Dada Nexus Limited
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 9 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by for Dada's Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. . As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the meeting over to your host for today's call, Ms. Caroline Dong, Head of Investor Relations for Dada. Please proceed, Caroline.

[Caroline Dong:]

Thank you, Operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our fourth quarter 2020 earnings release was distributed earlier today and is available on our IR website at ir.imdada.cn as well as on global newswire services.

[Philip Kuai:]

Thank you, Caroline, and thank you all for joining us today. We're very pleased to deliver another extraordinary quarter and outstanding fiscal year. Our total net revenue of 2020 reached CNY5.7 billion with 85% year-over-year growth rate. Our industry-leading position has been further strengthened with market share expansion and a widened gap with the second and the following players. According to Iresearch, JDDJ continue to be China's largest local on-demand retail platform in 2020, with market share increasing to 25% from 21% in 2019. In the meantime, Dada Now remains as the largest open on-demand delivery platform in China, with market share increasing to 25% from 19% in 2019. I will provide updates on the performance of our two platforms, and Beck will go into greater details about our financial and operating results. So let's first talk about JDDJ, China's leading local on-demand retail platform. JDDJ's fast growth in fourth quarter was driven by 4 main factors

[Beck Chen:]

Thank you, Philip. Before we go over the numbers, just a few housekeeping items in advance. We believe year-over-year comparisons are the most useful way to judge our performance. All percentage changes I'm going to give will be on a year-over-year basis, and all figures are in renminbi unless otherwise noted. I'll start with Q4 numbers first. Total net revenues increased by 70% to CNY2 billion. Net revenues from Dada Now increased by 54% to CNY1.3 billion, mainly driven by increases in order volume for our services to logistic companies and intra-city delivery services to chain merchants. Total net revenue from JDDJ increased by 107% to CNY729 million, mainly due to the increase in GMV from the same quarter last year, which was driven by increases in average order value and the number of active consumers. Year-over-year increases in online marketing services revenue was around 300%. Moving over to the expense side. Operations and supporting expenses increased to CNY1.6 billion, mainly due to the increase in rider cost as a result of increasing order volume for our services to logistic companies and intra-city delivery services provided to various chain merchants on the Dada Now platforms and the retailers on the JDDJ platform.

[Operator:]

. Your first question comes from the line of Ronald Keung from Goldman Sachs.

[Ronald Keung:]

And I guess, I have two questions for this quarter. The first question would be about lower-tier strategy -- low-tier city strategy. Just how have we observed the performance had been? And if we have looked into kind of different business models out there, including, I think, we talked about the company group purchase model evolving since the second half of last year, do we see we're serving a very different kind of user demographic and cohort? Anything that we could address or share on how our lower-tier city performance, alongside the 150% GMV that we talked about, how do we see this compared with other business models and our strategies ahead in adding users and the order intensity? I have my second question, but let me first ask this question.

[Philip Kuai:]

Thank you, Ronald. So talk about the lower-tier, the city -- the strategy first. So first of all, as you can see from the results, our growth in the lower-tier cities has been very strong. And I think one of the key reasons behind it is that we're able to work with the most competitive retailers in each region with the best supply chain capabilities. And as you know, in China, the supply chain is rather fragmented. And in each region, there are retailer leaders which has the most competitive supply chain, and we are able to work each one of them. At the same time, we never compete with them so we're able to always be the truthful partner with them. I think that's the key reason. And as of the basket size and the demographics, et cetera, we are seeing the comparable basket size in lower-tier cities. And the purchase power from the consumers in lower-tier cities is as strong as what we have observed in first-tier cities. I think perhaps one of the reasons is that the living cost is relatively low in lower-tier cities, especially the real estate and the rental cost, so they're able to spend more and willing to spend more. In terms of the group purchase, as you mentioned, as we have observed and competing with group purchase players for the last few quarters, we are now even more confident about our strengths. So in some of the areas that group purchase players are most active, including like Hunan, Hubei, et cetera, we managed to grow 3 digits -- continue to grow 3 digits. So our business was not affected in any way. And we -- at the same time, we are able to provide, at a store level, at least 10x more SKUs, the product assortments to the customers. And our basket size is at least 10x bigger than the group purchase players. So we're very confident about the future competition as well. And as we continue to grow the user base, we're happy to see that our user base has been growing pretty strong in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. And there are a few things in terms of the user acquisition or growth I would like to mention. So first of all, it's very unique to us because we are working with almost all of the leading supermarkets and grocery chains in China and most of the leading brands in China. So we're now -- so on a daily basis, there are tens of thousands of store associates and off-line brand promoters helping us to promote the JDDJ app. At the same time, we also provide digitized membership program to the retailers and brands. So they're also promoting their membership program to their existing customer base, and those memberships are based on JDDJ app. This is a highly win-win collaboration. At the same time, we're also happy to work even more closely with JD and receive lots of traffic support from JD as well. So we're very confident about our user growth going forward.

[Ronald Keung:]

That's very useful. And my second question is on your Haibo system. You talked about many, many stores that are using it. So what does it account for, say, of kind of daily orders from JDDJ? And how are we penetrating about 70-plus supermarkets amongst the top 100? Any targets there and potential for monetization or even kind of -- even adopting that overseas by your partners?

[Philip Kuai:]

Right. So Haibo system is very strategic. And we consider this as a -- one of the major way for us to empower our retailer partners. So Haibo system, you can consider it as an operating system for any retailer to do omnichannel business. And it essentially helps the retailer to digitize and manage their inventory, their orders, their procurement, their financials, et cetera. So it's an extremely important and helpful system. And in order to have the retailers to adopt the Haibo system, first of all, the Haibo system itself needs to be very, very strong with very high stability and capabilities of the system has been really, really competitive. At the same time, it also requires very deep trust between the 2 parties because imagine you're a retailer and then you are now using such a core system to manage essentially your omnichannel business. The trust needs to be very, very deep. So we are very proud that over the last few years, we have developed a very deep trust and partnerships with the retailers. In terms of the monetization, so we have just started some very moderate monetization with the retailers. And at the same time, the Haibo system, I think it will continue to -- in the foreseeable future, it will continue to serve as the backbone and the foundation for the retailers to do the business -- omnichannel business and as a strong value offering from us. At the same time, we are also pioneering some SaaS-based system and offerings to help the brand owners as well. So we may give you more case -- more examples in the future. We are happy to see some of the early, early cases as well. So at the same time, we will empower both the brand owners -- the retailers and brand owners. So at the same time, the Haibo system -- together with the Haibo system, we're having our CRM technologies, which has been quickly adopted by more and more stores. So as of today, I think there are over 40,000 stores which have adopted our CRM programs, which also dramatically help the retailers. So we'll continue to invest heavily in technology and to empower our retailer and brand partners.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Eddie Leung.

[Eddie Leung:]

Just wondering if you could share with us your plan for category diversification under JDDJ in 2021. For example, are we looking at more key categories to penetrate into? And related to that, could you -- could you help us understand the percentage of orders or GMV or whatever metrics you think appropriate from nonsupermarket cats in the fourth quarter?

[Philip Kuai:]

Sure, Eddie. So in terms of the category expansion, we're very happy that years ago, we started off with supermarkets because it's the most complicated category with the most -- like the largest number of SKUs and the inventories and all those things most difficult to deal with. So we laid a very solid foundations while we are doing the supermarket categories. And now we believe that it's a time for us to expand from supermarket to other categories. So we see this strategy from this angle. So basically, if you're looking to all the products available for retail, we categorize the product into 3 groups. So number one is the product you typically can only get from supermarkets. And the second is the products that you typically can only get in nonsupermarkets. I will give you -- give examples. And the third is the products that are available in both supermarkets and other stores. So in category -- in group number one, the things you can only get in supermarkets, for example, like milk or cooking oil or rice or toilet papers or like shampoos, et cetera. So those are the things typically you can only get in supermarkets. And there are things you can only get from nonsupermarkets, including like smartphones, laptop, pharmaceutical products and like the home appliance, flowers and like -- things like that, right? So those are the things that you only get from nonsupermarkets. And there are also products you can get in both supermarkets and nonsupermarkets. For example, like skin care, cosmetics, like alcohol beverage, bakery, snacks, et cetera -- parenting, et cetera. So the those are the things -- those are angle we look into the category expansion. So we will continue to strengthen our leading position in supermarket categories. No doubt. We'll continue to strengthen the market share and to -- as a matter of fact, we have now already the -- one of the fastest growing for most of the FMCG brands that are available in supermarkets. And we will continue to strengthen our leading position. At the same time, we will expand from supermarket categories to the categories that are available in both supermarkets and others. For example, like bakery or alcohol or like the fresh produce, et cetera. So those are the things you can get from specialty stores and supermarkets. We will expand to specialty stores. At the same time, as we have already successfully built the leading position in like the smartphone in our delivery business, we will continue to strengthen that. And like a pharmaceutical delivery, et cetera. So those are the things from nonsupermarkets. We will continue to strengthen that. So to summarize, the category expansion, we believe, is -- we are -- we have got very solid foundation from the supermarkets from the last few years. And we will expand to more categories in the foreseeable quarters and years. At the same time, the collaboration with JD, I think, will also be strengthened via Wujingtianze or other programs. It will be also helpful for our category expansion.

[Beck Chen:]

And also the nonsupermarket categories is accounting for 25% of the GMV, mainly coming from electronic stores, fresh market, food stores, pharmacy stores and beauty store, et cetera. So that's the answer, Eddie.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies.

[Thomas Chong:]

I also have a question relating to JDDJ. Can management comment about the trend in the unit economics across commissions and advertising as we go through 2021 as well as how we should think about the trend of consumer incentives and how we should expect the timing to break even? On top of that, may I also ask about what's the latest progress that we work with JD on the Wujingtianze project?

[Philip Kuai:]

Sure. So I will take the Wujingtianze question first, and I'll have Beck Chen to go through the unit economics and some of the financial projections. So the Wujingtianze program has been launched for a couple of quarters -- a few quarters since early last year. And we're happy to see that in Q4, Wujingtianze -- the GMV through Wujingtianze has been growing very strong. In fact, there's quarter-over-quarter by multiple times growth. And both JD and ourselves are very key in this program, and we are very actively pushing this forward. As you might have observed in Q4 on JD.com front page and JD Supermarket front page, there are quite a few more entry points. And if you also search on JD.com, on the search result page, you will see many significant entry points as well. So through this Wujingtianze program, we are now offering the JD users with 1-hour delivery service for many categories, from grocery now to consumer electronics, parenting, cosmetics and so on. And we envision that we will expand to more and more categories in the upcoming quarters as well. And at the same time, in Q4, we have launched multiple very successful marketing initiatives with JD through Wujingtianze and so more retailers now participate in those kind of marketing initiatives. And so both retailers, brands and JD really appreciate this program. So it's still at a rather early stage, but we absolutely believe that the GMV growth through Wujingtianze will keep the very strong momentum. And I would also want to just to give a quick summary of the rationale behind Wujingtianze so you might be able to understand the logic more clearly. So Wujingtianze is a highly win-win partnership between JD and JDDJ through a few dimensions. So number one is about fulfillment. As you can imagine, for JD.com, there are many product categories are -- actually very difficult for JD to do the order fulfillment, including like those heavy products or OCE products or those frozen products or the fresh produce, et cetera. So, all the categories I just mentioned either has very high fulfillment cost or has a very high shrinkage, et cetera. So, it does not make too much economic sense for JD.com to do the order procurement on their own. At the same time, those products and inventory are already available in the stores near the customers, in our retailer partner stores. So, it makes a lot of sense for us and for our retailer partners to do the order procurement. So that's number one, order procurement. Number two is about the inventory. So, in many categories, take consumer electronics as an example, like Apple or Vivo or OPPO. So those are the smartphones or consumer electronics players. Each one of them, they will -- highly promoting their own brand stores, off-line brand stores, and allocates more inventory to their off-line stores. At the same time, we also see that in other categories, the brands might allocate more marketing campaigns and budgets to their off-line stores as well. So by working with stores, we are now being able to accessing the off-line inventory. So it's, again a highly win-win for brands and for JD.com and for JDDJ. It's a highly win-win for everyone. We are helping the brands to sell their off-line inventory. And JD is able to access to more valuable inventory, and we certainly act as a -- to generate a lot of value out of it. And the third is about the marketing and promotion. So, JD certainly has very strong like Double 11 or June 18 promotion festivals, and they're very -- so they're certainly strong with that. At the same time, the off-line retailers, each one of them have their own annual promotion events and other promotional events. Again, highly complementary between the off-line retailers and JD.com. So we also serve as a very valuable bridge between all the parties. So that's the quick summary of the Wujingtianze logic and the rationale. And as you can see, it's a highly win-win program, and we are generating a lot of value from it.

[Beck Chen:]

Okay. And as for the outlook for the direct margin profile in 2021. First of all, for the monetization side, we expect that it should be growing by like 30 bps on a year-over-year basis, which is generally coming from the different revenue streams, including commissions, online marketing fees and delivery fees. In terms for the cost side, we expect that as we are prioritizing the growth of JDDJ platform, so the consumer incentives could be growing at a year-over-year basis, while the operation cost, mainly like the rider costs, can be well controlled in 2021.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Ashley Xu from Credit Suisse.

[Ashley Xu:]

My question is more on the 1Q trend we have been seeing during and post CNY. I just want to check, given the state policy implied during Chinese New Year, how we are seeing the trend of our order volume as well as ARPU. And how is that trending post the Chinese New Year? And with that, is there any change in our full year expectation in GMV growth?

[Philip Kuai:]

Yes. I will give you an overview, and I think Beck can give you more colors. So the -- this CNY has been, again, very unique. Last CNY, we went through the COVID-19. And then this CNY, we went through the so-called stay local or stay home, the Chinese New Year. So, we're happy to see that the purchase power from the customer has been very strong during the CNY period. And the basket size, that order volume has been very strong. As Beck mentioned earlier, so we -- even based on the very high base last year, we anticipate that this Q1, we will continue to grow more than like 50% year-over-year from last Q1. So we are very confident going forward as well. And at the same time, as we have worked with the retailers and the brands for the last few years, we have developed a very close partnership. And more and more, we are now being able to work closely and to -- really flexible in terms of the partnership to deal with those unique situations like we have just seen this year, right? So even through a partnership, even -- certainly, we are different parties. But jointly, we are now being very -- we're able to be very flexible and adaptive. So I think we are very confident about the outlook.

[Beck Chen:]

Yes. And also, just like I said in the prepared comments, we are looking forward to that. And going to the Q2, the growth rate of JDDJ will reaccelerate much higher than like the 50% to 60% in Q2. And for the second half -- or for the whole year outlook, at this time, we should still be a little bit conservative, of course. And I think maybe going to the mid of the year, could be -- the landscape could be more clear for us to forecast.

[Operator:]

That last question was from Ms. Ashley Xu from Credit Suisse. Your next question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Citigroup.

[Alicia Yap:]

I have a very quick one. Just to follow up on the overall monetization potential for JDDJ. In management view, what is the potential in the longer run to improve the commission take rate from the retail partners as the companies are providing more and more value-added service to them over time? And then how high of the online marketing revenue as a percentage of GMV you believe you could reasonably reach in the longer term?

[Philip Kuai:]

Right. So I'll give you an overview, and Beck can give you more color. So the monetization of JDDJ mainly comes from 3 ways. The first is the commission from the retailers. And the second is the marketing promotion dollars from the brands. And the third is the delivery cost paid by the consumers. So in terms of the commission from the retailers. So as we are expanding to more and more categories, we're happy to see that in most of the categories other than supermarkets, the gross margin for that categories tend to be higher than the supermarket category. So given that, we are -- I think it's reasonable to see a room for increasing the commission from the retailers going forward from various categories. And in terms of the brand marketing dollars, as we are providing a lot of very unique values to the brand, we are happy to see that in last quarter, the revenue from the brands grew by 300%. And as you can imagine, brand -- so for most of the FMCG brands, most of their sales still comes from off-line, and they always allocate a very significant portion of their marketing dollars to off-line channels. But traditionally, the off-line channels have -- it's difficult to digitize or to measure, also optimize their ROIs of spending. Now we're providing them with a very transparent digitized way to spend marketing dollars and to measure and improve the performance. So that's why brands are very happy working with us and allocating more marketing dollars through our channel. And at the same time, we are now -- it's one of the fastest-growing channel for the brands as well. So we are very confident to continue to monetize from the brands. And for the delivery cost, I think we are moderate in increasing the delivery costs. And we're actually among the very few platforms charge the customers in the last few years, while other people may not charge the customers. But we are seeing today that including like or others, they're now -- most of them are now charging the customers. I think we are -- we'll continue to do that, but I think we will be moderate.

[Beck Chen:]

And also, generally, right now, we haven't seen any like cap for the growth of the monetization rate. So right now, I think in the coming 2 or 3 years, we just still, as Philip said, we just moderately grow our overall monetization rate, not just from like one revenue stream but across different revenue streams to improve our profit -- improve our monetization rate.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Natalie Wu from Haitong International.

[Jasmine Wu:]

I am Jasmine on behalf of Natalie. I actually have two questions. The first one is about our expansion in lower-tier cities. I especially want to ask about our strategy in this expansion because, as we know, a lot of the supermarkets and retailers in lower-tier cities are quite small in size, meaning they don't have that many chain stores. So what is our strategy in choosing who to partner with? And also because they are not -- a lot of them are not operating in very well conditions, so they may not bring in that many orders online. So does that mean our strategy to cooperate with them is to level up our commission take rate? So this is the first question. The second question is, can we share more color about the Wujingtianze program, especially on what are the brands, the off-line brands that we are now cooperating with? Because just now, I think management has mentioned some brands are cooperating with Wujingtianze to help accelerate their sales in their off-line inventory.

[Philip Kuai:]

Sure. So the first one regarding the lower-tier city strategy. So first of all, we enter each lower-tier cities by working with our existing partners, the national players like Walmart or Yonghui or Vanguard. Each one of them has hundreds and -- or even thousands of off-line stores in lots of lower-tier cities. So for every city we enter, it's always a hot start. It's not a cold start. That's number one. And number two, there are a lot of very strong local players. And we -- so we did an analysis that at least there -- 100s of very strong local chain players. They might only operate in one city or in one province, but they are very strong and dominant in that particular city or even counties. So at least there are 100 of them. And we are very happy to sign up with those local winners one by one, and we're confident to work with almost all of them. That's number two. And number three, there are very competitive chain stores from other categories as well. For example, you can see Apple stores or Vivo or OPPO stores almost everywhere in China's lower-tier cities today. And like beauty -- and beauty and personal care stores like Watsons, you can also see lots and lots of them in lower-tier cities. So I think today, the lower-tier cities is very competitive in terms of the retailer landscape, and the players there is very powerful. And we're happy to see our partnership with them. In terms of the Wujingtianze , so we have now quickly expanded this Wujingtianze partnership with most of our retailer partners. At the same time, the brands -- the FMCG brands and other brands have been quickly adopting this partnership with us as well. So I think going forward, Wujingtianze will be an overwhelmingly popular program to most of our brands and retailer partners.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Robin Leung.

[Robin Leung:]

Congratulations on a solid quarter. I have follow-up questions on the user acquisition cost. Could management comment that if we see potential pressure on the user acquisition cost in 2021 because we see some bigger players are very strong in growing the users in many programs in the community purchase. And even those smaller front-end warehouse players are active in capital-raising activities recently. So it's likely that they're going to spend more in 2021. So for JDDJ, are we going to see more spending if more new users are coming from our off-line promotion in lower-tier cities?

[Philip Kuai:]

Sure. So I'll give you an overview and see if Beck has anything to add. So for user acquisition, I will split into like two things to look at it. So one thing is how you can acquire the new customers and access the new customers. At the same time, the second thing is the incentives in order to convert and to retain customers. The first thing -- so as I mentioned earlier in the call, so we have a very unique position and resource. So we have, on a daily basis, we have tens of thousands of active off-line store associates and brand promoters helping us to promote the JDDJ app. At the same time, we are able to get tremendous traffic support from JD.com. I think those are the things that are very unique and unavailable to other players. That gives us a very unique advantage in terms of user acquisition for the new customers. At the same time, as you can see from our financial numbers, the incentives as a percentage of our GMV given to the customers continue to go down as we are able to offer a broader product assortment and a very solid user experience. I think eventually, customers are coming to buy good products at a reasonable price and expecting a good service. And we will continue to be as competitive as possible in terms of providing all this. I think the incentives will continue to go down. And despite the -- as you mentioned, there are other players aggressively competing for customers. Yes, that's all we have. Thank you.

[Operator:]

I would now like to hand conference back to Ms. Caroline Dong for closing remarks. Please continue.

[Caroline Dong:]

Thank you, operator. Thank you for joining us today. This concludes the call.

[Philip Kuai:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.