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spk07: Good evening, and thank you for standing by for New Oriental's fiscal year 2024 first quarter results 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. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host today, Ms. Sissy Zell. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to New Oriental's first fiscal quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Our financial results for the period were released earlier today and are available on the company's website as well as on NewsWare services. Today, Stephen Yang, Executive President and Chief Financial Officer and I will share New Oriental's latest earnings results and business updates in detail with you. After that, Stephen and I will be available to answer your questions. Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, forward-looking statements involving inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, our results may be materially different from the view expressed today. A number of potential risks and uncertainties are outlined in our public findings with the SEC. New Rental does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call will be available on New Rental's investor relations website at investor.newrental.org. I will now first turn the call over to Mr. Yang. Stephen, please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Cici. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call. It's a great pleasure to announce the new rental has painted an encouraging start of fiscal year 2024 by delivering a set of robust financial results this quarter, with top-line performance beating the high end of our expectations. Following a tireless year of trial and development, our multi-pronged business lines have pivoted towards a stable recovery and anchored fruitful yields. mainly benefiting from the strong post-COVID recovery of demand, consumption, and traveling. While our new business has begun making meaningful contributions to the company's revenue, thereby invigorates growth and margin expansion. Our bottom-line performance has also achieved a promising growth. Our operating margin and non-GAAP operating margin reaching 18.6%, and 22.3% restructuring for this quarter, depicting a solid resilience across our business lines, thanks to our ongoing efforts in brushing up on operational efficiency and cost control. The delegated plans of our restructured business model, better utilized resources and streamlined cost structure have sharpened our capability to yield better than expected margins in this fiscal quarter, as well as enliven our exploration and ingenious ventures. Coupled with the company's sustainable profitability, resilient business lines, and emerging new initiatives, we have firm conviction in maintaining a healthy growth of our market share and creating sustainable value for our customers and shareholders in the long term. Now, I would like to spend some time to talk about the quarter's performance across our remaining business lines and new initiatives to you in detail. Our key remaining business secured a promising trend, coupled with a positive momentum in our new initiatives. Breaking it down, the overseas test trap business recorded a revenue increase of 52% in dollar terms, or 62% in RMB terms year-over-year for the fiscal quarter of 2024. The Overseas Study consulting business recorded the revenue increase about 27% in dollar terms or 35% in RMB terms year-over-year for this quarter. The Eidos University students business recorded the revenue increase of 26% in dollar terms or 34% increase in RMB terms year-over-year for this quarter. As mentioned in the past quarters, we have launched several new initiatives which mostly revolve around facilitating students all around development. I'm pleased to share that these initiatives have continued to exceed our expectations by yielding consistent growth and meaningful profits to the company. Firstly, the non-endemic children business, which we have offered in around 60 existing cities, focus on cultivating students' innovative ability comprehensive quality we're happy to see increased penetration in those markets we have tap into especially in higher tier cities with a total approximately four hundred and thirty eight thousand student enrollment recorded in this physical quarter the top ten cities in China contribute over sixty percent of the revenue of this business secondly the intelligence learning system and device business service designed to provide a tailored digital learning experience for students has been adopted around 60 cities. We're thrilled to see improved customer retention and scalability of this new business with approximately 181,000 active paid users reported in this quarter. The revenue contribution of this initiative from the top 10 cities in China is around 60%. On smart education business, educational materials and digitalized smart study solutions have continued to contribute material results to the overall advancements of the company. In summary, our new education business initiatives recorded the revenue increase of 103% in dollar terms or 117% increase in RMB terms year over year for the first quarter of 2024. In addition, beginning in this fiscal year, we're pleased to announce a newly integrated business line, which will be comprised of all of our tourism related business, targeting diverse age groups. This includes our well-grounded study tour and research camp business for students of K-12 and university ages, as well as our newly established tourism business that mainly serves middle-aged and senior audience. Upon consolidation, this tourism-related business line will utilize new rental strengths of knowledge sharing, start teachers, and reputable branding to visualize our capability in serving customers for all age groups. It's our great pleasure to share the performance of New Business Line in detail. Our study tour and research camp business, an initiative that aims to offering students of K-12 and university ages the opportunity to utilize their free time to broaden the scope, knowledge, and cultivate subject interest, has achieved encouraging growth in this summer. Thanks to the strong post-COVID recovery of demand, resumed consumption and traveling, we have conducted study tour and the research camp in over 50 cities across the country, with the top 10 cities in China offering over 55% of the revenue share of this new initiative. We finally expect a new business to contribute minimum revenue in this fiscal year. In addition to success of our study tour and the research camp offerings, we also began venturing into the tourism business to expand our reach to old age groups, including the middle aged and elderly individuals. During this physical quarter, we piloted a number of top quality tourism offerings in featured provinces, including Zhejiang, Sichuan, Shanxi, Gansu, and Henan. And we are sincerely grateful for the increasing traction that these novel adventures have gained. As we are still at a very preliminary stage of planning, testifying and evaluating the visibility of this business in selected districts, we will keep you posted should there be timely updates on this new world. With regard to our OMO system, we have persisted in revamping our platform and leveraged our educational infrastructure and technology edge on remaining key business and new business with a vision to provide advanced diversified education service to customers of all ages. During this reporting period, a total of $45.6 million has been invested in our OMO teaching platform, which equips us with the flexibility to maintain top-notch service to students during the pandemic. During this reporting period, Easterby has embraced a multi-platform strategy through an official debut on new platforms, including Taobao and its own app, in order to enlarge its customer base and amplify its brand influence. East Buy consistently adhered to developing its private label products that are healthy, tasty, high quality, with good value for money, and has attained instrumental breakthroughs with streams of new products rolled out each month. From groceries to daily necessities, East Buy's live streaming e-commerce has not only helped customers reap good bargains, but also helped farmers, producers, and local enterprise sell their products through strategic marketing strategies. In addition, the brand continued to join hands with local governments to promote unique agriculture products from region to region, nurturing public appreciation towards diverse cultures through inventive content. It also pioneered a new mode of live streaming that incorporated with the product traceability by which our lead teams would unearth the regions of our private label products, factories, and orchards. Our live streams have thereby offered assurance to the customers through guaranteeing products authenticity and visibility. With regard to the company's latest financial position, I'm confident to share with you that the company is in a healthy financial status with cash and cash-equivalent term deposits and short-term investments totaling approximately $4.6 billion. On July 26, 2022, the company's board of directors authorized the share repurchase of up to $500 million of the company ADS World Common Shares during the period from July 26, 8th, 2022 through May 31st, 2023. The company's board of directors further authorized the company to extend its share repurchase program launched in July 2022 by 12 months through May 31st, 2024. As of October 24th, 2023, the company repurchased an aggregate of approximately 6 million ADS for approximately $193.3 million from the open market under this program. Now, I will turn the call over to Cici to share with you about the key financials. Cici, please go ahead.
spk05: Now, I'd like to walk you through the other key financial details for this quarter. Operating costs and expenses for the quarter were $894.9 million, representing a 34.2% increase year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating costs and expenses for the quarter, which exclude share-based compensation expenses, were $855.3 million, representing a 32% increase year-over-year. The increase was primarily due to the cost and expenses related to the substantial growth in East Dubai private label products and live streaming e-commerce business. Cost of revenue increased by 41.4% year-over-year. to $441.2 million. Setting and marketing expenses increased by 37.9% year-over-year to $136.1 million. G&A expenses for the quarter increased by 24% year-over-year to $317.6 million. Non-GAAP G&A expenses, which exclude share-based compensation expenses, were $290.3 million, representing a 22.3% increase year-over-year. Total share-based compensation expenses, which were allocated to related operating costs and expenses, increased by 108% to $39.6 million in the first quarter of 2024. Operating income was $205.1 million, representing a 163% increase year over year. Non-GAAP income from operations for the quarter was $244.8 million, representing a 152.2% increase year-over-year. Net income attributable to New Oriental for the quarter was $165.4 million, representing a 150.6% increase year-over-year. Basic and diluted net income per ADS attributable to New Oriental were $1.99, respectively. Non-GAAP net income attributable to New Oriental for the quarter was $189.3 million, representing a 126.2% increase year-over-year. Long-gap basic and diluted net income per ADS attributable to New Oriental were $1.15 and $1.13, respectively. Net cash flow generated from operation for the first fiscal quarter of 2024 was approximately $335.8 million and capital expenditure for the quarter, or $132.5 million. Turning to the balance sheet, as of October 31, 2023, New Oriental had cash and cash equivalents of $1,748.9 million. In addition, the company had $1,399.4 million in term deposit and $1,423.9 million in short-term investments. New Orleans deferred revenue balance at the end of the fiscal, first fiscal quarter of 2024 was $1,401.4 million. an increase of 38.4% as compared to $1,012.5 million at the end of the first fiscal quarter of last fiscal year. Now, I hand over to Stephen to go through our outlook and guidance. Stephen?
spk01: We're confident in embarking a healthy journey of sustainable growth for the rest of this fiscal year, building on the combination of our brand advantage, rooted history, influential teaching content and resources, and solid foundation. We're also committed to work diligently adhering to the latest guidance from the Chinese authorities on enhancing the nation's education level to strengthen its leading position to further unveil our potential in all business lines and creative endeavors. With regards to the learning center and the classroom space, We plan to increase our capacity by about 15% to 20%, by which a reasonable amount of new learning centers is expected to be opened. While classroom areas of some existing learning centers will be expanded in a few major cities, most of the new openings will be launched in the cities with better top line, bottom line performance. We will keep monitoring the pace and scale of the new openings According to the local operation and financial results in this fiscal year Despite the historical seasonality of some new rentals major businesses Which will usually result in a slower period for every second quarter We remain confident in sustaining a healthy growth across all business lines in summary We expect total net revenue in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 to be in the range of $785.0 million to $804.2 million, representing EOV year increase in the range of 23% to 26%. To conclude, we're confident in achieving satisfactory operating profit level and improving our profitability in the rest of fiscal year 2024. As always, New Rental plays great determination to cultivate new endeavors and are bolstered our existing capabilities. Simultaneously, we'll devote reasonable resources on research and application of new technologies such as AI and chat GPT into our educational and product offerings with a vision to uplift our strengths and pursue the growth and operational efficiency in the future. We will also continue to seek guidance from and cooperate with government authorities in align with these efforts to comply with the relevant policies, regulations, and measures, as well as to further adjust our business operations as required. I must say that these expectations and forecasts reflect our considerations of the latest regulatory measure, as well as current and preliminary view, which is subject to change. This is the end of our fiscal year 2024 Q1 summary. At this point, I'd like to open the floor for questions. Operator, please open the call for these. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. The question and answer of this conference will begin in a moment. In order to be fair, all callers who wish to ask a question, we will take one question at a time from each caller. If you have more than one question, please rejoin the queue after your first question has been addressed. To ask a question, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question, please. Our first question comes from Yiwen Zheng. With China Renaissance, your line is now open.
spk09: Hey, thank you. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my question. So my question is about, you know, November quarter revenue guidance. You know, if we look at the worldwide growth, there was a bit of deceleration versus the August quarter. Can you walk through us what are the drivers, you know, behind? And probably you can also talk about, you know, how do we see the growth outlook across different segments Thank you.
spk01: Yeah, as for the revenue guidance for Q2, actually it's not the acceleration. You know, I want to emphasize the following points of the Q2 guidance. Firstly, you know, as always, we take a conservative approach in giving the guidance of Q2. Secondly, the exchange rates negatively impact the revenue growth guidance by approximately three basis points. Thirdly, I think it's also need to be noted that typically Q2 is our seasonally slow quarter for most of our education business with the lower than Euro revenue and profit. Given the strong demand of the growth momentum we have seen so far this year, we're quite confident that the whole year's revenue growth will be better than we originally expected, especially in the last quarter. We gave the guidance for the top-line growth, and this quarter, I think we gave the better guidance, or higher guidance than that of the last quarter, for the whole year. And lastly, you know, East Dubai will start to have a higher base comparison since Q2 this year. And overall, I think, you know, benefiting from the post-COVID, the economy recovery, we have seen strong demands in education sector, especially in the overseas related business and now diamond children business. And, you know, by leveraging our brand, the advantage of new rental and the, you know, the, the, the, good content and resources and our long established solid foundation. I think we'll continue to seize great opportunity and to take more market share in the future. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. Thanks. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Felix Liu with UBS. Your line is now open.
spk10: Hi, good evening, management. Thank you for taking my question and congratulations on the very strong first quarter results. My question is on your capacity plan. I noticed that in this quarter your capacity, your Q&Q new learning center expansion accelerated from fourth quarter last year. So may I check your plan, capacity plan from here? Do we expect this Q on Q new addition pace to maintain throughout this year? Or are there any seasonalities with capacity expansions quarter by quarter? And how do you see the regulation landscape or regulation environment around capacity expansions? Thank you.
spk01: This quarter we added 6% new capacity in this quarter. And as you know, we increased our capacity expansion by about 15% to 20% for the whole year, fiscal year 24. And as I said, we will open a reasonable amount of new learning centers or new classroom areas in the top tier cities with the good performance of the top line and the bottom line. And as I said, You know, the demand in education sector is very strong. That's why we raised the guidance of the whole year of the top-line growth and the learning center expansion plan for the whole year. As for the regulation side, I think so far so good. You know, and I think going forward, we expect the regulations will be stabilized. in the future. And that's it. And one more point I want to add. I think for the Q2, Q3, and Q4, I think we will follow the guidance of the learning center expansion for the whole year, 15%, 20%. And maybe in the Q4, you know, when we look at the budgets of the fiscal year 25, maybe we will raise the guidance of the learning center expansion plan again in Q4. Yeah.
spk10: Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
spk07: One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from the line of Lucy Yu with Bank of America Securities. Your line is now open.
spk04: Hi, Steven. This is Lucy. I have a question on the margin. So this quarter, we have seen the OP margin expanded a lot and reached like 22%, which is a pretty high level even compared to our historical kind of OP margin, especially in Q1. So how could we decoding the margin expansion, and how should we think about the margin expansion for the rest of the year? Thank you.
spk01: OK. Thank you, Lucy. Let us start with the this quarter margin analysis. You know, the GP margin and the OP margin increased a lot in this quarter, was mainly driven by the following reasons. Number one, the utilization and improving of our learning centers and the teaching resources increased the learning center margin. That means we have lower fixed costs and expenses compared to that of last year, and number New business margin is over 20% in this quarter. You know, the profit growth is faster than we expected, you know, two years ago. You know, we started the business two years ago. And the recovery of the remaining business, especially in the overseas-related business, you know, generally the higher margin in this quarter, you know, is higher, definitely higher than that of last year. And number three is that, you know, East Dubai enjoys a higher margin. And as we head into the fiscal year, fiscal year 24, Q2, I think we're operating leverage and higher utilization. And the remaining business lines and the new business lines will generate the more profit to the group. And I think we are optimistic on margin expansion and sustainable profitability in Q2 and in the rest of the whole year. I think the whole team will continue to work together to seek profitable growth in fiscal year 24.
spk00: And I think we believe we'll create more values to the shareholders over the long run. Thank you, Lucy.
spk07: Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from the line of DS Kim with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
spk08: Hi, Stephen. Hi, Cece. Good evening, and thanks for taking my question. And by the way, congrats on the quarter. I think 245 million OPO is the second-best level on record, which is pretty amazing. Anyway, I have a high-level question on long-term growth, if that's okay. I guess we talked a lot about new businesses which are completely different animal and can continue to grow triple digit, I'm sure. But for old businesses, existing businesses like overseas study, high schools, how shall we think about the sustainable growth from here? I mean, segment revenues, I think both of them are probably at record high level. So it's no longer recovery phase. And what's going to drive the growth further from here say you know if you were to break out different levers like center expansions we discussed 15 20 versus utilization growth how much further room can we drive here and the price hikes uh if any and how shall we think about say next two to three years annual growth for the old businesses from here yeah uh you know i think yeah for the for the existing business
spk01: such as the oversea test grads, oversea consulting, and the adult and the university students' business. You know, I think let's analysis the market like this. On demand side, we have seen the strong demand for the oversea test grads, consulting business, and for the college business. And on supply side, you know, after the COVID and the policy, we have seen a lot of players disappear from the market. So that means we're facing less competition. So I think the existing business, including the overseas business and the adult and college students business, I think we will generate the top-line growth very good in the next two to three years. So we're quite optimistic about the top-line growth and the market expansion for the existing business. And as for the utilization rates, right? And for overall, you know, in this quarter, you know, in Q1, Q1 is the high season of the educational products. So in Q1, the utilization rate in Q1 is somewhere around 65%. So that means the two-thirds. But I think we have a long way to go. And, you know, yeah, as I said, in this fiscal year, we'll plan to open 15% to 20% new capacity. But our top-line growth is, you know, we beat the guidance every quarter, and then we raise the guidance of the whole year top line growth. I think the healthy top line growth will cover the rentals of the new capacity. So that means we do have the operating leverage in hand. And going forward, I think you will see more operating leverage for all business lines.
spk00: It will drive the market up. Thank you, Diaz.
spk07: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone. Again, that's star 11 to ask your question. Again, to ask your question, that's star 11. We are now approaching the end of the conference. I would now turn the call over to New Oriental's Executive President and Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Yang, for his closing remarks.
spk01: Again, Thank you for joining us today.
spk00: If you have any further questions, please do.
spk06: Operator, we probably have one more question from one panelist. Okay.
spk07: All right. Okay, thank you. One moment for our next question. Go ahead, please. A question from Kiani Wang with CICC. Your line is now open.
spk00: Go ahead, please.
spk03: Hi, Stephen. Good evening. This is from CICC. So congrats on a very strong set of results. So I just have a quick question. Our intelligent learning devices, we've seen that the active paid users this quarter had a quite impressive growth, like double Q and Q. So actually, what is driving such a strong growth? and how would we accept this business in the medium term? Thank you.
spk05: Okay, yeah. Actually, we're very satisfied with the developments of the new initiatives, especially for this kind of targeting younger kids, like K-12 students, new initiatives. Like the new intelligent learning device business, last year we rolled out in almost all the cities, and now we're seeing a huge demand. for the service. It's quite innovative in terms of the offering using all the technologies that we accumulated in last several years, that we have the cutting edge technology and content as well, and offering students a unique experience that helps students to enhance their academic study ability, especially self study ability as well. Actually, the demand in all kinds of cities, high tiers, low tiers, are all very strong. And we are confident in this kind of user number increase improvement year over year. And definitely, we're also in the process of enhancing the quality of our products and services as well. So we will make efforts in increasing the user number as well as enhancing the tuition like this kind of subscribing fee renewal rates as well. And also we want to expand to more subjects for all the existing So in summary, actually the high demand and also the best content and technology and all the service are the fundamental for the development for this new initiative. And we will try to continue to enhance the quality and try to maintain this kind of healthy growth for this new initiative.
spk07: Okay. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of DS Kim with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
spk08: Hi, sorry. Can I follow up one more question here regarding a showholder return policy? I do think that our stock is very, very cheap still, but I noticed that the buyback activity past three months has been pretty minimal. I'm just wondering, given the stock rally so far, have you considered shifting the policy a little toward dividend or some other way, or are we going to keep reiterating this buyback policy for the rest of the year and next year? Thank you.
spk01: Yeah, as you know, we announced a $400 million share buyback plan. And so far, we finished $193.4 million. And I think we will buy more shares going forward in the rest of this year. And as always, we aim to create more values to the shareholders on capital return side.
spk00: Thank you, Diaz.
spk07: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone. Again, that's star 11 on your telephone to ask your question.
spk06: Again, as a reminder, to ask a question, that's star 11. And at this time, I'm showing no further questions.
spk07: We are approaching the end of the conference call. I will now turn the call over to the new Oriental's Executive President and Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Wang, for his closing remarks.
spk01: Again, thank you for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or any of our investor relations representatives. Thank you.
spk07: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.
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