Sunlands Technology Group
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 18 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Sunlands’ Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After prepared remarks by the management team, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today’s conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host today, Yuhua Ye, Sunlands’ IR Representative. Please go ahead.

[Yuhua Ye:]

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Sunlands’ fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call. The Company’s financial and operating results were issued in our press release via newswire services earlier today and are posted online. You can download the earnings press release and sign up for our distribution list by visiting our IR website.

[Tongbo Liu:]

Thank you, Yuhua. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Sunlands’ fourth quarter and full year 2020 conference call. While first was a year of both unusual challenges and changes, we concluded 2020 with steady and solid growth in the fourth quarter. We’re continued our strategic focus on developing diverse product offerings, improving student acquisition efficiency and enhancing curriculum effectiveness and pursued the opportunities in the market as overall demand grows for higher education and professional skills programs. In the fourth quarter, our net revenues reached RMB584.6 million, growing 6.3% compared to the same period of 2019, thanks to enhanced operational efficiency and expanded course categories. Our new student enrollment increased remarkably by 51.8% year-over-year to over 140,000 in the fourth quarter. The driving force behind this steady student growth was our further expansion of course portfolios spending all over the categories based on the solid foundation of our degree on to the programs. Our exploration of diverse avenues for user acquisition, as well as enhanced operating efficiency and the service quality also contributed to the strong growth. Our masters-degree oriented programs continue to yield robust results in 2020 with COVID-19 pandemic impacting many industries and creating heavy uncertainty in the job market. There has been increasing recognition of the importance of post-graduate education. The national postgraduate entrance exams for the 2021 concluded in December with registered applicants reaching a record high of almost 3.8 million and we are well-prepared to handle the growing volume and demand.

[Selena Lu Lv:]

Thank you, Tongbo. Hello, everyone. In the fourth quarter, we deepened our strategy to balance business growth and the profitability in a challenging environment. Our net revenues continue to grow at a healthy rate, exceeding the high end of our guidance by 4.4% as we further improved operating efficiency and optimize the cost. Our general and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter declined 44.6% year-over-year, which contributed to the significant narrowing of our net loss to RMB73.5 million from RMB139.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. Our net loss margin decreased considerably to 12.6% from 25.4% in the fourth quarter of 2019. Going forward, we will continue to refine our operation and the sales execution as we strive for robust and sustainable long-term growth in order to consistently create value for our students and shareholders, as well as the broader society.

[Operator:]

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Showing no questions. This will conclude our question-and-answer session. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference back over to Yuhua Ye, IR Representative, for any closing remarks.

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[Yuhua Ye:]

Once again, thank you, everyone, for joining today’s call. We look forward to speaking with you again soon. Good day and good night.

[Operator:]

This concludes the earnings conference call. You may now disconnect your line. Thank you.