ZTO Express (Cayman) - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sophie Li, Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Sophie Li (Capital Markets Director)

Thank you, Operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. The company's results and the investor relations presentation were released earlier today and are available on the company's IR website at irzto.com. On the call today from ZTO are Mr. Mason Lai, Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer, and Mrs. Yan, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Lai will give a brief overview of the company's business operations and highlights, followed by Mrs. Yan, who will go through the financials and guidance. They will both be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. I remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements made under the SAFE Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Such statements are based on management's current expectations in the current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict, and many of which are beyond the company's control, which may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding this and other risks, uncertainties, and factors is included in the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required under law. It is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Mason Lai. Mr. Lai will read through his prepared remarks in their entirety in Chinese before I translate for him in English.

[Foreign language]

Meisong Lai (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

[Foreign language]

Sophie Li (Capital Markets Director)

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining today's conference call. In the first quarter of 2025, ZTO maintained its industry-leading service quality, delivered a total parcel volume of RMB 8.5 billion, up 19.1% year-over-year, and achieved an adjusted net income of RMB 2.3 billion, which increased 1.6% year-over-year. Our service quality, scale, and profitability continue to lead the industry. In the first quarter of 2025, the express delivery industry grew its parcel volume by 21.6%. However, the proportion of lower value parcels further enlarged, and price competition continued to intensify. In addressing the misalignment between volume growth and revenue expansion, we remained focused on service quality and volume growth, and while rejecting rational pricing practices, we strategically increased our penetration into the low-value parcel segment. On one hand, we continuously improved end-to-end timeliness and lowered unit costs through process standardization and integration.

We were able to lead the way with B2 solidified rent advantages and leverage excellence to further efficiency gains. On the other hand, as a part of the strategy to build long-term competitive advantages, we beefed up efforts to empower our network partners through keeping the policies relatively stable yet urging improvements in last-mile service capabilities and cost competitiveness. Notably, the company has significant progress in developing differentiated products and services. First, ZTO earned greater trust and opportunity to deepen collaboration with e-commerce platforms and enterprise customers through continuously improved service quality and coverage. Retail parcel volume increased 46% year-over-year in the first quarter, with reverse logistics volume surged over 150%. We strengthened brand awareness and customer loyalty. Enhanced product mix brought a $0.12 positive shift in ASP for core express services in the first quarter.

Second, through digitization and accountability metrics, unit transportation and sorting costs decreased by $0.09 year-over-year, demonstrating ZTO's commitment to self-improvement as well as its ability to detect problems and come up with practical solutions effectively. Combining continuous cost efficiency gains and the disciplined SG&A spending, we maintained control over profitability amid intense competition. Entering the second quarter, the express delivery industry kept a high growth momentum, yet the price competition further intensified. Despite heated competitive landscape, we remained committed to strategic goals we set at the beginning of this year, that is, uphold high quality, outpace industry average volume growth, and attain a reasonable level of profit. These specific initiatives and measures include the following four aspects. First, enhance effectiveness of network policy by promoting cross-regional collaboration and resource allocation from end to end.

Set targets that are clear and aligned with market dynamics as well as tailor-made to include performance-specific incentive mechanisms. Under the principles of fairness, transparency, and uniformity, we will adopt a tiered approach to specifically unlock volume potential by both new and existing customers, fostering a productive model that combs passive volume, profit, and stability. Second, strengthen last-mile capabilities and profitabilities by layering or delayering partner network structure where appropriate, advancing the build-out of network partners, sorting capability, and efficiencies. Furthering initiatives such as establishment of direct linkage between outlets and last-mile posts, offering sufficient profit share to incentivize couriers to service retail parcels, and integrating commercial opportunities from local living. These efforts aim to reduce last-mile costs, increase retail parcel penetration, and enrich income diversification for network partners, all of which aims to drive growth in earnings for both outlet operators and couriers.

Third, continuously optimize revenue mix by meeting the quality demands by e-commerce platforms and enterprise clients, refining differentiated e-commerce logistics products and supply chain management capabilities, enhancing brand recognition and customer perception. Last but not the least, maximize resource utilization through systematic and scientific resource planning, procurement, and deployment, activate underutilized resources, optimize route planning and load rates through digitization and data analytics, and establishment of a lifecycle management framework to unlock potential for greater operational efficiency. Over the past 23 years, ZTO has evolved from handling less than 100 packages per day to processing over 100 million parcels today with uncompromised industry-leading service quality. We started out with just a dozen or so employees and became a vast and collaborative network of over tens and thousands of partners and constituents.

This transformation reflected the collective wisdom and dedication by everyone under the ZTO brand and the embodiment of hope and trust by partners and customers, as well as desire and expectations from the country and society. In response to today's white-hot competition and the structural challenges in volume compensation, ZTO's strategic priority is to solidify our leadership in quality and scale while achieving a reasonable level of profit. We believe the shift in competitive landscape is accelerating. ZTO will adhere to our healthy and sustainable growth principle, reinforce our shared success philosophy, embrace data plus experience-driven innovation, and fulfill our social responsibility and create value. Remain grounded in the present now. We anchor ourselves with foundational work and the tasks at hand. Inspired for future prospects, we proactively plan and fortify strategic long-lasting moats.

Being practical and progressive, we aim to build an enduring enterprise that will strive for generations to come. Next, let's welcome our CFO, Ms. Yan, to present the financials results and outlook.

Huiping Yan (CFO)

Thank you, Chairman Lai, and thank you, Sophie. Hello to everyone on the call. As I go through our financials, please note that unless specifically mentioned, all numbers quoted are in RMB, and percentage changes refer to year-over-year comparison. Detailed information on our financial performance, unit economics, and cash flow are posted on our website, and I'll go through some of the highlights here. In the first quarter, we adhered to the principle of profitable growth and continued to improve the quality of services and customer satisfaction. Our parcel volume grew 19.1% to reach RMB 8.5 billion, and we achieved RMB 2.3 billion adjusted net income, which increased 1.6%. Total revenue increased 9.4% to RMB 10.9 billion for the first quarter. ASP for our core express delivery business decreased 7.8% or RMB 0.11 given intensified competition.

The $0.06 impact of decrease in average weight per parcel and $0.16 in incremental volume incentives were partially offset by the $0.12 positive mix shift from increased proportion of KA volume. Total cost of revenue was RMB 8.2 billion, which increased 17.9%. Overall unit cost for the core express delivery business remained flat at $0.94. Combined unit cost of sorting and transportation decreased $0.09 for the quarter, benefiting from economies of scale and various cost productivity gain initiatives. Specifically, unit cost of line-haul transportation decreased 13.2% to $0.41, driven by more effective route planning in conjunction with improvements in fleet operations. Unit sorting cost decreased 10.4% to $0.27, benefiting from improvements in automation and labor efficiency.

Other costs of revenue included KA-related pickup and delivery fulfillment costs paid to our network partners, and on a total volume denominator basis, it increased $0.10, which was in line with KA volume increases. Gross profit decreased 10.4% to RMB 2.7 billion, and gross profit margin rate decreased 5.4 points to 24.7%. SG&A, excluding SBC, decreased 13.5% to RMB 517 million. SG&A expenses, excluding SBC, as a percentage of revenue decreased to 4.7%, reflecting strong corporate cost efficiency. Income from operations increased 6.1% to RMB 2.4 billion, and associated margin rate decreased 0.7 points to 22.1%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 0.7% to RMB 3.7 billion, and operating cash flow was RMB 2.4 billion for the quarter, which increased 16.3%. Capital expenditure for Q1 totaled RMB 2 billion, and we anticipate our annual CapEx in 2025 to be between RMB 5.5 billion-6 billion. Now, moving on to business outlook.

Based on our assessment of today's market conditions and business plan performance outlook, we are reiterating our 2025 full-year parcel volume guidance of 40.8-42.2 billion, which equates to a 20%-24% increase year-over-year. These estimates represent management's current and preliminary views, which are subject to change. Now, this concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We ask that you limit yourself to two questions. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Ronald Keung (Managing Director)

[Foreign language]

Thank you, management, for taking my question. The first is want to hear about the competition, particularly into the second quarter, given our target, which is to still grow faster than the industry volumes, seeing that the first quarter, I think, we were slightly slower than the industry. Want to hear how much of, investments are we willing to make and take, to achieve this volume target, and what will be the implications to absolute profit, for the remainder of the year. Second is we've seen a very good growth for your retail parcels, and also reverse logistics. Want to hear the scale of this business and some of the main targets for this business. Thank you.

Meisong Lai (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

[Foreign language]

Huiping Yan (CFO)

Thank you for your question, and I will translate for Chairman's answer. First of all, our goal to achieve our volume growth in this is still consistent with our strategy, ensuring quality of services and focusing on volume leadership and expanding that leadership while achieving reasonable level of profit. With the most recent performance, particularly in our first quarter, while we maintained overall structure of the network policies to be stable, we specifically introduced the existing volume versus incremental volume policies to incentivize our network partners. On an overall result basis, we have narrowed the gap between our volume growth to industry average. Certainly there's still a gap, and then we intend to continue to narrow that because our overall annual strategy remains and our goal or our guidance for the total year is still staying as we reiterated our guidance.

For the second part of the question, we have focused on upgrading our revenue structure and particularly achieved great results as associated with the retail parcel and particularly reverse logistics parcels. In the first quarter, our daily parcel volume averaged around 6 million. This is a year-over-year increase of 45%, which is significantly outpacing the overall market growth. Among these, we have the reverse logistics exceeded daily volume of 3.5 million and a year-over-year growth over 150%. These are our continued focus as we deepen our cooperation with major e-commerce platforms, which are also expanding their reverse logistics operations so that we are focusing on measures such as reversing transportation capacity. We train our network partners to be more efficient in meeting the quality requirements and implementing incentive policies to ensure service upgrades and expand the operating region's coverage.

As of late, we are looking at our parcel volume increasing even more significantly, reaching towards 8 million or even at peak days over 10 million parcels a day. In connection with the competition, the reverse parcels per unit price also sustained pressure. However, the reverse logistics services has a high barrier for entrance. ZTO's early mover effort, as well as our focus and deep relationship that's built with the platforms, will allow us to continue to outpace the rest because everybody else, our peers, are also focusing on this area. We hope to continue to improve the capacity as well as responsiveness to on two-door delivery and two-door pickup to help our couriers in servicing our customers properly.

As you are aware, improvements of our network partner as well as our couriers' earnings through increasing their proportion of retail parcel to total delivery or e-commerce parcel, their earnings will significantly improve, and that adds to the stability of our overall network. Ronald, I hope these answers your question.

Meisong Lai (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

[Foreign language]

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Chinmai San with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Huiping Yan (CFO)

[Foreign language]. Thank you, Lai Zong, Enzo, and Sophie for taking my question. I have two questions. The first question is about unit revenue and the cost. On the unit revenue side, we have seen that in the first quarter, the volume incentives went to around $0.16. This was higher than about $0.04 in the first quarter of last year and $0.02 for the full year of last year. Going forward, how should we forecast the unit volume incentives going forward for the full year. On the unit cost side, we see that in the first quarter, if we exclude the impact from KA, the unit cost reduction seems to be more significant than we anticipated at the beginning of the year.

Taking into consideration the first quarter performance and also it seems like the fuel prices are staying relatively low this year. Do we have any updated forecast in terms of unit cost reduction for the full year? My second question is about AI. We know that ZTO has been very proactively exploring the application of AI into its management and operations. Maybe can you update us if there is any progress with AI's application into business year to date? Going forward, how do you see the potential impact from AI's application, the merge of AI with our business, the impact from that front in terms of our competitive edge versus peers and in terms of earnings performance? Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Because we've lost connection with our speakers. They joined back in.

Yep. So we will continue in Chinmai's question

Meisong Lai (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

. 他他是姓什么。

Huiping Yan (CFO)

Can you hear us, operator?

Operator (participant)

Yes, you're live and coming in.

Yes, we can hear you.

Meisong Lai (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

[Foreign language]

Huiping Yan (CFO)

Thank you for your question. The first question relates to our unit revenue and cost. The SPA decline largely attributes to two aspects of the Q1 market environment. One is the competition really reached a white-hot stage. The pricing at the front end is continuously sustained pressure from competition. Two, the proportion of lower weight or small parcels continues to increase. Both of these give rise to the necessity of, first of all, increased incentives to meet the competition, some of which are specifically targeted to ZTO. Two, we do have the positive impact from the reverse and KA volume that is growing significantly and outpacing the total market. That contributed about $0.12 to offset the volume incentives and the weight per parcel decline. Going forward, we continue to emphasize on the fact that volume is important.

Certainly, it needs to be supported by high quality of services. Balanced approach continues to be our theme. When necessary, the volume will be the prioritized focus. With high quality of services, the price and the volume will be adjusted accordingly based on the market condition and competitive situations in specific markets. That is our intention to go forward. Again, in overall for your first question relating to revenue or per parcel unit revenue, the pricing is largely driven by competition. On the cost side, we have continued to move forward on our cost efficiency gain initiatives. In the first quarter, the parcel per unit transportation cost decreased by $0.06 and sorting decreased by $0.03. These cost reductions were both driven by economy of scale from the growth in the business volume.

As I mentioned earlier, decline weight and continued cost cutting helped in a way to improve our operating efficiency measures. Specifically, we refined our management of the operating process, continued to strengthen standardization of each segment throughout the whole process. We also scientifically set cost standards as a benchmark, utilizing information technology tools to track and compare data in real time, which allows us to detect anomalies more promptly and pinpoint optimization methodologies or solutions more accurately. Second, we also optimized compensation structure. We increased the proportion of performance-based pay in our wage structure, linking incentives to operational efficiency, task complexity, and workload, thereby motivating employees to work more proactively and more efficiently. Third, we set responsibilities in a much more granular level.

We have paired up drivers to specific vehicles and leveraged a parcel tracing system to locate operational along operational process issues or problems that arise. This ensures that responsibility is assigned to each position with clear reward and reprimand mechanism to ensure standardized operations at every step to the extent possible. In the future, we will continue to upgrade and leverage technology tools to transition from reactive to active management and achieving more precise and proactive control of the entire process quality. At the same time, we will promote further use of smart technology equipped equipment to reduce dependency on manual labor and further expand cost reduction potential in the transit process.

Additionally, we will place greater focus on optimizing costs across the entire production chain by enhancing outlet infrastructure and strengthening the direct linkage between outlets and last mile post, which will help further reduce delivery or pickup costs throughout the entire process at the outlet level. The next question relates to our AI application in our business operations. AI has been widely applied in multiple scenarios at ZTO. For example, in our sorting operation, machine vision technology has effectively reduced sorting errors. In our route planning as another example, our monitoring technology and advanced algorithm have optimized delivery route planning.

In order allocation process, our four-segment barcode recognition capability is automatically generating a much more granular level of delivery directions and helps us to launch a larger knowledge-based model, allowing not only our employees to quickly identify work inquiries or guidelines, as well as the network couriers to more efficiently plan their delivery route so that their service capacity and capability will be freed up to further focus on retail parcels. Looking ahead, we'll continue to actively explore the application of artificial intelligence in last mile delivery, autonomous vehicles, and other areas to continuously, at the right pace, match technology with the operational upgrade and improvements so that we will continue to harvest benefits from ever-improving technological advancements. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Amy Han with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Amy Han (Head of Asia North and Asia South Client Onboarding Operations)

[Foreign language]

Let me translate for myself. So the first question is about cost. So what is our progress in the direct linkage in the first quarter, and how large can the direct linkage or let's say the whole value chain cost optimization contribute to our unit cost cuts in the franchise site and also in the whole value chain this year? And the second question is related to the parcel volume growth in the market competition. So the June 18th shopping festival is approaching. What is our expectation on the parcel volume for the shopping festival of the volume growth, and will the price competition be some ease in the first six seasons? Because the price competition came earlier and more intense in this year, what is our view on the room for further ASP drop for the industry?

Meisong Lai (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

[Foreign language]

Huiping Yan (CFO)

Thank you very much for your question. First of all, on our direct linkage from outlet to the last mile post, a little bit of progress. This year we have focused on optimizing outlet layouts and promoting direct sorting and direct delivery to increase the proportion of end-to-end direct linkage. Now, this is a critical mission for our overall business focus. The goal is to clearly reduce the last mile delivery cost and increase the outlet's earning. Our goal of 40.8-40.2 billion total year annual volume would translate into about RMB 4 billion of additional cost savings and earning improvements for the network partner at the outlet level. For example, the work that we put in mostly relates to introducing sorting equipment to help improve the process efficiency of our outlets.

On average, we have installed a certain equipment that will automate the sortation work done by the outlets. Typically, that single machine can sort 8,000-9,000 packages per operation timeframe. For those outlets that have at least 30,000 packages per day, they are suitable for installing these equipment. To give you some specific examples, these will help reduce the sorting cost, and based on the current situation of $0.02 for the location fixed cost is about $0.03. If you bring the package from our super sorting center to the outlets, the transportation cost will be about $0.05. This together, $0.10 saving, equates to the 4 billion that I referred to earlier.

This process of establishing direct linkage is aimed at not to our profit statement, but to our network partners to ensure their ability to improve efficiency, reduce cost, and secure or solidify the network stability. Because as you know, as competition heats up and into today's white hot, in today's white hot condition, it becomes ever so important to maintain trust, hope, and belief of the network partners. Our strategy is very clear as the entire industry sustains pressure from the profit, even though volumes are growing as a total, yet the front-end pricing decreasing and the proportion of small and light parcels continue to increase. Everybody, including ZTO, everybody in the industry are feeling the pinch, and as you might be able to see from everybody's earnings announcement.

We are focusing on ensuring the connectivity between the super sorting center to outlets to the network couriers are properly set so that the interests are balanced and aligned. The division of duty as well as the rewards are suited for today's competitive environment because without a stable network, we have no future to speak of. On that, our goal being reiterated for the full year as it draws near to the second half of the year, we would be continuing to monitor the market, be flexible and disciplined in our pricing practice, and support our network partners in their stability as well as long-term trust and belief so that we can all work together to bring in, after the storm, normalized market growth in the long run.

Amy Han (Head of Asia North and Asia South Client Onboarding Operations)

[Foreign language]

Operator (participant)

This concludes our question and answer session.

I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Sophie Li (Capital Markets Director)

Thank you, everybody, again for joining today's call. As we mentioned, we continue to focus on being our best and setting our sights on, of course, the competition at hand, as well as at the same time allocating necessary resources to build strong momentum in narrowing the gap to the industry growth in volume, as well as building for a stronger foundation for the future of our business. We welcome your question and discussions with us after today's call, and look forward to speaking to you all.

Operator (participant)

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.