Waterdrop Inc.

Good morning, everyone. This is Tracy Lee from Water Drop Ambassador Relations. It is my pleasure to welcome everyone to Water Drop's fourth quarter and official year 23rd Street earnings conference call. All participants are in releasing mode in your English line. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. Please note that this discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made on the state public provisions of the U.S. private security and the Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainty, and the cost actually results different materially from the current expectations. So there is no risk and uncertainty, but not limited to online or public findings with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except that it requires an ethical law. Also, this could include discussion of certain net gap measures. Please refer to our earnings release for consideration between net gap and gap. Joining us today on the call are Mr. Shun Peng, our founder, chairman, and CEO, Mr. Yang Zhang, co-founder, director, NSVP, and GM of international business, Mr. Zhu Zitao, GM of medical, quarter company, and pharma tech business, Mrs. Li Jieyu, board secretary. And I would be happy to take some of the questions in the mentoring line at the end of the conference call. Hello, everyone. This is Shun Peng. Let's talk about our industry development first. Looking back on 2023, thanks to a virus economy and similar policies, the Chinese economy shows a gradually stable and recovery trend. Despite that, the regulation of the personal insurance industry remains cautious as it is continuing to evolve towards high-quality developments. So, as we saw both change and opportunities, we firmly believe that with the clear guidance and gradual implementation of new regulation policies that help innovation capabilities and sustainability of the industry will improve further in the future. Market participants with brand and technological advantages are more likely to stand out. As such, we will build up new quality productivity with improved technologies and innovative business models. leading our industry to its transformation and upgrading. We're filled with confidence about this. In terms of financial performance, in the year four of 2003, the company continues to uphold its entrepreneurial spirit and pursue healthy business development, which was attempted by stable and resilient financial results. Total revenue reached about Since Q1 of 2012, we have continuously recorded stable profitability for every quarter. In the fourth quarter, the bottom line performance has slowly improved. A gap net profit attributed to the company reaching about $59.1 million, representing a 61% cumulative growth. For fiscal year 2023, the gap net profit attributed to the company is about $167 million. In the meantime, we saw consistent cash inflow from operations, building up our cash balance. As of the end of 2023, the cash cash equivalents and short-term investment totaled about $3.39 an 8% increase from last quarter. Our end-by-patch reserves strengthen our foundation for carrying out steady business development plans, supporting us in our long-term growth initiatives, and enabling us to embrace industry change with confidence and technology competitiveness. From a business perspective, in Q4, all business segments maintain stable and healthy development, continuously solidifying our leading position in the industry. For what is our insurance marketplace, despite the difficult industry situation, we actively develop the new products and models with our insight into the diverse needs of hot virus getting working and then continuously generating steady profits. For what is our medical care funding, we remain committed to our principle of user-first service promotes. Continuously participating in the development of a multi-level medical support system, which consistently improves its transparency and operational efficiency, loss in the second hand was reduced compared to the last quarter. For eFind platform, we continuously enhance its service capability through business upgrades. In Q4, the number of hiring clients increased significantly, making breakthroughs in our cooperation with both domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies. For the third year, this segment recorded year-over-year revenue growth of nearly 70%. For R&D, as a technology-driven company, we maintain substantial investment in R&D and apply some of the intense AI large-language model, LLM, patterns. In the fourth quarter, our stock development LLM, what we call threshold, completed internal tasks, upgrades, and extended applications to intermodal cases, which brought efficiency improvements throughout the entire insurance service group. Now I will touch upon our charity and ESD initiative. WaterJobs actively incorporates ESD principles into various aspects of our operations, environmental protection, talent development, and community involvement, tightly integrating ESD values with our corporate DNA. The latest ESU rating results from China's leading ESU institution, Shijie, shows that our ESU rating has recently been upgraded to A, the leading score among players in the insurance sector. For OIDOC charity problems, we remain salient with our CSR. We join the halfway-bound, multi-level medical support information system. We have effectively connected basic measures to security, critical unit assurance, medical assistance, and charity in the Hainan province. Upon its launch in August 2003, it has assisted the government in establishing a poor control level medical support platform. By the year end, nearly a thousand patients have applied for assistance on the platform. This project was honored with the NUCSR Case Award hosted by People's Daily Online. In December 2003, in a response to a dental earthquake, Water Drop Charities funded a complex and emergency team and launched a whole team fundraising project to assist with disaster-affected areas and rebuilding damaged homes. And I would also like to update everyone with our actions taken in the capital market. Regarding the shares by bike, as of the end of February 2024, the company has cumulatively repurchased about 39.7 million EVs on the open market at a total of 88.8 million dollars. which affirms our confidence in our business value and is long-term perfect. Furthermore, the repurchased shares will be used for ESOPs to motivate our talented employees. Moreover, WaterJob continues to uphold our commitment to our shareholders. Our board of directors has approved a special cash given and plan to total about $15 million, with $0.04 per ADN. On the health and financial performance of the company and its commitment to shareholder value, the company is pleased to initiate its first dividend program, and it will try to continuously return value to shareholders in the future. This is the recap of our development in 2004, which is culminating in our business outlook as well as that of the industry. Looking into 2004, our strategies are For insurance marketplace business, we are here to use the first, of course, principle, committing to providing the best service to users. Meanwhile, we will develop more customized, better useful money insurance product through technological innovation to target virus demographics. For medical profiling, we will continuously take advantage of our scale and technological capabilities to ensure sustainable development while fulfilling standards and meeting user needs. For e-farm's platform, we will continue to leverage water drop data advantage, actively explore innovative service models, rapidly increase our network penetration, establish service capabilities covering multiple disease categories, and create a new work engine for a long-term growth. With abundant cash reserves, the company will continue to seek cooperation and investment opportunities around insurance and healthcare sectors. As for technology, we will accelerate technological empowerment by enhancing our AI capability and through core technological modes to support a long-term development. With our nearly eight years of business accumulation, our self-developed LLM water duct ratio has significantly improved internal efficiency, and we will further empower the industry's partners soon. Now I will pass the runway to discuss our insurance marketplace business. In the first quarter, the growth of personal insurance premiums in the industry is starting to slow down. Against this backdrop, we focused efforts on user value creation and long-term development and continuously optimized operations for existing users. Meanwhile, we actively explored new product offering and models, expanding customer acquisition channels, laying the foundation for advanced high-quality business developments. In the fourth quarter, FYP reached 1.53 billion. Insurance-related income reached 588 million. And operating profit reached 128 million. For the fourth year of 2003, the FYP reached 7.11 billion. Insurance-related income reached 2.34 billion. operating profit reached $528 million. In the fourth quarter, FIP of short-term insurance products reached over $990 million. During this quarter, the company strengthened platform operational management for users, enhanced policy service, and optimized user engagement, resulting in increased customer satisfaction. The number of users was steadily, with the number of policies per user rating for 2.0, and the renewal rate for shutdown insurance remained at a level of 95%. We were acquiring users from content production, enhancing the quality and the product choice on video channels. As a result, video playback volume increased by 68.6% to leading to a 34.5% crucial increase in premiums. As we further diverse our product offerings, the FIP of long-term insurance policy reached 530 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 22.9% worldwide. Among this, life insurance premiums increased 116.2% YY. During this quarter, we improved the environment quality for long-term insurance users, spent some partnerships with insurance companies to launch more customized products. Following the removal of high-interest products in the third quarter, we saw both opportunities and challenges in our industry. In terms of online broker channels, we emphasize on the integrated capability of our product portfolio. ensuring a better user experience. At the same time, we cooperate with high-quality sub-media channels to grow a high-quality user base. On offline brokerage fund, we launched the World of Safety 100 program in this quarter. Offline brokerage prioritizes its resources to better serve those high-net-worth customers. This initiative is in cooperation with industry partners and to build a one-stop platform encompassing insurance, pension planning, and wealth succession, as well as empower the team of high-quality workers. During the fourth quarter, we struck to pick the top performance agents from the team. The number of active agents increased by 108% YOY, and productivity per capita of long-term insurance products rose by 8% YOY. In the first quarter, water drop insurance markets play enhanced our synergy with Chenanbao. While Chenanbao continues to maintain independent operations, the two teams defend their cooperation on virus effects, including R&D, content marketing, and product offerings. Chenanbao contributes a FYP of $102 million in the first quarter. The policy quality remains at an industry-leading level with the renewal rate remaining above 90%. In the first quarter, we continued to deepen innovative capabilities across health insurance and saving insurance. Regarding health insurance, we launched a virus of innovative products to address the needs of some broader user base. Among this, the Chernobyl health insurance essentially covers all groups with chronic disease, critical disease illnesses, and minor ailments. Through our intelligence and writing ability, users with pre-existing conditions can also buy insurance online reliably. On top of regular health insurance plans, we also launched a product called Yisheng Shouhu. This product is the first online long-term critical unit insurance plan that covers users with pre-existing conditions. Moreover, we developed service and products to address needs of each demographic group. We launched a water drop . The industry-first maternal and infant insurance designed to cover the entire pregnancy circle. products have been widely recognized by users. In terms of saving insurance products, we launched a monthly payment-like insurance product. Different from the traditional annual payments or not-found payment products in the market, the monthly payment plan is more flexible for users with lower levels. This is an important practice for us to serve and diversify savings across different market segments. Next, let me brief you about our development of AI. We apply our insurance-focused last-minute remodel of your threshold. Threshold is used after our commitment to support a user's health with AI technology. Currently, facial already covers multiple scenarios in the industry business, including consulting. And the writing claims perfecting customer service and more. It can support multi-professional service, such as answering fundamental questions, consulting on insurance policy terms, offering and writing and post insurance service. We can also about the two major applications, the AI insurance consultant and the . Both of them are based on the official life model. The AI insurance consultant acts as a smart agent that is equipped with life model technology. People of independence communicate with customers in real time. They can recommend insurance policies and products tailored to the customer's specific needs. They utilize a vast amount of insurance knowledge to better understand user needs. It has been internal tapped and used in medical insurance scenarios. In this context, the AI insurance consultant can carry independent dialogue for up to 40 minutes, undertaking 90% of work for an average human worker. The second application, the super assistant can be an intelligent copilot system for aiding human agents. For example, Based on the conversation between agent and the users, it displayed a real-time inspection of tips for insurance-related questions, recommending more suitable products for each user in real time. It finds this in a way that is easier for users to understand and improve insurance service efficiency while increasing customer satisfaction. Currently, BangBang, the assistant, has been internally launched at the workshop. In the development process of social, we have obtained three patents and accumulating within 10 patents related to the last model. In the future, we will continue to adhere the path of technology and talent in the industry, bringing high quality insurance service to millions. This concludes my briefing on insurance business. So let me head over to Dr. Tao for an update on our medical for funding and digital clinical trial solution business. Thank you, Ranwei. As of Q4 2013, a cumulative total of 450 million people donated more than $62.6 billion to over 3.1 million patients through Waterjohn Medical Co-Funding platform. Both the network users and the fundraising amount continues to grow. In Q4, our platform established the Guardian Plan, which provides privacy restrictions and exemptions for extremely poor people. Moreover, our offline consulting team has tried offering additional supportive service to hospitalized patients. In the first quarter, the platform serves as a beacon to parenting and recruitment platform providers from public to communicate in business role discussion and fund review. Platform providers can randomly check the cost of details of any service from the running transaction and supervise the entire from the running process. By continuing this value transparency, we keep optimizing the service experience to make a critical unit system more accurate and efficient. We have continuously in the establishment of a multi-level medical support system, actively responding to the amendments of charity law in China. In the amended version of PRC, charity law has incorporated individual assistance into its provision. Furthermore, on December 21, our Hefei Fang Morinabo Medical Support System Project has awarded the NUSSR K-6 award hosted by People's Media Online. In the first quarter, the NUSSR Hefei Fang, our digital clinical child solution business, maintained steady and healthy development. Revenue was about 20.8% median. For the full year, revenue was 5,100 million, with an increase of 69% worldwide. In 2004, the E5 platform collaborated with 167 pharmaceutical companies and CROs. We made great progress on partnering with more leading MNCs during this quarter, which effectively joined the supply list of two of the top five global MNCs. And the formally kicked off project with White Neck Lens, and more projects are expected to officially launch in 2024. Additionally, the IFAN platform signed a cooperation agreement with one of the top three global CFRs and officially initiated patient recruitment. In 2004, the platform signed 82 new projects. With the rapid development of innovative drug R&D for chronic disease in China, the IFAN platform continued to improve our ability accordingly. Through efficient video operation capabilities and AI-driven matching, we enrolled in a record number of patients and projects. Our project covers categories including dermatology, respiratory, cardiovascular, immunology, diabetes, disease in salons. In terms of serous diseases, leveraging the experience operation, we successfully secure a clinical type project in the rare disease field of cell therapy, providing more partners with comprehensive data to service, such as data insights, medical affairs, product medicine, clinical survey, patient recruitment, and mathematics statistics, and so on. Regarding patient service, the platform continues to depend on cooperation with a leading global MNC in the patient health management of chronic disease. By integrating technologies such as mass models, it significantly enhances patient service experience and efficiency, gaining high recognition from customers. We also find contracts with multiple leading domestic and MNCs for medical patient operations, patient education, and data insights. continuously expanding the number and service scope of cooperation clients. And we continue to strive for technological empowerment. For patient private domain operations scenarios, we integrated AIGC technology into our platform, intelligently identifying keywords and interaction intentions from the conversation with users, allowing medical assistants to generate single, quick, and reliable adjustments that Such an application greatly improves the service quality compared to traditional methods. Thanks for listening. I will now hand over to Yang Guang to discuss our financial performance. Thank you, Zitao. Hello, everyone, and we now will get through on our financial highlights for fourth quarter. Before I go into details, please be reminded that all numbers called here will be R&D, and please refer to our earnings release for detailed information on our financial involvement on both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter basis, respectively. For the first quarter, I mean, a complicated environment or commitment to pursuing steady and healthy development, net operating revenue decreased by 3% while right about $659 million. The four-year NIDA operating revenue reached about $2.63 billion. Among that, insurance-related income amounted to about $2.34 billion, representing a decrease of 8.5% worldwide. Corresponding service fees amounted to $162 million, representing an increase of 4.4% worldwide. Digital coin supply solution income amounts to 100 million, representing an increase of nearly 70% YY. About the operating cost and expenses, on YY base, since the last quarter, we've been considering the financial results of Hanbao. For the four years, the operating cost and expenses increased by 13.5% YY to 2.64 billion. The third year, operating costs and expenses increased by 4.3%, YOYQ 633 million. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the operating costs and expenses decreased by 8.1% as we adjusted our spending pace to adapt to change in the external environment. Okay, for operating costs, we had about $302 million increased by 8.5% year-on-year and decreased by 3.2% in the QQ. The screenshot decreased primarily due to, firstly, a decrease of $5.8 million in cost of review and service team. And secondly, a decrease of $2.3 million in the cost of patient recruitment and consulting team. Before, economic expenses increased by 26.9% worldwide to $175 million. The increase was primarily due to, firstly, the consolidation of Chinatown, which generated economic expenses of $39 million, and secondly, an increase of $15.8 million on third-party traffic channel C, partially offset it, but a decrease of $21.1 million in personal costs and share this comprehensive incentive. On two or three basis, it decreased by 6.9%, primarily due to a decrease of $11.3 million in stuff and marketing personal costs and share this comprehensive incentive. GMA expenses were 96 million, a decrease of 19.1% and 16.3% YYQQ. The decrease was mainly about personal cost and the share risk comprehensive expenses and the professional service needs. R&D expenses was 59.8 million, a decrease of 16.6%. percent YY and 19.1 percent QOQ respectively. The decrease formerly about personal cost and share versus comprehensive expenses too. For Q4, net profit attributes to the company's ordinary shareholders was 59.1 million. The adjusted net profit attributes to the company's ordinary shareholders was 74.7 million. For Q1, 20.2. The company has achieved from 2021-2022, the company has achieved net profit for eight consecutive quarters. As for year-end 2023, cash cash equivalents and short-term investment amounted to $3.39 million, an 8% increase from last quarter. The abundant cash results position as well to focus on long-term development priorities. to better reward shareholders and boost investors' confidence. Our board of directors has approved a special tax dividend total of approximately $15 million. It's 0.4 cents per ordinary shares and 4 cents per ADF. The shareholders' ordinary shares and ADF of the closing date of April 19, 2024 U.S. is in time entitled to the difference. In summary, we need our financial guidance to market as we achieve the profitability in each quarter of 2023. By 2024, we will continue to create shareholder value with healthy growth and profit. And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we will conclude today's conference call. We do thank you for joining. Have a good time. The conference has now concluded. We thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect your line.