Earnings Labs

Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. (FEDU)

Q4 2020 Earnings Call· Mon, May 18, 2020

$11.00

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for the Four Seasons Education's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Olivia Li, Investor Relations Manager for the company. Please go head, Olivia.

Olivia Li

Investor Relations

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 earnings conference call of Four Seasons Education. The company's results were issued via Newswire services earlier today and are posted online. You can download the earnings press release and sign-up for the company's e-mail distribution list by visiting the IR section of our website at ir.sijiedu.com. Ms. Yi Zuo, our Chief Executive Officer will start the call by providing an overview of the company performance highlights for the quarter. Ms. Xun Wang, the company's Vice President of Finance will provide details on the company's financial results and business outlook before opening the call for your questions. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's prospectus as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Please also note that Four Seasons Education's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Four Seasons Education's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Ms. Zuo. Please go ahead.

Yi Zuo

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Olivia, and hello, everyone. Before providing an overview of our fourth quarter performance, we would like to extend our condolences to the families of those individuals who passed away due to the COVID-19. We are also profoundly grateful for the medical professionals, community staff and all those people who have fought against the coronavirus at the frontlines. I also want to thank all of our employees for their hard work and dedication that allowed us to overcome numerous challenges during this unprecedented time. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, we achieved a revenue growth of 10% year-over-year, a solid performance in light of the COVID-19 epidemic in China. After the outbreak of coronavirus, we immediately took precautionary measures to protect our students and our employees. In response to government's containment, we swiftly transitioned our offline courses of all academic subjects to online classes, ensuring our students were able to take courses online. Our quick transition to online classes has allowed us to successfully retain the majority of our students who registered for our offline courses to study with us online. Concurrent with the course migration, we also provided a series of supplemental online services such as course replay, abstract question-and-answer-sessions, and homework review, all in an effort to facilitate a smooth-use experience for students and parents. Additionally, in collaboration with East China Normal University Press, we have officially launched One Lesson One Exercise online courses for primary school students during the fourth quarter. One Lesson One Exercise is a well known and widely used reference book series. Our partnership with East China Normal University Press on the book series corresponding online courses is a clear testament to our curriculum development capability. These class years will also help us enhance our brand awareness to a broader student audience.…

Xun Wang

Management

Thank you, Joanne, and hello, everyone. In the full fiscal year, we promptly adjusted our operations in response to the COVID-19 epidemic and efficiently maintained our student base. In this quarter, our new enrollments decreased by [48%] year-over-year, because we started our course registration ahead of time, considering the early Chinese New Year holiday in 2020. Consequently, a considerable number of enrollments were recorded during the third quarter. The COVID-19 outbreak also impacted our enrollments for the quarter. As a result, total enrollments of the second half of fiscal year 2020 was relatively flat compared with the year ago period. Despite the challenging situation due to COVID-19, we still achieved about 10% year-over-year revenue growth to RMB71.0 million for the fourth quarter. We're continuing our stringent cost control and operational optimization to improve our profitability. Although, we will face uncertainties as the epidemic situations develop, we are confident in the long-term potential of the after-school education market in China. With our ever strengthening online facility in place and a more integrated OMO systems, we’re able to attract an even wider and larger student demographic to study with us. Last but not least, our strong cash position and healthy balance sheet enables us to upgrade our online and offline facilities and make appropriate investments with sufficient capital support. Now, I'd like to walk you through further details of our fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020 financial results. Revenue increased by 9.8% to RMB71.1 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020 from RMB64.7 million in the same period of last year, primarily attributable to the healthy ramp up of new learning centers opened by the company during the fiscal year 2019 and expanded course offerings. Cost of revenue increased by only 0.6% to RMB46.3 million for the fourth quarter of…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. First question is from Joy Wei from 86Research. Please go ahead.

Joy Wei

Analyst · 86Research. Please go ahead

My question is regarding the structural change of the after-school tutoring different market. Could management share your views on the development of online education market? Do you think online education will cannibalize the offline market? And what's your strategy to conform to this trend? Thank you.

Olivia Li

Investor Relations

First of all, let me clarify. What do you mean by the change of the structure of the tutoring market? You mean the breakdown between online and offline?

Joy Wei

Analyst · 86Research. Please go ahead

Yes, because online education market is growing very quickly, so it's like taking market share for the whole market.

Olivia Li

Investor Relations

Online tutoring has been very, very fast for a year, especially for the past two years and then the COVID-19 definitely accelerated such growth. But we believe the results, the quality is still very different between online and offline. Taking this COVID-19 as an example, many parents realized that the results -- the effectiveness of offline is somewhat better probably say or at least very different from online. I think it's -- definitely the online portion will catch up, but offline has its own strategy. And in our view, we believe the core essence of education is the content, the faculty, which lead to the results of the tutoring. Online or offline, it’s just a method. That is why we believe that this -- the whole COVID-19 forced us to transform in an online model and we adapted to this change very quickly. For us, it's a challenge and opportunity as well. As we pointed out earlier that, even that after you resume the offline facility delivery of coursewares, we will still resume a consistent portion of our delivery online. Going forward, online will be part of our business model too. We believe online-merge-offline is what we will be good at because we have the best content. We have the best faculty. And online and offline just are two means to reach students.

Joy Wei

Analyst · 86Research. Please go ahead

And I have a follow-up question on your student acquisition strategy. So what will you do in the spring and also summer vacation period to acquire these students considering that the spring semester is shortened?

Olivia Li

Investor Relations

Yes. As you know online -- the tutoring business is basically in most cases once a week, so it doesn't matter that the summer break is shortened in a way. And for us, we heavily rely on word-of-mouth referrals. And Four Seasons has already established brand in Shanghai. As you may know -- as you may have noticed that historically -- and which is still the case, that we have spent very little in marketing. All the students came to us because of the word-of-mouth referral and because of our brand, which both is a testament to our teaching quality. So going forward I think it still would be the main channel of our student acquisition which is our brand awareness and word-of-mouth referrals. But we also started to invest more in marketing and advertising. Previously we almost nothing -- spent nothing but we are going to -- and we are doing that, that we will cautiously increase our spending in the advertising or in other marketing methods that will help us to acquire students effectively.

Joy Wei

Analyst · 86Research. Please go ahead

Could you remind us the referral rate of the enrollment and also -- probably also in -- retention rate?

Olivia Li

Investor Relations

Sorry, we don't disclose that publicly. You can schedule a follow-up call with our IR and we can do it later. And -- but we don't disclose those two metrics publicly for now.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. As there are no further questions now, I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for any closing remarks.

Olivia Li

Investor Relations

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact Four Seasons Investor Relations through the contact information provided on our website or the Piacente Group Investor Relations.

Operator

Operator

This concludes this conference call. You may now disconnect your line. Thank you.