Edited Transcript of 2020.HK earnings conference call or presentation 23-Aug-22 10:59am GMT

Half Year 2022 ANTA Sports Products Ltd Earnings Presentation Hong Kong Aug 25, 2022 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of ANTA Sports Products Ltd earnings conference call or presentation Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 10:59:00am GMT TEXT version of Transcript ================================================================================ Corporate Participants ================================================================================ * Jie Zheng ANTA Sports Products Limited - Group President & CEO of the Outdoor Sports Brand Group and Executive Director * Shixian Lai ANTA Sports Products Limited - COO, CFO & Executive Director ================================================================================ Presentation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unidentified Company Representative, [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Investors, good afternoon. Welcome to ANTA Sports 2022 Interim Results Investors Conference. Let me first introduce to you our management in attendance. They are ANTA Group Chairman and CEO, Mr. Ding Shizhong; Executive Director and CFO, Mr. Lai Shixian; Executive Director and President and COO of Outdoor Sports; Mr. Jie Zheng; Executive Director, and CEO of Professional Board, Mr. Wu Yonghua. In today's presentation, Mr. Lai will first go through the 2022 interim results. After that, Mr. Zheng is going to go through a business review and outlook. And then finally, in the Q&A session, Mr. Zheng, Mr. Ding and other management will answer your questions. (Operator Instructions) So okay. Now we will first ask Mr. Lai to go through our 2022 financial results. Mr. Lai, please? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shixian Lai, ANTA Sports Products Limited - COO, CFO & Executive Director [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Investors, good afternoon. Welcome to ANTA's Interim Results announcement. First, let me report to you our interim results highlights. First, the pandemic in China has resurged and footfall has come down significantly. Consumption desire has weakened. However, ANTA's strategy Single-Focus Multi-Brand Globalization has led to remarkable results. In the first half, revenue was RMB 25.97 billion, up 13.8% year-on-year. This is better than market expectation. Secondly, we have multiproduct capability, and this is being testified. Well, we are able to get strong growth in relation to DESCENTE and KOLON. So in relation to outdoor sports brands, these 2 brands under the pandemic recorded strong growth. So brand revenue was up 29.9% year-on-year, reaching RMB 1.83 billion. Number three, with successful marketing campaign during the Beijing Winter Olympics, ANTA became the #1 related brand to Olympics. Besides driven by satisfactory sales of high-end basketball and running shoes and support of brand ambassadors, our revenue increased 26.3% to RMB 13.36 billion. So this reinforces our leading position in China. For FILA, Revenue came down slightly by 0.5% at RMB 11 billion, but still it outperformed other top international peers. Number five, despite the group's high concentrate in direct retail business and Tier 1-2 cities and therefore, heavily affected by the pandemic. Gross profit margin of the group only declined slightly by 1.2 percentage points in the first half. Operating profit margin only declined 3.6 percentage points. So this shows our ability of cost control. At the same time, this year, in the first half, comparing with first half of last year, the pandemic was more serious. However, our gross profit margin and operating profit margin improved on a quarter-on-quarter basis. So it went up 1.9 percentage points for ANTA and for FILA also an increase. Number six, our globalization strategy was very successful. So the JV that owns Amer Sports performed well, and our overseas business exceeded expectation. In China, the business, despite the pandemic, maintained high growth rates. Revenue of JV increased 21.2% year-on-year and EBITDA increased 28.2% year-on-year. Shared loss from the JV to the Group greatly reduced to RMB 180 million. In the first half last year, it's RMB 350 million. Profit attributable to equity shareholders slightly decreased by 6.6% year-on-year, which is better than market consensus estimates. Number eight, total cash and cash equivalents, fixed deposits held at bank and pledged deposits was RMB 24.91 billion, increased by RMB 350 million. Total borrowings decreased by RMB 400 million. And so there is an increase in net cash by RMB 800 million, reaching RMB 12.16 billion. Interim dividend is HKD 0.62. So (sic)[40.6]% dividend payout ratio, up 5.3 percentage points year-on-year. Now I'm going to briefly report to you our financial overview of the first half. In the first half, our overall revenue was up 13.8% year-on-year for ANTA, up 26.3% at RMB 13.3 billion, for FILA, down 0.5% to RMB 10.7 billion, for the other brands, up 29.9 percentage at RMB 1.82 billion. In the first half of the year, there was volatility in the pandemic. And based on government's requirements and guidance, a lot of offline stores were closed to a large percentage. So we suffer from a lower footfall and also weaker consumption desire. However, we increased online sales in order to offset the impact. Right now, our online business revenue accounted for 28.9% of the total in terms of absolute amounts comparing with 2021 were up 20.6% year-on-year. For our revenue for ANTA, revenue grew 13.8% because of the following reasons. First, growth in e-commerce business, the growth is quite fast. Second, increase in revenue as a result of the continuous D2C model transformation in Mainland China. FILA was affected by the pandemic. So many stores are in shopping centers in Tier 1-2 cities. So suspension of stores is of a high percentage. There is a decrease by 0.5% in revenue. For the other brands like DESCENTE and KOLON, their brand positioning is good and store productivity has improved. So revenue increased by 29.9%. Now for ANTA brand, if you look at our business model categorization, DTC accounted for 49.7%, e-commerce 34.2%. Traditional wholesale came down to 16.1% of the total. GP margin for the whole Group -- GP margin in the first half came down 1.2 percentage points at 62%. For ANTA, gross profit margin rose 3 percentage points -- slightly less than 3 percentage points. This is because of an improvement of GP margin under the DTC model. For FILA, GP margin came down slightly. This is also because of the sales situation. So it is affected by the pandemic. There's also increase in raw material price as a result that was cost increase. So overall speaking, the Group's GP margin came down a bit by 1.2 percentage points. Operating profit margin, 22.3%. It came down by 3.6 percentage points. This is because overall GP margin came down. The second point is the operating expenses account for a bigger share. For the whole group, we have DTC model and our direct retail businesses. So there are related retail expenses, which have increased. We exercised stringent cost control. So the decline was rather mild. For ANTA brand, operating profit margin, 22%; FILA, 22.5%; for the other brands, 21.6% OP margin. Operating expenses ratio. A&P expenses, the share went up 0.9 percentage points at 10.3%. In the first half, there were expenses related to the Beijing Winter Olympic besides our online advertising and marketing activities were quite a lot. So that's why the increase. For staff costs, the share went up 0.9 percentage points at 15.3%. That's because of retail transformation of ANTA, and there is an increase in number of employees. Besides every year for the outstanding employees, so the contribution increased. So there is then an increase in cost. For R&D costs, its share went up by 0.1 percentage points at 2.3%. So all along, we have been enhancing our R&D capability. That's our strategy. So equity shareholders and share of loss of JV. So the loss from Amer was RMB 178 million. That's the share of loss of JV. So this is a big improvement. Profit attributable to equity Shareholders came down by 3 percentage points at 13.8% because operating profit margin came down 3.6 percentage points and that was taxed, and that was impact of offset of loss from JV. And then operating capital management -- average inventory turnover days increased 28 days to 145 days. There was impact from the pandemic. However, the main impact was because of the DTC transformation of ANTA. And so we recovered some retail inventory. Inventory level went up a bit. Average trade receivables turnover days came down 6 days to 22 days. Again, this reflects our effective management of trade receivables. Average trade payables turnover went up 9 days to 53 days. This is a normal turnover days. And then relating to liquidity and also financial resources for free cash flow -- inflow, (sic) [RMB 4.1 billion] at the end of the period, net cash was almost RMB 12.2 billion, so up from the end of last year. So I think the overall cash flow situation is very good. Operating cash inflow exceeded our operating profit of the period. This shows our strong cash generation capability. So that's all from me in relation to financial. Thank you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unidentified Company Representative, [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lai. So there is a lot of uncertainty in the operating environment, we still delivered over expectation financial performance, so we maintained stability. Now we will defer to Mr. Zheng to go through market review. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jie Zheng, ANTA Sports Products Limited - Group President & CEO of the Outdoor Sports Brand Group and Executive Director [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. Investors, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to our 2022 Interim Results announcement. In first half 2022, there was impact from the pandemic and other external factors. The retail market underwent big challenge. There was a lot of uncertainty. Our company exercised dynamic management, and we maintained health in our operation. We achieved high-quality growth. According to official data in China, the pandemic is such that consumption confidence was a 15-year low in Q2. Since May, the government increased support for the real economy and it introduced a lot of measures to support the economy and to revitalize consumption confidence, but there is still a lot of uncertainty in academic control. And there was a big impact on social consumption, especially among young people. So young people consumption came down. So there is quite a big impact on the retail sector. In 2022 first half, based on our observation of the Chinese sport market, there are 4 unique characteristics. First, the pandemic capitalized the rise of several niche sports because more and more people get involved in sports. So there is rise of activities like skateboarding campaign and frisbee. These have created new settings and the new demand of commodity. And in China, if you look at sports brands, well, domestic brands continue to outperform. So in the market, many brands emerged or succeeded and big international brands share contracted. Another characteristic is that, overall speaking, if you look at e-commerce platform, competitive landscape has changed. For Tmall, well, it is still the market leader. However, their share is coming down, JD and other brands or other platforms are rising. And for Douyin, a live streaming e-commerce, there is rapid development. In first half this year, the growth exceeded 100%. And for live streaming content, consumers have higher and higher requirements or requests. So given such changes, so if you look at our brands, our different brands, I think we see very good opportunities. So this year is the start of our strategy. So we will adhere to the Single-Focus Multi-Brand Globalization strategy. So we will capitalize on our excellent global multi-brand operational capability. We will introduce new 2 key driving forces to become consumers' top of mind and excellent in retail operations. So we have 3 supporting platforms, synergy arising from managing multiple brands, shared talent pool from multiple brands, innovative value chain for multiple brands. So we hope to enhance our leading position in various segments. And if you look at various brand development, ANTA focuses on running FILA, focuses on high-end sports fashion and DESCENTE skiing and KOLON other categories. So each brand should create a very representative niche so as to enforce our leading position in the market. Now we have healthy development of multi-brands. If you look at ANTA brand in the first half, we continued our lead-to-win strategy. So we focus on professional sports, and we will also achieve breakthrough in major consumer groups. Besides -- FILA has 3 top strategies. For this year and next year, I think it is a very important period. We will strengthen our brand capability and product competitiveness. We'll continue to optimize in order to maintain FILA's leading position in high-end fashion sport for the DESCENTE and KOLON in their own area that is high-end for fashion sports and high-end outdoor lifestyle areas, they will also develop the category development. So they will become the search growth engine for our Group. So with multi-brand strategy, we have also built a big supply chain platform. Another is an innovation or R&D platform and then digitalization and then our empowerment platform. With these 4 main platforms, we're able to better service each brand in the development. So just now, Mr. Lai talked about Amer. So Amer is the most important move in our globalization strategy. In the first half, we achieved quite good results. For Amer Sports after acquisition in 2019, there was a strategy in Europe. So we are able to execute that strategy well. We are focused on Arc'teryx, Phillip Lim and Wilson. And we are able to strengthen the whole group position in North America, Europe and China. So right now, the JV is performing quite well. For the China business, even though there was impact from the pandemic in the first half of the year, there was more than 30% growth. Now I'm going to talk about our various brands. For ANTA, we are focused on professional brands, professional board. And on top of that -- so Olympics sign is taking the lead in our work. So for professional category, we won a publicity (inaudible) during the Beijing Olympics, and we got the #1 brand for decision and then for high-priced products with tap price over RMB 599 million and -- over 649 basketball sales exceeded expectation. So overall speaking, the sales volume was doubled. So we are able to attract some new white collar workers and new mothers into our consumer group. So overall speaking, for mid- to high-end customer segments, their share was more than 5%. In terms of channels, we are upgrading for shopping malls in tier 1-2 cities, the coverage continues to rise. For ANTA core brands, overall store productivity was enhanced to [270,000]. So for core stores, over [500,000] in terms of store productivity. Another major growth driver is ANTA KIDS rapid development for ANTA KIDS, it has become number one in market share in China in the sports kids wear market. And for ANTA KIDS footwear, the share increased a lot more than 70% online. ANTA KIDS focus on running, basketball and football. Basketball, football sneakers sales also came #1. Overall speaking, for kids, I think the development trend is very good right now. For ANTA core brand, we have 6,600 stores, 52% were self-operated, 48% are operated by franchisees according to ANTA's operating standards. For FILA, well, in different areas, we have different growth models, as you all know, for FILA, well, they have gone through more than 10 years of rapid growth. Our turnover exceeded RMB 20 billion already. So in the whole world, if you look at such high growth. There are not many precedents. So if we look at FILA, we have to be more rational in looking at future development. So we have to be high in quality and high in efficiency in managing FILA. So from high growth rates to high-quality development, that should be the right trend. So basically, for FILA, it is turning from high growth rates to high-quality growth. In first half 2022, we have -- we insist on top quality of products, brands and channels. In the first half, when the pandemic was very challenging. FILA's growth still outperformed other international top brands and the scale of business comparing with the international brands had a narrowing gap for footwear, we achieved bigger breakthrough. There is 15% year-on-year growth in the first half of the year. For FILA, if you look at store productivity, we exceeded [800,000]. For e-commerce business, on 618 Tmall, we are #3 on the billboard, and our growth rate is within top 5 in Tmall. So in the first half of the year, FILA is expanding and then there are professional sport opportunities in the market because in relation to golf and tennis, there are a lot of opportunities. In high-end sports fashion, we have actually built a lot of communities to enhance interaction with consumers, and we do digitization in order to improve the efficiency. So FILA KIDS in the area of high-end kids apparel and footwear, sales exceeded international brands, offline store productivity is also much better than other kids foot brands. So we are able to build or create very good business. For footwear, the share is enhanced to almost 40% for apparel, 25% to 30%, up from 25% to 30%. So FILA has been performing well for apparel -- for footwear, the share increased from 35% to 45% for women. The share was up to 50%. For FILA FUSION, store productivity is at 500,000 . So I think we have achieved quite good breakthrough from all these. Just now, Mr. Lai refer to our 2 smaller brands, DESCENTE and KOLON in the first half. The retail environment under the pandemic saw a lot of challenges. However, we still achieved good growth. For DESCENTE, it is high-quality professional sports. So in the first half of the year in -- when Tier 1 cities -- many Tier 1 cities were locked down, there was still growth. Right now, there was 5% growth in retail sell-through and store productivity ,[200,000] on average. So 30% growth in our retail sell-through. So we are also -- we also have a good layout in skiing as well as golf. For KOLON, we continue to lead in light outdoor and we develop new women market and strengthened high-end position. Under the pandemic, we recorded strong growth, more than 30% growth, for off-line store productivity, 500,000 . So if you look at our women's products sell-through, we have quite a big break through more than 50%. So for DESCENTE and KOLON, I think the drive to our future business will be big. So we are going to see a big help from these 2 brands. Amer Sports, globally speaking, well, the situation is full of complication and uncertainty. However, Amer Sports' performance exceeded expectation. We hope that revenue can increase 30% year-on-year. So JV revenue can go up by 21% as a result. We were at RMB 9.67 billion revenue. So in many places, revenue from retail and e-commerce business saw increase for Arc'teryx, more than 25%, more than 30%, winter sport equipment, up more than 70% year-on-year. As such as now, the business in China was under what impacted because of the pandemic. In the first half, we still grew 35%. The share of revenue in 2019 was 5%. It increased to 14% this year. For EBITDA of JV, it increased by 28.2% to RMB 710 million. In the first half of the year, during the slow season, the JV was able to reduce loss. For the whole year, we do have -- we are hopeful that for the first time, we are able to make contribution to profit in 2022. So that would be a contribution to ANTA Group profit. Under the pandemic, well, if you look at distribution network management, we achieved quite good results. We kept on expanding the influence of brands. And there with high-quality development, our goal is to enhance store shopping experience. So our retail strategy will be based on retail stores. For ANTA Adult, we had 6,660 stores at the end of June and 2,563 ANTA KIDS stores. In the first half, we increased the share of stores in high-end shopping centers. So for core stores, store efficiency or productivity rose 30%. The number of stores was down 6.8%. However, if you look at the overall revenue of ANTA brand there is quite a good increase for FILA at the end of June. There were 2021 stores. And for new stores, productivity and efficiency, we imposed higher requirements. And we wanted to continue to improve existing stores for the other brands. There was not a big increase in number of stores. Overall speaking, they are still able to achieve increase in sales. So we are still able to meet the goal of leading the market in the niche brands. So that's the overall situation. In second half 2022, we believe that the pandemic would still be challenging. The international situation will still be complicated. So global economy will still see uncertainty. So the situation will not be optimistic. However, if you look at overall sports industry, well, the pandemic has aroused people's demand for healthy life. And they are now very passionate about doing exercise and sports. So we believe that in China, well, there will be more measures and policies to stimulate the rapid growth of the sports industry. So I think this is a plus for the overall industry. So we will see a lot of development opportunities for our multiple brands. We will continue our focus on multiple brands and our globalization strategy. We will have more confidence and we will adopt dynamic management methods in order to write out the difficulties in the market and to overcome uncertainty. We will adjust our overall operation management model according to actual situation, so that the resilience of our business can be enhanced so that we can achieve high-quality growth for mid- to long-term development, we will reinforce ANTA brands leading position in China. And we will continue to be professional sport oriented, and we will focus on making breakthroughs in main channels and main customer groups for FILA. We will achieve high-quality growth. Our retail sell-through should surpass the peers in golf and in other segment, we want to achieve victory for outdoor sports. We will maintain the high-end nature of our brands. And then for our consumers, we will maintain the demand for functional products. And for DESCENTE and KOLON, we will continue to do a better job for DESCENTE and KOLON. This year is the 15th anniversary of our listing in Hong Kong. In the past 15 years, we have become a most internationally competitive enterprise, and we are also a very good company in China. So no matter how the external environment is going to change, we will continue our strategy. We will continue to adhere to our Single-Focused, Multi-Brand and Globalization strategy. So we would strive to become a world-leading multi-brand sports company. Thank you very much. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]