Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Weimob Inc.'s 2020 Annual Results Conference Call. A copy of the annual results announcement can be found and downloaded from the company's investor relations website at http://group.weimob.com/en/pages/relation. At this time, all lines have been placed on listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions following today's presentation. Joining us today on the call are Mr. Sun Taoyong, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Cao Yi, Chief Financial Officer and Joint Company Secretary, and Mr. Watson Yin, COO, who will be joining the Q&A session later. This call will be conducted in Chinese and English. Before we begin, I would also like to remind you that management's comments during the call will include forward-looking statements that are based on the current expectations.
All statements other than statements of historical fact during the conference call are forward-looking statements, which are subject to 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 the company, and this presentation also contains some unaudited non-GAAP financial measures that should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for, measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. Please do take a minute to read the risk factors and non-GAAP measures discussion in Weimob's 2020 annual results earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Cao.
Thank you. Good evening, investors. Thank you for joining the call. Time flies. As we did every year, it's time for us to review the performance and results of past year and share with the investor the future directions of the company. First, I'll go through the key performance and financials. Our CEO, Mr. Sun, will talk about the strategy and business development. On a financial performance, excluding the impact of compensation due to SaaS sabotage event, adjusted revenue has exceeded CNY 2 billion in 2020, representing 44% year-over-year growth. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 78% to CNY 299 million. 2020 is a special year. This year led us to think more deeply on the coming industrial digitization trend and what the customer really wants.
We firmly believe what the merchant really wants is not just a single software tool or an ad to get some traffic or having both, but delivered separately. What the merchant wants is a full omnichannel solution that connects with multiple traffic ecosystems and enables merchants to digitize not only systems, but also marketing management operation processes. Starting from 2020 annual report, we'll reorganize our business segments into three segments. Digital Commerce, including Subscription Solutions and Merchant Solutions, and Digital Media. Digital Commerce is our core business. We help merchants to transform their marketing and commercial processes by digitizing their system, marketing, and operation. Subscription Solutions, which correspond to our previous SaaS segment, represent our SaaS and other software solutions, including WeiMall, Smart Retail, Smart Catering, Smart Hotel, Haiding ERP, and other industrial vertical solutions, as well as some software customization in our WeiMall Cloud business.
In 2020, adjusted subscription solution revenue reached CNY 718 million, which is 42% year-over-year growth. Merchant solution represents value-added services as part of the full-chain, omnichannel solutions to meet merchant demand, in addition to the software functionalities. Merchant solution currently include mainly our target marketing services to connect merchants to multiple top traffic platforms to acquire online traffic with enhanced performance. The scope will be further expanded to include more value-added services in the future. In 2020, revenue from merchant solution totaled CNY 528 million, a 47% increase year-over-year. The gross billing incurred in the merchant solution reached CNY 0.97 billion, more than double the size of 2019. In digital media business, we offer advertising services to specific advertisers in which we commit results. The revenue from digital media business reached CNY 818 million, representing 43% year-over-year growth. The gross billing of digital media business is CNY 916 million.
A quick highlight of some key business data. The total number of paying merchants who are using our subscription solution by end of 2020 has reached 98,000, a 23% increase year-over-year. Within the subscription solution, Smart Retail business achieved high growth in 2020. The Smart Retail revenue increased by 224% to CNY 145 million, and the number of paying merchants increased by 234% to over 3,600 merchants. The brand merchants reached 618, with average contract value exceeding CNY 280,000. With the Yazuo integration and the COVID-19 impact, the catering segment has gone through a tough year. Our Smart Catering revenue is CNY 44.8 million, and the number of paying merchants reached nearly 7,000. Since we launched our integrated solution in second half of last year, we have seen some changes happening in the way we expected.
Our average contract value for Smart Catering segment had increased from CNY 130,000 per year in 2019 to CNY 190,000 in 2020. In Merchant Solutions, our paying merchants increased by 41% to 46,000 in 2020. In the second half of 2020, some of the key capital market events include our acquisition of Haiding Information and the Weimob stock joining MSCI China All Shares Index. Since we will have our CEO, Mr. Sun, to talk more about the strategy and business development in later pages, I'll leave the business update later and get through the financial performance first. In terms of the financial performance, we have achieved a solid growth in 2020. Our full year adjusted revenue increased by 43%, and within that, our core business, digital commerce, achieved 44% year-over-year growth. Our digital commerce business, including subscription solution and Merchant Solutions, is operated under the same core strategy and business model.
In 2020, 33% of our total revenue comes from subscription solution and 40% from merchant solutions. While 67% of paying merchants are using our subscription solutions and 31% are using merchant solutions. We expect digital commerce to represent majority of our merchants while increase its proportion within the total revenue continually in the next few years. Subscription solution will be the fundamental deliverable we provide, and the merchant solution will really add on to provide value-added services that enhance merchants' chance of business success. At the same time, help us monetize more. As a technology company, we continuously to invest today for future. The core investment is in R&D organization. The total R&D expenditure in 2020 amounts to CNY 251 million, which increased by 74% comparing with 2019.
Even though we invest heavily today, by properly balancing our business portfolio and generating profit for Merchant Solutions, we are able to come up with adjusted net profit of CNY 107 million in 2020. Last but not least, we have a healthy balance sheet. By the end of 2020, the total assets reached CNY 5.8 billion, with CNY 1.8 billion cash and cash equivalents. We are successfully managing our operating cash flow to reduce the operating cash outflow from CNY 452 million to CNY 53 million in 2020. Next pages there will be some deep dives, and we will quickly go through it. On page seven, it's mainly about digital commerce business. As we can see from the chart, digital commerce business grow at a high CAGR over 50% in the past three years.
This high growth was mainly attributable to the growth in both the number of paying merchants, which, in the year of 2020, reached at 98,000, representing 23% growth. There are altogether 45,000 merchants using our Merchant Solutions, increased by 41% year-over-year. The ARPU also increased by 15% to CNY 7,300 per year. With our strategy to moving up the market, we look forward to sustainable growth in ARPU for digital commerce as a whole. Our Merchant Solutions was successful in the past three years. The total gross billing for 2020 reached nearly CNY 1 billion, and the CAGR is over 115% year-over-year. Digital media is our legacy business in which we provide advertising services and commit certain results to specific advertisers. In 2020, altogether, 2,500 advertisers used our digital media service, and the ARPU is CNY 326 million.
Total revenue is CNY 818 million. Total gross billing is CNY 916 million. Let's come to gross margin. The gross margin on the financial statement decreased from 55% in 2019 to 53% in 2020. By breaking down to each business segment, we found gross margin for subscription solution decreased mainly due to the heavy investment in R&D, and a significant portion of our R&D cost has been capitalized in the past few years in amortizing to customer revenue. Since we continue to invest in R&D capabilities in the next few years, I expect the cost to have continued pressure on gross margin the next two to three years before our revenue ramp up and reverse the curve. Gross margin for merchant solution is pretty high, as currently majority of the revenue in merchant solutions are net rebate or commission from target marketing services.
The gross margin for digital media business went down a little bit due to increased operations costs. On page eight, basically, we talk about the R&D investment. As a technology company, a significant portion of our revenue are reinvested into R&D activity so that we can continue upgrade our SaaS solutions and expand our product offerings. By strengthening our R&D investment, in addition to the traditional Weimob solution, we have been offering a number of industrial vertical solutions, and our Weimob Cloud supports over 560 ISVs and offers over 1,000 applications. Recently, we started to further upgrade Weimob Cloud to turn it into an ecosystem, which build up not only a platform, but also a partnership with numerous ISVs and service providers. Our investment in R&D has been increasing over the past three years.
In 2020, the total R&D expenditure has increased to CNY 258 million, representing 20% of the digital commerce revenue. Despite the headwind and a strengthened R&D investment, we continue to be profitable on adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net profit basis in 2020. The net loss from the financial statement is CNY 1.16 billion. However, the loss is mainly resulted from the fair value change of convertible bonds, which is CNY 1.08 billion, compensation due to SaaS sabotage event, CNY 94 million in other non-GAAP items. After adjusting these items, we have an adjusted net profit of CNY 107 million in 2020, which is increased 39% comparing with last year. The adjusted EBITDA reached CNY 299 million, representing 78% increase. As we explained before, the fair value loss of convertible bonds is directly associated with the increase in the price of our convertible bonds in line with our share price.
This is a pure accounting matter and a little bit counterintuitive. We will continue to adjust this item so that investors can see a better picture of our own business results. The compensation due to SaaS sabotage event will be a one-time event, and we have completed substantially all the compensation to the qualified merchants. Majority of the financial impact has already been reflected in 2020. With that, I've completed the financial review. Next, let's have our CEO, Mr. Sun, to share with us the business strategy and development.
[Non-English content]
Good evening, everyone, welcome to the 2021 annual result conference of Weimob. In January 15th, we have held our investment meeting, and I believe that most of you are quite familiar with the strategy of 2020 for our company. It was including the three parts, which is moving up market, globalization, and ecosystem buildup. I will also elaborate on these three parts.
[Non-English content]
About the moving up market, we have realized a strong growth in Smart Retail. Look at this chart that we have realized more than a 200% of increase of the revenue. Also, we have increased more than 600 of our brand merchants, and also their ACV has realized a 31% of growth.
[Non-English content]
We have penetrated into all kinds of industries, especially in the fashion shoes and the home textiles and also women's fashion.
Our leading position in the fashion industry has a share of 34%. Also, we have reached a very great result in the food and beverage, in jewelry, electrical appliance and other industries. Our KA has accounting for 10%-20%, and we think that it would realize a 30%-50% of growth in the future.
[Non-English content]
Last year we have acquired the Haiding Information investment and they are quite strong at the commercial real estate and also the convenience stores. We can see that they have a share of 58% of market share in commercial properties and also 35% in the chain convenience stores. Therefore, we think that the combination of these two companies would help us to have more penetration in these two regards.
[Non-English content]
We have now combined ourselves and also all of their products are in our cloud and we believe that after this integration, it would also accelerate the business for them.
[Non-English content]
Last year we also have acquired the Yazuo, and they are quite good at the smart signing and help us to have a leading position in this regard. We think that about the dining technology, besides the Meituan and Alibaba, the other is focused on the WeChat private traffic flow. We think that in this regard we can have more of those products and to have a leading position.
[Non-English content]
We think that in the Smart Catering, it was including the operating, the marketing, cashier, payment and also delivery. We think that we could have this one stop solution for the Smart Catering.
[Non-English content]
We all know that it is not easy for the dining companies and the restaurants in 2020. Also this recovery speed is slower than the retailing. The revenue of the smart dining of our company is not so prominent, we still have seen the ACV of smart dining realized a 30%-40% of growth. Also, we think that we will have more than [five-30] the ACV.
[Non-English content]
Also Smart Catering would be a highlight of the moving up market strategy. We think that we have become one more mature in this regard and it would have the very bright future in this year.
[Non-English content]
The second strategy is the ecosystem development. It's also very important, including traffic ecosystem, developer ecosystem and investment ecosystem.
[Non-English content]
About the traffic ecosystem, we have facilitated the omni-channel Smart Retail operation besides Douyin, Alipay, Kuaishou, Baidu, we also have empowered the offline long-tail traffic like the offline store, POS, cashier and offline app.
[Non-English content]
In the future, we will have penetrate more like the KOL and also the short videos to help the merchants.
[Non-English content]
What's worth noticing is that the Douyin, the traffic flow is surpassed 20%.
[Non-English content]
About developer ecosystem, the most important thing is the Weimob Cloud. We have now mature into the PaaS 2.0. In this June, I think it will be launched, and right now it is undergoing testing in house. We think that whether it is about the technology or this openness would be unprecedented. Also, we think that Weimob is also one user of the Cloud PaaS. Together with our developers, we would provide much better solutions for our merchants.
[Non-English content]
Our Weimob Cloud will provide three areas of solutions for our merchants. One is the individualization, one is the professionalization, and also the customization.
[Non-English content]
We will have the targeted solutions like we would provide this customization for a medium and the large account, and also the market solutions, and also customization for our medium and small companies. Also, we would have the plug and use model for the other professionalization solutions like for [Non-English content] and [Non-English content] , we will have more penetration virtualization.
[Non-English content]
In the investment ecosystem, we have the investment scope as in the retailing, catering, hotel, tourism, short video education and live streaming. For example, in retailing, we have acquired the Haiding Technology and [Demo], and in the catering, we have acquired the Yazuo and [Non-English content]. That we would have three models, the direct investment plus the M&A and also the industry fund. Also, this year in Beijing, we have set up an industrial fund and this is the first industry fund of Weimob as a GP. It means that we can use this marketization way to manage the fund, and it means that our investment ecosystem is quite improved.
[Non-English content]
The third strategy is the globalization. Now we have a footprint in more than 10 countries, and most of them are doing by agents model. This is not our main business. We have the other business arrangements. The first service is for the clients going outside, and we would provide the SaaS and also the ad placement for them.
[Non-English content]
Besides that, we would maybe select one to two pilot areas to test the local solutions.
[Non-English content]
Right now, we are under discussion with Facebook, Google and TikTok, and we will launch the ad placement very soon.
[Non-English content]
Next, I will talk about the 2021 business outlook. The first one is to expand the leading position by enhancing industrial penetration and move up market.
[Non-English content]
In the previous years, we are quite strong at the fashion and textile regions, and later we would have more achievements and also to localization.
[Non-English content]
Since we have acquired the Haiding Information, probably would move a little bit to the shopping mall and convenience store, MF, FNB, and also the healthcare industry.
[Non-English content]
We predicted that the KA revenue would accounting for 30% and 50% by 2025.
[Non-English content]
Also the upgrading. We would focusing on upgrading full chain operating capabilities. Also in the annual investors meeting, we have mentioned the TSO concept, which is the traffic, the software, and also the operation. We would empower our users and the clients to improve their traffic and operating capabilities.
[Non-English content]
We have carried out those TSO strategies for our head clients, and which has been praised by them and welcomed by them all. We would continue to provide the TSO for them. For our mid clients, we would provide T plus S solutions for them. For our long tail, those SMEs, we would provide T or S service for them, which is a very comprehensive arrangement.
[Non-English content]
Also we will establish the open ecosystem, which I have mentioned before, so I will not go in detail.
[Non-English content]
How to expand cloud service offerings. Right now our business focus is on the commercial cloud. For example, the Smart Catering, Smart Retail and lifestyle. Also our Smart Beauty will be put online this tonight or tomorrow. Also we would pay more attention to Smart Hotel.
[Non-English content]
In the marketing cloud, we would enhancing the back chain conversion and mainly through the Wei Station and marketing assistant.
[Non-English content]
We have just issued a piece of information that we have comprehensively connected to WeChat, and we would issue a WeChat private flow and WeChat assistant, which would be connected to the commercial cloud and have this package.
[Non-English content]
In the terms of a sales cloud, [Non-English content] has been improved last year and we believe that this year it would realize an explosive growth.
[Non-English content]
About the acceleration of globalization. The first we would provide the one-stop solution, including those DTC to our overseas version to going overseas. Also the multi-platform traffic access we would connect with Facebook, Google and also TikTok.
[Non-English content]
Also, we would realize the localization to set up this network deployment and also to explore more international M&A to increase our competitiveness.
[Non-English content]
This is my part of the business overview and outlook. We will come to the Q&A session.
Thank you very much for the presentation. Now we'll start the Q&A session. If you want to raise a question, please press zero one. If you want to cancel a question, please press zero two. Please feel free to raise any questions. First question comes from Li Zhonghan. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content]. My first question will be, what are the reasons behind our increasing churn rate?
What's our forecast? My second question is how will our TSO solution hit our gross profit and gross margin, and what's our outlook for gross margin going forward, given that there will be more operation revenue in the top line? [Foreign language]
[Non-English content]
Thank you for your question. I will answer that one by one. The first about the attrition. We all know that 2020 is a very challenging year for all our clients, and some cannot even open in offline stores. Some of our clients cannot renew their contracts or their fees, and some cannot operate formally or function very normally. It leads to a little bit increase of the attrition. Due to our focus more on the move up market, there will be more and more larger clients, and we think that the attrition will decrease definitely.
[Non-English content]
About your second question, TSO would be our core strategy in the future, it would empower our clients to realize the multi-channel and the omni traffic and also the all site solutions, whether it is in the private or in the public traffic region. About the T, the traffic, our margin would come from the ads commission and it would be quite high. Also SaaS is also very high. The O is the operating, we would use the model of GMV, probably not as high as the previous two, but still not low. In the future, we think that we would have this T plus S plus O, those three parts combined together, it's gonna be very prominent.
[Non-English content]
Also we are developing all kinds of smart tools to facilitate the operating. We hope that in the future, 70% of our operating is from the smart tools, and only 30% is by human being and manpower.
[Non-English content]. The question is, will Weimob leverage third-party partners to help with our operation work or it will be fully by Weimob itself?
[Non-English content]
About the operating, of course, if they are very qualified and very excellent partners or third parties, and we are willing to outsource. Also the operating is one part of our ecosystem building up, and we hope that we can open it and to have it a more open service. In the first beginning that we want to set up a very qualified and high capacity team, and to have it standardized and to provide our solutions and also our methodologies to our partners.
Maybe I can add something. Actually our TSO, the bigger target for the future is to building up an operating platform that is open to the partners who are very capable of operating some services. We are open to that. At the beginning, we are trying to consolidate all the best practices and trying to connect with the popular accounts and others. At the beginning, we are investing some labors to do the operations, but in the future, we will be open to the ecosystem.
[Non-English content] Shopify [Non-English content] Merchant Solutions [Non-English content].
Next question comes from [Non-English content] at CITIC Securities. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content]
[Non-English content]
[Non-English content]. I will translate by myself. My question is what about the future planning of the Weimob PaaS cloud platform in three years? And what is the possible way of monetization in the future? Thank you.
[Non-English content]
All right, very good question. Thank you for your question. We think that right now we have initially the PaaS, this is great upgrade of our PaaS 2.0, is the PaaS cloud. We provide the following services. The first one is the developer tools platform, including those database, the info matrix, that you have more facilitation for the developers to use our platform. The second is the middle stage capabilities would improve quite a lot. For example, we would have our transaction center, we would have services that would be put online. We think that is in May or June. The third one is the aPaaS that's in-house in our company.
It is also to set up this mid-stage as a business logic platform, we could provide the customization services for our clients, to realize that it is not only the standardized but also according to their own demands. The four is the iPaaS. iPaaS right now is under survey, we think that it will be put online very soon. Also right now, a lot of KA are using our iPaaS to meet their customized or individualized demands, like the Coca-Cola. Also through the M&A, we would have more strategic partners like Bailian , we will have more industrial partners. About monetization, we think that in 2021, probably we would not have so much monetization. The monetization will come from three parts. One is the application service commission; the second one is the KA service commission.
They would use our server and it was one of our package solutions. The third one is the usage fee for our solutions.
[Non-English content]
Our next question comes from Yang Aily at GF Securities. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content]，How much increment could TSO bring to our business? And what revenue proportion will the operation part account for in the future?
[Non-English content] You just mentioned in 2021, we will develop more vertical industries in Smart Retail, such as shopping center, fresh convenience and Smart Catering, and Smart Hotel.
Among these businesses, which are the most important to expand and will bring increments this year and which are in the Okay, this is the question.
[Non-English content]
About the TSO, we hope that we could provide this added value for our clients to increase their ACV. For example, if they are using our T, we would provide the S and O, and if they are using our S, we would provide their T plus O, so that this is the one order that they could have three aspects of service. It could improve their income. We would probably not focus so much on the SMEs. Rather, we would focus on the middle and the large size enterprises and the clients so that we can have more commission. The commission also depends on how many clients we are serving, and also how many proportion that we could get.
For example, if we plan to have [ CNY 100 of GMV] surpassing the 100 million clients, and each we would have a 5% of commission, then if it is for a year, then it will be quite a large number. Whether we could reach that is still open in the air. We would focus more on our head clients.
[Non-English content]
Actually, regarding TSO, it's a kind of new model of business. Regarding the operation part in the future, we are relying on CPS or CPA these kinds of new charging models , including software and some revenues. The potential for these kinds of businesses is quite huge. Actually, we are charging the CPS or CPA majorly. If we have almost a fixed amount of people serving a customer, if your scale can be increased, then actually the profit will be increased. The portion of this kind of business in the future could open a much bigger market for us. Yeah.
[Non-English content]
About your second question about the vertical retailing penetration. Yes, the Smart Retail, the retailing industry would be the biggest one. The hotel, the beauty or the lifestyle that we are focusing on right now, of course the revenue cannot be as much as the retail, but we think that we could build up the digital commercial platform. It is quite important to have more vertical sections. Also in the marketing cloud, we would provide, as I have mentioned, the [Non-English content], this function can be cross buying with the commercial cloud services so that it could add more value. Also in the future, we think that in the sales, the shopping mall and also the convenience store would be the next focus.
[Non-English content]
The next question from [Non-English content], at UBS. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content] I've seen quite a lot of large retail chains deploying SaaS infrastructure. While there are different stores might be using different vendors, how do we see the difficulties to replace these different vendors? My second question is, in 2020, China based e-commerce platforms like SHEIN achieved a great development in overseas market. So can we elaborate more about the market potential related to the SaaS products? Thank you.
[Non-English content]
About this retailing SaaS replacement or the competition. We know that most of our clients, they have been through from the informationization to the digitalization. They have their own system, most of them. And some we think we can have cooperation with them, to connect with them. Some we could definitely replace them. And for those O2O, online to offline smarter retailer, those are to C platforms. Some of them are from the online to the offline smarter retail to C end, and some of them are doing the ERP or CRM. We would connect with them, not replace them. And for those, the previous system, some of them are from the third party, maybe they are not satisfied with their customization development or their responding time. And some of them, they cannot have a very strong competitiveness in the SaaS.
For Weimob, during the past seven years, we are improving our capabilities to provide the one-stop and integration services for them, including the transaction, the marketing and the other aspects. Our advantages are very prominent and very obvious. It is not difficult for them to choose us. Also, through the different word of mouth promotion and also, we have accumulated more and more clients, it has realized a stronger becomes stronger phenomenon. Some of them we can cooperate with them and some we can replace them very easily.
[Non-English content]
About the service for the overseas clients. Yes, the market potential is quite huge, and we would help them with their retailing, with their trade. Seeing it very successful, they can have their own independent app. We know that many of our clients don't have the capability to do their individual app replacement. I think that we could use our TSO service for them to facilitate the DTC and to focus more in the empowerment of their going overseas.
[Non-English content]
Our advantages is also about the TSO from the traffic to the software tools, and then to the operation.
Thank you.
The next question is from [Stephen Ing] at Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content] So I quickly translate.
The first question is, we connected to the in-store and WeChat video channel and for live streaming services for the merchants. Will you consider some additional monetization from this live streaming e-commerce in the future? The second question is on the progress of Haiding Information integration with our overall business in the SaaS part. [Foreign language]
[Non-English content]
Let me first answer your question and then we'll have Watson to add more. We would have more multilateral and multi-diverse ways to monetization. Right now, we are providing those client solutions besides the targeted ads and targeted marketing. We can also expand the other services, for example, the Weimob monetization, Weimob [Non-English content], Weimob [Non-English content] even. Also, we can help our clients to guide their traffic and then to have the commission into this. Right now, we are using this customization are mainly using our PaaS 2.0, and also a lot of KA are using the PaaS tools, and it is very effective according to their feedback. Also, we could use together with our ISV to improve the services for our KAs.
Maybe let me add some points on that. We see Douyin Shop and also WeChat video accounts as an opportunity. These two evolving every day, we are carefully managing and monitoring the progress. We already has been a service provider for Douyin, we are doing something for some customers to help them to open shops on Douyin and also open shops on WeChat video accounts, including providing SDKs. We think this is a very good opportunity. These two opportunities are evolving very fast. We are carefully and closely monitoring the progress. We are seeing some very good trend on that. We are helping some customers to do the live broadcasting on the Douyin Shop, the result is quite good. We are also helping some customers to live streaming on the WeChat video accounts. We are seeing it as a great potential commercial opportunity for these two. At some level is at a very beginning stage of commercialization. We see opportunities also we need to carefully monitor that.
[Non-English content]
About our business integration with Haiding Technology. Right now, we have in-depth integration with their products, with their sales business and also agent channels. This journey is quite smooth. Our phase I products will be online very soon. Also, about this smart mall and the smart convenience stores would be put online in this first half of this year. The purpose Haiding was focused probably mainly is about the mid-stage ERP. Right now, after the business integration, they could move to the front end, like the shopping mall convenience store, and to have an integration of the front end, middle end, and the back end.
Our next question is from Brian Gong at Citi. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content] I will translate myself.
My first question is still regarding TSO. We just mentioned that some few top clients already use our TSO. Not sure what take rate we are charging on the operation part. Over long run, what take rates we expect to reach when this business becomes more mature. The second question is about the customer acquisition cost. I'm wondering, management share, the customer acquisition cost for the key clients. Thank you.
[Non-English content]
The first question, I would like Watson to answer.
We have some pilot customers too, using our TSOs. The range depends on the industries. We have some customers, 3%, we have some customers more than 10%. It really depends on the industries. In the future, we haven't made a very clear judgment on the future, but it seems that if our scale can be increased, our bargaining power will increase. Yeah.
[Non-English content]
The customer acquisition cost for small-medium merchants versus large merchants is very different. The average customer acquisition cost for brand merchants is about CNY 200,000 for each individual customer. The major reason is due to the relatively longer customer conversion cycle, because for large merchants, basically, they have to go through a formal internal evaluation process in order to decide which independent software vendor they would like to choose. And the second reason is because we had a relatively independent BD team, which consists of high-quality salespeople. So, these are all our direct sales force, which basically we use in the Smart Retail business to go to those big merchants, brand merchants. So, because of these two reasons, the customer acquisition cost for large merchants is relatively high.
If you compare that with the longer life cycle for the large merchants, as well as the much higher average contract value for these large merchants, basically, I would say the profitability of large merchants would be much higher than the small-medium merchants.
Thank you. Due to time constraints, we will now conclude today's call. On behalf of the Weimob management team, I would like to thank you for your participation in today's conference call. If you have further questions about Weimob, please feel free to contact us. Thank you and goodbye.