Yiren Digital - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 4

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Yiren Digital Second Quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity for questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Keyao He, our Officer of Variety. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Speaker 0

Thank you, our speaker. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Today's call features the presentation of our Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Yiren Digital, our CEO, Mr. Ning Tang, and our CFO, Mr. William Hui, who will be on the Q&A session after the prepared remarks. Before beginning, we'd like to remind you that discussions during this call contain forward-looking statements, meaning analytics. Have a provision of the U.S. Credit Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements accept the risks, uncertainties, and factors that can come as a result of the different materialism this contains in any such statements. Certain information regarding future risks, uncertainties, or factors is included in our filings for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not admit any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as required under relevant law.

During the call, we will be referring to certain managed GAAP financial measures and some medical measures to review and assess our operating performance. These managed GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in an accusation or as a substitute for the managed information prepared and presented in accordance with the U.S. GAAP. For information about this managed GAAP financial measure and recommendations to GAAP measures, please refer to our enterprise lead. I will now pass it to Ning for opening remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you all for joining our earnings conference call today. We are pleased to report another strong quarter, driven by the continued success of our AI-powered strategy. Our advanced AI capabilities have delivered quantifiable results, more personalized customer engagement, enhanced risk management with predictable analytics and fraud detection, and improving service efficiency with compliant tailored solutions. This robust AI foundation enables us to innovate faster, exceed customer expectations, and optimize operational performance. Our growth is further fueled by three strategic priorities: AI innovation, geographic expansion, and operational excellence. These initiatives are accelerating momentum across our core business while unlocking new opportunities through our proprietary AI platform. By executing on this strategy, we are well positioned to sustain long-term success. Here are some of our successes. Our AI sales agent executes over 1,700 personalized marketing tasks daily, which results in a higher customer response rate.

The AI capital manager completes the capital deployment optimization process in 10 minutes versus one week by six employees in the past. The AI risk manager detects and blocks over 30,000 high-risk identity documents daily, resulting in the prevention of over RMB 180 million of loss from fraud annually. Most of our AI agents are monitored 24/7 by our supervisor AI model for quality checks and the system integrity. Before we get into details of our operating results, I would like to address the recent loan facilitation regulation announcement. While the full impact on industry take rates and business operations is yet to be seen until the regulations take effect on October 1, we have noticed that credit risk and capital costs have increased slightly. We believe the more regulated environment and the market conditions will trigger industry consolidation as smaller platforms exit the market and heighten the entry barrier.

This will benefit established platforms like us. We are exploring different risk-sharing models with our partners to mitigate potentially higher risk. Now, let me go through our business highlights for this quarter. First, on our financial services business, which accounts for over 90% of our revenue in the second quarter of 2025, loan volume facilitated reached RMB 20.3 billion in Q2, representing a 34% increase quarter over quarter and a 57% growth year over year. The robust growth is mainly driven by increasing repeat borrowing, which rose to 77% in the second quarter of this year, up 3 percentage points from the prior quarter and 21 percentage points from the same period last year.

As we reiterated previously, driving up repeat borrowing rate and improving the long-term trust and stickiness among our higher-quality borrowers are our key focus as we have notably upgraded our customer base by attracting those with stronger repayment capabilities and better credit performance. AI innovation and application have played a pivotal role in driving our key objectives of boosting repeat borrowing rates and elevating service quality. In Q2 2025, we launched AI Marketing System 2.0, extensively personalizing marketing content using generative AI. By the end of June, this system was conducting personalized marketing for over 600,000 users daily using AI-generated outreach strategies, 30 times the output of the 1.0 version in the prior quarter. This expansion facilitated more meaningful and efficient interactions, with the average number of customer engagement runs ranging from 7.1 in Q1 to 8.3 in Q2, further enhancing sales conversion rates.

Additionally, intention recognition accuracy surpassed 80%, enabling more precise and effective engagements. On the quality assurance front, our AI-powered inspection system underwent critical algorithm upgrades, now covering the entire telemarketing segment. It performs real-time quality checks on over 2 million sales records daily, with accuracy jumping from 75% to 92%. This advancement has increased the labor productivity by 50% while ensuring consistently high service standards. Now, let's turn to the funding aspect. In Q2 2025, our funding costs declined by 80 basis points year over year, though with a slight quarter-over-quarter increase. While new regulations in the loan facilitation business have introduced a sector-wide fluctuation in funding supply, we anticipate manageable capital costs for the remainder of the year, supported by our strong liquidity management.

Regarding our asset quality, our overall risk performance remained stable quarter over quarter, though we did see some early delinquency increase in June, but the delinquency improved in July as we tightened our credit measures. As of June 30, our 1 to 30-day delinquency rate was 1.7%, up 10 basis points from the previous quarter. Meanwhile, our 31 to 60-day and the 61 to 90-day delinquency rates actually improved, coming in at 1.1% and 1.0% respectively. That's 10 and 20 basis points lower than where we were at the end of the first quarter. We have made substantial progress in strengthening our risk management framework. Recognizing industry-wide trends in the first half of this year, we overhauled our risk rating system, implementing a more granular eight-level classification model with more strict assessment criteria. Under this enhanced system, we selectively switched the system to decline lowest tier borrowing application.

This upgrade has effectively contained the delinquency increase in May and June and reversed the trend in July. We will continue to monitor the market conditions to maintain our loan portfolio performance. Speaking of our asset quality management, AI has also played a pivotal role, particularly in loan collection. In the second half of the second quarter of 2025, our AI collection robots handled 81% of D1 delinquency cases and started to cover D31 to 60 cases in the domestic market. This automation realized average labor cost savings of RMB 2.7 million per month, a 42% increase from first quarter's monthly average of RMB 1.9 million savings. Besides cost saving, our customer experience improved substantially, with borrower complaint rate decreasing by a further 80% quarter-over-quarter. Now, let's look at our overseas business, which continues to demonstrate strong momentum.

In the second quarter of 2025, our loan volume in the Philippines reached nearly RMB 200 million. We are presenting a 54% growth compared to the first quarter of 2025. Our Indonesia pilot operation has begun and is expected to accelerate growth in Q4 this year and in 2026, following continued refinements to its data models. AI remains central to our strategy. Beyond our current applications, we are exploring the development of a fully autonomous AI agent platform that will integrate and automate the entire operational process, spanning marketing, customer service, risk control, compliance, and quality assurance. Once implemented, this platform is expected to significantly enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs. We look forward to sharing more exciting developments in the near future. Moreover, our insurance brokerage business showed a gradual recovery, with total premiums reaching approximately RMB 850 million in the quarter, a 6% increase quarter-over-quarter.

Meanwhile, our digital insurance business has leveraged our existing customer acquisition channels to sell digital insurance products. It achieved 103% quarter-over-quarter growth in digital insurance gross premiums, reaching RMB 8.3 million in Q2 this year. This demonstrates the adaptability of our customer acquisition algorithm and infrastructure for monetization from a new category. Regarding our consumption and lifestyle service, as communicated in Q1, we decided to wind down this segment to concentrate on our core financial services. To better reflect this strategic priority and ensure more clear financial reporting, we have refined our segment revenue categorization in this quarter's financials. William will provide further details on these adjustments during his remarks. Additionally, we are pleased to announce another round of cash dividends.

Under our current semi-annual dividend policy, the company will distribute a cash dividend for the first half of 2025, amounting to $0.22 per American Depositary Share, which is expected to be paid on or about October 15, 2025, to holders of the company's ordinary shares and ADS of record as of the close of business on September 30, 2025, based on Hong Kong Time and New York Time, respectively. In closing, our financial services customer acquisition platform has matured into a powerful monetization engine, as demonstrated by the strong performance of our digital insurance business, which we foresee sustaining its high growth for the next few quarters. By harnessing advanced AI, we've gained deeper insights into customer behavior, boosting conversion rates, extending customer lifetime value, and unlocking monetization opportunities from previously untapped traffic. Despite the regulatory headwind and changing market environment, our business has shown greater resilience.

With that, I'll pass it to William, who will go through the financial performance for this quarter.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Ning. Hello, everyone. I will be walking you through our financial performance for the second quarter this year. Please refer to our earnings release and our IR deck for further details, both available on our website. We are pleased to report a continued strong performance in the second quarter, with the total revenue growing by 10.4% year-over-year to ¥1.65 billion. The growth was mainly driven by 75% revenue growth from the financial services segment, partially offset by declining revenues from the insurance brokerage and the consumption and lifestyle segment, which we decided to scale down. Our net income rebounded to ¥358 million in the second quarter, which represents a 44.5% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 12.7% decrease year-over-year. It reversed our five-quarter declining trend on the net income. In the financial services segment, total loan facilitation volume increased by 57% year-over-year to ¥20.3 billion in the second quarter.

The increase was driven by the strong demand for our small revolving loan product and the growth of repeat borrowing, which accounts for 77% by loan volume in the second quarter this year, up from 56% a year ago. The revenue from this segment increased by 75% year-over-year to ¥1.5 billion in the second quarter. This segment contributes about 90% of the total net revenue of the company. Our loan guarantee services also saw significant growth. The revenue reached ¥317 million in the second quarter, up nearly 3.6 times year-over-year, as we complete almost one full guarantee cycle period and higher amounts of deferred revenue from past few quarters is being recognized as revenue. Because of that, the contribution margin for the entire financial services improved from 9.5% in the second quarter of 2024 to 30.2% in the second quarter of this year.

In the insurance segment, our gross written premium declined by 20% year-over-year to ¥850 million in the second quarter of 2025, primarily due to a regulatory-driven commission rate compression that began in the second half of 2024 for our traditional brokerage fund. However, the gross premium was up 6% compared to the first quarter of this year. The total revenue from the insurance line in Q2 was ¥58 million. In September last year, we launched the digital insurance line using our existing acquisition channels from the financial services segment, with virtually no additional customer acquisition costs. In the second quarter, the gross premium from the digital insurance line was ¥8 million and that represents a 103% growth quarter-over-quarter. We expect this growth momentum will continue in the next few quarters.

One thing to highlight is that the margin for the digital insurance line is much higher than the traditional line because of a lower customer acquisition cost, and it has a much bigger opportunity to scale. We expect the digital line will relieve some of the profit pressure from the decline of the traditional line. On the expense side, sales and marketing expenses in the second quarter increased by 21% year-over-year to ¥345 million, driven by higher loan facilitation volume in the second quarter and the investment in acquiring high-quality borrowers. Research and development expenses grew by 93% year-over-year to ¥108 million. That reflects our increased focus on AI and engineering talent to drive innovation. Origination, servicing, and other operating costs decreased by 35% year-over-year to ¥161 million because of a lower commission cost from the insurance brokerage business and ongoing operational efficiency.

General and administrative expenses for the quarter increased by 15% year-over-year to ¥79 million, primarily due to increasing personnel-related costs to support the growth of the overseas business and improved compliance practice. The allowance for contract assets and receivables and others for the quarter increased by 74% year-over-year to ¥215 million. That is driven by higher loan facilitation volume from our overseas business and the loans funded by our own balance sheet. Provisions for contingent liability this year increased by 38% year-over-year to ¥386 million because of the higher growth of our capital-intensive therapy business. The net income for the second quarter was ¥358 million, or ¥4.11 per share or $0.57 per American Depositary Share. That represents 44% growth from the first quarter of this year and a 12% decrease from the same period last year.

The net margin improved from 16% in the first quarter of this year to 22% for this quarter. The net cash flow from our operation in the second quarter was ¥411 million, and our balance sheets remain robust with the total cash equivalents and restricted cash of ¥4.5 billion. Given our strong cash position, as Ning mentioned, we are pleased to announce that our board has approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.22 per share. This dividend is payable on October 15, 2025, to shareholders of record as of September 30, 2025. This marks our third consecutive semiannual dividend payment, reflecting our strong financial performance and the commitment to delivering value to our shareholders. Looking ahead, we remain cautiously optimistic about our business.

While we anticipate slightly higher volatility in the credit and regulatory risk environment, our more disciplined credit policies have enhanced risk management capabilities and adaptive risk revenue models will position us well in this market environment. Our international business and digital insurance segments are expected to drive more revenues and margin growth in the next few quarters. For the third quarter of 2025, we are projecting revenue to be in the range of RMB 1.4 billion to RMB 1.6 billion, reflecting our disciplined approach to growth and risk management. Thank you very much.

Speaker 0

Thank you, our speaker. We are now open for Q&A.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touch-tone phone. We ask that you please speak up your handset to ask a question. If at any time your question had been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, you may press star and then two. You may need to pick up your handset to register the star keys. We will pause a moment while we wait for the question queue to build. Our first question comes from Bruce Ourin of Black Lab Fund. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Yes, hello, and congratulations on another strong quarter. Crypto assets have risen substantially this quarter. Does Yiren Digital intend to continue to increase crypto investments? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, William, you want to take a crack?

Speaker 3

Go ahead, yeah.

Speaker 2

Okay. Crypto is gaining momentum, and we believe a good part of it represents the future fintech. As a fintech player, we pay close attention to innovation frontiers. We will continue to work on this emerging asset class. Once we have more news to share, we will be happy to announce. I do expect that we will do more in this very important sector. William, you have anything to add?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I just want to add we increased our crypto acquisition in the first quarter of this year, initially for the purpose of just treasury management. As the stablecoins and the other crypto-related businesses in the market have matured, we are exploring different ways of using the crypto or blockchain to support our core business. It's still too early to tell, we are still in an exploration stage right now.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a key part of our strategic discussion and also, yeah, strategic implementation going forward, I believe.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Do you hedge the risks of investing in crypto assets?

Speaker 3

Sorry, do you actually?

Speaker 2

We have a long-term view. We have a long-term view.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 3

I think, okay. All right.

Speaker 1

Do you have anything to add? I'm sorry.

Speaker 3

I'm just saying, I think the simple answer is we do not hedge because it's really, we do not hedge directly on the crypto assets that we have. I think you see in the market that the crypto asset price has been trending up, which is also our long-term view of the crypto price. Also, the reason we are holding on those crypto assets is for the strategic purpose, which we are still exploring. We will update you as we make some progress on that front.

Speaker 1

Okay, thank you very much.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Ladies and gentlemen, just a further reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to press star and then one to place yourself in the question queue. It appears we have no further questions in the question queue. I will now hand over to management for closing remarks.

Speaker 0

Thank you, our speaker. That concludes our early conference call. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our team. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. That concludes this conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect your lines.