Earnings Labs

AIFU Inc. (AIFU)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 9, 2016

$1.34

-2.19%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by for CNinsure's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2015 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] After the management's prepared remarks there will be a question-and-answer session, please follow the instructions given at the time if you would like to ask a question. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the Internet. Webcast replay will be available within three hours after the conference is finished. Please visit CNinsure's IR website at ir.cninsure.net under the Events & Webcasts section. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Ms. Oasis Qiu, CNinsure's Investor Relation Officer.

Oasis Qiu

Analyst

Good morning everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015 earnings conference call. The earnings results were released earlier today and are available on our IR website as well as on Newswire. Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The accuracy of these statements may be impacted by a number of business risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include but not limited to those outlined in our filings with the SEC, including our registration statement on Form 20-F. We do not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required under applicable law. Joining us today are our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Chunlin Wang and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Peng Ge. They will walk you through our financial and operating performance in the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015 and take your questions after the prepared remarks. Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Wang.

Chunlin Wang

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Good morning, thanks for joining us in our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015 earnings conference call. I’m happy to have our CFO Mr. Peng Ge here with me and now I will give you an update of our financial and operational results in the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015 and then Mr. Ge and I will take your questions at the end of the report. [Foreign Language] Firstly, I would like to share with you an overview of our financial performance. CNinsure wrapped out the year of 2015 with a robust business growth exceeding our prior guidance. We achieved approximately RMB10 billion insurance premium, which are largely in line with the target that we set out at the beginning of the year. Our net revenue and net income attributable to shareholders were up 35.9% and 103.5% respectively in the fourth quarter of 2015 and up 31.5% and 29.9% respectively for the fiscal year 2015. [Foreign Language] In 2015, we made significant progress across our various businesses and online initiatives. Now I’d to share some of the business highlights with you. Firstly, our P&C insurance agency, amid sluggish macroeconomic environment, the P&C insurance industry in China slowdown with a modest growth of 11% in 2015. Despite the industrial slowdown, our P&C insurance agency business revenue went up 29.2% year-over-year for the fourth quarter and 28.6% year-over-year for the 2015. The growth was primarily derived from the combined effect of an increase in the commission rates that we received from the insurance companies, and strengthen and promotion of CNpad App mobile app during the fourth quarter of 2015. As a result of the successful marketing campaigns, insurance premiums generated from P&C insurance agency business reported a year-over-year growth of 22.8% for the fourth quarter and a year-over-year growth…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Patricia Cheng from CLSA. Please go ahead.

Patricia Cheng

Analyst

Thank you. [Foreign Language] The questions are from Patricia Cheng from CLSA, and she has three questions. The first one is regarding our marketing plans in 2016, and we mentioned that we are going to spend RMB500 million in 2016 in the marketing campaigns and developing our O2O platform as well as network expansion. And our goal is to achieve RMB100 billion in premiums in 8 years. She wonders how much will be the - overall spending will be in the - and then in how many years is it going to take for us to achieve - for us to spend those money in order to achieve the target. And the second question is regarding our Internet platform. What kind of products that CNinsure is selling and is that - product that we are selling, is there any difference from the other Internet platforms and what is our competitiveness. And third question is regarding the insurance companies that we are cooperating. She noticed that nowadays there are a lot of new insurance companies entering the market whether or not there will be any chance for CNinsure to cooperate with those new insurance companies.

Chunlin Wang

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Firstly I would like to explain the rationale behind the investments, the massive investment decision. Firstly, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we have seen that the regulatory environment for insurance intermediary - independent insurance intermediaries are getting more favorable. Firstly, the State Council issued a ten new guidance basically encouraged the insurance industry to play a more important role in the economic development in China. And accordingly the CIRC, the insurance regulator promulgated a lot of favorable regulations and also amended the insurance law. And among those amendments, the regulation for the establishment of insurance agencies and for them to establish branches are relaxed significantly and it makes it easier for them to set up new branches and expand their network. And also the license requirement for insurance agents are also removed from the insurance law and also the regulations issued by the CIRC. So we expect that immediately into agent migration from insurance companies into independent insurance intermediary space. And in addition, we are also seeing the changes in consumers’ consumption preferences due to the easier and faster access to Internet. And then customers are more confident to shop in their minds and make comparison before buying for any products and the younger generation becoming a more mainstream buyers in the Internet space. So against this backdrop, more and more companies are entering are seeing these growth opportunities and because of that we have seen that the Internet insurance has been growing quite strongly in the past couple of years. And right now the third-party insurance distribution platform, there are like hundred - over several hundreds of them already in China. And the insurance company, as well as some leading Internet companies are also exploring ways to tapping into the Internet insurance market in China.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Zhuo Ling from VBA. Please go ahead.

Zhuo Ling

Analyst

[Foreign Language] First of all, he would like to congratulate CNinsure on our good results and his question is about the number of our sales agents. The number of sales agents grew from 2,000 last year to approximately 11,000, so basically the growth is over 90%. He wonder whether all this 11,000 agents are in-house sales based agents or whether or not they are new agents that we [indiscernible]

Chunlin Wang

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Well, we would like to confirm that those are our commission based agents and as I mentioned, the regulatory environment is getting more favorable especially the regulation has removed the licensing requirements for sales agents and we believe that sales agents remain to be a major driving force for insurance sales in the industry and that’s why we have - actually we have been aggressively recruiting new sales agents in 2015 and we believe that and we will continue to do that in 2016. And it’s our target to further double the number of our sales agents in 2016.

Zhuo Ling

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Chunlin Wang

Analyst

And Zhuo Ling would like to confirm with that whether our target is double the number of sales agents in 2016 and the answer is yes.

Zhuo Ling

Analyst

And also he wonder whether or not the way we recruit the sales agents, are we going to use - you are going to recruit the sales agents [indiscernible] or by acquisition and we would like to confirm that, we are going to use the sales agents to join CNinsure.

Chunlin Wang

Analyst

[Foreign Language] And the key operational target that we set for 2016 is that we hope that there will be 500,000 downloaded and activated CNinsure app and which means that the penetration rate among the 5 million sales agents in the industry will be like 10% and we hope that the number of app or number of active users will double in 2016.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of [indiscernible] Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, thank you and congratulations also on a good quarter. Another question on your sales agents. What kind of turnover do you expect with this rapid growth of agents? How much training is involved and how long do you think they will stay with you? And also what kind of productivity would you think that they are working full time for you or they have other jobs also? Thank you.

Oasis Qiu

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Chunlin Wang

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Theoretically speaking, these sales agents are working on a part time basis for CNinsure. They might have a full time job elsewhere or they can be sales agents for insurance companies or even for our peers. And then in terms of the productivity, I think it really depends on how attractive our platforms are to them in terms of whether or not we can provide them a good product or whether or not we can provide them good services, so that they can stick to the platforms. And Mr. Wang cited examples like Jingdong and Alibaba and some consumers may more prefer to buy more products from Jingdong and some others more from Alibaba, it really depends on which platform can provide them better products and services. [Foreign Language] And with CNinsure, we'd like to focus more on providing them better products and better technological support and more stronger marketing support as well as better training to attract them to retain in CNinsure. [Foreign Language] And we will also provide them more stronger incentives to change a team of highly productive sales agents and [Foreign Language] Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Albert Tan [ph], private investor. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

[Foreign Language] There are two questions. The first question is regarding the use of our capital. In 2013, we had about few billion RMB in short term investments and use from this short term investments was roughly RMB65 million, which means that returns of only like 3%. He thinks that’s not really the best way to use your capital and whether or not the management has given any thoughts about that, whether or not management will plan to use some of the capital to buy back our shares to what you think is in the better interest of the shareholders. And the second question is that as the regulation is changing, the insurance companies are also aggressively recruiting sales agents, whether this process by the insurance company will have any impact on CNinsure?

Oasis Qiu

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Mr. Wang would take your second question first and your first question will be answered by our CFO.

Chunlin Wang

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Well, we believe that as the regulatory is getting more favorable or players will try every minute to take advantage of those regulations - the new and it is also perfectly understandable insurance company will like to increase their investment in the internet insurance space. [Foreign Language] And it’s also our judgment that insurance company will increase their investments in internet insurance market and also in recruiting sales agents. However, we do believe that insurance companies, they are the insurance - product providers and basically they provide a single type of product from one single brand and Mr. Wang compares this to the household appliance manufacturers like in China, several brands of household appliance manufacturer in China, they all will try to maintain and increase their brand awareness and increase to expand their service volumes, however, the sales, I think the third party distribution platforms like Gome and Suning will still be their major sales distribution - their sales channels. [Foreign Language] And actually we think that that has improved that insurance companies efforts to invest in Internet space and include South Asia [ph], may not be as successful as they expect. And insurance agents today will still be more inclined to find a one stop - to find a platform that could provide them like one stop products and services and consumers are also more inclined to shop in those platforms that can provide them like all the one stop services and products. [Foreign Language] So we believe that in the future, the largest insurance distributor will be a third-party and independent insurance distributor rather than insurance companies. [Foreign Language] And we’d like to invite our CFO to answer your first question.

Peng Ge

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Firstly, regarding the returns on the short term investments, as you know, we have like RMB2 billion in short term investments and the wealth management products that we invested are, we only accrued use when the products mature and some of the products basically, we have accrued the use on an annual or a semiannual basis. So not all the use of those returns have been reflected in our financial statements, but actually the average returns on those products are in the range of 5% to 6%, but of course in 2016, the interest rate may continue to drop, that means that the return may also decline slightly as well. [Foreign Language] And in terms of the share buyback, looking at the current share price of CNinsure, we do think that it may bring a very good return to shareholders if we buy back some shares and we do not really object to this idea. And however, there are two technical issues here. Firstly, the limitation in terms of a trading volume for any listed company to buy their own shares on the open market. Firstly, we are not allowed to buy more than one-third of the - the daily trading volume cannot be exceeding one-fourth of the average trading volumes in the past 20 days. And then secondly, and we have to wait for the prior bid to complete it before we can’t get our bid to strike a deal. And in 2015, we actually did buy some shares back from the open market. Last year, we got some proceeds in an amount of $2 million and the proceeds are from - actually, the proceeds from the exercise of stock options by our employees. So we are thinking that we’re going to use that $2 million to buy shares, but actually, it took us like 1.5 months to spend all this $2 million to buy those shares. So that means it’s really difficult for us to buy enough shares, even though we have this commitment. And the second problem that we are facing is the strict foreign currency control, right now. And because right now, almost all of our cash are in China right now. So if we want to do a share buyback, we have to convert the money to our overseas accounts and then there will be like a 10% withholding tax and also and we have to get the permission from the regulator to get the money out to overseas accounts. So while we’re trying to - maybe we need to find ways to fix those problems, we are also hoping that we can see better way to use our capital. As Mr. Wang announced our next 8 year plans and our target to achieve like 100 billion sales volumes in the next 8 years and I do think that it might be a better way for us to use the money and bring better returns to shareholders. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference back to the management team for any closing remarks.

Oasis Qiu

Analyst

Thank you. So if you have any further questions, please contact us. Thank you.