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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 10, 2022

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Coupang Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press Star one once again. Thank you. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mike Parker, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Mike Parker
VP of Investor Relations, Coupang

Thanks, operator. Welcome, everyone, to Coupang, Inc.'s Quarterly Earnings Conference Call for the Second Quarter ended 30 June 2 022. I'm pleased to be joined on the call today by our Founder and CEO, Bom Kim, and our CFO, Gaurav Anand. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, reflects management's views as of today's date only.

We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information except as required by law. Certain statements made on today's call include forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially.

Please refer to today's earnings release as well as the risks and uncertainties described in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on 12 May 2022, and in other filings made with the SEC for information about factors which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. During today's call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. As a reminder, these numbers are unaudited and may be subject to change.

Additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, are included in our earnings release and our SEC filings, which are posted on the company's investor relations website at ir.aboutcoupang.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Bom.

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Let me begin with some highlights from our second quarter operating results. First, we achieved an adjusted EBITDA of $66 million for the entire business, an improvement of $157 million quarter over quarter and $188 million year over year. Second, we recorded $1.2 billion in gross profit and 22.9% gross margin, representing a 250- basis point improvement quarter over quarter and 470- basis point improvement net of the fire year over year.

Third, constant currency revenues grew 27% year-over-year and 3% quarter-over-quarter, and revenue per active customer for the overall business grew 20% year-over-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter on a constant currency basis.

In short, the spend of our customer cohorts continues to compound at a fast rate, and we continue to grow at multiples of the overall e-commerce segment in Korea. In just three short years, by 2025, that e-commerce segment is projected to exceed $290 billion in sales. While we've grown to significant scale, we remain a small portion of what is expected to soon become the third largest e-commerce opportunity in the world. Our growth is powered by our relentless customer focus.

We'll always strive to make experiences richer, and prices lower for our customers. We increased our investments in free Rocket Delivery, exclusive discounts, and Coupang Play for our WOW members by 50% over last year to a record $500 million in second quarter alone.

In addition to providing unmatched delivery and service levels, we continue to offer the best prices to our customers. A recent study by KPMG found Coupang to have a 25% to 60% average price advantage compared to major competitors for top-selling items across the categories surveyed. Now a few details on the operating results of our individual segments.

To provide more visibility into the underlying performance of our business, for the first time in first quarter, we broke out Product Commerce as a segment representing our core e-commerce and fresh offerings separate from the Developing Offerings segment, which captured our investment in nascent initiatives like Eats and International. In second quarter, Product Commerce generated $98 million of adjusted EBITDA, an improvement of $95 million quarter-over-quarter and $146 million year-over-year.

We continued to see strong gross profit margin results in Product Commerce, with improvements of 150- basis points quarter-over-quarter, 380- basis points year-over-year, net of the freight. Despite ongoing inflationary headwinds, these positive results were driven by levers that we highlighted in first quarter. Benefits from investments in technology, infrastructure, automation, supply chain optimization, and scaling margin accretive offerings, including advertising.

We believe the progress we've made and the 2% adjusted EBITDA that we recorded in Product Commerce in second quarter is just a glimpse of the significant long-term profitability of our business. The rate of improvement won't be consistent or as dramatic each quarter, but we're excited about the potential ahead. On growth, Product Commerce revenues grew at 27% year-over-year and 3% quarter-over-quarter on a constant currency basis.

In contrast, the broader product e-commerce segment in Korea grew 6% year-over-year and 0% quarter-over-quarter. Our share of product e-commerce growth has increased every quarter since we've gone public, and this quarter was no exception, setting a new record. Increasing customer adoption and engagement across more offerings is accelerating our flywheel. Nowhere is that more evident than in our fresh offering.

After just three full years of operation, Fresh annual run rate stands at nearly $3 billion on the back of what we believe is the best value proposition for an online Fresh offering in any market. We believe we provide the largest Fresh selection of any retailer in the market, and we're the only online grocer that offers free shipping for orders above just $11.

What's more, customers can have their Fresh orders delivered via Dawn or same-day delivery, along with millions of non-Fresh items because we deliver both Fresh and non-Fresh orders on the same logistics infrastructure. Customers love the convenience of ordering everything in a single checkout experience, and the combined scale of both offerings generates economies that are difficult to match for any offline retailer or standalone Fresh grocer online. Fresh is still far from its full potential.

The vast majority of our active customers did not make a purchase in Fresh in second quarter, highlighting the significant opportunity to scale this offering in the years ahead. We're also encouraged by the progress of Fulfillment and Logistics by Coupang, or FLC, which allows third-party merchants to leverage our Rocket Delivery services and infrastructure for growth.

The offering promises to unlock for customers the speed and convenience of Rocket Delivery for millions of additional SKUs, and it allows us to share the value and growth of our Rocket offering with potentially hundreds of thousands of merchants, many of whom are small businesses with limited access to shelves of offline retailers. As of the end of second, over 90% of the third-party merchants benefiting from the services provided by FLC were small and medium enterprises or SMEs with less than $2.5 million in sales.

FLC has the potential to unleash exponential value for both customers and small merchants in the years to come. Another investment we're especially proud of is our effort to create a more sustainable environment.

We invested in process and infrastructure changes to eliminate our box packaging for over 85% of our Rocket deliveries, which not only saves on box and plastic packaging waste, but also allows us to reduce the number of trips our trucks make to complete deliveries, leading to a significant reduction in emissions. We've gone one step further in Fresh, delivering most of our Fresh orders in completely reusable eco bags.

Customers take their products and leave the eco bags for pickup and reuse, like empty bottles left on the porch in the old days of milk bottle delivery. That has allowed us to eliminate virtually all Styrofoam and most of the one-time packaging waste in our Fresh deliveries.

We estimate that for 2022, these two efforts alone will save the equivalent of 8 million trees and offset the majority of the carbon footprint of our existing delivery fleet, even as they deliver unmatched savings and convenience to our customers. Our small victories on this front serve as a powerful reminder that smart innovation, sustainable practices, and good business can go hand in hand. Now on Developing Offerings. Revenues increased 24% year-over-year, but declined 7% quarter-over-quarter on a constant currency basis, driven primarily by our Eats offering.

The decline in quarter-over-quarter revenue is due in part to the post-COVID slowdown in the online food delivery segment in Korea. Growth has also not been our priority this past quarter, as we mentioned in our last call.

Our primary focus in Eats continues to be on making structural improvements that will improve customer experience and position us to be more efficient in our next phase of expansion. Adjusted EBITDA losses in the Developing Offerings segment decreased $62 million quarter-over-quarter. The key driver for this improvement was optimization efforts in our Eats offering, including enhancements in operating efficiency. Developing Offerings also includes promising initiatives outside of Eats that target additional customer spend beyond our current e-commerce segment.

Specifically, investments in video, fintech, and international have the potential to expand the TAM for Coupang beyond the forecasted $290 billion in e-commerce sales by 2025. As we do with all parts of our business, we will continue to invest and execute in keeping with our operating tenets, which we first shared publicly shortly after our IPO last year.

One, we exist to deliver new moments of wow for customers. Two, we don't start with what looks easy. We work backwards from imagining jaw-dropping customer experiences, and we embrace the hard work required to challenge trade-offs that customers take for granted. Three, we will employ technology, process innovation, and economies of scale to create amazing customer experiences and drive operating leverage and significant cash flows over time. Four, we always prioritize growth in long-term cash flows.

Five, we are disciplined capital allocators. We start with small investments, then test and iterate rigorously. We invest more capital over time in opportunities that have the best long-term cash flow potential. In closing, I want to thank our employees for their dedication in executing on these tenets, even during some of the most trying times in recent history.

It would have been easy for the team to make a trade-off between customer experience and operational discipline, to choose one and give up the other. Despite the unprecedented challenges of the last few years, our teams refused to compromise on customer experience and focused relentlessly on strong execution to delight customers and drive operational excellence.

Gaurav and I are honored to represent such an amazing team, and we're excited to work together to continue to break trade-offs and deliver even greater moments of wow for our customers in the years to come. Now, I'll turn the call over to Gaurav to review the financials in more detail.

Gaurav Anand
CFO, Coupang

Thanks, Bom. Our demand continues to remain strong despite the post-COVID reopening impacts seen here in Korea. Our total net revenue grew 12% year-over-year on a reported basis, or 27% in constant currency. Quarter-over-quarter, we grew -1.5% on a reported basis or 3.1% in constant currency. Our active customers grew 5% year-over-year but declined quarter-over-quarter by 1%.

While active customers in Product Commerce increased both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, active customers in our Coupang Eats offering declined, due in part to a -11% contraction quarter-over-quarter in the overall online food delivery segment after the loosening of COVID restrictions.

As Bom Kim noted, we continue to see strong growth in our net revenue per active customer, increasing 20% year-over-year on a constant currency basis as our customers continue to deepen their engagement with our services. Second quarter marked another record quarter with gross profit of $1.2 billion, representing 75% year-over-year improvement, or 41% excluding the impact of the FC fire in 2021. Our gross profit margin was 22.9% or 250- basis points quarter-over-quarter improvement.

This improvement is a continuation of the drivers that we saw earlier in first quarter his year. Benefits from investment in technology, infrastructure, automation, supply chain optimization, and scaling margin accretive offerings, including advertising.

For the first time as a public company, we reached positive adjusted EBITDA for the total company with $66 million in adjusted EBITDA for second quarter. This represents a $157 million quarter-over-quarter improvement that follows a $194 million quarter-over-quarter improvement in the prior quarter. Over the past two quarters, we have driven a total improvement of over $350 million, a reflection of our disciplined execution across our business.

We provided guidance at the beginning of the year that we expected adjusted EBITDA losses to be below $400 million for full year 2022. We are now raising that guidance to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA for the full year.

While we are encouraged by the ramp in profitability that we have been able to achieve over the last two quarters, the rate of improvement going forward will be a bit uneven quarter to quarter due to cadence and sequencing of optimization efforts, variances in investments, and some seasonality impacts, among other factors. As we stated at the beginning of the year, forecasting revenue growth this year with the reopening of the market after COVID remains challenging.

However, as Bom noted, we are confident that we will continue the trend of growing significantly faster than the overall Korean e-commerce segment. Overall, we are pleased with the results this quarter. We believe that our position and customer value proposition will continue to drive significant revenue expansion as well as increase our operating leverage. In light of our performance to date, we are more convinced than ever of our potential to generate long-term 7% to 10% or greater adjusted EBITDA margins. Operator, we are now ready to begin the Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Please limit your questions to two per person. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Stanley Yang with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Stanley Yang
Equity Research Analyst, JPMorgan

Thanks for the great result and congratulations. I have two questions. First question on your adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter, the quarter-over-quarter improvement has been dramatic, more than $150 million. Can you break down the driver of this net EBITDA improvement by segments or by products? The other follow question is actually when do you expect the free cash flow turning positive?

My next question is, what's your outlook for the fulfillment capacity growth and utilization in the wake of the e-commerce market growth deceleration this year? Do you have any plan to incrementally strengthen third-party fulfillment service, Rocket Delivery? What's your expectation on your Rocket Delivery volume growth this year and next year? Do you see the potential take up of the Rocket Delivery as margin accretive? Thank you.

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

Hi, Stanley. Thank you for your question. First on the drivers of the adjusted EBITDA improvement, most of the impact came from the continuous improvement programs that we also mentioned last quarter, and many of which were launched before 2022. The main drivers were improvements in technology, infrastructure, automation, supply chain optimization, and the continued growth of various offerings like advertising.

I think what hopefully is becoming more clear is that COVID last year really obscured the underlying strength of our business, some of which you're now seeing more clearly. It's hard to overstate the unprecedented pressure and problems we faced during the pandemic and how hard the team worked to get through that period to where we are now.

You know, we have operational initiatives underway targeting significant margin improvement ahead, and we do expect benefits to continue to come from you know, greater economies of scale and improved operational excellence, and the growth of higher margin categories and services. As we've stressed, the rate of improvement will not be consistent, you know, as results of the efforts will materialize unevenly. There are also some pressures from inflation, including higher fuel costs. Of course, our teams are focused on generating operational efficiencies to mitigate it.

There are some short-term disruptions and that we should highlight, but we remain confident in our ability to achieve the long-term targets of 7% to 10% or higher adjusted EBITDA for the overall business in the long- term.

You know, we continue to invest in our FLC, as you mentioned. You know, the FLC timeline isn't dictated by macro trends. It's really driven mostly by our internal execution. We're continuing to see a very positive response from our customers and merchants, which has reinforced our belief that FLC will create tremendous value for both customers and merchants.

There is a lead time to build the technology and infrastructure to scale FLC, and we continue to test and iterate and refine processes. It's still very early, but our confidence is growing that FLC will be a meaningful driver of growth and margin in the long run. We look forward to sharing more data points, Stanley, at the right time.

Gaurav Anand
CFO, Coupang

Stanley, on the FCF question, we have not given guidance on it, but of course, we continue to work towards it. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Cha with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Eric Cha
Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you for the opportunity and, myself as well, congrats on the great sets of results. I have two questions, if I may. Around Eats, obviously, it's been impacted by the slowdown of the industry, but there also seems to be a bit of idiosyncratic issues as well, if I can call it an issue. But in what ways do you plan to rationalize the unit economics on that business going forward? And at the same time, how do you balance, you know, your sort of plans to gain market share as well? That's the first question.

My second question is another question on FLC, actually. More around the strategy. How do you plan to acquire the big third-party merchants or migrate the current third-party players to the FLC? What would motivate them to do that? How will FLC impact Coupang's profitability? Thank you.

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

Eric, on FLC, as I mentioned, it's still very early. We're still testing, iterating, we're building tools, and the infrastructure to scale. You know, the intent here is to share the value and the growth that Rocket generates with our merchants. Of course, for our customers as well, we're expanding exponentially the value of Rocket Delivery to many, many more products and selection that are provided by merchants in the broader market. We're excited about the value that we can create for both customers and merchants by sharing Rocket Delivery's value with third-party merchants.

It's still very early, and I think, as we mentioned in first quarter, towards the back half of this year, we look forward to sharing more data points. On your question on Eats, you're right that we were affected by the negative 11% quarter-over-quarter slowdown in the overall food delivery sector. We saw significant improvement in Eats profitability in second quarter due to our focus on improving operational efficiencies this quarter. We're also exploring synergies between Eats and other offerings in our ecosystem to expand value for customers and improve efficiency before the next phase of expansion.

It's important to highlight, that, you know, long-term, we remain very excited about Eats' potential, and we believe it'll be a valuable and profitable offering in our ecosystem, that generates synergies with other offerings and expand the value proposition, for our customers in the ecosystem.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Seyon Park with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Seyon Park
Equity Research Analyst and VP, Morgan Stanley

Hi. Thank you. Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I think it's the first time asking questions. Yes, once again, I think the results were actually very encouraging. Given the investors' focus really on margins, I was just wondering, you know, whether you can provide a little bit more color on, you know, where you have seen the biggest gains in terms of gross profit margin improvement for the Product Commerce segment. You know, particularly, could you say that in terms of the utilization of your delivery capacity, a higher utilization is a key reason for the improvements?

I guess along those lines, how much of improvement do you foresee kind of, you know, going through the remaining two quarters of the year? Has, you know, the low-hanging fruit been taken? You know, does that make the slope a little bit more difficult in the second half, along with, you know, the impact of inflation and the slowing market overall? Do you still think that there is still a lot of room for these efficiency gains to continue? That's my first question. Second question, I think just given, you know, the other analysts have already asked on Eats, I'd like to ask just on the strategic direction for Coupang Play.

Just, you know, the function of Coupang Play and, you know, just given some of the content investments that Coupang has been doing recently, you know, obviously that's. It's a negative in terms of near-term margins. But I was just trying to see whether you had other ways you were thinking of monetizing this service over the longer term. Thank you.

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

There's many parts to unpack there, but let me start with the Product Commerce, with the overall margin improvement. I think this also touches on a question maybe I can go a little bit deeper, that Stanley mentioned. When you talk about which segment it came out, you know, the margin improvements were driven in, we have a structural advantage in the network and infrastructure that we built, in the sense that the scale advantages that are driven in one category benefits the economies of the other.

For example, our structural advantage in Fresh, of combining Fresh and general merchandise on the same logistic infrastructure allows us to, you know, provide customers not only with the best experience and delivery within hours, but also the lowest cost structure, that enables us to provide, you know, free shipping and low prices. You'll continue to see that with economies of scale, as we generate greater economies of scale, improved operational excellence across multiple segments for that reason.

Of course, our margin expansion is aided by the growth of higher margin categories and services. Much of our growth ahead is concentrated in services and offerings that are higher margin. The acceleration of our flywheel, we believe, should also, over the long-term, drive margin expansion as well.

We're very confident that there's a lot of room for margin expansion over the long-term, and we remain more confident than ever in our ability to achieve the 7% to 10% or greater EBITDA margins in the long-term. However, in the short-term, as you mentioned, there are disruptions like inflation that have led to higher fuel costs, among other things.

We continue to work through them. We were net positive this past quarter because of our team's ability to mitigate much of that impact. That continues to remain a short-term headwind going forward. On Eats, I think, you know, we continue to remain focused on making the structural improvements.

As you mentioned, there are synergies across that we believe we can capture, you know, both in creating operating efficiency as well as on monetization, across offerings in our entire ecosystem. We'll again update you as we make more progress on that front. On Play, long-term, we believe Play is an exciting opportunity to enhance WOW membership experience and capture spend currently not included in the $290 billion e-commerce opportunity in 2025.

Much of our Developing Offerings investment is in initiatives that allow us to expand the TAM beyond the $290 billion e-commerce opportunity over the next three years. We'll continue to invest in a disciplined way in those offerings, in keeping with our operating principles.

Operator

Our next question comes from James Lee with Mizuho Securities. Your line is open.

James Lee
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Mizuho Securities

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two here. First on demand by categories here. In the US, we're seeing essential products outperforming discretionary items due to inflationary pressure and shift to services.

Just curious, are you seeing a similar trend in Korea? Also help us understand what the trends look like in third quarter so far in July. Second question is on fiscal year 2022 EBITDA guidance. Now, how should we think about the EBITDA for Developing Offerings? Previously, you said you plan to lose about $200 million. Just curious what you're thinking there, you know, for fiscal year 2022 now. Thanks.

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

On your first question, you know, as we noted earlier, our revenue for active customers grew on a constant currency basis 20% year-over-year, and our customer spend continues to compound at a fast rate because we are seeing growth and strong adoption across many categories, and offerings. You know, we're still very early in our journey, and you know, we're only in the single-digit share of the overall commerce market. We continue to see customers expand their spend into newer categories from our older categories.

Customers want selection, low prices, and fast delivery for all categories. You know, we have yet to find an exception to that truth. We're seeing broad growth across multiple categories. I think that was your first question.

On your second question. I don't remember. Was it the $200 million investment in Developing Offerings? We continue to invest, as I mentioned, in long-term opportunities that may not yield revenue growth in the short-term, because we're excited about the opportunity to capture spend in fintech and video and international, for example, that help us expand the TAM over the long-term. We'll continue to do that and test and iterate, invest when we're confident in the ability to generate long-term cash flows. We'll continue to be disciplined on that front.

James Lee
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Mizuho Securities

Great. Bom, if I can ask you a follow-up question more about your investment philosophy. You know, given the fact that you guys have done a great job becoming more efficient, how should we think about your approach in terms of balancing growth and profitability going forward, and especially in Developing Offerings, right? What indicators do you need to see to double down your investments, and what do you need to see to really back off continuously to reduce losses?

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

One thing that I should point out, and I hope it's clear, is these improvements you are seeing was not created over one quarter. Many of these programs that are driving this impact today or that are materializing in the numbers today were made, you know, over many, many quarters and sometimes over many years. The continuous improvement programs that drove much of the impact, that will continue to drive much of the impact going forward, were started before this year. It was, as I mentioned in earlier calls, COVID last year obscured a lot of the underlying improvements and strength.

You know, our business tripled from 2019 to 2021, while you know, COVID presented unprecedented challenges to our operations. I cannot overstate how what an incredible job the team did not only this past couple of quarters, but throughout the couple of years of the pandemic, when we had to you know, when we refused to compromise on customer experience and continued to make progress on the underlying you know, the underlying operational excellence.

So, I hope that's clear, and I hope we don't misinterpret these results as the output of you know, a few months. You know that operational excellence is a part of our D&A. As we mentioned in our principles that we shared, not this year, but over a year ago, shortly after our IPO, we are disciplined. We test, we iterate, and when we see our hypothesis confirmed, and we have more confidence in long-term cash flow generation, we invest more.

When we don't, you know, we cap the budget. That's the same approach you'll see as we invest in Developing Offerings that have the potential to yield a lot of impact to the business, that drive meaningful growth and meaningful profits for us in the long-term.

James Lee
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Mizuho Securities

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Susie Lee with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Susie Lee
Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Hello. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two quick questions. First, I would really love to get your thoughts on, like, big macro, big picture and consumer spending trend. It seems like investors around the world seem to worry about potential recession, and a recent inflation may lead to consumer wallet shrinking and also ad budget decline. In the past couple of months, have you witnessed any changes in the behavior of your customers or advertisers?

Like, you know, customers, even the moderate things, like they seem to prefer cheaper products or any signals that the basket size declines. Or for the advertisers, they become more prudent and, they seem to delay, the advertising towards the end of this year or even next year. That would be my first question. The second thing is, I think, James also asked about this. If possible, any chance could you help us understand the latest trend in your revenue growth in July and early August? Thank you.

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

You know, as I noted, as we've mentioned, there are unpredictable variables in the near term, and growth remains difficult to forecast. We're very confident that in any scenario we'll continue to grow significantly faster than the overall e-commerce sector. As you can see, the revenue per active customer growth highlights how fast customer spend is compounding. That's happening because of strong adoption across many categories and offerings.

You know, advertising continues to grow fast, but on both trajectories, we are still very early, far from where we want to be. I don't think there's. We just see a general long-term trend that we're very encouraged by. The short-term variables make it very difficult to forecast. I think we'll, as we mentioned before this year, especially, we'll refrain from making forecasts on short-term growth.

Operator

We will now take our last question from the line of Peter Milliken with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Peter Milliken
Head of Company Research for Asia-Pacific, Deutsche Bank

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Hey, great result. Really nice to see EBITDA profit. My question really is, how did you go about improving quarter-over-quarter so much? Would you attribute that more to COVID costs coming out and efficiency costs being driven, or through margins being higher, either through this positive mix shift that you talk about or even pricing in higher pricing per item?

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

There were no price increases. Our pricing strategy, policies, and implementation are unchanged. As we mentioned, in fact, we increased our investments in benefits for our customers in free services and exclusive discount for our WOW members by over 50%, to a record $500 million in second quarter alone. We continue to invest not only in low prices and fast delivery and richer experiences, but also in new benefits and services and offerings for the long-term, like the ones we highlighted in Developing Offerings. As I've repeated, these results were not produced by efforts in just one quarter.

Our improvements around process technology, supply chain optimization, you know, automation, infrastructure were driven by continuous improvement programs that preceded, many of which preceded this year. Now, some of those efforts did accelerate as we directed more resources towards them. You know, resources that have been previously tied up in response to pandemic-related challenges. You know, it's not a single short-term variable that drove this broad-based improvement in margin.

Peter Milliken
Head of Company Research for Asia-Pacific, Deutsche Bank

Got it. Okay. While I have you on the line, could you maybe perhaps give us your views on the competitive space that we have now? We've seen a lot of investment go into your competitors or at least planned to over the last year. With the post-COVID slowdown, do you see that continuing or any sign of change?

Bom Kim
Founder and CEO, Coupang

I think we can say that more so than at any point in our history, the core drivers of our business are unaffected by competition. Our share of product e-commerce growth has increased every quarter since IPO, including this past second quarter. That acceleration is the result of our investments, our innovation to provide customer value, a relentless focus on customer value and operational excellence.

You know, that's where we're spending all of our time and energy. I think we're more confident than ever in our ability to deliver for customers and unaffected by competition, you know, more so than at any point in our history.

Peter Milliken
Head of Company Research for Asia-Pacific, Deutsche Bank

Okay. Great to hear. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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