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Noah Holdings Limited (NOAH)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 12, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Noah Holdings Limited Third Quarter 2014 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. During the Q&A session, we ask that you please limit yourselves to two questions and one follow-up, so that we may have greater participation. If you would like to ask additional questions, you may reenter the question queue to do so. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Joining the conference today are Ms. Jingbo Wang, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO; Ms. Frances Chia-Yue Chang, Executive Director and acting CFO; Ms. Ching Tao, the newly appointed CFO. After the close of the US market on Tuesday, Noah issued a press release announcing its third quarter 2014 financial results, which is available on the company's IR webpage, ir.noahwm.com. This call is also being webcast live and will be available for replay on the company's website. I would like to call your attention to the Safe Harbor statements in connection with today's call. The company will make forward-looking statements, including those with respect to expected future operating results and expansion of its business. Please refer to the risk factors inherent in the company's business and that had been filed with the SEC. Actual results can be materially different from any forward-looking statements the company makes today. Noah Holdings Limited 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 the applicable laws. The results announced today are unaudited and are subject to adjustments in connection with the completion of the company's audit. Additionally, certain non-GAAP measures will be used in our financial discussion. A reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP financial results can be found in the earnings press release posted on the company's website. I would now like to hand the call over to Ms. Wang. She will be speaking in Chinese and her statements will be translated into English. Ms. Wang, please go ahead.

Jingbo Wang

Co-Founder

[Foreign Language – Chinese] Thank you, operator and thank you all for joining us today. With tem today, is Ms. Frances Chia-Yue Chang, Executive Director and acting CFO of the Company and Ms. Ching Tao, our newly appointed CFO. Today I will begin the call by reviewing our performance in the third quarter of 2014 and discussing the progress of our corporate strategy. Now I'll ask Ms. Chang introduce Ms. Tao to all of you. Afterwards Ms. Tao will discuss the detail of our third quarter financial and operating results. We'll be happy to take your questions after that. [Foreign Language – Chinese] In the backlog of a slowing economy, we still achieved solid performance in the third quarter. The value was of wealth management product distributed during the quarter was RMB 18.4 billion or $3 billion, a 52.8% increase year-over-year. Total registered clients reached 66,069, a 31.9% increase year-over-year. For the quarter, we distributed financial products to 4,091 active clients, an increase of 82.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Net revenue and non-GAAP net income was $62.9 million and $19.5 million interest of 51.7% and 27.6% respectively. [Foreign Language – Chinese] For all wealth management business, we have completed building our distribution network layout. In the first and second tier cities in China. By the end of third quarter, we have registered branch offices in 60 cities in China and continue to penetrate in each area. We also separate the local team with tier 1 [ph] geographic area to motivate elite staff. In fact, we have in total 91 branch offices included all the local teams as of the end of third quarter. This strategy helped us to control overall fixed cost and improved productivity. While the number of clients and the scale of asset under management…

Frances Chia-Yue Chang

Management

Thank you, Madam Wang, hello, everyone. Before updating our third quarter result. I'd like to introduce Ms. Ching Tao as our newly appointed Chief Financial Officer and congratulate Ms. Tao for the new position. Ms. Tao has more than 18 years working experience in investment and financial management sector. Prior to joining the company, she started as the Chief Financial Officer of Charter Group Holding Limited, a high and large scale department store operator from 2011 to 2014. She also worked at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, in Europe and Beijing from 1996 to 2011 and most recently was Executive Director of the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs in Beijing. Ms. Tao received an MBA degree from Columbia Business School in 1996. I'm confident that Ms. Tao's well sought financial and managerial experience will continue to provide Noah's prudent, financial management and the intense investor communications. Ms. Tao started to transit with me for our office and has become familiar with the company's operation and management. I will remain as company's Executive Director and will assist Ms. Tao with any additional transit work. Next I will ask Ms. Tao to share with you our third quarter financial information and both of us will be happy to take your questions along with Madam Wang.

Ching Tao

Management

Thank you, Madam Wang and Frances and good evening, everyone. I'm excited about the opportunity to play this important role in the development of Noah and look forward to working closely with Madam Wang and the entire management team to further enhance our financial management and communication with investors to deliver long-term shareholder value in the years ahead. With the strong demand of wealth management needs from our clients. Our diversified products mix and constant risk control. The overall quarterly performance including transaction value, net revenues and net income, all improved significant from last year. Net revenue with $62.9 million, which increased 51.7% year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income was $19.5 million representing a 27.6% growth rate year-over-year. Transaction value reached RMB 18.4 billion or $3 billion, which is a 52.8% growth rate year-over-year. Total net revenues for the quarter reached RMB 62.9 million and increased 4.8% compared to the second quarter of 2014, excluding the performance fee, the $11.4 million recognized in the second quarter. Revenue growth was driven by strong transaction volume and increasing recurring revenue, which was further enhanced by our growing asset under management. For the composition of our products in the third quarter private equity product decreased to 11% of transaction volume, compared to 20% last year and 29% in the previous quarter. Equity and other products increased to 30% compared with 1% last year and 5.5% in the second quarter of 2014. Fixed income products still remain the majority that declined to 54% of overall transaction value, this quarter compared to 76% in the third quarter of 2013 and 64% in the second quarter, 2014. These results lead to our continued focus and efforts to diversify our product mix as Madam Wang mentioned in her remarks. Third-party trust product accounted for about 12% of total transaction…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) and our first question comes from Ella Ji at Oppenheimer Ella Ji – Oppenheimer: First the question is relating to this issue with [indiscernible] the entire Beijing [ph] just wondering, if you have any idea with that in the timing on that this issue will be solved and also, do you expect incur any losses or expenditures associated with that and if so, I was just wondering if you have reflected this year may your G&A accrual expenses or has that not being reflected in your current P&L?

Jingbo Wang

Co-Founder

[Foreign Language – Chinese] I'll answer your first question. We do not foresee any negative impact of financial performance due to [indiscernible] case. We believe, we have a accrued certain amount of legal fee in this quarter's SG&A. [Foreign Language – Chinese] Yes, we believe that we should be able to solve this issue before the maturity of the asset management plans, just to give you to remind everyone this is one year product, which is supposed to be matured before the end of June, next year 2015. Ella Ji – Oppenheimer: Got it, thank you. That's very helpful. My second question is still relating to your full year guidance. I think your full year guidance is indicating the net income for fourth quarter, is it declined quarter-on-quarter and also the year-over-year growth is also deceleration from third quarter. I just wonder, if you can provide some colors behind that. Are you also expecting revenue will be declining quarter-on-quarter and also how about the margins expectations for 4Q? Thank you.

Ching Tao

Management

Hi, Ella. Let me explain this way. We expect revenues to go down a little bit. The fourth quarter remains historically strong. Historically, fourth quarter has been weaker compared to the other quarter. I mentioned earlier that, we have had some margin compression meaning slightly declining margins. This is due to investment in our internet finance businesses increased HR and IT cost, which is reflected in our financials. We will continue to invest in the fourth quarter in those areas. So we will continue expect our margins to go down a little bit, but excluding the impact of those investments in new business area. Our margins are completely in line with historical trends reflecting cost control and managing our expenses.

Jingbo Wang

Co-Founder

[Foreign Language – Chinese], Yes Madam Wang just wanted to ask, that will further invest in the new business. We'll drive higher value in the company in the long run. Ella Ji – Oppenheimer: Got it. Thank you. I'll get back to the queue.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Michael Li, Bank of America Michael Li – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: [Foreign Language – Chinese] There are two questions from Michael to the management. The first question is regarding about the product type is the third product, that other product accounted about 30% of the total transaction which as a big interest quarter-over-quarter. So he'd like management to further explain on that, what has been included in the other part? Well, the second question was related to number of increase of the relationship managers. So the relationship manager number increased about 40% year-over-year. So he'd like the management to explain the reason behind that and going forward situation?

Jingbo Wang

Co-Founder

[Foreign Language – Chinese] Yes for Michael's first question. The other product for this quarter actually included a huge amount of secondary market product. Our fee structure of this kind of product is quite similar to others. We charge 1% of management fee on those and for some of the secondary market products, we also will have some performance fees recognized in the future and for his question on the relationship manager, actually the 200 relationship manager increased in this quarter was kind of planned out in the beginning of this year. For example, we add new relationship managers for our institutional business that we talk about in the square [ph] for our more institutional wealth management team. right now, Noah already has team in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and we will further expand and also the new relationship managers that we have hired this year, will have seen the quality and the first time, that they have sell was at Noah, that the time has shorten and the quality has also increased. Michael Li – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: [Foreign Language – Chinese]

Jingbo Wang

Co-Founder

[Foreign Language – Chinese] thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) at this time, I would like to turn the conference back over to Jingbo Wang for any closing remarks.

Jingbo Wang

Co-Founder

Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to update about our fourth quarter results in a few months ahead. Thank you everyone.

Operator

Operator

The conference has concluded. Thank you for attending, you may now disconnect.