Welcome everyone to join Momo.com 4th quarter earnings conference call. We have uploaded presentations and equity report on our website. For today's call, President Jeff Ku will kick off with opening remarks, I will discuss the financial results. After that, we will open the line to questions from analysts and investors. I would like to remind you the following discussions, including the responses to your questions, reflect management's view as today's date only. We do not undertake any obligations to update or revise the numbers. With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff.
Thanks, Teresa. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm going to share with you some highlights from our fourth quarter and the whole year 2022 operating results. We delivered a strong fourth quarter result with revenue achieved a record high of NT$31.8 billion, growing 18.4% year-on-year. Operating profit of NT$1.3 billion, increasing 18.7% year-on-year. That indicates that we have passed the influence of high base of previous year and the reopening effect. As for 2022, the revenue was NT$103.4 billion, and the operating profit was NT$4.3 billion. Take rate and operating margin both came a little bit lower than previous year, mainly due to the favorable COVID resulted high base of 2021.
Despite all the negative factors such as inflation with economy reopening, et cetera, surrounding us during that period of time, our November revenue grew to NT$ 14.5 billion hit a record high for a single month, and it was a YOY 18.9%. The December revenue of NT$ 9.5 billion year-on-year has a 19.3%. All is attributed to our successful Double Eleven and the Double Twelve festival promotions. Also it shows we start gradually regain our growth momentum. It also shows the low penetration and the growth potential of the EC market in Taiwan and then the capabilities Momo possessed to grasp this opportunity.
With fast expansion of our logistics network in the past few years and the finalization of the road map of three distribution centers around Taiwan, we will shift our strategy from expansion to optimization, which means with completion of new warehouses added to the network, the focus will be in optimization. The automation equipment, IT systems, and the big data will play a big role here. Our own delivery fleet is responsible for 25% of our parcel deliveries today, and we will gradually increase it by expanding our service area from tier one to tier two cities in Taiwan. According to our government data, 2022 general goods retail market grew 7.8% year-on-year in Taiwan, the highest in recent years, mainly due to the low base of physical channel in the previous years affected by COVID. Among those retail channels, department store gained the most.
Year-on-year has 15.2%, with online business came second, year-on-year 11.5%. Even with post-COVID reopening, E-commerce still shows a strong growth here. It reflects the thickness of customer behavior post-COVID. With still low EC penetration rate of just about 13% in this market, it presents a greater future growth potential. In order to capture future growth, we will continue adding more product selections, means more SKUs and more brands based on our 1P and 3P mixed models. As for our 3P platform, we have seen encouraging results. It enable us to enlist those long tail products such as clothes, toys, home improvement items, et cetera, which can greatly enrich our selections and attract wider customer segments, such as young people. In fourth quarter, Momo EC customer spending increased 7% year-on-year. The strong growth can be seen across all product categories.
Even the mature categories such as 3C and home appliance posted a 17% year-on-year growth versus Taiwan online sales 11% YOY in fourth quarter of last year. The luxury showed lowest first quarter year-on-year growth because of the reopening influenced the luxury goods sales, and then the warm winter weather hindered the winter clothes sales. Regarding profit, fourth quarter overall take rate maintained at 14.1%, with less favorable revenue mix of TV and EC. Favorable EC take rate improved to 12.8% versus 12.4% in fourth quarter 2021. EC take rate improvement was driven by favorable product mix, less margin product weightings, less low margin product weightings, and a stronger bargaining power with suppliers as we scaled.
In the meantime, we saw positive impact from the economy of scale, helping B2C operating profit to grow 22.8% year-on-year. Now let me touch on a few new initiatives. First of all, the live streaming. We are happy to see that in November, live streaming traffic jumped 13 times. Of course, it has great help from the big festival promotion. The whole year revenue also increased one point five times. The strong growth rate shows its potential in complementing our E-commerce operation. We will continue enhancing the live streaming platform capabilities and hosting more shows, including opening more time slots to our merchant-originated contents. We expect a strong live streaming growth this year in terms of both traffic and revenue. Regarding digital advertising, we have noticed other market players' impressive performance, such as Amazon.
As a leading EC player in Taiwan with a large traffic volume, customer base, number of merchants, and more importantly, first party data enhanced, we think we are well-positioned to enter this business and we will allocate more resources to it and then nurture it to grow into a significant income source in the coming future. To sum up my opening remarks, I have three points to deliver here. First, we deliver good result in 2022 and further strengthen our market position despite the uncertainties faced in the microenvironment. This reflected the high-quality execution of our team, scale benefit and the logistic infrastructure investment made over those years. On top of this solid base, we are looking forward to extending the leading position this year. Looking into 2023, we remain vigilant about short-term macro headwinds and the retail market growth in Taiwan.
However, we continue to prioritize growth. In the meantime, we are taking a prudent pace in further infrastructure expansion and put more focus in efficiency. Overall, we expect mid to high teens year-on-year revenue growth this year. As far as bottom line is concerned, we expect to maintain a similar operating profit margin as previous year. As operations become larger and more complicated, we have started several operation efficiency improvement projects to streamline processes, increase automation level. Many of these projects involve leveraging data technology. This is also part of our intentions of making our IT and systems, particularly data, as one of the long-term competitive advantages. I will turn the call over to Terrisa to review the financials in more detail.
Thanks, Jeff. Jeff has discussed some of our financial highlights, so I will only focus on my comments on the other relevant metrics. We first recorded group revenues of TWD 31.8 billion during the fourth quarter, driven by the strong B2C sales growth of 20% YOY, further widening the divisions in the growth performance with retail competitors and continuing to grow much faster than the non-store retail sales of 9.6% against the high base. The fourth quarter group EBITDA recorded at TWD 1.6 billion, and EBITDA margin sustained at 5.1% versus 5.2% in the fourth quarter last years on the back of improvement in fulfillment efficiency, despite the larger scale of marketing campaign amid the weaker macro retail environment.
Moving to the fourth quarter, group net income to parents increased 11.4% YOY, which can be attributed to the group operating profit increase. 18.7% YOY and a non-OP loss of NT$ 52.5 million that we recognize one-time loss of NT$ 82 million regarding the Global Mall goodwill impairment. More importantly, fourth quarter group recurring basic EPS came in at NT$ 5.05, increased 20.5% YOY. At the end of the fourth quarter, net cash positions was NT$ 8 billion, a decrease of 8.6% YOY. That was primarily due to the NT$ 2.4 billion for DC construction expenses. NT$ 2.3 billion cash dividend paid and NT$ 994 million income tax paid. In terms of the cash CapEx.
In 2022, we paid down NT$ 2.7 billion for DC building construction based on the actual spending timelines. Having discussed the financial highlights, let's turn to the industry and the operation part. Based on the data point released by the government, the above chart show the non-store sales growth has been outperformed against the total retail, even during the economic downturn in 2008-2009. Also, the retail industry declined in 2015 and 2020, affected by the crude oil price drop and the pandemic. Left-hand side chart show the Momo's revenue YOY grew much faster than the non-store retail sales. That said, we continue our share gain amid ongoing industry consolidations and amid the global digitalization trend that induce people doing more and more online shopping.
The bottom right-hand side indicate by the end of the fourth quarter last year's, Taiwan online penetrations was only 13.9%, remaining comparably lower versus other leading Asia peers. Let's touch on the M omo.com operation updates. You can see from this slide the major five categories performed resiliently in the fourth quarter thanks to successful Double Eleven and the Double Twelve online promotions. 3C and home appliance up 17% YOY. Household increased 23% YOY. Beauty and healthcare up 22% YOY. Fashion and luxury up 16% YOY. The last, sports and leisures up 23% YOY. The key drivers, actually, we constantly sharpen our customers' value propositions to increase wider, widest product selections, to offer the better price, and to provide a faster delivery service and improve user engagement and experience.
We believe the non-electronics categories looks more exciting with FMCG, daily necessity, health and beauty, home improvement, home appliance, fashion category are expected to drive the greater growth in the coming years. Again, it's relatively limited presence currently. The following new initiatives aiming to improve user experience and deepen the penetrations in the various categories. For example, just suggest fresh hybrid 3P model to enhance the long tail SKU. For example, like clothing, toy, furniture, home improvement and fashions. We also provide installation service for white goods, exclusive bundles for healthcare supplements, and the gift wrap service amid the holiday seasons. Also, omni-channel strategy for massage chairs. In addition, we are developing AR virtual makeup try. I think we will launch this new new technology later this year as we foresee rising cosmetic demand once the mask policy is lifted.
As for the emerging format of new initiatives such as the new video, show video, live streaming should broaden our active user base. This real-time interactive natures of E-commerce add fun to the online shopping experience and often triggers impulsive shopping. On key customers metrics, despite a tough base last year's owing to COVID and work from home demand, we are pleased to see the solid customers retention rate and purchase frequencies are holding up well post reopening. You can see in the fourth quarter, active users increased 12% YOY and customer spend continued to grow 7% year-over-year, supported by the growing customer stickiness and loyalty.
Moreover MAU the Monthly Average Visitor, grows further by 4% YOY against a tough base, demonstrating our market position has been further strengthening. Regarding Momo-foodpanda co-branded credit card with an industry leading 5% Momo Coin rebate for all the purchase on the platform. Cardholder spending contributed around 33% of our B2C revenue. In the fourth quarter, with 1.8 Order frequency versus the normal user and a 2.1 spending. Finally, on warehousing. This year, we target to 83 main warehouses and six more satellite warehouses leasing around the major six cities. However, the net increased number of warehouses this year will be lower than this, because we are planning to terminate a couple of short-term lease main warehouses.
On DC, the second automated distribution center, SDC, will be completed toward the later part of this year, with partial operation in the fourth quarter and fully operated in 2024. Considering around 50 years depreciation period for the building and 10 years depreciation for the equipment, around, so far, we estimate around NT$ 150 million annually for the depreciation. However, the number may be slightly different, maybe slightly increased once the operation with the new automations will come in. The third DC in Zhongliao in central Taiwan, CDC, will start operation in late in the second half of this year. It will take around 2-3 years for building, aiming for 2026 operation. As for the budget, CapEx budget this year mainly focused on the CDC, the third automated distribution center.
From the slide, you can see for its constructions, engineering, first phase of automated equipment and solar power system is budgeted at NT$6.3 billion. With that, we would like to highlight the actual cash payment will be spread to second half of this year to 2026. Depends on the various phase of building process and spending timeline. Now, we are ready to open the line for questions. Meanwhile, you are also welcome to send your questions via chat box on the webcast. Operator.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now pull for questions. If you'd like to register for a question, please press star one on your telephone. Thank you. Our first question comes from Casey Chang with Alliance Global Securities. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Hi. Jeff and Terrisa, can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi. Hi, thanks. My first question is regarding gross margin fourth quarter. I think it was up about 50 basis points quarter-over-quarter. When I looked at your B2C rate was down and B2C mix was actually up. You know, those are both negative to gross margin, yet you still, you know, deliver Q-over-Q expansion. I'm just wondering, are the main drivers in fourth quarter mainly comes from on the cost side? Can you share with us on this? That's my first question. Thank you.
Well, I think as far as the gross profit margin is concerned, I think the first quarter mainly helped by the take rate or good take rate over the B2C business. That is really get help from the higher scale we have, so we can get a more support and the resources from all the different merchants. However, company overall take rate because the high margin of the TV business become less important as part of the revenue percentage, so that become unfavorable factors. Otherwise, the TV revenue become less important, so that impact become less.
The drift when I looked at your B2C take rate was actually down quarter-over-quarter, right? About 40 basis points. My question was, you know, even with this B2C take rate down quarter-over-quarter, your gross margin is still up quarter-over-quarter. I was guessing the main contributor comes from the cost side. I do notice, you know, you probably add much fewer warehouses, about two warehouses in fourth quarter, I'm not sure if that's the main reason for margin expansion in fourth quarter.
I think that's because the actually numbers different from quarter to quarter. First quarter revenue is much larger than third quarter, which will dilute the operation cost to some ways. Even the take rate is less than third quarter. However, the absolute numbers we get can help us to dilute that percentage in the operation cost.
Got it. Basically still some scale effect here. My second question is a quick follow-up with, I think, Teresa just mentioned the net add in warehouses will be lower than nine for this year. Can you elaborate on that? How many will you probably terminate this year?
Right. The number you show on page 17 are the newly added warehouse we going to have. Some of them has already been, the contract has already been signed last year. What hasn't reflected to that number is we also plan to take down a few of short-leased warehouses because those warehouses will not be able to come in line in time. That, what you will see this year, we'll add a few big main warehouses online and we take down a few less efficient or put that way, or smaller main warehouse so we can gain e-efficiency later. The number you see here haven't really do the deduction yet. The actual number will come less than that.
The reason why we haven't deduct that number is we are not quite sure the schedule of the new leased warehouse, when they're going to be come online, because we have suffered a major delay last year, and we are still not certain about the schedule. The delay mainly caused by a few major fire happened last year, so the building code regarding the fire becomes stringent, so it's harder to get the operational license. That's the reason why we haven't really take out that cost. In short, the number of warehouse, total number of warehouse will be less than what you have seen on the, on page 17.
Got it. Got it. Is it, we would say the percent of increase in terms of warehouses, warehouse numbers will be much lower this year compared with last year?
Yes.
A quick follow-up on this is it fair to assume that the warehousing and related labor costs as percent of our revenue this relationship should come down this year as well?
That will depend on, because the way we run this is we always prepare the warehouse before the revenue. We're always in the situation which we haven't really 100% utilized our infrastructure because we anticipated there's a future growth. We still anticipated we're going to grow this year. That's the reason why we have to prepare the warehouse beforehand. What we are saying here is we will slow down adding new capacity in the warehouses so that we can gain some efficiency through the high utilization and to improve the efficiency inside the warehouse operation.
That after that optimization period, and we run that optimization for a period of time and then revisit our revenue growth and to see whether we will add a few to which part of the area, and that we may come back to add a few in the coming years, but we don't know yet. 2023, you will see we still lay out warehouses we committed before going to add it to the network, which we will try to utilize with the newly generated business. We're still try to catch up the e-efficiency rate. I think that's going to improve over time. We're not. It doesn't mean if we don't render the warehouse, you will get the efficiency immediately.
Thank you very much. I'll get back to the queue. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Bill Lin with JP Morgan. Please go ahead, Bill. Thank you. Hello, Bill. Please begin your question. Thank you.
Hello?
Hi.
Hi, Jeff, Terrisa. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. First of all, in 2022, what we are seeing is the leverage as your year-over-year OpEx increase is higher than your revenue increase. Will we see the similar case in 2023 again as I think companies still want to gain share, how would you control the expense side to maintain the margin? Second is, I think Jeff mentioned this year you will study to enter into the digital advertising business. Can you tell us about the company's strategy, and how will this impact overall PNL in next maybe one to two years? Thank you.
Okay. We always believe the scale going to pay back sooner or later. That's the reason why we always emphasize a lot on growth. Last year, 2022, we're facing a very difficult situation. In the beginning of the year, we still think COVID going to play an important role. Suddenly that disease is not that fearful, and so that it leads to reopening and a lot of things happened after that. Plus the macro uncertainties, all those things are heading for us last year, so that in order to drive the sales growth, we spend a lot of resource on the marketing and the promotion. Which means spend more money. That is larger customer base and a higher frequency, I think it's still worthwhile. We have seen...
We don't see the customer behavior return to the pre-COVID era. We are confident with that, we can capitalize on the spending the money we spent last year. I will not call it deleverage. I would say that is for the, for that time and like I said, we need to invest, I would say. Looking into 2023, current competitive landscape actually become friendlier. We don't see any rational behavior from our competitor or from the retail market as a whole. Now the only thing we are not certain is the macro conditions. If things turning to a good way and the world situation will improve, then that will make our marketing become more efficient to run.
For the cost side, as I explained before, the major cost for us is in logistics. That efficiency gain will realize gradually once we start adding less new warehouse into the network and start optimizing and raise the utilization rate. Your second question is? Sorry, Bill, what's your second question?
Digital, right.
Oh.
Digital.
Digital advertising.
Advertising.
Right. We have seen player in other market like Amazon, Alibaba, they all have found a way to monetize their traffic. With the more tighter privacy on the user's data, we can see there's an opportunity for us to enter this business. Particularly we have very close relationship with all the merchants, and then traditionally they are the major source of those advertising spending. We have decided we will move resource in this area and start making it as a business. As I said, this also means we are in the very early stage. So far we don't see the revenue going to be significant yet, at least not for this year.
However, the emphasis on this year will be to build the necessary IT platform to recruit the team and make it as officially a business unit. Sorry, can't hear you clearly.
Hi, Bill. Have we answered your question?
Yes. Yes. Thank you, Terrisa. Thank you.
Thank you. Operator, we can, we can go to the next one.
Sure. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any question, please press star one on your telephone. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star one for questions. Next we have a follow-up question from Daniel Chang with UBS. Please go ahead, Daniel.
Hi, Jeff and Teresa. Thank you for taking my questions. Could you hear me?
Yes.
My first question is also about the warehouse expansion target in 2023. I see in the presentation page 17, you plan to add warehouse space of 88,000 square meter in 2023. This is higher than the addition of 57,000 square meter in 2022. Is this 88,000 square meter also not the final numbers and the final number may close to the 57,000 square meter in 2022 or even below it? Is my understanding correct?
Yeah. As I explained before, we didn't take out the planned deduction yet, so the number is higher than we expected.
Okay. Got it. Thanks. My second question is about the product mix. In 2022, 3C sales underperform overall sales. The sales mix decline year-over-year. This to some degree help improve our B2C take rate. My question is, going into 2023, did you expect 3C mix to decline that much year-over-year or it will remain largely the same given the destocking of consumer electronic product may end in first half, at the same time, 3C still our important revenue driver and we are still gaining market share?
We're still gaining market share, but it doesn't mean As a percentage of revenue will increase. We are gaining market share is because we see gradually industry consolidation. We gain more of the market share from our competitors. As far as our own revenue mix, we still be conservative in term of the 3C, particularly for this year. However, as you pointed out, it's a major part of our revenue component. I would say probably maintain the same kind of a position as last year, which means we will grow more in other categories. However, in the 3C we will still be competitive, which means compared to our competitors, we're still getting the market share larger than theirs.
Okay. Thank you, Jeff. That's very clear. My final question is that I recall previously we target 20%-30% revenue growth in the mid to long term, I don't understand. At least here we target mid to high teens due to some macroeconomic uncertainty. How about the midterm to long-term target? Is the 20%-30% target unchanged?
When we say 20%-30%, we mainly talking about how we're going to reach a NT$100 billion revenue mark. We haven't formed a consensus in terms of the mid to long-term revenue growth because as you know, we are still facing a lot of macro uncertainties and together with our higher base year-on-year. We cannot answer your question yet for the midterm to long term. However, for this year, we will try to make it at least mid to high teens. I think and hopefully things could go become clear in the second half of the year.
Okay. Thank you so much, Jeff. I will get back to the queue. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, please press star one on your telephone. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star one for questions. Our next question comes from Angela with Citi. Please go ahead, Angela. Thank you.
Hi, Jeff and Teresa. Can you hear me?
Yes, please.
Hello. Yes. Thank you for taking my question. First of all, congrats on the strong results. My first question is about. I noticed that our monthly average visitors stayed very strong even post-COVID, and that is very, very impressive in my view. What's the driver behind the strong MAU based on your observation? Also, do we expect a cap on the monthly average visitors in the longer term?
Well, I think the main reason are two. The first is with, we become larger and we become more attractive to customers. like, one of the evidence is no matter where I go, I have to run with people I know or I just newly met, everyone has some experience with Momo. that's the in internet, the larger become larger. Secondly, I think it's due to the successful marketing and the promotion we did last year. I think we get rewarded of that effort.
Got it.
Okay.
Also, do we expect a cap, i.e. the limit, on the MAU in the longer term?
Obviously when we reach to this scale, it's harder to find the new customers, although we're still adding news every month. The weighting was start shifted to the retention side, which means to increase existing customers' frequency. How we're going to do that is, what I said in the openings, we need to add more of the selections, from known brand and from the non-brands, which is the 1P and the 3P model we talked about.
Yeah. Got it. My second question is about our third-party business. How do we work with our 3P partners? Do we charge them like commission fee or is there other way we work with them? Also how to provide incentive to our potential partner to work with us? i.e. do we do any like subsidies to our third-party potential partners? What's our current contribution from the third-party business and what would be our long-term target? Thank you.
The business term, quite similar to the B2C, is quite similar to 1P model. The management, the way they run business is different. We give them more flexibility and allow them to do a lot since can by themselves. One thing we still hold to ourself is facing to the customers. Although it's a 3P merchant, we are always facing customer. Customer have any problem, they always can call Mobile. The three-team model really just give the merchant the flexibility so that they can put a lot of long-term product on our shelf efficiently and then manage it in a way so that they can make the business work for them. As far as the commission, we have to go with whatever the commission is going to work.
It depends on the product category, carry different commission percentages.
Mm-hmm. Got it. Thank you. I will go back to the queue.
Okay. There is one question from the chat box from New Silk Road. The size of the central and southern distribution center are bigger than the northern distribution center. Does this reflect the view of a bigger E-commerce market potential in central and southern Taiwan? The second question is, what is the target of in-house fleet this year?
No, it doesn't reflect that. However, as you know, the land in north part of Taiwan always more expensive in central and the south. So it's not easy to find a proper land in north part of Taiwan. Also it happened in different time. When we built the North Distribution Center, we were still very small. When we grow larger in terms of the business scope, and we found that we're always short of the warehousing space. That's the reason why we always when we try to build the one in south and central, we're always looking for a bigger land, so we can have more spaces. The South Distribution Center actually has probably roughly the same space as the Northern one, just slightly larger.
The central going to be much larger than the these two. I think also it came to this without planning because you we just happened to find a land in the central part of Taiwan fit our need and large enough. The result is good because the central one can really become a supporting role if we really roll out the distribution center in north and... in north particularly, the central can really take more responsibility to alleviate its loading. What is the-.
What's the target of in-house fleet this year?
For our in-house fleet currently account for 25% of our parcel delivery. As I said, we were moved from the first tier city to the second tier of the cities. I think in terms of the percentage increase will be not that much. We are looking at a 28%-30% because the second tier of the cities were not as dense as the first tier. And also, our business still grow year-on-year. The percentage increase not only is not, is not based on the previous year's number. That's our current view. As we will constantly review this and see whether we have room to grow faster. Normally in the second half of the year, we are revisiting it again.
Okay. There are more questions on the chat box regarding the digital advertising. I think we have mentioned that. Also regarding the depreciation and hybrid therapy model. I think we have covered most of the questions. Due to the time constraints, this conclude our QA sessions. Thank you all for your join participation today. We are very much looking forward to speaking to all of you again for the next quarter. Bye. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for participation. This concludes the conference. Goodbye.