The format for today will be a management presentation for the first 20 or so minutes, followed by Q&A. We will have a total of 30 minutes. For those of you in the audience who would like to ask a question, please type your question into the Q&A box at the bottom of your Zoom screen, and I'll read the questions out loud. With no further delay, Iman, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Anthony. Thank you for having us. Hello, everybody. Thank you for your time and your interest in the GigaCloud story. Let's get started. GigaCloud, the ticker GCT on Nasdaq, is a global business-to-business operator of big and bulky marketplaces. That's really a lot of big words for saying that we run a marketplace for B2B that happens to be a lot of big and bulky products such as furniture. We aim to bring efficiency to that entire supply chain and the way people do wholesale. To look at the company history, you have to look at 2010. That's when the company pivoted from the original business model. Larry, our founder, graduated from Yale and became the CEO of the online division of a vocational training company and then pivoted that business model as he faced a crash in 2007, 2008 in the Japanese market to e-commerce education.
We started experimenting with e-commerce ourselves, selling pretty much anything. The company became the number one supplier of suitcases in Japan. I guess everybody stopped work to identify the source of this success, and they came up with two keywords: big and bulky and non-standard. That today is our DNA and where we focus. Obviously, we expanded that business e-commerce into the U.K. market, then into the U.S. market in 2013. We entered the European Union and set up through the Germany market introduction in 2017. In 2019, we shifted the business model from being a distributorship e-commerce of furniture to an operator of a business-to-business marketplace. We brought our suppliers onto the marketplace and asked them to compete with us, selling to our buyers. That's how we kickstarted the ecosystem.
The ecosystem, as you can see today, accounts for $1.4 billion in GMV, connects 1,169 manufacturers to roughly 10,000 + resellers. With that being said, the company went IPO in 2022, and we opened up an office in the Malaysian market. We acquired two companies in 2023: Noble House and Wondersign. Wondersign operated roughly four or five thousand digital signage in retail brick-and-mortar settings. It happened to be a tech stack play for us to enable those kiosks to transact and to be a consumer-facing conduit for the B2B marketplace so the retailers can use it. Noble House was an online distributor of e-commerce furniture. They had a category of furniture that we were not particularly strong in, in an outdoor and infrastructure that were attractive to us.
2024 was a very, very proud year for us here working at GigaCloud because in addition to being included in the Russell 2000 Index, we were named by Forbes as the number one most successful small-cap company in America on a list that has renewable energy, AI, robotics, and truly for a furniture company, quite an honor. The financials will tell an interesting story. I would like to highlight that we have $0 of debt. Again, $0 of debt on the balance sheet. The only liability is unpaid rent for all our facilities and as an accounting treatment. The business has performed as far as the growth and profitability over its history. You guys can see that there's over $300 million worth of cash on the balance sheet. You guys can see the scale of the marketplace at $1.4 billion. The GMV growth year -over -year, about 31%.
The contributions from 3P. When we talk about 1P and 3P, we denote ownership of the inventory. Similar to that initial distributorship that I talked about as a DNA of the company, when the company buys the inventory, we call that 1P. We sell through the marketplace. When 3P is involved, it's completely independent of us and folks transacting with each other, factories coming to market through us. That accounted for $758 million, growing for us 33%. On the seller side, you guys can see the metrics. Over 1,100 suppliers are working with us at the current time. 10,951 resellers are sourcing from the marketplace, and the two are working together. The buyer growth for us was also quite substantial, 51%, and the average spent $131,000. You can see it's sticky because furniture as a category is a non-frequent purchase.
When you buy a sofa, you kind of go out of the market for a few years. You're hoping it's a long time. When it comes to wholesale, there are transactions on a daily basis, so that's kind of depicted in the numbers. The capital allocation, we raised $41 million during the IPO and since then have returned about $2 million in share repurchases in 2023 and $87 million expenditure on the two acquisitions that I highlighted, the Noble House and Wondersign, and $69 million of shares that were purchased in 2024 from the open market. We focus on that product category of non-standard, big and bulky because it's super fragmented and the crown jewel of our business. One of the reasons that is contributing to our success is our business model. We call it supplier-fulfilled retailing. It basically is as simple as the name suggests.
We envision a world where the supplier takes the inventory risk and the reseller is in a position where they operate asset-light. They would drive in and convert traffic. When sold, the supplier will deliver to the end consumer and will enable that entire cycle for end-to-end logistics. Furniture happens to be mostly produced in Asia and Southeast Asia. That end-to-end global fulfillment system is partnering up as a hand-to-hand operator with the marketplace itself, the tech stack on top of the logistics infrastructure to make that come true. We are also bringing manufacturers directly to markets, taking out the middleman. That is another efficiency that we are introducing. The supplier-fulfilled retailing by virtue, because it allows a fulfillment from a cloud warehousing system, removes a redundant touchpoint, which happens to be the retailer's warehouse.
This slide kind of depicts real quick the very easy flow of things that the seller lists the product. We also come up with a nationwide flat rate ocean shipping rate and in turn create a nationwide flat rate shipping rate to any zip code in the America, as I'll showcase in a few slides. It will all make sense for you. The buyer, the reseller, will discover the product. They'll source from the marketplace and resell on various channels, whether it's their own website or an Amazon Web Store or a furniture brick-and-mortar retail that puts a floor model on the floor and takes an order against it. The consumer interacts with it, buys the item, and the order flows through our system. In a lot of the cases, there are API connectors that do this automatically.
Giga, on behalf of the manufacturer, will fulfill directly to the end consumer. The reason why we're called GigaCloud is Giga refers to big and bulky, and Cloud is a term Larry borrowed from cloud computing to denote the idea that this cloud warehousing system exists where the product sits within. When the reseller sells, they don't even know where it is. They'll download the product to the end consumer's doorstep. Allow me to just jump forward a couple of slides to show you the marketplace to tie everything together, and then we can come back and cover those. One more slide. Perfect. This is a snapshot of a marketplace product page. As you guys can see, this item, this chaise lounger, can go to any zip code for $37.08. If I'm a reseller, if I run Iman's beautifulfurniture .com, I want to focus on the chaise loungers.
I come and I'm like, okay, this is great. Maybe I can buy this for, obviously, the supplier is already listing discount for additional units to be purchased. There's even a margin transaction where if I want to buy quantities of this item, but I'm not sure, but I do want to run a promotion, I'm kind of certain I can put down a deposit and the supplier will hold it for me. If the items don't perform, I just relinquish the deposit in exchange for them losing opportunity cost. That allows me to also buy the item on a discount. Very similar to securities, how they're traded. That's how easy we make trading of big and bulky. The information is all here at my fingertips. A resource packet could be downloaded. Obviously, all of these could be automated as well. The shipping costs where everything is simplified.
This item, assuming it was bought for $175 wholesale, will cost me $37.08, whether it goes to Tallahassee or Southern California and San Diego. I know my all-in cost is $212.08. I can list this for $300 and pocket the difference as my gross margin all day. The beauty of the marketplace is that we don't rely solely on the matching because most of the value we provide is in the business model and the end-to-end logistics and the marketplace that we operate. We allow the supplier and the reseller to exchange and communicate openly. I could message the seller and say, "Hey, I have two stores in Southern California.
Would you be willing to give me this product at $145 by multiple units or whatever the terms of trade could be?" Yes, the answer is the supplier gets to set different pricing for different buyers and that way manage their business. In fact, a lot of these factories that work with us are working with hundreds of buyers, including our 1P business, all managing their business through the marketplace. Not only with a few clicks and with no infrastructure, they come to market, but also through the backend, kind of an industrial software that we have, they manage their entire business. It's just an ERP that they run their entire business on and manage the supply chain.
Going back to some of the slides that are skipped over, technically, the business model supplier-fulfilled retailing stipulates that the reseller is an asset-light state, and we solve the fluctuations and instability of the supply chain for them so they can focus on their core competency, which happens to be driving and converting traffic. The supplier's core competency should be in R&D and developing new products. We do the same thing for them by providing the infrastructure and the IT tech stack to manage their business. All in all, helping the efficiency across the spectrum, stimulating transactions between the two parties. Obviously, from the 1P side, we clip product revenue by selling the product, but from the 3P side, we collect the transaction rate along with various revenues that we clip for services we provide in transportation and storage. The business, as I mentioned, has three components to it.
The 1P that denotes inventory ownership, 3P completely independent of GigaCloud, factories coming to market through us, transacting with the resellers, and the logistics infrastructure that ties everything together that is shared between the two 1P and 3P. This slide highlights the buyer cohort. The number is inching close to 11,000, as I mentioned. The buyer cohort is growing. The truth is, the two things to look for always to assess the health of our marketplace is the growth of GMV and then the adoption of the 3P GMV. Those are the two metrics that determine the health of the marketplace because as the suppliers show up, product variety shows up. As product variety shows up, buyers show up to source from the marketplace. That basically is the cycle that we fully go through. The marketplace snapshot here, the marketplace so far boasts over 50,000 SKUs.
Furniture happens to be our biggest vertical, but we do anything that is big and bulky. Do not forget that is our DNA. We are in outdoor, like outdoor tools and heating and auto parts and trampolines and chicken coops and fitness equipment and bath accessories and other categories that happen to be big and bulky, such as pet supplies. As you can see, Christmas trees is highlighted here as a picture. Our tech stack helps us manage the entire journey of the end-to-end logistics and the product business as we do the sourcing, the reselling of the goods ourselves, the 1P components. The entire ecosystem is run on algorithms and the load balancing that we create by forward positioning the inventory in the correct place so that we can generate the correct nationwide flat rate, the competitive nationwide flat rate that fuels the transaction that connects everything together.
Obviously, you guys can see we import a lot of containers into the various markets that we operate in. The 30,000 number is listed here into 16 ports. Our logistics footprint expands over 10.7 million sq ft of space globally and 36 in count in five countries. Within the U.S., we're talking about big and bulky. We specialize in getting the products to the end consumer in approximately three days. That kind of speaks volumes to our use of algorithms and correctly forward positioning the inventory. As you guys can see, in the U.S. alone, we are in 25 different warehouses across four different states. Obviously, a big chunk in California, 15, one in Dallas, Texas, six in the state of Georgia, three in the state of New Jersey, and one in Milton, Ontario.
The same marketplace also exists in the European market and the Japanese market as our first entry point. The sourcing happens to be Southeast Asia, China, and India at the moment. With that being said, I would like to take a pause. Thank you for your time, and I'll be delighted to go over some questions.
Thank you very much, Iman, for sharing the GigaCloud story. Great to get an update. As a reminder, if you have a question, you could type your questions in the Q&A box at the bottom of your Zoom screen. We already have a few questions here. Let's start with those. Can you just talk about your geographic growth opportunities? Which ones in particular do you think are attractive?
With the events that ensued after Liberation Day, there has been an influx of interest coming from 3P sellers into wanting to work with the European Union. The European Union was already a growth driver for us, but less so on the 3P front. It was more a 1P operation for us. Now we're seeing an influx of 3P sellers that want to explore that market. We talked about Canada. Obviously, that's another market that's being looked at. Those are two that are at the forefront of opportunities.
Gotcha. Can you remind us how much business do you do in the Europe now?
I think I have to double-check the numbers. It is still not as significant as the U.S., but I want to say 20%, 25%. I can check the exact number and get back to you.
Okay. Yeah, sure. No problem at all here. Can you talk about competition? Who do you view as your main competitive? Just overall, looking at who's out there, if you could talk to that, that would be helpful.
I'll be delighted to. In terms of an operator of a business-to-business marketplace with end-to-end logistics, there are no current other players in this space. There is a company called fFaire.com, F-A-I-R-E.com. They kind of boast a similar marketplace. The only difference is they specialize in lighter items. They don't do big and bulky. They are Silicon Valley -based. For a short while, we had like a copycat that came into the market, but then they fizzed away. No real competitor as far as the business model is concerned.
Okay. Can you talk about pricing trends? What have you done so far with pricing, given inflation or tariffs? How do you see pricing trends going forward?
Furniture is a non-standard item. For the most part, there is a little bit of elasticity, meaning that if I showed you my chair and I told you it's $63 and I told you it's $57 and I told you it's $74, there's really no basis for you to refute any of those price points unless you can carve it open and you know the cost of the material and you can kind of delineate that way. There is a tiny bit of elasticity in the price point. What we saw ensued after a deliberation day was an initial tariff out of China of 100 and something percentage points. A lot of those we'll try to pass on, so does every other person that dabbles in the category to the end consumer.
Whenever benchmarking exists in the market, you can't really pass it on because that same chair that I talked about, if you see a similar product to that being sold as a consumer, you can't really pay the difference. You cannot justify it. Those are the times that the price compression could occur. I believe Erica in our disclosures for last quarter in the earnings call expressed a 2.5% margin compression that she oversees coming in next quarter that will basically contribute to this hike in price where we cannot pass the entire price to the end consumer just because of what I just mentioned.
Got it. Okay. You've done a couple of acquisitions here fairly recently. On your last call, you talked about the Noble House portfolio being a meaningful margin contributor. Can you just provide more details on that and your expectations going forward for Noble House?
Absolutely. Noble House was an outdoor category. They actually did almost, I think, $700 million a year during the pandemic. It was just a very unhealthy business. They got really affected by inventory devaluation when the ocean rates went up to $20,000 and they couldn't exit out of those bad SKUs fast enough. The business kind of toppled. For us, in addition, by the way, there's a PowerPoint deck in the investor relations you guys can download where we delve into this in more detail. The infrastructure itself was very attractive to us. They had a lot of leases on big buildings that were below the market. There were a lot of supply chain efficiencies across the board that were kind of attractive to us that, in addition to the product line, we figured it's very attractive. The business was losing about 7%.
We just announced that we turned it into 7% positive, which is quite a remarkable feat. We did so by discontinuing products that were non-performing, developing new SKUs, and relaunching them. You guys should see contribution from Noble House continue to come in as we introduce new SKUs.
Gotcha. Okay.
Keep in mind the seasonality of the business.
Of course. Right. Can you talk about your acquisition pipeline currently in terms of availability, valuation, and your willingness to do additional acquisitions?
Yes, sir. With the cash balance, we're in the market looking, and there are three buckets in terms of acquisitions that we're always interested for. Obviously, from a tech front, anything that adds to our proprietary tech stack to make it easy for our participants to do business, that's something in an area that we can always look at. Number two is any business that allows us to expand our footprint into brick -and -mortar. As you guys know, Wayfair talks about the TAM for the entire space to be $130 billion. They also specify like 25% or so of the transactions to be online. We're in the same exact space. Brick -and -mortar represents a big chunk of the store. We're always trying to figure out a way to service our customers in the brick- and- mortar in addition to online.
Any company that can help us with that infrastructure or reach. The third bucket is obviously the European business. We talked about it. It is growing fast for us. Any infrastructure play where we can expand our footprint and gain efficiency would be of interest to us in Europe as well.
Can you also talk to the decline in the year-to-year earnings comparisons of analysts' estimates in the second half of the year?
Absolutely. I think a lot of it could be attributed to the state of the economy itself. There is softening of consumer demands. The new home sales are down. Obviously, the tariffs have had an effect. The consumer discretionary spend, the non-durables are down. It is without a doubt an environment that could be classified as very tough for business. Again, the light at the end of the tunnel is like we're operating in very, very difficult times. Despite all of those, the fundamentals allow us to kind of stay on track, deliver growth, and of course, most importantly, profitability.
Just to follow up about the tariffs, is there any way you guys quantify the impact of tariffs on your business this year?
It's very hard to answer that because there's a lot of dynamics in play. Number one, a lot of the manufacturers happen to have started a shift in production facilities to other countries. For instance, like Southeast Asia, Vietnam was booming, but now other countries are popping up in Thailand and Cambodia. There are people that have acquired facilities. They have the expertise, the know-how, and they quickly get stuff up and running. They operate within the markets that don't have as high as tariffs. That's one thing to consider. Also, the elasticity of the product category being non-standard. Again, to that topic, there are portions of it that are completely passed on to the end consumer. It's really dependent on the introduction of new designs. When the new designs come in, they get to enjoy the higher margins because there is no basis for comparison.
They need to be liquidated. Also, in the big scheme of things, there are times that the product has to be liquidated because it's no longer competitive. All of these are kind of working in together, making it very, very difficult to really assess exactly what the effects could be. I think we'll give guidance on the top line. Erica specifically mentioned that she kind of oversees a 2.5% compression on the margins just due to the fact that we're kind of dealing with this whole dynamic.
Understood. Okay. You've had very robust increases in your marketplace. For instance, in your last earnings release, you talked about a 31% increase in your marketplace GMV, a 33% increase in your 3P seller marketplace GMV. I guess two-part question. What's driving that? Secondly, how do you guys go about finding new sellers and buyers for the marketplace?
We have business development officers all over Asia and China. We can cover every city, every town, and search for these manufacturers. Our goal is to introduce them to the business model and allow them to utilize the infrastructure to make choices available for the resellers. In the various markets that we deal with the buyers, the same thing is happening. We're focusing on brick-and-mortar retailers, being present in the industry, and continuing to push to bring in the buyers and sellers by having boots on the ground and continuing to push the educational component of the business model being so disruptive.
Gotcha. All right. Can you also give us an update on your labor needs and hiring trends that you foresee?
That's an interesting question. I have to think about it for a second. Given the stability of the business as a whole within the U.S. market, I think things we expect to remain kind of the same. If anything, it's the growth that is accounted for that is not out of the norm. It's nothing that we expect is going to grow disproportionately. However, in the European Union, things are definitely taking off. That's one market that we're actively assessing very, very closely on a daily basis, the usage of the facilities, the number of the workers, the output, how to optimize the entire cycle. That's an area of focus for us when it comes to planning. The U.S. is very, I would say, stable at this point.
Okay, that's good to hear. As far as the European business, it is obviously smaller than the U.S. In terms of just thinking about the longer-term outlook, could it be as big as the U.S. at some point, do you think? Do you think the U.S. still will be a majority?
I think they'll definitely be comparable in size. The European Union collectively could rival maybe 70%, 80%, maybe 100% of the U.S. output. Again, keep in mind that things within the U.S. are not optimal at this time. This is definitely not a bullish market. It's definitely a bear market when it comes to furniture itself. We're in tough times already. We'll see the European Union continue to grow as an alternative to the U.S. When the economy turns, when the new home sales start to pick up, the U.S. always will be the shining star, I believe, personally.
Okay. That's fair. I guess the last question, I guess you may have already answered this, but as the last question we have is, what keeps you up at night?
I have a good answer for that one. My daughter, just kidding. I have a one-and-a-half-year-old. She's teething.
Okay, I'll do it.
She's definitely contributing. Honestly, for me personally, on a business front, we're going through a lot of challenges. There's nothing that keeps you up. I think the business is run extremely well. It's a healthy business, profitable business, growing. We're dealing with challenges. These are day-to-day challenges. The beauty of these challenges is that they're not isolated to Giga. What I'm working on on a daily basis is no different than what everybody else might, like companions, my competitors, even though we don't really have one directly, that are dealing with at the same time. With that being said, it just comes down to execution and belief in our business model.
Understood. Okay. All right. We're already out of time. If you have any closing remarks, I'll let you go ahead with that. Otherwise, we'll wrap up the webinar here.
I appreciate the time and everybody's attention. Have yourself a great day. I guess we'll closely monitor what's going to happen in a few hours with the rate cuts or lack of.
All right. Thank you very much, Iman, for again sharing the GigaCloud story. Thank you also, everyone, listening in and asking thoughtful questions as well. With that, we'll wrap it up and have a productive day. Thank you.
Thank you.
Take care.