Gaotu Techedu - Earnings Call - Q2 2025
August 26, 2025
Transcript
Speaker 3
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Gaotu Techedu Inc. Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Catherine Chen, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Catherine.
Speaker 0
Thank you, sir. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Catherine Chen, and I'll help host the earnings call today. Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s earnings release for the quarter was distributed earlier, and it's available on the company's IR website at ir.gaotu.cn, as well as through PR Newsletter services. Joining the call with me tonight from Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s senior management is Mr. Larry Chen, Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and Ms. Shannon Shen, Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s Chief Financial Officer. Larry will first provide the business highlights for the quarter, and afterwards, Shannon will discuss our financial performance in more detail. Following their prepared remarks, we'll open the floor to questions from analysts.
Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based upon management's current beliefs and expectations, as well as the current market and operating conditions, and they involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the company's control. They may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Further information regarding this and other risks is included in the company's public filing with the U.S. SEC. The company does not entertain any obligations to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable laws. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures for comparison purposes only.
For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please refer to our Second Quarter Earnings Release published earlier today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a live and archived webcast of this conference call will be available on Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s IR website. It is now my pleasure to introduce our Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Larry Chen. Larry, please.
Speaker 2
Good evening and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to each of you for your interest in and support of Gaotu Techedu Inc. Before I start, I would like to remind everyone that all financial figures discussed today are quoted in RMB, unless stated otherwise. Over the past quarter, we maintained solid growth momentum in our core business while harnessing the power of AI to enhance our service models, foster product innovation, and strengthen our organizational capabilities. Together, these efforts are shaping a clear growth trajectory and sustainable competitive advantages. Upholding our user-centric approach, we consistently upgraded our educational products, improved teaching quality, and refined service delivery. Our strategic prioritization and efficient resource allocation have significantly increased per capita productivity.
As we progress through 2025, we are steadily elevating our scale of reaching efficiency and user satisfaction, underscoring the resilience and disciplined execution driving our business's high-quality growth. In the second quarter, our revenue increased by 37.6% year-over-year to nearly RMB 1.4 billion, with growth ballooning up by 36.2% to approximately RMB 2.3 billion. Thanks to our refined operational execution and improved organizational efficiency, we narrowed our net loss by 50.5% year-over-year on a non-GAAP basis. We achieved a net operating cash inflow of RMB 588.8 million this quarter, an increase of RMB 202.6 million from the same period last year. These results reflect our ability to sustain solid growth momentum while strengthening operational quality and sharpening our competitive edge. Now, I'd like to elaborate on this quarter's operating highlights on four fronts.
First and foremost, we are deepening our investment in AI, advancing our "All with AI, All with AI" strategy to upgrade both our teaching models and technology infrastructure. These efforts aim to empower personalized learning at scale and create long-term value. Innovation is part of our DNA and has been a core growth driver since day one, propelling our consistent exploration and development of emerging technologies, particularly forward-looking AI initiatives. We believe AI-driven education solutions can make personalized, adaptive learning scalable, allowing every learner to enjoy a more efficient, individualized, and high-quality learning experience. Guided by this strategic vision, we have reshaped our previous dual-teacher model into an advanced tri-teacher model, integrating instructors, tutors, and AI companions. This new model deeply embeds AI throughout the teaching and core content development process, transforming how education is delivered.
For instructors, AI offers data-driven feedback and pedagogical insights to enhance teaching precision and course quality. For tutors, AI tracks individual students' progress and pinpoints knowledge gaps, increasing tutors' efficiency and enabling them to deliver more professional, personalized learning solutions. For curriculum developers, AI accelerates analysis of learning pathways, optimizing course design and content innovation. We continue to increase our investment in AI, centering technology for innovation as our engine, fostered by a strong talent base and a robust ecosystem. More specifically, we will first advance AI innovations in educational use cases, cultivate cross-disciplinary teams featuring both education and AI experts, and integrate our content, data, and partner resources to create a highly efficient, effective, and sustainable AI-empowered learning paradigm. This strategy will also lay the groundwork for high-quality, long-term growth and reinforce our commitment to delivering lasting value.
While propelling educational innovation, we are also embedding AI technology across our entire corporate operations and management processes as our core engine for boosting organizational productivity. By streamlining procedures and unlocking data-driven insights, we are maximizing operational efficiency and enhancing strategic decision-making. Furthermore, AI empowers every Gaotu employee to transcend boundaries, fostering both professional growth and personal fulfillment. Together, we are building long-term market advantages and a more dynamic organization positioned for sustainable growth. Second, with our user-centric approach firmly in mind, we continue to explore new products and develop innovative models to meet a wide range of learning scenarios and individual needs. We have successfully introduced a series of novel products, such as the Gaotu Reading App, the Legend of Gao Xiaotu, and the Model of Learning, all designed to spark interest in learning, enhance the learning experience, and boost student engagement.
Through ongoing exploration and market valuation, we continually strive to find the optimal product-market fit, driving expansion across our business. We also launched our AI Flash Learning model, which uses advanced algorithms to break down knowledge into granular units connected by dynamic knowledge graphs. This approach enables scenario-based, bite-sized, and interactive learning that measurably improves efficiency and creates more flexible, personalized learning experiences. Third, we remain laser-focused on building a lifelong learning services platform that is accessible and enjoyable for all. Our comprehensive product portfolio spans non-academic children services, traditional learning services, educational services for college students and adults, and overseas study programs, both online and offline. We also offer students a selection of large class, small class, and one-on-one sessions for maximum flexibility.
Our broad user coverage and robust product matrix comprehensively address diverse learning needs, strengthening Gaotu Techedu Inc.'s brand awareness and reputation through word-of-mouth referrals, while also driving cross-category conversions. By consistently amplifying user engagement and long-term educational value, we are steadily building an enduring competitive moat in the education industry. Fourth, we remain committed to fulfilling our social responsibilities, aligning long-term shareholder value with broader societal impact. To enhance shareholder returns, as of August 25, 2025, we have allocated a total of nearly $557 million to repurchase approximately 25 million ADS. This is a strong testament to our persistent focus on long-term confidence in creating shareholder value. Moreover, through the Gaotu Foundation, we have partnered with top-tier universities to establish career dream bases for college students, a one-stop career support system, encompassing curated internship opportunities, employment grants, career mentorship programs, and professional development workshops.
This end-to-end career accelerator not only empowers young talents but also demonstrates our commitment to creating both commercial and social value. With a focus on healthy growth as the heart of everything we do, I remain confident in Gaotu's future trajectory. Our diverse educational product portfolio, rapidly evolving AI technology capabilities, solid financial foundation, and a highly cohesive and effective team position us for continued innovation and success. Our goal is to deliver a best-in-class learning experience to our users while creating long-term shareholder value and advancing both our social impact and commercial success. Thank you very much, everyone. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now pass the call over to our CFO, Shannon Shen, to walk you through this quarter's financial and operational details.
Speaker 4
Thank you, Larry, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. I will now walk you through our operating and financial performance for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. In this quarter, we remained focused on advancing our healthy growth strategy, creating solid, high-quality growth momentum. Net revenues reached nearly $1.4 billion, exceeding the upper end of our guidance by 5.4%. Growth spendings grew by 36.2% year-over-year, outpacing last quarter's growth rate by 14.4 percentage points. In addition to our top-line growth, loss from operations and net loss narrowed by 48.0% and 39.7%, respectively, reflecting continued gain in operational efficiency and outstanding resource allocation. Deferred revenue increased by 38.9% year-over-year to about $2.2 billion, providing a solid foundation for sustained future growth. We maintained our ample cash position with cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term and long-term investments, totaling over $3.8 billion as of June 30, 2025.
Excluding the impact of share repurchase program, our cash position increased by $135.6 million compared to a year ago, supported by consistent investments in enhancing user experience, course and service quality, and organizational capabilities. The profitability and operational quality of our core established business continued to strengthen. In our ongoing efforts to boost operating leverage and efficiency, AI and other cutting-edge technologies are increasingly playing a crucial role in the refinement of operations, reducing operating expenses as a percentage of net revenue by 31.6 percentage points compared to the same period last year. To capitalize on the peak student demand during the summer period, we typically allocate key resources, such as teacher recruitment, team training, and customer acquisition channels, well in advance.
Given the approximately three to six-month gap between marketing investment and revenue recognition, we recommend using the ratio of growth spending to marketing investment as a more accurate indicator of customer acquisition efficiency for the online business. This quarter, we not only effectively captured and converted high student demand to drive growth spending growth, but also achieved a 1.7% year-over-year reduction in selling expenses and an increase of 38.6% in selling expenses ROI, bringing ROI to its highest level over the past four years. Simultaneously, G&A expenses and R&D expenses decreased year-over-year for the second consecutive quarter as a percentage of net revenues. The ratio fell by 8.0% year-over-year this quarter, reflecting effective and growing economies of scale. Through process optimization and data-driven decision-making, we have further enhanced group overhead efficiency, laying a strong groundwork for sustained profitability improvements going forward.
Next, an overview of this quarter's progress by business segment. Learning services contributed over 95% of net revenue. Breaking it down, over 85% of total revenues came from non-academic tutoring services and the other traditional learning services, representing an increase of 50% year-over-year. Combined growth spendings from these two segments grew by over 40% year-over-year. Our new initiatives focused on non-academic tutoring services in both online and offline settings delivered strong growth this quarter. Growth spendings were up by over 100% year-over-year, while net revenues from this segment recorded three-digit growth, contributing nearly 40% of total revenue. This also marked the fifth consecutive quarter of this three-digit achievement. By further optimizing operational processes and teaching services quality, we boosted student retention rate for the spring semester, with new enrollment student retention rates in a climbing trend year-over-year.
In addition, we actively expanded into emerging traffic platforms and introduced innovative products to optimize our customer acquisition mechanism, enhancing acquisition efficiency. Our traditional learning services maintained its healthy growth trajectory. While the early timing of the spring festival led to a year-over-year decline in the number of class sessions delivered this quarter, higher enrollment resulted in a 12.1% year-over-year increase in net revenues for the quarter, contributing to nearly 25% growth in total revenues for the first half of 2025. We remain focused on localizing our curricula to better align course content and services, a strategy that has already been validated by positive outcomes from user acquisition through service delivery. Building on this early success, we plan to duplicate this model across multiple cities and regions.
According to preliminary statistics, the number of students from Gaotu's class of 2025 admitted to the top two universities in China reached 267, marking five consecutive years of growth. To date, 1,118 Gaotu students have been admitted to the top two leading universities, a strong testament to our competitiveness across educational products, teaching quality, and learning services. Additionally, our referral rate for the second quarter surged by 75% compared to a year ago. The other crucial component of our learning services is educational services for college students and adults. In the second quarter, this segment contributed over 10% of total revenues. Loss from operations from this segment significantly narrowed year-over-year, with operating cash flow turning positive, demonstrating our strong strategic execution, effective resource planning, and increasing team productivity. Growth rates from educational services for college students increased by more than 50% year-over-year, with operating cash flow growing over four times.
On top of ongoing improvements in our online products' quality and operating efficiency, we steadily expanded our offline product portfolio and our online module to cover a wider range of learning scenarios and needs. It is worth noting that Gaotu J Center, our flagship offline service platform for college students, reached full enrollment capacity within just three months of its launch, affirming both our regional brand influence and this business model's commercial viability. I will now present our financials in more detail. Our cost of revenue this quarter was $472.8 million. Gross profit increased 31.6% year-over-year to $915.5 million, with a gross margin of 66.0%. The year-over-year decrease in gross margin was primarily due to changes in our product mix. Total operating expenses during the quarter decreased 0.2% year-over-year to approximately $1.2 billion.
Breaking it down, selling expenses decreased 1.7% year-over-year this quarter to $828.9 million, accounting for 59.1% of net revenues. Research and design expenses decreased 8.6% year-over-year to approximately $148.2 million, accounting for 10.7% of net revenues. General and administrative expenses increased 15.7% year-over-year to approximately $189.3 million, accounting for 30.6% of net revenues. Loss from operations was $221.9 million, and operating loss margin was 17.3%. Net GAAP loss from operations was $232.7 million. I'm sorry, I'm a bit under the weather today, so I might need to drink water from time to time. Sorry for the inconvenience. I will continue. Non-GAAP operating net loss margin was 16.7%. Net loss was $217.1 million, and net loss margin was 15.5%. Non-GAAP net loss was $206.8 million, and non-GAAP net loss margin was 14.9%. Our net operating cash inflow was $588.8 million.
Now turning to our balance sheet as of June 30, 2025, we held $841.4 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash, along with $2.6 billion in short-term investments and $387.5 million in long-term investments. This comes to a total of over $3.8 billion. As of June 30, 2025, our deferred revenue balance was around $2.2 billion, primarily consisting of tuition received, year-over-year. As of August 26, 2025, we repurchased in aggregate around 25 million ADS on the open market for approximately RMB 557 million. Before I provide our business outlook for the next quarter, please allow me to remind everyone that this contains forward-looking statements, which include risks and uncertainties that are beyond our control and could cause the actual results to differ materially from our predictions.
Based on our current estimates, total net revenues for the third quarter of 2025 are expected to be between $1,578 million and $1,578 million, representing an increase of 28.9% to 6.6% on a year-over-year basis. This concludes my prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready for the Q&A section. Thank you, everyone, for listening.
Speaker 3
Thank you. Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press * then 1 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 * then 2. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. For the sake of clarity and order, please ask one question at a time. Management will respond, and then feel free to follow up with your next question. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from LC Sheng with CLSA. Please go ahead.
Speaker 1
Thank you, management, for taking my question and also congratulations on continuing to deliver strong growth. I have a question on the offline center's development because, although right now the offline is a relatively small portion of our revenue, there is potential room to grow in the future. I would like to know our latest update, especially on the offline business. Do you have any operating metrics or indicators to share, like the ramp up and the future growth target? Thank you. Thanks, LC, for your question and for your interest in our offline initiatives. Our offline business is experiencing strong momentum and has quickly become a new growth engine for us. In the second quarter, offline learning center revenue grew by more than 20% on a year-over-year basis and has already contributed over 5% of growth spending this quarter.
The reason behind that is, first, on the customer side, we are leveraging the unique advantage of in-person interaction to build deeper trust with students and parents in a more direct way. By precisely matching localized and personalized learning needs and fostering high-frequency engagement, we are significantly strengthening our customer loyalty. Secondly, from the educational product perspective, leveraging the meticulously refined online content, there's no need for the offline learning centers to build up the content from scratch. The offline learning centers are able to extend vertically on localization and personalization, speed up iteration, and improve their content quality quickly. Third, on brand awareness and headquarter support, Gaotu has a strong brand recognition, enhances customer trust, and attracts high-quality talents. We have the ability to provide critical faculty support for our online operations in their early stages.
We are also integrating some online credit traffic with offline channels to meet diverse student needs, and it's also a strong support for offline business to grow at the beginning stage. In addition, our headquarters has been able to invest in our digital infrastructure to improve the quality and efficiency of our offline operations. We already saw the trend that in certain cities, especially for low-city regions, we already entered after two to three years' operations. We are seeing a worker cycle that, if we have strong teachers and high-quality instructors and content there, they all drive positive word-of-mouth referrals and are able to lead into steadily improving retention rates. That's one of the reasons that in the second quarter, the growth spend in our offline learning initially grew so fast.
The last and foremost, a highly efficient and professional team was assembled in the past two years, providing a strong foundation for the advancement of our offline operations. Leaders in each city are highly sophisticated, senior in experience. They are innovative and proactive. This gives us strong confidence in the scalability and sustainable offline business. The cities we already entered and the learning centers we already opened, all the numbers have been steady in the past quarter. Overall, our offline business is continuously validating this business model. At the same time, its development enriches our product mix that enables us to serve increasingly diverse learning needs of our students. That basically means if students have a demand for online learning, they can choose our online services. If a student wanted more personalized or a person-to-person interaction, they can also choose offline learning. It kind of enriches our product metrics.
We look forward to the future that our offline business will bring more students and more customer satisfaction to the group. Thanks, LC. Hope that addressed your question. Yeah, it's very clear, and congratulations again. Thank you.
Speaker 3
Your next question comes from Crystal Li with China Merchants Securities. Please go ahead.
Speaker 1
Okay, thanks. Thanks, Larry, Shannon, and Catherine. Congratulations on this strong result. I have two questions here. One is for the summer enrollment. Could you share more color on that and maybe the industry insight? My second question is, how should we look at the full-year growth outlook given your strong first half and third quarter guidance? Thank you. Thanks, Crystal. Yeah, summer is very important for the whole academic year. As the summer enrollment season draws to a close, and it is almost close by the end of this month, we are very glad to share that our overall performance has successfully exceeded expectations. You can probably tell from the guidance provided for the next quarter. The biggest contributor is the improvement of teaching quality.
The retention rate, a core indicator that directly reflects customer recognition and product satisfaction, delivered an outstanding performance this summer, as I just mentioned in my prepared remarks. Compared to both our own historical leverage and the industry average, retention has been continuously improved. What surprises us more is that we saw the new student retention rate keep improving. That also helps with our customer acquisition efficiencies. From the perspective of operational efficiency, specifically, our ROI in the second quarter improved from 1.99 in the same period last year to 2.775 this year. This means an increase of 38.6%, reflecting a significant step up in efficiency. As I just mentioned in my prepared remarks, the absolute number of our sales marketing expenses actually decreased on a year-over-year basis, but our Gaotu bidding still shows an over 36% year-over-year increase. That suggests the positive trend will continue.
We also have the confidence in Q3 that our ROI for sales marketing will further improve on a year-over-year basis. Beyond the refinement of teaching quality, ROI gains also reflect our multiple prolonged efforts on customer acquisition, ongoing explorations of diversified channels, our long-term investment in referrals and private traffic, and also systematic enhancement of organizational capabilities. Both of the efforts are inseparable from the deep empowerment of our AI technology. Our AI strategy is crystal clear, as Larry just mentioned, Always AI and Always AI, with its orientation focused on the value chain of the whole customer journey. On the student side, we are able to build up a tri-teacher model, adding to the dual-teacher model. We have a leading instructor, we have a supporting tutor, and also we have an AI companion. The three combined together can deliver comprehensive full-cycle learning support.
On the teacher support side, AI takes on repetitive tasks, freeing our teachers from those repetitive tasks, and they can focus more on their core educational value, like sparking curiosity and shaping characters of students. In turn, this continuously enhances our teachers' professional well-being and personal satisfaction. Actually, in the summer and in the peak season, they can actually reduce their working hours in the peak season. That's a big step. On the operational side, AI is optimizing efficiency across the entire value chain. This includes faster customer service response through AI-assisted interactions, like automatic Q&As, more precise user profiling for targeted operations, and intelligent optimizing of operational processes. All these initiatives not only drive cost reduction and efficiency gain, but also provide a solid technology foundation for sustainable business growth. Leveraging all the efforts, we are able to lay a solid foundation for the whole year's growth.
We set an initial goal at the beginning of this year to target around 30% year-over-year revenue growth. If we look at the total numbers we have got together, our total revenue growth rate for the first half of this year stood at around 47.3%. The upper limit of the Q3 revenue guidance we just provided is 3.6%. From this perspective, our year-over-year revenue growth for the first nine months will exceed 40%, a figure that significantly surpassed the upper limit we have set up for the full-year goal at the beginning of the year. Therefore, we will also accordingly raise our expectations for the three-year revenues. I hope that addressed your question, Crystal. Oh, thanks. Very clear.
Speaker 3
As there are no further questions now, I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.
Speaker 1
Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact our Investor Relations Department or our management via email at [email protected] directly. You are also welcome to subscribe to our news alert on the company's IR website. Thank you very much again for your time. Have a great night.
Speaker 3
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your line. Thank you.