Earnings Labs

Waterdrop Inc. (WDH)

Q4 2022 Earnings Call· Sat, Mar 18, 2023

$1.68

+0.00%

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Transcript

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Good morning. This is Mona [ph], the Investor Relations from Waterdrop and I'm happy to welcome everybody to the Waterdrop's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Call. Please note that, you’re on a listen-only mode and today’s event is being recorded. Please also note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Securities and the Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Additional risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to those outlining our public filings with SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Also, this call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release for a reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP. Joining us today on the earnings call are Mr. Shen Peng, our Founder, Chairman and CEO; Mr. Yang Guang, Co-Founder, Director; Finance VP and GM of International Business; Mr. Ran Wei, Director, GM of the Insurance Technology Business; Mr. Yao Hu, GM on Crowdfunding and Pharmatech Business, Mr. Chen Richard, Board Secretary and we'll be happy to take your questions in the measuring line at the end of the conference call.

Peng Shen

Management

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Looking back on 2022, the downside risks of global economy and the resurgence of pandemic put tons of pressure on the domestic economy. However, as China made efforts to deepen the stable growth and smoothen the provision layer. The domestic economy and the consumer confidence our current ratio showing cycle recovery. On the guidance of policies, the insurance industry has enhanced the trip on high-quality development and continue to calculate the patient operation. In the long term, the insurance industry will have great potential since the demand for insurance continues to grow. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry is in the new age, benefited from the acceleration of the clinical trial for the business model innovation. Facing headwinds, we anticipate on pursuing sustainable developments by creating value for users, which the metric business within. In the fourth quarter, our revenues continued the profit stream of the last three quarters, increased by 12.5% year-on-year. Our GAAP net profit reached RMB126.2 million in the fourth quarter and RMB608 million for the full year. We have delivered our commitment on overall profitability by our established business in the year of 2022. As of the end of December, our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments amounted to RMB3.7 million, increasing 3.2% quarter-over-quarter. Even taking into account our repurchase program, we will be able to generate a positive cash inflow of RMB1.15 million in the fourth quarter. Our ample cash reserves and ability to generate positive cash flow put us in a strong position to withstand the ever changing environment and the future oriented arrangements. Our businesses are showing positive traits. Specifically, under the pressure of industry adjustments, our Waterdrop Insurance marketplace continues to contribute net profit and cash flow by elevating our…

Wei Ran

Management

Thank you, Shen Peng. Hello, everyone. Let me give you an update on our Insurance business. With the complex external environment, a resurging academic across the country and softer consumer demand, plus the so called adjustment of life and health insurance industry. The growth rate of both year premium has not increased significantly. Against a backdrop, our first year premiums amounted to RMB1.6 billion and the insurance-related revenue reached RMB611 million. However, since we invested on high-quality development, our insurance business remains relevant and continue to contributing all the profit. And we also found ways to study a bottom line by driving better ROI and using budget more efficiently. In the fourth quarter, we leveraged the management of the safety users by building into our business constantly include user experience and their value projection. The number of policies per capita increased by 18% quarter-over-quarter and further increasing the chunk rate and renewal rate remain at high levels of over 60% and 90% and the ATL of existing users increased 7% quarter-over-quarter and we continue to improve operational efficiency. We proactively exposed customer acquisition channels on various social media platforms, the overall number of new customers increased by 39%, in which have regular accounts, the new customers increased by 166% quarter-over-quarter. It has already achieved perfect quality, laying a solid foundation for further expansion. In order to live stream our operations based on the current events and identified users with high volume to consume and our sales team will follow-up timely to provide financial consulting service for them. Leverage now direct to consumer experience as the ability to deliver high-impact content. The number of consumers in the short video platform increased by 321%. On the other hand, we collaborated with industry players to obtain sales fleet innovative from our commercial capabilities,…

Yao Hu

Management

As of the end of Q4, a cumulative total of 426 million helped a saving 2.7 million patients with around RMB57 billion on our own platform. In this quarter, the operational transparency committee made further improvements. For instance, we released a monthly bill including the overview and breakdown of the fund raised in our platform, which marks that not only can we achieve this transparency of a single campaign, but also the transparency of the online platform. The billing system includes the total number of accounting details from refunded and refused. It also shows the cash flow from the donor to the fund raiser. In addition, the detail billings of monthly cases and in useful digital are provided for the public oversight and monitoring. Besides, we can also fully disclosure the key review procedure and the corresponding results through Weibo to be specific, when accounting was initiated, this granting phase will be identified and intercepted on the simple scenarios including concerning the financial condition, undertaking personal information, using funds to buy a house or car, used to relate on our black list or other a few years back do not comply with other rules. On the other hand, you remain the fundraising process, any campaign related to the use population of funds, a bank account and medical bills will also be identifying and is active. We will also publicize the rationale and decisions to build users on commercial cases on the various scenarios, overall enhancing the transparency on the recovery following up. In the fourth quarter, the development of clinical sales was impacted by the pandemic in many places around the country. And therefore the truth life of many clinical trials were hindered. We are mentioning the advantage of our wide coverage across the country and capability, and quickly, and…

Guang Yang

Management

Thank you, Yao Hu. Hello, everyone. I will now walk you through our financial highlights for the fourth quarter and full year of 2022. Before I go into details on the financial performance, please be reminded that all numbers quoted here will be in RMB as the level of our earnings release for detail information on our comparative financial performance on both a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis respectively. Despite the challenging external environment, we invested on the high-quality development. Our net operating revenue increased by 12.5% year-over-year to RMB639.5 million, which primarily due to the increase of insurance-related income crowdfunding service fees and digital clinical trial solution income. The operational cost and expenses decreased by 10.5% year-on-year and 5.2% quarter-on-quarter, amounting to RMB606.6 million, driven by the financial guidelines taken in the third quarter of 2021. To break it down, operating costs were RMB278.6 million up by roughly 41% year-over-year, mainly due to the increase in professional and outsourced customer service base of RMB51.2 million and the recording of crowdfunding-related service base of roughly RMB67 million from sales and marketing expenses to operating costs and we started to generating crowdfunding service base, since April 2022. And partially offset by around RMB41 million decrease in personnel costs for our consultants and agents team. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, operating costs decreased by 18.4% as a result on the professional and also customer service base decreased by around RMB25 million. Sales and marketing expenses decreased by 42.8% year-over-year to RMB137.8 million which was primary due to a RMB36 million decrease in marketing expenses to third-party traffic channels. And exactly RMB18 million decreasing up cost sales and marketing services in third-party. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, our sales investment expenses almost remain unchanged. Our G&A expenses decreased by 20.7% year-over-year to RMB118.6 million due to…

Operator

Operator