Thank you, Johnny. And hello to everyone. Our second quarter revenue reflected the industry-wide headwinds, with revenue declining by 12.5% year-over-year, excluding fast-fuel cargo and capital. Our net loss from continuing operations, excluding the one-off expenses associated with the capital wind-down and the ADA's racial change, has narrowed by 27.1% to 235.1 million RMB compared with Q1 2022, benefiting from our consistent efforts to streamline our cost and expense structure. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments of 4.4 billion RMB and a net cash position of 1.4 billion RMB at the end of the second quarter. Let me walk you through our financial results of the second quarter of 2022. Our revenue for the second quarter was 1.9 billion RMB, compared with 3.1 billion last year. The decrease was primarily due to the winding down of our Yukako business unit. Yukako's Q2 2022 revenue was approximately 215,000 RMB, compared to 860 million RMB in Q2 of last year. Due to the higher oil prices and additional costs resulting from the pandemic, our gross loss for Q2 was 93.8 million RMB compared to a gross profit of 86.2 million for the same quarter of 2021. Gross margin was negative 4.9% compared to a positive 2.8% last year. Net loss from continuing operations for the quarter was 337.1 million RMB compared to 146.9 million RMB last year. Importantly, we narrowed our net loss by 42.8 million RMB from Q1 2022. Excluding the one-off expenses associated with the capital wind-down and the ADS ratio change that took place in May, we achieved a net loss reduction of 87.5 million RMB, or 27.1%, compared with Q1 2022. Adjusted EBITDA for continuing operations was negative 267.3 million RMB compared to negative 50.6 million for the same quarter of 2021. Next, moving on to key financial highlights for our business units. For BestBrate, its second quarter revenue was approximately 1.2 billion RMB compared with 2.3 billion for the same period of last year. The decline was primarily due to the decrease UCAGO revenue of approximately $860 million. Excluding UCAGO, PRACE revenue decreased by 13.6 percent year-over-year, primarily due to an 8.8 percent decrease in freight volume and a 5 percent decrease in ASP. PRACE gross margin was negative 7.8 percent, 10 percentage point lower year-over-year, due to the higher oil prices and additional costs associated with the pandemic. Adjusted EBITDA for best freight was negative 34.5 million RMB, compared with 41.4 million for the same period of last year. Compared with Q1 2022, the net loss of freight was narrowed by 115.7 million, resulting from a continuous effort in expense controls and operating efficiency improvement. Q2 revenue for best supply chain management decreased by 6 percent year over year, to 451 million RMB, primarily due to the disruption caused by the pandemic. However, Q2 growth margin has increased by 3.9 percentage points to 8.2%, compared with the prior quarter as we continue to focus on high margin accounts and use digitized information systems to improve our efficiency. Adjusted EBITDA for supply chain management was 23.2 million RMB, compared with 22.4 million in the same period of last year. For Best Global, Q2 revenue decreased by 23.3% year-over-year to 241.2 million RMB, primarily due to the market challenges resulting from the pandemic. Its gross margin was negative 14.7%, decreased by 10.3% year-over-year. Q2 adjusted EBITDA for Best Global was negative 97.7 million RMB compared to negative 47.3 million for Q1 last year. Our operating expenses, excluding share-based compensation, totaled 348.5 million RMB, or 18.1 percent of the revenue, compared with 280 million, or 9.1 percent of revenue, in the same period of last year. Our Q2 operating expenses, included one-off charges associated with capital wind-down and ADS ratio change. Excluding such one-off expenses, our operating expenses would have been $253.7 million, which was a 3.2% year-over-year decrease. Selling general and administrative expenses for continuing operations, including capital wind-down and ADS ratio change expenses, were $212 in the second quarter, which was an approximately 2 percent decrease year over year, reflecting the effectiveness of our cost control measures. R&D expenses for continuing operations were 40.9 million RMB, or 2.1 percent of the revenue, compared with 45.4 million RMB, or 1.5 percent of the revenue, in the same quarter of last year. We are encouraged by the improved financial results from Best Freight and Supply Chain Management. As we drive quality and value for our customers by consistently enhancing our capability in freight, integrated supply chain management, and global logistics solutions, we are confident that we are on the right path to deliver future sustainable growth and profitability. With that, we will now open the call to questions. Thank you. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. And our first question will come from Tongi with Northeast Security Company. Please go ahead.

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Okay, so to repeat the questions, thank you for your questions. To repeat the questions is that you're saying the pandemic and the general macro is under pressure, and the question is how is the freight business on the future, on the freight business, and what is our core competency? That was the question. So, the answer is that, yes, certainly the macro pressure from the pandemic down in some of the economic growth will impact the freight business. The freight is basically, you know, very much of manufacturing and consumption-driven business. However, transportation, China logistically is huge, right? over 10 trillions of IMBs. The transportation is about more than 5 to 6 trillion IMBs. So the freight business we're doing now is a very small segment of a total transportation business. So we're doing a less than truckload and very small truckload, less than truckload of business. So as the economic growth to the third and fourth tier cities and as well as multi-channel marketing and the consumption channels, more and more the transportation will be being towards the less-than-truckload, the freight business. So, overall, we are still seeing overall market and total size will still grow for the freight because of the general trend of the consumption as well as from the full truckload to a less than truckload. So, that is our belief that the freight business has three or four major major benefit. One is the still enlarge the pool of the business. Second is as an express business, the concentration of the business will be more as the time goes. So as we already seen that the top players has been gradually taking more and more market shares and improve their. Third is also a business is very much of The volume-driven economic of scales is also very obvious. Not as obvious as expressed, but still, as the volume goes, then you should have lower cost structures in terms of your labor, the rental space, as well as the transportation cost. I'm confident that our major competency and core competency in this very business is from a few areas. One is that we started this business very early, so we accumulated a very well-established know-how in terms of the technology, information technologies, the core network layout, as well as our franchisee networks. So that is one of our core competencies in terms of going forward. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

As there are no more questions, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining our call, and we appreciate your support. Please reach out to our investor relations team if you have any further questions. We look forward to speaking with you soon. Thank you very much.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.