Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you and welcome to Yunji's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With us today are Mr. Shanglue Xiao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Chengqi Zhang, Vice President of Finance, and Ms. Kaye Liu, Investor Relations Director of the company. Now I would like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Ms. Kaye Liu, IRD of Yunji. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2022 earnings call. Before we start, please note that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on our current expectations and current market operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors affecting Yunji and its industry. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as will, expect, anticipate, continue or other similar expressions. For a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our related documents filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statement that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today and are first qualified in their entirety by cautionary statements, risk factors and details of the company filing with the SEC.
Yunji does not undertake any obligation to update these statements except as required by applicable law. With that, I will now turn over to Shanglue Xiao, Chairman and CEO of Yunji. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Yunji's first quarter 2022 earnings call. Two weeks ago, on May sixteenth, we celebrated our seventh corporate anniversary. During 2022, we further refined the product curation strategy we have been executing in the past seven years since our inception. In the first quarter of 2022, we continued to improve our product quality and launched the Yunji product certification program. Under this program, once a week, we apply the most stringent quality assessment criteria to our product selection process, certify those products we deem as best of the best with the Yunji product label, and ensure peace of mind for our members who chose to purchase those certified products.
Our Yunji product certification program is conducted using detailed user feedback and behavior data collected through our platform. During the weekly product review and certification process, we integrate key performance indicators such as sales volume, category expert recommendation, repurchase rate, product quality stability and service managers and user product recommendation to select the finest items and then market them as flagship products during Yunji's festival promotion every Wednesday. In addition, we invite health and nutrition to interact with our business managers and members through a live streaming and advise them on how to live a healthy lifestyle. During the first half of this year, facing external challenges and macroeconomic uncertainty, we responded with resilience and agility by leveraging our diversified service offerings, strong supply chain management capabilities and optimized business operations.
Going forward, we will continue to capitalize on our core strengths while exploring innovative strategies to grow all of our product segments sustainably. The pandemic-related disruptions in the first quarter of this year, affected the sourcing and production process of both our manufacturing partners and our own private labels. Not willing to relinquish the high standards we have set for our private labels in terms of product materials and sourcing origins, we suffered the unavoidable delay in some of our new product development, production and restocking.
好像就是我们在今年两年拓宽了自有品牌的品类，尤其是美食和大健康自有品牌的开发，填补了我们在高品质大众消费品刚需方面的空缺。目前我们在刚需用品和弹性需求品类中有表现优秀的自有品牌商品。由于我们的新品开发渠道更加丰富，疫情期间依然开发出了许多新的爆款。如我们在大健康品类的自有品牌推出了多维软糖、欧包、牙膏等新品，这些新品虽然品类不同，但是都在不同角度迎合了健康美丽这个概念，与我们大健康垂直社群的基因高度匹配，均达成了单日百万销售的好成绩。
The good news is that the progress we've made over the past two years in private label, especially in the categories of gourmet food and health supplements, has fully compensated our price efficiency in high purchase frequency consumer staples. Fortified by our robust and abundant product development channel, we successfully launched new must-have products even during the pandemic, releasing such as establishing a firm foothold in both consumer discretionary and consumer staples categories. For example, in our private label health supplement category, we recently introduced a slew of new products, including multivitamin candy, European-style bread, and toothpaste. Each of these four leading products addresses consumers' desire for health and beauty from a different angle to synchronize with the demographic profile of the Yunji community in a very health-minded way, so much so that they were able to easily achieve the single-day RMB 1 million sales records.
在美食领域，我们开发了西式美食、意大利面、中式美食、手抓饼等新品，以满足更多不同的饮食喜好，丰富宝妈们的餐桌。对于餐桌上一些常见的标品，我们也进行了健康升级。比如宝妈们非常喜欢的牛奶和鸡蛋。在牛奶品类，我们向宝妈用户推荐了云集自有品牌莫乐园的水牛奶。比起普通牛奶，水牛奶营养价值更高，口味也更好。在鸡蛋品类，云集精选认证向用户推荐没有抗生素、经过严格杀菌的鲜无双可追溯鸡蛋，让全家吃得更加安全，更加放心。
In the gourmet food category, we have developed some novelty products such as specialty Italian pasta and gourmet Chinese pancakes to bring a greater variety of entries to the dinner tables of young mothers and their babies, and to better satisfy their diverse food preferences. We have managed to add a health and nutrition flag even to the most commonplace consumer staples, such as milk and eggs. For example, we recommend to young mothers a vast array of milk products, private label and new origin, which offers high nutritional value and a better taste than cow's milk. Also under the Yunji product certification program, we recommend a fully standardized, fresh eggs free of any antibiotics and hormones to ensure food safety for the entire family.
面对疫情的挑战，云集美食业务心系上海市民，牢记企业的社会责任，第一时间联系在上海有本地仓的合作供应商，与我们的服务经理一起组织保供商品的团购，当天就促成了近百万元的订单。在此，我们也非常感谢我们多年合作的供应商对云集美食和云集上海用户的支持。该供应商在美食垂直领域一直是云集的紧密合作伙伴，深受云集用户的欢迎，有着单日百万销售额的好成绩。
Facing the unexpected COVID lockdown, we emphasized the need to uphold our social responsibility and responded promptly with relief measures. We immediately got in touch with partner suppliers of ours with local storage facilities in Shanghai, rallied our service managers to embark on a food purchase campaign and fulfilled orders totaling close to RMB 1 million within the first day of the lockdown. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly express our gratitude to this partner supplier for its unwavering support to Yunji and to our Shanghai-based users. This supplier has been collaborating with us in the food business for years, acquiring popularity with our users, has generated a sales record of RMB 10 million within a single day.
在线下活动受阻的情况下，我们积极探索线上的泛外拓展。我们选择了美妆品类作为先锋，通过短视频营销帮助云集自有品牌的美妆走向更大众的视野。我们相信好的内容才能脱颖而出，留下用户。在直播团队的努力下，数个品牌成功地出圈，其中SUYE产品在视频播放量超过了几百万次，吸引了大量不同领域的新客。目前，云集自有品牌大部分功率销售均在第三方直播平台促成，在直播平台已经有了稳定的日销。
While the pandemic restrictions restrict the offline promotional activities, we have proactively explored alternatives such as expanding our online marketing investment to third-party platforms. Having chosen cosmetics as our power category, we utilize the short video marketing to successfully enhance the brand awareness and then coverage and visibility of our private label cosmetic products. We believe that only high quality content can stand above the crowd, stand over competition and increase user loyalty. Our belief is validated by the success case of SUYE, our private label cosmetic brand. Through the helpful marketing video produced by our live streaming team, debuted online with the associated short video about its skin gel product garnered millions of user views and attracted 12 new customers from various groups.
As of now, our private label products have achieved about the majority of their public sales through third-party live streaming platforms and maintain steady daily sales volume. Our business growth goes hand in hand with the development of our service managers. During the past few months, to comply with pandemic restrictions, we were forced to cancel many of our offline events and move our interactive training sessions online. We have used the mobile technology sharing and expert interaction sessions through live streaming so that our service managers can attend online education, improve their skills, and grow with us continuously. With that, I will hand over to Mr. Chengqi Zhang, our Vice President of Finance, to go through the financial results. Thank you.
Thank you, Kaye Liu. Hello, everyone. Before I go through our financial results, please note that all numbers stated in the following remarks are in RMB terms, and all comparisons and percentage changes are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. It has been a difficult start to 2022, with the recurrence of COVID causing lockdowns in Shanghai and stricter pandemic prevention and control measures in many other regions. Despite challenging market conditions, our repurchase rate remained stable at 80.2%, and our gross margin improved both on a quarter-over-quarter and a year-over-year basis. We managed our costs efficiently by diligently optimizing the cost structure of our self-operated private label products. Thus demonstrating our business resilience in the face of macro headwinds and the supply interruptions.
As a result of this resilience, we were able to achieve positive operating margin of 0.6% for this quarter, compared to a negative operating margin of 2.9% a year ago. In addition to achieving breakeven to positive operating margin for four consecutive quarters, our cash position is strong enough to allow us to navigate through the market downturn and uncertain macro environment. Now let's take a closer look at our financials. Total revenues were RMB 343 million, compared to RMB 675 million a year ago. Revenues from sales of merchandise were RMB 291 million, and revenues from our marketplace business were RMB 47 million. This decrease was primarily due to outbreaks of COVID during early 2022.
These COVID outbreaks lead to temporary lockdowns and delays in production and operations of our suppliers, especially private label suppliers, third-party merchants, third-party logistics service providers, and other business partners. This created temporary shortages of certain merchandise and delays in logistics service, as well as delays to our private label suppliers' research and development and new product launch processes. This has negatively affected and may continue to negatively affect our revenues and operations during 2022, depending on the future direction of the pandemic. Nevertheless, we improved our gross margin to 44% compared to 35% a year ago as a result of successful execution of our product curation strategy and excellent performance of our private label products. Now let's take a look at our operating expenses. Fulfillment expenses were RMB 49 million, compared to RMB 65 million a year ago.
This was primarily due to reduced personnel costs as we refined our staffing structure and lower service fees charged by third-party payment settlement platforms. Sales and marketing expenses were RMB 51 million compared to RMB 96 million a year ago, mainly due to the decrease in member management fees. Technology and content expenses were RMB 20 million, compared to RMB 38 million a year ago. The decrease was mainly due to reduced server costs and lower personnel costs as we optimized our staffing structure. General and administrative expenses were RMB 31 million, compared to RMB 74 million a year ago. This was primarily due to a decrease in share-based compensation expenses and reduced personnel costs as we refined our staffing structure. Total operating expenses in the first quarter decreased to RMB 155 million from RMB 273 million in the same period of 2021.
We recorded an income from operating of RMB 2 million compared to a loss of RMB 20 million a year ago. Net loss was RMB 37 million, compared with net loss of RMB 4 million a year ago, and adjusted net loss of RMB 31 million, compared with adjusted net income of RMB 17 million a year ago. This was due to financial loss, which was a mark-to-market investment loss rather than a cash loss. Basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to ordinary shareholders were both $0.02, compared with nil in the same period of 2021. Moving on to liquidity. As of March 31st, 2022, we had a total of RMB 743 million in cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments on our balance sheet.
Our accounts payable reduced to RMB 203 million as of March thirty-first, 2022, compared with RMB 255 million as of December 31st, 2021. Our liquid assets were sufficient to cover our payable obligations, and we did not hold any long-term bank loans or debt on our balance sheet. Despite near-term macro uncertainties, we are confident that our resilient business model and our new product curation and supply chain differentiation strategies will allow us to optimize our entire business cost structure and help us to navigate the current challenges through agile and flexible operations. This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. When asking a question, please state your question in Chinese first, then repeat your question in English for the convenience of everyone on the call. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Journey Chan, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Let me quickly translate myself. Can management comment about the impact of the pandemic to our business performance in second quarter? Can you share your views on the recovery of consumption after epidemic? Thank you.
Uh.
Thank you for your question.
There is still great uncertainty about the impact of the epidemic on the second quarter. The company operates efficiently with a very diverse offering with various business lines going hand in hand. Also, we have a strong financial foundation to resist the risk. Till the end half of May, the recovery of logistics onwards and cross-border transportation is still slow. Yunji will pay close attention to the epidemic situation and adjust the warehousing and cooperative logistics companies according to the market trends. During the end of the first quarter and the second quarter, the development of stocking of some new products were affected. The development of Yunji's new products have undergone multiple processes throughout the company and its partners. Each new product will go through on-site inspection, multi-party evaluation, and multiple proving.
The international travel and logistics restrictions have affected the development and stocking of some of the new products, and some sample shipments involving cross-border logistics have also been delayed. Fortunately, after nearly two years of hard work, Yunji currently has multiple teams operating its product brands of the different categories. Sharing the pressure of new product development. In the first half of the year, we still have many new products broken through. Regarding the recovery of consumption from the epidemic, we think it may have an impact on the commodity structure in the short term, according to the study of the National Bureau of Statistics. Consumers' elastic demand has not recovered yet. After the epidemic stabilizes, the demand for spending on the inelastic products will increase, and Yunji's product labels and food suppliers are able to meet consumer demand for healthy food.
We look forward to delivering Ningxia's unlocked food to consumers all over the country after the logistics come normal. Thank you.
Since there appears to be no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back to management for any closing remarks.
Thank you for joining us today. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions, and we're looking forward to talking with you next quarter. Bye.
This conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.