Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to J&T Global Express Limited 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message of trace. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to the first speaker today, Ms. Silvia Chen, from the company.
Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to J&T Express 2023 earnings conference call. I'm Silvia Chen from the investment department. The company's results and the investor relations presentation were released earlier today and are now available on the company's IR website @ ir.jtexpress.com. Before we start the call, we would like to remind you that the call may include forward-looking statements which are underlined by a number of risks and uncertainties and may not be realized in the future for various reasons. Information about general market conditions is coming from a variety of sources outside of J&T. This presentation also contains some unaudited non-IFRS financial measures that should be considered in addition to, but not only as a substitute for the company's financials prepared in accordance with IFRS. I have with me J&T's Executive President, Steven Fan; Vice President, Charles Hou ; and CFO, Dylan Tey.
Our management will share strategies, operating highlights, and financial performance for the full year of 2023. This will be followed by a Q&A session. With that, let me turn the call over to Steven. Steven will read through his prepared remarks in Chinese before I translate for him in English. Steven.
Okay，[Foreign language]
Hello everyone, welcome to today's earnings call. On behalf of J&T Express, I'm pleased to share with you the company's performance for the year 2023. This is the company's first financial report since its listing. In the past year, despite facing multiple challenges from the macroeconomy and fierce market competition, we have still achieved rapid growth. In 2023, we handled a total of 18.8 billion parcels, representing a year-on-year increase of 29%. Now, I will share with you the development of our business in different regions. Starting with China, in 2023, we have achieved EBITDA break-even in China, which is a major breakthrough for us. Our parcel volume increased by 27.6% year-on-year, and our market share increased by a 0.7 percentage point, a double gain in market share and profit. After four years' navigation, J&T Express has become one of the most competitive express delivery operators in China.
On the business side, we have noticed that the industry is transforming from quantitative growth to qualitative enhancement, and therefore, service quality is our priority. Our service quality has been improving, as demonstrated by a few of the service quality indicators, such as the statistics disclosed by the State Post Bureau and Logistics Industry Public Service platform. With the improvement of service quality, we are able to reach higher-quality customers. Thus, the company's volume mix has been continuously optimized, and the proportion of reverse parcels and individual parcels has been continuously increased. We have set up a special program to develop branded customers, and at the end of 2023, we have seen a significant increase in the number of branded customers, reflecting substantial endorsements from our customers. In 2023, we also introduced Tu You Da, a new premium e-commerce express delivery service on top of standard express delivery products.
This diversified our product portfolio and demonstrates our enhanced network capability and strength. Looking ahead, we aim to broaden our customer base and cultivate a roster of premium customers through continuous elevation of service quality, enhancement of our brand image, and strengthening of customer engagement and recognition of the J&T brand. Now, moving on to Southeast Asia. In 2023, we handled a total of 3.2 billion parcels in Southeast Asia, representing a year-over-year increase of 28.9%, far beyond industry average. Our market share has expanded to 25.4%, a 2.9 percentage point increase from 2022, further consolidating our leadership position. Our growth in Southeast Asia was driven by three main factors. First, the growth of the e-commerce and express delivery industry in the region. Second, our solid network infrastructure and superior operational capability. And third, our high-quality and cost-competitive services we provide.
I will now present our business results and future development strategy around these three growth drivers. First is the growth of e-commerce and express delivery industry. In 2023, the transaction value of e-commerce in Southeast Asia reached $189.7 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 22.6%, of which the transaction value of social e-commerce reached $81.9 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 36.2%. This makes Southeast Asia one of the fastest-growing markets across the globe, and we seize this growth opportunity, especially the growth of social e-commerce in the region. Second is our solid network infrastructure and superior operational capability. J&T Express is deeply rooted in Southeast Asia and has been cultivating the market for nine years.
We are the express delivery service provider with the broadest network coverage, the highest network density, and the broadest coverage of cash-on-delivery services, and the largest handling capacity in Southeast Asia. For example, during Ramadan, our daily parcel volume peaked at 16 million. Our well-established infrastructure has laid a solid foundation and support for our long-term growth. In 2023, our operational efficiency has been greatly improved through applying the advanced industry know-how in China to Southeast Asia, with our cost per parcel in Southeast Asia decreased by 11.8% year-on-year. Going forward, we will continue to invest in our network infrastructure and enhance network capacity and efficiency. We will utilize the extensive know-how in China to empower our Southeast Asia business, further improving our operational and management capabilities. Last but not least, we are able to provide high-quality services with competitive pricing to our customers.
As operational efficiency improves, the cost per parcel is expected to decline, which drives us to offer our customers more competitive prices, thereby making our customers more competitive in a dynamic market. At the same time, our service quality improved in 2023, with the average delivery time for parcels reduced by 6.5% year-on-year, while the complaint rate continued to decline as well. As the demand for high-quality services increases, we will continue to maintain close communication with customers to provide customized services and cater to their varied needs. Lastly, the new market. According to customs data, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports amounted to CNY 2.4 trillion in 2023, representing a year-on-year increase of 15.6%, among which cross-border e-commerce exports amounted to CNY 1.8 trillion, representing a year-on-year increase of 19.6%.
The development of cross-border e-commerce is advancing rapidly, with the increasing number of Chinese e-commerce platforms engaging in the global market. The LATAM market is seen as the last blue ocean and has emerged as a key area of focus for leading cross-border e-commerce platforms. Furthermore, as the political and economic ties between the Middle East and China enter a new chapter and the region undergoes an economic transformation, the Middle East has also emerged as a favored destination for e-commerce platforms expanding internationally. After two years of strategic development, J&T has successfully established its last-mile delivery network in these markets. Benefiting from the explosive growth of China's e-commerce platforms going overseas, our parcel volume in new markets grew by 369% year-on-year in 2023. Moving forward, we are committed to enhancing our productivity while elevating both the efficiency and the quality of our network.
Our goal is to foster mutual growth by providing superior logistics services to our customers. Looking ahead, we will closely monitor the development of other markets globally and are likely to enter into selected markets at opportune moments and in an appropriate way so that we can achieve sustainable expansion on a global scale. We firmly believe that our relentless dedication and ongoing innovation will enhance our ability to serve our global customers and attain our long-term growth targets. I would like to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude for your support and trust. Together, let us look forward to more achievements by the company in the future. With that, I will invite CFO Dylan Tey to discuss our financials. Dylan Tey.
Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. Now, please allow me to take you through the financial highlights. Please note that unless specifically mentioned, all numbers I'll be quoting are in U.S. dollars, and percentage changes refer to year-on-year comparisons. Detailed financials of our performance, unit economics, cash flow, and CapEx are posted on our IR website, and I will only go through some of the highlights here. For J&T Group overall, our total revenue increased 21.8% year-on-year from $7.3 billion in 2022 to $8.8 billion in 2023. This was mainly driven by the market share and parcel volume growth of our express delivery services in the 13 countries we operate. The total gross profit in 2023 was $473 million compared to a gross loss of $270 million in 2022.
Our annual Adjusted EBITDA turned profitable for the first time, amounting to $147 million in 2023, while we had an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $894 million the previous year. Next, I will present our segment results. Let me start with Southeast Asia segment. Our revenue increased by 10.6% year-on-year growth from $2.4 billion in 2022 to $2.6 billion in 2023 as a result of parcel volume growth and flexible pricing strategy. Our gross profit was $470 million in 2023 compared to $476 million the year before. We had an Adjusted EBITDA of $376 million in 2023, representing a year-on-year increase of 13.3% compared to $332 million in 2022. Our Adjusted EBITDA margins in these two years were 13.9% and 14.3% respectively, which is relatively stable. As you can see, we maintain a healthy and sustainable level of EBITDA profitability in Southeast Asia.
Our cost has been reduced continuously by expanding the existing economies of scale since we can integrate the volumes of all the e-commerce platforms, being the independent e-commerce enabler. We are also able to leverage our know-how in China into Southeast Asia to further drive down our costs. Our operating leverage has also assisted us to deliver these healthy unit economics. Next, let me move to the China segment. As mentioned by Steven Fan, we are pleased to share that we have achieved our first positive Adjusted EBITDA in 2023, which was a breakthrough and milestone for us. For the year of 2023, revenue increased 27.7% year-on-year to $5.2 billion from the year before, along with 27.6% year-on-year growth in parcel volume. Revenue per parcel in China was $0.34 in 2023, which was relatively stable compared to the year before.
This was primarily driven by the diversified customer base and the optimized volume mix, further supported by our improved service quality. On the other hand, cost per parcel declined from $0.40 in 2022 to $0.34 in 2023, which was in line with our improved overall operational efficiency. In China, we have adopted many measures to improve our cost efficiency, such as investing in self-owned line haul vehicles, upgrading automated equipment in our sorting centers, improving labor efficiency through standardization in operating procedures, and optimization of performance metrics. As a result, we had a gross profit of $59 million in 2023 compared to a gross loss of $665 million in 2022. The Adjusted EBITDA was $31 million in 2023, while the Adjusted EBITDA for China was a loss of $723 million in 2022. Thirdly, let me share about our New Markets segment.
As you recall, we entered Saudi Arabia, UAE, Mexico, Brazil, and Egypt in 2022, which we define as our New Markets. Our revenue for our New Markets tripled from $82 million in 2022 to $332 million in 2023, driven by strong growth of parcel volume and market share. As we ramp up into economies of scale, we achieved our first positive gross profit of $1.7 million in 2023 compared to a gross loss of $19.1 million in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA of these New Markets recorded a loss of $74 million and $82 million in 2022 and 2023 respectively, and the corresponding negative margins were 90% and 25%, representing a significant narrowing of losses. We were still in the investment stage in 2023 for these New Markets.
Going forward, we will further enhance our network capacity by increasing investment in equipment in sorting centers, increasing our line haul vehicles, and adding new outlets to meet the ever-growing service demand, as mentioned by Steven Fan. Lastly, for our cross-border, due to our strategic adjustments and focusing on our core, we closed down the cross-border small parcel business in the Q4 of 2023, which resulted in some one-off expenses such as personal severance, contract suspension penalties, and lost deposits. The revenue in 2023 was $660 million, down 6.8% year-on-year from $708 million in 2022. The Adjusted EBITDA of this segment was a loss of $170 million in 2023 compared to a loss of $90 million in 2022. Finally, let me return to our consolidated numbers.
As a result of all the factors mentioned above, we achieved our first consolidated positive annual Adjusted EBITDA of $147 million, which is a turnaround from an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $894 million. We had an adjusted net loss of $432 million in 2023, significantly narrowed from the loss of $1.5 billion in 2022. From the cash flow perspective, we had a net cash inflow from operating activities of $342 million in 2023 compared to a net cash outflow of $520 million in 2022, which is also a healthy turnaround. As of the end of 2023, our total cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash were $15.3 billion. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for questions. Thank you all.
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. To ask questions on the phone, please press star one one and wait for a name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for the first question. The first question comes from the line of Qibin Feng from CICC. Please ask your question.
Hello. [Foreign Language]
[Foreign Language]
[Foreign Language]
[Foreign Language] Steven Fan，[Foreign Language]
Sorry, Qibin Feng, just for the benefit of the English speaker on the call, may I just quickly translate your questions in English, and please confirm whether I understand correctly? So for Southeast Asia, your question is how the company is going to continue to increase our market share. That's your first question. And the second question is how is our for China, how are we going to maintain our stable ASP as well as and what helps us to turn around in China? Is that right?
Yes.
Okay.[Foreign Language]
So let me translate for the first question. As everyone know, we serve all the e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia, and we were also the first mover in this region. So building on these two, we have the largest network in terms of scale and also the deepest density as well as operational capabilities. All this combined will be able to help our partners to go through explosive growth in the region. On the other hand, we also have our portfolio in China that allows us to get access to the best practice from China and replicate that best practice to Southeast Asia. All this combined, we were able to provide high quality and competitive pricing to the e-commerce partners that we work with, and we are confident that going forward, our market share will continue to increase as we execute this strategy. Qibin Feng.
Hello, Steven Fan[Foreign Language]
Yeah. I'll answer your question. Yeah. I think your question is, let me just try, for the benefit of the English speakers, I will just translate for you. So the question is whether there's any room for us to reduce our cost in the future for our Southeast Asia segment. Is that right? I think the short answer is yes. We still have ample room for cost reduction. As Steven Fan mentioned, we will continue to build on our scale. And as everybody know, logistics is a unique cost game. So as we continue to build on our scale and increase our market share along with the growth in Southeast Asia, we'll be able to reduce our costs on a unit basis. On the other hand, we still have a lot of efficiencies to be gained as we replicate our know-how from China into the Southeast Asia market. Qibin Feng .
Thank you, Qibin Feng, for your question. And Charles Hou will take your question about China.
Okay[Foreign Language] Charles Hou [Foreign Language]
I'll translate for Charles Hou. As everybody know, after we started China, the company has always been focusing on our own self-development and focusing on our strategy and our goals. We have adopted a phased approach in refining our operational capabilities in China. The overall objective is basically to make less mistakes or no mistakes in the process. On the operational front, we seek to continuously improve our service quality and from that build on our ability to obtain and get higher quality customers. For the last year of 2023, we continue to optimize our revenue mix, which helps us to maintain a stable ASP.
On the cost front, we also continue to seek multiple measures to increase our operational efficiencies while lowering our costs, such as optimization of our line haul routing, increase our self-owned line haul vehicles percentages, increase training, and very importantly as well, strengthening the operational efficiencies and service quality of our network partners. In the future, we hope our China market share will continue to be stable and we will continue to and we expect that all these measures that we implemented in 2023, they help us to achieve this gross profit turnaround to continue into the future. Thank you, Qibin Feng.
Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from the line of Fan Tianshu from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening. This is Fan Tianshu from Bank of America. And thank you, management, for the presentation and congratulations for the first results. I have two questions, if I may. Number one is both are on the Southeast Asia. So number one could you please give us an update on the TikTok Indonesia situation after its reentry? How's that impacting J&T? And from the Southeast Asia gross margin perspective, should we assume that the margin already bottomed in 2023? Second question is kind of related to the question asked by Qibin Feng. We saw that the logistics market share of e-commerce platforms like Shopee and Lazada were growing quite meaningfully last year. How would that impact our strategy and growth outlook there? And do you expect more logistics insourcing by this platform?
I'm also wondering if you are able to provide a quantitative target for our Southeast Asia volume growth for this year. So let me translate for myself. [Foreign Language]
Thank you. Thank you, Fan Tianshu. For your first question about now TikTok's back to Southeast Asia and how would that impact the company's business. Charles Hou will take your question. The second question is about the gross profit in Southeast Asia. I think our CFO, Dylan Tey will take this. The last question is about the guidance of the volume growth in Southeast Asia. Dylan Tey will take that as well. Charles Hou, please.
[Foreign Language]
Let me translate for Charles Hou. So everybody knows we are platform agnostic and we are the independent e-commerce enabler in Southeast Asia. TikTok and Shopee are both important customers of our company. And any growth of our partners will benefit our growth in this region. And secondly, as some of you might know, for a short period of time, TikTok's operations were affected in Southeast Asia. But at the end of 2023, the operations have resumed and have continued to experience growth in the last few months. And we expect the growth to continue into the future. According to the Frost & Sullivan, over the next five years, the CAGR growth of e-commerce in Southeast Asia will be around 18%, which is significantly higher than the global e-commerce growth of 9%, which means that Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing areas for e-commerce globally.
Being the largest and independent e-commerce enabler, e-commerce logistic company in Southeast Asia, we are poised to enjoy the growth of this e-commerce growth in this region. Hopefully, we answered your first question. As for your second question about gross profit margin as well as the volume guidance for Southeast Asia, I will answer in two parts. First, for the gross profit, I think from our company perspective, we are looking at ensuring a stable EBITDA margin, which considers both the gross margin as well as the operating leverage that we have. Being the first mover and the largest player in this region, we expect our EBITDA margin to be stable into the future. Your second question about the volume growth, we expect our growth for 2024 will continue to be higher than the industry growth. I hope we answered your questions, Fan Tianshu.
[Foreign Language] Charles Hou [Foreign Language] Dylan Tey。
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from Aaron Dai from UBS. Please ask your question.
[Foreign Language]？ Let me translate myself. Thank you, management, for taking my question. And congrats for the first financial results. And my question is more about the New Markets. As we have noted, we have already signed a contract with the biggest e-commerce platform in Saudi Arabia. Just a bit curious, what's our current customer mix look like? And how soon we expect we can achieve a break-even there? And what are those major drivers? Thank you, management.
Thank you, Aaron Dai. For your questions about our business in the New Markets, Charles Hou will take this.
[Foreign Language] Aaron Dai[Foreign Language]
Let me translate for Charles Hou.
[Foreign Language], let me translate for Charles Hou into English. Hang on. So, I think for, as everyone knows, as we have developed these new markets, and maybe just as a refresher, the reason why we select one of the core considerations or how we select new market destinations is whether we have an anchor customer in this market. As everyone knows as well, that in the last few years, there are many Chinese e-commerce platforms seeking growth abroad. So, I think we have a close relationship working with them in various geographies. So, we will pace our investment as well as our growth in this market along with their pace of growth in this market as well. And secondly, I think even though we are relatively new in this market, we are continuously upgrading and improving our network strength and density.
As we continue to build our reputation as well as our operational capabilities, we will also gradually collaborate with the local e-commerce players. Aaron Dai, the one that you mentioned in Saudi Arabia is obviously a clear example. Lastly, I think for all these new markets, we have only started this market for two years now. And in our business, we need to invest upfront in building the infrastructure to allow for future growth. We expect the losses to continue to narrow into the future. And we achieve profitability in due course. Aaron Dai.
[Foreign Language] Charles Hou [Foreign Language] Dylan Tey [Foreign Language]. Let me also translate myself. We also noted that since the beginning of this year, we have done some organizational structure change for the China operations. And just wondering what's our key reasons or our key thinkings behind? And what's our development goal for this year?
How do we make a good balance between volume and profit growth? Thank you.
Thank you, Aaron Dai. Steven Fan used to be our China CEO. So I guess Steven Fan is the best person to answer this question. Steven Fan[Foreign Language] CEO [Foreign Language] Steven Fan [Foreign Lamguage]
[Foreign Language] Aaron Dai [Foreign Language]
Let me translate for Steven Fan. As you know, for the last four years, our group and China were double -hatting and it was run by the same team. For the last four years, the group team has spent significant effort in building up our China business. With our China market share increasing to 11.6% and also achieving the first EBITDA positive as we described earlier, we will consider this as a milestone. I think the second reason is, I think China, we believe, being one of our 13 countries' portfolio, also deserves a chance to develop independently under a separate competent management team. Then lastly, I think this separation will allow the group team, which is led by Steven Fan, to be able to spend more and even the full attention and all efforts into focusing our overseas market, which presents significant opportunity and growth opportunity for us.
Aaron, hope we answered your question.
[Foreign Language]
Thank you for the questions.
Yes, I guess we are running out of time here. So that was the last question we took. Once again, thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. We look forward to having further discussions with you all. Thank you. Have a good day and a great evening. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.