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Noah Holdings Limited (NOAH)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 17, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Noah Holdings Limited Fourth 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 further participation. If you would like to ask further questions, you may reenter the queue to do so. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. After the close of the US market on Monday, Noah issued a press release announcing its fourth quarter 2014 financial results, which is available on the company's IR webpage at ir.noahwm.com. This call is also being webcast live and will be available for replay purposes 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 have 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 remarks will be translated into English. Please proceed, ma'am.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language] Thank you, operator and thank you all for joining us today. With me today are Ms. Ching Tao, our CFO and Mr. Kenny Lam, our newly appointed Group President. For the last three years Mr. Lam has provided strategic advice to Noah in his role as a Global Partner at McKinsey. In the future Mr. Lam will mainly focus on operations and management, as well as strategic execution and I will spend more time on business development, product innovation and keys strategy developments. We are confident that with the combined efforts of the management team Noah will enter another period of high growth. [Foreign Language] Today I will first review our performance in 2014, then Mr. Lam will introduce himself and discuss Noah's strategy for 2015. Lastly, Ms. Ching Tao will discuss the details of our fourth quarter financial results and 2015 guidance. We will be happy to take any questions at the end of our prepared remarks. [Foreign Language] Over the past 2 years, Noah has a hold from a distributor of financial products into a comprehensive financial platform with wealth and asset management capabilities. And in 2014 we also launched our internet finance business. To more clearly illustrate our performance from this quarter on we will disclose our financial information by business segments. [Foreign Language] We finished 2014 with the strong fourth quarter. The value of wealth management products distributed in fourth quarter was RMB 11.83 billion. Revenue reached US$63.27 million, a year-over-year increase of 39.2% and operating profit reached US$17.83 million, representing 34.2% growth year-over-year. In 2014, we distributed RMB 63.37 billion or US$10.3 billion worth of financial products to 9,010 clients, an increase of 42.4% compared to 2013. And our total registered clients reached 70,557. Net revenue for 2014 was US$247.9 million, an increase…

Kenny Lam

Management

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Wang. Hello everyone and I would like begin by briefly introducing myself. Before joining Noah I was a Global Partner in McKinsey and was with McKinsey for 14 years. I was McKinsey's Head of Private Banking and Wealth Management and also co-led the financial services practice for Asia. Noah was actually McKinsey client and served Noah and Ms. Wang for three years and worked closely with Noah's management for three years. Based on my experience in the sector, I am very confident that the wealth and asset management industry in China will continue to witness strong growth in the coming decade. Noah has established a leading position in its market. I like to thank the board and Ms. Wang for giving me the opportunity play a role in Noah's development. I look forward to working closely with Chairman Wang and the management team to help build Noah, not only to be a leader now, but also for the longer term. In recent years Noah has tailored solutions to client needs, both domestically and abroad by offering a diversified set of product and services, while maintaining an asset life operation with established an end to end business model that covers top design, asset allocation, to client servicing. We've expanded our offerings without comprising the quality of our products and services. 2015 is the beginning of our next 10 years. In 2015, we will focus on building a sustainable platform that will support our tremendous growth over the next decade. We'll focus on three areas. First, sustainably increasing the capabilities of mid and back office. Second, developing new growth engines. Third, continue talent cultivation. I'll go over one by one now. First, in terms of substantially increasing the capabilities of our mid and back office. We'll invest…

Ching Tao

CFO

Thank you, Chairman, Wang and Kenny. And hello, everyone. In the interest of making the best use of everyone’s time, rather than reading through the financials that are disclosed in our release, I will give a high level of overview and highlight a few areas before we go into the Q&A. Firstly, you will notice that this quarter we begin breaking down our financials into three business segment, wealth management, asset management and internet finance. We think this better reflects the overall shape of our more diversified business model and we'll continue reporting this way from now on. As for our fourth quarter performance, we're pleased to have ended the year with another steady quarter, both on the top and bottom lines. Q4 net revenue increased just under 40% year-on-year and full year revenue grew 51% to US$247.9 million. On the bottom line, non-GAAP net income grew 37% to $77.7 million for the full year surpassing our prior guidance. Our wealth management business was a dominant source of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2014 generating 80% of total revenues. Asset management generated 18% and the internet finance business generated around 2%. Our continued efforts to diversify our product mix in the wealth management business were well reflected by our fourth quarter results. Of the 1.9 billion of wealth management products that we distributed during the quarter, fixed income products represented 63% compared to 84% in Q4 of 2013. Private equity products grew to 19% of total quarterly transaction value, up from a 11% a year ago and equity linked and other products contributed 18% compared to 5% a year ago. You can find a breakdown of the operating metrics of our wealth management business in a table at the back of our earnings release. Our effective commission rate for…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Matthew Larson of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Matthew Larson

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I had a question, you were discussing about the growth prospects because of the increasing amount of high network families and what have you going forward which should be fuddle [ph] grant for growth for your firm. What about the notion that the Mainland equity markets or federation markets are becoming more active and more buoyant. Do you see that could be a tailwind for your business going forward?

Ching Tao

CFO

Just a moment while we translate the question for Chairman, Wang.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language]

Ching Tao

CFO

Actually Ms. Wang mentioned in her remarks the rating of the Asia market in China definitely will help us to become more diversified in term of product mix. Actually in the beginning of the year 2015 we have already started to see the changes. The proportion of secondary market products, ancillary country build more in terms of our overall transaction value.

Matthew Larson

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ella Ji of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Q –Unidentified Analyst: Hi, good morning. Thank you, management. This is [indiscernible] And I have a question, its sort of the high level question. So now that you have made transition to full financial growth covering various of your business lines. So can management comment on the current competitive landscape in China and what do you think is your competitive edge? Thank you.

Kenny Lam

Management

So we'll translate the question for Ms. Wang. So maybe I'll answer for Ms. Wang. This is Kenny here. The opportunity deed [ph] has intensified over the course of the year a lot, where we see a new set of players coming in, including internet finance players, third party independent players, insures trust companies and banks. Now, I think we basically have three core competitive advantage that we think we will continue to invest in. One is we continue to invest a lot in product development and service development. I think that’s an area that is hard to replicate by competitiveness. We currently have about 100 professional just looking at product manufacturing and selecting proper investment products for our clients. And that’s something that a lot of the distributive products can't replicate, so that’s one area. Second is, our network, we currently have one of the largest coverage of high network clients in China with over 60 cities and 90 – over 90 branch offices across China. And that’s something that’s very hard replicate and not easy to build in a short term. So we continue to invest. And that – the branch offices that we have across China, not only those investment products, it’s actually those range of investments and to time in with services. So that’s a second advantage that we have. The third that we have now is that we actually have diversified platform. So both on asset management that is through our only subsidiary Gopher asset management, as long as our internet finance platform, we actually have a broad set of platform that covers not only private banking for high network clients, but also asset management for institution investors, as well as UN Gumball platform which covers white-collar professional. So that broad platform will help us build sustainably for the next 10 years. Q –Unidentified Analyst: All right. Thank you, Kenny. That’s very helpful. And my second question is about, now there is concerns over macro slowdown overall. So I was just wondering if that’s the case what type of products do you think will be more suitable or more like welcomed by your clients? Thank you.

Kenny Lam

Management

I am going to try [indiscernible] while Ms. Wang is driving our product development directly.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language]

Ching Tao

CFO

Actually we've seen the overall Chinese economy from two different prospects, the traditional industry such as import, export, has actually show quite slowing down in the recent years. But for the new emerging industry, such as internet, medical service and environmental, we have seen those industry start to grow quite dramatically for a lot of PE and VC form that are – we introduced to our customer, they invest in those emerging new industries and they already have good returns. So I think going forward we'll be, I like saying be conservative, but also be optimistic in the future.

Kenny Lam

Management

Maybe I'll also add a bit. I think what Ms. Wang is saying is that, in our product development we're also shifting our focus to new industry, such as medical, new media, as well as quite a few other industry that we think are going to be substantially growing in China, particularly also in the environmental development in China. So we think that in terms of product development that’s an area that we also want to shift our focus to other industries that we think are going to be growth engine for China. Q –Unidentified Analyst: All right. Great. That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Elaine Wu [ph] of Citi. Please go ahead. Q –Unidentified Analyst: Thank you, guys. [Foreign Language]?

Ching Tao

CFO

There are actually three questions for the management. First, Elaine will like the management to comment further about expansion of the internet finance business and also the institutional client’s base and how the internet finance business will impact our margins in year 2015? The second question is regarding about your real estate proportion in the AUM – in the asset under management in year 2015. And also the third question is regarding about the most current status regarding about the Jing Thai [ph] case that we announced in the August of 2014? So we'll answer one by one then.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language]

Kenny Lam

Management

Great. I'll translate what Ms. Wang is just talked about. So on the first question about internet finance and institutional clients. On institutional clients we've actually built a team that is now sitting in Gopher asset management. We believe that organizational change is actually good one. Currently the team is led by a former [indiscernible] executive and we are growing tremendously on an institutional client base. On internet finance, as I mentioned in my remarks and also in Jingbo Wang, we marked – the internet finance platform is actually targeted and growing tremendously. We are China's ad based internet private banking for white-collars. We continue to invest in building ancillary services for this platform, where we will have the payments service, we will also have a secured lending platform, as well as connect that with relationship managers, physical platform to an auto platform. The whole point of that is not just to be an internet finance, but to build a business that will become the feed for our high network business, who are focusing on white-collars and affluent clients now. But these are clients that in the next 5 to 10 years will be a private banking clients as well. So these [indiscernible] internet finance platform growing at around 30% per month now is going to be a great feet for our future private banking business. On Gopher asset management, which is our asset management subsidiary, we want to be a multi boutique asset manager and want to be the top two in China across categories that we play it. And currently we're focusing on a few key categories, private equity, private equity fund of funds, real estate, across all different types of asset classes, hedge funds and secondary market, as well as certain type of credit asset classes. And the way we're booted is beyond just focusing on those asset classes and becoming number or two in China, we are also good operational experience. So recently we've actually taken over a office building in Huangpu, where we're actually operating directly. So we want to build operational experience as well. We've invested around 40 funds in about 600 companies now. And so we continue to build our team. We want to be the Blackstone of China, where we will be a leader in multi asset, multi boutique firm, so that’s our Gopher asset management subsidiary. In terms of the event that happened in August last year, we are actually – everything is actually proceeding on schedule. We fully expect to recover principle and expected return on time for our investor. So everything is actually on schedule in terms of that particular incident in August 2014.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Young Lee of Chosy Partners [ph] Please go ahead. Q –Unidentified Analyst: [Foreign Language]

Kenny Lam

Management

Hi, Lee. Q –Unidentified Analyst: [Foreign Language]

Ching Tao

CFO

[Foreign Language] So this is Ching, I will reply to the first and third question and Kenny will reply to the second. The first question was regarding our margin for 2015, and what trend do we expect do we expect to see. The third question relates to average transaction value per client for wealth management business. In the fourth quarter it dropped. And then the second question is regarding our continued investments in internet financing new businesses. So first of all, regarding our margins, we're seeing some margin compression which started last year and I believe there will be some reasonable math that may continue this figure, as we continue to invest in the scale of our businesses. As you've heard wealth management, after management, internet finance are in their infancy in China and we expect the fundamentals macro wise in terms of high networks individuals and also enterprises and corporate’s meeting these types of services to be pretty huge. Our market share is fairly low. So we are currently in the next couple of years investing in building scale for these new businesses and also correspondingly in the middle and back office strength and infrastructure to support the scale. What we really don’t want to do is to lose the market opportunity. So we're focused on grabbing the market opportunity and building market share and over the long-term I expect that will allow us to have some margin expansion. But you know, the initial stages we may see some margin compression. In terms of average transaction value per client, that declined from third quarter to fourth quarter due to the product mix. As we distributed relatively more fixed income and also equity, equity linked products, the average transaction value fell a little bit. So transaction value will tend to have some volatility on a quarter-over-quarter basis due the product mix per quarter. So in any particular quarter for example, if we do more alternative related investments PE, VC funds, the average buying is much higher at RMB 10 million per product, so that will automatically pull up the average.

Kenny Lam

Management

Okay. I'll take the second question, I just want to highlight one thing before I go – I talk about the investment. The operating margin for our core business, the wealth management traditional business actually has improved substantially. And so that’s why I think in this quarters announcement we will provide numbers by segment as we think our businesses are in different stages and development. Our core business has improved substantially. I think the fourth quarter of 2014 operating margin is 40.4% compared to 27.8% in the same period of 2015. So it has improved substantially in our core business. In terms of investment, I think Tao Ching is absolutely right. This year is about both growth and investment. As we mentioned, we will invest substantially in our roughly expanded internet finance business which is a very targeted business for white-collar professionals and private banking. We'll also grow substantially our asset management capability and so that’s an area that we want to invest in. On our core business we will invest substantially in building profitable platform for operations in IT and those are three areas that we want to continue to invest. So overall group margin may continue to decline due to those investment, but we'll actually look at our businesses very separately and our core business and our traditional business, wealth management, we expect the margin to be stable or improving just like we've done actually in this quarter, where we've seen a substantial improvement on margin for the traditional business.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to company management for any closing remarks.

Ching Tao

CFO

Thank you everyone for joining us. We are looking forward to update you about our first quarter 2015 results in a few months ahead. Thank you.

Kenny Lam

Management

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This conference is now concluded. And we thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. And have a wonderful day.