FinVolution Group - Q2 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for participating in the Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call for FinVolution Group. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I would nowlike to turn the call over to your host, Jimmy Tan, Head of Investor Relations for the company. Jimmy, please go ahead.

Jimmy Tan (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Allison. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. The company results were issued via Newswire services earlier today and are posted online. You can download the earnings release and sign up for the company email alerts by visiting the IR section of our website at ir.finvgroup.com. Mr. Tiezheng Li, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Jiayuan Xu, our Chief Financial Officer, will start the call with their prepared remarks and conclude with a Q&A session. During this call, we will be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures to review and assess our operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings press release.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

Before we continue, please note that today's 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 results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties are included in the company's filings 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 applicable laws. Finally, we post a slide presentation on our IR website, providing details of our results for the quarter. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Tiezheng Li. Please go ahead, sir.

Tiezheng Li (CEO)

Thanks, Jimmy. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. This is Tiezheng Li, CEO of FinVolution Group. We are happy to speak with you today. We ended the first half of 2024 on a positive note, driving prudent growth in the China market while maintaining our rapid growth momentum internationally. So, demonstrating strong execution of our Local Excellence, Global Outlook strategy, or simply LE-GO, LE-GO strategy. We made great strides across our business in the markets in which we operate. Cumulatively, we have served around 31.5 million borrowers across China, Indonesia, and the Philippines as of June 30, 2024. During the first half of 2024, transaction volume for the China market reached RMB 92.5 billion, up 6% year over year.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

Transaction volume for international market continued to grow rapidly, soaring to RMB 4.5 billion, up 32% year over year. In terms of outstanding balance, China reached RMB 64.2 billion, while our international market grew to RMB 1.4 billion, up 3% and 27%, respectively, year over year. This stellar performance stands out as a testament to the effective execution of our LE-GO strategy and the unwavering commitment of our team. Customer acquisition is a key element of our LE-GO strategy. We view it as an ongoing investment that will ultimately lead to a higher percentage of better quality, repeat borrowers, and drive sustainable growth. During the second quarter, our number of total new borrowers reached 823,000, up 22% year over year and 15% sequentially, validating our ability to grow our business across different countries.

Notably, as we completed the transition to better quality borrowers in Indonesia and began to diversify our business model, the percentage of new international borrowers once again surpassed the percentage of new China borrowers. Furthermore, our number of new borrowers in the Philippines continued to grow robustly in the second quarter, increasing by 198% year over year and 69% sequentially. Our effective social media strategy in the international markets also continued to yield positive outcomes. As of end...

As of the end of the second quarter, our followers on leading social media platforms, such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, had risen to approximately 1.3 million, 850,000, and 240,000, up 41%, 30%, and 8% year over year respectively, validating the strong brand awareness of deep localization we have created in our overseas market. As a fintech leader, technology is deeply engraved in our DNA. It remains the core of our business and our primary competitive edge. During the second quarter, we hosted an internal tech competition called Hackathon, bringing together 60 R&D teams for a 36-hour session in a closed-door environment. Winning projects included Admin AI Bots, which can incorporate API function calls into large language models.

This framework can also be expanded to include multiple internal tools, and support the management of different tools across platforms. Another standout, eSound, leverage AIGC to utilize fragmented time slots to increase productivity. We believe these projects demonstrate great implementation potential for enhancing our operations and overall efficiency. Next, I'd like to share some updates on our ESG progress. We recently published our 2023 ESG report, the sixth in our company's history, highlighting our dedication to transparency and sustainability. In 2023, we advanced our mission of leveraging innovative technologies to make financial services better, as well as our ESG strategy centered on technology, green principle, and kindness. In addition to giving back to society with innovative technologies, FinVolution emphasizes integrity and compliance, low carbon development, and harmonious relationships with employees, partners, and communities in its ESG management efforts.

Moreover, we continue to support small business owners throughout the second quarter's challenges. During the second quarter of 2024, we cumulatively served around 415,000 small business owners, and facilitate RMB 14.2 billion of loans to nurture their dreams. I also want to highlight our long-standing cooperation with the National Weightlifting Team, and congratulate them on their recent wins at the Paris Olympics. We are proud to promote awareness of the sport alongside the team, and leverage their public image to help small business owners increase their product sales. Our joint initiatives embody our shared embrace of the Olympic value of excellence, respect, and friendship, helping to create a better society for all. We will continue to integrate ESG management throughout our business operations and partnerships, propelling sustainable development across the industry.

Before we move on to our CFO's review of operational and financial metrics, I'd like to share that FinVolution celebrate its 17th anniversary during the second quarter. A milestone that inspires us to look towards our sustainable future. As such, we set our vision for 2030. To become an international fintech platform, connecting borrowers in the financial institutions across multiple global markets, and leading the industry in each of them. We will remain dedicated to leveraging innovative technology to make financial service better and greener, sustainably propelling FinVolution's long-term growth. To summarize, despite China's ongoing macro challenges, we successfully deployed our leading technologies and operation capabilities to achieve solid progress in the second quarter across all the markets in which we operate. Going forward, as China's macro environment improve, we are confident of resuming faster growth and delivering consistent returns across multiple metrics for all our stakeholders.

With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Jiayuan Xu, who will discuss our operational and financial results in great detail.

Jiayuan Xu (CFO)

Thank you, Li, and hello, everyone. Let's go through our key results for the second quarter. To be mindful of the length of our earnings call today, I encourage listeners to refer to our second quarter earnings press release for further details. Despite China's 5% GDP growth in the first half of 2024, uncertainty still persisted in macro environment. Small-ticket items and tourism-related activities remained the bright spot with the May Holiday, 6.18 Shopping Festival and consumption-related index all showing signs of improvement. However, China's overall retail sales slowed to 2% growth year over year in June, which does not reflect an optimal recovery trajectory. China's Manufacturing PMI index remained largely stable in July, with Manufacturing PMI holding steady at 49.4 points.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

Concurrently, the Manufacturing PMI and the composite PMI both reached 50.2 points, which is within the expansion range, indicating Chinese enterprise gradually production recovery. In short, although China's economy is recovering, there are still pockets of turbulence, which we will need to navigate using our vast experience and the technological and operational process. As Li mentioned, our performance in the first half of the year were solid, with transaction volume growth in both China and the international markets landing within our guidance range. This was supported by consistent excellence across numerous other areas, such as institutional funding, loan collection, and risk performance, among others. Let me walk you through some of the details. During the second quarter, our average borrowing rate in China remained stable at IRR 22.2%, validating our strong commitment to advancing financial inclusion.

Given financial institutions' growing desire to obtain good quality borrowers from our platform, our funding costs improved significantly, shrinking another 90 basis points during the quarter and recording a cumulative improvement of 140 basis points in the first half of 2024, leading to consistent improvement in our take rate. Such a huge semi-annual improvement in funding costs underscores financial institutions' deep trust in our credit risk assessment capabilities and our ongoing enhancement of the quality of our borrowers. Given the quality of our borrowers and the ample market liquidity, we are confident of achieving continued improvement in funding costs in the second half of the year. Regarding risk management, the recovering economy and our agile adjustment to our credit risk assessment models drove progressive improvement in our Day 1 delinquency rate, which fell by 10 basis points sequentially to reach 5.1% for the quarter.

From a vintage perspective, we maintain our view that vintage delinquency will stabilize at around 2.5%. By referring our Responsive Payment Deduction strategy, we have enhanced the efficiency of our loan collection process, resulting in an improvement in our loan collection recovery rate to 88%, up 200 basis points from the previous quarter. We expect this strong recovery momentum of loan collection will persist in the second half of the year. Furthermore, as we continue to optimize our operations, we have strategically adjusted our business portfolio to adapt our partners' evolving requirements. For the first half of 2024, transaction volume for our international market reached RMB 4.5 billion, up 32% year-over-year to reach the upper range of our guidance.

Supported by the strong global macroenvironment and our effective LE-GO strategy, we believe our international business growth momentum is sustainable with further diversification among different business models. Moving on to our international expansion efforts. Indonesia, our first and the largest overseas market, has shown continued growth in its macroeconomy throughout the first half of this year, with a recorded GDP growth of 5.05% for the second quarter and a targeted GDP growth of 5.2% for full year 2024. The Indonesia Consumer Confidence Index has remained high at above 120% for 18 months. The volume of motorbike sales increased 26% year-over-year, and 17% sequentially to 599,000 as of July 2024, further illustrating the nation's heightened consumer optimism.

Besides a moderate correction to 49.3% in July 2024, Indonesia's Manufacturing PMI has remained above 50% since September 2021, reflecting nearly three consecutive years of sustained economic prosperity. The unemployment rate decreased year-over-year in March 2024 to 4.8% from 5.5% in the same period last year, further strengthening consumers' confidence. After two quarters of business adjustment towards better quality borrowers under the new pricing cap, we are proud to share that we have stabilized our operations in Indonesia and continue to gain recognition from local customers and other stakeholders. This recognition has attracted new funding partners, including a leading local digital bank. We are also steadily building and strengthening our relationships with larger and more reputable local financial institutions to diversify our funding sources, thereby optimizing funding costs. Next, our second international market, the Philippines.

As of July 2024, its Manufacturing PMI has remained above 50% for 11 consecutive months. The Philippine labor market is also exhibiting positive momentum, with the unemployment rate dropping to 3.1% as of June 2024, from 4.5% compared to the same period last year. Furthermore, private consumption contributed 72.5% of the Philippines' nominal GDP in the second quarter of 2024, reflecting robust domestic demand that will further support the nation's rapid economic growth. Notably, our Philippines operation continued to outperform expectations, with transaction volume growing 140% year over year, and 20% quarter over quarter to RMB 674 million in the second quarter, representing 29% of the international transaction volume.

This outstanding performance reflects strong support from our local partners, such as SeaBank, UnionBank, and Maya Bank. Our latest funding partners, who recently partnered with us on a $47 million program. With sufficient funding in place, we believe we can maximize the benefits of our e-commerce cooperation with TikTok Shop, acquire additional new borrowers from diversified channels, and sustain continued high growth rates. Now, turning to our financial metrics. This quarter's operational excellence lead to better than expected financial results. Net revenue for the quarter reached RMB 3.117 billion, up 3% year over year. Our net income was RMB 551 million, a 4% increase quarter over quarter, underscoring our operational stability.

Meanwhile, sales and marketing expenses increased by 5% sequentially to RMB 473 million, as we continue to invest in growth across all of our markets. As we restructured our business mix, our leverage ratio adjusted to 3.5x, indicating opportunities for tremendous growth when the economy further recovers. Our balance sheet remained robust, with short-term liquidity maintaining its healthy level at RMB 8.1 billion, reflecting our strength and flexibility in executing our LE-GO strategy to advance our international expansion and drive shareholders' return. Consistently, rewarding our shareholders remain a top priority for FinVolution, both through business growth across different markets and our market-leading capital return program, incorporating share repurchase and dividends. Our first share repurchase program began in March 2018, shortly after our IPO in November 2017, and has been widely embraced by our shareholders.

Our buyback history indicates two repurchase programs with a total deployment of around $260 million. We are now conducting our third repurchase program of up to $150 million. Notably, in the second quarter, we deployed around $30 million and repurchased $6.1 million ADS. For the first half of 2024, we have deployed around $57 million for share repurchase. Our total cumulative share repurchase amount reached $337 million as of the end of the second quarter. In addition, our dividends has steadily increased over the past four years, with the cumulative dividend amount reaching $325 million. In total, our capital return program has returned $662 million to our shareholders, with a payout ratio rising to 49% of net profit in 2023.

Going forward, we will continue to strengthen our capital return program for our shareholders. In summary, our solid second quarter results showcase our LE-GO strategy's effectiveness, our sustainable business model, and our technological advantages. We expect our Indonesia operations to become profitable in 2024, and our Philippines operations to contribute to profits in 2025, boosting our confidence in deploying a more proactive international expansion strategy. As we capitalize on the massive opportunities in the international markets, we look forward to delivering sustainable growth and sharing our success with all our stakeholders. That concludes my prepared remarks. We will now open the call to the questions. Operator, please continue.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the key. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to management in Chinese, we ask that you please kindly repeat your question in English. At this time, we will pause for a moment to assemble our roster. Our first question today will come from Cindy Wang of China Renaissance. Please go ahead.

Cindy Wang (Director of Equity Research)

Hi, there. [Foreign language] Thank you management for taking my call, and I have two questions here. First question is, could you give us some color on the trend of your, China borrowers loan demand in second quarter and also, in July. And the second question is, the Indonesia, your customer acquisition strategy after the APR meet the requirement, and any update on the regulation front of the interest rate requirement in 2025. Thank you.

Jiayuan Xu (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Speaker 7

Hello, Cindy, let me do the translation. Regarding China demand during the second quarter, the trend of our borrowers demand is largely in line with the weakness in personal credit demand. The daily application rate of repeat borrowers declined by mid-single digit around 6% on an annual basis and quarterly comparison, reflecting weak consumer confidence. In July and August, we have observed that the application rates of our repeat borrowers has increased by mid-single digit between 6% to 7% on a daily basis. The demand of our borrowers is concentrated in the area of daily necessity. Therefore, when the economy is weak, it will show more resilience, and we expect demand will gradually improve in the second half of the year.

Tiezheng Li (CEO)

[Foreign language].

Speaker 7

Hello, Cindy. Let me do the translation. From the Indonesia macro environment, it is presenting a much more positive trend. After the Indonesia election, right? Political situations has normalized with an improving economy such as GDP increase. And let us concentrate on our performance in Indonesia.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

During the second quarter, transaction volume for Indonesia market reached RMB 1.64 billion, up about 6%-7% annually, with outstanding loan balance between RMB 1.0 billion, up about 4%. Revenue for the quarter reached RMB 430 million. Number of borrowers reached 530,000, up 4% sequentially, and number of new borrowers reached 200,000, up 9% sequentially. We have cumulatively cooperated with seven financial institutions, and all our funding is from local financial institutions now. Our Indonesia operations has completed pricing transition in just five months, and we have made adjustment in borrowers cohort, model iteration and credit risk has improved by 28%, meaningfully offsetting the impact of interest rate reduction. Therefore, our take rate returned to 10%, reflecting our business entering a more stable state.

For the third quarter, in the second half of the year and for the third quarter, we expect Indonesia operations will resume growth of over 10%, with transaction volume potentially reaching new record high. Indonesia online operations will remain stable with credit risk, customer acquisitions improving consistently. For offline operations, we have completed the acquisitions of a multifinance license with a controlling stake of 83.7%. Going forward, we will proactively explore both online and offline channels, multi products and Buy Now Pay Later installments for different scenarios such as electric bikes, etc. We will fully leverage our China expertise and leverage them in our Indonesia market to ensure future growth. Hello, Cindy, any more questions from you?

Cindy Wang (Director of Equity Research)

No more question from me here.

Tiezheng Li (CEO)

Hello, thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question will come from, Yada Li of CICC, please go ahead.

Yada Li (Special Assets and Special Situations Analyst)

[Foreign language] Then I will do the translation. Hello, management, thank you for taking my questions. And I was wondering, what's the plan and growth target for the company's domestic business? And I've noticed the company has gained a slightly faster volume growth, compared with the peers. And looking ahead, how likely the company can maintain such growth, and how does the company balance the volume growth and profitability? That's all. Thank you.

Jiayuan Xu (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Speaker 7

Hello Yada. Let me do the translation for Alexis. As you know, China market has some changes this year, and it is very different from the previous years, and currently the scale of China consumer market has slowed down and entered into a stage of increased competition. After the risk fluctuation in the industry during the second half of 2023, many players have experienced varying degrees of volume reduction. Under the uncertain macro environment, we are searching for certainty that is beneficial for us, and execute sustainable development in China.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

We have a few ways to achieve this. First of all, we have certainty for success on acquire, acquiring new borrowers through information feeds, leveraging on data and behavior. We continue to optimize the information feeds channels and improve the algorithms and conduct joint modeling to enhance ROI, and we are able to increase the accuracy in determining the lifetime value of our customers and maintain stable customer acquisition strategy. Transaction volume contributed by new borrowers was up 2% and 27% year over year. So percentage of new customers was between 12% to 15%.

At the same time, we are able to have better cost control and a healthy LTV level. Apart from information feeds channels, we are also actively diversifying our customer acquisition channels, and have found multiple new Internet platform partners to work with us. In addition, we are also leveraging on our brand to influence our borrowers. For example, during the Olympics period, our support for the national weightlifting teams has achieved tremendous success along with their wins at the games. Along with promoting a positive image for China Olympics, we have also gained remarkable results of over 100 million views and over 20 million counts of video traffic transmission.

And secondly, the management of repeat borrowers is a certainty for us, and we have over 60, 17 years of operating history, and we are very familiar with our borrowers. Through deeply excavating their diversified, multi layers and differentiated requirements, we will then refer them with the most suitable products based on different scenarios such as user profiles and behavior characteristics. And all these have led us to increase our users promotion impact by 36% in the first half, which leads to a higher transaction volume for repeat borrowers. Thirdly, our business operations remain healthy, with stable performance, coupled with continuous improvement in funding costs, which leads to progressive improvement on multiple fronts, such as take rate. All these ensure our high quality growth, which is above the industry and lay the cornerstone for our sustainable growth going forward.

Jiayuan Xu (CFO)

Okay, thank you, Yada.

Jimmy Tan (Head of Investor Relations)

I will take one again. Okay. Thank you, Yada.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one. And our next question today will come from Alex Ye of UBS. Please go ahead.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

[Foreign language] My first question is on asset quality. We have noticed the early indicators have seemed to improve in the second quarter. Just wondering what are the key drivers behind and the recent trend? And should we be worrying about any potential uptick in NPL in second half, like in the quarter last year? And second question is on the sequential trend on the take rate, what has been the key drivers behind? What's the outlook for second half? And is there any more improvement, more room for improvement for the funding cost? Thank you.

Jiayuan Xu (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Speaker 7

Hello, Alex. Let me do the translation. Regarding our overall asset quality, during the initial stage of the risk fluctuation last year, we leverage on our years of experience and preemptively accurate predictions of the industry trends, tighten approval rates for riskier borrowers with higher debt, higher risk, and employ different strategies for medium risk groups and quickly adjust the boundary strategies during the early stages of delinquencies. In the first quarter, this performance stabilized, and we are one of the earliest platforms in the industry that are able to contain risk at a lower level.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

During the second quarter, we further optimize, adjusted and iterate on the overall credit limit and explore solutions for different types of users, while maintaining growth in transaction volume and balancing risk. We have also shared that, during the second quarter, our vintage delinquency remains stable at 2.5%, while day one delinquency reduced by 10 basis points to 5.1%, and loan collection recovery rate improved to 88%. We don't think this situation will happen in the second half as the overall environment is much more stable now. I would like to share more information with you.

Over the past 17 years in our operating history, industry wide fluctuations in asset qualities have occurred four times, and such fluctuations on average last around four to five months, with the longest lasting seven months and the shortest lasting two months. The fluctuation for this round is considered to be midterm, and the impact of fluctuation is smaller based on past recovery experience. The recovery process normally take place at between the fourth to fifth months. Therefore, the fluctuation this time round is not unique and has already shown signs of recovery, and we are confident to handle any more of such fluctuations in the future based on our experience.

Jiayuan Xu (CFO)

[Foreign language]

Speaker 7

Hello, Alex, let me do the translation. Regarding take rate, during the second quarter, our average borrowing rates remain stable at 22.2%. Funding costs optimized by ninety basis points in the second quarter, while vintage delinquency remains stable at 2.5%, and take rate further improved to around 3.1%. For the second half of 2024, we expect average borrowing rates will remain stable, and funding costs and vintage delinquencies to have further optimization. Our asset quality is popular in such environment, and we are one of the few platforms that are able to maintain growth.

Alex Ye (Equity Research Analyst)

This is the reason why we have more room to negotiate for better funding costs with our funding partners. Funding costs has cumulatively improved by 140 basis points in the first half, and improved by 90 basis points sequentially. Going forward, we still believe it will have room for improvement based on what I have just said earlier.

Jiayuan Xu (CFO)

Okay, thank you, Alex.

Operator (participant)

Okay, thank you. As there are no further questions now, I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.

Jimmy Tan (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact FinVolution Group Investor Relations team. Thank you all and have a nice day.