Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Weimob Inc.'s 2024 interim results conference. A copy of the interim results announcement can be found on the company's website. All of the lines have been placed on listen-only mode. However, the floor will be open for questions after today's presentation. This call will be conducted in Mandarin, and English simultaneous interpretation will be provided. Participants may flip the PPT on the streaming platform. Please note that this conference may cover information about non-IFRS metrics. As for detailed definitions, please consult the company's result announcement. Today, we have with us Mr. Sun Taoyong, Chairman of the Board and CEO, and Mr. You Fengchun , Executive Director and President of Weimob Inc., and Mr. Cao Yi, CFO. Now, may I invite Mr. Sun?
Fellow investors and analysts, good evening. Welcome to Weimob's result announcement for the first half. I'll walk you through the overall results for the first half. As far as our financial result is concerned, you must have already seen it from the website. You may be in doubt, why is it that the revenue has dropped by 28%? Overall, our revenue, I would touch, provide some details and subsequently. But we can see that our losses for the year has been narrowing, and overall, adjusted losses have improved a great deal. Versus the CNY 661 million of the same period last year, that loss has narrowed. I'm sorry, the number should be CNY 200 million.
Last year, our cash flow is negative, and this year it's a CNY 30 million positive cash flow. So we have the best cash flow in the 30 months until now. So for the first half, we have been able to get very good results in reducing our cost and increasing our efficiency. Regarding the decline of revenue, we think that there are two reasons. First is that macro, the macro economy has been coming down, and it has some impact to medium and small firms. So I believe that 5%-10% of the revenue is impacted by this factor. The second, and the main reason, is we have some strategic adjustments for the small and medium firms. Starting last year, for losing cities, we are ruling that out.
We kept only the core cities. At the earliest, we have 15 subsidiaries, but now we are keeping only five in the most important cities like Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. This is a very important reason explaining why the revenue has come down. This is a strategic move, I would say. We also have some losing business that we continue to shrink. First half of last year, through shareholding methods, we had seen some decline in overall revenue. We also spin off some of the low profitability businesses. The first half, especially, the revenue, especially subscription, has come down by 31%.
However, our costs has also come down a great deal, especially selling expenses and cost of sales, that has come down a great deal. So the overall result is that our overall losses have narrowed, and we have also other improvements in efficiency. Overall, for the small and medium sectors, of the mainland market, we think that given the current economic situation, these companies, first of all, the, their, client acquisition cost is not too low, and their budget is not too big, and also their revenue is not that big. So they would come with a high, longer return on, on payments. So most of the clients, because of these reasons, we see some losses. So we have... This is why we have made the strategic, adjustment regarding these sectors.
The core businesses, especially our retail, our Weimob Retail, we see that our organic growth is 3.1%. It is already 62% of our overall revenue. Despite of the overall economic slowdown being a challenge, we see that the retail sales is actually quite good, especially revenue proportion of old customers are very, actually very good. We think that given the economic situation, the smart retail and Weimob Retail is actually the sector that we should focus on. Despite that, the growth is not a really big one, but we think that it can still sustain, it can still be sustained, and this business is very robust. We will walk through specific details in a moment about Weimob Retail.
We have a gross billing increase of 19.4%. With our WeChat video account, we have a big increase, and the same for Little Red Book and Kuaishou. Our business actually is not bad, but why is it that our revenue still comes down? There are several reasons. The most important one is Tencent's strategy change or adjustment. Since last year to mid of this year, Tencent has cut down on the rebate that's given to us. We also have to give rebate to our customers, because our business model is that Tencent give us a rebate and our customer, and we also give our customer a rebate. So our net income is the difference in the rebate ratio.
However, our progress is actually lagging behind of Tencent in general. So at the beginning of the year, we have signed a framework agreement, but it is difficult to realize that immediately. So effects of Tencent strategies is would come in a lagging, you know, in later than reports. So if we keep the same strategy with our customers, then this would become a strong and stable trend. So this year, we think that Weimob sales overall, I think the growth is 10.9%, which 19%, which given the economic situation, is actually quite good. But then the revenue is coming down a bit. However, we have been able to reduce our cost and improve the operating efficiency.
Our losses are narrowing, and this improvement is very evident. Now, let us talk more about Weimob Corporate Services. Our overall strategy is the up-market strategy, and that has achieved some very remarkable results. That revenue has already become 60% of our overall, and it will continue to grow. And we will continue to introduce more corporate services, especially with the clothing industries and sportswear, the performance is quite good, like Li-Ning, New Balance, and, you know, these have already become our customers. Then there's Luzhou Laojiao, with the FMCG industry, and other like Jianchun, you know, these customers have also signed to and subscribed to our Smart Retail product. So our trend in the top segments of these customers are actually quite good.
So as far as subscription is concerned, the ratio has been rising from about 52% last year to 62% now. This is the strategy change in the small and medium sectors. With that change, we think that the overall corporate services will take, will contribute 70% in the future. We also have a lot of brand merchants. There are two figures that I'd like to disclose, which we have not been able to disclose before. The GMV and the order volume of Weimob Retail has been increasing a great deal. GMV increased by 38%, and order number of order increased by 42%. Through Weimob Corporate Services, the increase in the number of customers is very evident.
And upcoming, we may have a commercialized income that has to do, that is linked to order volume, so this piece will continue to grow. This year, apart from keep further penetration of the clothing industry, and we also have some good results with the FMCG industry. We're also moving into further penetration of the building materials industry. Through industrialized industry-based sales, products and operations. We dig deeper into each of the industries. And through our direct sales and channel sales system, we will continue to push our KA plus LKA to further penetrate medium segment customers and brands. And at the same time, we will push more industry-based products in order to gain an in-depth insight into the needs of these industries.
Overall, we will also provide industry-based operations, as well as commercial models that would help to increase our income. Each order is CNY 0.50, and that's an average, some may be higher. Now, with the order numbers increase, we will be charging for cloud service fees. Now, this activity basically is costless. It comes with no cost. However, it will bring us income straight profit every year. We would also be charging for message push and interface calling, which used to be provided for free. So this will be a driver for our revenue as well as our gross profit margin. Upcoming, let's talk about Weimob Marketing. Weimob Marketing, as last year, our gross billing has increased year on year by 19.4%.
And the Tencent advertisement consumption increased by 19%, and for Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, the increase is also very good. Now, the Weimob Marketing, be it the status of the industry, as well as our market share, as well as some breakthroughs into the market, and also our coverage of strong markets. I think in all these areas, I think we have done well. And because of media changes or media strategy changes, our profits may fluctuate a bit this year. However, with stabilization of the media policy this year, we do expect some fluctuations. With WAI, we continue to solidify our technical fundamentals. We have new open capabilities, 125 more of these. And the time for new product launch has come down in a big way by 50%.
The year-on-year increase in the cost to open capabilities have increased by 21%. This is a very good base for us. With AI, since last year, our AI products matrix has become very rich. First of all, with WAI, WAI Pro, it is a propeller tool. The merchants' use of this technology is increasing. Active customers has increased by 3.6 x year-on-year, especially in 618 shopping festival, the use of AI technology has increased greatly, and we also have added 18 scenarios as well as other functionalities. Some merchants, through buying our SaaS model, can then use our AI product. At the same time, for key customers, we also provide WAI Pro product.
It is a product that can help customers customize and personalize their AI applications. So we will, based on their business scenarios, to provide multi-model scenarios and to provide an overall comprehensive solutions. Some advertising agencies and brands like to use this within their teams. So we provide trainings of WAI Pro to them. So this is for the very, very key customers, and lately we have also launched a new product called WAI Me. This WAI Me product has been launched for less than two weeks, and it seems to be good. We already have 5,000 paying customers, and there are over 200 non-paying customers. So WAI Me then AI is something that one can experience.
Of course, we do not provide mobile support as of now. This faces individual e-commerce practitioners who would need to, you know, design posters and pictures and generate product detail pages. They can use this technology. They can, you know, have a picture ready in three seconds, and marketing messages written in three seconds, and they can also enjoy the AI-generated product details page, as well as use AI writing, et cetera. Now, this product faces personal individual subscribers. So this product is for more for the individual designers and e-commerce practitioners market. So we have products for the highest professionals as well as the massive individual market. So this is an all-comprehensive more product mix that will help us penetrate the market.
Now, let's talk about some of our outlooks. Now, first of all, the focus is on scenarios to promote AI applications and commercialization, and also to leverage on enterprise level of AI services. So we know that apart from our SaaS product that can be paid online, we also provide WAI PaaS that connects to a third party. We have already connected to Definisys and Tencent Cloud. So by connecting, they can directly use our AI products. We also provide to small and medium customers, especially designers, with design tools, and this is the WAI Me that I was talking about. WAI Me, especially as it relates to templates and marketing posters, you know, we offer a very rich product.
The paying customers will then increase, and demand will increase, and we will continue to add on to the scenarios so that this can become a more popular AI tool. Also with WAI Pro, we will provide more personalized and customized AI solutions. For example, with the Digital Man oral broadcast, that's something that is very welcomed by the market. So with oral vocal training, the Digital Man can actually help you save a lot of time. Also with AI image editing, AI music generation, content creation, we will be providing a comprehensive solution for these customers. The second outlook I'd like to talk about is the international market. So this is something that you all hold to your heart. Since last year, we have been trying to...
This globalization strategy, and we have a super app solution in Middle East and in Southeast Asia. We have built some potential customers. So from Middle East to Southeast Asia, to Japan, to the Americas, we have actually conducted some very in-depth research. So we believe that with the North American e-commerce should be our focus. And going forward, this will be the most important direction of our overseas expansion. And this is with the PLG methodology to build a product that faces a s a with a SaaS product that faces small and medium customers. I think this is very good for us, and we think that after research, we think that there's a lot of opportunities.
Using AI as a driver for e-commerce, comprehensive solution would be more efficient and cheaper for the customers, and therefore, more welcome by the market. This is therefore an important direction of our international strategy. We will continue to increase our revenue model and enhance our efficiency and financial performance, so we will be charging for some services, and this will be a driver for revenue in the coming year, and facing small and medium customers, we have an online subscription model. We do not wish to involve our sales team in there, so we provide a self-service platform so that they can do the subscriptions online themselves. We can then focus more on our retail business and enrich our industry and scenarios, and to dig deep into these different segments.
We will also continue to reduce our cost and enhance our income. Overall, as far as the positive cash flow, I think by next June, I think this is achievable. The fourth is, we continue to push our key account strategy and to further penetrate the mid segments of each industries. We anticipate that key account revenue would increase to 70% next year, and with the mid segments, we will continue to enhance our penetration rate, especially with the SM, FMCG and clothing, fashion industry. These have already been the leaders in the industry matrices, and we will continue to open up new industries because our products are also suitable for chain stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores.
So regardless of the size of the customers, they will find our products very useful because we have a very rich offer. Then we continue to deeply look into the Tencent ecosystem and the video accounts platform. With the video accounts platform, I think our advertising business is already very successful, and we will continue to push for video account plus influencer or video account plus live streaming and short video, as well as video account plus private domain. So these will bring further opportunities for us. So I'll end my introduction here and invite Mr. Cao to talk, to walk us through our financial performance.
Fellow investors and analysts, good evening. So upcoming, I will walk you through the 2024 first half financial performance. Just like Mr. Sun has walked you through the overall half year, first half. There has been a great deal of economic challenges. Sales are soft, and given such a challenging environment, we continue to adjust our strategy and continue to focus on the core business, and to get away from the small and medium and customers, as well as third-party customers with low profitability. In the first half, our revenue is moni-, and we also have CNY 10 million -CNY 20 million of subscription revenue. So this indeed has caused a great decline in our subscription income. However, we also cut down on CNY 230 million of sales and staff costs, administration costs. So overall, the subscription losses, you know, has been narrowed.
Now, as far as Merchant Solutions is concerned, we see that merchants are interested in the precision advertisements, and demand is good, especially video account advertisements that is increasing very good. Our revenue has come down. It's eight hundred and sixty-seven million CNY, came down by 28.3%, and our revenue from Subscription Solutions decreased by 31%, and the cost has come down by two hundred and thirty-four million CNY. So the overall loss have narrowed by CNY 57 million . The decline is 7.6%. This, compared to our peers, is rather similar. The gross income, gross billing from merchants has a 9.4% increase. It is a CNY 380 million of income, it's down by 4.5%.
Now, part of the reason is the Merchant Solutions. Our finance and our collection it has come down because with finance leasing, we have taken the initiative to shrink that business. This is because the overall economic cycle is showing some budget control, so we see a 50% decline. The advertising has come down by 16%. With gross billing, this is relatively slow when compared to gross billing. This is because we see big changes in the 2024 platform strategy. This change, the discussion and announcement about this change started only in March and April. With the upstream adjustment of the discount rate, we will need time to deploy that strategy change.
So because of this time difference, you will see that the net commission will, when compared to same period last year, you will see a smaller number. Now, with business adjustment, the Smart Retail, Weimob Retail, you will see some very good increase. This half, first half, we have a 62% increase, 62% contributor, 18% increase. So this shows that we have been focusing on this business. Given the uncertainties of the external economy, we are controlling our costs. We, our team headcount by 4,580 - 3,900. That's a 14% decrease, and our costs have also come down by 19%.
This CNY 670 million included a CNY 660 million of compensation for, you know, for the employees. As of mid-2024, we have CNY 7,470 million of assets. We also. Our short-term loans, including the April this year, we have convertible bonds, and the short-term bank loans is at CNY 1.17 billion, and this is a free cash flow loan. Our overall advertisement increase income has been growing healthily. Our overall customer collection from customer is good, so our loan and liabilities are kept stable. There's no bad debt concern. We have also optimized our cash flow and cash management.
2023 H2 to H1 of this year, our cost, our cash flow continues to be positive, and our free cash flow continues to be positive. Now let's take a look at our revenue. As far as revenue is concerned, we have already said that, after the COVID, economy has been facing a lot of uncertainties, the recovery is rather flat, so sales are coming down. The merchants are controlling their expenses, so we have taken the initiative to adjust our strategy. We are adjusting the subscription budgets of direct sales company, direct sales city and small and medium firms. So on and all, it has an impact of CNY 178 million of our revenue.
Our overall ARPU is stable, with a further expectation of stabilizing of the revenue, and we anticipate ARPU to come back to a previous level. Our advertisement income continues to be good. In our first half, we have a 19.4% growth in our gross billing. The Tencent ecosystem has increased by 19%, and the video account advertisement has increased by 78%, a very evident improvement. We have a 24.5% decrease in merchant solutions. That's because of DSO and some other business. We have taken initiative to shrink that.
The new policy change in the platform also has a very big impact, and it will take time for us to practice the same policy with our customers. This will take a little time. In 2023, the H1 advertising revenue is 5.7%. In the first half of this year, this has come down to 3.7%. In 2024, this ratio, net ratio, has come back to 4.1%. However, it is still lower than what we had planned. We anticipate that in the second half of the year, there's still room for further discounts to our customers. After we've, we can now take a look at our overall gross profit.
Because of revenue fluctuations, there will be impact to our gross profit margin. If we take a look at 2022, since 2022, each half year, the fluctuations of Merchant Solutions and Subscription Solutions, since it has gone from 61% - 59%, and then rebound to 2023 H2, 66%. And with the first half of this year, it has come down to 60%. This is Subscription Solutions. Now, after taking off the impact of heading, we still continues in 83% as a total. So this is in line with our anticipation. Now, with Merchant Solutions, we have advertising revenue and TSO revenue as well as financial revenue. The share of this have an impact to the overall gross profit margin.
So in this diagram, you will see that advertising revenue, its fluctuation, actually, is aligned with the overall fluctuation of our revenue composition. With the first half, the subscriptions are facing headwinds, so the adjusted loss from the second half of 2022, reaching the peak, then it started to narrow. In 2021 H1, the adjusted loss is zero, as far as 0.5%. Our free cash flow continues to improve. Now, since from 2022 H1, with a net outflow and with advertising cash flow, through our proper management of cash flow, we have optimized to reach a positive cash flow of CNY 365 million.
So overall, we have a positive cash flow, and that includes CNY 20-odd million of our finance cost. Now, 2024 first half subscription and merchant businesses face external challenges. The revenue is not as high as we had expected. However, the overall costs have been a loss have been able to to come down, and that's because we took initiative to adjust our strategy and reduce our costs. The subscription loss has from 2024 H1 with a negative CNY 430 million. It has come down to CNY 150 million this year. So that's because of our cut in cost, and that has narrowed down our losses.
2023 to 2024, we have continued to keep a lean team and cut our administration cost. The merchant net profit have come down from CNY 180 million in H1 of 2023 to CNY 110 million in H1 of 2024. And this, our net profit, our increase in gross billing has bring an additional CNY 70 million of net profit. At the same time, because of the platform policy change and the lag, you know, the gap in the timing, so that has also caused a drop in revenue of CNY 120 million. Regardless whether the scale, size, or overall, the team efforts, I think we have actually achieved a lot.
There has been surprise, you know, changes in policy and the platform that we did not expect. In the next half, we hope that our strategies can address the changes in the policy. This is our overall financial situation for the first half. Upcoming, I'll pass the floor to you, our investors, for any questions that you may have.
Thank you to the management. Let's start our Q&A session. The first is from CLSA, Mr. Yan. Please ask your question.
Can you hear me, Mr. Sun?
Yes.
Thank you to the management to allow me to ask a question. I have two. The first one is that I'd like to ask: How does the company look at the Weixin shops and their video account? What are the impact that they have on us? And also, with the cloud computing companies, they are adding up and accelerating on their CapEx to capture the AI opportunity. So how does the company, what's the company's view about the commercialization of our AI products and the trend?
Weixin Small Shops. This product has been there very early on. It's been developed by Weixin platform, and after it has been launched, this product has become the video account shops. Now, the e-commerce as it relates to video account has all become, has come back to the open platform. So this product has always been there... I think it's impact to our business, because upcoming, we are facing, we are targeting smart retail or Weimob Retail to our medium or large customers.
However, with this, the product that you just now asked is more targeted to small customers, so it does not bring a big deal of impact to us. And the positive thing that it brings is with the Weixin small shops. I would guess that Tencent, I would pay more attention to its e-commerce business, and they hope that this Weixin Xiaodian would become an even more important product, just like the video account. So with the circle of friends, Peng You Quan, and also with other functionalities, it can be integrated with amongst different mobile apps. So this is a very good trend for overall Weixin e-commerce. So for us, apart from advertising, it also can benefit some of our products. These can also be opportunities for us.
We can launch some of our special products in the Weixin Little Shops. Some of our marketing tools and marketing products can be used there. Now, with small applications and also small shops, these are the two products that can be connected. Overall, we think there's more advantage than there's negative impact. So with the overall Tencent e-commerce ecosystem, it's a good thing. The Weixin Small Shop has not disclosed a lot about their plans to the open market, so these are just my guesses. Now, as far as our commitment and investment to AI, I've already said that AI is a very important component of our strategy.
That's with the SaaS tool, WAI SaaS products facing individual designers, as well as the WAI Me product that faces individual web designers, as well as WAI Pro that offers customization for large customers. Our AI product mix is quite comprehensive, which is something that we would rely on to expand our international business. Now, with commercialization of AI products, I think, looking at the broader scope, the commercialization of AI products is still at its very early stage, because despite it has very evident strength in efficiency, however, it has. I don't think we have reached a critical mass yet in order to have a strong impact on customer behavior. We already have several hundred customers with WAI SaaS that they're starting to be paying customers.
And the same applies for WAI Me and WAI Pro, some large customers are also paying customers. I think the overall, customer behavior and customs and, when AI can, becomes a, you know, a, you know, a part of the working process of the customers that they cannot do without, then that would bring the critical mass point. And of course, I, we are positive about the future. But then, we think we still need to wait a little time.
Thank you, Mr. Sun. It's very clear answer.
Our next investor is from CICC, Mr. Zhang Xiaodan. Please state your question.
Mr. Sun, Ms. Cao, good evening. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. First is, we see that in the first half of this year, you have taken the initiative to decrease low quality and small and medium businesses. And also, the adjusted net losses have evidently narrowed. So with this initiative, what is... Do you expect the impact to continue into the next half of the year? And how about the cash flow for the second half, what is your outlook? My second question is about going abroad, international expansion. Mr. Sun, you have said that you will be making some efforts there. So, what products and which markets would we be focusing on? With, do we have an outlook or an expectation of, in the, for the medium term about the size of our international business?
Thank you very much. Excellent two questions. First of all, regarding our overall income, we think that in the second half, I think it, we can expect a stable or maybe even a small growth when compared to the first half. In the first half, for low quality and not profitable business abolitions, I think that work is almost done. So we can expect the second half to be better than the first half, but then to compare year-on-year, there will still be some decline. With the Merchant Solutions, with us, we are still communicating with Tencent about their strategy. However, I think our Merchant Solutions will grow. So in the next half of the year, our income growth would mainly come from Weimob Retail.
I think that growth would continue to be stable, and our new income, like, service fees and interface calling fees, you know, these will bring income next into the second half. As of next year, you will see a fuller effect, because we will just be increasing or introducing these fees, and it takes time for the market to take it. So as of next year, I think you can expect several tens of millions of revenue coming in from these fees. And with the AI income, the WAI Me revenue is also a source of income. Now, with the perfect optimization of our products, we will step up on the marketing of it, and therefore we can expect some revenue from AI products.
So with the second half, we expect our overall revenue to be better than the first half. And as far as cost is concerned, I think we have cut what we can, and we have optimized our team in the first half of the year, so into the next half, I don't think we will take further action. In the first half, some of the work that staff that has been taken out were doing will no longer be there. So we anticipate our financial performance, as far as cost is concerned, will even be better than the first half. As far as international expansion is concerned, we have done a lot of research from Southeast Asia to Middle East.
In the end, we did not choose to focus on the Middle Eastern market, because this market focuses on the big customers and one will need to have very good local connections. Now, for us and for our, it is not something that is aligned with our strength. And e-commerce in Southeast Asia is, you know, has just started. So it's digitization and the smart model development has not reached a stage where people are willing to pay for it. And the Southeast Asia market is very widespread, and the intention to pay is like that in China, people don't want to pay. Now, with Japan, it doesn't offer a very good medium, long-term prospect.
So we think that with PLG model focusing for small and medium customers, I think this is the way that we should go. And the e-commerce in South America is developing very quickly. However, North America is the most mature market, so all in all, we think the North American market is more suited for us. So we want to offer a smarter, more efficient and more simple product for that ecosystem. So with a small and medium product merchants, it would be forced to use a very complicated and very expensive products. So what we wanted to offer is you know some simpler products that is ready for to be used when plugged in. And this can offer them you know a lower cost.
So things like open shop tools, we would target the North American market with these products, simpler products, and relying more on AI. Because I think the North American market has already been there for twenty years, so they cannot very quickly, you know, embrace AI as a whole. So this is a window whereby we can introduce a more AI-reliant product. And because for them to switch a strategy is very expensive. So this is an important strategy for our international expansion. Now, with the PMF model, if that's successful, then the revenue, the space for increase in revenue is big. So we have about $10 billion. If we can have only a very small fraction of that market, it's already very big business. So, this can then be amongst another very important strategic attempt of the company, apart from AI.
Thank you, Mr. Sun. It's very. Your explanation is very clear. Thank you.
Because of time constraint, we will close our call here. So on behalf of the Weimob management, I thank you all for attending. So if you have any further questions, please contact the company's team. Thank you.