Jiayin Group Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 9 Apr 2021

[Operator:]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Jiayin Group Fourth Quarter and Full-Year of 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, we are recording today's call. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Julia Qian, Managing Director of The Blueshirt Group Asia. Ms. Qian, please proceed.

[Julia Qian:]

Hello, everyone. Thank you all for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Jiayin Group's financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2020. We released the results early today. The press release is available on the company's website as well as on newswire services.

[Dinggui Yan:]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full-year 2020 earnings conference call. 2020 was an unusual but special year for us. Despite the economic uncertainties created by the pandemic and every evolving regulatory environment, we achieved significant progress in our business transformation. Most importantly, we completed the shift of our funding sources from individuals to institutional funding partners. In November 2020, we cleared up all of the P2P balance. We did this in part by creating a similar process that simplifies institution now on-boarding and by enhancing our platform to enable faster integration and better scalability. The number of our funding partners increased steadily to 25 and another 45 institutions are now in discussions and preparation. It was remarkable to accomplish this business transformation amid the challenges and uncertainties forced by the pandemic. This business transformation enabled us to further optimize our cost structure and improve the operating efficiency. With the sophisticated risk management platform and the laser like focus on driving our business transformation and improving our operating efficiency, we will able to generate a better than expected results in the fourth quarter. In Q4, our net income grew by 259% year-over-year to RMB81.1 million. Our loan origination volume increased to 6.5% year-over-year to RMB3.1 billion. The repeat borrower rates reached 70.4%. This solid results demonstrate our ability to execute.

[Jin Chen:]

Thank you, Mr. Yan and Shelley, and thank you everyone for joining our call today. As Mr. Yan just mentioned, we generated encouraging results in the fourth quarter. We continue to operate conservatively and achieved outstanding bottom line growth. In Q4, our net income reached RMB81.1 million, up 258.8% year-over-year. The results fully reflect our relentless efforts to optimize our corporate structure, and improve our operating efficiency. We also remained prudent in our operations with increased emphasize on risk management and credit assessment.

[Operator:]

Okay, ma’am. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. We have a question from the line of Andrew Scutt from ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.

[Andrew Scutt:]

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on the strong quarter. My first question is about the successful expansions into Mexico and Indonesia. I want to congratulate you on the hard work you've done there. You've kind of provided the outlook for the expansion in 2021, and maybe the vision for the company growing in international markets over the next couple of years.

[Xu Yifang:]

Hi, Andrew. Thank you for the question. This is Yifang Xu, I'm going to take on that question. So far, we are not yet close to providing guidance on our financial outlooks for expansions in those two markets. But I want to further confirm international expansion is a key component of Jiayin's overall growth strategy. As you have noticed before with the years of proven track record in managing risks, so we would like to further extend our sophisticated risk management capabilities towards our international market. So far, we are gathering our cloud-based technological capabilities, and to facilitate online lending -- online micro loan origination and management in a variety - in a range of markets. Mexico is one of our leading markets in the markets that we are playing now. So far, we are glad to report that we are one of the leading players – well, one of the leading players in Mexico market. We have started to see more of our peers from Chinese market are starting to enter that market. But so far, we are definitely taking a leading position there. Comparatively in Indonesia market, as we have reported about a year ago, over a year ago that we are in a trial period of operating online lending license in Indonesia market, we remain in that position. We hopefully looking for more progress on that front. So far, as our status, as a trial, operating under trial mode, we are expecting our overall volume to take off as soon as we acquire our full license.

[Andrew Scutt:]

Great. Thank you. That was very helpful.

[Xu Yifang:]

Thank you.

[Andrew Scutt:]

As a follow-up here on unrelated. So it looks like sales and marketing expenses was a little bit higher in the quarter than it has been across 2020. So, I was just wondering, if there's anything you guys were doing differently to attract new borrowers? Or if that was just extra noise in the quarter?

[Xu Yifang:]

[Jin Chen:]

Okay. So, in terms of the customer acquisition costs, I would like to echo Yifang's answer, because we’re - it's like we're -- it takes a lot of initiatives to improve -- to lower our acquisition costs like we co-build models with our channels and we try to improve the efficiency, and also to acquire the customer in a more economically way. So, I think themselves and the marketing expenses will be in line with our loan volumes growth in the 2021. And although, this will really depends on the -- we will wait and see what the result will be at the end of the year, where the things will end up at. Yes, but I think basically, it will in line with our loan volume. Yes.

[Andrew Scutt:]

Great, thanks. That was very helpful. And one last question if I may. Just want to say congrats on the improved credit quality and increase in repeat borrowers. I was just wondering if there's a target number for the percentage, you guys are looking for repeat borrowers versus new borrowers in the long-term, as you guys try to way out for balance growth and strong credit quality.

[Xu Yifang:]

Sure. This is Yifang again, I'm going to take on that question. We do have a long-term risk levels that we are seeking to hold, as well as we are proving our overall credit profiles of our customers. But in regards to the percentage of our repeat borrowers portion of our overall business, and we're going to play it as a flexible, just to gear towards our growth needs. In 2020, that we're expecting much higher growth relative to our 20 -- in 2021, we're expecting a higher growth relative to our 2020 loan origination volume. It's like, as you can see, in the Q1, we're seeing 25% to 40% of growth. We're expecting somewhat high growth in the rest of the year. As we are working on to improve our way of interacting with our existing customers by providing better customer product experience, and more likely to shifting towards how we interact with the customers to really gain tractions on how our repeat customers portion of our volumes. Whereas in the same time, we’re seeing - compared to 2020, we're seeking a much higher growth on our new customers as part of our overall growth strategy. But overall, on top of that – in terms of – on top of our overall growth, volume growth, we're still holding a high bar on our risk levels.

[Andrew Scutt:]

Thank you very much. Once again, congrats on the quarter and that's all for me.

[Operator:]

We have no further questions at this moment. I would like to hand the conference back to our host. Please take over, ma'am.

[Julia Qian:]

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating on today's call and thank you for your support. We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our conference call for today. Thank you all for your participation. You may disconnect now.