Earnings Labs

Noah Holdings Limited (NOAH)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 16, 2016

$10.17

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Transcript

Kenny Lam

Management

Thank you to all investors and analysts for participating in our earnings conference call today. Joining me today are Ms. Jingbo Wang, Noah’s Chairlady and CEO; and Mr. Shang Chuang, Noah’s CFO. For today’s agenda, I will start by providing an overview of our financial highlights for the first three quarters of 2016 and walk you through the performance of our core wealth management businesses. I will then talk about the achievements and long-term strategic plans of go for asset management. Lastly, I would touch on the development of Noah’s mid- and back-office. After that Chairlady, Wang will provide an update on the product strategy and share her views on the macro and regulatory environment. And then Shang will provide further insights into our financial performance in the third quarter of 2016. Lastly, we will be happy to take any questions at the end of our prepared remarks. Currently we see Chinese macro economy still undergoing and illustrated adjustment and the global capital markets are still full of uncertainties. Despite a challenging macro environment, we continue to focus on clients needs and provide them with the best possible product and services through super fund selection with an emphasis on diversification and balance with return objectives. Thanks to our efforts in building a global cloud platform and strengthening our product and risk capabilities, we did not only generate healthy returns for our pipe but also ensured solid year-to-date operational and financial performance for Noah, which enable us to further consolidate a leading position in China’s wealth and asset management industry. In the first three quarters of 2016, we distributed a total of RMB 74.3 billion of wealth management products, up 2.9% year-over-year. Total assets under management as of September 30, 2016 reached RMB 114.8 billion, up 49.1% a year ago. Net…

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language] Thank you, Kenny. As 2016 started, [ph] transition and diversion have become a major global economic and political theme. The UK has voted for Brexit, the fed has started hiking interest rates and U.S. presidential election results were largely surprising. Japan and Europe have both interim and era [ph] of negative interest rates at the time when the renminbi was officially included in SDR basket. All of these historical events to define that a new international paradigm is gradually taking hold. A closer look at China’s macroeconomic trends also seem to confirm our judgment on its L-shaped recovery mode. The current macro-environment and markets are still full of challenges and uncertainties. There is increasing contrast between the payment market for quality assets in China versus rising demand for overseas investment. In the midst of recent rapid depreciation of the renminbi against U.S. dollar, how to achieve wealth preservation and steady capital appreciation, how to avoid market and currency risk, how to safely transfer wealth to the next generation all have become the issues that China’s high net worth families are most concerned about. We remain steadfast as we build under China’s new normal of slower growth, Noah should place long-term before short-term gains. Enhancing investor communication and client education and improving relationship managers, professional servicing skills are the key areas on which we should focus ourselves in the remainder of this year and beyond. Compliance and risk management are the life lines of wealth management companies. But there are still wealth management products in the market backed by capital pools with maturity mismatches and without independent custodians. In order to spread short-term business volume, some wealth management companies offer so called implicit guarantees, which they can honor when products do not perform as what they expected. Such non-compiling…

Shang Chuang

Management

Thank you, Chairlady, Wang, and hello, everyone. Today, I’ll give you an overview of our third quarter 2016 results and then open the call up for questions. As Kenny and Chairlady Wang have noted, we are generally pleased with our results for the third quarter of 2016. Net revenues increased 16.9% year-over-year to RMB 608.5 million. Non-GAAP net income grew 8.7% year-over-year to RMB 179.7 million. For our wealth management business, we distributed approximately RMB 23.9 billion of products in the third quarter, down 8.3% from the same period a year ago. However, looking more closely, net revenues from one-time commission increased 48.4% to RMB 281.2 million on a year-on-year basis. This was mainly due to changes in the product mix and higher effective one-time commission rate. Net revenues from reoccurring services which mainly come from private equity and real estate products were RMB 294.9 million in the third quarter of 2016, representing a 7.9% increase year-over-year. Reoccurring service fees as a percentage of total net revenues decreased year-over-year to 48.2% from 49.6% a year ago, as acted [ph] several real estate funds which usually have higher management fees than fund-of-funds products, and started repositioning our real estate investment towards commercial real projects. We expect recurring revenue to continue to provide stable sustainable income going forward. We received RMB 4.7 million in net revenues from performance-based income during the third quarter compared to RMB 63.5 million in the third quarter of 2015. The decline was primarily due to a large decrease of performance-based income from secondary market equity products. As we exited several real estate funds this year, we achieved total performance based income RMB 45.4 million for the first nine months of this year. The solid investment performance of our products not only helps our clients with capital appreciation…

Operator

Operator

At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.

Kenny Lam

Management

Hi, all. I just want to also let you know that I think Shang mentioned this, Gopher Asset Management’s CEO and Noah’s Co-Founder Mr. Yin Zhe is also on the call. We understand that there are questions about the investment into Gopher. So, this time, we also have Mr. Yin Zhe in the call to answer questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Bo Lun Tang of CICC. Go ahead, please.

Bo Lun Tang

Analyst · CICC. Go ahead, please

I’ve got two questions. The first question is regarding the recent UnionPay bank to so the policies purchased in Hong-Kong. Just want to understand some color and ground what’s that impact like for Noah? Because I noticed that in this quarter, actually 2%, roughly 2% of the transaction volume from the insurance policies and other products. Just want to understand what’s your outlook. And my second question is in terms of the AUM business. So, despite a strong growth in the AUM for the first three quarters, I noticed that the recurring service fee actually has increased in the relatively low speed of 7% Y-O-Y. It seems like the average recurring service charge as AUM has decreased. Is it related to previously you said you were introduced to institutional investors, so just want to understand the rationale behind. And when you try to introduce the institutional investments, will the ultimate trend of the recurrence of this fee charge rate to fall? Thank you.

Kenny Lam

Management

Let me just take the first question about the UnionPay and then the second question about recurring service fee Shang will answer. I think UnionPay, it actually has very limited impact on our overall revenue. It actually represents only about less than 10% of our total revenue that’s actually in overseas insurance. Even within that, I think we didn’t pay policy, it’s just the subset within the overseas insurance. We understand that there currently two things that’s happening, one is there are others providers, Visa and MasterCard that can actually still process in Hong Kong. And then secondly, as many of our clients actually do have assets outside and so a lot of the actually do not purchase through the hidden UnionPay route. And so just to reiterate, overall, the impact of our revenue is actually much less than 10% of the revenue in terms of overseas insurance. Even within that lower than 10% insurance share, there are three or four routes of buying insurance in Hong Kong. Many of our clients actually have assets outside of China and therefore they don’t use to UnionPay route. So in summary, it’s a very limited impact so far on our revenue in front.

Shang Chuang

Management

Okay. And on your second question regarding reoccurring service fee, as you may know, Gopher asset management is primarily a fund-of-funds asset management company. However, in the real estate asset category, it had also a very strong direct investment team. For this year, we have actively managed the acceleration maturity of many of our direct real estate funds. Now, many of the real estate funds have higher management fees and fund-of-funds products. And so on a blended weighted average rate, our management fees has slowly come down. That’s why you can see that our overall recurring service fee growth has slowed a bit. But as madam Wang has mentioned, we will be repositioning our real estate investment towards more commercial rather than residential. So, we still feel quite confident on a going forward basis as our asset management business growth, our overall recurring service fees will grow in line with that.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language] And you mentioned about the impact of institutional investors for asset management business. You rightly pointed out, this year, high quality institutional investors have been very interested in investing in Gopher Asset Management product. And some of them have actually made commitments already. But a lot of them have not been recognized in terms of revenues, it will be toward the later this year as they only recently made commitments.

Kenny Lam

Management

Just one more point about insurance. Actually, we’ve run some numbers for our performance this year. We see a lot of clients, actually a majority of our clients buying with the low US$50,000 type protection investment. So, it’s actually contrary to [indiscernible] we’re not actually selling a lot of saving, investment linked type product. The drive of the insurance growth is still very much protection oriented and about US$50,000 or below in the majority of our client base. So, this UnionPay policy is actually affecting us in a very limited way.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Usdin Wang of Rosefinch. [Ph] Go ahead please.

Unidentified Participant

Analyst · Rosefinch

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

For the benefit of the audience, I will translate the two questions that was raised. The first question was earlier this month, we noted a news article by 21st Century was commented or speculated that private funds in China won’t be allowed to credit assets or underlying assets, what’s your view on this and will there be any impact on our business? And the second question was, earlier this year, can you mention about rolling out new incentive scheme to improve the retention of key employees of the firm, can you brief us on any update regarding this initiative? Thank you.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

A couple of points your question regarding the news article. We consulted relevant regulatory bodies and our view now is that article -- it’s more of a speculation rather than a fact. But however this also points out to you an ongoing market trend or regulation trend, there will be more regulation to prevent a misleading, [ph] to prevent unhealthy investment into the credit market. What do I mean by unhealthy, [indiscernible] that we have seen in previous years, the capital quote, the mismatches, I mean there will be more regulation to make sure that these type of investment cannot continue on a going forward basis. There is a number, which I didn’t share on my call script, I’d like to point out, actually this year we have noted that those clients who have invested more than RMB 10 million actually grew at quite a healthy rate of more than 15%. I think in terms of fixed income or credit products, there is going to be more and more of a diversion. So, a lot of the larger clients, high quality clients will rely on good relationship managers; and smaller clients, they will probably start to buy more fixed income products online rather than relying on relationship managers. So overall, I think in terms of the development of the market and the regulation, we think that streamlining, minimizing systematic risk is actually all good for our business, as we’re an established player already.

Unidentified Participant

Analyst · Rosefinch

[Foreign Language]

Kenny Lam

Management

So, let me just answer the question raised on the idea of a partnership at the senior management level at Noah. I think I’ve raised this concept in the beginning of the year. We’ve actually implemented this in concept. We’ve selected the top 30 senior management at Noah to be distributed with higher concentration of Noah’s stock option. And so, this was actually done in exercise whereby we are distributing to fewer management but much more concentrated in higher allocation, so that’s one. Secondly, is we’ve selected a significant wave of management, the next tier, about 30 staff, which have also been selected to be provided with stock and stock options. And so, these are big next generation leaders. In terms of the management team’s stability, basically since 2015 for the last 18 to 24 month we’ve maintained the turnover rate at the low 7% to 8%. So that’s basically helping us maintain a very stable management team. We want to have some turnover but not high, so anything below 7% to 8% is something that we should be doing.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Frank Lin with Lins Value Capital. Go ahead please.

Frank Lin

Analyst · Lins Value Capital. Go ahead please

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

To finish with audience, I would translate Frank Lin’s question into English. Hello, senior management. There’s a couple of things I would like your comment on. Number one, I noted number, our team, the management team this year has stayed relatively flat. Can you please provide us the rationale of these numbers? Second, I also do hedge fund investing in China and I’m also a big believer of value investing. And I think that echoes what madam Wang said, I think that’s the way to go in the future. I know for Gopher more than 50% of the AUM is in private equity and hedge fund. In your opinion, what are good private equity hedge fund products, I note that for -- these equity products, the average duration is 0.6. Can you comment on that as well?

Kenny Lam

Management

[Foreign Language] So, let me just translate the whole thing in English. There’s the question about the RM growth. We’ve actually seen a limited growth this year. But we’re maintaining it about 1,100 in terms of RM. But you’ve seen growth recently, end of 2014, we had about 750 RM; so, we’ve grown about 50% in the last 18 months. Now, what we wanted to do in the last three quarters is to basically improve the quality of our RMs including with a special program to train the top 100 RMs to be leading private bankers. We have also focused on overall productivity of our RM and capabilities of our RM. So, when you see that, they will be generating more revenue and also generating more AUM for each RM, and that’s the focus this year which is the quality of the RM. Now, let’s Ms. Wang talk a bit about the product question.

Shang Chuang

Management

I’ll answer in terms of our private equity and hedge fund products in China, I think we’re very stringent in terms of our management selection process. We review multiple factors including the investment team, their track record, their investment philosophy et cetera. I think what we’ve ended up over the last 5, 10 years is we build strategic long-term relationship with the high-quality asset managers that’s in the market; many of them continue to outperform. They are often in the top quartile in terms of performance. For our various asset categories, I think the product relations are quite in line with the market standard. For private equity fund, the tropical whole cycle is anywhere between 5 to 10 years. For hedge funds in China, usually there is a one year lock and quarterly or biannually redemption when those thereafter. You mentioned a particular number 0.6. I think that is possibly referring to our 6-K. That is the amount of secondary market equity funds that expired in the third quarter of this year. So that’s 600 million that have expired versus 200 million of new flow. Despite the Asia weakness this year, our secondary market equity fund of funds AUM for Gopher has to remain quite stable and steady at more than RMB 10 billion for the most of this year. So, I guess that points out and illustrates the fact that we have very good management selection, the performance exceeds the index. And generally, I think our clients appreciate that. And so that translates into the fact that we have maintained our AUM over the last nine months.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

Sure. Madam, Wang would like to add a bit more commentary on both questions actually. The first question regarding our relationship managers. She will like to highlight for the wealth management industry in China, I think over the last 5, 10 years of development, I think we are seeing the industry as a whole advancing, it’s not just a numbers growth or plus high as many relationship manager as you can. I think we are now focusing more on quality over quantity. So, we are very focused on improving the productivity of our relationship managers. So, if we are able to improve the productivity of a typical relationship manager from RMB 300 million of new info per year to $300 million of new info per year that alone will help us increase our overall business volume six to seven times without adding new relationship managers. So, especially in this year in 2016 where the macro environment is quite uncertain, we’ve been focusing on quality as a more prudent way of expanding our business, rather than just hiring new item. So, the overall tone is more of a optimization. So, you will see in terms of relationship managers, in terms of branch [ph] number, we have kept it quite steady this year that is showing, we are optimizing the overall team layout. However, I would like to point out that we are adding new city coverage. So, the number of cities that we cover actually increased this year. So, I think some market in China, we have yet to cover well. So, I think we’ll plan to increase the number of city coverage going forward. Now, you mentioned about our product strategy, I would like to reiterate that I think Noah in the market, we have a very strong reputation for selecting and working with the top quartile managers. We believe that is a very strong rule in terms of alternative, i.e. the top planning manager will earn more than 80% of the return in the market. So, we are focus on deepening long-term strategic relationship with the best in class managers in the market.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Stanley Grove of Wharton Investment Funds. [Ph] Go ahead please.

Unidentified Participant

Analyst · Wharton Investment Funds

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

Sure. Before, Ms. Wang answer the question, let me quickly translate for the benefit of audience. Stanley from Wharton Investment Funds has two questions. The first question is, I noted that for the third quarter of this year in terms of the amount of private equity fund distributed is roughly about RMB 5.4 billion, which is down about 40% year-over-year. Given the current landscape a little more there in market quality assets in China, do you think that it’s going to be a bottleneck to secure high-quality private equity managers going forward. The second question is you mentioned that you are seeing more interest from institutional investors in terms of Gopher Asset Management business. Can you give us a bit more color and commentary on how that is growing and what is the percentage of AUM that’s contributed by institutional investors currently and going forward? Thank you.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

Sure. On your first question regarding securing quality manager for our private equity business, I think there is a lot of maters in play. Obviously you mentioned that there has been market for quality assets in China. But I think we have so far been able to secure long-term relationship with the top quartile managers. For private equity space, the managers -- the quality managers don’t always raise fund every single year. They usually raise a fund and takes about two, three year to invest before they raise a new fund. So, there are some seasonality in terms of fund raising. So, for example, on last year, we raised four private equity renminbi fund for Sequoia. So, obviously they are not in the market this year. So, for the third quarter, I think we paid a couple of quality managers and I think clients are still very interested in these types of long-term anti- cyclical products. I think on a quarter-to-quarter basis, depending on who we’re fund raising for, there may be some volatility in terms of the actual amount we have raised each quarter.

Yin Zhe

Analyst · Wharton Investment Funds

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

So, Mr. Yin who is currently the CEO of our Asset Management Business, Gopher, would like to answer the second question. So if you remember, Gopher Asset Management was set up about six years a ago. And after six years of operations, I think we are at a very good potential inflection point in terms of institutional investor. Number one, we have developed capabilities and multiple strategies including private equity, real estate, secondary market equity products and credit. We have built a very strong investment team around that and have demonstrated very steady investment ability and performance. And in teams of the second, in terms of the regulators and institutional investors, I think many of them are now realizing and appreciating the values in hand with fund of funds structure. Asset management industry in China grows rapidly. There are more and more managers that emerges every single day. And I think having the right manager is becoming much harder now versus a couple of years ago. So, through a fund of funds approach, many of these institutional investors can reduce their risk when they invest in alternative vis-à-vis a fund of funds model. And so, this year I have been interacting with a lot of insurance companies, banks, government led funds. They all very interested in terms of working with Gopher to increase the alternative asset allocations. So, for the fourth quarter and going forward, I think we will be able to report a lot of good progress in terms of our relationship and our cooperation with institutional investors.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Shao Ziqin of CITIC. Please go ahead.

Shao Ziqin

Analyst · CITIC. Please go ahead

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

Let me translate the question before Mr. Yin from Gopher Asset Management answers the question. So, the gentleman from, CITIC only has one question. The question is we note that for Gopher, the AUM has increased at a quite rapid pace, 49% year-over-year for third quarter. However the management fee revenue only increased 16%. Can you give us some commentary on the differences between these two percentages? Thank you.

Yin Zhe

Analyst · CITIC. Please go ahead

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

As mentioned by madam Wang, Gopher Asset Management is a multi -strategy, multi-product line asset management firm. So, we have not only private equity, real estate, secondary market equity product and other strategies as well. I think if you look at the mix of our AUM this quarter versus the last two years, you will have noticed that the AUM, though it has increased, the mix has changed. Currently, private equity is the largest asset category but a year or two years ago real estate was actually a very significant volume of our overall AUM. This year based on the overall real estate market trend, I think we have actively sold and matured a lot of our real estate funds. And we have recognized different quantity [ph] meaning that we have made good money for our investors. And as mentioned for many of our direct real estate funds, the management fee is much higher than the fund-of-fund structure. So, we’re repositioning our real estate business to focus more on commercial rather than residential. And we’ve already have many plans to launch new funds to meet the new opportunities that we see in the real estate industry.

Jingbo Wang

Management

[Foreign Language]

Shang Chuang

Management

So, madam Wang would like to add to the question. So, previously, real estate, this particular asset category was the largest in terms of contribution to Gopher AUM. For direct real estate funds our typical fee rate was 2% management fee and 20% carried. This year, given the development of the residential property market in China, our view is that we’d rather be a seller rather than a buyer. So, we have managed acceleration of many of our real estate funds. Going forward, I think the opportunity will be more on the first tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, holding operating assets that are located, situated in core business districts. I think going forward in 2017, I think we see a lot of fund raising opportunity around this particular strategy. And so, I think the differences and percentages is more of the changes in the AUM mix rather than any structural issues.

Shang Chuang

Management

Thank you.