Zoomcar Holdings - Earnings Call - Q3 24/25

Transcript

Vivian Tong (Head of Investor Relations)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. Welcome to Zoomcar's Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Earnings Results Call. My name is Vivian Tong, Head of Investor Relations of Zoomcar, and I shall be coordinating today's session. Joining me today are Chief Executive Officer Hiroshi Nishijima and Chief Financial Officer Sachin Gupta. During this presentation, we will make forward-looking statements concerning upcoming events and our expectations regarding the company's business and financial performance. Each time we do, we will try to identify these statements with words such as expect, believe, anticipate, or other words that identify potential events. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those stated in the forward-looking statements.

Please consider the forward-looking statements contained in the earnings press release issued this morning on February 14, 2025, and stated during this conference call, as well as the risk factors and uncertainties described in our annual and quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During our presentation, we may discuss or disclose non-GAAP measures. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to replace the presentation of our financial results in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The presentation of non-GAAP information is intended instead to provide additional information to investors to facilitate the comparison of past and present results. Any forward-looking statements we make today are based on assumptions which are believed to be reasonable as of today. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of future events. I will now hand the call over to Hiroshi to provide his remarks.

Hiroshi Nishijima (CEO)

Thank you, Vivian. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. I'm excited to share that Zoomcar has been able to achieve another quarter of solid results for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024. During this quarter, we remained focused on delivering a high-quality customer experience for our guests and hosts, and we saw continued growth on a year-over-year basis in booking of 19%. Demand remained strong while we concentrated our efforts on increasing supply organically and through partnerships with supply partners. These improvements have led to an increase in the number of hosts and in host retention rate, reflecting the strengths of the Zoomcar platform and brand that we continue to develop. We continue to focus on optimizing our cost structure and improving the profitability of the business while driving booking growth.

This quarter, we saw another increase in contribution profit, marking this the fifth consecutive quarter of positive contribution profit. Lastly, we continue to make progress in restructuring of the debt on our balance sheet, which will ultimately reduce the cash burden of the business. We appreciate that some of the audience may be learning about Zoomcar for the first time. Let me take you through a few slides for a brief introduction of the business and to discuss the key problems we are solving for in India. Zoomcar is an app that supports India's leading marketplace for car sharing. The app connects hosts who provide access to their vehicles to guests who choose from a selection of cars for use at affordable prices, all of which promote a sustainable smart transportation solution. We are headquartered in Bangalore and have been in existence for more than 10 years.

The company has 143 employees, of which the majority are engineering, design, and product-related staff. We host 10 million guests, and there are over 25,000 cars on our platform. We are well recognized in our home market and have over 90% brand awareness among car sharing and rental car users. What are the major problems that hosts and guests face, and how does Zoomcar offer a solution? For hosts, vehicle ownership is highly expensive in India, while vehicles are underutilized. This is the problem. Our marketplace provides hosts an opportunity to make side income from vehicles, which would have otherwise been sitting idle. How do hosts make money? Let's say a host has a full-time job, and his monthly income for the full-time job is approximately $1,000. By listing a compact SUV, he or she can earn $150-$200 net of loan repayment, maintenance costs, and insurance.

That is 15%-20% extra income. This is a good side income, and many hosts consider adding a second vehicle to further increase their side income. We have hosts who obtain financing for multiple vehicles upwards of, say, 15 plus, where Zoomcar is their main income source as a professional host. Through these examples, you can see how Zoomcar enables entrepreneurs to start their own car sharing business. Moving to the guest side, there are two problem statements. One, buying a car is still very expensive in India. The most popular vehicle is the Suzuki Swift, which costs over $10,000. This is significant for the average consumer who earns around $2,700 per year. As a guest, I may not be able to afford my own car; however, I may still want to occasionally rent a vehicle and go on holiday with my friends and family.

The second problem, people still require vehicles to travel from one city to another and need access to cars during the duration of the trip, whether it is for personal or business-related travel. I'm personally very empathetic to these problems. Unlike in the U.S., where car ownership is high, owning a vehicle is very aspirational in India. This is why we are excited to help our consumers by improving access to mobility in India through our platform. How big is the scale of these programs? India has a population of 1.4 billion people, of which the majority is working age. Only one in 10 households is able to afford vehicles, as the most popular car model costs four times of GDP per capita. Accessibility to mobility needs to be significantly improved. We believe there is a massive opportunity for Zoomcar.

Digital penetration is quite high, where more than 1 billion mobile phones are connected to the internet. Importantly, digital wallets are the predominant way to transact in India. You can even buy coconuts or bananas on the street using your mobile. We believe Zoomcar is well positioned in India, where there exists a large market for car sharing on the digital platform, where penetration today is still very low and demand for vehicles is high. With this overview of the business, let me dive deeper into some of these key highlights from this quarter's results. The customer experience has been a key priority as it impacts greatly whether a guest books another Zoomcar as well as a host's decision to remain on our platform.

We are taking several initiatives to improve the customer experience, including doubling customer support capacity, which is supported by GenAI tools, machine learning-based dynamic pricing, and loyalty points became more attractive for repeat users, increasing supply with fleet partners with nearly 10% of high-quality cars provided by one large fleet operator and Zoomcar's fulfillment centers across four main cities. These developments have led to improving metrics on our platform, such as the percentage of repeat users doubling from 6% at the end of the quarter ended September 30, 2024, to 12% at the end of the quarter ended December 31st, 2024. In addition, we saw a continued increase in the number of hosts as well as an improvement in high-quality host retention, which increased from 11% in fiscal Q2 to 30% by the end of the fiscal Q3, 2024. We achieved another record quarter of contribution profit.

The improvement in guest and host customer experience has also allowed us to continue optimizing costs related to marketing incentives and discounts. Combined with continuous improvement in operational efficiencies and smarter machine learning-based dynamic pricing, we continue to optimize our cost base, which led to another increase in the quarter of contribution profit. I will now hand it over to Sachin to provide an update on the company's fundraising and to discuss the financials in greater detail.

Sachin Gupta (CFO)

Thank you, Hiroshi. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call today. I would like to share an update on the fundraising process. Since last quarter's earnings call, we have closed a combined $15 million between the months of November and December 2024. In addition, we closed another round of funding totaling $3 million on January 31st, 2025. We will continue to raise additional funds during fiscal quarter four to support the needs of the business. These funds will primarily be used to support the growth of our operations and, in part, to pay down the restructured debts. In terms of debts on the balance sheet, we are in discussion with our debt partners to restructure the existing debt, which we believe will help us in reducing the near-term cash and funding needs and improve the sustainability of our balance sheet.

Let's take a look at our operational and financial measures. The fiscal quarter marked a solid quarter of performance as exhibited in our operational and financial measures on this page. The numbers presented here are for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, as compared to the quarter ending December 31, 2023, unless otherwise mentioned. The number of bookings grew by 19% to 103,599 bookings in quarter three over the prior year period. Gross booking value remained flat, and revenue increased by 1%, following a similar pattern to the last quarter, whereby we are seeing more frequent but shorter-duration bookings relative to the prior year period.

We will continue to focus on driving a higher frequency of the guest bookings over the immediate revenue growth, as we are prioritizing the growth of repeat guests and encouraging repeat booking behavior, which we believe will ultimately add value to our business in the longer run. The number of active high-quality cars, which we define as cars with 4.5 plus rated out of five, increased from 5,830-7,247. The average guest trip rating continued to improve from 4.16 during the quarter ended March 31, 2024, to 4.70 during the quarter ended December 31, 2024. All of this is driven by our efforts to improve the customer experience, building various in-app features and the use of AI to improve the in-app experience for both guests and the host. As mentioned earlier, revenue increased by 1% from $2.42 million to about $2.45 million.

Contribution profit increased significantly from $0.21 million to about $1.28 million due to a reduction in marketing costs, incentives, and other cost improvement projects. This marks our fifth consecutive quarter of positive contribution profits. Just to give you a perspective, on a per-booking basis, our contribution profit increased from $2.4 per booking during the quarter ended December 31st, 2023, to $12.39 per booking during the quarter ended December 31, 2024, which also represents a significant growth in contribution margin from 9% to 52% as a percentage of revenue year over year. Our adjusted EBITDA loss improved from $10.17 million to a loss of $3.15 million, driven by company-wide cost optimization efforts, improvement in customer experience, which drove the improved retention metrics for both hosts and guests, thereby reducing our requirement to spend on host incentives, discounts, and overall performance marketing.

Loss from operations also improved from $11.68 million to a loss of $3.24 million due to all of the aforementioned reasons. Our contribution we have presented in the subsequent slides, which is slide number 13 and 14, we have presented two non-GAAP measures, contribution margin and adjusted EBITDA, which we believe are important and supplemental to the GAAP measures. These slides provide a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the GAAP numbers reported in our to be reported in our Form 10-Q. These reconciliations will also be part of the Form 10-Q filed with Securities and Exchange Commission to be filed later today after the market close, and will also be and is also part of the press release made earlier in the day today. I would now hand over the call to Vivian for the Q&A session.

Vivian Tong (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Sachin. We will now move on to the Q&A portion of the call. Thank you to those who have submitted questions prior to today's call. The first question for today's session is, can you please provide more details about the fundraising process and debt restructuring?

Sachin Gupta (CFO)

Sure. Let me take that question. In November 2024 and December 2024, we raised $9.15 million and $5.5 million, respectively, for a combined raise of $15 million. Earlier this month, or end of January, we raised an additional $3 million of capital. We will opportunistically continue to raise additional capital this quarter. The funds raised so far and intended to be raised in future will primarily be used to fund the growth initiatives of the business, and part of the fund will also be used to pay down the restructured debt. Additionally, what we are doing is we are exploring various options with our debt partners to restructure the current debt on the balance sheet. This may include, for example, adjusting the terms of the debt to a longer paydown schedule, settling the debt via issuance of equity, or settling in cash against substantial debt forgiveness.

We believe this is an important exercise which will reduce the burden on the balance sheet, reduce the interest expense, and reduce the burden on the funds being raised in the shorter term. We believe our funds can then be better utilized to support the growth of the operations, benefiting the business and increasing the shareholders' value in the longer run.

Vivian Tong (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Sachin. The next question is, please provide us with an update on your NASDAQ listing status.

Sachin Gupta (CFO)

Sure. We have been diligently working to regain the compliance with NASDAQ applicable rules and are making significant progress. Earlier this week, we received a notification from NASDAQ allowing us to transition to NASDAQ Capital Markets by February 19th, 2025, and further granting us extension to regain compliance with the outstanding deficiency, reflecting the efforts we have made so far and the comprehensive plan in place to restore our compliance. The company is fully committed to addressing the remaining deficiency and will continue to exert our best efforts in the weeks ahead.

Vivian Tong (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Sachin. The last question is, what are management's near-term priorities for the business?

Hiroshi Nishijima (CEO)

I will take this question. Ultimately, we are prioritizing growth of the business by improving the customer experience for both hosts and guests, and we have many initiatives in place to support this. In addition, we expect this to also improve the cash flows of the business through cost optimization projects as well as the restructuring of the debt on our balance sheet, which Sachin discussed earlier. Allow me to provide more details. Operationally, we'll prioritize two things. One, increase supply, and two, provide a more seamless experience for our guests and hosts. We will continue to increase supply as this is a growth driver for us. By having more vehicles on our platform, it provides guests with more vehicle options in a given radius and with shorter distances. It makes it more convenient for pickups as well.

We'll continue to improve the customer experience, providing a more seamless experience for guests and hosts that are on our platform. Both of these factors will drive the growth of our business. Greater customer experience also has a positive impact on the financials, which are essentially greater bookings volume and revenue as well as cost savings. We have been optimizing our cost structure, and a big factor is being able to optimize marketing and incentives without impacting the growth of host retention. We believe we can continue to reduce costs to eventually reach a positive cash flow position. Our core contribution margin is strong, over 50%, and it continues to improve over time.

Vivian Tong (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Hiroshi. This now concludes Zoomcar's Fiscal Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. For more information, please refer to our Fiscal Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Press Release and other materials found on our Investor Relations website. You may also email us at [email protected] for any further questions. Thank you for your participation today. You may now disconnect.