Earnings Labs

Sunlands Technology Group (STG)

Q3 2019 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 22, 2019

$3.21

+0.00%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Sunlands’ Third Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After prepared remarks by the management team, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today’s conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to your host today, Yingying Liu, Sunlands’ IR Director. Please go ahead.

Yingying Liu

Management

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Sunlands’ third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. On the call, our CEO, Tongbo Liu, will provide an update on our operational performance, as well as our strategic initiatives. Our CFO, Steven Yipeng Li, will give you an overview of our financial performance and also provide our guidance for the fourth quarter of 2019. Following their prepared remarks, we will move into the Q&A session. Before I hand it over to the management, I’d like to remind you of Sunlands’ Safe Harbor statement in relation to today’s call. Except for the historical information contained herein, certain of the matters discussed in this conference call are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current trends, estimates, and projections, and therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Tongbo Liu.

Tongbo Liu

Management

Thank you, Yingying. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Sunlands’ third quarter 2019 conference call. During the third quarter, we continue to focus on a diversified set of student acquisition methods to attract more students to our online platform. Driven by these initiatives, our third quarter top line reached RMB527.3 million, which was in line with our guidance and represented a 2% increase year-over-year. We also narrowed our net loss margin to 24.6% in the third quarter versus 43.8% in the same period last year, as we continue to manage costs and expenses. During the third quarter, we continued to advance our strategic initiatives and new product features in an effort to promote our brands and improve the quality of courses and services we bring to our students. Our strategic initiatives also include the relentless pursuit of cutting-edge technologies, particularly with an emphasis on applying AI to education, as we strive to further differentiate our offerings through data mining our vast database of learning records and leverage our integrated AI technology, we’re able to analyze individual learning habits and develop personalized study plans for our students, so that their learning can be more efficient and attractive. We also use AI technology to analyze our massive database of historical examination questions in order to predict most of frequent test knowledge points and optimize our test preparation materials. Moreover, artificial intelligence plays an essential role in Sunlands’ internal management to improve quality of services for students in education and training, as well as protect students rights. For example, all phone course to our students are monitored by our AI system, which can detect sensitive words and protocol violations and immediately sends an alert for corrective action. Data analysis is also the foundation of our recruitment process. We have detailed the data record for candidate…

Steven Yipeng Li

Management

Thank you, Tongbo, and hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us. For the third quarter, our net revenues were RMB527.3 million in line with our guidance. Our gross billings on new student enrollment declined by 18.8% and 20.8% respectively year-over-year, as we continued to adjust the marketing expenses in view of uncertainties in student acquisition costs and macroeconomic trends. However, the rate of decrease moderated from the second quarter, which shows our student acquisition efforts are gaining traction. In addition, as Tongbo just mentioned, following the improvements in net loss in the second quarter. In the third quarter, our net loss narrowed again year-over-year to RMB129.8 million, compared with a loss of RMB226.3 million in third quarter of 2018, primarily as a result of reduced administrative expenses and sales and marketing expenses. Going forward, we will continue with steady execution of our five-pronged expansion and retention strategies, to bring long-term returns for both our customers and shareholders. Now, let me walk you through some of the key financial results for third quarter. In the third quarter of 2019, net revenues increased by 2% to RMB527.3 million from RMB517 million in the third quarter of 2018. The increase was mainly driven by the growth in the number of students in the third quarter of 2019 compared with the third quarter of 2018, following new student enrollments increase over the past years. Cost of revenues increased by 22.7% to RMB113.7 million in the third quarter of 2019 from RMB92.7 million in the third quarter of 2018, which was primarily due to the insurance premiums related to online education services with insurance coverage since late in 2018. Gross profit decreased by 2.5% to RMB413.6 million from RMB424.4 million in the third quarter of 2018. In the third quarter of 2019, operating expenses were RMB546.9…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Alex Xie, Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Alex Xie

Analyst

Hi, management. Thank you for taking my question. So my observation is that in Q3 compared with Q2, we have Q-on-Q growth in terms of gross billings and new student enrollments. But at the same time, our net loss also increased Q-on-Q. So would management show your thoughts on what would be your priority in the future still to boost gross billings growth or to continue to narrow the loss? Thank you.

Tongbo Liu

Management

Thank you for the question. The – yes, like you mentioned, the gross billings for third quarter, we see an increase compared to the second quarter and also the loss is bigger than quarter-end, and that’s primarily due to the additional spending on the sales and marketing expenses. As you may know, the – most of the sales and marketing expenses are recorded right after the gross billings, but most of the gross billings will be deferred and to be recognized as revenue in the future periods. So that’s the reason why the loss for third quarter is bigger than the loss for second quarter. But as we mentioned during the call, the – we – the companies for the past few quarters, we continue to try all different ways to control our costs, control the general and administrative expenses, control the sales and marketing expenses, and we have seen some results from our actions. So in the future, I think, our number one priority is still to gain more market share to – that’s our number one goal. But at the same time, we believe we can – yes, we can still control our costs and all the expenses and continue to narrow our loss.

Alex Xie

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I’m showing no further questions. This will conclude our question-and-answer session. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference back over to Yingying Liu, Investor Relations Director for any closing remarks.

Yingying Liu

Management

Thank you. And once again, thank you, everyone, for joining today’s call. We look forward to speaking with you again. Good day and good night.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the earnings conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.