Earnings Call: Q1 2021

May 19, 2021

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for 111's 1st quarter 2021 conference call. On the call today from 111 are Doctor. Gong Yu, Co Founder and Executive Chairman Mr. Junling Liu, Co Founder, Chairman and CEO Mr. Luke Chen, CFO of our major subsidiary Mr. Harvey Wong, Co COO Mr. Barry Zhu, Co COO Ms. Tiffany Zhu Ge, SVP of Investor Relations and Business Development Ms. Monica Mu, Investor Relations Director and Mr. Alex Liu, Finance Director. As a reminder, today's conference call is being broadcast live via webcast. In addition, a replay will be available on our website following the call. The company's earnings press release was distributed earlier today, and together with our earnings presentation are available on the company's IR website at ir. 111.com.cn. Before we get started, let me remind you that this call may contain forward looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which would cause actual results to differ materially. For more information about these risks, please refer to the company's filings with the SEC. 111 does not undertake any obligation to update any forward looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable law. Please note that all numbers are in RMB and all comparisons refer to year over year comparisons unless otherwise stated. Please also refer to our earnings press release for detailed information of our comparative financial performance on a year over year basis. With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Junling Liu. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining our 2021 Q1 earnings call. I'll begin with an overview of the company's business and operational performance before handing it over to Luke to take you through the financials in Section 2. We will then conclude our prepared remarks with guidance for Q2 2021 before opening the call for Q and A. We were pleased to report another quarter of strong growth. In the Q1, net revenue rose 64.7% year over year to RMB 2,600,000,000. This marks the 11th consecutive quarter of year over year revenue growth since our IPO. In China, Q1 is typically soft quarter in the healthcare space as well as for the general retail industry due to the Lunar New Year holiday. In addition, Q1 2020 was unusually strong due to the sudden surge in demand for pandemic related products. So we're pleased with the year over year growth, which excluding one time pandemic related sales, was 89% in Q1 2021. Non GAAP net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders as a percentage of net revenues also decreased from 6.9% in the Q1 of 2020 to 4.2% in this Q1, which shows our continued momentum towards profitability. Our top line growth is driven by our S2B2C model as we continue to take the lead in the modernization and advancement of China's healthcare system. Our growth is a testament of the tremendous progress in our mission to digitally connect patients with medicine and healthcare services. Given the transformative nature and the leading edge technology of our S2B2C model, I will briefly highlight its core fundamentals. First, the S in our S to B2C model represents our powerful supply chain platform that encompasses not only the technology behind the platform, but also our network of suppliers such as pharmaceutical companies, distributors and other service providers. This S is digitally connected to the B, our rapidly growing network of pharmacies, doctors, clinics, and so on. To further strengthen our supply chain capabilities, the 2 new fulfillment centers in Northwest and Northeast China we announced in March are now fully operational. We're also expanding and upgrading some of our existing human sensors to meet the growing demand for our services. The expansion of our supply chain network has been key to supporting businesses and doctors and allowing them to serve their patients effectively and efficiently. These improvements will also expand our ability to help marketplace vendors sell their products via our online platform. There are currently over 900 marketplace vendors utilizing our platform. By leveraging our supply chain By leveraging our supply chain infrastructure and online presence, they are able to expand their geographical reach and attract new customers. With the regulatory policies in China trending towards lowering healthcare costs and increasing transparency and efficiency, pharmaceutical companies need new sales models to address the challenges presented by these regulatory changes, such as volume based procurement, more intense local competition and taking full advantage of accelerated NRDL approvals. In the past, one drug may be able to enjoy a decade plus of high sales volume. But in today's environment, both international and domestic pharmaceutical companies need to capitalize on the patent's exclusivity period and reach peak sales volume for their products in the shortest line of the platform. To help them achieve this, we continue to broaden our partnerships with pharmaceutical companies in our omni channel commercialization platform, offering them access to our large network of retail pharmacies, our network of both in house and affiliated doctors, as well as our nationwide supply chain network. A good example of this is our strategic cooperation agreement with BeiGene announced in March. BeiGene currently markets 2 internally discovered oncology medicines in China and also markets or plans to market in China additional oncology products licensed from a number of well known global pharma companies. 111 and BeiGene will cooperate around an Internet plus medicine plus healthcare model, leveraging our Internet hospital, smart supply chain network, data driven AI solutions and online and offline DTT delivery of medicines to create a unique oncology management platform and expand the commercial reach of BeiGene's innovative drugs. As of March 31, we have over 360 similar partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and these partnerships allow for a win win scenario for all parties involved. Patients benefit by being able to access a much wider variety of medication, along with newly approved medication faster than ever before without waiting for medicine to enter the hospital system. And doctors benefit from no longer being limited to prescribing drugs available within a certain hospital system, allowing them a wider range of treatment options. Pharmacists benefit by leveraging our models of scale to provide better pricing, wider selection, and the ability to fulfill single unit orders. Pharmaceutical companies benefit by gaining wider access to doctors and patients nationwide and the ability to sell products in multiple channels without relying exclusively on hospitals for sales. We benefit as well by being able to acquire products at lower cost and offer revenue generating services to pharmaceutical companies. Let me break up the B in our S2B2C model in a little more detail. We continue to develop our S2P2C model, supply chain platform to pharmacy to consumer. Here, we provide pharmacies with a wide selection of products and services from our economies of scale, which includes over 340 1,000 pharmacies, accounting for more than 60% of China's total retail pharmacy network. Pharmacists leveraging our supply chain platform can take advantage of our Cloud CRM and Cloud Clinic, a wide variety of products and services like CD Home Delivery and inventory and supply chain management. We also offer a suite of enterprise solutions, such as tools and support necessary to enable previously offline businesses to establish an online presence and reach consumers. At the same time, we're expanding the reach of our B2C model, supply chain platform to doctors to consumer. By harnessing the power of our industry leading technology, we are modernizing the traditional in person medical care process by offering telehealth and the patient management tools to provide convenience and timely medical care from diagnostics to treatment to follow-up and routine care. We're proud at the forefront of the healthcare The doctors can utilize our cloud pharmacy, cloud clinic and doctor patient platforms to provide online consultations, e prescription services and follow-up care to patients, which improves the quality of the patient experience and results in more positive care outcomes. This platform removes the element of geography and the hurdle of physical distance between businesses and patients. Doctors can engage and interact with their patients who are at home, allowing for effective and efficient follow-up care or the mitigation of potential complications early in the diagnosing process. This foundation of our model is extended to the seed the consumer or the patient, who is digitally connected to doctors, medicine and other healthcare providers and services. Consumers can leverage a wide network of doctors and pharmacies that were previously out of reach or unknown. We believe that the benefits to having this integrated digital platform is clear, improved access to health care and better patient outcomes. As a result, our omni channel digital platform fills many gaps in the traditional healthcare ecosystem and we have seen that increased demand for our innovative solutions. This is demonstrated by the fact that in the Q3, our service revenue, while nascent and therefore not yet making a substantial contribution for our total revenues, grew to RMB17 1,000,000, representing 161% increase over Q1 2020. I would further like to highlight the potential for growth in these spaces and the increasing market opportunities we are seeing. According to a report from Frost and Sullivan, China's online consultation market is expected to rapidly increase from 6% in 2019 to 42% in 2024 and 68.5% in 2,030, respectively. This increase is partially driven by China's enormous chronic disease management market, which is expected to triple from RMB4.5 trillion in 2019 to RMB14.9 trillion in 2,030. Accordingly, China's online pharmaceutical market is expected to grow nearly tenfold to RMB1 1,000,000,000,000 by 2,030. Given the industry tailwind and the leadership position 111 has established in our space, we continue to make significant investments in our team, technology and the supply chain platform. This also shows our confidence in driving more business momentum. Technology expenses grew more than 100% over the past 12 months, and we have also made significant investments in our patient management portals and other technology offerings. In addition, we continue to add to the pharmaceutical and doctor support team that we began building last year, consisting of professionals with expertise in specific disease areas such as endocrinology, oncology, neurology and others. Our established S2B2C model or specifically S2P2C and S2B2C models are a win win for all, and our strong Q1 2021 results reflect that. Our dedication to improving and expanding the foundation of our industry leading technology and omni channel network, along with growing market opportunities in healthcare, telehealth and the pharmaceuticals, put us in an excellent position to continue to deliver outstanding value to our shareholders. With that, I will hand the call to Luke to walk through our financial results. Thank you. Thank you, Junling. Moving to the financial section on Slide 13, you can see the details of the Q1 2021 results from Slide 14 to 16 of our presentation. I would like to highlight few key business and financial metrics and our focus on year over year comparisons. All numbers are in RMB unless otherwise stated. Let's start with the Q1 results. Total net revenues for the quarter grew 63.4% to RMB 2,600,000,000, which is at the high end of our guidance range. Our B2B segment revenue grew 7.6% to RMB2.45 billion and our B2C segment revenue was down 27% to RMB142 1,000,000. The decrease is attributed to the Q1 being generally slower for the entire retail industry due to the Lunar New Year holiday as well as Q1 2020 being an unusually strong for online purchases due to the landed quarantine. Our B2B gross margin was 3.6%, up from 3.3%, while our B2C gross margin remained stable at around 20%. The improvement in gross margin of our B2B segment reflected our ability to continuously improve the margin while maintaining robust top line growth. Overall, our gross profit grew by 32.2% to RMB116 1,000,000. Total operating expenses for the quarter were up 43.6% to RMB 2,900,000,000. As a percentage of net revenue, total operating expenses for the quarter decreased to 11.1% compared to 12.8%. Fulfillment expenses as a percentage of net revenue for the quarter was 2.6%, down from 3.5% in the same quarter last year. Sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of net revenue for the quarter was 4.7%, down from 6.1% in the same quarter of last year. G and A expenses as a percentage of net revenue for the quarter was 2%, up from 1.9% in the same quarter last year. Technology expenses accounted for 1.9% of net revenue, up from 1.3% in the same quarter last year. This is primarily driven by an increase in the number of personnel in the R and D and IT teams, reflecting our continuous investment in our infrastructure. As a result, non GAAP net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders for the quarter was 100 and 9,300,000 as compared to RMB 109,400,000 in the same quarter last year, which accounted for 4.2% of net revenue, down from 6.9%. As to the guidance for the Q2 2020 1 on Slide 18, the company expects the total net revenue to be between RMB 2,920,000,000 and RMB 3,080,000,000, representing a year over year growth of approximately 80% to 90%. The above outlook is based on current market conditions and reflects the company's current and the preliminary estimates of the market and operating conditions as well as consumer demand, which are subject to change. Please refer to Slide 20 to 22 of appendix section for selected financial statements and a quick note on our cash position as of March 31, 2021, we had cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short term investments of RMB1.16 billion compared to RMB1.62 billion as of December 31, 20 20. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you. Operator, we are now ready to begin the Q and A session. Your first question comes from the line of Junji Huang of HSBC. Please ask your question. Yes. Thank you very much, management, for taking my questions. This is Xunjie from HSBC. I hope to ask 2 questions on behalf of Rachel Yang. My first question is on the fulfillment cost. So we do see then the fulfillment cost has further decreased in Q1. So just wondering how we made it and how do we see further room for decrease? And the second question is about the industry. So we see much more industry updates recently such as the online sales of prescription drugs and the remote medical insurance payments. So how do we expect those policies to impact our businesses? Yes, that's my two questions. Thank you. Talking about fulfillment cost decrease, yes. We have continuously improved our whole supply chain, including the our systems we build. And also, we initiated various BPI programs to improve our operational efficiency and effectiveness. At the same time, we are optimizing our supply chain infrastructure. As you have seen that in Q1, we have built launched 2 new fulfillment centers, 1 in worldwide, 1 in northeast. And we are restructuring the whole supply chain network. This enables us to have a more efficient supply chain. At the same time, we are engaging with more third party logistics and improving our coaching coverage, improving our fulfillment center automation. So, all these together help us to lower the fulfillment cost. Yes. Let me address the industry question. That was a great question, by the way, Javier. Yes, you mentioned a few policy changes in recent months, But also if you look over in the past couple of years from allowing online sales of drugs, the volume based procurement and also the patent approval or the speedy approval of new drugs into China, there are lots and lots of changes in the regulatory side. I think if we look at all those policies, they all point towards 2 important directions. 1 is really transparency. The other is really efficiency. And if you look at our business model, 111 is very different from our other competitors in the industry. We do not have a parent company with background or a lot of resources. Our business model is purely based on 2 principles, one being transparency, the other one being so this really plays right into our strength. The other great developments are the push towards digital and the penetration towards lower tier security. Obviously, the solutions can help us address both the needs from the pharmaceutical companies and also the doctors and patients and pharmacies alike. Once again, this plays right into our strength. I must say that the Chinese government is extremely competent. If you look at those policies, we actually wholeheartedly welcome those new policies. They actually will lay the foundation to make the Chinese healthcare system one of the most efficient ones in the world. I think within the next decade, we feel extremely lucky to be in the right market at the right time. Thank you, Junjie. Yes. Thank you very much. I will see you. Your next question comes from the line of Zoe Beynon of Citi. Please ask your question. Hi, this is Zoe from Citi. Thank you, management, for taking my question. My first question is about the revenue growth drivers in Q1. We know that you have covered a majority of pharmacies in China. And which customer group is your strategic focus in the next 1 to 2 years? The second question is about the partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. Can you please share why do they choose YAP-one hundred and eleven to cooperate? And can you give us more examples of the partnership? And the third question is about your new investment on the supply chain. Any updates on upgrades of supply chain infrastructures and fulfillment centers? And the first one is about your Starboard listing status. Thank you. Thank you, Zoe. I think we can take your question in your order. First question is about the drivers in growth. That's a great question. And I think I spoke about the in my script about why we continue to grow at a pretty fast pace even though our revenue base has gone down over $1,000,000,000 last year. And I think fundamental it's still our model driving the growth. It's our S2B2C model. If you look the progress we made in Q1, and obviously, we announced the 2 new fulfillment centers in full operation and also we are expanding upgrades in some of the existing fulfillment centers and we increased the pharmaceutical partnership to 360 plus and we also collaborated with a number of globally renowned pharmaceutical companies on their new drugs like Eli Lilly, like Biogen, like Hengray, etcetera. We're also working with some of the CSO companies that are also referenced that we have over 900 marketplace vendors on our platform. This is all our S, okay? So that's our supply chain platform. And obviously, how do we really break up the S2B2C and then I explained that was further broken down into B2C and B2C, right? So in the S2P side, that's the pharmacy side of the business. I referenced a number by March 31st. We actually covered more than 340,000 pharmacies, right? That is more than 60% of the overall market. And on the F2D2C side, the number of doctors we have been working with has increased to more than 15,000 by the end of the quarter, right? So really, if you look into the growth of the business, this is the fundamental driver. And we're pretty confident we're going to continue to deliver pretty robust growth even though our base has become a much, much bigger base now. And the second part of your question 1 is about the focus on customer groups. Really, on the pharmacy side, yes, indeed, for a majority of the pharmacies now. But what we believe, the value we could offer to the small and medium chains and the single stores. From the dimension of graphical coverage, instead of focusing on Tier 1 cities, I think our biggest opportunity is really in the Tier 3 to Tier 6 cities. The lower tier cities, they actually those pharmacies there need our services more than those Tier 1 city pharmacies. So, I'll stop at that and maybe Gong should be talking about the partnerships on the question 2. All right. Let me answer the second question to Zoe. You have seen that we are a perfect partner for pharmaceutical companies with complementary strength. As all you know that the pharmaceutical companies, they have their R and D capabilities, they have all their products, they like to have a broad market coverage to penetrate to all the consumers. They have good branding and experts, medical experts, but they really like us to have the omnichannel commercialization capabilities, our supply chain coverage, our digital solutions, these are a perfect match. Another so our plus our data service can help them to improve the scale the customer insights. Our SaaS service can help them to improve their field reps' efficiency. And another big plus is that we're a NASDAQ based company. They like our transparent corporate governance. They like our compliance. And all these together make us to be their choice. Also, the third question you mentioned about why we continue to expand our supply chain. I think we'll continue doing that in fulfillment centers, both in capacity and in throughput. We are now also in the process of expanding our coaching coverage for innovative drugs and for bio drugs. We're also investing in warehouse automation to gain more operational efficiency. So, we're through all these, we're deepening our regional penetration, broaden our market coverage, improve our time limits delivery and optimize our systems and operations. Yes. Regarding the stockholder domestic listing, in the second half of last year, we started the process of preparing an IPO on the Shanghai Exchange, particularly Starboard. And that work is continuing. As many of you may be aware, the listing process on China's exchange require approval from various government entities. And because of that, we cannot control the timing and thus we cannot give a clear guidance on that. But we remain committed to achieving our goal of building an investor base consisting of both domestic and global investors. And we believe that a new listing in China, in addition to our current listing on NASDAQ, will allow interest investors convenient and additionally to invest in 1 1000000 no matter where they are based. Zoe, hope we answer all your questions. Thank you, management, for thoroughly answering my questions. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Please ask your question. Hi, thank you for the presentation. This is Hore Shing from IDA Investments. I just have two questions. The first one being related to the expenses. I see expenses have gone up, especially G and A and technology expenses have gone up significantly. Especially on technology, can you shed some light on the timing of the investment and sort of the nature of the increased expenses? My second question is on the gross margin. I see that gross margin continues to expand. Can you give us a little bit more insight on to the margin expansion and whether or not we should continue to expect such expansion? Thank you. Right. So, it's a great question. If you look into the details of our business, we actually feel extremely confident of the future of our business, and what we wanted to do is take the opportunity to really strengthen our capabilities to better position ourselves in the marketplace, right? So this is a tremendous demonstration of our own confidence over the future of our business. The expenses really are happening in the following areas, where we think we should be investing to better position the company. You mentioned about technology. Absolutely. We actually more than doubled our technology team from last year. That is a key area for us to really differentiate ourselves from our competition marketplace. And the other part of the investment actually goes into the innovative new businesses. So we have a number of new businesses that we are incubating and we believe in the future, we believe, especially in the space, there is going to be a tremendous prize there. And of course, our fundamental part of the business is supply chain platform. Obviously, a lot of the investment goes into our supply chain network, not only our fulfillment centers, but also the partnerships and the ecosystem, including the team that's covering some of the key accounts of the pharmaceutical companies, the teams that are doing development in the marketplace vendors, in other CSO companies, distributors, etcetera. And of course, we're also making investments to our team and our G and A expenses are going up. We believe those investments are very necessary given the opportunity we have in the development of the healthcare industry in China. This is going to really nail us on the map for the future development of the company. I think about the gross margin side of the business, Luca, are you going to address that? Yes. We are very pleased to see the we continue to improve the gross margin on the 2B business. This quarter, we grew the 2B business, the revenue grew like 7%, the gross margin, I mean, gross profit will grow 90%, more than 90%. And the percentage margin from 3% to 3.6%. The driver behind is as we explained, we are increasing more direct sourcing of farm companies, which we have better trading terms with them. Additionally, because we've been partnered with those pharmacies, we provide fast solutions to them, and we are able to achieve more sales revenue service revenue as we highlight this time, as well as we are focusing our team to focus selling those high margin products like co brand with particular farm companies. So we think that with the scale we're building out, we will have more opportunity to leverage the network we build out to provide not only the distribution service to the pharma companies, but also and the sales and marketing service, like digital marketing service we provide to them and other service. And then also, we believe we'll be able to generate service revenue from all those SaaS solutions we provided to pharmacies, the clinics, private hospitals, etcetera. So we've been able to improve the gross margin and gross profit on the 2B side quarter over quarter, and we are very pleased that we will continue to do that. Okay. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Charlene Lu of HSBC. Please ask your question. Hi, Doctor. Yuwen, the management team. Thank you very much for taking my question. I think management team mentioned earlier and as we know that MOLAN DAKAM has already achieved great success in terms of covering the pharmacies 50% of the market. And obviously, another area of growth is to start covering doctorsclinics. And by the end of the quarter, you have already covered 30,000. Can you share a little more as to where you are on the expansion plan and how much of the landscape which you intended to cover has already been covered thus far? And can you talk about the percentage of your orders are now currently originate from clinics as opposed to the pharmacies? Thank you very much. Okay. Maybe, Harvey, can you answer your question? Yes. Our majority of our customer engaged currently through our online operation, those pharmacies and clinics. And as Junling just mentioned, there are many from Tier 3 to 6 cities. We also have an outside task force around the country to provide on-site services, especially for our new customers. And those on-site passports, their service includes Google services and cloud clinics and cloud CIM and our SaaS services. We also developed an app called Hawk Eye, which monitor all our activity of our sales force and enable our sales force to achieve a much higher productivity than competitors. I think I want to add another comment there, Charlene. I think the revenue majority of the revenue still comes from the pharmacists instead of the clinics, although clinics would be a future growth area we want to invest in. And currently, more than 90% of the revenue is due for the to be business is due from the pharmacies. Understood. Is there a target as to how many clinics or doctors you intend to cover, say, in the next 2 to 3 years? And would it be one of your KPIs to sort of target certain revenue breakdown at some point in time down the road coming from clinics? Yes, indeed. But we're not ready to announce to the outside world yet. We have an internal plan that's definitely we have specific targets developed. We deployed a whole team that's dedicated doing that. So we will be supporting that due course. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. This is very clear. Thanks for the Your next question comes from the line of Anthony Price of Oddity Investments. Please ask your question. Thank you so much. First of all, I want to congratulate you. I've been I'm an old Greek that lives outside of Washington, D. C, and I've admired your company for well over a year. I think no one in the Communist Party would object and no one in America would object to the work you're doing and I'm proud to be an owner of your shares. My question deals with the issuance of shares. And let me explain. I had a lot of China datacom some years ago and there was an issuance of 47% of the stock. The stock at the top the stock had gotten up in the 20s and it never recovered. Also, the American government is issuing dollars now and destroying the value of the United States currency. And I know you gentlemen are well intended and you want to and you have a tremendous growth trajectory, but how are you going to protect us, the outside owners that support you regarding the price point forward and the issuance of shares? Thank you, sir. Thank you for taking my question. Anthony, first of all, we are most grateful for having you as our shareholder. I appreciate you attending the call and listening to our story and also expressing your view. Your view is very well taken. We understand what you're talking about, but it's a rather complex issue. And I would love to get the opportunity to speak to you further on this. And we will take your comment back, and our team is going to do some further research on that. And we also need to do some analysis. Of course, there is always funders and monitors on whatever structure of the shares we're going to have. But yes, once again, your comments are very well taken, and we would love to have the opportunity to actually speak to you on this further. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm available to speak about it at any time, and I thank you so much for understanding my question. Indeed. As there are no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back to the presenters. Please continue. Okay, that sounds like we have completed all those Q and A sessions. And so Monica, are we ending the call now? Thanks. Thank you, operator. Thank you. In closing, on behalf of the entire 111 management team, we'd like to thank you for your interest and participation in today's call. If you require any further information or have any interest in visiting us in China, please let us know. Thank you for joining us today. This concludes the call.