Quhuo Q3 2021 Earnings Report

Quhuo EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $483,840,000.00
• Consensus EPS: $613,440,000.00
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$129,600,000.00
• One Year Ago EPS: -$34,560,000.00

Quhuo Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $171.57 million
• Expected Revenue: $178.17 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$6.60 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Quhuo Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2021
• Date: 11/28/2021
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Monday, November 29, 2021
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Quhuo (NASDAQ:QH) Inc is a China-based mobile internet platform that provides digital solutions for personalized mobility and driver management services. The company connects passengers and corporate clients with professional chauffeurs through its on-demand and scheduled ride-hailing offerings, emphasizing safety, reliability and customer experience. Quhuo’s smartphone applications support real-time booking, route optimization and seamless digital payment processing for iOS and Android users.

In addition to its core passenger transportation business, Quhuo delivers business-to-business SaaS solutions to automotive enterprises and logistics providers. These services include driver recruitment and training, fleet management software, performance monitoring tools and analytics for operational efficiency. By leveraging big data and proprietary algorithms, the company seeks to increase asset utilization and reduce idle time for its driver partners.

Headquartered in Beijing, Quhuo completed its initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Market in August 2018. Since then, the company has concentrated its expansion efforts on major Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Its technology infrastructure integrates real-time tracking, dynamic pricing and customer support modules to streamline dispatch and maintain service quality.

Quhuo Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Q3 total revenues grew 44% year-over-year to RMB1.155 billion, outpacing prior guidance and industry averages.
• On-demand delivery revenue reached RMB1.05 billion (+38% Y/Y) with 159 million orders (+59% Y/Y), driven by expansion to 87 cities and a 262%-Y/Y surge in grocery delivery.
• Housekeeping solutions revenue surged 538% year-over-year to RMB211 million, making it the company’s second-largest business line.
• Mobility services revenue jumped 365% year-over-year to RMB34.6 million, boosted by the July launch of intercity freight services.
• The company returned to profitability with Q3 net income of RMB19 million (vs. a RMB10 million loss last year) and adjusted net income of RMB28 million.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Quhuo 3rd Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. This time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference call, Mr. Eric Yuan. Please go ahead.

[Eric Yuan, Investor Relations Representative at Christensen]

Okay. Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Quhuo's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. The company's results were released earlier today and available on our website. On the call today are Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO, Co-founder Barry Ba, and CFO Sandra Ji.

[Eric Yuan, Investor Relations Representative at Christensen]

Leslie will review business operations and the company highlights, followed by Sandra who will discuss financials and guidance. They will be available to answer your questions in the Q&A session that follows. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

[Eric Yuan, Investor Relations Representative at Christensen]

Such statements are based on management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions, and relate to the events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict, and many of which are beyond the company's control, which may cause the company's actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.

[Eric Yuan, Investor Relations Representative at Christensen]

Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties and factors is included in the company's filings with the U.S. SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required under law. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Leslie Yu. Please go ahead, sir.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Thank you, Eric, and thank you all for joining our Q3 2021 earnings call. We are pleased to report another strong quarter. For Quhuo, the total revenues grow by 44% year-over-year, reaching RMB 1.1 billion, in line with our prior guidance. All of our three main business lines, on-demand food delivery, mobility, and housekeeping solutions, all enjoyed continued strong demand with our top line growth outpacing that of the industry.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Now let me walk you through our key business performance in Q3. First, let's look at our biggest revenue contributor, the on-demand delivery business. Its revenue reached RMB 1.05 billion, up 38% year-over-year, exceeding the RMB 1 billion mark for the first time. For Q3, the aggregate number of delivery orders were 159 million, up 59% year-over-year.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

This growth rate was clearly faster than the industry average, showing our ability to quickly gain market share. These impressive results in our on-demand food delivery business were enabled by our strategy to aggressively penetrate into new cities and expand our service network. By Q3, we provided our on-demand delivery services in 1,231 business circles across 87 cities nationwide, compared with 1,067 business circles across 70 cities in the same period in 2020.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

In addition, we expand our coverage of serving chain merchants directly, including supermarkets and chain restaurants. This so-called new retail business gained a strong momentum in Q3. We believe that the COVID-19 containment measures across China served as a positive catalyst for our clients in metro areas to adopt new ways to purchase living necessities. They place orders online and get instant delivery offline.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

This positions Quhuo very well in capturing new business opportunities in this burgeoning segment, as evidenced by our community and grocery delivery, enjoying explosive growth in Q3, with revenue up 262% year-over-year. Furthermore, our expanded network is enabling Quhuo to sustain our leading position on business scale and service quality, while also improve our operational efficiencies and cost structure.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Moving to our housekeeping solutions business. Q3 revenues increased 538% year-over-year to RMB 21 million, with a GMV of RMB 46 million. We are pleased to announce that our housekeeping solutions has become our second-largest business line. For our mobility business, this strategic segment continued its strong growth in Q3, with revenues reaching RMB 34.6 million, up 365% year-over-year and 35% quarter-over-quarter.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Besides shared bike ride-hailing starting July this year, we launched our freight service for industry customers by fulfilling end-to-end intracity and long-distance transportation orders. We believe this is a very promising business with huge market potential. All above reflected our growing brand awareness and resulting in market share gains in this lucrative category.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Let me now provide another update on our exciting multi-scenario deployment, which enables gig workers to have multiple jobs on our platform to optimize their overall income. In Q3, the cumulative number of workers who engaged in two or more types of jobs on our platform reached about 22,700, increasing 28% quarter-over-quarter. Female workers accounted for 60% of the total group, increasing from 10% in the previous quarter.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

For riders with an average monthly income of at least 5,000 RMB, they represented more than 54,000 workers, accounting for 51% of total group, flat with the previous quarter. In Q3, we would like also to highlight the importance of our aggressive investment in Quhuo's technology platform, reflected by the doubling of our R&D, research and development, expenses from a year ago.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

We believe these expenditures will enhance our competitiveness by improving operational efficiency and service quality while expanding our services to more sectors. A clear illustration of our progress on the technology front is the rollout this quarter of our new NetFix platform, including a new family-oriented housekeeping services. Our goal is to extend our world-class housekeeping service capabilities from hotels and restaurants directly to homes and communities. The market size of which is expanded to reach the trillion RMB level.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

The NetFix platform integrates intelligent inspection, robots, and sensors to monitor water and electricity consumption, which can effectively reduce labor cost of property management and improve efficiency and service quality. With the adoption of this smart system by more property management companies, we will set up service stations near communities and fully utilize resources of workers at hotels and property management companies within five kilometers of service stations.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Meanwhile, through cooperation with more property management companies, we can also mobilize our existing housekeeping workforce and our infrastructures to engage in the community housekeeping services, creating a win-win solutions for all parties. Finally, let me talk about our continued efforts in driving profitability in Q3.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

In spite of the operating constraints from the stringent COVID-19 containment measures and with heightened competition, we were still able to achieve our RMB 19 million net income result in Q3, compared with a net loss of RMB 10 million in the same period last year. Adjusted net income for Q3 was RMB 28 million.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

The results reflected our commitment to sustainable profitability as we continued to advance our lucrative business model. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Sandra Ji, who will discuss our financial results for the third quarter. Thank you.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Thanks, Leslie. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Quhuo's third quarter 2021 call. Please be reminded that all amounts quoted here will be in RMB, unless stated otherwise. For this quarter, our total revenues were RMB 1,105.5 million, representing an increase of 43.7% year-over-year, primarily due to the rapid growth of our major business lines.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Revenues from on-demand delivery solutions were RMB 1,047 million, representing an increase of 38% from RMB 758.8 million in third quarter of 2020, primarily due to the increase in the number of delivery orders we fulfilled as a result of the industry growth and our continued penetration and expansion into new geographic markets.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Revenues from mobility service solutions consisting of shared bike maintenance, ride-hailing, and freight service solutions were RMB 34.6 million, representing an increase of 364.5% from RMB 7.4 million in third quarter of 2020, primarily due to our enlarged customer base and service scope for shared bike maintenance solutions and the commencement of freight service solutions in July 2021.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Revenues from housekeeping and accommodation solutions were RMB 21.9 million, representing a significant increase of 538% from RMB 3.4 million in the third quarter of 2020, primarily because we enlarged our customer base for housekeeping and accommodation solutions to include hotels and B&Bs following our acquisition of Lailai and Chengtu Home.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Our cost of revenues were RMB 1,055.1 million, representing an increase of 53.2% year-over-year, primarily due to our business expansion, which resulted in increased costs proportionate to our revenue growth and the incremental hiring expenses and equipment costs to expand the workforce on our platform and secure additional resources in preparation for the anticipated increased demand of our solutions and our continuous business expansion plan in the first quarter.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

General and administrative expenses were RMB 56.2 million, representing a decrease of 45.6% from RMB 103.2 million in third quarter of last year. The decrease was primarily due to the decrease in share-based compensation expenses from RMB 72 million in the third quarter of last year to RMB 9.1 million in third quarter of this year, primarily because we incurred substantial share-based compensation expenses in the third quarter of 2020 as we satisfied the performance conditions of our share incentive awards upon completion of our initial public offering then.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Excluding share-based compensation expenses, general and administrative expenses increased by 51% year-over-year, primarily due to the increase in staff costs in line with the rapid growth of our housekeeping solutions and professional service fees and expenditures in connection with our business expansion plan.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Our research and development expenses were CNY 6.3 million, representing an increase of 180.9% from CNY 3 million in the third quarter of 2020, primarily due to the incurrence of outsourcing expenses to develop a new subsystem for our housekeeping solutions and the increase in staff costs as we enlarge our research and development team.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

The operating loss was CNY 19.3 million compared to operating loss of CNY 24 million in third quarter of last year. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, the adjusted operating loss was CNY 10.2 million compared to adjusted operating profit of CNY 48 million in the third quarter of 2020.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

We recorded other income net of CNY 39.2 million compared to other income net of CNY 32.1 million in the third quarter of 2020, primarily due to the increase in fair value change of investments in the mutual funds. We also recorded income tax benefit of CNY 0.8 million compared to income tax expenses of CNY 15.8 million in the third quarter of 2020, primarily due to the lower estimated annual effective tax rate for the third quarter of 2021.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

Net Adjusted EBITDA was CNY 35.1 million compared to adjusted EBIT of CNY 85.1 million in third quarter of 2020. The adjusted net income was CNY 28.2 million compared to adjusted net income of CNY 61.3 million in the third quarter of 2020.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

For the balance sheet, as of September 30, 2021, we had cash, short-term investments and restricted cash of RMB 257.1 million, short-term debt of RMB 140.6 million. Now move to our financial outlook for next quarter. For the first quarter of 2021, we expect the total revenues to be in the range of RMB 1,050 million-RMB 1,150 million, representing the increase of 20.6%-32% year-over-year.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

The forecast reflects our current and preliminary views on the market and its operational conditions, which is subject to change. I think this concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your attention. We are now happy to take your questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the pound or hash key. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from Dillon Heslin from ROTH Capital Partners. Please ask your question.

[Dillon Heslin, Equity Research at ROTH Capital Partners]

Hi, good morning. Good afternoon. Hope everyone's doing well. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I know some of the other gig economy companies in China talked about some weakness in consumer demand from both the COVID-19 Delta variant and then some flooding and other macro impacts. Did you guys see anything similar in 3Q? And if so, have any of those trends normalized for 4Q?

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Hi, this is Leslie. Even though the COVID-19 contained the movement across overall China, we can see- We capture the business opportunity, and we have very strong growth. According to our growth, we consider that the market for on-demand delivery and for housekeeping and for mobility is still very strong.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

We expect that the Q4, as indicated by Sandra in the financial outlook, we're still expanding. That will be huge demand, and we will maintain this growth. Although there will be, like, Spring Festival followed up by Q4, so we mainly focused on the profitability driven in Q4. We expected that the demand for the service and for the revenue growth is still strong. Thank you.

[Dillon Heslin, Equity Research at ROTH Capital Partners]

Thanks. Secondly, your gross margins were a little bit under pressure again in 3Q, down a bit more from 2Q versus what they were last year. How much of that is one-time in nature from some of the platform expenses you incurred to grow in terms of, like, technology and hardware? Then what sort of like a steady-state forward gross margin outlook for 4Q and beyond?

[Barry Ba, Co-Founder, VP and CFO at Quhuo]

I would like to explain the reason why the gross profit is little bit down in Q3. That is because we have recruited a lot of staff preparing for this Q4 because we are already expecting very strong growth compared with last year.

[Barry Ba, Co-Founder, VP and CFO at Quhuo]

Overall is about 80% growth compared with last year. For this coming winter, we need to prepare people in advance because in this year, particularly in the market, the labor is more. The supply of the labor compared with the last few years is relatively limited, so we have to get more people on board with us prepared for the Q4.

[Barry Ba, Co-Founder, VP and CFO at Quhuo]

Because we are facing some extreme weather according to the forecast for this winter, we prepared for our winter equipment a little bit early, and it's a full preparation in Q3. That's a reason why a little cost has been increased in our operational cost to produce one-off investment in the winter equipment and also in the labor recruitment cost.

[Sandra Ji, CFO at Quhuo]

I can give you a rough picture of the first quarter gross profit margin. We expect the margin will be better than this quarter. Thank you.

[Dillon Heslin, Equity Research at ROTH Capital Partners]

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. One more if I may. Can you sort of talk a little bit more about the multi-city deployment? What's your go-to-market strategy there? Like, how do you select which cities. I'm sorry, not multi-city, multi-service. Which cities get the multi-service, and how do you onboard some of your workers onto that platform?

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

For multiple jobs opportunity and also we consider this multi-scenario deployment. Actually, this is a nationwide strategy, and we basically will provide our workers for multi-job opportunities.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

For these workers, possibly, they do not have this kind of skill or capability, so we have online training system and together equipped it with the inside coaching. With these two systems, we'll help them to adapt them to the new job opportunities and help them to get the income, more income. Besides that, we have call this session.

[Barry Ba, Co-Founder, VP and CFO at Quhuo]

Screen.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

Screening system. Yeah. We have screening system on Qihoo+. This screening system will help to record and this personnel and their qualification and their skill set and their work record in the system.

[Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO at Quhuo]

We use a kind of like the algorithms to help us to identify and match the people to the right jobs. When these people are in the system being matched, we will encourage them and provide them with the training program and some kind of encouragement, and they will be better, easier, and also be encouraged to work in the new job opportunities. That's how we can keep the more workforce in our platform to have more job opportunities and increasing about 20% quarter-over-quarter. Yeah, thank you.

[Dillon Heslin, Equity Research at ROTH Capital Partners]

Great. Thank you. That's it for me.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Barry Ba, Co-Founder, VP and CFO
• Leslie Yu, Chairman and CEO
• Sandra Ji, CFO

Analysts

• Dillon Heslin, Equity Research at ROTH Capital Partners
• Eric Yuan, Investor Relations Representative at Christensen