Perfect Corp - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Perfect Corp's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. We will be hosting a question-and-answer session after management's prepared remarks. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by the number one again. Please note that today's event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to the first speaker today. This is Jimmy Xia, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead.

Jimmy Xia (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you and hello everyone. Welcome to Perfect Corp's first quarter 2025 earnings call. With us today are Ms. Alice Chang, our Founder, Chairwoman, and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Louis Chen, our Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer; and Ms. Iris Chen, Vice President of Finance and Accounting. You can refer to our first quarter 2025 financial results on our IR website or in the Form 6K we filed with the SEC. A replay of this call will also be available on our website shortly after its conclusion. For today's call, management will provide our prepared remarks followed by a question-and-answer session. Before we continue, I would like to refer to our Safe Harbor statement in our earnings press release. This call may contain forward-looking statements regarding performance, anticipated plans, our original results, and objectives.

Forward-looking statements are based on management's expectations and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our call today. Perfect Corp undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law after the date of this call. Please note that all numbers stated in management's prepared remarks are in U.S. dollar, and we will also discuss non-IFRS measures today. I will now turn the call to our second speaker, Ms. Alice Chang, our CEO.

Alice Chang (Founder, Chairwoman, and CEO)

Thank you, Jimmy, and welcome to Perfect Corp's 2025 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Let me start by providing some financial highlights, then share some exciting developments. After a strong end to 2024, we started the first quarter of 2025 with double-digit growth, which was in line with our revenue guidance for 2025. Total revenue grew by 12.1% year over year to $16 million. The net income for the same period was $2.3 million, an increase of 264% year over year. The adjusted net income increased 33.3% to $2 million compared to the first quarter of 2024. The continuous growth in revenue and the positive net income is primarily driven by the strong performance of our mobile app subscription business within the AI/AR cloud solution sector, even under current microeconomic uncertainties.

The first quarter of 2025, we saw our operating cash flow generate a net inflow of $4.3 million, and our balance sheet remains very strong with over $164.6 million in cash and the cash equivalent. All these results are testimony to the company's robust business model as well as our agility to navigate under the fast-changing world and its global economic uncertainty. Our B2C mobile app business has maintained strong growth with a number of active paying subscribers of 973,000 to end of the first quarter of 2025, an increase of 7.9% compared to 902,000 subscribers for the first quarter of 2024. Our YouCam mobile app suite continues to evolve with planned updates and AI features enhancement powered by cutting-edge generative AI features for image and video creation.

We recently unveiled a new mobile app called YouCam AI Chat, which features personal AI assistants to assist users with a wide range of topics, including fashion, dating, social science, travel, writing, financial advice, and more. Beyond this specialized AI assistance, the app also delivers powerful AI tools capable of generating images as well as summarizing photos, websites, and YouTube videos, just to name a few of its popular features. By merging convenience and personalization, YouCam AI Chat app fulfills the growing demand for seamless digital interaction. This app leverages multiple world-renowned AI LLM models such as ChatGPT 4o and 4o mini. Before diving into our B2B performance, I would like to provide additional updates on the post-acquisition of WANNA. The integration of both teams is progressing smoothly, with our operations, cultures, and strategic goals aligning seamlessly.

This process will position us well to leverage new growth opportunities and further enhance our market position as we work to expand our addressable market. At this first phase of integration, our global sales team has started to engage with new clients and prospects to explore additional contract opportunities, with emphasis on geographic expansion and product expansion, particularly within the shoes vertical. In our B2B operations, we continue to deepen market penetration in beauty and fashion segments. Our platform now hosts over 801 brand clients with over 891,000 SKUs. This increase is contributed by organic growth and consolidating the newly acquired WANNA client base and the shoe, bags related SKUs for VTO. We are making very good progress in expanding our unique offering with AI-powered skin diagnostics, which extend across aesthetic clinics, dermatology centers, skincare facilities, med spa, and wellness centers.

During the first quarter, we launched our AI skin analysis solution with one of the largest beauty retailers in the U.S. Now, users can scan their face with a smartphone, allowing the app to deliver skin analysis in seconds, and receive a personalized four-step skin routine and product tailored to their specific needs. Offering our AI skin solutions to a wider global audience has been our priority, and this partnership will open the use case to millions of North American users. Additionally, our YouCam Online editor SaaS API enables seamless integration of Perfect AI features into client software. Brand developers can now embed advanced photo, portrait, and video editing, generative AI, and more, offering a user a rich, full-featured image editing experience within our product.

During the first quarter of the year, we added AI hairstyle and skin analysis API and made refinements to the subscription plan and the subscription credit model. In conclusion, despite the global economic uncertainties, we continue to experience growth in the first quarter of 2025, driven by increased revenue, improved operational efficiency, and strong financial performance. Our growth strategy for 2025 remains on track, focusing on expanding our B2C revenue with the introduction of newer generative AI functions and to drive higher premium subscription plans to increase the value of our subscription. On the enterprise business side, we are focusing on fully integrating the WANNA team and their product into our business, expanding our presence in beauty, skincare, shoes, and the fashion market, exploring cross-selling opportunities, diversifying our product and service offerings, strengthening leadership, accelerating revenue growth, and maximizing long-term shareholder value.

Lastly, with the rise of more efficient and cost-effective AI models specializing in specific functionalities, Perfect Corp is well-positioned to benefit from evolving needs of clients and prospects thanks to our strong track record, expertise, and deep integration in the beauty and fashion industry. With that, I have concluded my remarks and will now pass the call over to Louis, who will discuss our financial details with you.

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

Thank you, Alice. Please note that all financial comparisons are on a year-over-year basis, and the reporting period is the first quarter of 2025 versus a comparable period in 2024. On top of the International Financial Reporting Standard, IFRS measures, we will also discuss non-IFRS measures to provide greater clarity on the trends in our operations. In the first quarter of 2025, our total revenue increased to $16 million from $14.3 million for the same period in 2024, representing a year-over-year increase of 12.1%. The growth came from the continuous growth of our AI/AR cloud solutions and mobile app subscription business. AI and AR cloud solution and subscription revenue grew 13.3% to $14.1 million compared to $12.4 million from the year-ago period, which represented 88% of total revenue in the quarter.

This growth is attributed to the continued expansion of our mobile beauty app subscription and the positive momentum for our online skin diagnosis solutions as well as our virtual trial business. Licensing revenue increased by 1.5% in the first quarter of 2025 to $1.6 million compared to $1.6 million during the same period of 2024. The licensing revenue will gradually become immaterial as it continues to be phased out and replaced by the new AI/AR cloud subscription revenue model. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2025 grew by 11.4% to $12.5 million, with a gross margin of 77.9% compared to $11.2 million and a gross margin of 78.3% for the same period in 2024.

The small decrease in gross margin was primarily due to the increase in third-party payment processing fees paid to digital distribution partners such as Google and Apple due to the increase in our mobile app subscription revenue. The total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2025 increased by 2% to $12.6 million compared to $12.4 million for the same period in last year. The increase was mainly due to the increase in R&D expenses but was mostly offset by the decrease in G&A expenses. Going into detail for operating expenses, sales and marketing expenses for the first quarter of 2025 were $7.4 million compared to $7.2 million during the same period of 2024, an increase of 2.6%. This increase was largely due to the increase in marketing events and advertising costs related to our mobile apps and cloud computing, as well as WANNA sales and marketing expenses.

Research and development expenses were $3.6 million for the first quarter of 2025 compared to $3 million during the same period of 2024, an increase of 17.5%. The increase resulted from additional R&D headcounts for new product development and one-off related personnel costs. General and administrative expenses decreased by 21.6% to $1.7 million for the first quarter of 2025 compared to $2.2 million during the same period of 2024. The decreases were mainly due to the decrease of corporate insurance premiums as well as savings from external professional services. Net income was $2.3 million for the first quarter of 2025 compared to a net income of $0.6 million during the same period of 2024, an increase of 264%. The positive net income was supported by continued revenue growth and effective cost control. These results represent a net income margin of 14.3% for the first quarter of 2025.

The company continues to deliver good profitability to invest in developing a complete line of audio, video creativity, and enhancement solutions for both consumers and enterprises. Excluding non-cash share-based compensation, non-cash valuation gain, and loss of financial liability, the adjusted net income was $2 million for the first quarter of 2025 compared to adjusted net income of $1.5 million in the same period of 2024, an increase of 33.3%. This also represents an adjusted net margin of 12.6% for the first quarter of 2025. As of March 31, 2025, the company held $164.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and six-month deposits compared to $165.9 million as of December 31, 2024. We had a positive overhead and cash flow of $4.3 million in the first quarter of 2025 compared to $3.5 million during the same period in 2024.

The positive cash flow demonstrated the company's continued ability to generate continuous cash flow to support its business operation and growth strategy. On the mobile app business front, our YouCam mobile app active subscribers were 973,000 by the end of the first quarter of 2025, compared to 1 million by the end of the 2024 year. Although the number of subscribers has some expected decrease, the revenue from the app subscription continued to grow strongly. This decrease in active subscribers was expected as we continue to perform pricing optimization initiatives as well as introducing higher price point new subscription plans, representing a significant increase in revenue per active users. Our enterprise customer base has a net increase of 59 brand clients since the end of last quarter, achieving a total of 801 brand clients.

We've over 891,000 SKUs for makeup, skincare, eyewear, watches, jewelry, scarves, shoes, apparel, and fashion products as of March 31, 2025. The further expansion in these metrics highlights the inclusion of WANNA's client base as well as ongoing growth in customer penetration and SKUs expansion. In the first quarter, Perfect Corp's number of key customers was 148, down from 151 at the end of December 2024. This reduction was due to a few unexpected U.S. clients' contract churns due to the rising financial challenges in the macroeconomic environment. In the first quarter of 2025, AI and AR cloud solutions and mobile app subscription business continue to drive our growth. As previously mentioned, WANNA's integration process will help us grow our business, and the additional development of AI technology will strengthen our core competencies and expand our total addressable market.

Even with the uncertainties in today's macroeconomic environment, we are still excited about the opportunities that are ahead of our B2C and B2B business lines. Our offering can help bring clients increased customer engagement, increased basket size, as well as create savings by decreasing return rates. Our suite of YouCam apps continues to deliver value through fun interactive features with a focus on GenAI-powered photo and video functionalities, as well as other innovative new AI capabilities. Our 2025 guidance remains intact. Total revenue year-over-year growth is expected to range from 13%-14.5%. This forecast is based on the company's current assessment of the market and operational conditions, and management will monitor business progress and provide updates to offer better clarity to the market. That concludes my prepared remarks. Operators, please open up the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star on your touch-tone phone, and you will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to withdraw, please press star followed by the number one again. If you are using a speakerphone, please leave the handset before pressing any keys. Our first question comes from the line of Lisa Thompson from Zacks. Please go ahead.

Lisa Thompson (Analyst)

Hi. It's great to see another great quarter coming out. Can you talk first off about your launch of the new AI chat app? Where did you launch it, and how is it being received?

Alice Chang (Founder, Chairwoman, and CEO)

The app just launched last month, and this is the app on the App Store, Apple's App Store, and Google Play. Users can just download it from the App Store. As I said, this is an integration of all the AI assistants into one and also adding some of our strengths like image editing by AI and photo summarize and all kinds of different AI tools into one app.

Lisa Thompson (Analyst)

When was it launched in all countries and all languages?

Alice Chang (Founder, Chairwoman, and CEO)

Yeah. Just released to the App Stores with eight languages support. It can be downloaded over the world.

Lisa Thompson (Analyst)

Okay. All right. That's ahead of schedule because I thought you were only going to do a couple of countries.

Alice Chang (Founder, Chairwoman, and CEO)

We move fast.

Lisa Thompson (Analyst)

Okay. Let me ask you a question about the WANNA acquisition. Now, I thought that you had said that they were going to add about 20 key customers, but if they did, then you must have lost a lot of customers in Q1. Or did they not add 20?

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

Hi. This is Louis. The WANNA acquisition did add a little bit over a dozen of the key customers after the integration. You are right. We also have suffered some loss for our beauty business, as I mentioned in my remarks, for the other beauty clients from the key customer accounts.

Lisa Thompson (Analyst)

Okay. All right. I was wondering about that. Just the last question is, when you look at future acquisitions, are you going to have to be trying to find new verticals that you're not in, or is there any opportunity out there to, say, scoop up some of the competitors that maybe do like try-ons for eyeglasses? Because is there a shakeout out there in any categories? What are your thinking about acquisitions going forward?

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

I think our priority has been spending our time through acquisition, accelerating our market penetration. In the core business that we are, there isn't too much other competitors that we think it's worth doing acquisition. We very much have a better product, a more complete service. I think we are winning that from just organic growth. For newer categories, newer verticals, acquisition could help accelerate our penetration, especially in enterprise clients that typically take a long time to penetrate. Options are available, but our key priority has been spending the time rather than just taking out competitors.

Lisa Thompson (Analyst)

What verticals are left out there?

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

I think on the shopping, I think certainly in the fashion space, there's still a lot of other things. Of course, we have technology to grow internally, but I think most importantly is the luxury business, the luxury retailers. A lot of them are still not fully digitized or using VTO technologies. I think spending time potentially will be a bigger priority rather than just acquiring them because it's a part of the market education and getting on board more key clients.

Lisa Thompson (Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. That's all my questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Again, should you have a question, kindly press star followed by the number one. Our last question comes from the line of Pat McCann from Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Pat McCann (Analyst)

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. First, I wanted to ask about the Warna acquisition and how that relates to or impacts the sales process. When you go to a potential B2B client, I'm wondering, having a more full lineup of services for a more complete list of categories now that you've acquired Warna, how does that—are you seeing any notable positive impacts as far as being able to provide more fully for a potential client's needs? Just wondering, early results, kind of what you're seeing there and how it maybe makes the sales process easier for your salespeople.

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

Hi, Pat. It's very positive feedback we heard from the client because, again, they're having a full complete solution. It saves a lot of their integration efforts, right? I think this is one of the strengths and synergy we try to build that is not just one product company, but it's a whole platform or solution, especially with our global sales team and global customer service team. We're able to support those clients across different geographies. That is something that, stand alone, WANNA wouldn't be able to do. Now, as part of the Perfect Corp Group, we are able to bring this total value to the clients. Certainly, more and more clients are looking at offering multi-category integration services, and they want to work with one company, with one platform. They will get more familiar, either from the screen creation process to analytic process.

That will come as additional synergy. I think the most important one is the capability that we are able to upgrade the existing technology to even better because of our decade-long research and more engineering resources. We will be able to take the WANNA solution as is, but also to infuse and shift new technology in there to upgrade whether it is generative AI or other new algorithms under development. In general, I think the strategy that we map out has been executed well. So far, the market feedback has been also strong and positive.

Pat McCann (Analyst)

Thanks. I was also wondering, with regard to the B2C monetization strategies where you are maybe toying a little bit with different ways to monetize the apps and cost structures for subscribers, I was just wondering if you could give any more color there as far as the types of things you're trying and kind of what the feedback you're getting from the consumer is.

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

Our recent market research and looking at other competitor alternative products there, we noticed that there's a room to optimize our price point. Originally, we were charging around $39 a year for the subscription, and now we're introducing a much higher premium subscription with newer features at $79 per year. It is a significant increase in ASP. Of course, that is driven by adding new generative AI features. Some of those are very advanced and very fun and cool. The early results show the consumer are willing to upgrade from their original plan into this newer plan. That is also part of the contribution in revenue and increase in the ASP. We will continue to do such type of optimizations and, depending on the market needs, to segment different product lines or different subscription plans and keep optimizing on that.

Pat McCann (Analyst)

Great. Thanks so much for all the color in. That's all I had. Congrats again on the quarter.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have our last question from the line of Aashi Shah from Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Aashi Shah (Analyst)

Hi. Congratulations on another great quarter. I just wanted to ask about the WANNA acquisition and if you can just talk a little bit about the competitive landscape that is there in the industry, in the shoe market and the handbags, please.

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

I think from our view, there isn't too much competitor in the bag space. I think WANNA has probably the best solution that is there. There's still room to improve. The shoes market, WANNA is clearly leading in that industry with a number of brands, especially in the top luxury segments, covering more than a dozen top shoes brands in there. There are a few competitors, but in a much smaller scale that are there. Again, Perfect Corp, we are not a shy of competition. We think we have great technology to make this solution even better. I think, of course, the worldwide macroeconomic challenges are slowing down some of these new adoptions by key clients. They are waiting to see what is going to be their new cost structure, how they're going to invest in digital.

We certainly will be ready to support our clients when that decision is coming. Again, we are not waiting. We are doing a lot of integration and improvement of the technology through our in-house development teams. I think when the market offers better clarity and opens up, we'll be ready to take it.

Aashi Shah (Analyst)

All right. Switching sides and asking a little bit about the B2B clients, following up on another question, you've lost a lot of key brand customers. Can you tell us what the color on what the conversation with clients is looking like with respect to the macroeconomic conditions in the U.S. right now?

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

Certainly. Yes. We lost a little bit more than what we expected. None of them were big tier-one clients, but they were these medium-sized clients. I think most of those feedback that gave us is not the churn because of competition, but mostly the churn because of the financial pressures that they have from management to cut on the cost because whether it's a tariff or other concerns, they want to be prepared and be ready to save some costs and navigate through these difficult economic times. That is something that we may try to regain those customers once the situation gets better. So far, I don't think there's anything that the management is too worried about. Of course, we are sad to see those clients go, but so far, it hasn't been the VIP, the big clients. It has been just more of the small regional brands.

Aashi Shah (Analyst)

All right. My last question is about the capital allocation strategy and is there any change in that? There is about $160 million in cash on hand right now. What is the plan for the cash going to be like?

Louis Chen (EVP and Chief Strategy Officer)

I think under the current environment, holding on the cash is actually not a bad thing. I think there are a lot of deals, activities in the market have been very much on hold, and the same as I and we. We remain to see. I mean, the capital is there to support the growth. I think growing organically is our key priority, especially with the B2C business going very strongly. That is why we launched a new app. We are launching a lot of updates and upgrades to our existing app subscriptions. This is part of the use of those capital to invest in R&D, to invest in market. M&A is still in our radar, but I think for the time being, we will be a little bit more selective into looking at what are the options in the market under the current environment.

Aashi Shah (Analyst)

Thank you so much. Congratulations on a great quarter again.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As there are no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back to the management for closing remarks.

Jimmy Xia (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you once again for joining the call today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us directly or through our IR website. We look forward to speaking to everyone next time. Thank you and goodbye.

Operator (participant)

That concludes our conference call for today. Thank you for joining, and you may now disconnect.