NaaS Technology Inc. (NAAS) Q3 2023 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the NaaS Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Cynthia Tan, Senior IR Director. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to NaaS Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. The company's results were issued earlier today and are posted online. Joining me on the call today are Ms. Cathy Wang Yang, our Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Alex Wu, our President and Chief Financial Officer. For today's agenda, Ms. Wang will provide an overview of our recent performance and highlights. And Mr. Wu will discuss our operating and financial results. Before we continue, I refer you to our safe harbor statement in the earnings press release, which applies to today's call on forward-looking statements. Also, please note that this call includes discussion of certain non-IFRS financial measures, please refer to our earnings release, which contains a reconciliation of non-IFRS measures to the most [indiscernible] . Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, [indiscernible] RMB terms. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Ms. Cathy Wang Yang. Cathy, please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. I'm not CEO, Kathy Wang Yang. It's my pleasure to share NaaS third quarter 2023 earnings results with all of you to discuss and discuss our recent development. In the third quarter of 2023, our total revenues increased by 536% year-over-year to reach and RMB 171 million. Our non-IFRS net margin attributable to ordinary shareholders narrowed by 256 percentage points compared with the same quarter last year, the total charge volume transacted through our network during the quarter increased by year-over-year. Reaching 1,383 gigawatt hours. This accounted for 21.8% of all charging volume completed through public chargers in China during the same period. Since the beginning of 2023, NaaS has undergone a fundamental shift in its revenue structure. In the second quarter of 2023, the proportion of off-line and innovation service revenue exceeded 50% for the first time, reaching 53.4% in the third quarter. Revenue from EPC Energy storage and other solutions accounted for 81% of the total revenues. We affirm our full year 2023 revenue guidance to be between RMB 500 million to RMB 600 million. And we expect our full year 2024 revenue to be between RMB 2 billion to RMB 3 billion, a growth of 4 to 5x. NaaS is transforming from a new energy service company into a new energy . In the third quarter, NaaS stands at RMB 204 million energy storage order. In addition, we won the bid for MG Green and low-carbon supply chain construction project, creating the global EV storage, charging swapping benchmarking project for the highway trucks. NaaS International business is forging at height, contributing 32.7% of our total energies in the third culture. In October, NaaS become one of the first batch of strategic [indiscernible] of the Hong Kong SAR office for attracting strategic enterprises. On September 22, sustainable which assigned NaaS the highest ESG entity score in China. 22nd in Asia and 50 worldwide. On October 23, NaaS joined United Nation's Global Compact organization, we embrace open source technology, open data access and an open ecosystem. This commitment to openings pays the way for our global initiative towards carbon neutrality. We look forward to join hands with our partners. To advance our vision of empowering the world with with Green Energy. Now I will turn our call to Alex, our President for a closer look at our operating and financial performance. Thank you.

Thank you, Cathy. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. As Cathy mentioned, we delivered an excellent performance across our key operating and financial metrics in the third quarter. Our top line growth was exceptional. And we remain the industry leader in China's growing charging services market. Simultaneously, we're expanding from a singular mobility connectivity business to a model that also monetize our digital analytic capabilities. We're doing this by achieving a rapid expansion of our charging station operation and energy storage businesses, which will allow us to reach our goal of becoming a leading integrated new energy asset operation and management service provider in China and abroad. In line with our business expansion, we introduced a new revenue reporting structure in the third quarter. Income from mobility, connectivity and self-operated charging stations has been consolidated under charging services revenue. Income from our integrated charging infrastructure, PV and energy storage now falls under Energy Solutions revenue, while income from our third revenue stream, electricity procurement services and other services has been remained new initiatives revenue. To assist with comparison, we have adjusted historical periods accordingly. We think these three revenue categories better describe our extended new energy asset ecosystem and more clearly reflect the direction of our business. For more information, please feel free to refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. We can see our business transition taking shape in our stellar third quarter growth, and we're pleased to be able to show a more visible profitability trajectory. Our total revenues reached an all-time high in the third quarter of RMB 170.9 million. The bulk of this rapid growth came from our Energy Solutions revenue. Which increased by 6x quarter-over-quarter, accounting for 81% of our total revenue in the third quarter. The substantial growth is mainly attributable to the ongoing delivery of energy solution projects, to provide renewable energy generation, energy management and storage solutions. On a year-over-year basis, our financial efficiency has significantly improved in the third quarter. Gross margin increased to 27% from 6% year-over-year and the gross profit increased by 28-fold year-over-year as we started to reap benefits from our expanded know-how and capabilities in delivering and executing energy solution projects. Total operating expenses decreased to RMB 285.3 million in the third quarter from RMB 359.1 million in the last quarter. We are beginning to recognize advantages from economies of scale, enabling us to gain significant operating leverage. During the third quarter, we substantially improved our operating spend as a percentage of revenue. Our sales and marketing expense ratio dropped sharply to 94% from 252% in the third quarter of 2022. And 177% in the second quarter of 2023. As the percentage of revenues, administrative expenses ratio declined substantially year-over-year to 63% from 95% in the second quarter of 2022. Research and development ratio also declined to 10% of our total revenues compared with 28% in the same period last year. Our net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was RMB 366.9 million for the third quarter of 2023 compared with a loss of RMB 109.1 million for the same period of 2022. While our non-IFRS net loss was RMB 175.7 million for the third quarter compared with RMB 96.5 million for the same period of 2022. Net margin improved from negative 406% to negative 214%, whereas non-IFRS net margin improved from negative 359% to negative 103%. As we diligently manage our operating costs and work to narrow our losses, we're looking towards our long-term prospects. Our explanation of growth has come from our initiatives, both locally and internationally as we gain traction across our expanding business. Our network continues to experience high growth in China. And total charging volume increased by 66% year-over-year in the third quarter, reaching 1,383 gigawatt hours. The total number of orders rose by 58% year-over-year to nearly RMB 59.2 million. Furthermore, in terms of our assets under operation, we continue to carefully select high-quality charging stations to add to our portfolio. We are also making excellent headway with our energy storage initiatives, propelling the growth and the maturation of PV storage charging station development. By the end of the third quarter, we had already launched 43 integrated charging stations with energy storage, covering cities including Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Chongqin, Wuhan, and Tanja. On the other hand, our timely execution of the leading MG, PV storage charging sporting project, entailing the installation of , a 4,200 kilowatt distributed PV system, 36 energy storage and charging capital and 2 leading domestic heavy truck battery working stations. This will showcase our integrity solution, coupled with the timely execution that continues to win us new business. On the international front, our recent acquisition of [indiscernible] Power to broaden our reach in Hong Kong is already bearing fruit. Total international revenue for the third quarter accounted for more than 32% of our total revenues. Compared with 22% in Q2, demonstrating our rapid progress and the strength of our acquisition strategy. As our business [indiscernible], we are attracting strong support that bolsters our momentum. We can see this in our alliances with OSS, ZSY and China Construction Bank. For example, CCB will provide us with integrated financial service support encompassing overseas M&A, liquidity loans, project loans, inclusive loans, and financing for global renewable energy asset investment in charging stations, energy storage PV, among others. This will empower us to extend our global presence in the new energy sector. Thereby fostering green, low carbon and sustainable development in energy industry. This recognition from our strategic partners is helping us advance the new energy sector and its underlying infrastructure as we work to expand our presence in the new energy globally. I'm also pleased to provide an update on our recent financial activities in July and September 2023, we issued USD 30 million and USD 40 million convertible notes to LMR partners. As of today, USD 33 million has been converted into ADS. Highlighting our upward momentum. The remaining principal amount of the notes totaling USD 37 million. We appreciate the trust of LMR Partners which further fuels our commitment to continued growth and success. Looking ahead, we are on track to deliver our previously announced full year revenue guidance of between RMB 500 million and RMB 600 million, which is a 5 to 6x increase from 2022. With our added visibility and new growth, we would also like to introduce our guidance for 2024. We currently expect full year 2024 revenues to be between RMB 2 billion and RMB 3 billion. In summary, we're making considerable progress in establishing NaaS as a leading global provider of new energy asset operations and management services. We are broadening our One-stop charging services, advancing integrated energy systems and leveraging our strategic acquisitions to increase our global footprint. On top of our robust top line growth driven by both Charging Service and Energy Solutions. We also continue to drive a more favorable revenue mix with more high margin business. Our operating margins are also improving rapidly, benefiting from economies of scale and optimized operating costs. Our margin expansion is a testament to our commitment to both financial efficiency and that we are achieving sustainable growth in the right way. As we continue to grow our business both in China and abroad, we remain dedicated to provide sustainable new energy solutions while exploring new opportunities for growth that drive the industry forward. This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Kelly Zoot Jefferies.

Firstly, congratulations on about your strong third quarter results. I have two questions. Firstly is about the revenue guidance you just mentioned to us about the revenue [indiscernible] ? So can you share more color about the growth driver of your Energy Solutions business in China and also overseas market. [indiscernible]? And the second question is about the margin outlook. So can you share more color on your margin improvement? So basically helping us to know how to forecast the margin trend of your Energy Solutions business going forward?

Okay. Thank you, Kelly. Those are two very good questions. For your first question regarding Energy Solutions business and its growth drivers, let's look at what it's doing right now. So we have seen significant contribution from Energy Solutions in out of the Q3 revenues, the Energy Solutions has contributed RMB 139 million, which is a year-over-year 500% growth. If we look at the drivers, there are basically 3 segments that we're looking at in that business. Number one is what we call the EPC. The EPC driver is effectively we have the data advantage. We have the industry know-how, and we have a very strong customer base that will give us the capability to build the complex projects. And that will also give us the capability that we can give to our customers that we can pick the right spot to build those charging stations. Number 2 is the Energy Storage. For Energy Storage revenue driver, they are sort of twofold. The first one is we know that this year, we have the 380 contracted stations that we want to build the energy storage solutions. In Q3, so far, we've delivered 43 out of the 380. So the lion's share of the contracted stations that are yet to be delivered should be delivered in Q4 this year. If we look at the medium term that we picked 1,880 stations. Out of the 73,000 stations that we've connected to. This 1,880 stations are good candidates for us to build the Energy Storage Solutions, Inc. So we've already picked those stations. We already know where they are. The next step that we need to do in the midterm is to get those stations constructed and built that sorry, to get this Energy Storage Solutions build. So that's for energy storage. For overseas, I think it's quite easy to see that the overseas revenue has already contributed 32% of our overall revenue in Q3 this year, and we expect the overseas revenue to be about 40% of our 2024 revenue. If you look at the short-term drivers, we know that in [indiscernible] , for example, we have a RMB 70 million backlog that has already been secured and committed. We just need to get them delivered in Q4. We also know that it is, is very quickly expanding into EV charging. We have won 3 out of 5 contracts under EHSS, which is the government-sponsored EV charging project. We can also see clear synergy coming from NaaS after the acquisition of . We can see the financial support. We can see the EV know-how that has now been integrated into Hong Kong . So I think in overall, we can see clear growth momentum and very clear growth drivers for the Energy Solutions business. For your second question regarding margin, you're absolutely right. We have witnessed good margin trend in this quarter. In Q3 2023, we're basically driving the margin improvement through 2 major levers. The first one is revenue mix. Second one is operating leverage. In revenue mix in 2023, Q3, 81% revenue is from Energy Solutions with profitable margin. Energy Storage business, if you take that as an example, enjoys EBITDA margin of between 10% to 15%. The same EBITDA margin applies to Center Power business. So as we get more business in those lines, we tend to have higher margin, right? The second thing is on operating leverage. Our total operating expense ratio has declined significantly from 385% in Q3 2022, to 170% in Q3 2023. So if you mix those two together, we think we will generally be seeing better margin going forward. And we'll be seeing improving profitability in the next couple of quarters.

Your next question comes from Yizhen Du from CICC.

First of all congratulations on excellent performance in the third quarter. And I have two questions this time. The first one is that you just shared us with the 2024 revenue guidance. which shows a significant increase compared to this year's guidance. So could you explain how NaaS will achieved such rapid growth in 2024? This is the first question. And the second one is about the overseas business. We all know that previously acquired [indiscernible] and, so what is the recent progress of the overseas business? And how would you predict the revenue contribution of overseas charging pile, [indiscernible] sales in 2023 and 2024. This is my two questions. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Yizhen. These are good questions. So the first question is about 2024 revenue guidance. I just would like to take a step back and look at the very to set the stage, right? So based on CIC report, for example, the public charging in China is expected to grow 20 times by 2030 and the public charging volume will be growing 25x by 2030, and we clearly still see EV coming into the market at a rapid speed. If you look at NaaS, NaaS is China's largest EV charging network. It has 73,000 charging stations covered, which is about 50% market share, has 768,000 charges connected, which is 42% market share and has charged 1,383 gigawatt hour of electricity in 1 quarter, which is about 21.8% market share. And if you look at the capability, this is a company that has analytic capability as a very strong big growing customer base and user traffic. And we are working very hard to move to the asset operation business, which is effectively a way to monetize our data analytics customer base, traffic and also the very well-connected customer. Customer base in China to run our assets more efficiently. Right? So that is to say the same. Now if you look at different segments, if you look at the charging station operation, for example, that I've already mentioned the largest EV charging network I've already mentioned our analytics and Chinese station base and also a professional operating team. Our objective is to see significantly increase the chargers under the management by end of 2023 and in 2024 to a number that is much bigger than what we have today. This these charges under management will be picked from our extensive network. The charges will be picked from the 768,000 that we're currently connected to. And we are well on track to reach the chargers under the management grow because we have a number of projects that's currently undergoing. For Energy Storage, as I mentioned before briefly, in Q3, until Q3, we've only delivered 43 out of the 380 contracted stations that we've designed. In the medium term, for example, in 2024, we plan to deliver about 1,500 stations with Energy Storage Solutions. As I mentioned before, these are the stations that we are very, very carefully picked from the 70,000 stations that we're currently connecting to through our data advantage. We screened, for example, device with the the biggest peak and value price differences. And we also selected those lines that have peak electricity situation rate. So these are the stations that we are very confident that once you put Energy Storage Solution need, you can make money, right? So what we plan to do in 2024 is to deliver the rest 1,500 stations that we've already picked. The next segment is about overseas. I mentioned before that we've already seen 32% revenue contribution by [indiscernible]. We aim to increase that to about 40% with and with other assets or other businesses that we acquired. I've already mentioned the the very clear traction of Center Power in our previous question, so I will not repeat myself. For those segments, if you look at macro, which is a very much favorable macro, and if you look at those 3 segments, we have clear growth drivers. So I think we're confident that we can get the guidance that we provided. The next question, Yizhen, which is about overseas expansion. So I think I sort of mentioned that in my previous question. But I would like to probably highlight a little bit about Hong Kong Center power. As I said before, we acquired the company. It has been growing very well and it is very much profitable. We are already seeing, which is 2, 3 months after the acquisition, we are already seeing a very strong EBITDA margin contribution from the company. The EBITDA margin can reach 15% for the ones that we're doing. So I think for overseas expansion, what we're doing currently is really a replication of what was done with Hong Kong Center Power which is to choose the right asset to buy it at the right price and also most importantly, to integrate it with our overall business and provide synergy and capabilities as much as we can.

Your next question comes from Zoe Feng at TF Securities.

Hello. This is Zoe from [indiscernible]. Your Q3 financial results was very impressive. But based on your current results, you still need to achieve a significant revenue growth in Q4. Can you share more color on how to achieve that? That was my first question. And second question is, you previously disclosed a major contract in the Energy Storage business. Can you share some updates on the progress of that contract.

Great. Thank you, Zoe. So first question is about the Q4. So just to recap, we've delivered significant revenue growth, the Q3 revenue is RMB 171 million, as you have seen, which is a year-over-year growth of more than 500%. But most importantly, within that RMB 171 million we see September single month revenue exceeding RMB 100 million. So I believe that is a major step-up in our growth trajectory. And I believe we'll be able to stay in that revenue magnitude, if you like, for the rest of Q4. If we break that into business, I would just probably repeat some of the things I said before, but I think those are useful. In Energy Storage, we still have well more than 300 contracts, stations to be delivered that we plan to deliver in Q4. With solar power, we have a clear backlog in hand, I say backlog, I mean those are the projects that have already been committed. Some of them we've already started construction, we just haven't finished yet, right? And we also, as I said before, winning 3 out of 5 projects or contracts that we have under EHSS. EHSS is a project that we know is a project that we know very well, and we can deliver fairly quickly within 1 or 2 months. And in the EPC business, we have disclosed before that we won a RMB 67 million, OneStop PV storage project in [indiscernible] . Delivered a part of that, but there is part of that, that will be delivered in Q4. And we're working closely in the PV place. We're working closely with some of the the other sort of domestic local governments that want to build those high-tech charging stations. So we may have more good news to come in that space. For the the Chinese station operation business, we, what I can review is out of the 13 charging stations in Tooting, Hubei, Zuzanna and [indiscernible] which is a fairly distributed sample that we picked. We've achieved 10% charging on improvement after our operation. So I think that has proved that we have the capability that is, that is driven from our data capabilities, our analytics capabilities and our operating team know-how we proved through this pilot. So what we aim to do is to increase the number of stations under management starting from Q4 this year. But definitely going into 2024. So to recap, I think back to your question, I think in every single segment, we have clear sort of drivers that we already have in hand that is within our control that will continue in Q4 this year. Now for energy storage, I just want to give some more details so that people can understand what have we got. So when we say we signed the RMB 200 million worth of contract, that is a contract to build energy storage solutions in 380 charging stations with 580 storage facilities of 580 boxes with a total capacity of 130-megawatt hour and with 224-kilowatt hour per storage box, right? So that's the sort of overview of the contract. As I said before, we saw delivered, sorry, by end of September, we've delivered 43 out of 380 stations and the team in our energy storage department is working very hard and not to deliver the rest of the contracted stations. I believe within this year, they will be able to deliver most of the stations, and using the same methodology with gone through the 73,000 stations are reconnected. If I can review a little bit more about of our methodology, within that 73,000 stations, we use our model, our data-driven model to sort of filter through. Out of the 73,000 stations, we've identified about 13,000 stations from cities with peak and value price difference exceeding which is the rule of thumb of sort of the commercial feasibility to the energy storage. Then we further identified 1,880 stations with peak electricity saturation exceeding 80%. So the easy way to understand those are the stations that have people coming during the peak hour. You don't want to pick the stations and build the energy storage when nobody comes at peak hour. So we've identified those stations basically commercially excellent stages that we expect to make good money when those energy storage solutions are to be built. So with those 1,880 stations, we basically covered the next 12 to 18 months of pipeline. And those are the stations that we have connected to, and we have some level of control, right? So that has helped us to give the confidence that we have a clear pipeline to deliver for 2024.

Your next question comes from Alice Mara at UBS.

Thank you for the opportunity for asking this question. My question is actually about your classification like the revenue. Can we understand that actually the the online business in the past classification is very much similar to the current charging service revenue, except that we have another kind of business model like card full station operation model. And my next question is, can you like further elaborate more on the full station operation model, like what is the business model is? And how could it bring impact on your revenue and margin going forward?

Thank you, Alex. This is an excellent question because this is an important business model for us. So to, the easy way to understand the operating, operation business model, is that we basically operate these stations more efficiently than the current asset owner. So if you separate the layers, there is the layer that for asset owners, those are the people that have invested in assets and their own assets. And there is a another layer on top, which are the asset operators. These are the people like us that don't own assets, but we have capabilities, unique capabilities that we can operate the assets in a more efficient manner. And for us, in this, in the charging business, the operation has a lot to do to, with digital capabilities with analytics and most importantly, with pricing. So what we have is we have the largest charging network. We have covered the most number of charges and we've charged a large number of, a large percentage of the market, public charging market share with the data that we could collect from these chargers and charging stations. We could derive the best sort of running model for a particular charging station, right? And we could get the right pricing for a charging station for a charger at a particular hour of a particular day. So that helps us to drive for the higher efficiency of those charging stations, and that has been improved by the pilot project that I just mentioned. Out of the 13 piloted stations in 7 different provinces. We've managed to achieve a 10% charging volume improvement after our team take over the operation. So that is achieved basically by having the analytic capability right, and the ability to understand the seasonality to understand our by our charging volume change, the demand change and to basically forecast, forecast and predict what's going to happen from a charging demand perspective. As I said, we've already proved the capabilities through the [indiscernible] projects. Now if we look at the potential there is obviously huge potential. We cover 73,000 charging stations. These are all candidates that we could pick that to run the operation. And what we do is we will just go through our data model and our analytical tool to find out the ones that have the highest potential for efficiency improvement. And we will try to get this operating rights, if you like, from the asset owners, right, so that we can improve the efficiency and we can obviously generate revenue and make money. And I think the final thing to think about this is, I mentioned 73,000 China stations, right? But that is not a fixed number. That number is growing very rapidly. As the macro market is growing. The number of public charge in China is expected to grow 20x by 2030. So we're talking about not just with the screening and going through the funnel that has 73,000 stations to custom. We're also talking about underlying macro market that is growing very rapidly at the same time. So I believe if you put those two things together, this is a very unique opportunity to combine the macro growth and our unique capability, which we've accumulated over the past couple of years.

Your next question comes from Chile New at Casa Securities.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes please?

Okay. I'm the analyst of the [indiscernible]. My question is about NaaS as a long partnership with China Construction Bank. Can you elaborate on how the partnership could support your business?

Thank you for your question. That's once again, a very good question. As a context, NaaS and it's parent company [indiscernible] group, have entered into a partnership with China Construction Bank, one of the biggest banks in China. To provide a credit line up to RMB 2.5 billion for [indiscernible] . And this is not really the end of the credit line, and we're talking about a collaboration on the same time. I believe the partnership with China Construction Bank could with our financial position in this fast-growing phase is growing very, very fast. So to get financial support and especially the financial support from one of the biggest banks in China definitely helps. It also helps to accelerate the energy transition and new energy adoption in our value chain. So as you know, energy transition is a is a policy that is very well taken and the Chinese government. So this partnership with China Construction Bank definitely helps to drive the speed of production, and finally, I think this is a mutually beneficial partnership to empower more business primarily in our ecosystem. We firmly believe win win situation, I think in the energy space, as we are facing this very unique opportunities that probably happens like in the life time. We want to ensure that all the partners that we work with in this ecosystem can get some benefit from us we want to be the ecosystem integrator to help everyone to get some benefit, right? So to work with CCB, that enable us to to have this capability to get more business partners into the system. So this is, so we are all very excited about this partnership with China Construction Bank. And we all feel very proud that we have support from CCB.

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to the company for closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining our call today. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions. Good night, and Goodbye.

Thank you. That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.