Earnings Labs

AIFU Inc. (AIFU)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 21, 2018

$1.37

+7.87%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by for Fanhua’s Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After management’s prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please follow the instructions given at that time if you would like to ask a question. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the Internet. The webcast replay will be available within three hours after the conference is finished. Please visit Fanhua’s IR website at ir.fanhuaholdings.com under the Events & Webcasts section. Today’s conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I’d now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today’s conference, Miss. Oasis Qiu, Fanhua’s Investor Relations Manager.

Oasis Qiu

Management

Good morning. Welcome to our third quarter 2018 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 and Chairman, Mr. Chunlin Wang; Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Peng Ge; and Board Secretary, [Lily Lee]. Mr. Wang will walk you through our financial results in the third quarter of 2018. He and Mr. Ge, Mrs. Lee will then take your questions after the prepared remarks. Now, I will turn the call over to Mr. Wang.

Chunlin Wang

Management

Thank you for joining us on today’s conference call. Here with me, we have our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Peng Ge and our Board Secretary, Mrs. [Lily Lee]. We will begin today’s call with a review of our third quarter 2018 financial results and the major progress that we made during the quarter, followed by a brief discussion of our business outlook for the fourth quarter 2018. Then we will have a Q&A session after the report. To begin with, I would like to give a brief analysis of the industry dynamics. Since early this year, government's efforts to rectify the order in the financial markets are said to continue. Deleveraging, removal of implied guarantee returns, cracking down on illegal fund raising are the main things. Meanwhile insurance regulator continues its emphasis on long-term protection of products capping the guarantee returns on savings type of insurance product and restricting the fast return features for those products, which formed stark contract with the aggressive wealth management products offered by the bank in the first half of 2018. As a result, consumers were held back from making decision to purchase savings products which directly led to a decline in sales agents’ income and damper their moral thus resulting in obvious job in sales agent’s prosperity and active ratio across the industry. And as a result, negative growth in first year premiums of regular personal life insurance business, which is the most valuable insurance business, has seemed to become an inevitable reality across the industry for the full-year 2018. Against this backdrop, we continue to report strong profits for the third quarter 2018. Operating income was up 48.7% year-over-year to RMB124.6 million, again, beating our previous guidance, and net income increased by 73.9% year-over-year to RMB195.2 million. Now, let’s look at the performance…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Dan Tian from CICC. Please go ahead.

Dan Tian

Analyst

The question is from Tian Dan and he has three questions. Firstly, the company reported strong growth year-over-year in number of sales agents in the third quarter. He would like to know whether the company has kept a record of our active sales agents? The number of our active sales agents each month, or what is the active ratio of those sales agents? And the second question, insurance company have started preparing for the year opening sales in 2019 and as far as the information he has got the situation seems a bit challenging and he wonders what preparation we have made for the year opening sales in 2019, and what are our tactics for the year opening sales? And what’s our expectations for the growth of our life insurance business next year? And the third question, recently there is an officer from the CBIRC who talked about a reform, a possible reform on the sales agent’s organization model, what is your view on this potential reform?

Chunlin Wang

Management

Since we started our expansion to achieve the target of 1 million sales agents by 2019, the net increase per month of our sales agents is basically in line with our expectations, which is the net increase -- we have maintained a net increase of like 25,000 agents per month. And as I mentioned just now, we have also attracted a lot of senior managers from top life insurance companies to join us, which is a good demonstration of the acceleration of the trend of division of labor and the division of the manufacturing from distribution. And however, due to the restriction on the annuity products and – like savings type of products the active ratio of sales agents is somewhat effected. And as we think that this is a normal phenomenon in time of correction or in time of adjustment of the industry. And so, for Fanhua, the active ratio of our agents is relative stable and right now basically 50% of our registered sales agents are active agents in terms of selling all types of products or having all kind of sales activities, including for selling like auto insurance, P&C insurance and the accidental insurance and life insurance or have recommended someone to join our eHuzhu platform. And for the monthly active agents for life insurance business, this is the key metric that we are more focused on, and currently the number of active life insurance agents is probably 5% of the total registered sales agents or 10% of the active agents. So, in 2018, particularly in the third quarter, we do see a somewhat decline in the monthly active ratio of our life insurance agents, mainly because of the adjustment in the products, as well as the rapid increase in a number of our sales registered sales…

Dan Tian

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Arthur Hall from Halco. Please go ahead.

Arthur Hall

Analyst

Hello and thanks for taking my call. The only question I had was the top three insurance carriers for the quarter, has that changed at all? Who were the top three for the life insurance carriers and what was that percentage and how do you see that changing?

Chunlin Wang

Management

We maintain normal and active cooperation with our business partners and still a lot of new insurance company are trying to pursue cooperation with us. Basically, there are three criteria that we will look for when we select our business partners i.e. the product offerings and their services, as well as their technology support capability and right now more and more insurance company fit into these criteria. As for the top three in the third quarter, Huaxia accounts for 31% of our total life insurance revenues and Tian'an represents 21% and the Aeon takes up 26%. And other companies like Taikang ICBC-AXA also have been quite active to pursue the cooperation. And we expect that the cooperation with Aeon, Greatwall, and Evergrand will have more positive performance in 2019. Thank you.

Arthur Hall

Analyst

Thank you and congratulations on a good quarter.

Chunlin Wang

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand back to management for any closing comments.

Oasis Qiu

Management

Thank you for joining us on today’s call. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you.