Jingbo Wang
Analyst · CLSA
[Foreign Language] For today's agenda, I will first share my views on the microeconomy and then briefly summarize Noah's overall performance for the full year 2019. The developments of our business segments and the gains and challenges during our transformation. Our CFO, Grant Pan will follow with a detailed discussion of Noah's full year and quarterly financial performance. We will conclude the call with question-and-answer session. The past 2019 was a tough year for Noah where the Camsing incident has tested the bottom line of our business ethics and operations. We didn’t expect that 2020 poses an even bigger challenge or more ultimate challenge, which tests our attitude as humanity when facing a crises that's threatening our lives. At this point I am very grateful for having experienced the Camsing incident in 2019, which has become a gift with the profound influence on Noah's strategic decisions. Because of the Camsing incident our management team reflected on how we started to listening to the voices of our employees and clients to understand their real demand. We're thinking more about company's vision and business plan for the next 5 to 10 years. Therefore we're able to reach a clearer consensus on what we should persist in our core strategy for the long run and will show what we should abandon immediately. Starting from the second half of 2019 we determined to terminate single counterparty non-standardized private credit assets and fully entered the field of standardized products. Concurrently, we shifted our operations from off-line to online. Such initiatives and efforts have fully prepared us to confront the difficult situation in 2020 when containment measures such as mandate travel restrictions and longtime deployed to combat the sudden breakout of the global COVID-19 epidemic. Next, I will go over Noah's 2019 performance. In 2019, ad revenues for the full year reached RMB3.39 billion up 3.1% year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income attributable to shareholders reach RMB1.04 billion up 2.7% year-over-year. In terms of core operational results, the transaction value of financial products for the wealth management segment was RMB78.5 billion. The AUM of our asset management segment continued to grow reaching RMB170.2 billion among which private equity investments reached RMB104.9 billion. We distributed RMB26.4 billion of standardized products for the full year up 93.9% year-over-year. After we stopped offering single counterparty non-standardized private credit products the transaction value of standardized product in the fourth quarter was close to RMB10 billion,, representing a significant increase of 580.8% year-over-year and 30.4% quarter-over-quarter. We continue to optimize and upgrade Noah's mutual funds App Fund Smile. In 2019 the transaction value of mutual funds increased by RMB16.4 setting a new distribution record for single year and a single quarter. Considering the internal and external challenges we faced we're satisfied about such achievements in 2019. [Foreign Language] During the COVID-19 epidemic this year, transaction value of standardized products maintained an encouraging growth momentum. It demonstrates the initial success of Noah's paradigm shift on the product front. We will scale up investment to consistently refine IT systems and operational processes so as to continuously optimized client's experience. Meanwhile we have launched a new relationship manager compensation scheme that emphasizes on AUM-based compensation with an adjusted incentive plan to align the interests of relationship managers Noah and clients. We believe such assessment forms a win-win situation enhancing client stickiness and relationship manager's loyalty to the company. In 2019 Noah's high net worth client base continued to expand with over 35,000 active clients for the year up 27.7% year-over-year, which included mutual fund clients. The number of outer [indiscernible] worth clients are card members with per capita assets under our management of over RMB90 million also continued to increase up 14.7% year-over-year for 2019. On the wealth management segment we have established a VIP center to serve super clients and continuously improve the conversion rate of hard clients. Thanks to the strategic transition to standardized products almost all of our business has shifted from off-line to online. During the COVID-19 epidemic a 100% of orders placement by our clients are made online. With the development of our online business in addition to AUM we have also studied Noah's clients by their behavior patterns and divided them into three categories; discretionary portfolio management, specific product driven and self-service transactions. We can see that the numbers of all three types of clients has increased. Through our overseas segment, net revenues increased by 25.4% to nearly RMB1 billion accounting for 27.9% of the group's total revenue as compared with 22.9% in 2018. AUM reached RMB24.8 million -- sorry billion in 2019 accounting for 14.6% of the group's total AUM remaining flat compared with 2019 sorry 2018. With Noah's increasingly comprehensive service offerings we are strengthening connections with our clients globally with an in-depth understanding of their intrinsic and long-term wealth management demands. [Foreign Language] At the end of 2019 Noah's AUM reached RMB170.2 billion among which our voluntary divisions offering single counterparty non-standardized private credit products cost a net decrease of RMB10 billion in AUM. Our actively managed funds have achieved different levels of growth in AUM. Specifically AUM of standardized product represented by the public securities products increased by 50.3% year-over-year and AUM of our multi-strategy funds increased by 31% year-over-year. We also achieved solid AUM growth in our conventional products really based on private equity. For public securities products Noah posted this on large asset allocation and perceives no volatility and absolute return which our high net worth clients rigid demand. In 2019 the investments return of Gopher’s public security flagship FOF and MoM fund was up by over 15%. Our quantitative FOF realized a 34.8% returns with a low volatility of 3.8%. Among Gopher’s multi-strategy fund the smart better index enhanced strategy quantitative strategy fund has generated a return of 30.1% in 2019 since its launch. This product has generated excess returns for 82% of its clients. All these performances reflect Gopher’s continuously strengthened investment and management capabilities in the field of public securities products. At the same time, I would like to clarify that our high net worth clients still have strong demand for our vCPE and real estate products, which are also our featured product that traditionally had strong performances. We have built a stellar brand image in the market. Our product strategy shift to standardized product does not represent gaining up on our advantages in these product type categories. We will continue to optimize and deepen our operation in this area to enhance our advantages. Specifically, we will keep enhancing our brand and influence through collaboration with the best alternative investment managers and working with the best alternative investment team in the United States to strengthen our globalization approach. In terms of operational efficiency total operating expenses in 2019 were RMB2.48 billion up 4.3% year-over-year. Non-GAAP net profit margin was 30.6%, which included one-off expenses of the RMB163 million as a result of Camsing related legal expenses. Excluding these one-off expenses the net profit margin would have been 35.4% showcasing great improvement in management efficiency. It reflects the efforts made by the management in streamlining our operations. Noah always believes that talents and possession are the most precious wealth of the company and has been screening elite relationship managers. Our elite relationship managers contributed to most of our revenue generation capacity while their turnover rates was only 4.1% in 2019 down 0.5 percentage points compared with 2018. We will continue to strengthen the professional capacities of our relationship management team and provide excellent investment advisory services to clients. The goal of our transformation and new positioning is to be a platform company that provides comprehensive financial services to clients. With our advantage of serving high net worth clients we're expanding our reach to a broader client base through the Internet. Both our products and channels are open to our partners. Apart from Noah's direct sales team opening channels is one of our core future strategies. We're continuously enhancing our internal resources through optimizing and recruiting relationship managers and construction our VIP center which serves super client. Simultaneously we're cooperating with banks distribution channels and serving more independent financial advisors. As part of its overall transformation strategy, the company has decided to further increase its investment in IT infrastructure and online platform development. This will primarily consists of the major upgrades of Fund Smile app, the construction of the global version of Fund Smile app and the creation of a new soft system for institution channels. In 2019 the paradigm shift in China's wealth management space was well on the way. Noah was determined to lead the old check and entered a worldwide recognized new arena. We believe that a wealth management market in China is full of new opportunities. We're facing new environment, new market and new clients as well as a refreshed market landscape and an upgraded mechanism of operation. Most importantly through crises Noah's core team has gained a more profound insight into the industry. We spent a lot of time and efforts in aligning interest of our employees and clients. We have repositioned the core management capacity of Gopher asset management to focus on comprehensive asset allocation, pursuing products with low volatility and absolute return that are welcomed by high net worth clients. We expect huge market potential in this area. At the same time we are delighted to see that with the illusion of implicit guarantees being broken and the reform on the financial supply side, the market has rapidly presented new clients demand, which is even exceeding our expectations. On the wealth management product and client front, previously we have completely stopped offering private credit products. Our transformation has just matched client's new demand. Therefore, our products received welcome reception and recognition. The transaction value of standardized products driven by client's strong demand demonstrates promising momentum and the trend of our transformation, which further proves our strong pressure resilience and resistance. We believe that a successful wealth management and asset management company shows full-features, excellent performance, diversified products, broad distribution channels and significant AUM scale. Not a single feature can be omitted. Noah has made many achievements in the past 15 years and most important of which was the establishment of the product platform and direct sales channels that opened the globe. In the coming decade, Noah will continue to understand client's evolving needs, pivot around client interests and improved stability of our performance. In the meantime, we're opening up our channels to promote our product from direct sales to selling on the commission basis and to serving independent financial advisors with a goal of constantly extending our AUM. The COVID-19 epidemic has pressed the pause button on normal daily operations. Saved with this unexpected situation, we are deeply aware of the importance of online operations and the role of digital capacities in Noah's future development. Online transaction capabilities of standardized products will be the key area of our strategic investments going forward. During the epidemic with divers and sufficient leading product supplies, we have to field demands of our clients. In addition, we also introduced a variety of online investor education activities to enhance client stickiness. Such online activities have covered 560,000 people and helped us enhance interactions and relationships with our clients during the epidemic. These practices during the COVID-19 outbreak also demonstrated the resilience of our business on the southern crisis. We also remain committed to our social responsibility and have donated cash and valuable medical equipment to Hubei province through Shanghai Noah Foundation at the beginning of the epidemic outbreak. Finally, I believe the COVID-19 epidemic will eventually be contained and life will continue. We were glad living as the minimum yet optional strategy for our service families and businesses. The epidemic is likely to accelerate economic recession but Noah has already set the bottom line. We have a strong sense of crisis and we are also firm optimists. To Camsing incident and the COVID-19 epidemic have served as a wake-up call. We cherish the opportunities to implement fundamental changes to our work, life and spirit. Our perception of the financial industry, our families and our core values, will all be recalibrated based on common sense and intrinsic quality. We will emphasize a family and community oriented diligent and healthy that hot lifestyle instead of glorifying lavish entertainment. We also aim to become real situation entrepreneurs to accumulate to save costs and to contribute as much as we can with honesty, dignity, discipline, self alert, fortitude and extraordinary perseverance as our core values. These values will allow us to overcome future challenges rise above corruption and tasteless indulgence driven by basic instinct and restore order, reason, simplicity and space in our way of work and style of life. We're confident that such changes will enable us to remain focused on our long-term goals instead of opportunistic tunnel visioning and short term results. Having experienced this unprecedented epidemic, we are confidence to become a better firm. We will reserve strength in the downtown for future development just as we need to score before leap forward. We are extending our mission, vision, values and our organization as well as a human resources KPIs through the crisis. We're determined to realize that overall enhancement in our operating concept and mechanic, human resources, technology, product and market. In 2019 Noah entered the vast and competitive landscape of standardized products from a small market venturing around alternative investments. Our rich experience in the industry, mature market relationship managers and clients and the management's in depth understanding and knowledge of the wealth management industry and client needs only enable us to provide superior services to high net worth clients. 2020 will be a new starting point for Noah and we are confident in our development going forward. In the meantime, we firmly believe that no Noah's transformation is in line with the development trend of wealth management and asset management industry in China. With a gradual containment of the COVID-19 epidemic in China we can say that we have not wasted this crisis.