MINISO Group Holding - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone. Thank you for your patience, and welcome to MINISO Full Year 2024 Earnings Call. All participants are now in listen-only mode. We will conduct a Q&A session for the management. Prepared remarks. Before joining the Q&A session, please identify yourself by stating your names and the institution you represent. Please make sure the call will be recorded. English simultaneous interpretation will be provided for this call. You can select your preferred language by clicking "Interpretation" in the toolbar of Zoom.

We published our Q4 and Full Year Financial Result earlier today. Those materials are now available on our Investor Relations website. Joining us here today is our founder and CEO, Mr. Ye Guofu, and CFO, Eason Zhang. Before we proceed, I'd like to direct your attention to the Safe Harbor statement in our earnings release, which also applies to this conference call, as we are making forward-looking statements.

Please note that we were discussing non-IFRS financial measures today, which we have already explained in our company's earnings release and filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where we have already reconciled those measures with the most comparable metrics reported on the International Financial Reporting Standards. All monetary accounts will be in RMB unless otherwise specified. In addition, we have prepared a set of the presentation slides containing financial and operational information for this call. If you are using Zoom, you will see it now. The presentation will also be available for your review on our website. Coming next, let's welcome Mr. Ye Guofu to begin his remarks.

Guofu Ye (Founder and CEO)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to join us for MINISO Group Full Year 2024 Earnings Call. Look back to 2024. We are not only continuing to make progress in store extension or revenue growth, but achieved a significant breakthrough in global market development and brand upgrading. By the end of December 2024, our global total account reached 7,780, with net increase of 1,290 stores of the year. MINISO China added 460 stores, MINISO Overseas expanded 631 stores, and TOP TOY grew by 128 stores, all exceeding our opening target set by the beginning of 2024.

Our global expansion strategy began in 2015, where continued to serve as a key growth engine in 2024. We now operate 3,100 stores in overseas market, contributing nearly 40% of the group's revenue and helping drive overall revenue growth of 23% to approximately RMB 70 billion. Looking ahead, our confidence and determination remain unwavering both for our accelerated growth in 2025 and our next five-year target from 2024 to 2028.

I will give you a detailed brief of our business development in 2024 and 2025 growth strategy, including MINISO China, MINISO Overseas, and TOI. In 2024, our domestic business achieved a double-digit growth. On top of the high growth rate of 36% in 2023, overall revenue growth will be 11%, offline growth by 10%, e-commerce growth by 25%. By the end of December, our store count in China reached 4,386, with a net increase of 460 stores throughout the year. We feel confident about accelerating our growth in 2025. Let me share with you a few growth drivers. The first one is channel and retail partner structure upgrading. Even though Same-store sales faced slight pressure in 2024, average daily sales per store for newly opened stores in 2024 were low double-digit higher than those opened in 2023, indicating high store quality and healthy retail partner profitability.

We have identified improvement opportunity among those longer established stores with sub-optimal location. In response, we optimize our channel and retail partner structure. On one side, we provide more product and operational support to partners with substantial market experience and strong resources. On the other side, we're also phasing out some long-term retail partners who can't meet our current management requirements. In the near future, we'll continue to improve our retail partner structure and quality. At the same time, we implement a more precise product matching based upon the characteristics of the differentiated channel and consumer profile, which will become another powerful lever for improving Same-store revenue. For example, we have self-turned featured IP and limited-edition product exclusively at MINISO IP LAND store and flagship store, creating immersive playground experience, and become a must-visit destination.

For standard stores and O2O platform, by ensuring adequate stock of the best-selling IP product, we were also extending our selection of everyday items to meet customer daily needs. Thirdly, we will leverage our platform advantage to extend our IP collaboration metrics, both on depth and deeps. Over the past few years, we've created iconic IP events sublike to cover China co-branded departure, and we also have the global recognized cultural symbol and the Chinese trend. This year, we have planned more than 90 IP launches covering the evergreen to potential to strongly characterized IP. Our very strong platform advantage, we can smoothen trend cycles through an IP metrics, reducing dependence on single characters and creating a relay race for growth opportunities. Finally, we have member loyalty and repurchase rate. In 2024, our global registered membership has already surpassed 100 million.

Member spending has accounted for more than 60% of the total sales, representing a low single-digit growth. Our average member spend is 2.2 times more than non-members and shop with us approximately four times annually. We were going to use large language and the data analytics to deliver more personalized product recommendation and market initiatives, further driving customer satisfaction and repeat purchase behavior. Coming next, let me discuss overseas business performance. In 2024, our overseas revenue reached RMB 6.68 billion, representing 42% growth. Our GMV reached RMB 40.16 billion, growing by 27%. We added a net total of 631 overseas stores, with the majority of the expansion occurring in the U.S. and Indonesia. Same-stores of our overseas operations are in a mid-single-digit number. The U.S. market has emerged as a strategic stronghold for our international operations, delivering triple-digit compound growth from 2021 to 2024.

While maintaining this rapid expansion, we implement more targeted site selections and enhance store quality. In 2024, we added 154 stores in the U.S., bringing our total to 275 locations across 47 states. We have already concentrated our expansion efforts on 24 states that represent 76% of the U.S. population. This will help us to further improve the warehouse efficiency, reducing logistic costs. We have also strengthened our merchandise operations through greater precision. Our headquarters established a dedicated product development team that tailor-made merchandise assortment based upon the U.S. store formats, CDTs. We see that the overseas growth opportunity extends well beyond the U.S., with European shows tremendous potential. In 2024, the U.K. market leveraged our IP strategy to drive the channel upgrade, and our GMV has registered a triple-digit growth. More significantly, our U.K. experience has yielded replicable growth formulas for other European markets.

First of all, we provide comprehensive support to our retail partners, strengthening coordinations with headquarters, cross-ordering, distribution, merchandising, and marketing functions. We collaborated with retail partners to secure primary commercial locations. Over the past year, we have our flagship store in key retail locations, for example, Oxford Street of London, creating high-performing locations, generating monthly sales exceeding RMB 2 million. The upgraded store enhanced our visibility and also helped MINISO secure additional primary retail real estate overseas. Our globalized strategy goes beyond simply open stores and selling product. We have a global strategy, and in 2024, we have our localized product design center in South Korea. Moving forward, our network design hub across China, U.S., Japan, and South Korea will establish recognized product development to address local needs. We also focused on localizing Talent and operation.

As our global strategy continued to advance, talent localization has become a critical success factor in our overseas market. In 2024, we achieved 100% localization of the store managers in directly operated markets. In 2025, we will continue to further deepen our global localization strategy for talent to improve our operational efficiency. As global economy uncertainty increases, particularly the policy changes from the U.S. tariff, MINISO, as a globally operated enterprise, we must respond with extraordinary resilience and agility. The world is constantly evolving. When there is a change, there are opportunities. Significant change always brings significant opportunities. First of all, we will further diversify our global supply chain. We will reduce our dependence on mainland China as a single sourcing market through strategic global procurement initiative.

To date, our U.S. team has achieved nearly 40% of the local direct sourcing, rapidly increasing procurement from Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea. This can help to stable the supply chain and reduce the cost. Secondly, we remain committed to our interest-based consumption strategy. IP co-branded products such as Blind Box and Plush Toys carry unique emotional value, where consumers demonstrate low price sensitivity. We will continue to work with IP partners to introduce more limited-edition exclusive products to enhance aesthetic value and emotional resonance.

We explore opportunities for local IP resource in overseas market, developing localized IP production and development capacities. Let's then go for TOP TOY. In 2024, TOP TOY delivered 45% worldwide growth, net increase of 128 stores, and we have already made a good profitability of the year. The result stems from effective implementation of our product differentiation strategy.

The gross margin improvement was 7.3%. Key categories, including Building Blocks and Blind Box, saw significant margin improvement. Self-developed product increased the share by 3.5 percentage points. Regarding store expansion, following the successful pilot of the TOP TOY Shop-in-Shop IP LAND store in Indonesia, because of the very young demographic profile's rapid development, we will be able to continue to grow ourselves. 2024 marks TOP TOY's first year of full-year profitability. We reached a inflection point through enhanced product competitiveness, optimized operational efficiency. We believe in the near future, TOP TOY will secure a more important position in the trendy TOP TOY segment, bringing more excitement and joy to the consumer worldwide. Finally, I'd like to touch upon the progress of YH.

Acquisition of a 29.4% equity stake of YH has already been completed, and at this week, YH extraordinary shareholder meeting, a resolution was passed approving MINISO nomination of the three directors to YH board. Looking ahead, we'd like to take YH to allow us to capitalize on the quality retail opportunity. The essence of the quality retail is product excellence. Good product is a foundation for the business. Only superior product can build very strong brands. Moving forward, YH and MINISO will pursue deep synergies to continue to have the product competitiveness improvement. 2024 represents a pivotal chapter for MINISO's global strategy and a very important milestone in our journey towards becoming a super brand. We were committed for interest-based consumption, IP-driven product innovation, and a global expansion strategy. We have a very clear target to become the world-leading IP design retail group.

As consumer demand shifted towards interest-based and quality consumption, China's supply chain and consumer market advantage position continued to favor us. We will capitalize on those opportunities by continuing to strengthen our IP collaboration, product innovation, and taking prominent positions in global retail landscape. MINISO achieved ESG rating upgrades for three consecutive years, with our MSCI rating elevated to double A. This advancement truly recognized the international authoritative institution regarding MINISO's long-term development value and competitive strengths. In looking to the future, we will continue to strengthen sustainable development, stick to long-term development, and create more value to the shareholders. For the foreseeable future, we will remain committed to distributing 50% of the adjusted annual net profit as dividends. We will continue to implement dynamic share repurchase, delivering predictable returns to our shareholders. Coming next, I will welcome Eason to walk us through the financials of 2024. Please.

Eason Zhang (CFO)

Thank you. Thanks for Mr. Ye. Welcome to join us for the call. Coming next, please allow me to help you to walk you through our financials of 2024. Please note, full figure are in RMB unless otherwise stated, and I will also refer to certain non-IFRS financial measures that exclude share-based compensation expenses. Let's first go for revenue. In 2024, for the full year, our total revenue reached RMB 17 billion, growing by 23%. Grow by 23%. In line with our expectations set by the beginning of the year, the growth was driven by 80% growth average store account, where our comparable Same-store sales declined by a low single-digit number compared with the previous year.

You can also see, therefore, that RMB 17 billion, MINISO brand revenue totaled RMB 16 billion, up by 22%, within which MINISO mainland China revenue was RMB 9.3 billion, growing by 11%, where MINISO overseas revenue reached RMB 6.7 billion, increased by 42%. Among our overseas markets, directly operated market revenue was RMB 3.8 billion, growing by 66%. Detail market contributed RMB 2.9 billion, growing by 90%. From our revenue composition, overseas revenue accounted for 39% of our total revenue. This number used to be 34% in the previous year. Specifically, directly operated overseas market increased their contribution from 16% in 2023 to 22% in 2024. The evolution of our revenue structure represents a key driver behind our record-high gross margin, which also resulted in a great concentration of the operating profit in the second half of last year. Regarding GP margin, we achieved a 3.7% improvement in 2024, reaching 44.9%.

Besides revenue structure adjustment I mentioned earlier, our effective IP strategy also contributed to margin improvement across all business segments, particularly strong mid to high single-digit increase in our overseas and TOP TOY business. Notably speaking, our GP margin has been climbed for eight consecutive quarters, repeatedly setting new records. Looking to the future, the quarterly margin may fluctuate due to seasonality reasons. As our overseas revenue and IP product continue to go up, we still have huge room to continue to grow our GP margin. Recently, you may notice the tariff policy. We have the following countermeasures. First of all, we will accelerate the supply chain globalization. The proportion of the Chinese sourcing of our overseas directly operated market has already increased from 25% to 30%. This figure approaching 40% in the U.S.

Secondly, working backward from our profit target, we were considering price adjustment while maintaining certain GP margin objectives. Thirdly, one of our largest retailers in our segment, we maintain strong negotiation leverage with the suppliers. Even if the entire industry facing tariff impacts and raising costs, our product remained highly competitive in terms of the value and differentiation, helping us continue to gain market share amid challenges. As we are facing very complicated geopolitical landscape, we have accumulated substantial experience navigating evolving tariff policies. Okay, let's also talk about the fees. In 2024, our combined sales and administrative expenses increased by 52%, with sales expenses growing by 59%, administrative expenses raised by 29%. Sales and administrative expenses accounted for 26% of the revenue, 5% higher than the same period of last year. Majority of those expense growths are related to the newly opened directed operated stores, especially in overseas market.

As been discussed before, our existing investment in directly operated stores is aimed at capturing more sales opportunities to ensure our future business success, particularly the strategically important overseas market like the U.S. By the end of fiscal year 2024, we operated more than 500 directly operated stores in the U.S. market, representing double the amount from the previous year. In 2024, the revenue from the directly operated store also doubled, where the related sales and distribution expenses, for example, the rent, depreciation, amortization, and personnel cost, increased by 72%. When we entered into Q4, our cost control measures and operational efficiency improvement began to show good results. The growth rate of the directly operated store-related expenses was 75% in the first nine months, but moderated to 66% in the fourth quarter.

We believe through continued refined operation and strict expense management, our operating expenses ratio will continue to be improved. In the mid and long term, those newly opened direct open store will unlock significant sales and profit potential. Additionally, marketing and promotion expenses grow by 38%, but remain stable at around 3% of the revenue. Licensing fee increased by 29%, slightly faster than the first half growth rate, primarily due to a significant higher proportion of the IP product sales in H2, especially in overseas market.

Logistics expenses rose by 51%, similar to the growth rate seen in H1 and first nine months of 2024, mainly driven by the increase in overseas stores and rising international freight cost. Let's also talk about profitability. Our adjusted operating profit increased by 70% in 2024, with an adjusted operating profit margin stabilized around 20%. Adjusted net profit reached RMB 2.72 billion, growing by 15%.

The adjusted net profit margin was 16%, maintaining healthy profitability level despite rapid overseas expansion. Our adjusted EBITDA grew by 21%, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 25.5%, which is essentially flat compared with 2023. The both adjusted basic and diluted earnings per ADS increased by 16%, outpacing the growth of adjusted net profit. This was primarily due to our share repurchase program, through which we canceled more than 11 million ordinary shares in 2024, accounted for around 9% of our total shares, further enhancing shareholder value. Regarding the working capital, our channel inventory turnover remained robust and efficient. At the end of 2024, 33% of the MINISO brand inventories are located overseas, compared to 24% a year ago. Our inventory turnover days was 91 days.

Specifically, in mainland China, this was 75 days, up from 70 days in the same period of last year, with increase primarily due to the earlier stocking for the Chinese Spring Festival. MINISO overseas directly operated market recorded 187 days, up by 131 days in the previous year. It's because we have nearly a net age of 450 directly operated stores worldwide. From the structural perspective, inventory age over 180 days accounted for approximately 11% of our total inventory, around 1% lower than the first nine months of 2024. Looking ahead, we will continue to optimize our overseas inventory management strategy, flexibly responding to tariff risks and reducing inventory risks by improving our store operational efficiency. Regarding the capital allocation, today, we announced a final dividend of the fiscal year 2024 for approximately RMB 740 million, representing 50% of our adjusted net profit for the H2 of 2024.

The dividend expected to be paid to our shareholders in April this year. For the full year of 2024, the company has distributed approximately RMB 1.24 billion in cash dividends, representing 50% of the corresponding adjusted net profit. Combined with the share purchase, we retained a total of RMB 1.57 billion to shareholders. Looking ahead, we will remain a dividend payout ratio of 50% in the near future. Our capital allocation strategy will also balance rapid business growth and our commitment to deliver stable and predictable returns to our shareholders. For the full year of 2024, our company generated a net operating cash flow of RMB 2.17 billion. Free cash flow was around RMB 1.4 billion.

At the end of the fiscal year 2024, we still maintained a very healthy cash reserve of nearly RMB 6.7 billion, including RMB 6.33 billion cash and cash equivalents, approximately RMB 100 million financial product recorded on the other investment and restricted cash on the balance sheet, and approximately RMB 270 million in terms of the deposit. Our interest-bearing liability ratio was 3.15, indicating our balance sheet remained very healthy. In January 6 of this year, we issued a seven-year convertible bond with a value of $550 million. The convertible bond carried a coupon rate of just 0.5%, payable semi-annually, representing a relatively low financing cost. The conversion period began after the sixth year from the issuance, and through a core spread nearly structured, the conversion price has been set at HKD 102.1, which significantly minimizes the risks of the equity dilution.

The insurance makes the company's first convertible bond financing, helping us broaden our investor base, increase coverage from the long-term capital, and further enhance our cash reserve and financial flexibility. 50% of that will be used for overseas market expansion. 50% will be used for shareholder return. By so doing, we aim to support rapid development of our overseas business while enhancing shareholder returns through share repurchasement. Finally, I'd like to share the latest progress of YH transaction. The five pre-requisites of the YH acquisition have been fully met. The deal has been successfully completed. In YH transaction, our external borrowing accounted for approximately 55% of the investment amount, with average interest rate less than 3%. We will use the equity method of the accounting for this transaction, calculating our share of YH net profit based on our 29.4% ownership state.

We expect YH will begin impacting our financial statement from Q2 of 2025. Looking to 2024, our full-year performance reflects our strengths and resilience of our business model, and the effective execution and development potential of our IT strategy and global initiative. Our steady development strategy and ample cash reserve have maintained our flexibility and quickly seized market opportunities to respond to the macroeconomic uncertainties. Looking to 2025, we will continue our due-prolonged approach. On one side, we drive high-quality growth in China by enhancing SIMSTO sales and will also continue to improve the member repurchase rate. Channel structural upgrades. On the other side, we will maintain our focus on overseas market development, implementing a more disciplined cost control while sustaining rapid performance growth.

Regarding the store expansion, we are progressing according to our five-year strategy, with plans to double our store count by the end of 2028 compared to the end of 2023. The number of the new stores in 2025 is expected to be slightly less than what we have achieved in 2024 due to our own operational pacing. We believe it's important to focus on the store quality rather than just quantity. We hope in the near future, more growth will come in from our SIMSTO sales. Based upon the assessment of the current market environment and the execution of our growth strategy, we are optimistic about the accelerated revenue growth in 2025. However, considering the base effect from 2024, the pace of the revenue growth will likely be lower in H1 and higher in H2.

We expect healthy growth in operating profit in 2025 as we focus more on expenses control, but improvement in operating profit margin still depends on the profitability of our directly operated stores. The directly operated stores are still in a high-growth period. The related revenue is expected to have a triple-digit growth in 2025. The store currently has the lowest GP margin, but significant optimization potential in the mid and longer run. Look ahead, we believe our reasonable operating profit should return to be around 20%. Our financing strategy will continue to maintain discipline in budgeting, cost control, and capital allocation, committed to achieve stable and sustainable profit growth and healthy cash flow. Thank you very much. Here concludes our presentation. We now start the Q&A.

Operator (participant)

The first question coming from Michelle Cheng from Goldman Sachs. You can now raise your question.

Michelle Cheng (Managing Director)

Thank you. Thanks for Mr. Chen, and thanks for Eason. Thanks for giving me a chance of raising the question. Congratulations on the company for your robust performance in such a volatile market environment. I have two questions. The first question is the SIMSTO performance in China. I do see huge pressure in H2 of 2024, but I do see that in Q3 and Q4, there are some great contributions from the famous IP. How are you going to comment on the SIMSTO performance in China? Is there any clear growth driver to improve your performance for the SIMSTO sales? Another question that you also mentioned is the different format of the stores. Do you have any specific target? That is regarding the domestic business. I have the second question regarding your business in the U.S. I noticed that there was some pressure for the SIMSTO sales last year in a few quarters.

What about the profit per store in the U.S.? How are you going to comment on the SIMSTO sales in the U.S. in 2025? You also mentioned in the overseas market, Eason, the directly operated market is still going to face huge pressure on the expenses. How are you going to comment on the GP margin improvement in the overseas market? Thank you.

Eason Zhang (CFO)

Thank you very much. From January to February, the revenue growth of the Offline store was high, and also we see some good improvement. There are a few data for your reference in improving our SIMSTO performance. First of all, we can see the larger GFAs of store is, the better the recovery the business would be, especially for store covered 300 sq m. The recovery was pretty nice for small stores. They do have some pressure.

In the near future, we may consider rectifying those small stores into larger stores. For some small stores, even if they are under pressure, they have some good performance. We are going to make a comprehensive adjustment. Starting from this year, you can see that our Same-store performance has been improved compared with Q4 last year, and especially we see the loss continued in Arowdan. We will keep an eye on the Same-store performance in the near future. At the same time, you can see that in 2024, in August, we already have the IP LAND. We now have three in operation, and until now, the performance of the IP LAND is exceeding our expectation. Compared with traditional stores, the IP LAND store actually has very nice designs. We're working with internationally renowned architecture design companies.

It actually builds a very immersive environment with a wide portfolio of IP. With a space of more than thousands of square meters, we do have different zoomings regarding the atmospheric piece and the light box, and also the global limited edition. We also continue to improve its presence. We have already taken the IP LAND as our key strategy in the near future. We are also going to launch the signature stores along with the IP LAND in the premier cities and the best locations. We have already had it in Shanghai, Nanjing, and those stores will be located in the premier locations in the top-tier cities, for example, in Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Hangzhou. We will also consider having those stores in Jinan, Kunming, Guiyang, Shijiazhuang, Harbin, with more than ten net adds.

At the same time, we're also going to develop the flagship stores with a focus to double the normal stores and continue to focus on the well-performed cities for site selection. We're also going to continue to improve the existing stores. We can see that we're going to have foreseeable 100-200 flagship stores. Regarding the margin of the overseas directly operated stores, they are now in rapid growth stage. In 2025, we foresee a triple-digit growth. The GP margin of the directly operated stores has the lowest margin, but it has huge room for further progress in the near future. In the mid and longer run, operating profit would be around 20%. There are some fluctuations due to seasonalities and the utilization rate, but still, it's going to continue to be improved. Globalization means a lot for the company.

We have to be patient with long-term and sustainable growth strategies. Globally speaking, we have 8 billion people, and in China, the number was just more than 1 billion. The global market is a huge market. I know that for investors, we pay much attention to the returns, but for me, as an entrepreneur, I do not want to see the short-term immediate effect. We have to be forward-looking. If you do any business, you have to invest, and then you are going to harvest. In the early days, we make investments in the market, continue to improve our brand awareness. We build our sales network and operating mechanism. Lay a solid foundation for the future profit growth. The U.S. market has always been a very important part of the global strategy.

From 2021 to 2024, the U.S. market was growing with a triple-digit compound rate, one of the highest output countries in our overseas market. In 2025, we hope that we can have more precise and targeted store opening strategies to improve the quality of the stores. In 2024, we have a net add store of 454 in the U.S., and the state covered around 54 states in the U.S. Starting from this year, we're going to have the refined strategy, and we're going to focus our new stores in the key states covering 76% of the population. Leveraging the stores, we're going to play the scale effect, making sure we best utilize the resources to continue to take care of the product shortage, improve the customer satisfaction, optimize logistics and distribution routes, reduce transportation costs, improve logistics efficiency.

Through the concentrated management, we can foresee the demand, reducing the backlog, improve the turnover, and we also have the following measures to improve the efficiency. We're going to have a special product R&D task force developing the product according to the market preference of the U.S. All those products we're targeting in the U.S. market, where globally speaking, we're going to leverage the dealer and the retail partner cooperation model to continue to optimize our cooperation model.

We know the market may have diversified needs. We take a diversified strategy to guarantee the successful execution of our strategy and business growth for long-term growth. We will continue with four major initiatives in the U.S., especially our membership system. Especially, we identify those products with a high purchase rate built into the best-selling product. We're going to have the targeted customer profiling analysis, improving our service to the customer. That's all for my answer. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next one, Mr. Ye. Next question comes from Wei Xiaopo from Citi, please.

Thank you. Thanks for giving me the chance to raise a question. Mr. Ye, Eason, good afternoon. I have two questions. My first question is targeting your prepared remark. Eason, you mentioned about the outlook of the margin in 2025. It seems that your margin performance is truly dependent on your directly operated stores. Eason, you have already mentioned in 2025, revenue growth would be accelerated. This means that the certainties of the profit growth are not as confirmed as what you stated in November last year. I have the second question, and Mr. Ye, congratulations on completing the transaction with YH. I see you were entering into the YH reform task force and being the team lead.

Do you have any business indicators you can share with us? I know YH is an Asia-listed company. If you can't share the statistics, is it possible for you to give us some color to see how the business progresses with YH? Thank you.

Eason Zhang (CFO)

Thank you. Thanks for Mr. Ye. I'm Eason. Let me just repeat the guidance I provide to the market. We have every confidence that no matter for revenue or profit growth in 2025, we will still remain healthy, and especially the revenue growth would be accelerated. The source of our confidence is because we see that almost every BU and every business will have the possibility of outperforming the performance in 2024, especially in China. In 2025, we see the online business in China is going to boom. It is going to continue to drive the overall sales.

Even if you see that our offline business grows by a limited number, I do believe we're going to register a double-digit growth for offline business in 2025. For overseas business, from 2021 to 2024, the company growth rate was 43%, which is pretty significant. Considering our business model and a huge addressable market in the overseas market, we maintain our forecast of the growth in the overseas market at 35%-40%. We'll talk about the profit growth in my prepared remarks. I have already mentioned our adjusted operating profit grows by 70% compared with last year. Net profit rate was up 20%. Excluding YH business, at least for this MINISO core business, our operating profit will continue to grow. For sure, as I have already mentioned, net profit or the profit margin is truly dependent on the profit of the directly operated stores.

The number of the directly operated stores has been improved a lot. We have many newly added directly operated stores. The profit of the existing directly operated stores would be significantly improved in 2025. At least for me, they're going to have a low single-digit to the mid single-digit profit improvement for the existing stores. Let me just give you an example. In 2024, we have the directly operated store, for example, IP LAND in Shanghai. Even if the cost is pretty high, still, in the past four to five months, the store can still keep a high double-digit profit rate and continue to be optimized. In 2025, we will continue to invest in those new directly operated stores. In the first year, because of the early-stage investment, their profit or margin might be low because they are in the high growth period.

Let me just draw your attention. You see that for the three formats of the stores, the direct operated stores, even if it has a lower margin or probably lowest margin among the three categories, in the mid and longer run, we hope that the margin of the directly operated stores can reach 20%. I do believe our long-term operating margin can reach 20% for the directly operated stores. The second question regarding YH, let me have Mr. Ye respond to it. For YH, they have three increases and two reductions. The first increase is to improve the manpower efficiency. We are optimizing the team in improving the productivity and efficiency. The second increase is that performance and efficiency of the stores need to be doubled, even tripled.

The third increase is that for YH, we hope that the triple performance or efficiency would at least be the upper line or the bottom line for any stores to achieve. At the same time, we are also initiating the reduction initiative for YH. YH, for the past two years, its revenue was around RMB 80 billion-RMB 90 billion, but around one-fourth are in daily necessities, which enjoy a very low margin. We are going to support YH in further improving the margin. At the same time, YH will also continue to develop its self-owned brand product, which can also help to further improve the competitiveness of YH. The second reduction initiative is cost reduction. For example, reducing all the possible sourcing costs. The third reduction is regarding reducing the labor cost. YH is going to optimize its team in 2025.

We do have the initiative to continue to help YH to further reduce its financial losses by the end of 2026. For the existing store of YH, we even close those underperformed ones, only reserve those well-performed ones. By the end of 2026, we're going to make sure that all YH stores would be retrofitted into the new ones, improving the GP margin, the business efficiency, the performance. In 2026, you see YH going to register a good performance by then.

Operator (participant)

Next question, Anne Lingg from Jefferies, please. Thank you.

Thanks, Rey. Hello, management team. I have a few questions. I'm not sure I missed the information or not. Did you actually talk about your store opening target in 2025? I heard you may have less new stores open compared with 2024. Do you have any data or quantitative ones you can share with us?

How many new stores are you going to have in China? How much are for directly operated stores? The same as the overseas market. For example, the new store target in the U.S., Mr. Ye, you also mentioned. In Europe, you're also going to open new stores. How many are you going to open? This is my first question. Thank you. Let me also bring my second question up. If we take a look at the stores in China, I find out there are some non-self-operated products. For example, the Blind Box or the Pop Toys. I find out in your store, you also have products from other brands, the same as a beauty product.

It seems that for MINISO stores, in the past, you have all the products produced by your own brand, but now it seems you also introduce brands and products from other brands. Will it help your Same-store sales? Whether it's going to have any impact on the GP margin or profitability? Thank you. Let me have Mr. Ye answer the first question regarding new store opening plan. Do you have any quantitative data?

Guofu Ye (Founder and CEO)

In 2025, the new store number would be flat compared with 2024. For directly operated stores, we hope we can operate more in the U.S. and Indonesia. If we blindly seek for the store quantity growth, it won't help to serve our long-term growth of the brands because consumer needs are being further diversified, and we also need to improve the customer experience. We are handpicking the right resources, having the right handpick of the locations, designers, do the right product selection, and the service optimization. Hope that we will be able to make sure each new store would become a model in its own region to continue to lay a solid cornerstone for its future development. Thank you.

How many directly operated stores are going to open in 2025?

Eason Zhang (CFO)

Hello, I'm Eason. Let me help to answer this question. You can actually refer to the new store number in 2024 to see how we're going to have in 2025. From 2023 to 2024, the net age of the store is around 250-300. The majority of those net age stores are in the following markets. For example, some are in the China market, not many in China. We have some asset light model. For example, like IP LAND. Now we have three IP LANDs in operation. The model proved to be very successful by multiple successes.

We're going to continue to roll out more IP LANDs. We're going to have, conservatively speaking, 10 IP LANDs in China. For the U.S., I think for our store expansion plan, we're still very positive and optimistic. We foresee in the U.S., we will have around 350-400 stores in total. In the U.S., in the next one year, we're going to have a few dozen stores being newly added. We're also going to have a new store expansion plan in other countries, including in Canada, in Southeast Asia countries, or in European countries. Those are all the emerging markets with very significant growth for the past one year. That's our new store plan.

Thank you. Well taken.

The question is regarding the third-party product. Starting from H2 of 2024, you'll probably notice in a MINISO store, we do have some beauty products or cosmetic products at our store entrance shelving the third-party product. We have two reasons for that. Because their target consumer is highly aligned with ours. We are also targeting those young ladies. That's the reason we place on the third-party brand cosmetics products. It can also help to further improve the diversity of our portfolios and offerings. For those products, no matter from profitability or from the attachment rate, can help to further improve the Same-store sales a lot. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next question. Samuel Wong from UBS.

Samuel Wong (GWM Integration Office Regulatory Specialist)

Thank you. Thanks for Mr. Ye. Thanks for Eason. My first question. Is it possible for you to share with me if you have any new IP plan in 2025? I see that last year in Q2, you have CHiiKAWA, which laid a very high baseline in Q2 last year. Do you have any new plan for new IP? My second question, I also would like to ask you. You mentioned you have a deep bond with Sanrio as well as Disney, especially on the Wino product and the Plush product. How's the progress now with Sanrio and Disney?

The company was kept emphasizing on the high turnover. If you really want to have a differentiated design, how are you going to balance the high turnover and the differentiated design? My third question. As you're talking about the dealer integration, I have a follow-up question on that. You do have a reform over your dealers. How are the reforms being progressed? Are you going to complete the dealer integration within 2025? Thank you.

Guofu Ye (Founder and CEO)

Thank you very much. Thanks for Samuele for the question. The first two questions are all related to IP. Let me help to respond to the first two questions. Yes, indeed, in 2025, we have already planned more than 90 IP-related events and products covering IP of different styles and different genres. Starting from the golden week in May to the summer vacation or even to the national holidays, we are going to have the S-level project in our pipeline. The IP is truly worthy of high expectations. Every year, we are going to roll out our product, for example, on ACG. Every month, we are also going to develop a mini store product. We are also going to focus on the co-branding. For example, we are going to work with Bandai on releasing more of the manga-related product. You also mentioned about the Wino product. It is indeed a very good fit to IP.

That's the reason on this category, we have deep bonds with IP. For example, we're working with Disney for that Wino and Plush products. For example, on 30th March, we need to pull the Wino and Plush Blind Box being approved in the U.S. for launch, which actually helped to set a record high sales in our New York Times Square store. Through such events, we will help to build the customer awareness of our product, lay a solid foundation for the future Wino product development, and continue to improve our brand influence and consumption and penetration in the market. We operated IP for many years. Every year, we continue to literate our IP product, improving the customer wellness. Let me just share with you what is our interpretation of the life cycle of IP. We do believe there are different IPs.

For example, for evergreen IP, the life cycle of the IP should be further extended much longer than other products. IP products from the essence perspective, it showcases different product design style. Indeed, they have the same carriers. In the mid and the longer run, especially in a product life cycle, I believe the IP or non-IP product sales will not be truly decisive by IP self. I think the fundamentals still rest with IP design. That is the reason you ask about the balance between the high turnover and the design. Let me just respond to you in this way. You have to consider your product needs to take the customer's functional needs and emotional needs at the same time. This is indeed something we would like to address. You also have a question regarding the integration of the retail partners.

I have already mentioned we continue to optimize the structure of our retail partner. In 2024, we have 80 commercial systems with a total sales of more than RMB 50 million. We're at the same time in the top-tier commercial shopping malls, and we continue to grow the sales with a significant number, especially the sales with the China Resources shopping malls and the hypers. In the near future, we're just going to continue the following two ways. First of all, for those retail partners who have extensive experience, more resources, and deep cooperation bonds, we're going to supply them with more products and operational support, continue to improve our brand awareness and sales in the higher-tier cities and the key and primary locations. Those retail partners can understand and execute our brand strategy, improve the appealing to the customer.

Our products and resources would be invested to those highly potential retail partners who are willing to work with us. This is also an initiative of resources allocation optimization. This not only improves the resources utilization rate, but also further improves our brand presence in the market. Second mention, we are also going to have some periodically visit to the long-term retailers who want to catch up with our high-quality development needs in the near future. In our daily operation, there are indeed going to have some short-term small store number reductions or regional retail partner with store. Looking to the future, I think we're doing the right things to achieve the high-quality growth. We're going to continue to optimize our product portfolio, improve the operational efficiency to mitigate the negative impact from the integrated retail partners.

After one year integration, our existing structure is more streamlined and efficient, be able to be more agile to respond to the changes in China market, adjusting our portfolios and offerings and marketing events to continue to improve our competitive edge. We're still going to continue this integration strategy over the retail partner.

Operator (participant)

Next question from Lucy from Bank of America, please.

Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. I have a question regarding the online business in China. Eason, just now in your prepared remarks, you mentioned in 2025, you hope the online sales in China could be further accelerated. Can you briefly tell me what is the online sales contribution to your total revenue in 2025 or 2024, how you're going to plan it in 2025, and how you're going to achieve it?

The second question is regarding the China offline business. You hope you can register a double-digit productive growth. You mentioned the total new store number would be lower than that of 2024. I believe the growth rate, naturally speaking, should be lower than 2024. I do see you may have some plan of having more IP LANDs being available. The revenue contribution from IP LAND would be higher than normal stores. How should I, how can I make sure you will be able to continue to have a good growth?

Eason Zhang (CFO)

Thank you very much. Thanks for your question. For our online business in China, it's been divided into two parts. The first one is traditional e-commerce business. The second one is O2O business. Both businesses being developing very fast in 2024. E-commerce grew by 25%-30%. O2O close to 50%-60% growth.

Operator (participant)

Both businesses together accounted for around 15% of the total China business. Where in 2025, we believe we will continue to accelerate the business growth. The reason is because we identify new opportunities in certain categories. For example, in 2024, the offline channel we organized to co-branded product. You can see that to cover the Plush product, also register very good sales on the online channel. Only the Plush toys, just one single category, accounted for 20-25% of the total sales for the online channel in 2024. A significant contribution even compared with the offline channel. I think for online channel, we will continue to make our product stand out, be a highlighted product with core brand to further expand our sales for the online channel. Where for the offline channel, the double-digit growth.

First of all, in my prepared remarks, I have already mentioned in 2024, the China business growth is indeed not easy to be achieved because in 2023, the growth used to be 36%, but still in 2024, we made a double-digit growth. Still, even against the high baseline from 2023, we still registered a very good growth. We also need to make sure the competition of the stores could continue to be improved, especially on the Same-store sales improvement. Same-store sales improvement would be the key priority we are going to go for. We do see some opportunities now. Let's review in 2024 for our Same-store sales. You see, there are some good opportunities here. For example, we can leverage the positioning data to see that in 2024, besides the external environment changes, there are a lot of factors.

For example, site selection or some of the retail partners, they need to further improve themselves for the shelving, for the product quality improvement and service. Certainly, we need to have a more refined product distribution. Those are all rooms for improvement. We have already identified those problems. In 2025, we surely believe we're going to have the solution to those problems of continuing to improving our Same-store sales. Structurally speaking, you see we do some nice opportunities. Mr. Ye has already elaborated on that. For all different store sizes, especially the store at different locations, we clearly notice the higher the GFA the store has, the better the performance it would be. If a store covers more than 300 sq m GFA, its profit would be positive.

If the store GFA is 100 sq m, 200 sq m, or less than 100 sq m, its Same-store sales is still a negative growth number, which is truly in line with what we will be noticed in China because people have a statement, "If you're going to run the store, well, you have to open large stores." That is the reason we believe we still have further room to improve our performance.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thanks for all the investors for joining us for 2024 Annual Earnings Call. Here comes to the end of this meeting. See you next quarter. Thank you.