51Talk Online Education Group - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for 51Talk Online Education Group's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Mr. David Chung, Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, David.

David Chung (VP of Investor Relations)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call of 51Talk. The company's results were issued via newswire services earlier today and are posted online. You can download the earnings press release and sign up for the company's distribution list by visiting ir.51talk.com. Mr. Jack Huang, our CEO, and Ms. Cindy Tang, our CFO, will begin with some prepared remarks. Following the prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Before we continue, please note that the discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's Form 20-F and other public filings filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable law. Please also note that earnings press release and this conference call include discussion of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. 51Talk's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Jack Huang. Jack, please go ahead.

Jack Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Thank you, David. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for joining our conference call today. Q2 2025 has been a strong quarter for us. The gross billings exceeded our guidance, reflecting healthy demand and disciplined execution. We expect this positive momentum to carry into the second half of 2025. Our third quarter guidance reflects our confidence in the company's trajectory. We have also deepened our investments in enhancing user experience and service quality. We believe these initiatives will strengthen our competitive position and create durable long-term value for our shareholders. AI remains integral to our strategy and operations, with applications spanning across the company. We remain steadfast in our commitment to developing robust infrastructures and systems necessary to embed AI across our products and processes, with the objective of delivering an exceptional learning experience to our students at scale.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Cindy, our CFO.

Cindy Tang (CFO)

Thank you, Jack. Now, let me walk you through our second quarter financial details. Second quarter net revenues were $20.4 million, an 86.1% increase from the same quarter last year, largely driven by the increase of active students with attended lesson consumption. Gross margin for the second quarter was 74.6%. Gross billings grew by 79.7% from the same quarter last year to $28.5 million. Q2 operating expenses were $17.9 million, an increase of 53.5% compared to the same quarter last year. Specifically, this has been driven by Q2 sales and marketing expenses of $12.8 million, a 74.8% increase from the same quarter last year due to the rise in marketing and branding expenses resulting from marketing and branding activities, as well as higher sales personnel costs related to increases in the number of sales and marketing personnel.

Q2 product development expenses were $1.2 million, a 45.5% increase from the same quarter last year. Finally, Q2 general and administrative expenses were $3.9 million, a 39.1% increase from the same quarter last year. Overall, Q2 operating loss was $2.7 million, while net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was $3 million, a 12.7% and 144.7% increase from the same quarter last year, respectively. Q2 GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per ADS were -$0.52 and $0.46, respectively. The company's total cash equivalent and time deposits were $30.9 million at the end of the second quarter. Advances from students were $56.4 million at the end of the second quarter. Looking forward to the third quarter of 2025, we currently expect the net gross billings to be between $36.5 million and $37.5 million.

The above outlook is based on our current market conditions and reflects the company's current and preliminary estimates of the market and operating conditions and customer demand, which are all subject to change. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the line for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift 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. You may re-enter the queue if you have further questions. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Toby Liu, a private investor. Please go ahead.

Dear Management Team, congratulations for having such a good result. Yeah, so I have two questions. The first question is I noticed that we have changed the accounting firm to the Ernst & Young. So could you please describe the reasons why we changed it from Marcum to Ernst & Young? And yeah, so what's the consideration behind that? Thank you.

Jack Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Okay. Thank you very much. This is your first question, right?

Yeah.

Okay. So first of all, we really want to express our appreciation to our auditor, Marcum. We believe they have their service quality and they are very professional in terms of the accounting. But as you know, a lot of investors, a lot of them have the mandate about the auditor, especially some of them have the mandate about the Big 4. So I think that is the key reason that we choose E&Y for the auditor.

So basically.

Yeah.

So basically, this means that the change of the auditing firm is a way for us to enlarge our investor base so that some investors, maybe after we change the auditing firm, we can fill their investment criteria, right?

Yes. We think with the Big 4, after we change the auditor to the Big 4, to E&Y, some of the investors, some of the potential investors, they can buy the stock of COE.

Yeah, yeah. Got it. Got it. Yeah. And my second question is also related to investors. So I've noticed that actually our stock is trading with relatively low liquidity, and the bid-ask spread is usually quite large compared to other stocks who have the similar market cap. So is there any intention for us to increase the liquidity, for example, like conducting some stock split or maybe other incentives to increase our turnover rate or maybe to lower the bid-ask spread? Yeah. Thank you.

Cindy Tang (CFO)

Thank you for your question. Yes, you are right. Our liquidity is low. But for now, we don't have a near plan to do any stock splits or other attempts to increase it yet because now we are actually focusing on doing our business to improve our operation, which we believe will provide more sustainable and fundamental value to our investors. But in the future, we will also consider all these alternatives. But now we don't have a recent plan yet.

Okay. Yeah. Got it. Thank you for addressing my question. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then one to join the question queue. Press star, then one to ask a question. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the conference back over to the company for any closing remarks.

David Chung (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please contact 51Talk's Investor Relations through the contact information provided on our website.

Operator (participant)

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