Yuanbao - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Transcript

Haiyang Wang (CFO)

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Yuanbao Inc.'s first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Cassie Nguyen, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Cassie Nguyen (Investor Relations Manager)

Thank you, Operator. Please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors. Some of these risks are beyond the company's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today's press release and discussion. A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect Yuanbao's business and financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update its forward-looking information, except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.

For definition of non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. Joining us today on the call from Yuanbao's senior management are Mr. Rui Fang, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Ray Wang, our Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Fang will deliver his remarks in Chinese, followed by an English translation. We will conclude the call with a Q&A session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on Yuanbao's Investor Relations website. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Fang. Please go ahead, sir.

Rui Feng (Chairman and CEO)

[Foreign Language]大家好，欢迎参加元宝2025年第一季度财报电话会。这也是元宝公司上市后的首次业绩报告会。2025年4月30号，元宝成功在纳斯达克挂牌上市，这标志着我们开启了作为上市公司的新征程。在此，我谨代表元宝的全体员工，向一直给予我们大力支持和帮助的新老股东们表示衷心的感谢。接下来，我很高兴与各位分享元宝第一季度出色的财务与运营业绩。第一季度，公司的总收入实现了全面稳健的增长，同比增长了43.8%，达到人民币9.7亿元。与此同时，我们的盈利能力增长势头迅猛，经营利润同比增长了122.1%，达到人民币2.95亿元。对应的净利润率为30.4%。这是我们连续第11个季度实现盈利，充分体现了公司在运营效率上的不断提升。此外，截至一季度末，公司现金储备达人民币27.7亿元，为后续业务的发展奠定了坚实的财务基础。这些亮眼的财务表现得益于运营数据的强劲增长。一季度，我们的核心业务指标保持双位数增长，新保单数量同比增长21.3%至680万份。运营和财务指标的双重跃升再次证明了元宝商业模式的韧性和持续的盈利能力。

Cassie Nguyen (Investor Relations Manager)

Hello everyone, thank you for joining our First Quarter 2025 earnings conference call, our first earnings call since the company's IPO. On April 30, 2025, Yuanbao was successfully listed on the NASDAQ, marking the start of our new journey as a public company. On behalf of all our employees, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our shareholders, new and long-standing alike, for your trust and tremendous support. Next, I'm pleased to present our stellar first quarter financial and operational performance. In the first quarter of 2025, we achieved solid broad-based revenue growth, with total revenues increasing by 43.8% year over year to CNY 970 million. At the same time, our profitability expanded with strong momentum. Net income surged by 122.1% year over year to CNY 295 million, with a net income margin of 30.4%.

This marks our 11th consecutive quarter of profitability, reflecting our continuous operational efficiency gains. In addition, as of the end of March, we held RMB 2.77 billion in cash reserves, serving as a robust financial foundation for ongoing business development. These impressive financial results were driven by robust growth in our operational metrics. In the first quarter, our core operational metrics maintained double-digit growth, with the number of new policies increasing by 21.3% year over year to 6.8 million. The dual improvement in operational and financial metrics once again demonstrates the resilience of Yuanbao's business model and our ability to sustain profitability.

Rui Feng (Chairman and CEO)

[Foreign Language]本季度，我们在业务发展和技术创新层面也取得了诸多进展。在消费者方面，我们通过自建的消费者全周期服务引擎持续推动获客，凭借我们在保险行业的经验以及对消费者偏好的深刻理解，不断积累用户特征。在广泛覆盖的互联网渠道上，高效地触达潜在的消费者群体，为消费者提供了定制化的产品及优质的服务。我们聚焦传统保险服务难以触达的中低线及城市及欠发达地区，大力推动普惠型健康险在更广泛人群中的覆盖和渗透。这一战略目标的有效实施下，离不开我们引擎强有力的支撑。为此，我们在持续加大在AI技术方面的投入。截至一季度末，公司AI团队人数已占公司总员工数的10%以上，为我们引擎的迭代提供了扎实的保障。互联互通的模型网络是我们在引擎中非常重要的一环。基于该模型网络，我们能够运行从消费者定位和获取到理赔售后服务等大量产品，确定并不断地优化针对每个潜在消费者的服务路径。截至一季度末，我们已经开发了超过4,700个模型和超过5,100个特征，较上年同期分别增长了约600个模型和1,000个特征。这些特征会输入到每个模型中，推动所有模型的迭代和优化，帮助我们更深入地理解消费者的风险特征与保障需求，从而高效地推动，从而高效地推送个性化的保险产品，提升消费者的满意度，并与保司共同打造定制化的产品方案，进一步夯实我们在产业链中的核心地位。

Cassie Nguyen (Investor Relations Manager)

We also extensively advance business development and innovative technology this quarter. On the consumer front, we continue to enhance customer acquisition through our proprietary full consumer service cycle engine. Leveraging our deep insurance industry expertise and key insights into consumer preferences, we consistently refine and scale our user profiling. These capabilities allow us to efficiently expand our consumer reach across a wide range of digital channels and offer tailored products and premium services. We target mid and lower-tier cities and less developed regions underserved by traditional insurance services, actively promoting the accessibility and penetration of inclusive health insurance among broader populations. Our engine plays a critical role in the effective execution of this strategy. With these strategic goals in mind, we continue to ramp up our AI investments.

As of the end of March, over 10% of our workforce is focused on AI innovation, laying a solid groundwork for the ongoing iteration of our engine. An interconnected network of models is a key pillar of our engine. These models enable us to operate across scenarios ranging from consumer targeting and acquisition to claim settlements and post-sale services, empowering us to identify and iteratively refine personalized service pathways for every potential consumer. As of the end of March, we had developed over 4,700 models capable of analysis across more than 5,100 labels, an increase of 600 models and 1,000 labels from a year ago. These labels are fed into each model to drive continuous iteration and optimization of all models, giving us deeper insights into consumers' risk profiles and protection needs.

This allows us to efficiently offer personalized insurance products, enhance customer satisfaction, and jointly develop customized products and solutions with our partner insurance carriers, further reinforcing Yuanbao's leading position within the industry value chain.

Rui Feng (Chairman and CEO)

[Foreign Language]同时，我们也正在将大语言模型融入从消费者定位和获取转化理赔售后服务到日常运营的全链条场景，以持续推动效率提升。例如，我们设计和应用了基于大模型的自检智能体，能够自主规划与调配，包括关键词自检、流程自检、服务态度自检等多个任务，灵活实现复杂自检场景的复用搭建，大幅提升了自检效率。我们还在开发赋能其他业务领域的智能体，以提高流程效率。其次，我们在通过引入RAG技术，构建了融合专业保险知识库的大模型服务体系，有效弥补了通过大模型在保险专业领域的知识局限。例如，针对用户问询的保险知识和或保险产品等相关问题，RAG技术可以辅助大模型在数据库中召回并参考相关的内容进行回复，从而显著地提升用户问题的解决力。另外，我们还通过多模态大模型整合文本、图像等多维数据，目前已经可以做到自动识别理赔材料，全面优化理赔流程。用户可以一次性上传全部理赔材料，由大模型自动识别、分类与审核。相比传统的OCR图像识别技术，大幅降低了操作复杂度，提升了服务效率。在公司内部，为了推动AI工具在公司各业务线的广泛应用，我们建立了系统化的培训体系，并将AI使用能力纳入到员工的OKR和KPI的考核体系，以确保每一位员工都能在AI赋能的新浪潮中不断成长。

Cassie Nguyen (Investor Relations Manager)

Meanwhile, we are integrating large language models throughout our business, from scenarios such as consumer targeting, acquisition, conversion, claim settlements, and post-sale services, all the way to our daily operations, steadily boosting operational efficiency. For example, we developed and implemented an intelligent quality inspection agent based on LLMs that can autonomously plan and coordinate multiple tasks, including keyword inspection, process inspection, and service attitude inspection. Expandability enables rapid deployment and reuse of complex inspection scenarios, significantly enhancing inspection efficiency. We are also developing agents to empower other operational areas, ultimately improving process efficiency. In addition, by integrating RAG, we have built an LLM service system enriched by a specialized insurance knowledge database, effectively addressing the limitations of generic LLMs in processing specialized insurance knowledge.

For instance, while responding to user inquiries about insurance knowledge or products, RAG allows LLMs to retrieve and reference relevant content from the specialized database, substantially improving the resolution rate of user inquiries. We have also leveraged multimodal LLMs to integrate text, image, and other data types, enabling automated recognition of claims materials. This has comprehensively optimized the claim settlement process. With a single app flow, users' claims materials are automatically recognized, categorized, and reviewed by LLMs, greatly simplifying the workflow and substantially improving service efficiency over traditional OCR technologies. Internally, we have developed a systematic training framework to advance company-wide AI applications across all business lines. Furthermore, we have incorporated AI proficiency into employees' OKRs and KPIs, empowering every employee to adapt and grow amid this new wave of AI empowerment.

Rui Feng (Chairman and CEO)

[Foreign Language]最后，在推动行业发展方面，今年1月，我们和清华大学五道口金融学院、中国保险与养老金融研究中心联合发布了《中国互联网保险发展报告2024》。该报告是近年来为数不多的全面深度的互联网保险行业的研究报告，不仅为行业的发展提供了重要的战略指引和数据支持，同时也进一步巩固了元宝在行业中的专业影响力。自创立以来，元宝始终秉持用户至善的价值观，致力于为广大用户提供高质量的保险服务体验。这一理念不仅是我们衡量客户价值创造的核心标准，更是公司业务长久健康发展的基石。这也是我们积极履行企业社会责任的重要体现。展望未来，我们将不断深化AI技术创新，不断挖掘公司的平台潜力，以满足客户日益增长的保险需求。同时，我们将进一步完善全链条的消费者服务体系，巩固与保险机构的协同合作，为股东创造更大的价值。下面请我们的CFO来为大家介绍一下我们一季度的财务表现。

Cassie Nguyen (Investor Relations Manager)

Before we wrap up, I'd like to highlight our proactive role in driving industry development. In January this year, we jointly released the 2024 China Online Insurance Development Report with the Research Center for China Insurance and Pension Finance at Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance, as one of the few comprehensive and in-depth studies on the online insurance industry in recent years. This report offers critical strategic guidance and data-driven support for industry development, further strengthening Yuanbao's thought leadership and professional influence across the sector. From day one, Yuanbao has remained dedicated to a consumer-centric philosophy, striving to deliver high-quality insurance service experiences to a wide range of users. This ethos is more than just a core metric for measuring customer value creation. It is a cornerstone of our long-term sustainable business growth and a key expression of our commitment to actively fulfilling corporate social responsibility.

Looking ahead, we will continue to advance AI innovation and consistently unlock our platform's potential to meet customers' evolving insurance needs. Meanwhile, we will consistently refine and enhance our full-cycle consumer service system and deepen synergies with insurance carriers, creating greater value for our shareholders. Now, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Ray Wang, to present our financial results. Thank you, everyone.

Haiyang Wang (CFO)

Thank you, Mr. Fang. Thank you all for joining today's earnings conference call. I'm pleased to share our financial performance of the last quarter. We delivered a solid start to the year, characterized by resilient revenue growth, improving profitability, and significant enhancements in cash position. Total revenues for the first quarter reached 970.1 million CNY, representing a robust 43.8% year-over-year increase. This growth was primarily driven by continued momentum across both insurance distribution and system services businesses, reflecting the increasing demand and engagement from both consumers and insurance partners. Breaking this down, insurance distribution services revenues rose to 321.8 million CNY, up 45% year-over-year due to an increasing number of policies transacting on our platform, partly supported by enhanced targeted marketing efforts.

System services revenues reached CNY 647 million, up 43.2% year-over-year, driven by constant improvements to our full consumer service cycle engine, which bolstered our enhanced marketing and precise analytics services, as well as strengthened system service offerings for both existing and new insurance carriers. Moving to expenses, total operating costs and expenses increased by 24.1% year-over-year to CNY 680.6 million. Operation and support expenses came in at CNY 44.8 million, up 16.8%, primarily due to business growth. Selling and marketing expenses grew 15% to CNY 493.2 million, as we enhanced our efforts to attract new consumers and retain existing customers. General and administrative expenses rose 50.7% to CNY 60.6 million, primarily due to higher salary and benefits expenses.

R&D expenses more than doubled, increasing 104.5% to CNY 76.1 million, primarily due to intensified research and development efforts and the expansion of R&D personnel to enforce our leadership position as a technology-driven online insurance distributor. As a result of this strong top-line growth and disciplined cost management, our profitability improved significantly. Net income was CNY 295.1 million, an increase of 122.1% year-over-year, with a net income margin of 30.4%, compared to 19.7% in the same period last year. Non-GAAP adjusted net income rose 103.2% to CNY 312.2 million, representing a non-GAAP net income margin of 32.2%, up from 22.8%. We also maintain our strong cash flow and healthy cash position. Net operating cash inflow was CNY 425.1 million. As of March 31, 2025, our cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, restricted cash, and short-term investments totaled CNY 2.77 billion, compared with CNY 2.34 billion as of December 31, 2024.

In closing, the early momentum we've achieved sets a positive tone for the year ahead. With a solid financial foundation and robust cash reserves, we are well positioned to drive our strategic initiatives and seize new opportunities for a sustainable future growth. Thank you, and I would like now to open the call to Q&A. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will begin the question and answer session now. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your questions to management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your questions in English. One moment for the first question. Our first question comes from the line of Amy Chen from Citi. Please go ahead.

Amy Chen (Analyst)

Hi. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to ask questions. This is Amy from Citi Research. My first question is regarding your first-year premium growth. We noted that you booked quite robust total revenue growth, and we're just wondering how was your sales momentum in the first quarter, and has this momentum continued into the second quarter? The second question I have is that we noted a news reporting that the Shanghai Consumer Council in Shanghai actually raised a few alerts or comments regarding some less appropriate selling behaviors of internet insurance products, and a few brokers were named in this news, including Waterdrop, etc. Has this impacted your sales in the past few weeks, and what kind of measures would you take to ensure full compliance during sales process?

And the third question is regarding your AI model efficiencies, as we noted that the percentage of marketing expenses out of total revenue actually declined year-over-year. But what I'm wondering is that do you expect to see continued efficiency improvements, or eventually there would be a ceiling at some point? Thank you.

Haiyang Wang (CFO)

Thank you, Amy. This is Ray Wang. I'll take the Q&A session. So first question on FYP. As Mr. Fang mentioned in his remarks, our core operational metrics maintained double-digit growth in the first quarter. First-year premiums reached RMB 9.5 billion, up 35.3% year-over-year. Now, we didn't give second-quarter guidance, but we expect a double-digit growth in FYP for the full year of 2025. Next question regarding the issued risk alert. So we are fully aware of the recent risk alert issued by the Shanghai Consumer Council. Now, we have not been named in this report and has had no direct impact on our business. Compliance has always been a top priority for us. We built a full insurance sales management system that follows all regulatory requirements, so covering every step of the sale process.

Our goal is to make sure that consumers' rights are fully respected and protected. In response to the risk alert, we've established and improved our compliance management system and related mechanisms to achieve comprehensive coverage and effective control of the associated risks. Additionally, and lastly, we will continue to conduct dynamic monitoring, evaluation, and optimization, iteratively upgrading our products and services to provide consumers with more reassuring and convenient insurance experiences. Your third question regarding AI model efficiency is whether there's going to be a ceiling at some point. The short answer is no. Our engine is composed of a deeply integrated and highly scalable model architecture, networks of interconnected models, and a suite of systems and tools. So in addition to that, every aspect of our operations can be made more efficient leveraging AI. We believe there's still considerable potential for optimization in our engine.

We will continuously iterate the model, build more models, extract more data insights, and further improve the accuracy of the model's predictions. As we mentioned in the earnings release, in the first quarter, we also made a lot of optimization in systems and tools by applying LLMs. We're developing agent applications based on OpenAI Agent SDK released by OpenAI. It's open source, which enables us to quickly build and assemble agent workflows and complete business empowerment, and also, with the recent release of open-source LLMs, we follow up with adopting models such as DeepSeek R1, Qwen 3 Series, Qwen 2.5-VL, and CogV4, so internally, we've deployed multiple locally hosted LLMs and built an internal LLM API platform using LiteLLM, enabling our R&D teams to quickly access and develop with these LLMs.

In the following quarters of this year, we'll also conduct more explorations and implementation in these aspects to enhance the efficiency of our operations as well as our engine. Thanks, Amy.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from Thomas Wang from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Ronald Keung (Analyst)

Thank you. Congrats on the good results. A couple of questions. Firstly, maybe can you give some color on first-quarter take rate and commission rate? And then secondly, we've seen some of the platforms like Meituan and JD that provide social insurance for delivery personnel. Just want to check whether you see any impact from that on your business? Thank you.

Haiyang Wang (CFO)

Thank you, Thomas. So the premium per policy in the first quarter increased because we made some product adjustments. We've always been trying to jointly customize insurance products with insurance carriers, making them more attractive to consumers. In the first quarter of this year, we promoted some products with lower deductibles and better protection. The premiums of these products, as a result, increased marginally as they offer more value to consumers. For the take rate, quarterly fluctuations are not meaningful due to many factors. However, from the perspective of this year, our take rate will remain relatively steady. I would also like to add that since we always focus on optimizing our ROI, balancing growth and profitability. Take rate is only one of the factors among many, such as price per policy, cross-selling, CAC, etc., that we need to consider in tandem.

Now, with respect to CAC and ROI, from our financial performance, it can be seen that we've consistently maintained an ROI for at least over one for at least 11 quarters. In the first quarter of 2025, the proportion of our sales and marketing expenses to revenue was 50.8%, a decrease of 12.8% compared with 63.6% in the same period last year. This reflects efficiency improvement of our engine and the company's strategic goal of continuously pursuing a better ROI. Your last question regarding Meituan and JD providing social insurance for delivery personnel. So we don't see any negative impact from JD or Meituan providing social insurance to their delivery personnel. In fact, we think of it as a positive. What they're offering is government-provided social insurance, while we provide commercial insurance. The two are fundamentally different and complementary.

Our commercial health insurance serves as an upgrade, primarily targeting those with social medical insurance, and for those without social medical insurance coverage, we offer our commercial health insurance for the different terms and pricing. Hence, providing social insurance for delivery personnel is beneficial to our overall business. Social insurance typically covers everyday lower-cost medical needs, like outpatient visits. Our products, by contrast, protect against major risks, serious illness, or accidents, helping individuals and families avoid financial hardship from unexpected high-cost events. What also sets us apart is our ability to provide tailored protection. For example, if the user is a delivery worker frequently on the road or away from home, we may recommend adding coverage for traffic accidents or out-of-town hospitalization to better match their real-world risks and needs.

So overall, we see these developments as helping to raise insurance awareness, and we remain focused on delivering flexible, high-value protection that fills the gaps that social insurance doesn't cover. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for the questions. That concludes the Q&A session. So I'd like to turn the conference back over to Management for any additional closing or comments.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us directly or Piacente Financial Communications. Our contact information for IR in both China and the US can be found in today's press release. Have a great day.