Baozun Inc. (BZUN) Q4 2024 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by for Baozun’s Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I will now turn the meeting over to your host for today's call, Ms. Wendy Sun, Senior Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Baozun. Please proceed, Wendy.

Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our fourth quarter 2024 earnings release was distributed earlier before this call and is available on our IR website at ir.baozun.com as well as on PR Newswire services. They have also posted a PowerPoint presentation that accompanies our comments to the same IR website where they are available for your download. On the call today from Baozun, we have Mr. Vincent Qiu, Chairman and CEO, Mr. Junhua Wu, Director and Chief Strategy Officer, Ms. Catherine Zhu, CFO, Mr. Arthur Yu, President of Baozun Ecommerce and Mr. Ken Huang, CFO of Baozun Brand Management. They will all be available to answer your questions during the q&a session that follows. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of The US Securities Act of 1933 as amended, The US Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended and The US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relates 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 to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties or factors is included in the company's filings with the US Securities Exchange and its announcement, notice or other documents published on the website of Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. All information provided in this call is as of the date and is based on assumptions that the company believes to be reasonable as of the date. And the company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required under applicable law. Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. In addition, we may elect to use adjusted in place of non-general accepted accounting principles or non-GAAP in order to reduce oral confusions that may arise from our discussions about financial related to the Gap brand. It is now my pleasure to introduce our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Winston Qui. Winston, go ahead please.

Thank you, Wendy. Hi, everyone, and thank you all for your time. I'm delighted to report that Baozun continues to execute our three year transformation plan with strong momentum and consistent quarterly improvements. In the fourth quarter, Baozun Group achieved an 8% year-over-year revenue growth. Our e-commerce division saw a sustainable substantial 16% increase in non-GAAP operating profits, while BBM narrowed by 20%. On an annual basis, we have met our annual non-GAAP operating profit breakeven target supported by positive operating cash flow and healthy cash balance. Baozun e-commerce has resumed annual top line growth of two years of contraction. To navigate an ever evolving market, we have enhanced our creative content capabilities and leveraged our technologies to help brand partners to capitalize on platform interconnectivity, data intelligence and AI driven efficiencies. By expanding into emerging channels like Douyin, RedNote and WeChat, we achieved a 16% year-over-year increase in online store operations revenue this quarter. Additionally, value added services, including digital marketing and IT solutions, grew by 15% year-over-year. We believe these strengthening fundamentals position BEC well for high quality and sustainable growth. BBM is experiencing accelerated revenue growth and expanding its store footprint. During the quarter, we generated a 17% year-over-year revenue increase. Notably, GAAP offline revenue has grown for the first time since our acquisition. In Tier 2 cities, we have adopted an asset light approach by engaging franchise for store expansion. Strengthened by global and local partnerships, this strategy extends our reach across the broader China market, while minimizing expansion risks. Additionally, Hunter has expanded its presence with new store openings in Malaysia and Shanghai. Each launch attracted significant foot traffic and the media attention, further elevating Hunter's brand presence and appeal. These collective efforts bolster our confidence in sustaining BBM's robust top line momentum. The year 2025 marks a combination of our strategic transformation and sets the stage for future growth. We have strengthened our senior management team to drive this next phase. My Co-Founder, Junhua Wu, has taken a more hands on role as Chief Strategy Officer of Baozun Group, overseeing both BEC and TIC, while Ken Huang continues to excel as CFO of BBM and has now also assumed the role of CEO of Gap China. These two high achievers bring energy and vision to our leadership, fostering a more entrepreneurial and innovative cultures across the globe the group. Now, I will hand the call over to Junhua to share a few words followed by our team who will provide a deeper dive into our financials and the business performance.

Thanks, Vincent, and hello, everyone. I'm excited to share my vision to elevating Baozun e-commerce. As Baozun's Co-Founder and Director, I'm dedicated to leading with an emphasis on profitability and a sustainable growth. Technology is the cornerstone of our success. In today's rapidly evolving digital e-commerce landscape, we are all well equipped to distinguish ourselves as the driving force behind our brand partner sales engine. Our competitive edge lies in enduring partnerships, omni channel expertise and value driven strategies that create lasting impact. Execution requires discipline and a great team. By fostering a culture of ownership and entrepreneurship, we empower our teams to take initiative, drive innovation and make impactful decisions. Baozun's future is profit focused, tech empowered and customer centric. I'm fully committed. Now I'll hand the call over to Catherine to provide financial updates.

Thanks, Junhua, and hello, everyone. Now, let me provide you our fourth quarter and full year of 2024 financial results in more detail. Please turn to slide 3. Baozun Group's total net revenues for the fourth quarter of 2024 increased by 8% year-over-year to RMB 3 billion. Of this, e-commerce revenue grew 6% to RMB 2.5 billion, while brand management revenue grew 17% to RMB 535 million. Breaking down e commerce revenue by business model, services revenue increased by 9% year-over-year to RMB 1.9 billion for the quarter. This growth was primarily driven by a 16% increase in revenue from online store operations and a 15% increase in revenue from digital marketing and IT solutions. Meanwhile, BEC product sales revenue decreased by 4% year-over-year to RMB 572 million, mainly due to the relatively weak performance of appliance category as we prioritized profitability over revenue growth in this category. BBM product sales totaled RMB 535 million for the quarter, reflecting 17% year-over-year growth. This increase was mainly driven by the strong performance of the Gap brand with both online and offline sales achieving healthy growth. Please turn to slide 4. From a profitability perspective, our blended gross margin for product sales at the group level was 30%, while gross profit increased by 5% to RMB 332 million. Breaking this down by our key business lines, gross margin for e-commerce product sales were 10.8% for the quarter compared with 12.4% a year ago. This decrease was mainly due to a change in category mix, but remained relatively stable compared to the previous quarter. Gross margin for BBM was 50.4% compared with 52.9% a year ago. The decrease was mainly due to higher discounts during quarterly GAAP promotions. Now turning to bottom line items, please refer to slide 5. During the quarter, our adjusted income from operations totaled RMB 103 million, an improvement of RMB 28 million, or 37% from a year ago. This included an adjusted operating profit of RMB 137 million from e-commerce segment, an improvement of 16% compared with RMB 118 million in the same period of last year. BBM's adjusted operating loss totaled RMB 34 million, an improvement of 20% compared to RMB 43 million in the same period of last year. Our non-GAAP net income attributable to shareholders for the quarter was RMB 46 million, an improvement of 59% year-over-year from RMB 29 million in the same period of last year. Let's turn to a quick full year summary. The group total revenue was RMB 9.4 billion, an increase of 7% year-over-year, of which e-commerce net revenues were RMB 8.1 billion, an increase of 6% year-over-year, while BBM net revenues were RMB 1.5 billion, an increase of 16% year-over-year. Our adjusted operating income totaled RMB 11 million, an improvement of RMB 34 million compared with adjusted operating loss of RMB 24 million in fiscal year 2023. In addition, we successfully completed our share repurchase program, which was authorized by our Board in January 2024. As of the last over window trading day of January 17, 2025, we repurchased approximately 5.3 ADS through the over market for $14.7 million. This represents approximately 9% of our total shares outstanding at the beginning of the program. As of December 31, 2024, our cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments totaled RMB 2.9 billion compared with RMB 3.1 billion a year ago. Let me now pass the call over to Arthur to update you on BEC, our e-commerce business.

Thank you, Catherine, and hello, everyone. Let me share the key operational achievements of the fourth quarter and how we closed the year. Now please turn to slide 6 for operational highlights. We are glad to report that BEC maintained its momentum in the fourth quarter, achieving a 6% year-over-year increase in total revenues and a 16% improvement in non-GAAP operating profit. More encouraging, our annual e-commerce top line resumed growth, rising 6%. Our growth continues to be driven by strong brand partnerships and category expansion. By the end of 2024, our brand portfolio has expanded to over 490, up from approximately 450 a year ago. This includes around 330 brand partners in online store operations, 340 in digital marketing and IT solutions and 180 in warehousing and logistics. On slide 7, we are pleased to collaborate with our brand partners on end to end solutions with most engaging with us through omni channel approaches in value added services. In store operations alone, omni channel adoption has increased from 44.7% to 48.8%. Our key categories performed well during the quarter. Total apparel service revenue grew by 27% year-over-year, waist sportswear increased by 18%, luxury returning to growth and other apparel achieving an impressive 62% revenue increase. We continue to optimize our service offerings across various channels to help brand partners grow. We also upgraded our business intelligence offering to provide real time visualized data insights across channels, making it easier for brands to track performance. This quarter, we launched Douyin Business Intelligence and by the end of 2024, we were working with over 30 brands on content driven store live streaming. Overall, Douyin maintained triple digit growth during the quarter, contributing 6% of e commerce revenue. In our latest live streaming event for a Spanish fast fashion brand, we hit a peak viewership of 35,000, total paid views of 5 million, and sold out 100% of the featured products. Our efforts were recognized with the Douyin Ecommerce Diamond Brand Service Provider Award, the highest honor at the latest Douyin Commerce Awards in January. On right note, we strengthened our capabilities in content creation, influencer collaboration and data driven marketing. In 2024, we have executed over 50 brand marketing campaigns and 1,000 live stream sessions, with more than 18,000 KOLs in our established network. These initiatives in RedNote enable brand partners to run targeted campaigns and boost their presence in the market. Client satisfaction remains a priority and our efforts are paying off. Over the past three years, our Net Promoter Score, NPS, has steadily improved. In the latest Nielsen survey released this month, our NPS reached to 8.53 in 2024, up from 8.23 last year. Our key accounts also show strong loyalty with a 95% renewal rate. Cost optimization is another focus. Our regional service centers continue to ramp up and as of end of 2024, approximately 2,700 of our staff were located in these centers. We also continued to integrate AI into our service system. During the recent Double eleven, we deployed our iSwipe AI assistant for customer service and the feedback was highly positive. As we cut response time by 13% while improving customer satisfaction and conversion rates. As BEC completes the first phase of its transformation initiated in 2023 and returned to a path of growth. I believe this is the right time for me to pass the baton to Junhua and pursue a career opportunity outside of Baozun. It has been an incredible journey and I'm deeply grateful for the support and collaboration I have received from everyone over the past five years at Baozun. I have full confidence that Baozun will continue to thrive and reach new heights in the years to come. Now I will pass to Ken for an update on BBM.

Please turn to slide eight for additional insights into BBM's progress through Q4. I'm proud to report that we sustained a strong momentum through Q4 2024, delivering a 17% year-over-year sales growth, making one of our strongest performances in recent years. This growth was driven by continued expansion across both online and offline channels. Same store sales increased for the second consecutive quarter despite a challenged macroeconomic environment. Importantly, offline revenues continued to positive growth for the first time since our acquisition, demonstrating the impact of store optimization and enhanced in-store experiences. In the second half of 2024, we opened 40 new stores, including 16 in Q4, which performed strongly in new Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities such as Changsha and Zhuhai. We leveraged our strategic partner model to expand in emerging cities, securing premium retail spaces and further strengthening our competitive edge. The unit economics of these new stores are highly promising, driven by strong productivity and healthy store level margins. By the end of 2024, we managed 152 Gap stores across various cities and the total store footage is back on our growth trajectory. While we opened new stores throughout the year, we also strategically closed underperforming locations to optimize our offline network, making 2024 a year of structural upgrades. Looking ahead, we plan to accelerate our expansion by prioritizing high traffic locations that maximize sales potential. In 2025, we aim to open approximately 50 new stores, resulting in a net increase of 40 stores after accounting for strategic closures. We continue to strengthen Gap's brand DNA and reinforce our iconic categories. Through our close collaboration with Gap Inc’s Global merchandising team, we have refined the product localization while preserving the brand core identity. Moving forward, we are prioritizing design improvements, supply chain refinements and the deliberate product planning to enhance our offerings and margin performance. We are also aligning marketing strategies more closely with culture trends and local collaborations to deepen consumer engagement. Our recent partnership with Forbidden City stands out as one of the most successful IP collaborations in the past three years, highlighting the power of well executed brand storytelling. Our key strategic pillars for 2025 include channels. First channels expand across shopping malls, outlets and the strong online platforms, while ensuring a balanced and sustainable retail mix. Second, merchandising, strengthen product segmentation and planning to provide stable high quality offerings that resonate with our consumers. Third, marketing, enhanced brand storytelling through culture driven engagement, entertainment and strategic collaborations. In summary, BBM's partnership with Gabi Inc. voiced by our localized approach and operational excellence continues to drive tangible results. With a clear roadmap, we are well positioned to maintain our strong momentum and capitalize on new opportunities. In 2025, we strive for double digit top line growth while continuously improving operational efficiency and profitability. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you. Operator, we are now ready to begin the q&a session.

Thank you. The first question we have is from Alicia Yap of Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my question. My question is related to consumer consumption sentiment. Has management observed any improvement in consumer consumption sentiment over the past two months, especially with the supportive measures from government and promotional activities during the International Women's Day? What is management expectation for 2025 growth and what are the key drivers? And how should we view the benefits Baozun could capture from smartphone trading subsidy? And my second question is related to Gap China. Can management update us on Gap China's same-store sales growth and performance of other brands under BBM? And my last question is for Mr. Wu. With your return to company recently, what are your key initiatives and top priorities for Baozun? And will there be any meaningful change of strategic direction for the company in the coming months? Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for the question. This is Junhua. So let me address your first question and your last question. So, your first question is about the consumption sentiment over the past two months. So, our observations during the past Queen's Day was very good. So, we drove a quite decent growth in terms of our revenue and a lot of brands have achieved their higher targets worldwide. During past two months, we see a lot of categories is growing rapidly, for example, like the home appliance category and the smartphone business, consider we have a support from the government subsidiary support. So, in those two categories, our services lies in driving our conversion rate and increase the right capital efficiency into our distribution model and our services model. So, we are expecting a higher momentum of the consumption sentiment in the future. So, the third question is what's my working priorities when I just back to the frontline. So, my day to day focus lies in two areas. The first is bottom line oriented. So, I'm going to just optimize our existing team structure and implement our salary structure and the incentive program. And also, I'm going to focus on day to day financial management related to the business, including like the AR and AP and how do we leverage our capital in the right way. Also, under our distribution model, I'm going to optimize the terms we work with our partners and enroll more high quality revenue based distribution business and try to just release a lot of some kind of low efficiency kind of the business in terms of a district model and service model. For the top line focus, I'm going to lay my emphasis on same store growth by looking into a deeper dive into our day to day operations and also driving more initiatives on the omni channel, kind of harmonized with each other like Douyin, Tencent Smart Retail and RedNote. Also, driving marketing capability is the key in this year. And we also want to leverage a lot of AI initiatives in terms of driving our top line and increase our bottom line efficiency. So, for business development, we have our new strategy for this year. We can share more later on when we are meeting those kind of questions. And we also want to optimize our business structure in terms of our DC model and consignment model.

This is Ken. For your second question about BBM, I think our sales growth is coming from both same store growth and also our new expansion of stores. For the same store gap, we had a low single digit same store growth in Q4 2024. And for Hunter, because Hunter is relatively small in terms of the percentage sales revenue contribution to the total BBM sales volume. But it grows very rapidly and same store growth rate is over 100% last year. And for the new store expansion, I think we also see very good trend in our new openings, especially in Q4 in new Tier 1 cities and Tier 2 cities. Our sales per square meters is ranked over many of our competitors. And for Hunter, we opened our first store in Shanghai and now we will accelerate our expansion in Tier 1 cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and some new Tier 1 cities such as Hangzhou. That's all from me.

The next question we have is from Chris of Huatai Securities [ph]. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on the solid result this quarter. And I have two questions for the management. The first is about the competition. As we see more changes in merchant policy from e-commerce platforms like going to cut commission rates for several categories. How should we expect the potential influence to Baozun’s fundamentals from the changing competitive landscape in e-commerce sector? And second question is about the consumption recovery trends. So, with more consumption stimulus policies roll out, how should we look at the consumption recovery trend in 2025? And could management share more color on the growth outlook for Baozun's key categories? That's my two questions.

I believe those two questions are for me. I'm Junhua. So, the first question is about Douyin. So, we all know that the GMV growth rate on Douyin is competitively higher than the GMV growth rate on the other platforms. But from our perspective, so like Tmall and JD, they are still the largest GMV platform, so consider the transaction. But Douyin, they cut off our commissions based on the GMV growth. In our categories, in the fashion apparel and the luxury category. So, we see a very decent growth in those categories. And we are also benefit in those kind of the commission rate supports basically from the whole landscape. So, we are trying to just expand our services and drive more our existing partners onto Douyin platform. And we also will harmonize the Douyin traffic into the Tmall and the other JD kind platform to leverage our omnichannel strategy to make sure that the content and all those different kind of the rich content initiatives on Douyin can be benefit from the all kind of range of the transactions on Tmall and JD? That's the first question. For the consumption and the overall expectation on 2025, I believe we are serving over 400 different brands. And each brand, they have a different strategy looking into their expectation in 2025. Some of the brands, they are still maintaining a high growth strategy. Some of them, they are playing a very different game role. So, a lot of our brand partners in certain categories, they are focusing themselves in the product development and design. And they plan to just optimize their sales in this year, late this year or maybe early next year. So based on our portfolio of the categories, so we cannot give you a very unified trend in terms of the consumption expectation of 2025. But we maintain a very high expectation and a very optimized outlook to 2025 in terms of our GMV growth, revenue and operation profit. Thank you.

The next question we have is from Jiawei Yan of Citigroup [ph]. Please go ahead.

Good evening management. Thanks for taking my question. My first question is that JD.com has actively invested in the clothing category since the end of 2024 and this trend is expected to continue in 2025. So, what's the Baozun strategy in this channel? And my second question is that how does the company view the rights of AI tools such as DeepSeek? And what are the main application scenarios in the business side? Is there any quantitative data available for sharing? Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for the question. The first question is about the fashion apparel category, rapidly growth on JD.com. So Baozun, we are omnichannel focused. So, we served JD a long time ago. A lot of our brand partners has already put their business on Tmall and JD and the other platforms. So, the first thing is we're going to and sorry, fashion apparel is also a very strong category of Baozun. So, we're definitely going to help our existing clients moving their business onto JD.com, especially in the fashion apparel categories. And we are also going to leverage our expertise in the fashion apparel categories to drive more business and more new clients onto JD to benefit all their growth trend. So yes, the JD.com in their apparel and beauty category, their executive management team has already been newly appointed to someone else. So, we are going to definitely work together very closely with their management team to make sure that we can also implement a very strong growth on JD.com in the future. The second is about the AI initiatives and what kind of the tool are benefiting our business. So, talking about AI, basically, we are focusing on AI driving our efficiency for the bottom line and also AI trying to adjust increasing our top line growth. So, for the bottom line, we developed a lot of AI tools like smart customer service tools to helping our customer service agent to leveraging our existing knowledge based database and also helping them to drive more efficiency on finding products. For the product management and digital asset management, we have already implemented some system for our existing clients and our distribution business models to making sure that we can using lesser people using AI technology to help us efficiently to drive a lot of automation in terms of the digital assets creation and the management and the data collection, etc. And for also our company internal management like financial department and our HR department, we're also going to leverage some AI agent technology to increase our, for example, like our financial reconciliation period, something like that. So, in terms of the revenue top line, we are trying to develop some tools, maybe like on RedNote, we are helping them to drive a lot of different kind of promotions and also driving a smart decision on targeting the right consumer. It's helping our driving the right top line and also matching the right products. So, we are on our way chasing the latest technology. Technology is also the key of Baozun. We have a lot of technology engineers. So, we believe we are very promising in the future leveraging AI technology for our business. Thank you.

Thank you. That's very clear. And could you please also follow-up on RedNote plans as well?

Okay. So let me put your question on the landscape of customer journey. So, we are leveraging RedNote also talking about the customer journey. So, when we are targeting a new customer, we need to consider their customer journey like where is the opportunity and where is the brand awareness or product awareness of RedNote and how do we drive the interest of our customer, how do we just push them to purchase the product and how do we maintain the loyalty of the consumer for this product or the brand. So RedNote currently is in the very front line of driving the opportunity. So, we are not directly promoting a specific SKU or product on RedNote because it's not the way to driving business on RedNote. We are driving a lot of content, making sure that we can set up the emotion linkage before making transactions. Let them know that, for example, in the fashion apparel category, how do we do the daily setup? How do we dress up for fine dine? And how do we just make sure that we can use very high technology for our product to increase their lifecycle status and their kind of their life quality? And how do we really just help them to understand what's the trendy technology or something like that? So, we can drive a lot of content by using our AI technology, by using our KOL and KOC to send a lot of feeds on RedNote. And then we drive the attention to a certain brand or to certain products. And then we convert them, making sure that they are interested and then give them a lot of reasons with the transaction deal to make the first purchase and then repeat. And then we drive them back on continuously providing a lot of content on RedNote, create a very healthy circle. Yes, that's my answer. Thank you.

Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions. And I would like to hand over back to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. On behalf of the Baozun management team, we would like to thank you all for your participation in today's call. If you require any further information, feel free to reach out to us. Thank you for joining us again. This concludes the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.