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Qudian Inc. American Depositary Shares, each representing one Class A Ordinary Share
Q2 2021 Earnings Conference Call
8/24/2021
spk03: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for QDN INC's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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 host from QDN. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hello, everyone, and welcome to QDN's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. The company's results were issued via Newswire services earlier today and were posted online. You can download the earnings press release and sign up for the company's distribution list by visiting our website at ir.qdn.com. Mr. Ming Luo, our founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, and Mrs. Zhu, our VP of investor relations, will start the call with prepared remarks, and then we will open the call to Q&A. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor Provision of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's 20F as spelled 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. Please also note that Shijian's earnings press release and this conference call include discussion of unaudited gap financial information as well as unaudited non-gap financial measures. Shijian's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-gap measures. to the unaudited most directly comparable gap measure. We also posted a slide presentation on our IR website, providing details on our results in a quarter. We will reference those results in our prepared remarks, but will not refer to specific slides during our discussion. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Min Luo. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hello, everyone. I would like to thank you. or for joining us on today's call. In the second quarter of 2021, we continued to operate prudently across our cash credit business line, maintaining asset quality at a healthy level. We generated approximately 3.9 billion RMB in transactions for our loan book business with an unbalanced sheet loan balance of 3.5 billion RMB. Our tireless efforts to maintain a robust balance sheet ensure our ability to safeguard the interests of our shareholders while providing us sufficient funding to propel the development of our extra-curricular activity business, Wanli Mu Kids. We are pleased with Wanli Mu Kids' steady progress. We successfully opened two new centers recently, one in Fuzhou City in Jiangxi Province and the other in Xiamen. Furthermore, we have assigned this agreement for another 37 Wan Limu Kids Centers, of which 24 centers are under renovation. As we further expand our footprint, we believe our first mover advantages in depth Entrepreneurs' expertise and strong digitalization capabilities will fuel the ongoing growth of Wan Limu Kids. Now I would like to turn the call over to Sisi for more details on our results.
spk01: Thank you, Ming. And good morning and good evening, everyone. Amid complex online lending market dynamics, We maintain our cautious and conservative approach in our loan business by rigorously assessing credit risk in new transactions. The transaction volume for our loan book business was RMB 3.9 billion this quarter. Our asset quality continues to improve with a D1 delinquency rate below 5% at the end of the quarter. and our M1 plus delinquency coverage ratio remained high at 2.5 times. Echoing Ming with respect to our extracurricular enrichment business, our vision for Wan Limu Kids is to help children joyfully explore their talents and potential in sports, arts, music, and other extracurricular activities. We believe This goal is aligned with the core principle of China's new regulatory framework, which aims to promote students all around development. With our existing three centers as well as 37 new centers in the pipeline, we're confident to replicate the success of our flagship center and tap into opportunities in China's fast-growing extracurricular enrichment market. Together with the opening of new centers, we will incur more operation expenses relating to staff compensation, sales and marketing, rental expenses, et cetera, which would affect our profitability in the third quarter. Looking ahead, we will continue to closely monitor the evolving regulatory environment and proactively respond to policy changes. We believe that with our thoughtful operating strategy in the loan business Along with the Wan Limu Kids' steady progress, we are well positioned to deliver long-term value to all stakeholders. Now let me share with you some key financial results. In the interest of time, I will not go over them line by line. For a more detailed discussion of our second quarter 2021 results, please refer to our earnings press release. Our total revenues were RMB 412.1 million, representing a decrease of 64.7% from RMB 1.2 billion for the second quarter of 2020. Our financing income totaled RMB 311.8 million, representing a decrease of 46.3% from RMB 580.9 million from the second quarter of 2020. as a result of the decrease in the average on-balance sheet loan balance. Our loan facilitation income and other related income decreased by 95% to RMB 12.6 million from RMB 255 million for the second quarter last year, as a result of the reduction in transaction volume of all balance sheet loans during this quarter. Total operating costs and expenses decreased by 90.9%. to $89.3 million from the second quarter last year. Cost of revenues decreased by 82.3% to $64.9 million from $366.4 million for the second quarter of 2020, primarily due to the decrease in costs associated with the loan book business and the decrease in cost of goods sold related to the Wan Limu e-commerce platform. Sales and marketing expenses decreased by 81.4% to RMB 29.1 million from RMB 156.8 million for the second quarter of 2020, primarily due to the decrease in marketing promotional expenses. General and administrative expenses increased by 44.8% to RMB $109.1 million from RMB $75.3 million for the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the increase in staff salaries primarily relating to one remote kids business. Research and development expenses decreased by 30.3% to RMB $39.2 million from RMB $56.3 million for the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the decrease in staff salaries. Provision for receivables and other assets was a reversal of 97.4 million RMB compared to a loss of 519 million for the second quarter last year, mainly due to the decrease in past due on balance sheet outstanding principal receivables compared to the second quarter last year. Our net income attributable to GDS shareholders was RMB 200. and $69.9 million or RMB 1.03 per diluted ADS. Non-GAAP net income attributable to GDS shareholders was RMB 282.5 million or RMB 1.07 per diluted ADS. With that, I will conclude my prepared remarks. We will now open the call to questions. Operator, please continue.
spk03: Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the pound or hash key. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to the management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the pound or hash key. As there are no questions at this point of time, I would like to turn the call back to the company for closing remarks. Thank you.
spk01: Hey, AJ. I actually heard from our investors that there might be some technical glitches over the phone that they can't hear us clearly. Is there a spell line that you can connect to? Or we do the sound check again?
spk04: Pardon the interruption.
spk03: Am I not audible to you, ma'am? Hello? Pardon the interruption. This is the operator. Yeah. Am I audible to you?
spk01: Yes. Loud and clear.
spk03: Okay. Okay. Once again, participants will wish to ask questions. Please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to ask your question. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad to ask a question. We have a first question from the line of Hanan Han from Wellcome International. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions. The first one is, what do you think about the 24% cap that is window guidance by some cities' customer financial companies? The second one is, could you give us more color about your new initiative for your education program and how it's going to develop forward? Thank you. Thank you, Hannah. Thank you, Hannah, for these two brilliant questions. Let me address it one by one.
spk01: So regarding the 24 interest rate cap, per hour standing is a window guidance that is mainly relevant to licensed financial institutions. And local regulators have very different implementation details and timelines on this issue. Given the fact that our profitability will be negatively affected if our interest rates get capped at 24%. So before any concrete interest rate restrictions get enforced on our proprietary lending activities, we will choose to maintain our status quo. That is, we're charged at less than 36%. We don't have plans to boost the growth of our credit business before the regulations turn to the promising side. we will embrace the regulatory changes and promote an orderly and healthy lending market together. With regard to your second question for our Wanimu Kids business, we are happy to say that we have successfully opened three centers so far and 37 other centers with signed long-term lease contracts in the pipelines. customers are quite satisfied with our superior service offering. The cool thing is we spent quite some effort and money in designing and renovating the centers, which in turn become one of our competitive advantages and entry barriers. As a matter of fact, building swimming pools and sports venues indoor require lots of detailed designing, calculation, and advanced construction techniques. To give the investor community more confidence, our first center, which opened in January this year, already passed our internal test of monthly break-even points, outperforming our expectation if we take out trial programs and associated fall areas from the calculation. For the business as a whole, the financial numbers are still very small and immaterial as opposed to our core lending business. although customer satisfaction is very good. We will certainly be more than happy to disclose the numbers when they become material. Thank you, Hannah. I hope I answered your question.
spk02: Yeah, that's very clear. Thank you.
spk03: Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad, wait for your name to be announced. Thank you. If there are no further questions, I would like to hand the call back to the company for any closing remarks. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you, operator. So it's very happy to meet everyone online today. And if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact our IR team. You can also find our press release and relevant PowerPoints on our IR website. Thank you very much again.
spk03: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect your line. Thank you.
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