FinVolution Group

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for participating in the first quarter 2021 earnings conference call for FinFolution Group. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Jimmy Tan, Head of Investor Relations for the company, Jimmy, please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. The company results were issued via newswire services earlier and are posted online. You can download the earnings release and sign up for the company's email alerts by visiting the IR section of our website at ir.pnvgroup.com. Mr. Feng Zhang, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Jia Yuan Xu, our Chief Financial Officer, will start the call with their prepared remarks. and conclude with a Q&A session. During this call, we will be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures to review and assess our operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with US GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings press release Before we continue, please note that today's discussion 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 involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties are included in the company filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Finally, we post a slide presentation on our IR website providing details of our results for the quarter. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Feng Zhang. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jimmy. Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us today. We are pleased to start 2021 with remarkable progress. delivering high-quality growth across all aspects of our business in the first quarter, while also achieving further improvements in risk metrics across the board. Notably, our total loan origination volume for the quarter reached a record high to 26.8 billion RMB, representing a year-over-year increase of 105%. Our loan origination volume for mainland China increased 24% quarter-over-quarter to 26 billion RMB, Also, our international business is continuing its rapid growth, generating approximately 760 million IMB of loan origination volume during the quarter, up 42% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Our sequential quarter growth in low volume following the continued economic recovery from the pandemic is a testament to the effectiveness of our strategies and our strong execution. Also in the quarter, we continue to benefit from our successful transition toward higher quality borrowers. We improved our delinquencies to historical lows while achieving sequential growth. Our recent day one delinquency rate in May was around 5.4% compared to 9.7% in the same period last year. Our vertical delinquency rate that was 15 to 89 days past due further improved to 1.24% from 1.38% in the previous quarter, while our 90-day-plus delinquency rate was 1.13% compared to 7.25% in the same period last year. Our loan collection recovery rate continued to stabilize at 90% around. We further expect We further expect vintage delinquency rate to fall to historical lows around 2.5% in the first quarter and key risk metrics to remain stable for 2021. Going forward, we see continued opportunities for quality growth as we further build our strong technological capabilities and credit risk management framework, notably our total number of new acquired borrowers in the first quarter of 2021 exceeded 1 million, compared to 373,000 new borrowers in the same period last year, representing a 169% increase. By continuing to improve our acquisition efficiency, we were able to reduce our acquisition costs from the previous quarter. As part of our efforts to pursue financial inclusion, our average IRR for this quarter stabilized at around 26.8%. Since 2020, we have been diversifying our loan facilitation services to serve small business owners in mainland China as we continue to capitalize on this unique opportunity presented by the need for operational funds. In the first quarter, loan origination volume for small business owners grew rapidly to 4.4 billion RMB. versus 3.7 billion RMB originated throughout the full year of 2020, accounting for 16% of total loan origination volume for the period. The total number of small business owners we served in the quarter reached around 305,000 compared to 220,000 for the full year 2020. We believe this segment of our business supports China's economic rebound and is in line with national policies. Going forward, we will remain focused on serving small business owners, and we expect this portion of our business to account for around 20% of total loan origination volume in 2021. Our international expansion strategy continues to be a key competitive differentiator for us as we remain optimistic and selective in penetrating Southeast Asia emerging markets, where we have established first-mover advantages. We currently have established operations in Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore. Apart from our online loan facilitation services, we have also been exploring other business concepts with different partners in the South Asia market. Leveraging on our expertise in online loan services and the localization strategy, we are confident in our globalization process and our long-term mission to make financial services more accessible and inclusive for our borrowers. In light of the ongoing uncertainties stemming from pandemic-related economic conditions, our international expansion strategy will help diversify both user base and revenue streams, thus bolstering our ability to generate a steady long-term growth for the company. We remain focused on evolving our risk assessment and management framework with prudent principles, enhancing top-notch technology advancement capabilities while pursuing a healthy approach to diversifying our customer base, as well as expanding funding sources, both domestically and internationally. With all that being said, as we drive our industry-leading position further with these initiatives in technology, overseas markets, and product diversification, I believe Finvail Ocean will establish a significant presence in some of these new territories over the next several years. Based on our track record with our successful business transition in mainland China and our expansion in Southeast Asia, we believe our digitalization and operational capabilities can empower a variety of businesses across multiple scenarios in different industries. In conclusion, we are excited to get the year off to a strong start as we successfully execute our business strategy. We are confident in our ability to maximize our well-established position in China's consumer and micro-enterprise markets, as well as South Asia's booming digital finance market, which will unlock tremendous value for all of our shareholders. With that, I will now turn the call to Mr. Jia Yuanxu, who will discuss our financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Feng, and hello, everyone. With a strong and steady recovery across multiple operational fronts in the first quarter, we delivered a 45% increase in the GAAP operating profit to $671 million. We are affirming the successful transaction of our business model towards high-quality borrowers. Our balance sheet remains strong with $5.1 billion in unrestricted cash and short-term investments. empowering our strong technology and risk management capabilities. We will continue to explore new business models and tap into new opportunities both domestically and internationally. Now, turning to the financial results for the first quarter, in the interest of time, I will not go through each item line by line on this call. Please refer to our earnings release for more details. Net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 stabilized at around 2.11 billion RMB, primarily due to increase in loan origination volume and partially offset by the decrease in guaranteed income as a result of improved asset quality. Loan origination service fees increased by 103% to 761 million RMB for the fourth quarter of 2021 from 375 million RMB in the same period of 2020, primarily due to the increase in loan origination volume, which was partially offset by the decrease in average rate of transaction fees. Post-facilitation service fees increased by 24% to 226 million RMB for the first quarter of 2021 from 183 million RMB in the same period of 2020. primarily due to the increase in outstanding loans serviced by the company and the low impact of the deferred transaction fees. Guaranteed income was 659 million RMB for the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to 1,115 million RMB in the same period of 2020 as a result of improved asset quality. Net interest income decreased by 11% to 280 million RMB for the fourth quarter of 2021, around 315 million RMB in the same period of 2020, mainly due to the reduction in outstanding loan balance of consolidated trusts partially offset by the higher loan origination volume originated outside mainland China. Other revenue increased by 121% to 185 million RMB for the fourth quarter of 2021, from 84 million RMB in the same period of 2020, mainly due to increased customer referral fees to other third-party platforms. Nungap adjusted operating profit, which excludes share-based compensation expenses before tax, with 671 million RMB for the fourth quarter of 2021. representing an increase of 45% from 464 million RMB in the same period of 2020. Net profit was 593 million RMB for the fourth quarter of 2021, representing an increase of 41% compared to 420 million RMB in the same period of 2020. We have a well-capitalized balance sheet, and our leverage is conservative. If you divide the total outstanding loans of 32.5 billion RMB on our platform by our shareholder equity, the leverage ratio across our business was only 3.7 times. And our liquidity position remains strong with 5.1 billion RMB of unrestricted cash and short-term investments as at the end of March 2021. Our strong balance sheet positions as well in the current operating environment and it gives us significant flexibility. As China's economic environment gradually recovers from the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, the company has been experiencing progressive improvements across numerous operational metrics. The company will continue to closely monitor the situation of global pandemic and the remaining energy in its business operations. As such, The company holds a cautiously optimistic view on its operations and anticipates a steady growth in its large volume in the second quarter of 2021, which is expected to be the range of RMB 29 billion to RMB 13 billion. Last but not least, we continue to return value to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. As of March 31, 2021, We have cumulatively deployed 131 million USD for buybacks and 143 million USD for dividend distributions. With that, I will conclude my prepared remarks. We will now open the call to questions. Operator, please continue.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. 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 would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to management in Chinese, we ask that you please kindly repeat your question in English. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Thomas Cheung with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hello, this is Thomas Cheung with Jefferies.

Thomas, hello. Let me answer your two questions. The first one is about unit economics. We can take a look. It's actually quite simple. The pricing level of the entire IR is between 26 and 27. Our funding cost is around 7.5. Then our Vintage risk level is now at 2.5. If 2.5 is converted into an IR lens, considering our deadline, it's about 7%. So you can take 27-7.5-7, and you can get an IR lens of about 12. If this 12 is converted into a T-Crate lens, it's about 4. This is the same as what we gave before,

Okay, let me do the translation for Mr. Alexis. The calculation for our unique economics is pretty straightforward. Our IRR on average is between 26% to 20%, and our funding cost is about 7.5%, and our vintage delinquency rate is 2.5%. On an annualized basis, it's around 7%. So on average, the IRR is around 12%, and when we convert to a take rate of 4%, it's in line with what we have been guiding with the market along the past few quarters.

Okay, our next rule, elaborate more on our development phase. We will be explaining two different stages. Yeah. First of all, let's take a look at our domestic housing business. After the beginning of the year, we have maintained a very stable core index. In terms of risk, we have also achieved an improvement. Based on this, we have also given a second degree. We are expected to sell at a level of 2.9 billion to 3 billion in a quarter. We should say that we have now entered a

Our loan facilitation business in China has shown all our key metrics in our loan facilitation business in China has been showing a healthy sign. For example, our risk metrics has continued to improve and in the second quarter, our Expected loan origination volume is expected to be in the range of $29 billion to $30 billion. And we are continuing to show healthy growth in all key metrics going forward.

In the first quarter, our total number of new customers exceeded 1 million. And in the domestic market alone, our new customers exceeded 600,000. And all these increasing new customers actually provide engines of growth for the future. Based on the current situation and the current performance of our key operation metrics, we are confident to deliver our full-year loan guidance of $100 billion to $120 billion. In addition, from the perspective of our Southeast Asian modern business, we still maintain a very rapid growth in the Indonesian market. Although Southeast Asia is still affected by some of the epidemic, we are still able to maintain a very speedy and rapid growth regardless of whether it is a new investment or a deal.

Okay, for the Southeast Asia market, we are still maintaining very rapid growth, although there has been some impact by the rebounding of the pandemic in Southeast Asia. In terms of new customers and loan origination volume, we are still seeing very rapid growth in both of these metrics. And besides Indonesia, we have also penetrated into a new country, Philippines, and we have also begun operations in Philippines. Okay, that's about it. Thank you, Thomas.

Okay, was there a follow-up, Mr. Chong? Okay, continuing to the next question. The next questioner is Yuran Zhong with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you, Mr. Duan. Congratulations on your strong performance this quarter. I have two questions. The first is, I saw that the size of our board has dropped relatively quickly, which means that the transfer speed to the outside of the board is relatively fast. I would like to ask about the latest situation of the board and the outside of the board. I would like to ask the management if there are any feedbacks regarding the management of the accommodation. The second question is that I would like to ask about Southeast Asia. Thank you, management, for taking my questions and congratulations on the strong results. I have two sets of questions. One is on the loan facilitation It seems the exposure to the on-balance sheet lending and lending by trust structures have been rapidly reducing. And so I wonder what's the latest split between the on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet origination volume. And related to loan facilitation, what's your assessment of the regulation over the loan facilitation business model going forward? Would it be regulated under a license regime, for example, under the personal credit reference law? Any feedback you can share from the funding partners or regulators would be appreciated. And secondly, regarding the overseas business, following up on your earlier comments, can you share more details on the Southeast Asia expansion? What's the economics there? any guidance on what you expect the volume to make up, when the volume would make up a meaningful contribution of your volume going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Yilan. The first one is about our outside and inside. According to this standard requirement, what we actually show on the inside is that we are cooperating with SYNTO. this part of the transaction. This part, from now on, in fact, the overall ratio is indeed not large. It is probably less than 10%. Because our main cooperation with the bank and cash is to do such a joint cooperation model. So this part is the so-called outside of the table. The ratio of this piece is actually getting higher and higher.

Okay, on the balance sheet, if the trust contribution that's on the balance sheet is currently less than 10%, our loan facilitation model mainly cooperate with the banks and consumer finance companies, which is off balance sheet.

Let's try to understand the regulator's intentions. The regulator is in the process of building a comprehensive framework. And over the last one year plus,

regulators is in the process of establishing establishing a comprehensive framework. from our observation, the regulator is in the process of establishing a comprehensive framework task. Many different aspects such as data protection, funding restriction, customer privacy are being reviewed.

From our observation, this framework is relatively complete. Based on our observation from March 2021 onwards, the regulatory environment seems to be much more stable.

and it is less likely for any new regulatory framework to be introduced. In the future, it is less likely for any new regulatory framework to be introduced. However, modifications on the current regulations will still continue.

We think the credit scoring consultation coverage is very broad. But from the point of view of our business, we feel that we may not be able to get into this range with it. Because our entire housing business has a relatively long process. It includes from customer acquisition to customer management to risk management. That's a series of such a process.

Our business is based on the loan facilitation model, providing comprehensive solutions on multiple aspects, such as customer acquisition, risk management, after-loan management, and loan matching, et cetera.

So from this loan facilitation model, our final output is not a data product or a credit card product. In fact, our payment product, in some ways, For the loan facilitation model, we do not offer stand-alone credit scoring services or point scores. We refer the customers to our financial institution partners.

whether a loan is being approved or not is dependent on their independent assessment.

从这个层面上讲,我们觉得目前来看, 包括我们了解的一些信息, 其实觉得这个征信办法可能并不一定都适用于我们。 And from this view and our current assessment, we believe we are not within the scope of the current credit scoring consultation paper. As the Southeast Asia business contribution is still very small relative to our overall business, we intend to share more updates with you when this portion of the business grows bigger in the future.

The next question comes from Hai Yong with 86 Research. Please go ahead.

The first question is that we see that iPhone and other Android manufacturers have added some privacy protections, including IDFA. Does this affect the accuracy of our input? Or in other words, does it affect the cost of our goods? In addition, does monitoring the rules of our necessary information collection of some of our apps affect the collection and control of our data? So let me translate my questions. Thanks management for taking my questions. Congratulations on another great quarter. My first question is regarding on the privacy protection. The recent days, some smartphone makers changed privacy policies, for example, new IDFA policy by Apple. So will this policy change affect our advertising effectiveness and the borrower acquisition cost? In addition, regulators clarified some necessary personal information for online learning apps. So will it adversely impact our data collection and risk assessment model? My second question is on our technical service. We launched the BaaS service last month. Can you share more color on how many institutions have adopted the service and how we charge them? Thank you.

Thank you, Han Yang. The first question is actually related to one kind of problem. In fact, supervision has raised some higher requirements for data privacy protection.

It actually belongs to the same question. The regulators have increased the barrier on data privacy and customer protection.

From the current results, the impact is minimum. As we are a technology company, we are using our technology capabilities to solve all these problems. And also, compliance is a top priority for us. On the other hand, we are also concerned about the rules and regulations, so we are not on many of these lists. So this also shows that we are actually very concerned about the privacy and protection of this data, these rules and regulations.

As you know, compliance is of the top priority of us. And if you actually notice on many NIM leads, our company is actually not of those NIMs highlighted by the regulators.

The second question is about the BaaS service. Because before, we also launched a BaaS service with our financial institutions partners. Regarding our bus progress with our 14 years of digitalization capabilities, we are helping our financial institution partners in terms of increasing their efficiency and Our partners actually agree with our views on the BaaS services and we are currently working with three of them to introduce the

various stage of the bus services. We are actually providing services such as after-loan management, risk-related services, and the fees collected will be based on the actual results of the performance.

Of course, the bus service is a to-be business type. It has its own rules. So, in this business, we will not take a particularly aggressive pace. We will constantly polish the products. And then,

OK, the bus is a to-be business model, and during this process of promoting the bus services, our intention is to allow us to have more time to enhance our products before sharing it with more of our institutional partners.

Thanks, very helpful.

Thank you, John.

The next question comes from Alex Yue with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hello, Mr. Guan. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to ask a question. My first question is about this question. uh uh So I have two questions. The first one is on Is there any updates on the earlier, the national on a license? Is there any updates on that front? And earlier, one of your peers had mentioned that they might be doing some work on applying such a license. Second question is on your international business. I'm wondering would you have any specific guidance in terms of the the full year long volume contribution from that business. And also, as you ramp up your international business, what's the implications on your sales and marketing expense? And in particular, I'm wondering if you could share with us some color on the customer acquisition cost for your international business. Thank you.

Thank you, Alex. We are still in the process of understanding the supervision and the internal evaluation. In fact, there is not much new information about the supervision of the small band in this quarter. Including the original method of the small band, the formal version has not come out yet. OK, with regards to the nationwide microlending license programs,

We are still in the process of evaluation and understanding the regulators' requirements, as there has been no update from the regulators since the previous consultation paper. We will share more details with the market when there is more information from the regulators.

Although the pandemic is rebounding in Southeast Asia, we are still confident to achieve three to four times growth on a year-on-year basis in Southeast Asia this year.

As we have disclosed, we have acquired over 300,000 new customers in Indonesia, and our lending app is known as Atacami. Our app in Indonesia is very popular, and between the last six months, ranging from 1st October to 31st March, in terms of fintech lending, we are ranked number one in terms of downloads.

The cost of customer acquisition in Southeast Asia is relatively lower, but as the business and situation change, the cost of acquisition is expected to change as well. In the first quarter, the cost of a successful new borrower in mainland China is about 450 RMB and this has shown improvement compared to the previous quarter. As you know, we have also become an important partner with many leading information feed vendors. And our cooperation with these partners has become closer and leading to a more strategic partnership. As our risk metrics have been constantly improved, this has also lead to a decrease in our customer acquisition costs. Thank you, Alex. Thank you.

Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. The next question comes from Eric Liu with China Renaissance. Please go ahead.

Hello, Mr. Guan. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to ask a question. I have a small question I would like to ask. We see that the quality of the company's assets has been greatly improved. I would like to know how our current storage customers compare to a year ago. So my question is we saw the asset quality has been largely improved. So just want to know if there's any change to our current client profile. Thank you.

Our customer profile has actually changed a lot.

During the P2P era, only about 15% of our borrowers have PBOC records, and today, over 95% of our borrowers have PBOC records.

And we would also like to share more color on how we are able to gain such a significant change in our asset quality. Okay, the reasons for the improvement are largely due to two of our capabilities. Number one, our digitalization capabilities, and number two, constant data accumulation.

Constant data accumulation enabling us to upgrade the effectiveness of our model. Our digitalization capabilities can be proven in many situations. For example, during the last 14 years, we have track record in customer acquisitions, risk management, and after-loans management, etc. 这个能力我们之前是在P2P的相对刺激的人群上得到了验证。 现在我们转成优质人群以后, 现在从结果上我们也得到了知名。 同时我们在东南亚这个国家, This capability has been proven during our P2P era and after our swift transition to better quality borrowers, we have also seen multiple improvements across operational metrics as we leverage on our digitalization capabilities. And these capabilities have also been leveraged onto our Southeast Asia business, where our business is expanding rapidly.

And in the future, we believe our digitalization capabilities can also be leveraged in non-finance industry across multiple scenarios. Another very important factor is the constant data accumulation.

Constant data accumulations coupled with the digitalization capabilities double the results as more data are being collected will lead to a more accurate model, hence increasing our capabilities. As you can see, from our transition to higher quality borrowers, driven by the increase in number of new customers and resulting in higher loan origination volumes.

As the number of new quality borrowers increase of the platform with a higher loan origination volume, all these will become a positive impact And we are confident that with all these capabilities as our key operational metrics, such as our risk, improved, we are able to have a healthy growth for the business. Thank you.

The next question comes from Henry Yang with GoldDragon. Please go ahead.

China, China, China, China. Now, we are not doing well. And then these top peers in China are not doing as well as we do in this kind of overseas market. Where is the core competitiveness or the core point that can be dragged out in this regard? And then can you ask the management to share again? That is to say, we may have a long-term impact on the new market. So just congrats on such a strong result. And as we see, Simvolution has been doing very well in Southeast Asia market, especially Indonesia, and outperforming all the local players after COVID. And even for our peers who have been doing a better and larger business in mainland China, none of them has been as successful in overseas markets. as our company. Can you please share what kind of core modes or competencies we have to be able to lead in the Southeast Asian market? And would you please also share your plan on the overseas expansion and the total addressable market over the long term? Thank you.

Thanks, Henry. This is Feng. I'll try to give a brief view on your question. I think it's a really good question. I think our core capability, core strengths of the company are really twofold. One is after so many years, we are really good at leveraging data and technology to improve efficiencies in in a business process. And particularly, I think in the past, our main business has been on this, you know, loan tech, you know, business in our view. And secondly, I think the company has a really strong, you know, value system and reflecting in our business, I think it has, we have a very strong risk culture and we really respect risk and we treat it very seriously. We don't sacrifice risk for achieving short-term growth, and we really look at things in a very long-term way. So I think these are the two core strengths of the company, and I think you know, the company has experienced up and downs. I think, you know, before we went IPO, we had a period of rapid growth. And after IPO, you know, due to very severe regulatory environment and external environment shifts, we had a couple of tough years. But I think, you know, what's inside the company, the fundamentals of the company really were able to enable us to go through that tough period. And I think our track record during good years and tough years really says a lot about our fundamentals. And to the second part of your question, I think We are really bullish about the Southeast Asian market. I think roughly it's half the size of mainland China. So I think even for Indonesia, Philippines, these two countries combined, we are very small. We are very early stage, though we are developing very fast. but we think the market is huge. So we think just like in this market, we have a lot of opportunities there. We're very bullish about that. And I think I will also add, you know, we will continue to explore getting into other markets when opportunity presents. But I also want to take a step back, coming back to what we believe is the core strengths, the fundamentals of the company. And I want to call out that it's actually not limited to only loan facilitation model or loan tech. Think about that. It's really leveraging data and technology to improve efficiencies. And our long-term-based value system, we believe there's a lot of opportunity for us to leverage the core strengths of the company to improve efficiency. And so we are also exploring how do we leverage this core capability to enter different markets and different businesses. And we will share with the market, share with you guys when there are more meaningful processes. But there are a bunch of things like in the incubation stage in the company. Thank you, Henry.

Yeah, just a very quick follow-up. Investors, shall we expect to share a meaningful update of the overseas businesses, both on their top-line contribution and also the bottom-line contribution towards the end of this year and the next?

Yeah, possibly. I think as the business sides continue to grow, you know, some of our new businesses, you know, namely, like, particularly, like, you know, the international business. And we, you know, we are very careful because, for example, like, you know, this is the first time we disclosed the international business. But internally, within the company, we started the business, you know, several years ago, right? So, but, like, you know, we decided, like, you know, until we feel fairly comfortable and we will start to share some information. And I think, you know, as the business become more meaningful, We're very bullish about the business. The business is in a very healthy stage, very healthy in both growth as well as unit economics. And as it becomes a more meaningful part of our entire business, we will share more color, more insight, and more numbers with the team. Thank you. Thanks.

As there are no further questions now, I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact the Innovation Investor Relations team. Good night.

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