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ZW Data Action Technologies Inc. (CNET)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Apr 17, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Please standby, we are about to begin. Good day, everyone. Welcome to today’s ChinaNet Online Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Results Call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Gregg Davis with MZ. Please go ahead, sir.

Gregg Davis

Management

Thank you. And welcome everyone to today’s conference call for ChinaNet Online Holdings Incorporated. This call will cover ChinaNet’s financial and operating results for the fiscal year of 2014. The earnings press release accompanying this conference call went to the wire early yesterday morning on April 16, 2015. On our call today is ChinaNet’s Chairman and CEO, Mr. Handong Cheng; and the company’s COO, Mr. George Chu. Before we get started, I will read a disclaimer about forward-looking statements. This conference call may contain, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws regarding ChinaNet Online Holdings Incorporated. Forward-looking statements including statements about plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance and underlying assumptions, and other statements that are different than historical facts. These forward-looking statements are based on current management expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may result in expectations not being realized and may cause actual outcomes to differ materially from expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include change in demand for the company’s services, the impact of competition and government regulation, and other risks contained in the statements filed from time-to-time with the SEC. All such forward-looking statements whether written or oral made on behalf of the company are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements, and such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and we caution you not to place undue reliance on these. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Mr. Cheng, who will make some brief opening remarks. Mr. George Chu will provide translation and be your main host for today’s call. Mr. Cheng?

Handong Cheng

Management

Thanks, Gregg, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Throughout 2014 ChinaNet succeed in expanding our competitive portfolio of products and services, strengthening our strategic partnerships and building new ones. However, as we work diligently to introduce these new initiatives and saw positive results in revenues and new business relationships. The macroeconomic environment continue to challenge us in 2014, which negatively impact margins and our online. Looking ahead at ChinaNet in 2015, we are confident in our opportunities to serve the small and medium-size businesses that represent our core customer base. Our significant partnership with Baidu and their confidence in us also lift us our belief that we are on the right track. Together with our partners, entrepreneurs and franchise owners, they are positioning ourselves for success in rebounding economy. In the meantime, our capital position remains solid. Our competitive advantage with new and cutting-edge technology offering continues to diversify our revenue stream into mobile and online to offline systems. We had although begun to strengthen our diversification by making different partnerships and investments into promising companies like MediaFun and O'Yummy Investment Management where we can leverage our knowledge and marketing service into their success. But at the same time, we are mindful of in fact these new initiatives has on our margins and cash flows. In closing, I would like to thank our employees for their commitment to ChinaNet and our shareholders. They understand the challenges we face and we are not satisfied with our results. They are positioning our companies for growth in 2015 and beyond. Thank you for your patience and understanding. I would like to introduce our COO, George Chu, who will now discuss our fiscal year 2014 results.

George Chu

Management

Thank you, Mr. Cheng. Good morning to the investors in the U.S. and good evening to those in Asia. As Mr. Cheng mentioned, I will begin with the discussion of our fiscal year 2014 results before I highlight a few recent business developments. Please refer to the earnings press release and 10-K we filed on Thursday, April 16, 2015 and Wednesday, April 15, 2015 respectively. For more details regarding our results and operation, I will close with our outlook and operational initiatives for 2015. Total revenue for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2014 were $38.9 million, an increase of 28% year-over-year. Revenue from internet advertisings, search engine marketing and other related technical services. For the year ended December 31, 2015, it increased by 51% to $31.3 million compared to the same period a year ago. Search engine marketing service designed to help customers optimize their align search, marketing effectives and maximizing cost per leads, generated from our integrated Internet marketing solutions and partner. We generated about $30 million of revenue in 2014 and it was the main driver of our revenue growth. Management -- we believe this service will help raise overall customers’ satisfaction, thereby increasing recurring revenue and market share for online advertising marketing services in the future. Revenue from TV advertising was $6.4 million in 2014, down slightly from $6.8 million in the same period a year ago. The year-over-year decrease in TV advertising revenue was offset by the collective efforts made by the management in response to the adoption of restriction of TV infomercial broadcasted in provincial satellite television station in China. In response to uncertain business government policy, management shifted resources into the online advertising marketing businesses while maintaining the ongoing relationship with selective provincial satellite television stations for any potential use in future. Revenue…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. [Operator Instructions] We’ll take a question from Jeff Corfman with Symmetry Peak.

Jeff Corfman

Analyst

Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my question. I have three quick ones, if I may. Could you just help me understand a little bit more about your advertising solutions, what it actually does? Secondly, when do you expect to be profitable, what quarterly revenue run rate, are you going to need to hit that profitability? And then if you just have some long-term operating margin expectations, what would they be? Thank you so much.

George Chu

Management

Thank you. So to keep a pretty similar case, very similar case but not exactly the same would be in U.S. what you came looking for is the solution called [indiscernible], which was recently purchased while probably last year purchased by salesforce.com, which is a one-to-one sales lead generation solutions and that’s what we do. So if we will use the U.S. term, what we provide the total solution is called the -- we provide the sales-lead solution as well as the sales conversion rate solutions. So for example, in my presentation, I’ve mentioned the CloudX Tracking System, which will help the SME to track not only the sales-lead conversion rate but also track how many leads are converted to real sales, that what we call a CPS. So basically our core competences are the solutions that we use to provide business specific on sales leads and also have the companies to track this sales lead to become real offline sales. So that’s the solution we’d do. For your second question, that we do anticipate the company return to profitability latest by Q1 next year, latest by Q1 last year. So for long terms, I would be anticipating the company to remain at least on 25% to 30% bottom margin in the long run. Off course, right now we are in a heavy capital expenditure, right now. As we are improving and also developing technologies and also creating and building up all the key alliances, so -- as well as we are building up our real-time bidding systems. So that’s why for last year and for this year, our spending was still huge. So that’s why we anticipate on popularity latest by Q1 in 2016?

Jeff Corfman

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then do you think, you will be raising more money in the future? Thank you so much and congratulations.

George Chu

Management

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, on the investment, great question. You know, every good company always need money to expand, so do we. Okay. But right now, as you can see, our cash is in a very healthy position but of course more capital will facilitate faster expansion of the companies. So I can’t say yes or no to that question but if we do find a right financial investor or strategic financial investor into the companies that will be great to the company and also to the shareholders.

Jeff Corfman

Analyst

Great. Thank you. We look forward to talking to you soon.

George Chu

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] It looks like we have no further questions at this time. So I’d like to turn it back over to our speakers for any additional remarks.

George Chu

Management

Well, thank you. Thank you everyone for participating in this meeting today. And we appreciate your patience in everything and your support to the company. While Mr. Cheng and myself, we promise that we will make this company from a good company to a great company in the long run. So as a result, we need your support. So we will be more and more in details to disclose our actions and progress of the companies to keep you as investors intact with the company developments and that’s the promise we are working, especially starting from 2015. Thank you and thank you for your time. And I wish you all have a great day. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude today’s conference. We thank everyone again for their participation.