Cheche Group - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning and welcome to the Cheche Group's fourth quarter and 2024 results call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Crocker Coulson, Investor Relations for Cheche Group. Mr. Coulson, the floor is yours.

Crocker Coulson (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you so much, Operator. Good morning, everyone here in the U.S. Good evening to those of you joining us from Asia. Thank you to all of you for joining us to review Cheche's 2024 fourth quarter and full-year results. This morning, Cheche posted both the earnings release and a related investor presentation to our website, which you can find at ir.chechegroup.com. I'm pleased to say that with me on the call today are Lei Zhang, Cheche's Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Sandra Ji, Cheche's Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks are concluded, we are going to open up this call to your questions. Before we begin, some statements in this teleconference are forward-looking within the meaning of federal securities laws. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, we can provide no assurance that they will prove to be accurate because they are prospective in nature.

Actual results could differ materially from those that we discuss today. We encourage you to review the most recent filings with the SEC for the risk factors that could materially impact our results. As I mentioned, the earnings release is available on ir.chechegroup.com, and we encourage you to review the reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures contained within. With those formalities now out of the way, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Lei Zhang, Chief Executive Officer. Lei, take it away.

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

Thank you, Crocker. Greetings, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to review Cheche Group fourth quarter and the full-year 2024 results. I am pleased to report that the Cheche Group continues to perform positively in the rapid evolving insurance landscape, driven by the increasing relevance of new energy vehicles, our expanding partnerships, and technological advancements within our platform. Overall, China's NEV sector is seeing continued momentum, with penetration rates hovering around 50% of total passenger vehicle sales. For the full year of 2024, the number of embedded Cheche policies will up 159% year-over-year to 1.1 million, with corresponding NEV written premiums growing 128% from prior year to $452 million over the same period.

As a leading player in the space, Cheche is well positioned to capitalize on the industry positive trends as we expand our insurance offering for EV vehicles to capture renewal and policies for used vehicles. This is a critical step in growing our customer base and increasing our revenue streams from existing policyholders. The platform grows as the largest auto insurance technology platform by digital auto insurance transaction premiums, continuously feeding the industry, providing customized systems and embedded insurance products. As we continue to broker strategic partnerships and leverage our innovative solutions, our reach among NEV manufacturers has grown to 15 as of the fourth quarter. The need for advanced technology, data-driven systems, and customer-tailored insurance products in the NEV space drives improved margins.

As the EV industry continues to mature and underwriting becomes more accurate, the higher margins of our EV policies will continue to positively shift the overall revenue mix. We continue to deepen our partnership with both traditional and EV automakers, positioning Cheche as a key player in this space. These partnerships provide us with valuable data, insights, and access to customers that will allow us to further expand our presence and enhance our offerings. We are particularly excited about our ongoing innovation in the realm of autonomous driving. In collaboration with automakers and insurers, we are working to launch a new suite of products on our independent third-party platform. Their products are designed to help provide forensic reports that connect all parties, involve an accident, and assign a sliding scale of responsibility. We plan to launch selected products on a test basis in certain cities later this year.

We are also incorporating AI and machine learning into our business by partnering with a leading computer model to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. Currently, in development, our products focus on fraud detection in claims management and on rapidly assessing vehicle damage, which we believe will significantly improve customer experience and operation efficiency. Last month, Cheche announced that its innovative Tianmu insurance anti-fraud and risk control model has been recognized in the prestigious top 100 AI products of the 2024 list, highlighting Cheche's commitment to leverage cutting-edge technology in the insurance industry. The award-winning Tianmu model integrates advanced technologies such as big data, AI, and biometrics to construct an intelligent anti-fraud and risk control system. As a company, we are actively broadening our revenue streams by diversifying across different product types, with a focus on increasing our market share through more tailored and flexible policies.

Additionally, we are launching new SaaS and data analytics tools to enhance the value of our technology and further improve our margins. Looking ahead, our unique insights and broad capabilities help drive our growth of the digital insurance industry, delivering great value to our partners and customers. Cheche, alongside our network of insurance companies and intermediaries, will continue to innovate the insurance tech best to offer users more personalized and cost-effective coverage options. We are proud of what we have achieved and excited by these new opportunities that lie ahead. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Sandra. Thank you.

Sandra Ji (CFO)

Thank you, Lei. Firstly, I'd like to begin by touching on our first quarter operational and financial highlights before taking questions. Our total written premiums placed for this quarter increased 15.6% to RMB 7.4 billion, or $1 billion, while total written premiums placed for the full year of 2024 increased by 7.5% over the prior year to RMB 24.3 billion, or $3.3 billion. The total number of policies issued increased from 4.8 million for the prior year quarter to 5.1 million in the fourth quarter this year, while the total number of policies issued over the full year of 2024 increased from 15.8 million of the prior year 17.3 million. As Lei already mentioned, 441,000 policies and 1.4 billion of corresponding premiums were embedded in EV deliveries, growing 184% and 171% respectively year-over-year.

Embedded policies and corresponding written premiums for the full year of 2024 reached 1.1 million and 3.3 billion, which is $452.4 million respectively, representing growth of 159% for policies embedded and 128% for written premiums compared to the prior year. In terms of our net revenues, we generated RMB 983.6 million, or $134.8 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 13.4% year-over-year, while net revenues for the full year of 2024 increased by 5.2% over the prior year to RMB 3.5 billion, or $475.8 million. The growth was driven by an increase in insurance transactions conducted through our platform by referral partners and third-party platform partners. The cost of revenues in the quarter was RMB 932 million, or $127.7 million, up 13% from the prior year quarter.

Cost of revenues increased by 4.8% to RMB 3.3 billion, or $454.1 million from the prior year, which was consistent with the growth of business volume and net revenues. We also reported a drop of 20.1% in selling and marketing expenses in the quarter to RMB 19.7 million, or $2.7 million, primarily due to a decrease in staff costs and lower marketing expenses. For the full year, selling and marketing expenses decreased 28.7% to RMB 79.5 million, or $10.9 million from RMB 111.5 million in the prior year. General and administrative expenses were also lower this quarter, declining 53.2% to RMB 25.7 million, or $3.5 million, from RMB 54.9 million in the prior year quarter, largely due to decreased share-based compensation expenses and partially offset by an increase in post-listing professional services fees and staff costs.

As for the full year of 2024, general and administrative expenses decreased by 22.6% to RMB 107.9 million, or $14.8 million. Research and development expenses decreased 25.3% in this quarter to RMB 9.3 million, or $1.3 million, and decreased 33.6% to RMB 38 million, or $5.2 million, from RMB 57.2 million in the prior year. The operating loss in this quarter decreased by 93.7% year-over-year to RMB 3 million, or $0.4 million. If we excluded non-GAAP expenses, the adjusted operating income for this quarter was RMB 1.3 million, which was $0.2 million, compared to an adjusted operating loss of RMB 12 million in the prior year quarter, which resulted in the growth of our net revenues and the improvement of our operational efficiency.

Operating loss for the full year of 2024 decreased by 60.3% year-over-year to RMB 66.5 million, or $9.1 million. Excluding non-GAAP expenses, the adjusted operating loss decreased by 40.2% year-over- year to RMB 28.2 million, or $3.9 million. Net loss in the quarter also improved 67.4% to RMB 10.4 million, or $1.4 million over the fourth quarter of 2023, while improving 61.6% for the full year to RMB 61.2 million, or $8.4 million, from RMB 159.6 million over the prior year. Adjusted net loss for the quarter improved to RMB 3 million, or $0.4 million, which is down 38.6% from the adjusted net loss the prior year quarter, mainly due to foreign exchange losses of RMB 5.3 million.

Adjusted net loss was only RMB 24.8 million, or $3.4 million in 2024, which decreased by 25.3% from RMB 33.2 million for the prior year. Turning to our balance sheet, we reported RMB 152.9 million, or $21 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments in the fourth quarter. Next, looking ahead to our full year of 2025 guidance, we expect net revenues to range from RMB 3.6 billion-RMB 3.8 billion, representing an increase of 3.7%-9.4% compared to the full year of 2024, with total written premiums placed to range from RMB 25.5 billion-RMB 27.0 billion, representing a year-over-year increase of 4.9%-11.1%. NEV written premiums placed are expected to range from RMB 7 billion-RMB 8 billion, representing a year-over-year increase of 112% and 142% growth.

We also anticipate our adjusted operating results shifting from a loss to a profit for the full year of 2025. I think this concludes our remarks. Next, we will be happy to take your questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Allen Klee with Maxim Group. Please go ahead.

Allen Klee (Analyst)

Yes. Hi, good evening. Congratulations on the quarter where your revenues and bottom line results were better than my projections, and also your outlook is better than my projections. Great job. If I could start off on some of the first things I heard you say on this call, you expect to increase revenue streams from existing partners. Could you talk a little bit about how you think that is going to happen?

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

好的，我来回答这个问题。目前我们的存量客户刚才提到像新能源车企现在有15家以上。那么我们未来业务的增长来自于两方面。一方面我们还会增加我们的OEMs的新的客户的数量。另外，我们现有的这些客户像蔚来、小鹏、理想、小米等等，还有一些重要的一些车企，他会把存量客户，就是已经存在的车主的续保服务，renew policy的renew会继续交给我们。所以这一块也会给我们带来源源不断增长的业务规模。那么我们从险种的角度来说，就是不光是从车险，我们还会延伸着从给车主围绕他的我们说的这些财产险业务，还有一些责任险和意外险业务，也会成为我们的新的险种和产品线。OK。那么我们在第三方面就是还有车型。那么在汽车的不同品牌下面，他的新发布的一些新的款式，包括纯电的，还有一些油电混合的这样一些的车型，都是我们服务的对象，主要是三方面。

I'll help translate. Firstly, our revenue growth in the NEV market will come from the below aspects. Firstly, in terms of the partners, we already have 15 partners currently, and we will try to bring more partners into our business, and that's the first pathway to increase our revenue stream. Secondly, during the current partnerships, in the past few years, the main growth driver was for the new car deliveries, and we already started to do business with our NEV automakers to provide service for their used vehicles, for their existing car owners, to help them to do the insurance renewal business. That's the second pathway. Thirdly, apart from the traditional car auto insurance business, we are already starting to provide non-auto insurance service along with the auto insurance to constitute a service product package to the car owners. That's the third pathway.

Beyond that, we're also trying to provide service to cover more car types within the same partners because even in the current partnership, automakers can produce a lot of types of cars. Currently, we only cover part of their car types. We are trying to cover more and more in the future. Thank you.

Allen Klee (Analyst)

Thank you. Could you give, you've talked about different ways you're using artificial intelligence. Could you maybe describe some of the examples of how you're using that today and how you might expand it?

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

Okay.那么我就举一个例子吧，就是目前在中国的新能源的汽车现在基本上都是智能网联的。那么它的智能驾驶的普及率很高，比如像华为、鸿蒙智行公布的，那么智驾的占比占里程数的35%。那么通过智能驾驶减少了碰撞次数，可能达到162万次。这是最新的数据。所以当智能驾驶启动以后，如果发生交通事故的话，车主会认为这个事故不是人为造成的，是由智能驾驶产品的稳定性和安全性。那么在这种情况下，保险行业我们其实率先现在正在推广一种新的产品责任险。那么产品责任险就是基于智能驾驶产品本身的稳定性、安全性和成熟性这些因素开发的。那么现在很多车企都在积极地推出这种产品。而我们车车科技在里面的角色就是作为一个交通事故的第三方的见证平台。那么由我们来见证事故发生的时候，由车主还是由智能驾驶进行了主导。那么对人和设备做责任的判定和划分。那么我们提供相应的独立的第三方的AI的SaaS的云平台。那么里面包括了反欺诈和防篡改的一些区块链的技术，特别是以人工智能AI方面的对事故进行分析、推理和判断。所以这是我们在基于AI方面的，特别在智能驾驶领域的一个非常典型的技术解决方案。

Basically in China right now, the intelligent driving in smart connected NEV is very high. For instance, among Huawei, Harmony Intelligent driving users? The intelligent driving accounts for about 35% of the total mileage, reducing collision incidence by about 1.6 million times. When an accident occurs, the car owners will typically think it is caused by the stability and safety of the autonomous system rather than themselves. Under this scenario, it has urged the insurance industry to introduce a new type of insurance product, which is product liability insurance. This insurance product is designed based on factors such as the stability, safety, and maturity of the intelligent driving system. Many automakers are now actively rolling out this product liability insurance, which may be purchased either by the vehicle owner or the automaker. Cheche's role comes into play when a traffic accident occurs.

We as a third party, we can determine whether the vehicle owner or the intelligent driving system was in control at the time of the incident. We provide an independent third-party cloud platform and SaaS solution with blockchain technology for provision and AI-powered analysis and reasoning. This is our AI-based technical solution in the intelligent driving area.

Allen Klee (Analyst)

Thank you. That's very interesting. Thank you. Maybe two more questions. One on revenues, and we'll all combine them in one big question. On the revenues, I'm curious for your guidance for 2025. How should we think about your projection for revenue growth? How much is because you think the market's going to be growing at a certain rate versus how much is relative to your thinking that it's going to be an expansion of what you're offering of your partners and your new products and upselling and all that? Sorry to make this so long, the other one is just you've been able to increase your gross margins around 50 basis points a year. Does that seem like with more NEVs, that probably should continue?

You've also been doing a great job on operating expense control and how to think about that in 2025. Thank you so much. Sorry for so much.

Sandra Ji (CFO)

Okay. Yeah. In terms of the logic for the revenue growth, if we see the whole market for the traditional car insurance market, for the past couple of years, the year-over-year growth rates are remaining at only 4%-5% a year. I think for the ICE market, as in traditional car market, we will keep growing along with the total industry. Yeah. We will not expect big surprise from that. For the NEV market, the industry growth rate for the past two years is around 40%-50%. Yeah, definitely, we are going way faster than the whole industry. We already keep the momentum of growth of over 100% growth rate for three or more consecutive years.

We expect the trend will continue, and as we showed in the guidance, yeah, we are quite confident that we can enjoy a way faster growth rate in NEV industry than the NEV market than the whole industry grows. Yeah, that's the logic. As for the margin, I think I talked before, for the traditional car insurance, the gross margin is relatively low, which was only around 3-5%. For the NEV insurance, because we provide the SaaS system service to our business partners, i.e., those automakers, and we also provide operational and other renewal service like we mentioned before to them, we can enjoy a way higher gross margin in the market, which was around 20% compared to 3-5% for the traditional car market.

That is why we are confident we can improve our profitability going forward and achieve break-even or even make profit soon. Thank you.

Allen Klee (Analyst)

Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Steve Silver with Argus Research. Please go ahead.

Steve Silver (Analyst)

Thanks, operator, and thanks for taking my questions. The company's exiting 2024 in a very strong capital position in terms of cash, with the expectation of the company turning profitable in 2025. I'm curious if there are any areas that you've identified for capital investments to continue this growth trajectory.

Sandra Ji (CFO)

Actually, we don't think we will—sorry—we will invest too much in this year besides in the AI R&D sector, because as Lei mentioned, we are developing certain new types of products like AI claim management and damage assessment tour, and also for the third-party platform for the autonomous driving insurance. Yeah, since we are still developing those new products, we will invest some funds into this area to increase the service or increase staff investment. Other than that, we don't expect we will invest in other sectors. Thank you.

Steve Silver (Analyst)

Great. The press release mentions that you're now aligned with the majority of significant NEV manufacturers in China. I'm curious as to whether there are any other groups that will now make up the majority of new partnerships that the company may form, just other areas you might have identified there.

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

虽然我们目前合作的现在已经有15家的OEMs，但是我们今年预计还会增加一些。但这些大家都知道中国的主流的OEMs也就二三十家左右，所以我们基本上占据了百分之七八十以上的客户。那么未来我们刚才提到的最重要的增长还是来自于存量客户的每一年的续保，因为在中国车险是每年都要renew的，所以它的数字是持续在增长，而且它的保费规模就随着存量车的变大，它是每年都要有一个重新续保的这样一个需求。所以这是我们未来增长的一个重要的动力。

Now, as we just mentioned, currently we have been cooperating with 15 NEV makers. We expect that in this year, this number will still grow, but as we all know, in China, there are around 20-30 NEV makers basically in total, and we just take 17% of the total OEMs on the market. Basically in the future, we think the growth will mainly come from the auto insurance renewal services from our existing partners because in China, you need to renew your auto insurance each year. With NEV keeps growing each year, and this is a big growth.

Steve Silver (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much, and best of luck in 2025.

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

2025年的增长，刚才我提到了。

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Mark Long with Prime Impact Capital. Please go ahead.

Mark Long (Analyst)

Hi, Lei and Sandra. Congratulations on a strong quarter and strong 2024 momentum and the outlook for profitability in 2025. Very impressive results. My question, Lei, is around how you plan to leverage the new low-cost open-source AI models that are available in China for your new products and what you see in terms of the ability to deploy cost-effective solutions across your portfolio.

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

Okay. 谢谢 Mark。我们其实可以看到从今年的第一季度，那么可以看到更多的大模型的出现，特别是对算力要求的要求会越来越低。那么也就意味着很多行业将会利用AI大模型进行流程的重新的重塑，那么降低成本并且提高效率。所以我们在保险行业，我们认为在核保和核赔两端都会有相应的AI的应用。核保就是在定价侧，我们可以基于AI的技术，实时动态的通过车机的数据，帮助车企实现实时的精算、实时的定价。那么这里面会利用大量的用户行为、驾驶数据。这种实时精算的保险产品是利用AI技术的赋能，那么比传统的车险定价更加精准，而且更符合驾驶人员的这种差异化的定价和千人千面。那么在理赔的核赔方面，我们也在基于智能网联的新能源汽车的车机数据，在交通事故发生的时候能够提取相应的雷达、摄像头，包括碰撞数据。这一系列的数据将使用AI大模型进行智能化的查勘和定损。这种智能理赔的解决方案会颠覆传统保险的理赔流程。我们把查勘、定损、核赔、理算、支付这五个流程实现了一站式、一体化和一秒赔。所以这是我们在AI方面的两端的一个探索。我们认为在未来的三年甚至更长的时间，三到五年会重塑整个保险行业的作业流程，会实现风险的减量和降本增效。

As we can see, in the first quarter of this year, there's a lot of big models on the market, and a lot of industries are using AI to reshape the industry workflow to reduce the cost and improve efficiency. About application of AI in the insurance industry, we believe it will play a big role in both underwriting and claim settlement. On the underwriting side, which is about pricing, we will use AI to help automakers achieve real-time extra area calculations and dynamic pricing. By utilizing a big amount of driving data, including user behavior data, our approach is far more precise than traditional auto insurance pricing methods, which can better reflect the difference among drivers. While on the claim settlement side, we are researching solutions that can utilize data from smart connected NEVs.

In the event of accidents, relevant driving data such as radar readings, camera footage, and collision data can be extracted and analyzed using AI large models for investigation and assessment. This intelligent claims solution will revolutionize the traditional claims process by integrating five key steps, which are investigation, damage assessment, claims, loss calculation, and payment. These five steps into one seamless system. This is our exploration in intelligent claims processing, and we believe it will reshape the entire industry workflow to achieve cost-effectiveness and risk mitigation.

Thank you, Mark.

Operator (participant)

Was there a follow-up, Mr. Long?

Mark Long (Analyst)

No, that's excellent. It sounds like you're well-positioned to leverage the open-source models, which will give you a huge advantage given your relationships with the large NEV OEMs. That sounds like you're going to leverage your leadership position and become one of the leaders in how AI reshapes the auto insurance industry in China. Thank you.

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. The next question comes from Feixiang Gao with CITIC Securities. Please go ahead.

Fei xiang Gao (Analyst)

好的，谢谢管理层。我是中兴证券的高飞翔。那我有个问题就是想请教一下，我们知道其实我们最近其实获得了很多合作伙伴的一些项目，就包括小米、理想。所以我的问题是，是否能够介绍一下为什么这些OEM厂商选择和我们合作？那以及就是说未来我们的AI产品还有未来的规划，就是能否给介绍一下。

So let me translate it. We know that we have some partners such as Xiaomi, Li Auto, and so on. My question is that why does this OEM prefer to cooperate with us? Could you give some information about this question? What is our product and the future plan? That's all. Thanks.

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

谢谢。这是两个问题。第一个就是包括未来小鹏、理想、小米，还有一些传统的车企像东风、广汽等等，他们选择我们合作基于两个原因。第一个就是我们是国内目前最领先的基于数字化、线上化的聚合平台。我们聚合了多家保险公司的API接口，那么可以实时地帮助车企实现了线上的报价、支付和出单这一系列的服务，是完全数字化的。第二个原因就是我们在车险的用户运营方面具有丰富的经验。那么截至目前，我们服务了已经超过2000万车主在中国的车险市场。所以不管是和保险公司的合约的关系，还是对C端用户的这种用户的车险的运营，那么我们都是他们最佳的选择。这是第一个问题。那请帮我翻译一下。

As for the first question, why? As you can see, we have been cooperating with the main NEV partners on the market. Basically, there are two main reasons we think why they chose us. The first one is we are the leading digital platform in China. After 10 years of experience, we have been connecting our call system with multiple insurance companies. We can help them to realize an online co-occupation and policy insurance. We provide a full-service service, a full-stop service for our partners. That is the first one. The second one, because we have a rich amount of auto insurance operational experiences. During the past years, we have been providing services for more than 20 million car owners. Whether it comes to operational or technology, we are always the best choice for them.

Okay. 第二个问题就是我们对AI方面的理解。除了我刚才回答的关于在核保和核赔方面的应用，其实最关键的一点就是目前的新能源车都是智能网联的。也就是中国的新能源汽车目前的智能驾驶、智能网联的技术在全球都是领先的。这里面其实代表着背后的大数据。不管是驾驶行为的数据，还是车辆的行驶和碰撞数据，那么它都可以作为AI应用的一个最好的土壤。所以加上我们现在开源大模型的成熟，以及算力的要求会降低，所以在车险，特别是智能车险的行业里面，AI终于找到了一个非常合适的一个行业应用。那么这一块将是我们未来研发的重要方向和我们一个战略的投入。

As for the second question about AI, apart from what I just mentioned about the AI application in the claims and underwriting, we think because right now in China, most of the NEVs are smart connected NEVs, the intelligent driving skills in China are leading globally. Basically, behind this, there will produce a large amount of data no matter their driver uses data or collision data. All of this data can be utilized in the AI. That is why right now we are investing in the AI techniques. Basically, in auto insurance, especially in the smart connected, in the smart NEV insurance, AI will be fully utilized in this industry. This is our future, and this is the direction of our future strategic investment. That's it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Was there a follow-up? Feixiang Gao?

Fei xiang Gao (Analyst)

Okay. Very clear. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question is a follow-up from Allen Klee with Maxim Group. Please go ahead.

Allen Klee (Analyst)

Oh, hi. I hit the button by accident. I'm sorry.

Operator (participant)

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Lei for any closing remarks.

Lei Zhang (Founder and CEO)

Thank you. We appreciate you taking the time to join us on the call today. If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out to investor relations. Have a great day. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.