Earnings Call: H2 2022

Mar 29, 2023

Good morning. I am Naici. I am the management trainee of the future star of Mengniu. I am also the first virtual staff. I'm honored to be the MC for today. Right now, Mengniu 2022 annual results announcement is beginning soon. Investors, analysts, media friends, welcome. It has been 3 years, and now Mengniu is announcing results on site. Naici is very honored to be the moderator and MC for today. On behalf of China Mengniu, I would like to welcome all of you. At the same time, I would like to thank you for your long-term interest and support for Mengniu. Now, let me introduce to you our management. They are Mr. Lu Minfang, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director. Ms. Wang Yan, Vice President and Executive Director. Mr. Zhang Ping, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Gao Fei, Senior President for the UHT Business Division. Mr. Luo Yan, Vice President for Chilled Products and also Fresh Milk. Mr. Chen Yiyi, Vice President. Mr. Li Pengcheng, Vice President. Mr. Chris Kwok, Financial Controller and Company Secretary. Once again, thank you, management, for coming. There are two parts in today's meeting. In the first part, Mr. Lu will present our company's 2022 results highlights. The second part will be a Q&A. This meeting will be concluded at 10:50 A.M. Now, may I pass the floor to Mr. Lu? Okay. Dear investors, good morning. I am delighted to be here. Finally, after three years, we are able to meet in person. For the past few years, we conducted our result announcement online, and it feels quite different coming here today, being in person. We feel better. I think that we are all better connected in being able to see each other. Three years, yes, we have seen a lot of changes. Possibly it is a very big change and beyond our expectation. I also feel that today we have changed our venue. We have even changed our MC. Now we are using AI to help host our meeting. Perhaps the next time a ChatGPT could replace me to be a roadshow MC, and that will be a big innovation. Of course, for capital markets, we have also seen a lot of changes. Today, being here today, we still hope that we could have more communications with everyone, with all our friends to understand about our changes as well as our expectations in the future. In the past three years, we have changed a lot as well. We have changed our logo. The elements of the logo in terms of our marketing campaigns, we have made major changes. In addition, for Mengniu, in terms of our strategies, we have made adjustment. There are continuations, there are also changes. Taking this opportunity here today, I would like to have an in-depth collaboration and communication with you all. We know that, in terms of the performance of Mengniu and behind this, I think that there are many factors in relation to the market as well as the consumers and the economic situations in mainland China. In this backdrop, 2022. 2022 compared with the 2020 and 2021, it's an even tougher year for everyone. I think that's the common consensus. We have already uploaded our results on the website last night, and I think that for us, what's very important is that in this uncertain external environment, to find a strategy that we are certain about and matters and campaigns that we are certain that we would like to implement. Therefore, you can see that our total revenue grew by 5.1% and our gross margin, again, it's still very good, even if there is a decline of 1.4%. This is mainly due to different structures, and we know that for raw milk and raw material and roughly speaking, they have neutralized. Even if the raw materials, the price has gone up, but the raw milk price has decreased. Therefore, in terms of the impact on the gross margin for this part, roughly speaking, it's neutralized. In terms of the main gross margin decline, it's mainly coming from the structure. In the backdrop of the pandemic. In terms of some of our dairy drinks as well as yogurt, because of the shutdown of stores and the reduction of foot traffic, that has seen a negative growth. In addition, we also have some consolidation of the financial statements, but the percentage is not very high. In terms of our operation, later on, I will talk about our operation expenses coming down, and this will help us to continue to contribute to the positive growth of our operation profit. You can see that we have actually expanded by 40 basis points. This morning, I was saying that our guidance was about 20 to 30 basis points. We were saying that it would be flat, but eventually after the hard work of the team, in the second half of this year, our whole year operating profit margin has actually expanded by 40 basis points, and this has exceeded our target initially. This is thanks to us focusing on profitable growth and focusing on our strategy implementation. In the meantime, we also have the expansion of our staff, and there is also a C&B incentive. Even with this, our operating profit margin, we continue to see 40 basis points increase. This is the contribution. Of course, in terms of Milkground's financial statement consolidation, that's something can't be neglected because it only happened in the last months. Overall, our performance, we are very satisfied. Starting from this year, in terms of the lines that we see, for instance, we have some one-off actions, for instance, with the Milkground, as well as some equity gains. If we exclude all these lines and you would be able to see that our operational profitability has improved. This is an overall summary, and later on, we will have a QA session, so we can ask questions in detail. Second part is on our revenue. Revenue, of course, is still very important to us. Liquid milk is very important here, including our base white milk as well as fresh milk. We have seen maintained very strong double-digit growth. Even if we have seen the various reductions of other yogurt drinks and dairy drinks, but we can see that for our base milk and our fresh milk have maintained very strong growth. Our ice cream business have also seen over 30% of growth. In terms of milk powder, this again is because of the pandemic, there is a big impact on the birth rate. There is a decline as a result. In addition, we have some our cheese business, as well as Burra Foods. It's a consolidation of the financial statement, there is quite a big contribution. Next one. We will look at cash and CapEx cash flow. You can see that our net cash increase is quite significant, and this is with the driving force of the operational profit growth. It has increased by 10.4% to CNY 8.33 billion. In addition, for our CapEx cycle from last year and the year before, we have reached the peak. For last year's capital and in terms of the investment in property, plant, and equipment has already come down to CNY 5 billion, and I believe that going forward, it will continue to decrease. In terms of the expansion of our capital expenditure, we have already gone into the decrease phase. In addition, people are also focused on our sales and administrative expenses, SG&A. You can see that this has continued to optimize, including, for instance, marketing and efficiency continue to improve. We continue to focus on our channels and targeted precision marketing, and these are all improving. In addition, in terms of our administrative expenditure, because last year we have a one-off C&B, and if we exclude that, it's about 4.1%-4.2%. It's very stable. Next, if we look at some efficiency indicators and, for instance, for our inventory turnover, receivables, payables, these are all very healthy, even if, end of last year for some of our powder, there was some impact on the turnover days. Overall speaking, it's all stabilized. Very quickly, I have gone over the operation indicators. I think what's important is that, whilst achieving, how do we actually achieve these figures? That's the key today. Coming back to our five-year strategy. In terms of the impact for the external environment, and we hope to push forward for high quality growth. Number one is that, the challenges we face at the moment is how do we make sure stable growth of profit? Second, to use main innovation, as well as brand upgrade, and we believe that in terms of the channels, we continue to have room for further improvement, even if 2022 has been a challenging year. We believe that for Mengniu's way of coping with this, we still feel that we are still very calm. In terms of all our strategy implementations, they are all being pushed forward in a stable fashion. We have not panicked. In terms of our cost reduction and efficiency increasement, we can see that we have seen obvious improvement. This is something that we adhere to, and we hope that every year our operating profit margin will continue to improve, but our strategy will remain the same. After the pandemic, yes, indeed, in terms of liquid milk as well as the people's focus on health and in terms of some of our basic nutrition business. I think that it's polarized. For our very high-end product, they have grown very well, and our basic product, and they have also grown quite well. This is in terms of the consumption structure, this is the change that we have seen. I have also been speaking with the other CEOs of other consumer companies, and they have also seen the same trend, which is a bell-shape polarized trend. For Mengniu, I think that benefits outweigh the disadvantage. For our high-end, they continue to grow. For instance, for Telunsu and our high-end product, we continue to see them to grow very well. In addition, for some of the products that we are working on, first we will focus on the basics and second to focus on the premiumization. In addition, what's more important is that we will continue to improve our marketing ability. Basically this means, can I spend the same amount of money? We feel that for our current, our marketing efficiency has improved. Even if you can see that for last year, you can see from the Women's Football and to World Cup and Olympics, we have done very well. Our brand image has also improved quite a bit. In terms of our marketing cost has not gone up. You can see the efficiency has improved. In addition, for our digitalization on the media, that has already accounted for about half. You can see that the continuation of a reduction of the traditional media has helped us to improve the efficiency of our advertisement. Of course, in those two pages, you can see that there are some important growth points that we have grasped. For instance, ice cream and cheese, adult milk powder, fresh milk. Roughly speaking, for dairy industry and for the important growth points, we have been able to grasp them all. Therefore, for our brand as well as for innovation and the channels, we have done very well, and we continue to improve our efficiency. In addition, which is on new retail and some of the changes, again, we are ahead of our peers in terms of all these fresh milk delivery to home business. For Mengniu, we are ahead of our peers in the industry. This is also why that whilst maintaining a strong growth, we are able to maintain the improvement of our SG&A efficiency. Very quickly to go over some of the business, and I believe that you can already see this. For UHT business, we talk about for white milk and for instance, Milk Deluxe, as well as Milk Deluxe premium and our organic business, we have become the truly number one in the market. You can see that even if our competitor have always been in the organic milk business, but Milk Deluxe at the moment, in this part of the market, we have already overtaken them and become the real number one. Second, in terms of our UHT yogurt, we have also done some changes, and you can try our Just Yogurt product outside the room, and you can try. We have the blueberry. We also have meal replacement, and it is low fat. It is also to replace a normal meal. For the online business, we have done even better with the UHT. Online and offline, O2O business, we have done very well. In terms of our total members, they have exceeded 55 million for offline. For our RTM business, we continue to see our RTM business continue to go down. For these implementations, we have done well. This is our UHT and UHT's milk drink. We have also tried some new innovations. We hope that after the pandemic, we predicted that in terms of tourism and footfall, leisure, entertainment, there will be some recovery. For fruit milk drink, and this is quite a strong brand, and we believe that this is an opportunity for us this year. Now second on our fresh milk business and ice cream, they are growing both very strongly. Even if in 2022, and you know that in terms of the pandemic control, actually in a way compared with the previous two years, the impact on our business is even bigger. For fresh milk business, we continue to see double-digit growth, especially for Shiny Meadow, and we have seen growth of 30%. In addition, for our delivery to a home business, we are always number one on the platform. We also have another new product. You can try it out outside, which is called Little Shiny Meadow. Here we have reduced the fat by 60% and reduced the calorie by 30%. These are the products that are very popular by the young people. In our convenience store, very quickly, we have already overtaken our competitors. In terms of ice cream, ice cream is also, again, another area that we continue to focus on this product, the innovation. When the opportunity came, we were very well-prepared. You can see that for our new product as well as crossing different sectors. For instance, you know, multi-ice cream, even if it's sold at CNY 60-plus, but the product is very good. You know, you can try it, and after 5 minutes, and you don't need to worry about driving. 3% real multi, and it's a fatia multi, so I can guarantee the raw material that we have used. It's really delicious, and you don't need to worry about driving after five minutes, it's 3% alcohol. In about 1-2 months, you can taste this new product together with Tongrentang, which is a TCM pharmacy, and you can imagine what kind of product we have. Perhaps it has E Jiao, which is a traditional Chinese TCM product, which is a donkey skin. Of course, we are also working with Disney and Universal Studios, and we have launched some new ice cream, and for instance, the Minions and LinaBell, which is a Chinese cartoon character. Coming back, what are the challenges that we face and which is for chilled business and yogurt business? On one hand, perhaps it's because of the pandemic. On the other hand, for this chilled business, I think that in the market, the value was not really done very well by the market. First of all, for our UEC business, we think that this is a great growth engine that we need to do well. Secondly, which is the one shot, you can see that this is to boost your immune system, Guan Yi Ru product. In addition, this, we hope that this year we have some better categories. In terms of cheese, it's very interesting. Mengniu's cheese and Milkground's cheese. Milkground is very strong in the retail end. The very recent figure, if it's coming from Kantar, our market share is already more than 45%. If it's Nielsen, is about just 30%. For Mengniu's cheese, you can see that we are making a major shift. First of all, we are focusing on high-end. This is our strategy. We want to produce a better cheese product. Second, our 2B business is very big. 2B business accounts for about 70% of our cheese business. For this part, even if the growth margin is not that big compared with the retail, but the profitability is still very strong. In terms of all our solutions from cheese and butter, we have done very well. I was also on TikTok last time, and I talked about. How do I say this? Apologies, I forgot about this. They. I was asked to do live streaming sessions on TikTok, I said that, actually, why don't we do something interesting? Why don't we challenge this? It's the 30 layers of an Napoléon cheese, and we couldn't finish this. It's about 10 kg of cheese and 50 people, we couldn't finish eating it. You can see this is innovation, our innovation is here, we are becoming more innovative. Using this opportunity, I would like to encourage our team. There are still a lot of opportunities. Finally, let me turn to 2 other challenging business that you may be interested in. Formula milk of Yashili. Last year, well, you may say that there is some impact arising from birth rates, as you know, for the national standard from last year till this year, there is national standard upgrading and transition. We have got the approval for the formula already. This year in February to March, we have already got approval for all our formulae. Concerning transition between old and new formula, there is some impact on our business. For adults' formula, in the past, there was strong growth. Because of raw material impact, there was big cost impact. We hope to slow down our process and enhance quality so that we can improve profitability. For Bellamy's, in the past two years, well, when it comes to cross-border and Daigou, there was bigger impact. We are very determined. At the end of last year, we did an overall adjustment. The management of Bellamy was actually changed. I refer to Q1 data, they are very good. I believe that, first of all, this is a very good brand, and secondly, we still have a lot of. Opportunities. Number 3, challenges on our team will be such that when the pandemic ends, in relation to Daigou and other cross-border business, there will be recovery. I believe this year we will see better performance in these two business areas. Finally, I would like to talk about marketing. In the past 5 to 6 years, well, the biggest change is that we are very focused. Marketing of the whole Mengniu brand is concentrated on Olympic Games and World Cup, and we have been accumulating our work. 'Cause we have signed a long-term investment agreement for more than 10 years, so we can continue to accumulate our effort for our brand. We do not rely on annual or yearly marketing efforts, but we rely on long-term accumulation. For aerospace, 20 years already. We are determined in some long-term work. This is very critical to long-term brand building and enhancement. If you look at our marketing efforts, for example, about Eileen Gu, well, we have done a very good job. Actually, some time ago, I went to Inner Mongolia to visit Eileen Gu. I think she is really talented. For Messi and also another soccer star, well, of course, they are well-known. Now, you can see World Cup here on this slide. No matter whether we talk about sponsorship or marketing, we are number 1 in World Cup events. Let me declare that we had not been engaged in any internal manipulation. Well, if you talk about Messi, Leo Messi, and his opponent in the final, well, that is not something that we have included in our script, so to speak. Argentina and France, Argentina versus France match, actually, this shows that our long-term move and also our judgment in relation to winning teams. If you refer to the final results, you can see that we are very determined. Actually, we also panicked a bit, as you know, about Messi or Argentina. Concerning long-term move, I think you can see that in our Mengniu brand, it is not only about the soccer star and also the pop stars. Actually, I think the final this time is the best match in the past 30 years. It is amazing, the two soccer stars have not disappointed us. In the process, I keep on saying that in relation to advertising efficiency and also publicity efficiency, they are rising because we are focused, and we have made long-term plan. If you look at the financial data, we have not spent really a lot of money, perhaps as you expected, we have achieved very good efficiency. From brand's point of view, we have to be long-term in doing marketing and accumulating our effort and achievements. We just had World Cup. Next year, there will be the Paris Olympics. Next year, I hope that we can deliver to you some very big pleasant surprise in terms of our brand strategy. Finally, let me comment on ESG. For ESG, of course, we also made long-term investment and plans. Since we established our ESG strategy all the way till now, we have a very clear green strategy. Our development strategy is very clear, the final result is good. No matter whether you talk about rating and other outcomes, well, they are very good. That is because of our sustainable corporate governance, our responsibility sense, and also a green and environment-friendly production, our ecosystem and industrial chain layout, and also our focus on nutrition and health. All these moves are very clear. We will continue them. Under ESG, we also have our dual carbon strategy. We have already announced our dual carbon goals. Here you can see phase 1, 2, and 3. They are very clear through production, raw milk packaging, transportation. Altogether, there are 6 critical steps in order to achieve our dual carbon goals. Finally, as said just now, the results are very good. For supply chain, for our upstream raw milk supply and decarbonization work, it is very satisfactory. Our zero carbon plant certification is such that we are the first zero carbon plant with dual or two certifications. In terms of our products and packaging, well, we have passed the CGF Golden Design Rules certification. We are doing a very good job. For UEC, label-free packaging and also our ESG management. Actually, we have already formed a cross-department, very professional, specialized an in-depth ESG management principle and process. The final outcome is that for MSCI ESG, we are rated A. This is the highest rating in the Chinese food industry, and we are a very important constituent in Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Index. For ESG Vanguard fifty Index, we are number 1. All central enterprises are being rated, all important big enterprises are being rated, and then we are number 1. In the future, we may have some case studies which we can communicate with you in greater depth. Let me turn to 2023. We think that for 2023. Well, you have been asking about our scale and also our growth rate because we want to create a new Mengniu. Well, definitely, it is not possible to do without scale, but we have to make sure that there is high quality out of the scale, and we have to continue to improve our profit margin. In terms of improving our penetration rate in the industry and our premiumization, our growth engines have not changed. Over the past two years' efforts, I think 2023 is a critical year. In terms of pure scale accumulation all the way to having both scale and profit, I think that is a strategy that we adhere to. In the future, in terms of high-quality development, we want to achieve best mix of our market cap as well as return. I won't go through the details on this slide. Perhaps later on, we can talk more about our brand, online/offline integration, offline scenarios, digitalization, nutrition and health, and so on. I think when we talk about high-quality development, finally, we have actually brand premium, innovation premium, and also digitalization premium. By seizing these three items, we can improve our profit margin. These three elements actually entail very clear measures. For example, brand premium, innovation, digitalization. Digitalization is an area which we have invested significantly, and we have also gained benefit from digitalization. Our capabilities. As said in the past, I would like to refresh our core competencies, our brand power, RTM, digital transformation, innovation capabilities, giving rise to improvement in profitability, our organization improvement. Now you can see that we have already got our talents and manpower in digitalization. In the area of supply chain and brand, we have enhanced our digitalization capability. I'm not only talking about expansion of scale and improvement of profitability. I'd like to paint a very complete picture of Mengniu first. In terms of consumption, we want to be first choice of consumers. Then in relation to internationalization and also our management capabilities, these have to be enhanced. We are more responsible, we make investment in digitalization. In terms of our culture, we promote continuously our cultural DNA. In the past three years, our experience told us that no matter whether there are opportunities and challenges in the market, opportunities are available for those who are well prepared. When we talk about our high-quality development strategy and also the building of our six major capabilities and competencies and our final success painting or blueprint, well, in the coming three to five years, we will adhere to this strategy, and we will continue to improve our operating capability and profitability. I have joined the company for six and a half years already. I think right now we are calmer because in terms of our various capabilities and our mastery of different elements, we are more stable in terms of our operation. We have more confidence. Mengniu is a company with innovative and breakthrough capabilities. The balance between these two sides, from the management's point of view, is such that we can have more confidence. We can rest assured, even if we need more innovation and breakthrough, we do have the capability. In the capital market, we can convince you that we have profitability as well as growth. We are very confident in that as well. Today, when I look at the situation in the future, I think in the coming 5 to 6 years, the difficulty and workload is going to be heavy, and things will be difficult. I think the degree of certainty will be higher than in the past, especially during the pandemic. My final conclusion is that we have to maintain very strong innovation and breakthrough capability. At the same time, there must be a very certain corporate profit growth and business growth stability together with our team's effort. Yes, the job will be harder, but we will work harder, and things will be more certain. Our organization will be more creative. I think that is the overall condition of our team. Thank you very much. Just now I've presented our annual results and also our preliminary reviews about the coming year. Thank you