Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LexinFintech third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now I'd like to hand the conference over to Ms. Echo Yan, IR Director of LexinFintech. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to LexinFintech third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With us on the line today are CEO Jay Xiao, President Jared Wu, and CFO Sunny Sun. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that the call and presentation contain business outlook and forward-looking statements, which are based on assumptions as of today. The actual results may differ materially, and we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Jay will first provide an update on our performance. Sunny will cover the financial results in more detail. Lastly, Jared then will discuss risk management. I will now turn the call over to Jay. His remarks will be in Chinese, and an English translation will be followed. Jay, please.
[Foreign language].
Hello, everyone. It's my pleasure to speak with you again. In the third quarter, amid variety of COVID resurgence and somewhat pressured macroeconomy, we achieved a result that not only continued the recovery trend but also the path of. Our second and third quarter results demonstrated that our previous obstacles have passed, and a sustainable track of clear change for the better. Our loan volume exceeded the previous guidance at CNY 53 billion, reaching CNY 56.2 billion for the last quarter, representing an increase of 14% QoQ. Revenue at CNY 2.7 billion, representing an increase of 12% QoQ. Net profit at CNY 280 million, representing an increase of 65% QoQ. Overall outstanding loan balance at CNY 94.6 billion, representing an increase of 9% QoQ.
Total registered users at 180 million, representing an increase of 19% YoY. Since the beginning of this year, our asset quality, funding cost, and loan volume improved, providing improvement in our profitabilities. Net margin improved steadily from 4.8% in the first quarter to 10.2% in the third quarter. The improvement continued in the fourth quarter. Based on our confidence in strategy and growth potential, the company repurchase program remains in execution. As of September 30, 2022, the company had repurchased approximately 20 million ADSs for approximately $44 million under this repurchase program. In addition, a new share repurchase program has been authorized, under which the company could purchase up to an aggregate of $20 million over the next 12 months from November 17, 2022.
Our ongoing recovery trend is accomplished thanks to our asset quality prioritized solution strategy that's been applying consistently, which is lowering our risk level, refining operations, and backing asset quality to the improvement of profitability. In particular, the asset quality will continue to strengthen our risk management team by introducing several talents in the industry to join us this quarter. We have also strengthened our investment in data and the models to continuously improve the accuracy of risk identification. I would like to elaborate more on these subjects now.
[Foreign language]
On the acquisition front. In the third quarter, we reinforced our online customer acquisition capabilities by expanding the leverage of the use of external data resources and deepening the cooperation bond with our advertisement partners to generate over 30 customer acquisition models. For the last quarter, our acquisition went down 14% YoY, and new customer per capita increased by 31% in September compared with that number in June.
[Foreign language]
In terms of our existing customers, we continue to enhance our capabilities into a more refined operation in customer management by incorporating external data resources with our own database, which contained many years of data and increased our data abundance by 30%, extended the degree of the direct connection of the use of the credit reports from PBOC, and derived nearly 400,000 risk identification dimensions. On top of that, we established and perfected a new risk model based on different trading patterns, increasing its accuracy by 10%.
On the operational strategy front, we followed one of our priorities in exploring the potential of our qualified customers, to whom we provided higher credit lines and lower interest rates and boosted their contribution in values throughout their life cycles. Meanwhile, we are continuing the course of a steady reduction of high risk customers to further stabilize our risk level.
[Foreign language]
Through these approaches, our asset structure was improved to the next level for the third quarter. Low-risk customer loan origination volume increased by 70% QoQ, and average contribution increased by 44%. In the meantime, the ARPU of our active customers increased by 33% YoY, and the incremental scale of loan origination conversion of the existing users exceeded CNY 2 billion. In the third quarter, the 30+ day delinquency rate was 4.61%, which decreased 0.24 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. Well, while the 90+ day delinquency rate was at 2.66%, the day one delinquency rate continued to be decreased quarter-over-quarter, while the 30-day collection rate was maintained at about 90% with a steady increase.
[Foreign language]
All these cannot be done without the assistance of the optimization of our data and technology capabilities, which has always been the core driving engine of the development of the company. In the third quarter, research and development expenses were CNY 140 million, a 7% increase year-over-year, continuing to take the lead of the industry. The smart business engine continued to be iteratively upgraded. In terms of the system capabilities, we established mechanisms or systems such as our user LTV model, indicator variation alert, and intelligent attribution scheme. We increased the coverage of agile e-commerce business scenarios to 100%, which greatly improved the company's decision-making and operational efficiency. In terms of AI applications, we strengthened the exploration application of deep learning to identify user risks from more dimensions, and the risk identification ability of new customers has been improved by 20%.
The series of marketing models based on federated learning and joint modeling has improved the marketing conversion of new and existing customers by more than 35%.
[Foreign language]
A little bit on the business ecosystem surrounded by our three main businesses. The Double 11 e-commerce festival has just passed, and our Fenqile platform delivered an encouraging performance. From October 24th to November 12th, total GMV increased by 97% YoY, and the number of transactions and users increased by 94% and 70% respectively. Benefiting from the consumption scenarios of the Fenqile platform, our installment consumption scenarios led by Lehua Card reached a 15% increase year-over-year in transaction volume, and our pool of transaction users increased by 30% YoY. Leveraging the advantages of consumption scenarios and focusing on high-quality customer operations, our new consumption-driven local-based service business has continued to grow this year.
[Foreign language]
in consumption scenarios and core capabilities of data analysis and technology keep its progress of integrating with the business, which forms a circular enhancement path. Our high frequency consumption driven local based business puts LexinFintech at an advantage of having opportunities to generate more high quality customers for credit-driven business. Accumulated technology and risk management experience, and the capabilities of credit-driven business allow us to further provide services to our financial institutions and merchants, as well as promote synergetic development of our technology-driven platform business. The synergistic development makes LexinFintech connected with more funding pools and scenarios. A virtuous circle thus formed. LexinFintech's unique business ecosystem with three diversified revenue drivers allows us to more robustly respond to the complex and changing external environment. Let me spend a few minutes to update you about LexinFintech's corporate social responsibility, our CSR initiatives.
In the second quarter, we launched a specific program called to help SMEs to deal with their cash liquidity challenges. The program continues. The total amount of small and micro loans was CNY 5.4 billion in the third quarter. For SMEs more affected by the pandemic resurgence, we took several measures to help them tide over the difficulty. In addition, we also upgraded our customer protection initiatives in the fourth quarter by launching the 5S Guardian System, which makes full use of the AI technology to strengthen data security, anti-fraud protection safeguard, conduct standards, intelligence customer service, and strike for combating financial blackmail. All of the five I's together, 5S's together allows us to build a comprehensive security firewall for customers. Looking into the future, we will stay positive with an optimistic attitude to pursue continuous sustainable quality development.
We will do our bit to aid offline stores or even real business development with our advanced FinTech technologies while providing support to young people and SMEs. We will continue to strengthen the company's underlying capabilities, optimize our customer segmentation operation strategy, and improve profitability by reducing the cost while increasing efficiency. Thus, making LexinFintech better prepared for any future challenges and uncertainties. The current momentum can be maintained in the fourth quarter, and our loan origination is expected to be in line with the volume of this quarter. Let me now hand over the call to our CFO for financial updates. Thank you.
Thank you, Jay Xiao. Good morning and good evening, everyone. It's my pleasure speaking to you again. I'm excited to report that despite external uncertainties, our third quarter performance continued with a positive and upward trend, guided by our principle of pursuing sustainable and quality growth. We continue to build up a diversified revenue structure, advanced risk identification capabilities, and operational efficiencies. Our never-ending efforts on technology innovation and digital transformation also contributed to the achievement of Q3's performance. Now, let me go through some key financial and operational metrics with you. Total loan origination in the third quarter was CNY 66.2 billion, representing a 14.4% growth quarter-over-quarter. The outstanding loan balance stood at CNY 94.6 billion, delivering a 9.2% increase compared with last quarter.
If we look at the results at the end of fiscal year 2021, our outstanding loan balance as of Q3 already increased by 10.1%, demonstrating the ongoing resilience of our business. We're delighted to see that the positive momentum of both our loan origination and outstanding loan balance has continued for two consecutive quarters. Based on current information, it is on course for the rest of the year. While driving a solid growth continuity, we're keeping a close eye on potential fluctuations externally, such as COVID resurgence-related economic impact, and are confident to make the corresponding adjustments if needed. At the current point of time, the management believes quality over quantity is the right approach to sustain a healthy status of our business. Total operating revenue was CNY 2.7 billion, achieving an 11.5% increase quarter-over-quarter.
Revenue from new consumption-driven location-based services was CNY 525 million, an increase of 31.3% from the same period of last year. A modest decrease of 2.5% QoQ. It is worth noting that the June eighteenth online shopping festival made meaningful contribution to the Q3 revenue. Revenue from technology-driven platform services was CNY 500 million, representing a 14.6% increase quarter-over-quarter. Revenue from credit-driven platform services was CNY 1.7 billion, delivering a 15.8% increase quarter-over-quarter. I'd like to take the opportunity to emphasize again that we have reorganized our revenue segmentation since Q1 this year, which we believe better reflects the diversity and resilience of our revenue and the nature of our business.
Once again, the contribution from non-credit driven services was about 40% of the total revenue this quarter, and has reached CNY 1 billion, achieving a 5.1% increase. Quarter-over-quarter. This is in line with our strategic goal of realizing high quality and complementary revenue structure, which enables us to better overcome future external challenges in the long run. In line with government guidance, loan pricing in Q3 continued to fall and moved closer to 24%. The mix within 24% APR was above 80%, like the last quarter. Let me move on to the expense side of the third quarter. Sales and marketing expenses decreased by 11.1% QoQ, and by 13.5% YoY to CNY 425 million.
This is as intended by the management to maintain a prudent overall spending in lieu of the uncertain trading conditions. However, we're reaching our customers more precisely through various online and offline channels thanks to our digitalized and data-driven marketing programs. Research and development expenses increased by 7.3% YoY to CNY 141 million, reflecting our continuous investment in upgrading our technology capabilities. G&A expenses went down by 7.7% QoQ to CNY 104 million. While the loan origination and top line revenue kept their upward trend this year, our G&A expenses remained stable and decreased on QoQ basis for two quarters. I'm particularly happy to note that the net profit of Q3 was CNY 276 million, achieving a 64.4% significant increase quarter-over-quarter.
It is encouraging to see that our profitability has continued its strong recovery trend on a Q-on-Q basis, while our major risk indicators remained stable. We expect net profit to be further improved in Q4, based on the current external conditions. On March 16, 2022, the company's board of directors authorized a $50 million share repurchase program. As of Q3, the company had repurchased approximately 20 million ADS for approximately $44 million under this program. The board has also authorized a new $20 million repurchase program. However, prioritizing and concentrating resources on strategic and meaningful performance-related initiatives will be our guiding principle. We will continue to pursue a sustainable and resilient business approach, and we'll also keep ourselves in the know of any material signs of external changes that may impact our business.
We are very confident that we are well positioned to react quickly and responsibly. With that, I will turn the call over to our President, Jared Wu, who is overseeing the Risk department. Jared, please.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Sunny. Good morning and good evening, everyone. It is a great pleasure to speak to all of you today. Now let me elaborate on the risk management performance of other business. Last quarter resulted to be a quarter of improvement amid macro environment uncertainties and the residual impact of sporadic COVID resurgence. We are witnessing a continued lowered day one delinquency rate as of the end of September. Our 30+ day delinquency was at 4.61% this quarter, representing a decrease of 0.24 percentage points from the last quarter. As for our 90+ day delinquency, it held relatively steady at 2.66% this quarter, which fell into our prediction at up three basis points.
We expect the impact from second quarter's COVID restrictions has been faded out and our 90+ day delinquency has peaked in the third quarter. Should no interruptions caused by external force majeure happen, we are prudently optimistic to state that our delinquency metrics are to go on a stable downward trend.
To reach a more balanced level and our overall risk level to continue to fall in a more favorable direction.
[Foreign language]
In the last quarter, further serving high quality users and boosting the contribution of our high quality users was one of our priorities. Surrounding such, we expanded the depth and breadth of the use of our more high quality data resources and focused on strengthening the exploration and application of credit reports from the PBOC, as well as further upgrading the re-refinement models for different user segments. These measures helped us identify high quality users more accurately and match them with lower interest rates. Our APR has continued to decline, promoting a significant increase in customer unit price of high quality users.
[Foreign language]
In the last quarter, the multipoint resurgence of the pandemic has in fact impacted our risk management front, and we can see that the risk of assets in high risk cities rose to some degree. Ever since last year, we started to build a risk monitoring and targeted strategy adjustment mechanism for pandemic areas, and this system has matured to the point that we are now able to quickly adjust our pre-lending, mid lending and post lending strategies according to the situation in each pandemic area, which is one of the important measures for us to continue to improve our risk performance in this quarter. As we continue to devote resources to our risk management section, our refined risk management capabilities advanced rapidly. For the past two quarters, on one hand, we actively brought in several risk management talents in the industry.
On the other hand, we have been accelerating the iterative upgrade of various models of risk management and have been increasing the investment in data resources and models which have had a timely effect on refining the identification of our user risk. We have made good progress in all aspects, respectively, from customer acquisition to asset management, from credit line granting to pricing, and the corresponding initiatives in the aforementioned have demonstrated effectively in their early stage results in this quarter. Going forward, we will keep on working on supplementing these initiatives to further enhance our risk management capabilities and continue to improve our asset mix and risk performance. Thank you. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Hans Fan from CLSA. Please ask your question.
I got two questions. First of all, this is Hans Fan from CLSA. Congrats to the improvement in the results on a quarterly basis. I got two questions. One is on regulation, another one is on APR. Can you give us some updates regarding the reclassification process, especially the decoupling of the data feeds to the banks, especially that over the recent days and weeks, we have noticed some signs of pivots in Chinese FinTech regulation. Just wondering what's our progress there. Number two is about the APR. The APR of our company has been coming down in the past few quarters, based on regulatory requirements, and also our adjustment of the customer base. Just wondering what's the outlook for the APR, and also what's the exact APR in third quarter?
That's my question. Thank you very much.
[Foreign language]
Let me take the question. The first one about the regulations. As you know, we're not in the first batch of the name list. Currently there's no specific requirements to our company yet. However, we are closely watching the situation and want to get the ideas of what is the specific requirements to the first batch of name list. Meanwhile, we are maintaining very close communications with [Foreign language] these two vendors in the industry, and we are very aware of the solutions of these two companies. Currently we are already about all the plans.
As long as the requirements from the authorities can be clear and the current conducted plans have been approved, we can take very quick initiatives to be connected as well.
[Foreign language]
In this quarter our APR is very close to 24%. 24.3%, only a little bit above 24%. The pricing, which is above 24%, is very, very limited. Going forward, we'll continue to further decreasing our APR. We believe, you know, together with the increased percentage of our high quality customers and the increase of our asset qualities, our pricing will continue to be decreased. From other perspective, we believe the higher quality customers, the better quality of the asset management is actually in line with the further decreasing of our APR. Only with a better APR, we have attracted a higher quality of the customers.
[Foreign language] Thank you very much.
Great, thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Zheng from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question, Frank.
[Foreign language]
This is Frank from Credit Suisse. Thank you management for giving me the opportunities to ask questions. I've got two questions. The first one is on credit quality. We see that in this quarter, 90 day capped flattish quarter-on-quarter, 30 days started to fall already, and the company suggested it's likely to improve going forward. If the credit quality continues to improve, shall we see some sizable write backs on the provision expenses in the next few quarters? And the second question is on funding cost. This quarter funding cost improved by twenty basis points. What is the main driver behind this? And also recently we have seen some marginal tightening in the monetary market. Do we expect further optimization on the funding cost in the fourth quarter? Thank you.
[Foreign language]
I will translate myself just for the English speaking audience. For the first question, we are also very happy to see that our asset quality remained stable and is going an upward trend. However, we will probably not in a position to say that there will be significant reduction in provision due to the uncertainties of the external environment, particularly the COVID resurgence related economic impact. Of course, we do see the possibility of such a reduction of the provisions, but at the moment we think that it will remain stable. We will keep a close eye on external conditions and the markets. So at this moment, you know, I think there are uncertainties. The second question, regarding the drivers of the cost of funding, we are also happy to say that we have a 20 basis points reduction for the last quarter. This is of course due to the favorable policies adopted by the government on one hand, and also thanks to the years of relationship that we have built up with our partners and we are having closer and closer cooperation. So I guess this is the result of both drivers.
Great. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Ye from UBS. Please ask your question, Alex.
[Foreign language]
Um, the first one is on our customer mix migration. I've noticed that our per customer loan volume, the ticket size has increased sizeable Q on Q, so I would presume that was largely driven by our customer mix upgrade. But just want to get more color on, for example, what was the percentage of our high quality customers per our definition, and how does it change Q on Q? And what's the outlook from here? And the second question is on the take rate.
Given our ongoing customer mix upgrade, how has been the impact to our take rate? Specifically want to know more about, you know, the take rate for this quarter, on the new volume perspective, and how does it compare to the take rate from our total portfolio? Could we say that we have probably seen our take rate bottom from here? Thank you.
[Foreign language]
Talking about the premium or high-quality customers, we divided our customers into different dimensions from the risk level. Currently, internally, we mainly focusing on the Level 1 - 3 as our major targeted high-quality customers. We are from three dimensions. First of all, we are further understand the good performance customer to attracted back our original existing customers. In the future, together with further provide better services and better based on the better understandings of our current high-quality customers, we are also taking the assets to further limit the high-risk customers. Internally, we define them as their risk level from 6- 8. Together with all these assets, we believe our overall risk management structures or asset structures will be continued to be optimized.
Talking about the take rate, together with the further optimization of our risk management and asset structures, we believe our take rate will be also on an uptrend in the future. At beginning of this year, we have an overall view of our take rate level for the whole year, which is 3%. Currently, this whole year view is now changed.
All right. Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Right. There are no further question. I'd like to turn the call back to the management team for closing remarks.
Thank you all again, everyone, for joining us today. If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact information available on our IR website. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.