Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you and welcome to Yunji fourth quarter 2021 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 fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Before we start, please note that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on our current expectations and the current market operating conditions, and relate to events that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors affecting Yunji and its industry. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminologies such as 'will,' 'expect,' 'anticipate,' 'continue,' or other similar expressions. For detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our related document filed with U.S. SEC. Any forward-looking statement that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today and are expressly qualified in their entirety by cautioning statements, risk factors and details of the company filing with SEC.
Yunji does not undertake any obligation to update this statement, except as required under applicable law. With that, I will now turn over to Shanglue Xiao, Chairman and CEO of Yunji.
[Foreign language]
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Yunji's fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Today I will summarize our strategy execution during the past year and discuss the outlook for its continued implementation in the coming year. We are acutely aware that consumers need to be more precisely targeted and segmented and given greater peace of mind. At the same time, we realize that our service managers need to increasingly focus on serving our users. As such, we have launched our highly curated product selection, Yunji 99 Special Sales Portal.
Yunji 99 Portal displays no more than 99 cost-effective products per day, each of which is guaranteed to be in line with current trends, meet users' needs and consistent with our high product selection standards. In addition, our product curation model allows us to more efficiently operate our platform and community groups.
[Foreign language]
During 2021, we cultivated our user mindset of goods gathered at Yunji. Going forward, we hope that our platform will be known for quality products gathered at Yunji. By effectively executing our product curation strategy, we guarantee that only products that reach the high standards necessary to be certified Yunji quality products are launched on our platform. We always put quality first, carefully selecting superior products for our customers while saving them time and enhancing their shopping experience. By doing so, we are developing our user mindset of quality products gathered at Yunji.
[Foreign language]
Our private label strategy is crucial for us to achieve healthy profitability. We have made substantial progress developing our private labels, especially for our food focused strategy. At the same time, we have fortified and extended our cosmetics and healthcare categories. With our food category as our focus, our dream is for our members to be able to eat delicious foods from all over the world without having to leave their homes. To allow our users to eat happily and safely, we have launched multiple new private labels such as purely meat positions, 李巴天 [Foreign language] and natural and nutritious, Baiyueshan. Our private label foods are targeted at different user cohorts, but they share the same philosophy: to make users feel safe while eating food they can share with your whole family. The success of our selection of branded products is demonstrated by their high repurchase rates.
To build on this success, this year, we will accelerate and enhance our development of new branded food products.
美妆品类的素野品牌，开启了新的高端产品线，同时还开发了贴合高端护肤方向的蟹子好商品，迎合消费者更广泛的需求，让消费者用得更放心。素野品牌融合了瑞士和美国的新技术，开发了多款新品，其中水光成分的面膜首发的十五分钟内销售就突破了人民币1,000万元。云集的美妆垂直领域在接下来的几个月，还有多款护肤和彩妆新品将按照计划有序地推出。 [Foreign language]
On the cosmetic front, we have successfully launched a number of new product lines for our SUYE brand. Additionally, several SUYE products are certified to be registered as a medical device by the National Medical Products Administration, and can therefore be used in cosmetic surgery applications. SUYE's new product lines will satisfy more diversified consumer needs and give them an increased feeling of assurance. Under the SUYE brand, we have developed multiple new products by integrating new technologies from Switzerland and the USA. Among this, a hyaluronic acid face mask was an instant hit, generating RMB 10 million in sales revenue within 15 minutes of its launch. Furthermore, we have a variety of new skincare and cosmetic products in the pipeline that are due to be launched in the next few months.
大健康方面，我们吸取了之前在身材管理健康食品上的成功经验，将健康云集这个概念做了延伸。我们年销十亿的大健康品牌也进行了品牌升级，打造以新身材管理之口服美容、养、身体调理三大系列的产品矩阵，全方位服务女性健康，并开发出了多款新品。在短短几个月内，多款单品突破了千万元的销售。[Foreign language]
Now let's turn to our healthcare category. Based on our previous successful experience in weight management products, we have extended the concept of health products gathered at Yunji and upgraded our healthcare brand, 轻姿养 [Foreign language] , which generates billions in sales per year. We further augmented our products offering matrix to better satisfy the healthcare needs of our female customers in three dimensions: weight management, skincare and body revitalization. Multiple products have achieved tens of millions in sales within only a few months of their launch.
我们希望我们的自有品牌可以走出云集。2021年，我们就在新、老自有品牌走向外网进行了筹备和试水合作。今年我们会加快将云集制造输送到外网的步伐，做好供应链的输出，包括不限于外网直播平台的直播和达播，各大电商的入驻等。我们希望外站流量能反哺我们的私域社群，提升品牌传播度和竞争力，共同为云集贡献利润。 [Foreign language]
We have always hoped that our private label products would also be available to purchase through external retail channels. During 2021, we prepared for and explored how our new and traditional private labels could be retailed on other platforms. This year, we will accelerate our pace and take the necessary steps to integrate our supply chain with non-Yunji platforms, including but not limited to streaming platforms and e-commerce platforms. We hope that the external platform traffic can be directed to our private community groups, further enhancing our brand awareness and competitiveness, and in turn generating ever greater profits for us.
我们自有品牌的推广离不开我们的服务经理和服务经理带来的垂直领域专业化零售。一直以来，云集看到女性能量，助力女性自我提升。几年来，我们非常高兴地看到云集的女性们生活变得更加美好。我们将这些服务经理看作创业者，并且希望通过培养创业者所在领域的能力，从云集走出更多优秀创业者。我们致力于在保障服务经理的收益的同时，为广大宝妈提供专业知识培训，宣导健康美丽的生活方式，满足物质和精神层面的双份的需求。垂直领域将我们的社群更加细分，尤其是美食、美妆、健康三个垂直领域，配合我们的品质云集精品模式，有利于提升服务经理推广的效率。 [Foreign language]
The promotion of our private label brands is dependent on our service managers and the vertical specialization that they bring to retail. For a long time, we have been empowering women and helping them to improve their lives. Over the past few years, we have been delighted to see that the lives of those of our service managers, who are mothers, have become better and better. We see our service managers as entrepreneurs, and we hope to develop even more excellent entrepreneurs by cultivating their capabilities in their specialized fields. While we are dedicated to generating income for our service managers, we also provide professional training for those who are mothers. In addition, we promote a healthy and beautiful lifestyle which satisfies our service managers material and psychological needs. The development of our verticals, especially food, cosmetics and healthcare, enables us to further segment our community groups.
Importantly, our increasingly segmented user groups and our emphasis on all the quality products gathered will improve the promotional efficiency of our service managers. With that, I will turn the call over to Mr. Chengqi Zhang, our Vice President of Finance, to go through the financial results. Thank you.
Thank you, Shanglue Xiao. Hello, everyone. Before I go through our financial results, please note that all numbers stated in the following remarks are in renminbi terms, and all comparisons and percentage change are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. During the first quarter, we sustained our strategy of optimizing our product range and carefully curating our products as we continued executing our marketplace product pool program, which focused on expanding our offering of exclusive products and private labels. It's worth mentioning that as we accelerate the development of our new products and improving productivity, our private labels have made substantial progress, allowing us to realize substantial profitability. In addition, our private labels received an excellent reception from the market and proved to be a great success.
This success was reflected by our high repeat repurchase rate, which reached 80% in the twelve months ended December 31, 2021. As a result, we record an operating income of RMB 4 million and a net income of RMB 58 million during the first quarter, compared with the operating loss of RMB 20 million and a net loss of RMB 77 million a year ago. This is our fourth consecutive quarter of non-GAAP measured profit and the first year turning loss to profit. Now, let's take a closer look at our financials. Total revenue of RMB 471 million, compared to RMB 1,327 million a year ago. Revenue from sale of merchandise was RMB 389 million, and the revenues from our marketplace business was RMB 74 million.
Adhering to our long-term growth strategy with a focus on profitability, we refined our selection of merchants and suppliers, resulting in near-term decrease in both our marketplace business and the merchandise sales. Importantly, our gross margin improved significantly to 40% compared to 26% a year ago. This increase was due to our continued successful execution of our long-term growth strategy and the introduction of more private label products with higher gross margin on the platform and enhanced the operating efficiency. Turning to our operating expenses. Operating expenses were RMB 47 million compared to RMB 93 million in the same period of last year. This decrease was mainly attributable to reduced warehousing and logistics expenses resulting from lower merchandise sales, reduced personnel costs due to staff restructure refinement, and the decreased service fee charged by third-party payment settlement platform.
Sales and marketing expense decreased to RMB 78 million from RMB 167 million in the same period of last year. The decrease was due to reduced business promotion expense and member management fees. Technology and content expense was RMB 26 million compared to RMB 44 million in the same period of last year. The decrease was mainly due to a reduction in server costs and personnel costs as we refined our staffing structure. General and administrative expenses were RMB 44 million compared to RMB 64 million a year ago. The decrease was primarily due to reduced personnel cost as a result of headcount optimization. Total operating expenses in the first quarter decreased by 47% to RMB 196 million from RMB 368 million in the same period of last year.
We recorded operating income of RMB 4 million as compared to a loss of RMB 20 million a year ago. Net income was RMB 58 million, compared with a net loss of RMB 77 million a year ago. Adjusted net income was RMB 71 million, compared with the adjusted net loss of RMB 63 million a year ago. Basic and diluted net income per share attributable to ordinary shares were both $0.03, compared with basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to an ordinary share of $0.04 in the same period of 2020. Moving on to liquidity. As of December 31, 2021, we had a total of RMB 1 billion cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments on our balance sheet. Our accounts payable reduced to RMB 255 million as of December 31, 2020, compared with RMB 402 million as of December 31, 2020.
Our liquid assets were sufficient to cover our payable obligations, and though we did not hold any long-term bank loans or debts on our balance sheet. As you have probably noticed, capital markets have underperformed recently. However, we remain confident in the company's further growth prospects. We have received a proposal from the board. Today we announced a share repurchase program under which the company may repurchase up to $20 million of its shares over the next six months. Looking ahead, we will continue to execute our strategic upgrade of careful curation of products through our product pool, initiate introduction of more products with strong repurchase potential and quality of private label and exclusive products. We remain confident that our strategy to focus on profitability will drive and sustain our business growth over the long term. This concludes our prepared remarks for today.
Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the hash key. When asking the question, please state your question in Chinese first, then repeat your question in English for the convenience of everyone on the call. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your first question comes from the line of [Jannie] Zhang, who is an individual investor. Please ask your question.
[Foreign language] Let me quickly translate myself. Thank you for taking my questions. We have observed a downturn in the consumer market and fierce competition in the second half of the year, and would like to ask whether Yunji is also affected by the economic downturn. Could you share some views and the future set strategies?
[Foreign language]
Thank you for your question. In 2021, we have started to work with many advanced manufacturing companies in China to explore more new quality products. Our products are mainly in such areas as food, healthcare, and cosmetics. We have explored more quality products that have a large market in China and that are also cost-effective. With all these products, we have further tackled the influence of the downturn of the economy.
[Foreign language]
We believe that in the next 10 years, the Chinese consumers will have a greater demand to further upgrade their consumption. For Yunji, on our supply chain, we will continue to explore more quality products that are also cost-effective. We believe that this will meet the demands of nearly 1/3rd of Chinese families. At the same time, we will also make 10 years as a cycle to further explore more quality and cost-effective products, and to make greater contribution to meet the consumers' needs.
[Foreign language]
Thank you.
As there are no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back to the management for closing remarks.
Thank you for joining us today. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions, and we were looking forward to talking with you next quarter. Bye.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.