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.
Lufax Holding Ltd American Depositary Shares, two of which representing one Ordinary Share
Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call
3/13/2023
spk06: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for saying bye and welcome to the LUFIX Holding Limited's fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, we'll have a Q&A session. Please note this event is being recorded. Now I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Ms. Liu Xinyan, the company's head of board office and capital markets. Please go ahead, ma'am.
spk05: Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Our quarterly financial and operating results were released by our newswire services earlier today and are currently available online. Today, you will hear from our chairman and CEO, Mr. Y.S. Cho, who will provide an update of our business performance, the macroeconomic impact, and our business strategies. Our co-CEO, Mr. Fred Gibb, will then go through our fourth quarter results and provide more details on our business priorities. Afterwards, our CFO, Mr. David Choi, will offer a closer look into our financial before we open up the call for questions. Before we continue, I would like to refer you to our Safe Harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call, as we will be making forward-looking statements. Please also note that we may discuss non-IFRS measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under the International Financial Reporting Standards in our earnings release and the findings with the SEC. With that, I'm now pleased to turn over the call to Mr. Y.S. Cho, chairman and CEO of FluFax, please.
spk04: Thank you for joining. I would like to start by providing some perspective on where we are and on our business performance in Q4. While the fourth quarter was undoubtedly challenging, we are confident in our strategy to achieve a U-shaped recovery. At present, we must be patient, prudent, and prepared. We need to be patient for the macroeconomic tailwinds to flow through to the SMB segment. We're prudent in implementing new risk strategies and embedding lessons learned from the pandemic period and be prepared to gear up new business when the improved environment arrives. Recently, we have made the hard decisions on right sizing, risk, and resources with many related execution work streams to be completed in the first quarter. In the first half of 2023, our focus will continue to be on asset quality overgrowth and depth overbreadth in terms of upgrading our direct sales capabilities in prioritized geographies and within SMB or customer segments. Our focus will also include optimizing credit enhancement approaches to provide further support to our operating margins and business sustainability in the midterm. We believe these strategies will lead to a U-shaped recovery. And we remain patient in terms of preparing ourselves for this recovery and delivering sound operating and financial results. Now, I would like to share some updates for the fourth quarter. On the macro environment, we saw that the operating environment for SMBs remains challenging during Q4. Although there have been signs of recovery in the midterm since the change of zero COVID policy on December 7, 2022, the composite PMI was 49 in October, decreased to 47.1 in November, and further decreased to 42.6 in December. Nominal GDP in the fourth quarter grew at only .9% year over year. Our actual segment was shaped particularly hard as a result. With the adjustment of zero COVID policy, we believe China's economy will recover over the next several quarters. We have already seen signs of robust tourism activity and witnessed consumption boom during the spring festival. Non-manufacturing PMI returned to expansion at the sixth consecutive month of contraction in January. And manufacturing sector PMI hit 52.6 in February, the highest since April 2012. The IMAC has also raised its forecast for China's economic growth in 2023. Meanwhile, the government has called for more efforts to implement policy package for shoring up the economy. The Chinese government has stressed enhancing the law of finance in stabilizing the macro economy and improving financial services for the real economy. As SMBs are highly dependent on the macro environment and operating continuity, it is expected that SMBs' operations will gradually turn to normal post reopening. While it is too early to say whether notable recovery in performance will arrive, the indicators that we are monitoring closely include our C to M3 net flow ratio and the asset quality of new vintage compared with older ones. For new business volumes, due to challenging macroeconomic environment in 2022, we have prioritized asset quality over growth by tightening our customer selection standards and focusing new customer acquisition in more economically resilient regions. As we have seen a better credit performance from customers in these regions, and we have turned away potential customers who do not meet our credit standards. For example, for our general insurance loans, we rank the culture of our borrowers using our R1 to R6 risk rating system, which is based on the customer's credit risk score and their available assets. R1 represents customers with the highest quality and R6 with the lowest quality. Currently, we only enable loans for borrowers that are ranked at full or better. We have also optimized our risk rating system by factoring in the differences in economic resilience and underlying credit performance by region and industry. Meanwhile, we have been optimizing our direct sales force to be more nimble, productive, and effective in customer targeting as we focus on higher quality borrowers. We reduced the size of our direct sales force from over 58,000 as of the end of Q3 to approximately 46,000 as of the end of Q4. We have managed to retain the most productive members of our sales force to target more economically resilient regions. During Q4, we made many difficult decisions, including adjustments to customer selection strategy and the operational optimization of the sales force. The allow factors coupled with seasonality caused our neurons enabled in Q4 to drop by 37% quarter over quarter to a long maybe 77.8 billion. We believe that seasonality accounts for approximately 10% of the decrease between Q3 and Q4 based on the data over the past two years. As a result of aforementioned factors in Q4, our revenue declined by .6% quarter over quarter. However, the neurons that we enabled should generate better results as compared to loan vintages as a whole from a loan life cycle point of view. At the same time, while our core SBO customers were impacted by the deteriorating macro environment, we observed that our consumer finance sector was less affected, allowing us to continuously develop and grow our consumer finance business. The outstanding balance of consumer finance loans has grown substantially from 3.6 billion as of December 31, 2020, to 29.7 billion as of December 31, 2022, representing 188% compound annual growth over the two years. Similarly, our borrowers with outstanding consumer finance loans increased from 168,000 as of December 31, 2020, to 1.3 million as of December 31, 2022, representing 179% compound annual growth. We are in the process of optimizing our risk-bearing model. As you know, CGI premiums charged by our insurance partners remained elevated in fourth quarter, as they typically priced the risk based on historical loan vintages that were impacted by the challenging macroeconomy environment. While we continue to work closely with our credit enhancement partners, we cannot ensure that the outcome of the CGI premium pricing negotiations will align with our expectation. In circumstances and to the extent where we no longer find these partnerships to be commercially attractive, we are looking to increase our risk-bearing portion on the loans that we enable through our licensed financing guarantees subsidiary. And reduce the size of cooperation with the external credit enhancement partners. We are now in discussions with our funding partners regarding potential adjustments to our model, where we reduce usage of external credit enhancement partners. We target to complete these adjustments with the majority of our funding partners over the next few quarters to increase our operating flexibility. As of the end of Q4, we had net assets of around 94.8 billion on a consolidated basis. And our financing guarantee subsidiary had net assets of around 48 billion. The strong capital position provides a solid foundation for us to increase the percentage of risk we bear and support the optimization of our risk-bearing model. On regulation, we have largely completed our rectifications and the industry will enter into a stage of normalized supervision in January 2023. The regulators confirm that rectifications on the financial business of the 14 platform companies have largely been completed with only a few pending issues currently in progress to be resolved. The regulatory authorities will maintain normalized provision in general going forward, according to guidance provided by the regulatory authorities. Finally, I'm pleased to share that we are pursuing a Hong Kong listing. We submitted the A1 filing for dual primary listing by introduction on the main board of Hong Kong Exchange on February 1, 2023. And we will continue to communicate with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange regarding the listing plan. I will now turn the call over to Greg for more details on our operating users and business priorities.
spk02: Thank you, Wyeth. I will now provide more details on our Q4 and full year 2022 results and our operational focus for this year. And please note, all figures are in Remi B unless otherwise stated. The challenging macro environment has adversely affected our top line and bottom line financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year 2022. Our revenue in Q4 declined slightly to $12.3 billion, down .6% compared with Q3. In aggregate, 2022 full year revenue was $58.1 billion, a 6% decline compared with 2021. Due to a further spike in our credit impairment loss in the fourth quarter, which reflected the impact of the challenging macroeconomic environment for both our customers and operations, we made a net loss of $0.8 billion Remi B in Q4, while the full year net income declined .5% year over year to $8.8 billion Remi B. Similarly, asset quality metrics in Q4 worsened across the board, with DBT 30 plus and DBT 90 plus reaching 4.6 and .6% respectively, increasing from 3.6 and .1% compared with Q3. Our credit impairment loss increased from $4 billion in Q3 to $6.3 billion in Q4, reaching an aggregate of $16.6 billion for the full year of 2022. We have also seen continued deterioration in our CDM3 ratio, which worsened by 21 basis points compared to Q3 and reached .0% in Q4 as compared to .5% in Q4 2021. In spite of the challenges we faced in Q4, there are some bright spots in our performance. For instance, our funding costs in Q4 declined by 33 basis points compared with a year ago as we were able to tap public trust funding. As Elias mentioned, our consumer finance business saw steady growth in 2022 and credit performance for consumer finance was healthy and in line with the industry. As part of our business strategy, we continue to focus on regions, demonstrating more economic resilience, given divergence and performance between different regions, while further enhancing our operating efficiency and optimizing our channels. As we mentioned in last quarter's earnings release, we have seen variations in performance across different regions, and this remained the case in Q4. Last quarter, we saw a clear divergence between the top, average, and less desirable performing regions that we had categorized in Q3. We have therefore adopted and applied differentiated strategies in different regions as we strive to grow in regions that demonstrate more resilience and credit performance. Although we witnessed credit deterioration across the board in Q4, our asset quality metrics for top and average performing regions suffered less deterioration than those of less desirable performing regions. For example, the C to M3 ratio of general unsecured loans for top and average performing regions worsened by 14 basis points and 19 basis points respectively in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, while the C to M3 ratio for less desirable performing regions deteriorated by more than 28 basis points during the same period. On new loan sales, we achieved stronger contribution in new loan volumes from top performing regions due to our differentiated strategy targeting such regions. Compared with Q3, contribution of new loans enabled from top performing regions increased from 43% in Q3 to 46% in Q4. Average performing regions remained stable at 30%, while less desirable performing regions declined from 27% to 24%. In Q4, we continued our efforts to enhance efficiency and optimize our channels for new loans enabled in the full year of 2022, including consumer finance. Contribution from direct sales increased by .7% from .5% in 2021 to .2% in 2022. And contributions from online and telemarketing channels also increased from .8% in 2021 to .6% in 2022. Meanwhile, contributions from other channels declined from .7% in 2021 to .6% for the full year of 2022. We optimized our direct sales force during the fourth quarter to make our operations simpler and more efficient. The overall size of our direct sales force downsized from about 58,000 employees at the end of Q3 to about 46,000 as of the end of Q4. We have retained the more productive direct sales workforce in the top performing region,
spk04: whose
spk02: average productivity is more than twice those of the less productive sales members who departed in Q4. In addition to our differentiated strategies mentioned above, we have enacted prudent cost control measures to enhance operating efficiency. As a result, our cost to income ratio decreased from .8% in 2021 to .3% in the full year 2022. At the end of Q4, we bore .5% of credit risk on the outstanding loan balance and an increase from .5% as of the end of Q3. As Wyeth just mentioned, we are making progress in implementing an optimized risk bearing model with our funding partners, underpinned by our strong capital position to address the challenges brought about by elevated insurance premium charge by credit enhancement providers. We have already engaged most of our funding partners to discuss the model under which our guaranteed subsidiary provides full provision of credit enhancement. We aim to complete these discussions with the majority of our funding partners in the next few quarters. Among our 81 funding partners, 15 funding partners have already agreed to the model where our guarantee company provides full provision of credit enhancement, gradually alleviating future margin pressure from the elevated fees currently sought by insurance partners. As mentioned before, our strong capital position provides us with a solid foundation to transform to an optimized risk bearing model. As of December 31, 2022, our net assets stood at 94.8 billion with 43.9 billion of cash at bank. Our financing guarantee subsidiary had net assets of 47.9 billion and a leverage ratio of two times as of the same date. At the same time, we have continued to make progress on our new SBO ecosystem. We launched our new small business owner value added services shipping platform in November 22. This value added services platform, branded Nguyen Tung, is an open platform designed, populated with digital operating tools and industry content to support businesses' development for the small businesses themselves. We intend to use this platform to engage potential customers at an earlier stage, deepen our interaction with existing customers, and create both new cross-sell opportunities and a new source of customer referrals. Our goal is to create an ecosystem that fosters both customer to customer and customer to sales team interactions and supports business owners whose end customers are both other small businesses and consumers. As of December 31, 2022, we had approximately 250,000 registered customers with complete business or personal information, of which 130,000 are CED customers and 120,000 are BN customers. Growth of the new ecosystem has continued to accelerate quickly into 2023, with the total number of registered customers expanding roughly fivefold in the first two months of 2023. Although we are not able to provide detailed guidance for 2023 at the moment due to the uncertainty as to the speed of the U-shaped recovery, which largely depends on the speed of recovery of the Chinese economy and the outcome of negotiation with credit enhancement providers, I'd like to provide some directional guidance on our outlook for 2023. We project a return to profitability in Q1, albeit at a more subdued level given the challenging operating environment we described earlier. Challenging as the macro and operating environment for SBOs are, we do see signs of recovery in the medium term, resulting from zero COVID policy changes, and we are confident we will achieve our U-shaped recovery, and we must remain patient, prudent, and prepared for this recovery as YS said earlier. As far as we can see, there are three key stages in this U-shaped recovery process. Stage one, broader credit policy adjustment we have made during the course of 2022, featured by tightening up of credit standards and focusing on regions and industries showing more economic resilience. Stage two, business adjustment and operating efficiency improvement, which we initiated in Q4 2022 and expect to complete within the next several months, including optimization of direct sales, streamlining of management layers, and optimization of the risk-bearing model. And then stage three, back to sustaining growth and profitability as the economy is returning to normal. During the process, we need to be patient for the macroeconomic tailwinds to flow through to the SBO segment, be prudent in implementing new risk strategies and embedding lessons learned from the pandemic period, and be prepared to gear up new business when the improved environment arrives. Finally, we would like to thank our shareholders for their continued support. To deliver greater value to our shareholders, our board has approved the distribution of a 40% of our 2022 net profit on a full year basis as cash dividends. In October, we paid our first half of 2022 dividends of USD 17 cents per ADS, representing 32% of our net profit for the first half of 2022. We will distribute an additional cash dividend of US 5 cents per ADS for the second half of 2022, bringing the full year dividend to 22 cents per ADS. I will now turn it over to David for more details on our financial performance.
spk04: Thank you, Greg. I will now provide a close look into our fourth quarter results. Please note, all numbers are in Remedy terms, and all comparisons are on a -on-year basis, unless otherwise stated. In the fourth quarter, our total income decreased to $12.3 billion, and the total expenses grew to $12.9 billion. The increase in total expenses was primarily driven by the increase in credit impairment costs, while our operating related expenses actually decreased by .8% to $6.6 billion. For the full year of 2022, we recorded $58.1 billion in total income and $8.8 billion in net profit. Next, let's have a close look at our total income. First, as WISE and Greg mentioned before, our performance took a hit from the sluggish macro conditions in China, resulting in a .2% decrease in our top-line performance in this quarter. As we are dedicated to building up a more sustainable business model, the total income makes up our credit-enabled business continued to evolve. During this quarter, while platform service fees decreased by .5% to $5.9 billion, our net interest income grew .2% to $4.4 billion, and our guaranteed income grew by .2% to $1.7 billion. As a result, our technology platform-based income service fees as a percentage of total income decreased to .7% from .8% a year ago. In addition, due to the increase in the consumer finance loans, our net interest income as a percentage of total income actually increased to .5% from .7% a year ago. Furthermore, as we continue to better utilize our guaranteed company's abundant capital to bear more credit risk by ourselves instead of by our P&C insurance partners, we generated more guaranteed income, reaching .6% of our total income compared with .3% a year ago. Our other income, which mainly includes account management fees, collections fees, and other value active service fees charged our credit and housing partners as part of the retail credit-enabling process, was $131 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to $769 million in the same period of 2021. The decrease was mainly due to the change of fee structure that we charged to our primary credit and housing partners. Turning to our expenses, we continue to fluently manage our operating expenses. Our total expenses, excluding credit and asset impairment losses, finance costs, and other losses, decreased by .8% year over year to $6.6 billion this quarter. As we further improve our operating efficiency, in the fourth quarter, our expense grew to $12.9 billion from $11.5 billion a year ago. This increase was primarily driven by an increase in credit and asset impairment losses of $3.7 billion year over year. Our total sales and marketing expenses, which mainly includes expenses for borrowers and investor acquisition costs, as well as general sales and marketing expenses, decreased by .4% to $3.7 billion in the fourth quarter. This increase was driven by three factors. First, the decrease of new loan sales and reductions in commissions. Second, the decrease in investor acquisition and retention expenses and referral expenses from platform service driven by decreased transaction volume. And the last, the decreased general sales and marketing expenses driven by the decrease in new loan sales. Our general and administrative expenses decreased by .8% to $750 million in the fourth quarter from $971 million in the same period of 2021 because of decreased personnel expenses. Our operations and services expenses decreased by .7% to $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter from $1.9 billion a year ago mainly due to our expense controlling measures and decrease of loan balance and new loan sales. Our credit impairment losses increased by .1% to $6.3 billion in the fourth quarter from $2.5 billion a year ago mainly driven by an increase of proficient and indemnity losses as a result of the increased credit risk exposure and worsening credit performance due in large part to the accumulated impact of challenging macroeconomic environment. Our asset impairment losses decreased to $7 million in the fourth quarter from $689 million a year ago mainly due to the higher basis of impairment losses in fourth quarter of 2021 driven by impairment losses of intangible assets. Our finance costs increased by .6% to $501 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 from $267 million in the same period of 2021 mainly due to non-referring interest costs due to early repayments of group convertible notes. Other gains were $419 million in the fourth quarter compared to $300 million a year ago mainly due to the increase in government subsidies. As a result, net loss for the fourth quarter was $806 million compared to net profit of $2.9 billion in the same quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, our basic and diluted losses per ABS during the fourth quarter were both $3.36 or $2.05. Our basic and diluted earnings per share during the year of 2022 were $3.83 or $5.55. On the balance sheet side, our balance sheet remained strong and solid as our cash advance balance increased. As of December 31, 2022, we had a cash balance of $43.9 billion in cash advance as compared to $34.7 billion as of December 31, 2021. In addition, liquid assets maturing in 90 days or less amounted to $49.9 billion as of the end of December 2022. As of the end of December 2022, our guaranteed company's leverage is only at two times, while registry requirements allow us to leverage up to 10 times. All of these provide strong support for the company to remain resilient in the face of economic downturn and continue without a big impact. That concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are ready to take questions.
spk06: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 4 by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star 4 by 2. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. In addition, I'd like to remind you to please mute yourself after stating your question. Thank you. Our first questions come from Yada Li of CICC. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hello, management. This is Yada from CICC. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions for today. First, I was wondering when will the market see the U-shaped recovery and among the expansion of new loan sales and the improvement of credit impairment losses, which one shall the market expect first? And my second question is in regards to the improvement in credit risk after the COVID pandemic, are there any positive signs of loan recovery collection and customer management? And are there any improvements in borrowers' willingness to repay after reopening? And what are the main causes if we still find some of the borrowers fail to repay? That's all. Thank you.
spk04: Thanks. Thanks, Yada. Let me answer your question. When to see U-shaped recovery and then you are asking among new loan sales or credit impairment loss improvement, which one we expect to see first? And then you also ask that whether we are seeing any signs of recovery in collection and there was a reason for our borrowers failing in their repayments. So, over recovery, it depends on still our U-shaped curve. It depends on the recovery of over economy or in particular our SBO economy. And the outcome of negotiation with credit enhancement partners, as Greg said, that largely affects our net margin. Although we see that in some industries like a table, accommodation, restaurants, we see the signal of the initial improvement. But in overall, it's too early to say when a notable recovery will arrive with supporting numbers. New loan sales expansion and improved improvement of credit impairment loss. I think they will come at a similar time, but new loan sales expansion will proceed. We are monitoring the early indicators of loan credit performance like net flow rate and early MOP teleconcern rates. And for each segment, region and industry, when you see the improvement signal, they will start expanding loan volume growth, while credit performance improvement will follow as it carries a lag effect. And for your second question, yeah, we see some positive signs of consumption and travel boom, but knowing that SBO sector got the biggest hit during the last year, it will take more time to show obvious recovery. And then it's not because, and the reason our customers failing in repayment, it's not because they are unwilling to repay, but their ability to repay the loan got damages last year the most. So their ability to repay, we believe, will gradually turn to normal post reopening. So it will take a few time, but trends, I think, we are sure about that.
spk06: Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Xu of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you. Thank you, YS. Thank you, Greg, for the detailed explanation. I got two questions. So I understand basically the company is trying to use more guarantees rather than insurance, CGI, insurance guarantees. So any long term target in terms of the split between guaranteed by your guarantee company versus insurance? Any timeline target on that as well? Second question is recently there's some news on CBIRC, you know, crackdown on some of the loan brokers. I don't know if there's any impact on our business and how do we separate the typical loan brokers, essentially targeted by the new regulatory scrutiny at the moment versus our agents on the ground? You have two questions. Thank you.
spk04: Let me address our first question and then Greg can take the second. I think we are aware that our CGI team level remains high to now. That affects our new business net margin. We have been negotiating with our credit management partners, but we have not made clear progress in lowering the CGI premium rate so far. And as they price the rate based on the historical loan vintage performance, right? And then that was affected by the macro environment last year. So if we do not make good progress, meaning that if we do not find the CGI price in the future is not commercially attractive for us, then we can increase our risk-bearing portion and reduce our cooperation scale, cooperation scale with CGI partners. Now we are discussing with funding partners and as Greg mentioned, already a large number of our funding partners agreed to switch to more CGI models in which we provide full part of credit management. And then if you see how much net access we have under our guarantee company, we already have almost 50 billion net assets under our guarantee company, which can provide 10 times leverage support. So in other words, about 500 billion in the USA. So I believe all direction is clear. We want to have less dependence on CGI partners because of the price issue. We want to take more self-guarantee portion from 30 percent to about 50 percent or going forward even higher. That's possible. But we don't have any timeline that we provide today. But I can be on it today.
spk02: Right. Richard, on your second question, I think you're reflecting an announcement that came out with the CBRC this past Friday with regards to loan brokers. I think two points to make it. The first is our core business itself is operated under the guarantee license. And so our sales force is able to find clients, introduce those to the banks and the banks that make their judgment on providing a loan. So as such, we are really not as acting as a broker with our funding partners. I think that is really the most critical point. The second point is if you look at the apparent reasons for the CBRC to raise this is there have been examples where there have been third party agents without a license who have basically been either packaging customer information to make a loan look like it's to be used for business purposes, but that is used for other purposes. And or external brokers working with banks to charge customers other in transparent fees, therefore increasing total cost. So that that is an area that we we really don't touch. We do operate through our guarantee company. And when we do our business, at the end of the day, the banks are able to collect and see all information they need to determine the use of funds for the loan, be that secured or unsecured. So this is something that we will nonetheless keep a close eye on. The banks, the funding partners themselves will be going through a process which goes from March until September to review. And certainly, if there's any higher standards or anything in our process, we would need to uplift. We would do so, but we don't anticipate a major issue there. Richard.
spk06: Thank you. Our next question is from Alexi of UBS. Please go ahead.
spk03: Okay, thanks for my question. My question is on pricing and tech rate. So I separate them into two parts. First is on the short term outlook. So how should we expect the pricing trend going forward? And if you if we take into account the pricing and CGI cost, how does the tech rate outlook look like for the rest of 2023? And in terms of the trajectory of that tech rate recovery. And second, from a medium term perspective, obviously, in the next one to two years, and after your U shaped recovery did do materialize. So after that, what is a sustainable level of tech rate that we should target at? And in the past, I remember management used to give high level guidance of targeting a pre-tech margin of 3.5 to 4.0%. I'm wondering, is that still a reasonable target? Thank you.
spk02: Thank you, Alex. I think the view on pricing, which today for new unsecured loans is just below 20%. I think it's about 19.7%. This pricing will largely remain stable in 2023. If you look at that headline pricing over the last couple of quarters, it's come down a little bit. But the reason for coming down is really because the way we prioritize our business focus. So we are prioritizing as Wyatt said, serving customers who rate R1 to R4 in the better performing regions. And those rated customers have traditionally had slightly better pricing. So as what you see in our pricing on the APR side, as it comes down a bit, it continues to represent the improvement in our overall customer mix. So we will not even though CGI pricing remains elevated. That really is reflecting the history of the macro economy over the last 12 months. But because of that, we're not going to change our customer focus to then try and drive up higher pricing because we really want to stay focused on those higher quality customers. So the key for us to return to the historical level of net margin of pre-tax 3 to 4% is really doing two things. One is making sure that the new customers that we're acquiring and building out in the R1 to R4 rated
spk04: group
spk02: achieve what we believe to be the reasonable and targeted performance. And that is something that we've seen over the last couple quarters to be largely intact. It's now a matter of continuing to build up that business in line with the speed of the economic recovery. That's point one. Point two, to achieve that historical level of 3 to 4% is indeed, as YS just laid out, optimizing the mix of our credit guarantee versus credit insurance. Right? Because if the credit insurance partners continue to charge a high amount, that reduces the net margin in the business model. So the transition to a higher percentage of our self-guarantee is the key to us achieving that historical level, which we do intend to achieve over the medium term. I think if you were to press on the numbers you asked, medium term, the answer to that question is yes. Is that a 2023 or 2024 event? We would see that more likely as a 2024 event for the portfolio as a whole because we need to need that new business build up and replace the legacy business as it matures.
spk06: Thank you. Our next question comes from Emma Xu of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you for taking my questions. I have three. The first one is about your loan growth. What's your loan growth plan in the coming quarters and what are the assumptions underpinning the current growth plan? The second one is about your cost. Are there room for you to continue optimizing costs, including founding costs, sales and marketing costs, and other operating costs? And the third one is about your dividend policy. We note that you changed your dividend policy, so could management comment on the change and its impact to the shareholders? Thanks.
spk02: Sure. So on the first two, and I'll ask David to also elaborate on the third point, on loan growth what we're really looking at is the overall improvement of the key lead indicator C to M3. So what we've seen is that being elevated through Q4. So we're not increasing as fast as we've seen in some of the other previous quarters, but nonetheless remaining at a higher level. So while we continue to prioritize new loan growth at the moment to the best customer segments in the best regions, broader loan growth will depend upon us seeing a more across the board improvement in some of those lead indicators. So we hope that that improvement will be something that we see in the next one to two quarters, right? As we see that improvement, we will then uptick in our overall loan growth. But as Wyatt said, our bias at the moment is to go for quality over volume. And so that's something that we will probably have that stance, I think, through Q1 and into Q2. But indeed, if we see that improvement, then in the second half, there will be more opportunities to enhance that relative loan growth. On the cost side, we have been optimizing starting in Q4. It goes through into Q1 in terms of optimizing lower productivity sales force, reducing some management layering, and indeed optimizing mid and back office costs. All of the execution of this is happening really mostly in Q1, a little bit into Q2. There's a little bit of room to optimize. I think it's something that really is in line with our overall business growth. But in terms of funding costs, we're probably not going to see a huge optimization in the near term on that front, even though we have seen improvement there over the last couple quarters. On dividend, just a high level comment, which is that for the last two years, we basically have announced a dividend policy of 20 to 40%. This time, we basically kept within that range. The cash dividend for the full year of 2022 is 40%. So the overall range hasn't changed. What we did modify slightly is that for 2021, our dividend was paid out in two halves. So what we have done is saying for the full year of 2022, we will take it to a total of 40%. The dividend that was paid out in the first half of 2022 was really based out 32%. And so we had basically brought it at par across the entire year, 40%. I don't know, David, do you want to add any other comments on the dividend policy? I think Brad has
spk04: a pretty comprehensive comment on the dividend. Yeah, this is nothing changed. The frequency of our dividend payment has not changed. The range, the dividend payout ratio that is approved by the board hasn't changed 20 to 40%. The second change is really on how to calculate on a annual basis or on a full year basis. That is the second change. This second change, we believe, relieves management more flexibility. We are able to deliver greater value to our shareholders. So I think it is positive to all shareholders.
spk06: Thank you. There are no further questions. That concludes our Q&A session for today. I will now hand the call back over to our management team for closing remarks.
spk05: Thank you. So this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining the conference call. If you have more questions, please do not hesitate to contact the company's IR team. Thanks again.
spk06: Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thank you everyone for attending. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer