Dada Nexus Limited (NASDAQ:DADA) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Dada Nexus Limited (NASDAQ:DADA) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript November 18, 2022

Dada Nexus Limited beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.15, expectations were $-0.18.

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by for Dada’s Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. . I will now turn the meeting over to your host for today’s call, Ms. Caroline Dong, Head of Investor Relations for Dada. Please proceed, Caroline.

Caroline Dong: Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. On the call today from Dada, we have Mr. Jeff Jeff Huijian, President; Mr. Beck Chen, CFO; and Mr. Jun Yang, Co-Founder and CTO. Mr. He will talk about our operations and the company highlights, then Mr. Chen will discuss the financials and guidance. They will all be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. Please kindly note that during the Q&A session, Jeff will answer questions in Chinese and the consecutive translation will be provided. In case of any discrepancy between the original remarks and the translated version, statements in the original remarks should prevail.

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Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements. Please refer to our latest safe harbor statement in the earnings press release on our IR website, which applies to this call. Also, during this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please also refer to our earnings press release, which contains a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures. Finally, please note that, unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. It is now my pleasure to introduce our President, Mr. He. Jeff, please go ahead.

Jeff Huijian: Thank you, Caroline, and thank you all for joining us. This is my first earnings call as President of Dada Group, and I’d like to have the opportunity to announce the strong quarter after we have just delivered. Now on to our results. During the quarter of 2022, Dada Group maintained our — just — our rapid revenue growth and continuously improved operating efficiency. Our total net revenues increased by 41%, and adjusted net loss margin narrowed by 15 percentage points year-over-year. I will start with a brief discussion of the overall industry environment before moving on to update on the 2 platforms. Beck then will walk you through our financial results in detail. In terms of industry and regulatory environment, our key message from 20th CPC National Congress is that high-quality development is China’s top priority in building a modern socialist country in all respects.

China will pursue high-quality development by increasing the expansion of domestic demand with intensified supply-side structural form. As a leading digital platform, Dada Group will fully leverage the advantages of digital technology to sell the real economy in which we are deeply embedded and the empowered regulatory industry. We believe our business is well positioned to promote high-quality development and helps domestic economy. In September, we showcased the sale, our contributions to high-quality development at 2022 China International Sale and Trading Services, highlighting the progress we have made in promoting the transformation and upgrade our off-line retail with our digital employment and the fulfillment committees. Next, I’d like to provide some updates on our dependent cooperation with JD.com.

During the quarter, GMV of Shop Now or Xiaoshigou, the unified brand for all on-demand retail services within the JD ecosystem increased by more than 160 year-over-year, driven by the robust performance of connection through both search results and Nearby tab. For search result optimization, we upgrade our supply-demand tool to accurately match incremental Meituan and the product supplies with city-specific user demand at JD.com, leveraging the refined tool, Shop Now exposure link among search results at JD.com pilot test more than doubled. In fourth quarter, we will continue to optimize the demand and assets down to a great level as to further improve our search exposure rate. For the Nearby or Fujin tab is now available to users who are working on near-term locations which bring incremental exposure.

Furthermore, during the quarter, we have fully rolled out the display and upgraded the Nearby tab, replacing the original Nearby with relevant city names, which further improved the click-through rate. In addition, we continue to enhance our user operation capability with Nearby tab, resulting in higher conversion rate. These improvements led to the strong growth of GMV generated for Nearby tab. Before discussing our quarterly performance for our 2 platforms, I would like to provide some highlights of the — this and Double 11 shopping festival. With our 200,000 stores participating, GMV of JDDJ on peak day is a historic high. And for Dada Now, number of average daily orders during the promotion period exceed 10 million. Now let me walk you through the operational highlights of our 2 platforms, JDDJ and Dada Now.

I will talk first about the JDDJ, the leading local on-demand retail platform in China. JDDJ GMV growth significantly outpaced the inflation. In addition, mainly driven by improved subset the efficiency, direct margin continued to improve after during the second quarter, with 1% in the third quarter. Let me take you through the 3 key focus of JDDJ, the retail empowerment, brand cooperation and the technology innovation. Let’s start out with our efforts in empowering retailers. Beginning with the supermarket category, we recently partnered with more top supermarket chains such as Hubei and now have established a partnership with 88 out of the top 100 supermarket chains in China. We also onboarded more regional campaigns like Jiangxi . We also continued to make progress in the consumer electronics and home appliance category.

In the smartphone subcategory, JDDJ became the only third-party platform were presales was available for newly launched Apple products in September. More than 2,600 Apple-authorized stores on JDDJ offered the iPhone 14 series. On the first day of iPhone 14 series launched, the GMV of fulfilled orders more than tripled compared with the iPhone 13 debut. In the mom and baby category, JDDJ is capturing strong consumer market share. The GMV of mom and the baby chains on JDDJ in the third quarter more than tripled year-over-year. In the apparel category, we expanded our offerings from sportswear to daily wear. During the quarter, we worked more closely with the existing partners, such as Canon, and also formed new partnerships with and others. The GMV of apparel merchants on JDDJ increased by 8x year-over-year.

Turning to JDDJ’s efforts to . In the third quarter, the year-on-year revenue growth of online market services exceed 70%, demonstrating such JDDJ continue to gain market share. Our brands partner that keeps expanding. We continue to penetrate the FMCG category. And this quarter, we established partnerships with emerging key value brands such as penetrates the consumer electronics and the home appliance category, brands such as Lenovo and Super. Turning to our innovative brand-marketed campaigns. In August, JDDJ teamed up with wholesale products and food brand to launch a joint marketing campaign, and that helping the brand reach across capital users, GMV of the 2 brands on JDDJ even more than tripled year-over-year. In September, we worked together with 9 major brands, including to promote the mid-autumn festival gift sales.

During the demand, we had more tech testing events to help blend distribute the 3 samples. Total GMV of participating brands grew more than 50 year-over-year. Next, I will touch on our initiatives for importing the tailors and the brands with technology innovation. Beginning with the high-growth system, our omnichannel operating system for retailers at the end of September has been deployed in all 8,300 retailer channel stores. In addition, we expanded high growth services to in apparel capital such as , further demonstrating the system’s functional scalability. We continued to upgrade high-vol features in the third quarter, including the introduction of product management function for nonstandard items. By creating labels that will enable the retailers to more efficiently manage the — pinpoint these products.

The chance to have tested this upgraded product management feature. So our 20% efficiency gains inbound and outbound warehouse operations. The inventory count on nonstandard products. We also made progress in consumer, our system. For example, we introduced a new approach of working with brands which entails more automations, enable brands to manage China inventories during — down to the store level more efficiently. Since August, brands adopting the upgraded system has significantly improved their product set availability in local grids reached in a increase in exposure and the incremental sales of 17 percentage points. Regarding our digitized in-store picking services, Dada Picking. Leveraging our flexible labor management model and digital picking process, we enable the stores to handle high level of O2O orders, which manages fulfillment costs and customer experience.

In the third quarter, we worked together with Meituan to further improve the pricing model of Dada Picking. With the pilot tried price model, we reduced the unit picking costs by 12%, which meant maintaining a stable fulfillment rate. We also continue to expand the store coverage and the increased penetration of Dada Picking in partner stores. As a result, the total number of orders fulfilled by Dada Picking increased by more than 160 year-over-year in the third quarter. And our number of monthly active pickers steadily grew to more than 10,000, majority of whom are female. In this way, we have not only helped retailers to improve picking efficiency and the fulfillment needs, but also provide a meaningful platform of employment opportunities for a wide range of workers.

Now let’s move on to Dada Now, the leading local on-demand delivery platform in China. In the third quarter, Dada Now’s O2O volume and to both maintain the rapid growth whilst operating efficiency continued to improve. Our steady growth and the improved efficiency were underpinned by our technology. In September, we participated in 2020 Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Conference, showcasing the progress we have made in using AI technologies to improve order matching, efficiency and the location accuracy as well as to enable our promise delivery. As a technology-driven company, we will continue to promote the robust and efficiency development of business through investments and innovations in technology. Now let’s turn to the performance highlights of Dada Now’s 3 major business lines.

In terms of KA or chain merchants’ business, in the third quarter, revenue on-demand delivery services to KA merchants increased by more than 40 year-over-year, while gross profit for other continued to improve sequentially. In the supermarket KA category, we continued to consolidate our leading position with increased by more than 40 year-on-year. In addition, continues to grow significantly, increased by more than 140 year-over-year. In our SME and C2C business, orders fulfilled increased by more than 50 year-over-year, where we continue to greatly optimize unit economics. In particular, driven by our continued penetration into low-tier city and expansion of rider network. Our SME orders increased by more than 60 year-over-year. For last-mile services, orders fulfilled increased by more than 60 year-over-year.

The steady increase of our penetration led in JD logistics for last-mile delivery. Meanwhile, we maintained the rapid growth in picking up business with a number of orders grew more than 200 year-over-year. Finally, Dada autonomous deliver open platform expanded the collaboration with more autonomous vehicle manufacturers and continued to explore more flexible ways to provide autonomous delivery services to retailers. As of the end of September, our platform has fulfilled dozens of thousand customer orders through autonomous delivery. To wrap up, we are pleased with the performance of the business this quarter. We continue to be challenged by macro environment. Our new leadership team is committed to build on these results and executing our strategy to deliver sustained returns for our shareholders.

With that, I will pass the call to Beck to go over financial results for this quarter. Thank you.

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Beck Chen: Thanks, Jeff. And before we go over the numbers, just a few housekeeping items in advance. We believe year-over-year comparisons are the most useful way to judge our performance. Therefore, all percentage changes I’m going to give will be on that basis. And all figures are in Renminbi, unless otherwise noted. Total net revenues in the third quarter increased by 41% to CNY 2.4 billion. Net revenues from Dada Now increased by 36% to CNY 836 million, mainly driven by the increase in order volume of intra-city delivery service to chain merchants. Net revenues from JDDJ increased by 44% to CNY 1.5 billion, mainly due to the increase in GMV, which was driven by increases in the number of active consumers and average order size.

The increase in online marketing services results as a result — revenue as a result of the increasing promotional activities also contributed to the revenue growth of JDDJ. Moving over to the expense side. Operating and supporting costs were CNY 1.5 billion. The increase was primarily due to an increase in rider costs as a result of increasing order volume for intra-city delivery services provided to various chain merchants on the Dada Now platform and the retailers on the JDDJ platform. Selling and marketing expenses were CNY 1.1 billion. The increase was primarily due to the growing absolute dollar amount of incentives to JDDJ consumers, an increase in advertising and marketing expenses to attract new consumers to JDDJ platform and the amortization of the business cooperation agreement arising from share subscription transaction with JD.com in February this year.

G&A expenses slightly rose to CNY 107 million, mainly attributable to increases in professional services fees. R&D expenses rose to CNY 181 million, mainly attributable to the increase in research and development personnel cost as the company continues to strengthen its technology capabilities. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders of Dada was CNY 270 million. Non-GAAP net loss margin was 11.4%, improving by more than 15 percentage points year-over-year and 6 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. As of September 30, 2022, the company had CNY 5.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments. Pursuant to our USD 70 million share repurchase program announced in March 2022, as of September 30, 2022, we had repurchased approximately USD 57 million of ADSs under this repurchase program.

In terms of outlook, for the fourth quarter of 2022, we expect the total revenue to be between CNY 2.65 billion and CNY 2.75 billion, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 30% to 35%. In addition, we expect net loss margin in the fourth quarter of 2022 to continue to significantly narrow year-over-year and achieve sequential improvement for the seventh consecutive quarter. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you. Operator, we are now ready to begin the Q&A session. Thanks.

Q&A Session

Operator: . Your first question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.

Ronald Keung: First, I just want to hear about the COVID impact to your business recently across Guangzhou — Zhengzhou and Guangzhou, a few cities have significant cases. Has that impacted our business? Or has it actually boosted demand? And how should we think about the outlook for next year, assuming a further reopening trend? Second is about the JDDJ side with the revenue guidance, how are we thinking on the GMV growth in the December quarter? And any timing expectations for economics or EBIT turnaround from the business?

Jeff Huijian: Thank you for your question. I will answer the question about the pandemic and then Beck will take the question about Q4 guidance. So in most cities where pandemic control measures are imposed, the mobility is restricted. Most retailers can still do business online. The riders are available for delivery. Therefore, the direct impact on our business is limited. That said, over the past year or so, some consumers have to cope with pay cuts or has a more conservative outlook due to the pandemic. So the overall consumer confidence has weakened which poses challenges to our business. However, the impact on our platform is not as significant as on other platforms since our largest category is supermarkets, which sells consumer staples, so we can maintain faster growth and other platforms.

Beck Chen: Okay. So yes, Ronald, let me address your second question about the Q4 and next year’s guidance or the forecast. So basically, in Q4, based on the revenue guidance we have given, and we expect our GMV could be grow by — of JDDJ GMV could be grow by 30% to 40% on a year-over-year basis. During which, we will continue to improve our subsidy efficiency and operational efficiency. So in Q4, we will continue to see the overall operation efficiency enhancements. And for the bottom line, as we have guided in the prepared remarks, that it will continue to improve as percentage points improve, both on a year-over-year basis or a Q-on-Q basis. So for next year, generally, we will still like aim at breakeven for the first half of next year. And based on that, we will just would like to grow still very fast and healthier on a year-over-year basis for both platforms. So everything is still on track, and we keep up with the reason, and we have previously set up.

Operator: Your next question comes from with Bank of America Securities.

Unidentified Analyst: My first question is regarding our cooperation with JD. Can you give us some update? And how should we see the trend in the future? Secondly, can you give us some updates on JDDJ’s GMV category mix and the growth trend?