Cango Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 11 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Cango, Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. This call is also being broadcast live on the company's IR website. Joining us today are Mr. Jiayuan Lin, Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Michael Zhang, Chief Financial Officer of the company. Following management's prepared remarks, we will conduct the Q&A session. Before we begin, I refer you to the Safe Harbor statement in the company's earnings release, which also applies to the conference today, as management will make forward-looking statements. With this said, I'm now turning the call over to Mr. Jiayuan Lin, CEO of Cango. Please, go ahead, sir.

[Jiayuan Lin:]

Thank you. Good morning and good evening, everyone, and welcome to Cango's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. In 2020, the unexpected pandemic at the beginning of the year brought the industry towards stand still. But China's economy picked up speed in the second half of the year, and the auto market recovered steadily. pressure on the auto industry, it also accelerated its pace of transformation with the unleashed pent-up demand from lower-tier markets and continuous progress across our business lines, we are pleased to report that Cango's overall business rebounded significantly during the second half of this year -- of the year, I mean, 2020. As a result, total revenues in the fourth quarter grew to a record RMB 1,097 million, surpassing the high end of our previous guidance range by about 46%. Thanks to our effective cost control initiatives, operating income sustained its growth movements in the quarter and came in at RMB 198 million. Net income for the quarter was RMB 1.6 billion, primary attributable to investment gain of about RMB 1.5 billion in the Auto The year 2020 marked Cango's 10th anniversary, a significant milestone opening a new chapter of growth for the company. 10 years ago, we founded Cango as we saw unmet demand in the auto transaction value chain, specifically in the lower-tier markets, and this prompted us to create a one-stop platform to connect and empower all parties along the auto value chain, while offering an easy and enjoyable car purchasing experience to our customers. After originating our business in auto financing, we have also deepened our routes in the lower-tier markets. And today, we have a network of nearly 50,000 registered dealers nationwide, making Cango a leading technology-based automotive transaction services platform in China. Building on this solid foundation, we are actively expanding the upstream and downstream of industry value chain, extending our reach to the car trading transactions and aftermarket services facilitation segment, pressing to forward toward the goal of better serving customers and the auto industry as a whole. We are always looking for ways to further advance the overall development of the industry. And we remain dedicated to our vision and mission, which is to make car purchases easy and enjoyable and become an auto service platform of choice for consumers. As of now, Cango has three main business lines

[Michael Zhang:]

Thanks, Jiayuan. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. Before I started to review our financials, please note that unless otherwise stated, all numbers are in RMB terms and all percentage comparisons are on a year-over-year basis. Our continuous and steady progress across business fueled top line expansion in the fourth quarter, with total revenues coming at RMB 1.1 billion, once again outperforming our previous guidance range. Notably, we saw a shift in our revenue streams during the quarter, as contribution from our car trading transaction increased to approximately 50% of total revenues. This business is becoming an important revenue contributor. Revenues from automotive financing, facilitation and off-market service facilitation were RMB 398.1 million and RMB 70.8 million, respectively, in the fourth quarter. Now, let's move on to our cost and expenses during the quarter. Total operating cost and expenses in the fourth quarter of 2020 were $899 million compared to RMB 320.8 million in the same period of 2019. The increase was mainly due to the related costs incurred by the car trading transaction business.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your first question comes from Shelly Wang from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Shelley Wang:]

First of all, congratulations to the management on yet another year of strong performance. I'm Shelley Wang from Morgan Stanley. And so I have three questions. The first question is on the car trading transactions business line. What is your outlook for the business in 2021? For example, how many cars do you expect to complete facilitation in 2021? And also, some dealer’s maybe -- they may be able to get cars directly from OEMs. So what, kind of, value do you generate with your car trading transaction service to the dealers? My second question is about the independent sales rep model, how do you manage risk for this model, for example, how do you verify the ability to repay the note by the customers? And how do you make sure that the loans are indeed used to buy cars? And my third question is more on the macro economy. So do you see the credit supply tightening in the New Year? And how will that -- I mean, based on your observation, how will that impact the demand for auto loans? Do you already see less demand for auto loans because of tightening credit supply?

[Jiayuan Lin:]

Okay. Shelley, I will answer your three questions. First of all about the outlook for our car trading transaction in 2021. So we expect that in 2021 for the whole year, we will facilitate 45,000 to 50,000 car trading transactions and about the second part of your first question, that is what kind of value do we offer to the dealers. While we mainly target the non authorized dealers in the lower-tier cities. So for these types of dealers, they don't really have very solid supply of cars from the OEMs because they used to get their cars mostly from the car traders and large forest stores. So for them, they have quite a lot of challenges in ensuring the supply of their cars, for example, the supply of cars is not very steady and reliable and sometimes it's difficult for them to authenticate the source of cars and the prices are not very competitive in the market, and the whole supply chain is inefficient. So targeting these difficulties, we offer various values to the lower-tier city non-authorized dealers because we centralized the sourcing of cars from OEMs, and we also provide supplementary and complementary supply chain services to these dealers. And our services are able to help the dealers to streamline the whole process of car sourcing. And this actually not only helps the dealers, but also is very valuable to different parties in the supply chain. It reduces the cost of operation for the dealers and also improves their ability to complete deals as well as their profitability. So in the future, we will continue to improve our logistics service capabilities so as to better empower the dealer partners. On your second question, risk control for the independent sales rep model. Well, for the aftermarket services, business line and car trading transaction business line. Well, our independent sales reps, they are mostly helping the company to generate and operate traffic. So there is not much risk exposure to the company on these two business lines. And then about auto loan transaction business line, we are strictly managing and monitoring the qualification as well as the eligibility of each and every sales rep. And we're looking to the recommendation, and we also review their authorization levels, as well as how they conduct in-person visits. So we have a very strict authorization level set up for all these independent sales reps. In addition, we control the supply of cars for -- supply of cars to the independent sales reps in terms of the auto loan facilitation business. So because we have strict control overall source of cars, we are able to ensure the authenticity of the transactions. And thirdly, we are also adopting a more stringent risk control measures on these independent sales reps than for our lower-tier city fine auto loan facilitation business. And so far, the -- if you look at the loan service management, in fact, the quality of the loan service management is close to the average level of the company. As for your third question, the macro credit policies impact on our business. Well, if you look at the government – central government policies, for example, a 2021 State Council work report, it has been clearly proposed that measures will be taken to drive consumption in the rural areas of China and in countries and smaller cities of China as well as to increase the supply of parts as well as to increase the demand of -- for cars steadily. So definitely, the macro policies are in favor of companies like Cango. And also, so far, based on observation, the tightening of credit supply has not really directly impacted on our business. Instead, the performance of the car market as a whole is a more direct factor impacting on our fundamental business.

[Shelley Wang:]

So that's all for me. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Derek Su from Goldman Sachs.

[Derek Su:]

Thank you. I'm Derek Su from Goldman Sachs. Congratulations for your strong performance in the fourth quarter. My question is about your partnership with the founding partners. So what is your outlook for take rate? And what is your outlook for interest rate, cost of funding, et cetera?

[Jiayuan Lin:]

So I will invite Michael Zhang, our CFO, to answer these questions.

[Michael Zhang:]

Thank you, Derek, for your questions. Well, our strategy has always been to expanding the range of funding partners we have. We want to work with more and larger and higher quality funding partners. So we have been working very hard to keep the cost of our funds -- we have been working very hard to keep the cost of our funding steady and even decrease. And with this, then we will be able to offer more competitive products to our customers, thereby helping our customer acquisition strategy. So we have also -- we have been able to keep our take rate steady and stable. I mean, you probably understand the take rate is the fee paid by the bank to us. So for the future, we believe we will be able to keep our cost of funding steady and also our take rate steady as well.

[Derek Su:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to management for closing remarks.

[Jiayuan Lin:]

Thank you for joining us on this earnings call. Thank you all for your participation and your support. So that concludes today's earnings call. Thank you.