So from ZOZO, we have on the call Director, Executive Vice President, and CFO, Mr. Koji Yanagisawa, and me. So there'll be two of us joining from ZOZO.
Eh,
First, CFO Yanagisawa will take you through the financial results.
Everyone, good evening. Now I'd like to walk you through the first quarter financial results for the fiscal year ending in March 2025. Let's jump right in. Here are the highlights of this quarter. As for the first quarter of FY 2024, our gross merchandise value, GMV, increased by 7.6% year-over-year, totaling JPY 141.8 billion. Our GMV, excluding other GMV, rose by 7.5% year-over-year, reaching JPY 132.6 billion, and our operating profit rose by 0.2% year-over-year, reaching JPY 15.8 billion. In terms of the achievement rate against the company plan, GMV excluding other GMV achievement rate was 23.2%, and our OP achievement rate was 24.8%.
Demand for spring and summer items has been growing since mid-April, as the temperatures have aligned with previous years, and all businesses are generally progressing according to the plan. Our operating profit also exceeded the plan, although by a small margin. Both GMV and OP have reached record highs. Let's now go to page seven of the handout, and this is the quarterly consolidated financial results. In the first quarter of this accounting period, GMV, excluding other GMV, grew by 7.5% year-over-year. Gross profits increased due to higher GMV growth in the advertising business and changes to the shipping policy, and these factors outweighed higher costs associated with the low logistics spaces and with the new logistic bases and higher shipping costs due to changes in economic conditions.
Let's go to page eight of the handout, and this is the increase and decrease analysis of the operating profit of the first quarter. The previous fiscal year's OP was JPY 15.86 billion. In FY 2024, it amounted to JPY 15.89 billion, up by approximately JPY 30 million. There are three factors attributable to the growth of the OP. First, +JPY 2.42 billion from the gross profit growth resulting from ZOZOTOWN and LINE Yahoo! Commerce GMV expansions. Second, +JPY 417 million from the sales increase generated by the advertising business. Third, +JPY 1.11 billion from the growth of shipping income and others coming from shipping policy change. On the other hand, there are four main factors that drove down the OP.
First, -JPY 1.6 billion from the increase in fixed costs impacted by the rise in the number of employees and logistics spaces and others. Second, -JPY 1.65 billion from the increase in variable costs that rose in correlation to the GMV and shipping expenses.
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-JPY 310 million from the increase of the actual promotion related expenses associated mainly with expenses to attract customers and point based sales promotions, and fourth, -JPY 410 million from other expenses such as the purchase of consumables, including materials and equipment, increase in cloud server costs, and others.
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Let's now go to page 20 of the handout. This is the breakdown of SG&A.
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The SG&A to GMV ratio was 23.4%, an increase of 1.4 points from the same period of last year.
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There are mainly three factors that drove up the SG&A ratio.
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First one is the shipping expenses. The shipping expenses increased by 0.5 points as we accepted Yamato Transport shipping fee increases from April 1st, 2024.
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Thirdly, the rent expenses increased by 0.3 points following the commencement of the lease of ZOZOBASE IBARAKI 4 and 5.
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This is the actual promotion related expenses trend on page 23.
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In this first quarter, we used 3.3% worth of GMV as our actual promotion related expenses, which are the sum of advertising expenses and point related costs.
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It's about the same level as last year.
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Let's now go to page 19 of the handout. Here are the OP and OPM trends.
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Due to the increased costs related to the new logistics bases and increased shipping costs due to the changes in economic conditions, our OPM for the current fiscal year was 0.9 points lower than in the same period of the previous year, landing at 12.0%.
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Moving on to the main KPIs of ZOZOTOWN. I'd like to start off with page 29, which is the number of total buyers.
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By the way, the KPIs hereafter do not include the results of our LINE Yahoo! Commerce or BtoB business.
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The number of total buyers was up by 110,000 from the previous quarter, amounting to 11.79 million, of which active members was 10.91 million, increasing by 130,000, and guest buyers decreased by 20,000, finishing at 870,000.
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...The strong effects of the warm winter slowed down the demand, which resulted in a decrease in the number of annual buyers in the fourth quarter of last year. However, in the first quarter, we saw a recovery in the new buyer acquisition as the temperature picked up from mid-April, and thanks to this, we were able to increase the number of total buyers solidly.
Eh,
Let's go to page 27 of the handout. This is the number of shops on ZOZOTOWN.
Eh,
As of the end of the first quarter, the number of shops was 1,605, a net increase of 10 shops from the end of the previous quarter.
Eh,
We welcomed 30 new shops to our platform this quarter. To name a few, we now have Her lip to, an apparel brand produced by a renowned female celebrity, Tory Burch, an American luxury brand, and COSME ReMAKE that carries popular cosmetic brands from Korea, like rom&nd.
Eh,
Let's now go to page 29. With respect to the average retail price, it was JPY 3,698, down by 0.7% year-over-year.
Eh,
The brands continue to increase their list prices for the spring and summer season, but the temperature continued to be higher than usual years, and then this resulted in an increase in the sales mix of relatively lower priced merchandise, such as T-shirts. The ARP turned out to be slightly below that of the same quarter of the previous year.
Eh,
Now let's go to page 30, where we have information on the average order value. The average order value was JPY 8,343, up 2.0% year-over-year.
Eh,
Although the average retail price was slightly lower, the number of items purchased per order increased, bringing up the average order value higher than that of last year.
Eh,
The number of items per order increased because we gave more days to free shipping on purchases over JPY 12,000 or more promotions than last year, and the ratio of combined purchases rose thanks to it during this period.
Hi,
Go to page 32, and here are the full year consolidated earnings forecast and dividends for the ongoing fiscal year. There's no change to the business performance forecast.
Hi, eh.
That was a quick presentation from my side. Thank you.
Eh,
Let's now go into the Q&A session. If you have questions, please raise your hand with a button.
Eh,
When you're appointed, please unmute yourself and inform us of your company name and your name, and ask questions.
Hi. So then, Mr. David,
David, sir, go ahead.
Thanks very much. David Gibson from MST Financial. I have two questions. The one key result, you did very well on the take rate, a significant improvement for both the Yahoo business as well as the consignment. Could you elaborate on the driver behind that? I think you said, you know, brand mix in the Japanese call. But just do you think that's actually sustainable or will it change because of a seasonal change in brand demands going forward or in other periods? The second question is could you talk a little bit about how inventory was versus plan? Are brands changing their plans at all for you to carry their inventory going forward? That's my two questions. Thank you.
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So I'd like to answer the first question, which is about the brand, brand mix. So this is something we can't really control, because that's actually informed by the merchandise that the brands produce for different seasons. And then, yes, maybe the number of online players, as our merchandisers may go up, you know, our merchants may go up, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that will bring up the take rate, automatically. So, the brand mix is something we really don't, you know, have control, so much control over, and that's due to change.
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And, about the second part of your question on the inventory. So I believe that, that question had to do with the fact that the turnover deteriorated, last year. And I take it that, that question was related more to that. But the spring and summer sales finished, and then, the inventory level is rather stabilized now.
Okay, great. Thanks very much.
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Thank you very much, David-san. For those of you who have other questions, please raise your hand with a button.
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All good?
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Maybe we can wait for 10 more seconds.
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We just got a question coming in.
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Tim-san, go ahead for their question.
Hi, guys. Thanks for doing this. Just a quick question on in terms of when you look forward at the rest of the year in terms of the promotion that you guys control, any thoughts or changes on the level of promotion as you go through the year? And then also, can you just flag, you know, timing for what you expect, you know, large campaigns, if any, to be coming in the next two quarters. Thank you.
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So with respect to the promotions, we are planning to spend a little over 4% worth of GMV, and we have that in our budget. Then in the first quarter, as I have informed you, we spent only 3.3% worth of GMV, which is much lower than the annual levels, which suggests that we are planning to spend more in the third quarter and the fourth quarter, like we do usually.
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To answer to the second part of your question, compared to the previous years, are we going to conduct large scale promotions? We are not planning something like that right now. Just like usual, we'd like to invest in TV, commercial, web commercial, and point related promotions, including personal discount.
Got it. And my second question is in regards to AOV. You commented that the items per shipment has increased year-over-year, in part due to discounts you're providing on shipping fees when multiple products are ordered. How is your AOV assumption for this year? Because I noticed the comps ease in the second and third quarter. What is your expectation for, you know, AOV growth on a full year basis now? Yeah. Thank you.
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Thank you for your question. As far as our budget is concerned for this fiscal period, fiscal year, with respect to AOV, we are not expecting to increase this significantly.
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And in terms of the free shipping initiative, we don't plan to do this too many times, because if we do this too many times, then the users will start to refrain from buying when we're not holding this campaign. So, they will hold it off until the next promotion period. So we don't intend to do this at a high cadence. And then for the second quarter and onward, we may, we believe that we will conduct this here and there, but not too often.
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Sorry for repeating myself, but we are thinking of this to be rather flat.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.
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Okay. Thank you, Tim-san. And David-san, go ahead with your questions.
Thanks. Just one simple one. Just thinking, in 1Q, you reported basically zero or 0.2% OP growth. Looking to 2Q, I'm assuming, is it correct to say that you're expecting better growth in the second quarter? If so, what is the driver of that? Is it purely top line? And what pressures of cost do you see in the second quarter in particular? Thank you.
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So, first of all, the premise of all this is that in the first quarter and the second quarter of this year, the logistics base costs have been impacting us all throughout the year with the commencement of Tsukuba 3. And then so the cost of the logistics center is pretty heavy on us. And then in terms of the shipping expenses, we experienced the price increases of the shipping expenses we pay out to the delivery company, and then we are offsetting that with the shipping revenues regained from our users. But when it comes to SG&A, the SG&A has gone up because of the shipping expense increase.
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And in the first quarter of last year, we were not impacted by the costs related to the logistics bases. So that's really the only quarter when that in which we were not impacted by that last year. And then from the second quarter, it's going to, in the second quarter, we were already incurring the cost last year. And then just like this year as well. So when it comes to the OP growth, the second quarter, in the second quarter, we expect the growth rate to be better.