Earnings Call: Q1 2021

Jun 1, 2021

Earnings release

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the First Quarter of 2021 Earnings Conference Call for Light in the Box Holdings Company Limited. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Rune Van D'Estijen for opening remarks and instructions. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Rani. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Lightinthebox First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. The company's earnings results were released earlier today and are available on the company's IR website as well as through PR Newswire. Today, you will hear from Lightinthebox CEO, Mr. Jiang He, who will give an overview of the company's strategies and recent developments, followed by Ms. Young Yoon, the company's Chief Financial Officer, who will go over financial results. Together with them today is Ming Wen Liu, the company's Chief Growth Officer. All will be available for Q and A at the end of this presentation. Before we proceed, I would like to remind you of our Safe Harbor statement. Please note that the discussion today may contain certain forward looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U. S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. To understand the factors that could cause results to materially differ from those in the forward looking statements, please refer to our Form 20F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21, 2021. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward looking statements, except as required under applicable law. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. He. Mr. He, please go ahead. Thanks, Rene, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We have a solid past quarter. Starting the year with revenue of $105,000,000 up 118% from the same period of 2020 and in line with our prior guidance. As we continue to execute our established strategy, we are pleased to see the growth across all of our major operating regions. Our gross profit margin in Q1 was 43.6%, largely flat compared to the same period of 2020, where adjusted EBITDA grew by close to 60% year over year. Product sales increased 119% compared to Q1 last quarter and the revenue from apparel increased 156%. Among all categories, apparel is still the largest, which contributing 53% of total product sales in Q1 compared with the 43% in Q1 last year. This category has a 4 spectrum ranging from adult fashion, casualwear, sportswear, children's growth and so on, which covers customers' daily needs for various occasions. We have been leveraging our new technology to improve operational efficiency and to build a strong foundation for gross profit incumbents. R and D spending came to $4,900,000 in Q1 2021 compared with $3,500,000 in the same quarter last year. As we continue to invest in R and D, we have better insights in our customers' needs and wants, which drive the improvements of the supply chain in terms of product quality, design and the production cycle. We can also be more proactive to the faster training and the diversified consumer needs with the help of technology. For 2021, we will continue to implement the strategies to achieve sustainable growth and enhance our platform to be more responsive and user friendly. So, customers will enjoy the convenience of online shopping even more on other websites and the mobile app. I will now turn the call over to Yanjun to go through the financial results. Thank you, Mr. He, and thank you everyone for joining the call. I will now review our financial results for the Q3. Let me remind you that all numbers quoted are in U. S. Dollars. Total revenue was $112,000,000 up 117.5 percent year over year from $51,500,000 This was mainly driven by strong growth in product sales, which were $109,400,000 versus 49 $900,000 in the same period in 2020 and the growth in services and other, which was 2.6 $1,000,000 compared with $1,600,000 in the same quarter of 2020. Included in product sales, revenues from apparel increased by 166 percent to 57.6 $1,000,000 in the Q1 of 2021 compared with $21,700,000 in the Q1 of 2020. Gross profit was $52,300,000 compared with $23,900,000 during the same period last year. Gross margin was 46.6%, slightly higher than 46.4% in the same quarter of 2020, primarily due to our continued efforts to optimize the supply chain. Total operating expenses were $50,900,000 compared with $27,100,000 during the same quarter of 2020. The increase was mainly due to the increase in selling and marketing expenses. Our operating expenses, fulfillment expenses were $7,200,000 compared with $5,000,000 in the same quarter of 2020. As a percentage of total revenue, fulfillment expenses were 6.5% compared with 9.8% in the same quarter of 2020 and 6.7% in the Q4 of 2020. Selling and marketing expenses were $35,600,000 compared with $14,800,000 in the same quarter of 2020. As a percentage of total revenue, selling and marketing expenses were 31.8% compared with 28.7% in the same quarter of 2020 and 33.1% in the Q4 of 2020. G and A expenses were $8,400,000 compared with $7,300,000 in the same quarter of 2020. As a percentage of total revenue, G and A expenses were 7 point 5% compared with 14.1% in the same quarter of 2020 and 7.9% in the Q4 of 2020. Included in G and A expenses, R and D expenses were $4,900,000 compared with $3,500,000 in the same quarter of 2020 and $4,800,000 in the Q4 of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA, which represent income from operations before share based compensation expense, interest income, interest expense, income tax expense and depreciation and amortization expenses was $2,300,000 in the Q1 of 2021 compared with $1,400,000 in the same quarter of 2020. Net income was $1,400,000 compared with $700,000 in the same quarter of 2020. Net income per ADS was $0.01 compared with $0.01 in the same quarter of 2020. As of March 31, 2021, we had cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of $60,100,000 compared with $65,500,000 as of December 31, 2020. Finally, for the Q2 2021 guidance, based on information currently available and business seasonality, we expect net revenues to be between $130,000,000 100 and $45,000,000 representing a growth rate between 14% to 27% compared with the Q2 of 2020. Excluding the net revenues from sales of personal protective equipment, which are no longer showing 2021, the year over year growth in net revenues for the Q2 of 2021 will be 48% to 65%. This concludes our prepared remarks. At this point, we are ready to take some questions. Operator? Thank you. First question comes from the line of Matthew of National Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. Great quarter. Certainly on the top line, that's the 3rd, Q4 in a row where you have all shown tremendous growth on the top line. Got a question for you though. The profitability is not at the same level as your top line growth. Last quarter, you actually had a small loss even though you were up 100% or something plus. And then this quarter, you have a small profit and a small increase in EBITDA. Can you give me a reason for that, please? Thank you for your question. Because actually the Q1, we have this Chinese New Year, so due to some seasonality issue, we had slightly lower profit in terms of the percentage. I'm sorry. I missed that. You're saying that this Q1, you actually had a slightly smaller gross profit or what have you. I didn't catch that because it looked like you came in at a penny like last year, but your EBITDA was slightly higher, dollars 2,000,000 Okay. Let me rephrase my answer. It's due to our 20 year seasonality issue in terms of the supply chain efficiency. It's likely lower as compared to last year's quarter 4. So yes, that is the reason why the bottom line didn't really grow as the top line. Is there what is your strategy, your game plan to increase the bottom line? Or are you just reinvesting most of your revenue gains back into the company? You have a very nice balance sheet, a little the cash was slightly lower than last quarter, but you're an e commerce company and you're trading well below one time sales, which is quite unusual. So there's a big opportunity here for investors like myself to be able to invest in a company whose business model has changed in the last few years, your product mix and what have you, so that if you can see some money falling to the bottom line, this stock could be worth several times what it is currently. But obviously, at the end of the day, you got to some money or if not, if you could explain the strategy as to, 1, just focusing on growth versus profitability? Or is profitability going to come in the near term? Okay. As you have been seeing for the past 2 years, we have already stabilized the overall efficiency and we have a better bottom line performance over the past 2 years. And in this coming year, even the few years, so going forward, definitely our priority will be, 1st of all, the revenue growth. 2nd will be the cash flow. Thirdly, it comes to the profit. So as an e commerce company, we can't only have good profit without any revenue growth. So I believe for us, we are trying to have a healthy and sustainable growth followed by a good cash flow followed by the bottom line performance. I see. So you expect for the year seasonally, your Q1 is not your strongest. So that's what made this quarter very exciting as far as your performance. Do you expect to be profitable for the year on a net income basis? That's a good question. I can't make any conclusion right now. I can't really give you any guidance. I'm not an important pillar, but definitely we are running this company and we hope we can have a sustainable growth as so as the profit performance. So what we are trying to do, as you can see for the past 2 years, we are trying to stabilize the operational efficiency in order to reduce the overall cost. And this coming year, even though we are going to have better revenue growth, but at the same time, we are still looking closely at all the cost factors and try to stabilize the bottom line as well. All right. I mean, as long as ultimately that's your goal. If I look back at, say, even Amazon, for many, many years, they were not profitable, and it was part of their strategy to grow and to reinvest any cash flows they had into the company. So it was not falling to the bottom line. They were not profitable. However, they were growing dramatically. And I'm hoping that you all have a similar strategy because for many years, your company did not grow, but you've had really explosive, really strong growth over the last year. And presumably you have a lot larger customer base that are repeat customers. And that on a run rate right now, it looks like you'll do $500,000,000 at least this year, assuming that this is the seasonally weakest quarter. And for a company whose market capitalization is significantly below as an investor, I would expect to see dramatic growth in your share price. So hopefully, that's the goal of your company to see a higher share price. Okay. I think I'm going to address this concerning a few points. First of all, as the online retail e commerce platform, cash flow is very important. Even though Amazon was not profit at all, but it has positive cash flow. So that's why we are also emphasizing our cash flow. Yes, I believe for a healthy retail company cash flow positive cash flow is pretty important. Secondly, as we've mentioned, we have a big customer base. So for the past few years, for past 2 years, we have tried our best to improve the supply chain, try to provide our customers with better quality products at lower cost. So we need some time to have a stronger customer base so that we can have more returning customers and reduce the marketing spending. All right. That sounds good to me. All right. Thanks so much for your time. And again, congratulations on a great quarter and for some very strong guidance you gave for the Q2. Thank you. Thank you for your question, Sue. Thank you. Thank you.