Waterdrop - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Morning, everyone. This is Tracy Lee from Waterdrop Ambassador Relations. It's my pleasure to welcome everyone to Waterdrop's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants are enabled in our English line. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. Please note that discussion today will come from forward-looking statements made under the provision of U.S. Private Securities and the Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainties, and the actual results differ materially from our current expectations. Potential risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to those outlined in our public filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Also, this call includes discussion of certain non-GAAP matters. Please refer to our earnings release for consideration between non-GAAP and GAAP. Joining us today on the call are Mr. Shen Peng, our founder, chairman, and CEO, Mr. Wei Ran, director and GM of Insurance Business, Mrs. Xiaoying, head of Finance Department, and Mr. Jasmin Yu, Board of Directors. We will be happy to take some of your questions in the measuring line at the end of the conference.

Peng Shen (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Shen Peng. In the first quarter, Waterdrop achieved robust business growth while maintaining steady profitability. Our revenue reached over RMB 750 million, up by 7% year-over-year, with net profit attributed to the company's ordinary shareholders about RMB 110 million, a significant 34.2% year-over-year growth. This marks our 13th consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability. As segment, our insurance business continues proactive with growth strategies, driving first-year premiums up by 19% year-over-year, contributing to an 8% year-over-year increase in insurance revenue.

For medical profiling, as a pioneer of online service platforms for individuals seeking financial help, we strictly adhere to regulatory guidelines, giving legally assisting 3.47 million patients. The e-phone platform maintains stable execution, with over 11,000 patients enrolled today. We further advance our AI capabilities, establishing industry benchmarks for insurance applications. R&D expanded into one total of RMB 56 million, up by 3.6% quarter-over-quarter. Our Waterdrop Guardian AI insurance efforts expanded across more scenarios, including internal use in maternity insurance, WeCom, and external partnerships. Returning to shareholders' statements, our priorities: by the end of May 2025, we have repurchased approximately 54.2 million ADS in the global market, totaling $1.07 million. This May, we distribute our third cash dividend of $7.3 million. Waterdrop remains committed to social responsibility and sustainable development, actively creating shared value for society.

As of March 31, 2025, Waterdrop Charity Platform has partnered with 117 public charitable organizations, launching over 15,500 projects, including rapid response to the SPEC earthquake. Currently, we expect our revenue growth rate in subsequent quarters to further increase. We anticipate that the annual revenue will grow by over 20% year-over-year. In the second half of the year, the company intended to increase its investment in driving business growth, which may have a certain negative impact on the annual profits. I will now pass it around to update our performance in insurance business.

Wei Ran (Director and GM of Insurance Business)

Thank you, Shen Peng. In the first quarter, our insurance business achieved an FYP of approximately RMB 2.09 million, with a year-over-year growth of 19.3% and a quarter-over-quarter growth of 10.2%. Insurance-related revenues reached about RMB 660 million, increasing by 8.4% year-over-year and by 13% quarter-over-quarter.

The insurance business generated operating profit of approximately RMB 150 million, with an operating profit margin of 23%. FYP for ChainBox Insurance reached RMB 1.5 billion, with 30.1% year-over-year growth and 4.6% quarter-over-quarter. On the customer acquisition side, centered on Waterdrop's insurance branding, we implemented personalized marketing strategies across traffic platforms, including TikTok, WeChat channels, and Xiaohongshu, by leveraging real-time API capabilities. Currently, we explored upgraded coverage and value-added service for existing users, driving premium growth from both new and existing customer bases. On the supply side, we have continued to innovate in median medical insurance, insurance for substandard risk, and maternity insurance offerings. During the quarter, our products for substandard risk generated a premium of RMB 280 million, representing year-over-year growth exceeding 200%. We have further strengthened our collaboration with insurance companies to develop more customized innovation products.

Our exclusive maternity insurance product, Xiaoping, has been upgraded to version 5.0, introducing coverage for multiple diseases. For the first time, incorporating medication subsidy side, providing expectant mothers with enhanced benefits. In late April, in partnership with issuers, we launched the ChainBox, the industry's first median medical insurance product with both health declaration reverse and guaranteed renewal. This product is available for chronic disease patients and individuals with suboptimal health, allowing renewal up to age 105 and setting new standards for medical insurance coverage. FYP for long-term insurance reached RMB 590 million, representing a 1.6% year-over-year decline with a 27.6% quarter-over-quarter increase. The year-over-year decrease was primarily attributable to the pressure on life insurance products. However, we observed a significant growth in disability insurance and critical illness insurance. Disability insurance products contributed over RMB 87 million in premium.

Within critical illness insurance, our digital drug series featuring a flexible health declaration continued to gain user recognition since its launch, with multiple upgrades and integrations. During this quarter, we also introduced an upgraded version of Tangalo, a specific insurance product covering type 2 diabetes patients, as well as the industry's first family plan long-term charity insurance, furthering Waterdrop's innovation in long-term health insurance products. The traditional online sales team maintained steady quarter-to-quarter growth in the workforce size, with productivity per capita achieving both year-on-year and a sequential increase. Shen Dabao continued to refine its online lifespan model independently, contributing RMB 110 million in premiums each month. The platform also strengthened its technology collaboration with Waterdrop Insurance Platform, launching an AI service application currently in beta testing, which can now handle over 100 daily service cases. Waterdrop continued to drive the development of large language model capabilities.

As of the end of Q1, the company has filed 51 patents related to ROM technologies. AI applications continue to enhance operational efficiency across all business segments. The AI service quality copilot has improved quality management efficiency by leveraging LLM reasoning capabilities, improving unique operation efficiency by 83%. The AI insurance expert has made significant progress across multiple current lines, like the AI insurance expert in medical insurance is gradually scaling its capacity, facilitating RMB 2 million in monthly premiums in outbound scenarios. Additionally, WeCom service expanded this quarter with the significant launch of maternity insurance service for WeCom clients in March, achieving end-to-end policy underwriting and premium generation. In customer service, our AI-powered support system operated 24/7, resolving 62% of user experience automatically. In specific scenarios, it already handled 94% of the service requests without human intervention.

Beyond medical insurance and customer service, we are actively expanding the AI insurance expert application to new scenarios through ongoing R&D efforts. This concludes our business insurance business in Q1, and we now pass to our Board of Directors, Jasmin, to update our performance: medical profiling and the healthcare business.

Jasmin Yu (Board of Director)

Thank you, Wei Ran. As of the end of March 2025, around 475 million people cumulatively donated RMB 68.8 billion to about 3.47 million patients through our Waterdrop Medical Profiling Platform. We focused on three key tasks this quarter. First, we optimized our process design by introducing an online slash requirement at the campaign initiation stage. A service slash will clearly communicate the platform's support orientation to users. Additionally, we have carefully educated users about our social supervision mechanism, as well as relevant laws and regulations. Much like the health declaration in insurance applications, this matter established an integrity safeguard.

Additionally speaking, Waterdrop continued to enhance its risk control verification capabilities through systematic infrastructure improvements this quarter. We delivered standardized verification guidelines for three high-risk scenarios: housing, vehicle ownership, and income. By integrating official verification channels like from traffic management bureaus and the local government service platform, covering 92% of cities nationwide, we significantly improved the efficiency and quality of risk verification. Regarding the most concerning issue of fund security, Waterdrop implemented an intelligence monitoring platform, combining systems of civilians and manual follow-up. For five high-risk scenarios, the system can generate optimal risk control solutions based on algorithm models. Determining the ideal frequency and timing for human intervention, the technological approach has effectively reduced the risk of fraud, misappropriation, and ensuring the safety of donated funds. In this quarter, Waterdrop healthcare-related business maintained steady development. The digital clinical trial solution business partnered with 185 pharmaceuticals and CROs, securing 77 new projects.

During this quarter, 822 patients have been enrolled, and the cumulative number of enrolled patients since launch reached 11,215. Revenue from digital clinical trial business grew by 11.5% year-over-year. The platform continued to expand the oncology field, expanding its collaborative projects this quarter in thoracic grafts, gastrointestinal tumors, thereby strengthening its industry competitiveness. Additionally, leveraging its extensive patient database and digital recruitment strategy, the platform achieved multiple breakthroughs in chronic and rare diseases, earning well-suppressed recognition. Concurrently, in this quarter, the platform has actively expanded digital-only channel marketing initiatives, leveraging its algorithm modeling strengths. Waterdrop partnered with a medical device company to jointly develop an intelligence service system for diabetes. This project is expected to be launched in the second quarter, collaborating with our partners to enhance the efficiency of patient health management.

Now, I will hand over to Xiaoying, our Head of Finance Department, to discuss our financial performance in this quarter.

Xiaoying Xu (Head of Finance)

Thank you, Jasmin. Hello everyone. I will now walk you through our financial highlights for the first quarter of 2025. Before I go into details, please be reminded that all members for this year will be online, and please refer to our earnings release for detailed information on our financial performance on both the year-over-year and quarter-on-quarter basis respectively. In the first quarter of 2025, all business segments of Waterdrop delivered solid performance. The company's total revenue reached RMB 754 million, representing a 7% year-over-year increase. By business segments, insurance-related income contributed approximately RMB 658 million in revenue, up by 8.4% year-over-year. Performance services amounted to RMB 67.1 million, remaining stable year-over-year. Digital clinical trial solution business generated about RMB 23 million in revenue, growing by 11.5% year-over-year.

In terms of operations, the company focused on enhancing efficiency and quality. In the first quarter, total operating costs and risk expenses amounted to approximately RMB 678 million, representing a year-over-year increase of about 3%. The growth rate was lower than the revenue growth rate. Among this, operating costs for this quarter reached RMB 374 million, an increase of 13% on a quarter-by-quarter basis. This was primarily due to an about RMB 37.7 million raise in cost of referral and service fees during this period, along with more than a RMB 2.8 million increase in costs for digital clinical trial solutions in 2019. Sales and marketing expenses amounted to RMB 172 million, decreasing by approximately RMB 9.6 million worldwide. The reduction was primarily reflected in off-source marketing service fees and related operational costs.

Through the progressive application of AI capabilities, internal operational efficiency continued to improve, with a decrease of RMB 5.9 million and RMB 5.6 million respectively in this area this quarter. Moderate investment in customer acquisition led to a year-over-year RMB 4.5 million increase in marketing expenses for third-party channels. Under this combined effect, sales and marketing expenses for the period decreased by 5.4% year-over-year. General and administrative expenses were RMB 74.9 million, down 15.8% year-over-year, primarily attributable to improvements in the complex management efficiency and a reduction in related professional service fees. R&D expenses were approximately RMB 56.2 million, remaining a stable year-over-year. However, the structure of R&D costs has further adjusted to focus more on getting AI capabilities. In the first quarter, the company achieved net profit attributed to the ordinary shareholders of RMB 108 million, representing significant year-over-year growth of 34.2%.

As of the end of Q1 2025, the company maintained annual cash reserves of about RMB 3.64 billion, with operating cash flow continuing to be positive. This quarter, the quarter generated net operating cash inflow of RMB 94.5 million, providing sufficient financial support for future business growth. In summary, the strong first-quarter performance demonstrates Waterdrop's sustainable and stable healthy growth, with notable progress across multiple business segments. Moving forward, we will adhere to the business path of driving growth and improving efficiencies through technological empowerment and continue to deliver steady performance. Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we will conclude today's conference call. We do thank you for joining. Have a good time.