Earnings Call: H1 2022

Aug 24, 2022

Investors, good morning. Welcome to the 2022 interim results announcement of Mengniu and Yashili online. This meeting is going to be conducted in Mandarin, and I am from the investors relations department. I'm going to introduce to you members of the management in attendance. We have CEO and Executive Director, Mr. Lu Minfang; Vice President and Executive Director, Mr. Wang Yan; CFO, Mr. Zhang Ping; Senior Vice President, Gao Fei; Vice President, Mr. Wen Yongping; Yan; Vice President, Mr. Li Pengcheng; Financial Controller and Company Secretary, Ms. Chris Kwok. From Yashili, we have CEO and Executive Director, Mr. Yan Zhiyuan, and CFO, Mr. Chen Limin. First of all, Mengniu will introduce to you the 2022 interim results. After that, Mr. Yan of Yashili is going to make a presentation of the first half results. After that, there will be a Q&A session. You are most welcome to ask questions. I will pass the floor to Mr. Lu to talk about the 2022 first half results. Okay. Investors, good morning. Welcome to the 2022 interim results presentation of Mengniu and Yashili. Due to epidemic prevention and control, we are once again holding this presentation online, and we are pleased to have today's presentation, hoping to have adequate communication with you. First of all, let me briefly review the results of the first half of the year. Concerning the first half of the year, you may be interested in the impact of COVID-19, and there was impact on the overall consumption. Given this overall macro environment, I think our performance is still very strong. Under the pandemic result, we still achieved double-digit growth. Overall speaking, in the first half, our overall revenue rose CNY 47.72 billion, up 4% year-on-year from a relatively high base last year. Under the pandemic impact, we're still able to enhance our position in the global ranking, so this is a historical high situation. We are happy with our revenue results. My second point is that in terms of net profit. I would like to say that the audio signal for me is very broken. Once I speak, I can hear no sound from the management. Overall speaking, we are very happy and content. Of course, I would like to say a few words and a few major categories. You can see that perhaps you are very concerned about the growth margin. For the first half of this year, it's about roughly 32, and now it's 38, and now it's going down to 36.6%, and which is down by 1.6%. This is because a few reasons, and one is for the raw material, and especially for milk powder. We can see that in terms of the inflation going on around the world and in terms of the cost going up, it's very obvious. Secondly, in terms of the gross margin impact, in 2020 and 2021 with a high growth and with the new factory built, as well as the investment and depreciation. This is, these are such costs. I believe that when we move on going forward. Secondly, in terms of Q2, we had invested in some of the promotion activities, especially for our yogurts and drink products, and this has helped with our shelf sale, and to make sure that we are having a healthy inventory. Overall speaking, we can see in terms of the milk price and overall speaking, and the structure is improving. One is that for our Q2 investment, and second is in terms of the production. This is an offset, we can see this is on the gross margin. In terms of the net margin, we can see that in terms of the operation, especially in terms of Later on, I will talk about the going down. In terms of the overall operation, we have not really yet seen a big impact. If we take away the one-off incentives, if we take that away and compare with the first half of last year, we can see that we are about 20 basis points different from last year. I'd like to mention this point because this is quite a big one-off expenses. For this time, this is the first time for our allocated expense is quite big, and it's roughly about 40%. Therefore, in terms of the impact on the profit for the first half of this year is quite obvious and roughly about 40 basis points. This is a one-off expense. In terms of the net attributable profit, CNY 3.75 billion and up 27.3% year-on-year. This includes the net fair value gain on the financial liabilities. If we look at this in a normal fashion and look at our net attributable profit and should be CNY 2.98 billion. Overall speaking, in terms of the financial performance and for the moment, we are quite satisfactory, especially for first half of this year. Now I'll take a look at the various categories. The first one is for liquid milk, and this would include UHT as well as fresh milk. I think what's good or what's positive is that for our high-end and as well as our fresh milk, we can see that they have grown very well. I will go into details later on. However, in terms of the main impact, we can see is that for the UHT as well as the dairy drinks, these are the ones that have not performed very well here. If it's only UHT and fresh milk, it's actually growing by double digits, actually, over 20%. For ice cream, we can see that it has performed very well in the first half with revenue. This is because we can see that for the birth rate decline, there is a very obvious impact. We are also launching other business, and we can see that they are growing very well. In addition, we also have cheese, and the cheese growth. Overall speaking, there is no impact on our operation. We only made reserve on our bulk powder. For second half this year and also Q1 next year, we just ensured a good supply of our milk formula and reasonable cost. In relation to CapEx, comparing with first half 2021, there was a decline by around almost CNY 700 million. This is because there was impact from the pandemic, we slowed down our CapEx investment. This is the situation about CapEx. In relation to administrative expenses. Well, in the past, you have been concerned about our selling expense ratio. It is coming down from 2020 to 2021 to 2022. Every year it comes down. This is because we have done digital transformation, and we dug deep into our channels. As a result, we are able to lower our S&D expenses ratio. In the 1st half of the year, we did advertising investment. We made adjustment to our advertising expenses to ensure our overall supply. For administrative expenses, as I said just now, this year, there is a slight increase. From 3.6%-4.2%. This is mainly because of the SBC one-off CB non-cash equity incentive expenses. For this expense, well, it will come down year after year, starting the year after next. In relation to inventory turnover days, 38 days. There is an increase from 34-38 days. This is mainly because of our stockpiling of bulk powder and our strategic reserves. For receivables, because we increased vertical business, there is also increase in e-commerce new retail. As a result, the turnover is lengthened. Now our share of direct retail accounts for 45%, and some of the customers had led to an increase in our receivables. That is because of an increase in the percentage of customers. Payable turnover is stable. Right now, it's 53.2 days, so it is the same or more or less flat as last year. Now, let me talk about the situation in 2022, the overall situation. I believe from the overall situation, you can see quite clearly, first of all, in Q1, we're strong. For Q2, there was impact from COVID-19. Regarding the impact from the pandemic, there is some lagging behind effect, so recovery is not as fast as expected. This is because. Well, that's the situation in the first half of the year. A point to note about the first half is that we did a good job in Winter Olympics, and also a Women's Asian Cup. In the first half of the year, our marketing effort was very smooth and successful. Besides, in Q2, under the pandemic, for a lot of our categories, for example, UHT and fresh milk, when there was epidemic control and prevention work, our sales recovery started in May all the way to June, and then in July, we already achieved double-digit growth. This is very good. If you look at our marketing and sales, I think we have done a good job in mastering the rhythm. Regarding channel cultivation, we attached much importance to the new retail channels and also home delivery. Right for home delivery and also e-commerce, we have a number of new channel categories in which we are leading, and we are number one in the market. When we talk about channels and also channel structure optimization, you can see our moves and initiatives we have put in place. We have confidence in our categories because if you take a look at our Shiny Meadow, Milk Deluxe, and also Mengniu Pure Milk, for all these brands, growth was very strong. In the whole battlefield, we have not missed out any of the fields with strong growth. In these areas and segments, we are leading for Shiny Meadow and also Milk Deluxe and Mengniu Pure Milk. They all enjoyed fast growth. We also made layout in cheese. Basically, in the dairy, product categories, for those categories with high growth potential, our layout has been very effective, and our work has been very effective. We are confident. We have strong confidence in our development. Now, I will turn to digital transformation. Even though there is impact from the pandemic, we accelerated our digital transformation from factory, supply chain, consumption end, and also channels. We are happy with our work. Later on, I will elaborate more on our digital transformation and also our enhancement of our management of the channels. Overall speaking, in the first half of the year, if you look at our results in terms of sales and profit and our strategic moves and implementation in relation to various categories, I think the implementation of our plan from 2021 to 2022 was satisfactory to us. Of course, in Q2, there was anti-epidemic work, so that posed a challenge on us. The situation is different from 2020. Of course, in 2020, there was a process of recovery after the big outbreak. In 2022, there were multiple outbreaks in different places, there was quite big impact on our operation. There was store closure and also decrease in footfall in various retail outlets. This is rather widespread, not only in a particular province, for example, Hubei. This is quite a big challenge for us in the first half. When we developed new products and when we expanded channels, the pace was affected. The pace slowed down. Of course, we reacted quickly and proactively. When it comes to community group purchases and so on during the pandemic, if you look at Shiny Meadow and Milk Deluxe in Shanghai. For Milk Deluxe, we immediately did our work in relation to community group purchases and delivery. For Shiny Meadow, home delivery market share reached almost 50%. Overall speaking, in the whole country, our e-commerce home delivery market share reached almost 50%. This shows our ability to react to the pandemic. Then we seized the business rhythm, and we managed the channels effectively. Even under the pandemic, we did not increase the burden on the channels. We reacted fast. At the end of June, all our inventory in all business segments were at healthy level, and our product mix is very good. Of course, we need to seize the opportunities in Q3 and also World Cup. I think World Cup is going to be very important to us, and we are going to do a lot of important work, both online and offline. That's our reactions and responses under the pandemic. Now, I will present the highlights of each business segment. Later on, you may have a lot of questions to ask, and we have our senior executives responsible for various business segments. They can communicate with you. Now, let me talk about UHT. For Milk Deluxe, we still achieved double-digit growth. Driving overall growth of 10% for the whole brand. Mengniu Pure Milk continued to perform strongly, growing 22% in the period. For Milk Deluxe, UHT, it is very successful. For organic milk, we are already number one in the market. Besides, for innovation, this year, for Just Yoghurt and Yummy Yoghurt, in these two categories, we have been innovating, and all the production lines have been commissioned. Even though there is impact from COVID-19 on our new products, but we are strong in innovative capability, and our product capability is strong. We hope that Just Yoghurt can be real yogurt. It is not just ordinary milk beverage. If you look at nutrition and new scenarios of consumers and product quality, we have put in a lot of effort, of course. For UHT and also milk beverage, under the pandemic, they were impacted. If you look at our channel structure, we are optimizing it. We are stronger in managing our channels. For UHT in the first half, the overall situation was very good. Let me turn to the other two business segments which have performed well. Fresh milk, up 25% year-on-year. Shiny Meadow achieved an even higher growth. Online, for fresh milk, we are already number one brand in China of fresh milk sold online. For high-end fresh milk, again, we are number one. In only four years' time, we have done well. In terms of product innovation, we have not stopped our work. This year, we have the Shiny Meadow 4.0 low-fat fresh milk and also the Little Shiny Meadow, which are well-received. We continued our product innovation. If you look at our online investment for fresh milk, we have invested a lot. If you look at our growth rate and also enhancement of brand strength, that's because of our superior product quality and our innovative capability. We also invested in the brands. Basically, for the high-end segment, for example, in Sam's Club, Yonghui, and Sun Art, and other channels, we maintain number one sales share. Basically, in the high-end area, we don't really have competitors. For ice cream business, this year, we did quite a good job because in the past few years, we went back to the fundamentals. We improved our channel work, we also did a good job with our products for our ice cream. It is doing well. We attach importance to cross border innovation. Together with Moutai, we introduced an ice cream product jointly, we experienced shortage of supply, there was constraints on our production capacity. I think ice cream can deliver sustainable profit. We only need to do a good job with all our core work. At the same time, there are businesses which faced challenge. For chilled product business, it actually posed a challenge. For chilled yogurt, the impact was even bigger. For our overall strategic adjustment, yogurt is being packed to rigid demand, so that can drive the development of Yoyi C and also quality enhancement of our yogurt. We expanded retail and home delivery business, and we enhanced our product mix to improve our profit margin. For chilled product business, profitability improved a lot. Revenue growth came down. For Yoyi C and also Champion brand, the products are very good. Later on, we're going to focus on sustainable profit. I think we are the best in the industry in this regard. Most companies in the chilled product area are not profitable. For us, we still have a very valuable business. We want to achieve value marketing and the return of value. That's about chilled product business. Milk formula. For infant's milk formula, it is one of our weaknesses. Under the macro environment, there was a lot of challenge on us. There is Yashili's infant milk formula and Bellamy's Organic. For these two businesses, they are under pressure. However, we have found a way to achieve growth for Yashili. By means of the new national standard products, we need to enhance our product quality and product formula. For our sales systems and other fundamental work, we have to improve our work. When everybody is trying to promote sales in a quick way, we have to make sure that there is good value allocation along the whole chain, so that each link can be profitable. Of course, we also need to enhance investment in our products. For adult milk formula, the business trend is good. This year, for adult milk formula, in terms of cost, there was increase in cost of milk powder, we spent less on adult milk formula. In July, we can see quite obvious recovery of this segment. For Bellamy, I think we have completed the adjustment in terms of channels and the team and so on. Within this year, we hope all our work will be completed and on Douyin and Kuaishou and other live streaming new channels, we are making our layout as well. Another most important reason is we have got the organic children's growth milk powder. We are optimistic about that, we introduced some baby noodles, sprouted rice puffs, and so on. All these will be launched in order to enhance the organic brand equity and also business growth for Bellamy. That's about Bellamy. We hope for brand building. We attach much importance to long-termism. At present, Mengniu has already moved on from the Olympics all the way to FIFA World Cup. Our execution capability is well realized during the Winter Olympics. Our innovation and our marketing capabilities have been proven. What I want to say is that by means of brand and IP, continuous accumulation, we will cooperate with the International Olympic Committee till 2036, and we have long-term cooperation with FIFA. In this way, we're able to enhance our brand strength and enhance our investment so that the return on investment will be better. I think this is a big thing I need to elaborate. I think this is very effective and valuable for our brand. In the second half of this year, I think FIFA World Cup is going to be a big, big thing, focus of the world, because after 3 years of the pandemic, we really need this big event. The Qatar World Cup is going to be our main battlefield. In terms of our brand and our marketing work, we will try our best to do a good job. We have Mengniu and Messi, the two together, I think this is really a good opportunity for us in the second half. It will also drive the CNY business next year. It is going to be a peak season for sales during the period. Now I would like to talk about our ESG strategy. In our last annual report, we already stated some important work under this category. our long-term vision is to Common health of people and the planet. Our mission is to create more nutritious products, a better life, and more sustainable planet. This is based on our sustainability and ESG strategy. These are also our sustainability targets and our work plan. We will focus on five main areas. Governance, sustainability, responsibility, collaborative prosperity, environment, carbon net zero, responsible development, carbon, ecosystem, collaborative and accountable, nutrition, supreme and inclusive. These are very important. Consumer goods will be moving towards quality and nutrition. There shouldn't be excessive marketing. That's the right direction. We will continue our work in ESG. Besides, there is one thing very important, and that is dual carbon. We have announced a very realistic dual carbon goals, which are also based on science. That is about carbon neutrality and also carbon peaking. We have hired BCG, and we are working with them and looking at all our products and to look at all the carbon emission analysis as well as our footprint. All of these, they are very well laid out. In terms of the two goals that Wei has talked about, they are based on facts. In 2030, we will realize the phase one and phase two targets. In terms of our per ton of dairy product, emission intensity will be within 160 kilograms of CO2 in 2030. In 2050, through our increasing portion of the renewable energy as well as for the carbon footprint of the product, it will be decreasing year by year, so as to achieve carbon neutrality for scope 1, 2, and 3 in 2050. Here you can see that we have a very detailed analysis as well as the methodology that would be adopted for the carbon emission reduction process. We believe that this is something that we will adhere to, and we will also go ahead and push forward for the scope 1, 2, 3 of the carbon neutrality and realize our dual carbon goals. Just now, we also talked about our ESG strategy and especially that our focus on dual carbon. In addition, we have also achieved quite a lot. I'm not going to go into details. For instance, ESG management, responsible supply chain, production, products, and packaging environment. For all of these, we have a very clear achievement. I am now sharing with you all here. For Mengniu's ESG, this is a ESG strategy that we are very capable to implement. Perhaps for our overall industry and where we are going forward, you may have some questions. Very quickly, for the whole industry development, there are a lot of potentials and how do we make sure that there is high quality growth. This is for the second half of the year and some of the important work that we need to look at, including, for instance, for the consumers, they pay more attention to health. Very recently, we have seen that in the market, whether it is whether it is the spreading of the word and people pay more attention to this. How do we make sure that we can grasp this opportunity? Secondly, I'd like to talk about the silver economy. We are now planning for the silver economy, and I believe that next year we will be in a better position to inform you in detail about our plans for the silver economy. Thirdly, in terms of the macro economy and the macro environment that we are looking at, for instance, the consumption of cheese, et cetera, and we have a dedicated, empowered team, and we will be grasping this opportunity for sure. Finally, we also face some challenges. For instance, in terms of raw material price going up, in terms of the milk price, we are able to stabilize it. We also have some measures to carry out cost control and to make sure that our profitability can continue to grow. Finally, I'd like to talk to you about the building up of the core competence. For instance, in terms of brand power, R&D, innovation, RDM, digital transformation, milk source control, M&A integration, organization assurance, and to make sure that we have the cost investment management in place. All of these measures are things that we will be focusing on. I don't think that a short-term pandemic or the volatility in the consumption market will actually affect our future or will affect that how we are going to realize our targets. We don't think so. We will adhere to those pathways that we have laid out. We do believe that they will come to fruition at one point. Finally, just to come back to our strategic vision, creating a new Mengniu in five years. Dear investors, today we are sharing and announcing our first half of interim results with you. Again, we will stand very brave and to face up to the short-term challenges as well as the future challenges ahead of us. We will be grasping all these opportunities in different sectors and to make sure that we can create a new Mengniu in five years with our first vision and to make sure that all our implementations will be fully executed and to help us to build a better, more international and more responsible and digital Mengniu. We continue to work towards this goal and with a strong cultural DNA. Thank you everyone, and perhaps I have talked for a long time today, and I also look forward to further communication with our investors during the Q&A session. I believe that you probably have a lot of questions in the current environment. I now pass the floor to Yashili. Of course, during the privatization process for Yashili and in terms of the performance and in terms of the forward-looking prospects, we will be compliant with our transaction guidance. I have Mr. Yan Zhiyuan to talk to you about Yashili.