MINISO Group Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 22, 2023

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In addition, we have prepared a PowerPoint presentation for today's call, which contains financial and operational information for this quarter fiscal year. If you are using Zoom meetings, you should be seeing it right now. You can also revisit it on our IR website later. Now, I would like to hand the conference over to Mr.

Operator

Ye, and Mr. Zhang will translate for Mr. Ye. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our earnings conference call. Our overall performance once again reached new heights as we achieved big breakthroughs in both revenue and profitability. Total revenues exceeded the RMB 3,000,000,000 milestone for the first time, increasing by 40% year over year to RMB 3,250,000,000. GP margin reached 9.8 percent, an increase of 6.5 percentage points year over year. Adjusted net profit surpassed CNY570 1,000,000 increasing by 156 percent.

Speaker 1

Adjusted net margin also hit a new high reaching 17.6%, an increase of 8 percentage points year over

Speaker 2

year.

Speaker 1

I'll now walk you through business updates for our 3 major segments, Ministry of China, Ministry of Overseas and Top Toil. Minus of China showed resilience despite the challenging consumption environment. Off line sales of Minstrel China achieved 40% year over year growth in this quarter, whereas according to the National Bureau of Statistics China, domestic retail sales increased by only 10%. Average transaction volume increased by 18%, while average transaction value increased by more than 5% year over year. Entering July, nearly 1 third of municipal stores in China achieved new sales record marking a strong start to the September quarter.

Speaker 1

GMV increased by over 25% year over year with GMV per store increasing by 14%. Average transaction volume and average transaction value increased by 10% and 3% respectively. For the 1st 7 months of 2023, GMV per store in China recovered to 2021 level and around 85% of pre COVID level in the same period of 2019 in line with our expectations at the beginning of the year. Notably, we opened a total of 321 new stores on net basis in China during the Q2, including more than 90 of new stores in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. This not only sets a quarterly record for store openings for minstou, but also represents the highest quarterly new store openings in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities since the pandemic.

Speaker 1

Meanwhile, store closure rate in this quarter was only 1.0% below historical average. What these two signs in store opening and closing reflect is the high confidence of our retail partners. As of June, Minso brand had over 1,000 Minso Retail Partners with nearly 50% of stores owned by top 50 franchisees. Among them, 40 have been cooperating with us for more than 6 years. In the past 4 fiscal years, about 50% of new stores in China are owned by our top 50 partners.

Speaker 1

The average number of stores owned by them increased steadily from 27 to 33. We have been recruiting new partners as our store network of countries into lower tier cities. The total number of retail partners increased from 754 at the beginning of 2020 to 10 22 as of now. We are highly confident that we will achieve our target of opening 350 to 450 stores in China on net basis in 2023. We are also optimistic that we will be able to expand our network in different tier cities across China.

Speaker 1

We now expect to have about 5,000 stores in China by 2027 compared to 3,325 stores we had at the end of 2022. Let's move on to overseas. Firstly, revenue was RMB1.11 billion, a 42% year over year increase from the high base of last year, exceeding even our most optimistic expectations and setting a new record June quarter. Revenue from directly operated markets increased by 85%, accounting for more than 45% of our overseas revenue, up from 35% in the same period last year. Secondly, GMV in overseas markets increased by 41% year over year, including 69% growth in directly operated markets and 32% growth in distributed markets.

Speaker 1

Overall, GMV per store in overseas market increased by over 25% year over year and reduced book count increased by about 11%. Major overseas markets maintained rapid growth momentum including 106% growth in North America and a Sir, overseas GMV per store in the June quarter recovered to 92% of the same period in 2019. This is meaningfully higher than the 77% 68% recovery rate we saw in the previous quarter and the same period of last year. The distributed markets recovered to 95% pre COVID levels, while the DTC market recovered to 85%. In our top 5 overseas markets, GMV per store in North America was nearly twice the same period in 2019.

Speaker 1

GMV Presto in Latin America, Europe, Middle East and North Africa all recovered to about 90% of 2019 levels. Asian markets recovered to about 65%, which was the highest we have seen since the pandemic and the recovery is still very fast. Country wise, GMV per store in Mexico is 10% higher than pre COVID level. In the first half of twenty twenty three, 4,000 new SKUs were launched in Mexico and became a major driver of its local sales. GMV per store in the U.

Speaker 1

S. Was twice the pre QV level since the grand opening of our first global flagship store at Times Square on May 20. It has consistently been setting new sales records. 4th, profit margin of overseas business is substantially improving thanks to the operating leverage. In this quarter, overseas markets contributed more than 40% of total operating profit, meaningfully higher than the approximately 25% in last quarter.

Speaker 1

Margin expansion was especially apparent in U. S. Markets, along with a rapid revenue growth and refined unit economics. About 9% of our stores there was already profitable in June, significantly driving up the operating profit margin for overseas directly operated markets. In the first half of twenty twenty three, 72 new stores were opened in overseas markets on a net basis.

Speaker 1

The second half of calendar year tends to be peak season for store opening and sales. Recently, store opening have accelerated. In July, we added 38 overseas stores. We are still positive with the target of 350 to 450 addition in overseas market in 2023. Since the beginning of this year, I have spent the majority of my time in overseas markets.

Speaker 1

During this period, I had a lot of deep thinking about Minasource value proposition and I'd like to take this opportunity today to share with you. In the past 10 years since our inception, Minsoo leveraged China's unmatched supply chains. We used to position our products as 3 highs and 3 lows, meaning high appealing, high quality and high frequent low cost, low market and low prices. We relied on this cost leadership strategy for a very rapid growth. 2023 marked the 1st year of Minso's brand upgrade.

Speaker 1

Its value proposition has never been clearer in my mind. Facing new changes and new trends both at home and abroad, we cannot survive by relying solely on cost advantages. In addition to that, we also need to differentiate our product offerings as much as we can to engage in global competition. So I have renewed Minasoft's brand positioning to a global value retailer offering lifestyle products featuring IP design. So how should we think about this positioning?

Speaker 1

The first message I want to deliver is that we attach great importance to the design of every single product. We have developed a lot of trendy lifestyle products that resonate with young consumers by focusing on creating more interest driven content, just like Nike has been doing in promoting better design in sportswear. In addition to that, we should become IP powerhouse such as Disney and make lifestyle products more fashion by featuring IPs By leveraging consumer demand to guide product design, we can always develop products that are truly unique or are believed to offer more value than similar IP products. Only in this way can we continuously design best selling products that also resonate with our consumers. We are now cooperating with 80 IP Licensers compared to 17 when we listed in the U.

Speaker 1

S. 3 years ago. Take the recent blockbuster Barbie series as an example. Half of related SKUs we had in store were sold out within the 1st 5 days of launch. The collaboration generated immense buzz on social media platforms, including Xiaohongshu, wealth related topics received over 13,000,000 comments as well as Weibo.

Speaker 1

Well, the topic accumulated nearly 300,000,000 views as it became another phenomenal article branding event for us. 3rd, we will stick to value for money proposition. Minstrel believes in our happy philosophy as we offer creative and high quality products to global consumers at affordable price. This is in line with our commitment to make it easy for consumers to enjoy happy and quality life. Leveraging China's efficient supply chain and design capabilities we have accumulated during the past 10 years.

Speaker 1

Miniso is able to offer global consumers budget friendly products and build our customer friendly image. This valuable money proposition enables us great advantages in navigating through economic cycles. We have identified 2 product strategies for overseas markets, globalization and IP strategy. To accomplish these two strategies successfully, we need to consistently drive product and design innovations. That means we need to offer emotional resonance with consumers by providing good looking, fun and useful products, among which we believe 3 categories will be key to our success.

Speaker 1

These are big beauties, big toys and big IPs products. In this year, perfumes, IP related plush toys and IP related buying boxes acted as our killer categories and have generated explosive growth in overseas markets, opening up new avenues for our future growth. Lastly, we'll implement Superstore strategy. I believe Superstores play a key role in growing mind share among consumers and strengthening our brand as they contribute larger sales. For example, our recently opened flagship store on Beijing Road of Guangzhou refreshed the sales record of single store in China for years.

Speaker 1

This is particularly impressive given ongoing weakness of consumption in China. In particular, the opening performance of Times Square flagship store was unbelievably strong and it has operated our understanding of our business, and strengthened our confidence in further developing and making investments there. The Superstore concept is potentially a new path towards improving personal sales for us. Now let me brief you our recent developments from Top Boy. Hopefully revenue increased by 81% year over year with an increase of 46% year over year in personal sales and increase of 24% of average store count.

Speaker 1

I believe that high quality growth is just ahead of us. In the June quarter, Dapoi's product mix has been optimized as our exclusive products accounted for 1 third of total sales, reaching the goal we set about 2 years ago. Merchandise GP margin was about 46%, 5 percentage points higher than the same period last year. Accounting GP margin continued to increase to a comparable level of Minsoft China 1 year ago. This is a reasonable comparison as both business employ an SLI business model, while we mainly attract partners to invest in stores.

Speaker 1

So when sales reach a certain scale, operational leverage will kick in and drive our profit. I'll now turn the call over to Yisheng for a review of our financial performance in June quarter fiscal year 2023. Thank you, Jack. Hello, everyone. Thank you again for joining us today.

Speaker 1

I'll walk you through our financial results for the June quarter. Please note that all numbers are in renminbi unless otherwise stated. And I will also refer to some non IFRS measures, which have excluded share based compensation expenses. Revenue was CNY3.25 billion, representing an increase of 40% year over year. Revenue from China was CNY2.14 billion, up 9% year over year.

Speaker 1

The increase was driven by a growth of 42% in revenue from Minnesot's offline stores and a growth of 81% in revenue from TopToei. The 42% year over year growth of Mini Softline Business was the result of a 9% growth in average store count and a 31% of growth in per store sales. However, on a more comparable basis, 1st store sales increased by about 25%, excluding the impact of store closures last year. The 81% year over year growth of Top Toy was a result of 24% growth in average store count and 46% growth in postal sales. On a more comparable basis, postal sales increased by about 30%, excluding the impact of store closure last year.

Speaker 1

Revenue from overseas markets was RMB1.11 billion, up 42% year over year, driven by an increase of 11% in average store count and a growth of about 28% in average revenue per menstrual store in overseas markets. Revenue from distributed markets was about RMB609 million, an increase about 20% year over year. Revenue from directly operated markets was about RMB506 1,000,000, an increase of about 85% year over year, accounting for 45% of overseas revenue as compared to 35% last year. For through fiscal year 2023, revenue was RMB11.5 billion, up 14% year over year. Of this, revenue from overseas markets was about RMB3.82 billion, up 45% year over year.

Speaker 1

Gross profit in the June quarter was RMB 1,300,000,000, up 68% year over year. Gross margin was 39.8 percent compared to 33.3% in the same period of last year. The year over year increase was due to 3 reasons. 1, GP margin in China increased by about 6 percentage points, thanks to our continuous effort in brand upgrade. 2, GP margin in overseas markets increased by another 6 percentage points, thanks to product optimization and higher revenue contribution from directly operated markets.

Speaker 1

And 3, GP margin of Top Toy increased by 10 percentage points due to product optimization. SG and A expense as a percentage of revenue was 19%, down from 22.7% in the same period of last year. Selling and distribution expense was about CNY458 1,000,000, increased by 33% year over year driven by: 1, increased IP licensing expenses number 2, increased personnel related expenses and number 3, increased marketing expenses, mainly in connection with our strategic brand, operator of Minasol in China. Going forward, we will continue to see marketing expense increase for a while, but we are highly confident to make sure the total SG and A expense maintained at a reasonable and controllable level of revenue. G and A expense were RMB161 1,000,000, decreasing by 10% year over year.

Speaker 1

Turning to profitability. Operating profit was RMB690 1,000,000, increasing by 1 154%. Operating margin in this quarter was 22%, the first time ever for us to reach such a high level. And for fiscal year 2023, operating margin has reached nearly 20% too. Adjusted net profit in this quarter was RMB571 1,000,000, increasing by 156 percent year over year.

Speaker 1

For full fiscal year, adjusted net profit was about CNY 1,850,000,000, up 155% year over year. Adjusted net margin in this quarter was 17.6% compared to 9.6% in the same period of 2022. For fiscal year, adjusted net margin was 16.1% compared to 7.2% in last year. As of June 30, 2023, we had a strong cash position of RMB7.3 billion compared to RMB5.8 billion 1 year ago. Turning to capital allocation strategy.

Speaker 1

We have established a dividend policy of paying out no less than 50 percent of adjusted net profit in the future. For fiscal year 2023, the Board of Directors approved a cash dividend in amount of US0.412 dollars per ADS, about 50% of our adjusted EPS or $0.81 The aggregate amount of cash to be paid is approximately US128.5 million dollars or RMB931.7 million. Ministo aims to be a world class company. Our capital allocation strategy in the future will balance new growth opportunities and our commitment to bring stable return to shareholders. So June quarter has witnessed too many breakthroughs and new hits in each major aspects of our operations.

Speaker 1

Looking forward into the September quarter, we expect our sales will continue to grow strongly on a year over year basis, driven by better store level performance and store network expansion. Meanwhile, our margin profile will continue to optimize on a year over year basis. Basis. Thank you. And this concludes our prepared remarks.

Speaker 1

We are now ready to take questions.

Operator

Thank you, sir. The first question today comes from the line of Michelle Sheng from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

So I have 3 questions. So first two is for Mr. Yan. The first one is the IT performance has been very strong this year. And can you share with the sales contribution from IT products this year?

Speaker 2

And whether we have any target for the future? And regarding the cooperation method with partners, Is there any difference between the domestic market and also the overseas market? And my second question is about the China per store GMV upside. Given are you still around 15% gap versus pre COVID level? And do we have any specific strategies to drive further improvement?

Speaker 2

And third question is about the OPE margin for overseas. This quarter we have 35% revenue from overseas and 40% contribution from operating profit for overseas business. So can you share with us what is the driver for DTC and also the distribution model? And how should we think about the margin upside for the overseas business? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Okay. Michelle, thank you for your first question. So we will continue to enlarge our cooperation with strong IPs with global influence and in line with our strategic direction of brand upgrade and will be helpful in expanding our sales. Specifically in overseas market, we will stick to our big IP product strategy and we will continue to fund the strong IPs in each important market we are in. And that is that will be one of our focus too.

Speaker 1

For the target of IP sales, we do not have specific numbers at this moment. But my personal estimate is that in the near future, it will be stabilized at about 25% to 30%. In the first half, the IP contribution was up about 25 percent, about 1 percentage points higher than the same period last year. But compared to 2019, it has been 10 percentage higher. And I'd say in at least for a while, the percentage contribution will be 25% to 30%.

Speaker 1

But in the future, we will dynamically change the contribution from IP based on the market change. And there's no significant difference between our core patient mode between in China and overseas market. We specifically found that IPs in the U. S. Or from Japanese has global appealing among our customers.

Speaker 1

And we will cooperate with our IP licenses in terms of product authorization, in terms of marketing, in terms of shopping experience and store experience and in all these aspects. We will leverage IP to empower in terms empower us in terms of branding power and product power. Thank you. In terms of the second question, you are right that with the progress of our brand upgrade, we will stick to our big store strategy or flagship store strategy. By the end of June, the average store size of Minister of China store is about 180 square meter and this number has been stabilized during the past several years.

Speaker 1

But with the improvements of our branding power and our product, it has created some preconditions of our big stores opening. As I shared earlier, only by open big stores can we increasing our mind share among our customers as these big stores contribute larger sales. And by opening big stores or flagship stores, It's also a common experience that we have learned from the big retailers, the advanced retailers from European countries and the U. S. So in the 1st 6 months, we have opened dozens of big stores that has demonstration effect.

Speaker 1

For example, the flagship stores of Beijing Road and the Chunxi Road. Now in our store portfolio, we have about 100 flagship store or big stores, large stores. On average, the initial CapEx is about 2 times of ordinary stores. In the 1st 6 months, the personal sales have been very great of these big stores because their personal sales is 3 times of that of ordinary stores with ASP 7% higher and the inventory turnover days with inventory turnover days of about 30 days. It's about 20 days less than the ordinary stores.

Speaker 1

So in general, in terms of ROI and payback, these large stores will be far better than ordinary stores. And Michel, this is about your 3rd questions about the OP margin of improvements. I think first of all, you have to know that this what percentage OP margin contribution is the one before the allocation of headquarter overheads because there's always some overheads in headquarters that is allocatable to HBU. And for the Okey margin of overseas business, I would say now currently it's between the 22% of the group level and about the nearly 30% of Ministry of China is between them. I'd say whenever the OP margin of overseas business is above the average the group level, its profit contribution will be higher than its revenue comparison between this quarter and last quarter, I would say the source from the improvement is mainly from the operating leverage.

Speaker 1

If we look at the expense structure in both directly operated markets and the distributor markets in this quarter, we would see that the expense ratio the OpEx ratio, they decreased about several percentage points compared to last quarter. So in general, the OP margin of overseas market in this quarter has improved by about 5 percentage points on a quarter over quarter basis. And the last point I would add is, I would say it's not the first time that we have seen OE margin contribution of overseas market surpass 40%. As we shared earlier, before the pandemic, when the overseas market contributed about 35% or nearly 40% revenue contribution, Then we already saw nearly 40% or over 40% of margin contribution. And I'd say because the directly operating markets of our overseas business is still picking up operational leverage.

Speaker 1

So the overall profit contribution from overseas market, I would say, you will not surprised to see it will fluctuate for a while.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the lines of Anne Ling from Jefferies. Line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

My first question is on the Superstore strategy. Just a follow-up question regarding like whether we will be opening a sales owned Superstore or how many of this store in the future will be operated by the franchise? And in the future, what is our target for these super stores in our 300 to 400 store opening for this year for both China as well as for the overseas market. And the second question is coming out from is actually for the U. S.

Speaker 2

Market. How much of the sales contribution is it like from the U. S. As a percentage to the U. S.

Speaker 2

From the overseas sales? And in terms of

Speaker 1

the Pestotal

Speaker 2

performance, how different is it so far versus the China market? I remember that in the past, our S and it's been gradually building up, which in the future will help drive the sales as well as the profitability.

Speaker 1

Ann. For your first question about the largest store strategy, I'd say we will stick to this strategy. In my design, we have a blueprint that in the future, we do believe that each city or each provincial city in China has a flag ship store that represents Minnesota's brand image. So my best guess is we should have like 500 such stores. And there's no such thing that this store should be directly operated or franchisee operated.

Speaker 1

The best the first and foremost important thing is we should fund the optimal allocation. And we will suggest every of our mid source overseas market to open suitable flagship stores because as I said, the big store strategy is critical for our future success because it can bring our it brings Minsto's brand image and our store performance to a new hit. And it will also have a demonstration effect for its peer stores among the same store markets. So for example, in the U. S.

Speaker 1

Markets, our flagship stores there, we can deliver like RMB1.3 million to RMB1.4 million sales record. And for our Guangzhou, Beijing Road flagship stores, we may have 5,000,000 sales per month. And all these are new sales record for Minsoo Inverse. And for your second question about the U. S.

Speaker 1

Market specifically, I would say the U. S. Market for the past three quarters, it has 2 quarters ranked the first among its revenue contribution in overseas market. And in June quarter, it's the 2nd largest in terms of revenue contribution. And its revenue contribution of our overseas market is high teens.

Speaker 1

And this revenue contribution of our total sales is like mid single digit during the past several quarters. And you are right that we have a lot of potential in terms of store operations, in terms of product optimizations, in terms of unit economics in the U. S. In the near term. And as I shared in our prepared remarks, the unit economics of the U.

Speaker 1

S. Stores has been improved a lot. For example, the OpEx ratio of U. S. Stores during the past 12 months decreased by about 20 percentage points.

Speaker 1

And that is one big thing that turned this business into a profitable one. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Lucy Yu from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

So there has been mentioned in announcement that China is targeting for 5,000 stores in 20 7. So what's the allocation or geography allocation of those new stores? And do we have any midterm plan for the overseas market, which may have greater potential in the long term? And second one is on the China store unit economics post COVID. So what's the detailed GP margin of the expense breaking down as well as payback period?

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Okay. Thank you, Lucy. For your first question about the store opening potential, in China, our target is to have 5,000 stores by year end of 2027. We have strong track record and we have high confidence to achieve that goal. And in terms of overseas potential, I would say, from my perspective, we do not have any worry concern about the store opening overseas market for at least the next 10 years.

Speaker 1

My personal observation in this year, I have spent a lot of time in overseas market is that in a lot of countries overseas market, we can open 1 minstrel at least 1 minstrel store for each 100,000 people in overseas markets. And this is for your second question about the payback of the domestic stores. We strongly believe that the payback period for most of our franchisees has been shortened during the past several months. There are several reasons. The first is our better store performance during the first half of this year.

Speaker 1

And the second reason is the optimization of our expense structures, I. E, the rent level decreased, the staffing costs optimized and there are other savings in their costs too. So I'll estimate that our franchisees average their margin profile has improved significantly compared to 1 year ago, 2 year ago, especially in Tier 1 cities. In this year, we have observed that in Tier 1 cities, our Minstrel stores, their sales per store increased by 30%, more than 30% on a year over year basis. It's higher than the 20% of the average year over year growth.

Speaker 1

And for the new stores in Tier 1 cities in this year, we observed that their average rent level has decreased by single digit compared to last 3 years. As Mr. Ye just shared, in the first half, we have opened a batch of demonstrative big stores. So the big stores, their average payback period is far, far less than the ordinary stores. So I would say as my last point to your question is that the big stores will also help increase the ROI of our franchisees.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next

Speaker 1

So we saw from the announcement that our July sales is also very strong with domestic growth above 25%, overseas growth at 50%. So what are the reasons and drivers behind that? Thank you. Thank you, Samuel. This is Yi Chen.

Speaker 1

Yes, our domestic sales increased by more than 25% in July month. It's between 25% to 30%, driven by 2 drivers. The first is the personal sales of Minnesot of China increased by mid teens during the same period. And we have also in a decent store number growth. So on a single store basis, the mid teens per store sales increase was major from low single digit of ASP hike and a high single digit or about 10% of traffic improvement.

Speaker 1

And the overseas market, we also mentioned in the earnings release that the GMV increased by about 50%. And I'd say the overseas directly operated markets still has seen a continued high growth rate comparable to the June quarter. And in overseas market, we also see the drivers also come from the traffic and ASP hike. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Qingru Song from Industrial Securities. Line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

I will have two questions. The first question is about how to improve our supply chain and about the overseas supply speed and control inventory, ask you. And the second question is how do we forecast the ASP? It seems like it increased by 3% year over year this time, but how do we focus about the overseas ASP on the next year and the domestic ASP on the next year? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Okay. Thank you for your questions. In terms of overseas supply chain expansion plan, we have two points to add here. The first is that we will stick to our accumulated resource in China. So China will definitely will be the major supplier supply chain base, But we are still exploring new partners in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and so on.

Speaker 1

2nd, we will increase the percentage of direct sourcing in local markets such as the U. S. Market. For example, we have been proactively increasing the percentage of IP related snacks in U. S.

Speaker 1

Market. And for your second question about ESP in overseas market, I'd say in China it's around RMB35, right? And now it's about RMB37 in the June quarter. For overseas market, I'd say we have a rough number that on average ASP in overseas market is about 2 times or a little bit higher of China's ASP. But in countries in specific countries like in European countries, in the U.

Speaker 1

S, I'd say this number is about 3 times or even higher than that of China. In our rapid growth markets such as the U. S, in Canada and so on, we still see our ASP increasing at a very faster speed. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you once again for joining us today. Our conference call now comes to an end. If you have any further questions, please contact Minasil IR team. Our contact information can be found on today's press release. We will see you in the next quarter.

Operator

Have a nice day. Goodbye.

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Earnings Conference Call
MINISO Group Q4 2023
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