5/24/2022

speaker
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Yat-Sen first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Irene Liu, head of strategic investment and capital markets. Please go ahead.

speaker
Irene Liu

Thank you, operator. Please note that the discussion today will contain four looking statements. relating to the company's future performance and are intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability, as established by the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors. Some of these risks are beyond the company's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today's press release and this discussion. A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect Yasen's business and financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only. For definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. Joining us today on the call from Yasin's senior management team are Mr. Xinfeng Huang, our founder, chairman, and CEO, and also Mr. Donghao Yang, our director and CFO. Management will begin with prepared remarks, and the call will conclude with a Q&A session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded, and a webcast replay will be available on Yasin's investor relations website at ir.yasinglobal.com. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Xinfeng Huang. Please go ahead, David.

speaker
Xinfeng Huang

Thank you, Irene, and I thank everyone for participating in Yasen's conference for the first quarter of 2022. The first quarter of 2022 was a challenging one for Yasen and the entire beauty industry. According to the China National Bureau of Statistics, Beauty retail spending grew by 1.8% in the first quarter, one of its lowest growth rates since the pandemic recovery from the second quarter of 2020, due to weak consumer spending and economy uncertainties in China. The resurgence of COVID-19 in March led to widespread restrictions in major Chinese cities, such as Shanghai, and with the restrictions continuing well into the second quarter, it is clear that we are facing one of the toughest business environments in recent years. Against this market backdrop, our potential net revenues in the first quarter declined by 38.3% year-over-year to RMB $891 million, in line with our previous guidance. Market turbulence Notwithstanding, we remain committed to our strategy evolution plan, a process that began in 2021. Fundamentally, we believe strong brands are highly resilient across market cycles. Strong brands also deliver higher margins, which in turn can be reinvested into branding and R&D, perpetuating a virtual cycle. Therefore, our evolution strategy is simple, offering a portfolio of strong brands with highly differentiated, effective products to drive sustainable growth. We are allocating the talent and the resources needed to achieve these goals, and our team executed with passion, tenacity, and resilience during the first quarter. Since the team's efforts, we are already seeing some signs of progress. One such sign is the improvement in our growth margin, which reached 59% in the first quarter, an increase of 0 points and 4 percentage points respectively on a year-over-year and a quarter-over-quarter basis. We achieved this growth margin gain by relentlessly focusing on building brand equities and reducing unprofitable discounts and promotions. Incidentally, our Perfect Diary loose powder won WWD's Maker of the Year Award and was included on the National Business Daily's 2022 China Generation Z Brand List. These awards not only underscore the ongoing appeal of Perfect Diaries brand and product, but also our powerful validation of our brand building approach. We have expanded our brand and launched a new product for the new year. Starting with skincare in March, Dr. Wu released his new Triple Action Repair Serum along with a campaign highlighting the product's efficacy in repairing acne scars and enhancing enhancing Dr. Wu's dermatologist brand credentials. In April, Yip Long launched a new branding campaign with breathtaking visuals centered around a mystical British botanical garden, awakening customers' sense of sight, smell, and touch, while re-interpretating a vision of radiant skin beauty for a new generation. Not to be outdone, in May, Dylannix introduced its new secret effluent powder series, an anti-aging serum featuring snow algae as the core ingredient. Combining the breathtaking scenery of the French Alps with an insistence on French precision and science to reinforce Dylannix reputation for elegant yet effective skincare products. The energy and excitement of these campaigns are matched by robust financial results from our skincare brands, with net revenues growing by 58.5% year-over-year to RMB 183 million in the first quarter, representing 20.5% of total net revenues, up from 7.5% in the prior year period. While our transformation is rooted in brand building, we are laser focused on doing it in the right way. Under the current economy conditions, marketing efficiency is key. For our color cosmetic brands, the tough market environment and our relentless efforts to optimize marketing ROI led to a large decline in revenues in the first quarter. However, our color cosmetic brands are now operating with a much improved profitability profile for online business compared with the last year. Specifically, we significantly improved Ito Onbin's profitability profile by streamlining operations and concentrating on its hero product category, namely the eyeliner, where it enjoys strong brand recognition among a core group of loyal customers. For PinBear, on the other hand, we developed a strategy combining this good bang for the buck product with a breakthrough reason to buy and IP crossovers appealing to school-age target customers to attract new customers and keep performance marketing expense at a reasonable level. We are also exploring several operating levels for both legal auditing and the team there. From increasing third-party online and offline distribution to tailoring ROI-maximizing strategies on Tmall and Douyin as we seek incremental uplift opportunities for revenue and profitability amid this difficult market environment. These marketing efficiency enhancements across the brand portfolio helped us significantly reduce our selling and marketing expenses in the first quarter. Our total non-GAAP selling and marketing expenses declined by 44.4% year-over-year to RMB 517 million. And as a percentage of total net revenues, our non-GAAP selling and marketing expenses reached 54%. a decrease of seven percentage points year over year. While we continue to pursue further improvements in marketing efficiency, there's also much we can do operationally to build on this progress. At the moment, we are focused on mitigating the adverse impact of pandemic-related disruptions on our offline stores. During the first quarter, Many of our offline stores were shut down due to pandemic restrictions. While those stores that remain open witnessed reduced traffic and e-store spending. We expect this situation to persist and possibly worsen in the second quarter. Accordingly, we proactively initiated a number of store optimizations in the first quarter and approved and requisite certain foreclosure-related expenses as a result. We may continue to optimize the size of our offline stores network throughout the year. We believe this plan will put our offline business on a more sustainable footing, given the dynamic retail environment in China this year. COVID-19 adverse impact also extends to our logistics and supply chains. To ensure that we are able to obtain critical orders ahead of the crucial May 20th and June 18th promotional holidays in the second quarter, our team has worked tirelessly with our logistics and supply chain partners to find creative solutions. Additionally, given the weakening consumer demand outlook for the rest of 2022, we made certain optimization adjustments to the size of our logistics footprint and reduce the scope of our supply chain expansions during the first quarter. Looking elsewhere within our cost base, we also overhauled our organization structure to align with our new sustainable growth objectives. During the first quarter, we comprehensively updated our management structure We vented our compensation structure and optimized our talent pool. As a result, our total headcount stands at approximately 3,000 as of the end of March 2022, compared with 4,200 employees a year ago. Our non-GAAP general and administrative expenses totaled RMB $113 million, approximately RMB 32 million lower than the fourth quarter of 2021. The cumulative effect of our various cost optimization initiatives is we achieved a non-GAAP net loss of RMB 156 million in the first quarter, a 38.3% reduction compared to the net loss of RMB 234.3 million in the prior year period. We expect the operating environment to become even more challenging in the second quarter of 2022 due to the effects of prolonged COVID-19 impacts on the economy. We will remain focused on both aspects of our business and the environment that we can control. Optimizing costs, upgrading our capabilities, and investing for the future. while continuing to adapt to a dynamically evolving market. As the lifeblocks of our product differentiating efforts, R&D continues to be a key area of investment. We recorded R&D 36 million in R&D expenses in the first quarter, representing 4% of total net revenues. We are working on a number of exciting initiatives to strengthening our IMD capabilities in 2022, and we look forward to sharing updates on our new partnerships and milestones as they become available. We are also working to upgrade our Dolphin live streaming operations. Building on the previous quarter's momentum, total net revenue from our Dolphin channel grew by over 150% year-over-year, in the first quarter of 2022, making it our third largest channel by revenues behind Chimo and our offline stores. After more than a year of extensive testing and optimization, we have developed and honed various tactics to maximize ROI on Douyin across our various brands. In particular, COVID diary ranked third in color cosmetic sales on Douyin during the first quarter, demonstrating the progress we have made since last year. As pleased as we are with this result, we won't be standing still. Given the fast-moving nature of the Douyin platform, we will continually adapt and innovate to stay ahead of the curve. Last but not least, integral to our sustainable success is our continued effort to adapt socially responsible corporate citizens. Yasmin is passionate about promoting women's public welfare and empowerment. On International Women's Day, Yasmin and Neil Whitley jointly launched the Women Without Limits campaign. We invited women from different industries and diverse identities to share their life experiences. encouraging more women to explore their own possibilities and pursue their dreams. In addition, our efforts to ensure the safe and efficient delivery of goods have continued in the recent COVID outbreak. With Perfect Diary cooperating with logistic companies to develop a green goods code, this code improves the transparency of the transported goods and help ensure on-time delivery to customers. For detailed information on how we are adjusting the environmental and the social impact of our business and putting in place corporate governance best practices, please refer to our inaugural ESG report, which was released on May 15th. This first annual report provides a comprehensive review of our ESG activity. In a world full of uncertainties, we believe Yasen serves a vital social mission to discover, protect, and elevate beauty, which creates happiness and inspires our minds. To that end, 2022 will be an important year for Yasen as we set off our new five-year plan. Although the current and foreseeable market conditions remain challenging, we plan to evolve narrow our operating rules, and continue to delight customers in China and around the world with our pioneering high-quality business products. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Donghao Yang, to discuss our financial performance. Thank you, everyone.

speaker
Irene

Thank you, David, and hello, everyone. Before I get started, I would like to clarify that all financial members presented today are in and all percentage changes refer to year-over-year changes unless otherwise noted. Total net revenues for the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 38.3% to $891 million from $1.44 billion in the prior year period. The decrease was primarily attributable to the 45.6% decrease in net revenues from our color cosmetic brands partially offset by the 68.5% increase in net revenues from our skincare brand. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 38% to 614.5 million RMB from 991.6 million in the prior year period. Gross margin for the first quarter of 2022 increased to 69% from 68.6% in the prior year period. The increase was primarily attributable to our continuous efforts to improve our gross margin, including through increasing sales from our higher gross margin product, as well as through optimization of pricing, discounts, and promotions. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 30.9% to 922.5 million RMB from 1.33 billion in the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2022 were 103.5% as compared with 92.4% in the prior year period. Fulfillment expenses for the first quarter of 2022 were 73.9 million RMB as compared with 92.7 million in the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, fulfillment expenses for the first quarter of 2022 increased to 8.3% from 6.4% in the prior year period. The increase was primarily attributable to a decrease in the economies of scale of our fixed fulfillment expenses partially offset by certain cost-saving initiatives related to fulfillment assets instituted during the first quarter of 2022. Selling and marketing expenses for the first quarter of 2022 were 604.7 million RMB as compared with 1.04 billion RMB in the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, selling and marketing expenses for the first quarter of 2022 decreased to 67.9% from 72.1% in the prior year period. The decrease was primarily attributable to our continuous efforts to optimize the efficiency of our marketing spending, partially offset by expenses related to the closure of certain offline experience stores. General and administrative expenses for the first quarter of 2022 were 208.1 million RMB, as compared with 172.3 million in the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, general and administrative expenses for the first quarter of 2022 increased to 23.4% from 11.9% in the prior year period. The increase was primarily attributable to the increases in salaries and share-based compensation expenses. Research and development expenses for the first quarter of 2022 were 35.8 million RMB, as compared with 27.7 million in the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, research and development expenses for the first quarter of 2022 increased to 4% from 1.9% in the prior year period. The increase was primarily attributable to the increases in personnel costs, raw materials, equipment, and share-based compensation expenses, reflecting our commitment to enhancing our research and development capabilities. Loss from operations for the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 10.3% to 308 million RMB from 343.3 million in the prior year period. Operating loss margin was 34.6% as compared with 23.8% in the prior year period. Non-GAAP loss from operations for the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 34.1% to $170.1 million from $258.3 million in the prior year period. Non-GAAP operating loss margin was 19.1% as compared with 17.9% in the prior year period. Net loss for the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 8.7% to 291.4 million RMB from 319 million in the prior year period. Net loss margin was 32.7% as compared with 22.1% in the prior year period. Net loss attributable to Yasin's ordinary shareholders for diluted EDS for the first quarter of 2022 was 0.2%. 46 RMB as compared with 0.5 in the prior year period. Non-GAAP net loss for the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 33.6% to 165.6 million from 234.3 million in the prior year period. Non-GAAP net loss margin was 17.5%. as compared with 16.2% in the prior year period. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Yatsen's ordinary shareholders for diluted ABS for the first quarter of 2022 was 0.25 RMB, as compared with 0.37 in the prior year period. As of March 31, 2022, the company had cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments of 2.97 billion RMB as compared with 3.14 billion RMB as of December 31st, 2021. So the first quarter ended March 31st, 2022. Next cash used in operating activities was 104.1 million RMB as compared with 466.1 million in the prior period. For the second quarter of 2022, the company expects its total net revenues to be between $808.3 million and $960.8 million, representing a year-over-year decline of approximately 37% to 47%, primarily due to continued industry-wide softening of color cosmetics demand and continued negative impacts. from COVID-19 on offline experience stores, online order fulfillment capabilities, and supply chain. This forecast reflects the company's current and preliminary views on the market and operational conditions, which are subject to change. With that, I would now like to open the call to Q&A.

speaker
Operator

Operator? We will now open the call. 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're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you'd 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, please immediately repeat your question in English. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Dustin Wei with Morgan Stanley.

speaker
Dustin Wei

Please go ahead. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. My first question is I wish management could quantify a little bit for the COVID impact from both sales, market, consumer perspective, offline store, and also I think from the product delivery or any supply chain disruption and do you actually see some of the easing situation like coming from like march april to may second question is you know based on the improvement in the loss reduction and the much sort of better roi but also we have this bigger headwind from covet like just want to check if management still stick to the target to you know maybe for 2023 to get to turn around or making some small profits And I guess the third question is that if they could provide a little more highlights for the key brands. I think you talked about it in the prepared remarks, but just anything that you need to highlight, especially in the current competitive environment. and the current macro weakness, what's your thoughts and the initiatives for the key brands, as well as for the key channel? You mentioned Doin, but just wonder if you can elaborate more, like what's some of the detail, so the initiatives that you are focused on. Thanks a lot.

speaker
Irene

David, do you want to take the first question on the impact of the COVID-19 on our operations?

speaker
Xinfeng Huang

I think if you look at the numbers of the retails and also the building industries and the growth seen in April, we can clearly see the total retails declined by 11.1% and also another 22.3% decline in the building industry. I think that is the very important sign about the impact of the COVID for our business, including online and offline. And for our offline specifically, I think in April, we see that around like 50% of our stores have been impacted by the COVID. For online, because of the logistics issues, and also the supply chain disturbance in the Shanghai area. So that has a very negative impact for our new product launch and also for our customer coverage. So if we look ahead about what we are going to hedge the risk of the COVID-19, And also, we have been very focused on our new growth model. And then so we are shifting more and more resources in the skincare brands. And so I can answer the third question first, which is what kind of initiatives we are taking for strengthening our brand portfolios in skincare. I think for right now, Delany and Dr. Wu are growing really fast. For Dr. Wu, I think the brand has a very unique and distinctive brand equity, which is focused on dermatologist brand. And so this year, the brand has launched a very important product, which is the Triple Active Repair Serum, which helps the product to expand into covering more bigger group of the customer base. And we see the momentum of the program is pretty strong. And for Galenic, we just launched the Snow Algae Serum, which has extended the brand from the VC Serum into a bigger energy space. And so based on the initial launch results of the two new products, we foresee the two products will become more very strong supporting pillar for both brands' growth in the future. And for Yves Blanc this year, one of the most important initiatives is we actually take a brand launch for Yves Blanc. So right now, the brand equity has been expanding from a cleanser brand to more like a luxury skincare brand. So the campaign we just launched, which is the Yves Blanc Secret Garden, has been very well received by the consumers. So I think I'm looking forward about the, uh, about the, about the, uh, uh, skincare expansion. We will devote more resources into, uh, and I believe those, uh, those brands, uh, have high growth margin and then, um, and also charge the, um, um, the whole company.

speaker
Irene

Yeah. And that thing, uh, your question number two, uh, well, I think we were still aiming to break even or to turn profitable for the full year next year. But that depends on how the COVID-19 situation improves. Well, if it's over by the end of this year, I think, you know, chances are we will be able to achieve our goal. But that will actually depend on the situation of the virus.

speaker
Dustin Wei

Thanks a lot, Davey and Don. I may have just one follow-up on, you know, main brand, Perfect Diary brand. This year, obviously, it's very important for Perfect Diary brand itself to go through so many changes in terms of the way you do marketing and, I guess, a new product launch. So could you also share some, you know, colors on, you know, what's the current focus on Perfect Diary brand?

speaker
Xinfeng Huang

Sure. I think for Perfect Diary brand, So we are looking at a number of growth strikers to really ease the sales decline. But at the same time, the most important thing is to improve the brand's profitability. So there are a few things we are doing right now. For one thing, we are continuing momentum in Douyin. So right now, we have more and stronger direct working relationships with the top KRLs. And also, we are continuing to improve our own brand live streaming capabilities. And also, the second initiative we take is going to launch new products. So right now, we just launched the Original Stone series as part of the 6-18 promotion period. I think based on our observation on social media, the products pretty well received our core customers. The third thing we are going to do is to expand our third-party distribution at the major offline retail chains. So on the other hand, another thing we want to highlight is we really want to improve the bottom line for the brand, which we will seek to improve by optimizing capabilities offline towards mobile throughout the whole year.

speaker
Dustin Wei

Thanks a lot. That's all very helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Christine Cho with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

speaker
Christine Cho

Thank you, management. I have two quick questions. You mentioned that the operating environment still remains quite challenging in the second half. How should we think about the recovery path in the second half and also next year? You know, what are some of the key drivers that we need to watch for to see industry reacceleration as well as our own market share gains? That's the first question. Secondly, can you elaborate a little bit more on your plans for selling and marketing spend if you look at first half of this year versus the second half? Thank you.

speaker
Xinfeng Huang

I think for the whole industry, one of the key indicators is still the year-on-year growth rate. Right now, we see a pretty big decline in April, and how the number is going to be in the third quarter and the fourth quarter will become one of the key decision factors about reflecting the health conditions of the whole industry. So having said that, I think we need to be very cautious about the impact of the supply chain for the whole industry. Right now, if you look at a lot of the manufacturers, the OEM, ODM partners, which are located in the Shanghai area, All of those suppliers have had a very strong impact of the very strict COVID-19 policy. So that would give all the players in this industry a very big challenge for the new product innovations or existing product supply in the second half of this year. So that's what we think about the COVID right now.

speaker
Irene Liu

Yeah, and for the second question that Christine asked about the sales and marketing expense changes going forward. So currently, if we look at this quarter, we have a seven percentage point reduction of the sales and marketing expense compared to a year earlier. So the actual number and the reduction is actually higher, but it was partially offset by some one-time expenses related to closure of some of offline stores due to the resurgence of the COVID-19. And then going forward, we think there are a couple of drivers will help us continue to reduce our sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue. Number one is ongoing optimization of the offline store. And then secondly is the ongoing optimization of ROI, which will help reduce the traffic expenses for all our brands in the portfolio. So those will be the two main drivers going forward for sales and marketing.

speaker
Christine

Thank you.

speaker
Operator

The next question comes from Qianyi Lin with CICC. Please go ahead.

speaker
Christine

Thanks for the management sharing and taking my questions. My first question is that what are the company's strategies on June 18th shopping festivals, such as price strategies and marketing strategies, and how much will we leverage top KOLs? And also, how do the management see the competition this year? My second question is that we've seen Jetson established Open Lab in 2021 and has increased investment on R&D, showing the company's growing capabilities in pursuit for sustainable growth. So could the management give some updates on our R&D results and how will the results be applied in the product development in the future? Thanks.

speaker
Xinfeng Huang

I think for the first one about our preparation for the June 18th Big Promotion, one of the key initiatives we take is to launch a new product and also for some brand upgrade for the Big Promotion event. So in May, we launched a few very important new SKUs for Profedari, Little Hongdeng, PinBear, basically all of our brands. So we are looking forward to those new initiatives' performance for the promotion event. On the other hand, we are also strengthening our brand equities. Because right now, if you look at the promotion event of the Gen 18, the end of the period, you see that the discount rate and also price competition has become really strong. So the only way we can to adjust that concern or mitigate that risk is to strengthening the brand equity so that we can maintain a healthy growth margin. for sustainable growth. So that's what we are doing for the June 18th promotion. Having said that, right now we think that there are very big uncertainties about what is going to happen for the new year promotion. So that's why we are giving a relatively wider range of the guidance this year. For the second question about the R&D, if you're looking at the number, yes, we are improving the R&D expenses. But on the other hand, if you're looking at some of the new initiatives or products we just launched, you can see that there are patterns, there are technologies. that we developed based on the Open Lab strategy. For example, the Dr. Pu Triple Active Repair Serum is a product we co-developed with the Huazhong Science and Technology University. And the patent in the sign is something that we uniquely own, and it will create some entry barriers for the competition. If you look at the Snow Algae Serum, it is a product we co-developed with PSRP in the past years. Also, the ingredients and technology within the Snow Algae Serum actually ensure very high performance of the product efficacy. Now we can see that looking forward, there will be more and more patterns in the technology we develop through R&D, putting into our newly launched products. So in the coming half a year, there will be more and more new technologies. especially focused on the skincare area. And we can see that the R&D efforts have been helping our product to improve the competitiveness in the market and also reflecting the growth margin and a healthier repeat purchase rate. Thank you.

speaker
Christine

Thanks. It's super insightful. Yeah, that's all the questions I have. Thanks.

speaker
Operator

The next question comes from Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

speaker
Raymond James

Hi, this is Devin Weinstein on for Olivia. I appreciate you taking our questions. First, I wanted to ask a little bit more about the guidance. So presumably the impact of COVID will be a bit more substantial in Q2 than Q1. But your guidance for the next quarter implies only at the midpoint just a slight increase in the slowdown rate. and on a two-year stack, a sequential improvement. So I was hoping to get a little bit more color on the environment, the category, and your positioning to get some more context. And then if you could also comment on the second half, I appreciate some of the earlier comments that you gave, but more specifically around some of the pent-up demand you're expecting to see with lockdowns ending and the easier comps going into the second half. And then my second question is around The cost environment, it sounds like you've done quite a bit of work in terms of reducing headcount, and right-sizing, you know, your personnel. I'm curious where you think you stand in terms of your long-term goal, where the headcount needs to be, what kind of other actions you're planning on taking as well in terms of optimizing your COGS or other operating expenses, just any other areas where you think you can lean out the expenses and bring greater productivity. Thank you.

speaker
Xinfeng Huang

I think the first question is the decline of the beauty industry in April. If we separate color cosmetics and skin care, color cosmetics has a higher decline rate versus skin care. So the reason we are giving this guidance is a reflection of our estimation of our skincare brand's growth for Q2. We believe right now the skincare sector of the video industry will be gradually resuming and also mitigating the impact of the COVID from Q2 and Q3 and looking forward. So that's why we are devoting more resources for the skincare brand, which we believe will be fundamentally helping the business to become a profitable business. Having said that, for make-ups, Um, so right now we, uh, for sure, um, has been, uh, declining in the past few months. One of the key reasons we are doing that is, uh, we, we are, we are, we are raising, um, the sales and marketing, uh, the ROI bar for both brands, uh, which means, um, it will be reflecting in the, uh, gradually declining, um, sales and marketing expense. Um, so, um, so, um, so right now, um, On the other hand, if you're looking forward about our optimization strategy, we think that there are a few components that we will focus on. The number one and the most important thing is still the sales and marketing. Because if we look at the Q1 and also for the sales and marketing, we see the opportunity will come once the offline resuming to a normal situation. And also our continued effort to optimizing the marketing ROI and also the high review purchase rate coming from interbrands. So all those factors will be contributing to the decreasing sales and marketing. On the other hand, one thing that we will continue to optimize is the GNA, because we still see there are some rooms for us to optimize the talent performance, and also there are Once the optimization process moving forward, we will see the G&A percentage of the total revenue. We will reflect our continuous effort for that component.

speaker
Raymond James

Thank you, Governor.

speaker
Operator

And that concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any additional or closing comments.

speaker
Irene Liu

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at Yasin directly or TPG Investor Relations. You can find our contact information for IR in both China and the U.S. in today's press release. Thank you, and have a great day.

speaker
Operator

The conference has concluded. You may now disconnect. Thank you.

Disclaimer

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.

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