Rong Luo
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question
Thank you, Mei. And thank you all for joining us on our earnings conference call for the second fiscal quarter of 2016. So we have communicated last quarter, we are expecting this to be a strong quarter. The second quarter revenues do exceeded our guidance due to very strong growth of our small class business, particularly in other cities. Our sales were better than expected in the one-on-one business. Net revenue increased 41.6% year-over-year to US$173.3. In RMB terms the gross was up by 43% due the depreciation of the RMB versus the US dollars. Revenue growth was primarily driven by an outstanding 55% increase in enrollments. Our performance of the top line resulted in a very solid quarter for operating income as well - with a year-on-year increase of 28.5%, even as we continue to expand classroom capacity and invest in auto initiatives. Today, I will briefly review our operational highlights in the second quarter and then discuss our most recent progress and strategy acquisitions and investments. After that, I will provide some further analysis of the Q2 financials and our business outlook. Overall, the second quarter was continuation of the positive growth trend we saw in the first quarter, a major contributor to growth in the second quarter was our small class business. In the second quarter, small class accounting for 83%, 8-3, of total revenue compared to 82% in a same year ago period. Net revenue for small class was up by 44% and enrollments increased by 52%. Other cities, especially the new cities that we enter in the past two years, continue on [indiscernible] and even a little better than expected. In Q2, as many as 9 cities grew by over 100% year-on-year. This made our revenue base from small class more widely spread geographically. Another way to show this is by looking into the 14 cities ranking below the top five cities, which are Tianjin, Xi'an, Wuhan, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing, Shenyang, Shijiazhuang and the four new cities we added in the quarter last year. These 19 cities are – sorry these 14 cities 1-4, together contributed 32% of the Peiyou small-class revenue in Q2, in the same period last year the cities below top five contributed 24%. Let me update you on Beijing's small-class performance. Our consolidated efforts to reach general growth in Beijing are beginning to pay off. The 1RMB [ph] summer class offer for the first year junior high students [indiscernible] of last years summer vacations. We have a high rate of over 80%, 8-0, registered enrollments actually going to class. This promotion was quite successful and resulted in a very solid retention rate of over 50%, 5-0, in the first year class for summer to fall. We are confident that this will continue to lead to growth in coming quarters. Another positive indicator is that [indiscernible] overall enrollment increase in Beijing is around 10% year-over-year as of today. By comparison, overall Beijing enrollments was slightly down in the same period last year. In addition, our English and Chinese class promotions also progressed quite well. Beijing Chinese enrollments more than doubled the summer time [ph] and we saw around 70%, 7-0, of enrollment growth year-over-year in the [indiscernible] as to now, Beijing English enrollments were also up by around 20% in summer time and are growing at a similar pace year-over-year in the fall time as to now. Overall, Q2 revenue in Beijing was flat year-over-year, while enrollment gross was over 15%. As you may recall, revenue growth in Beijing was mostly priced driven in the past quarters. Enrollment growth was up by high single digit, if we exclude impact [ph] for the first year to a high summer promotions. We are very clearly moving into the right direction of enrollment driven gross for Beijing and we are confident about their growth in the coming quarters. Turning briefly to our one-on-one business. one-on-one performed better than expected, contributing to 13% to the overall revenue in Q2, compared to 15% in the same year ago period. This remains a business that’s hard to give guidance for, there is [indiscernible] parents paying once for a certain amount of the tutoring sections, while we can now can show, where its still – its actually coming for sessions. In select regions we have started to offer small class, small group class as a supplement to one-on-one tutoring. Meanwhile, we continue to expand learning center capacity to support the robust demand for our services. During the quarter, we added 207 new class rooms. By the end of August, we had closed our learning centers, as these were small scale counting around 7 classrooms center versus the average of 18 class rooms per center. By end of Q2, our learning center network covers 300 centers, operates 214 as more class learning centers, including 4 learning centers [indiscernible] and 86 are worldwide learning centers. Fiscal year today, the total learning capacity expansion is 25%, which is basically in line with the 26% capacity gross were recorded in the first half last fiscal year. Most class rooms were added in the cities, including Tianjin, Shenzhen, Xi`an, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Beijing, Zhengzhou, Suzhou and Hangzhou. Our expansion plan was delayed a little bit in second quarter, so we are going to make up for this in the third quarter. In addition, in proportion to the local demand we will add more class rooms in cities with very high additional rates, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Tianjin and Chengdu. The four new cities we entered last year are also doing quite well now, revenues in the second quarter was several times those in the same quarter last year. All of four cities, including Jinan, Qingdao, Shijiazhuang, Changsha achieved operating profit in the second quarter ahead of our expectations. As a result, we are going to add more capacities over there earlier to meet increasing demand. Due to these factors in the third fiscal quarter we are preparing for adding 20 to 30, 2-0, to 3-0, new learning centers and for the full fiscal year 2016 we probably will add more class rooms 25% to 30% that we mentioned last quarter. And we maintain our plan to enter LAs four new cities by the end of this fiscal year. As expected, in the second quarter our online courses business segment remains one of our fastest growing segments with 69% year-over-year revenue growth. Online courses xueersi.com contributed 4% of total revenue this quarter compared to 3% in the same year ago period. We expect revenue contribution from online courses continue to increase going forward. Online enrollments also increased 74% 7-4, year-over-year to 15% of the total enrollments this quarter worth of 13% in a same year ago period. Online ASP declined by 3% year-over-year mainly because of more low price courses so in the quarter. Let me now take you through our most recent acquisitions and investment deals. We are very pleased to have made some important strategy advances with our recent investment in change in education, the acquisition of Firstleap Education and our latest investment in Phoenix E-Learning Corporation. Before I update you on each one, let me highlight what we consider for the commencing of this deals. First, each of this has been well coordinated in terms of paying, preparation and timing. Second, each has a very strong fee, raising our structure plan to gain long-term leverage in the future education business models and become a leading technology focus education service provider. And as the third common thing, this business all have core focus on education, and the K-12 segment and are very complementary in such a way that we can continue to lead with our organic growth strategy. Let me first discuss the change in education, in Chinese, Jinjin Jaja. Our Shanghai and Guangzhou base company operating a auto platform and mobile app that helps to connect tutors in K-12 students. In June, with two minority stay in this company investing both cash in excess rate reductions [ph] The access investment was by of integrating our one-on-one business in Guangzhou with change in educations operations. The main point I want to share with you today are as follows. This stat has not materially affect our P&L, as our revenue for long while in Guangzhou was around 10%, 9% in Q1 and 11% Q2 of the overall one-on-one revenue and is relatively low margin business. While this is a minority investment and therefore there is no consolidation in our P&L. We change our Guangzhou one-on-day business for equity in the investment and as such recorded a tough gain of US$50 million this quarter based on US GAAP. More recently in September we have entered into definitive agreement to acquire Firstleap Education. I would like to update you on the business and financial aspects of this deal. Firstly, provides all started [ph] tutoring services in English in China to children age from 2 to 15 years old, we are very pleased with this acquisition, which will strengthen our English training capability. Firstleap practical index training in Osages [ph] complements our [indiscernible] tutoring in Lewaijiao brands. The separate brands will also work together with Shunshun Liuxue, the online C2C overseas studies consulting platform in which we have invested last quarter. We expect to see all of these separate brands to grow into integrated businesses under the TAL umbrella. Firstleap now operates 66, double six, learning centers in 25 cities of this 36 centers are self operated and 30 are franchise. The numbers of students in August 2015 was around 20,000. During the period for September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2015 all the tier revenue per book was around US$30 million 3-0. Firstleap is loss making at a moment with cross selling on our platform [indiscernible] the new customer acquisition cost for Firstleap We expect this business to become profitable within two to three years, with profit margin of between 10% to 20%. Now turning to our most recent investment in Phoenix E-Learning Corporation. We invest US$30 million Phoenix E-Learning, which operates cxxk.com [indiscernible] in Chinese, the largest online education platform serving the public school system in China, upon compassion of the investment which is subject to filing with the relevant government authorities, TAL will hold 32% equity interest in Phoenix E-Learning Corporation. Cxxk.com [indiscernible] is highly recognized by the schools, teachers, parents and student in China, it’s used in over 30,000, three zero, 30,000 public schools and has over 50 million users, the vast majority of home teachers. With this investment we have opened a very important gateway to enter the market of digitalizing public schools which is wide space field for our content and tutoring services [indiscernible] To summarize, as we are now at a mid point of fiscal 2016 we are well on track pursuing this year’s straight forward growth strategy mostly driven by enrollments. Through our offline learning center network and deeper online engagement, the highest growth for our Cosmo class continues to come from [indiscernible] other than Beijing giving us a very solid growth revenue base for future growth. Meanwhile our efforts to bring back enrollments driven by our gross in Beijing are also paying off. We are pleased we have made a very strong strategic investments in [indiscernible] that will bring long-term value to shareholders. Our recent investments have been well coordinate, aligned with our long-term strategy plan and all have in common focus on education and K-12 segment and complement to our organic growth. Now let me go over some financial points, I would like to highlight for the second quarter. The decrease of ASP was mainly attributable to a mix of factors affecting the [indiscernible] including the small class summer promotion in Beijing, the 1RMB promotions in Beijing. More offerings are small group class as a supplement to the one-on-one and more enrollment contribution from the online classes. These factors were only partially offset by the increase in the hourly rate of the small class course offerings. Small class ASP declined by 5.3% year-on-year, mainly because our summer promotion in Beijing for the one-on-one and the cost offering, we increased hourly rate of small class in five cities and ASP will be back on track in future quarters. One-on-one ASP declined by 17.4% because we offer more small group class in selective regions in the quarter. This new tie of the small group class received a positive feed back and contributing more than 25% of low one-on-one enrollments in the second quarter. ASP of small group class was significantly lower than the regular one-on-one. Online ASP was down 3.1% year-on-year in Q2 because of more low price classes still in the quarter. Our expenses were US$4.1 million for the second quarter of fiscal year 2016 compared to other income of US$1.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2015. Our expense in this quarter was mainly driven by exchange losses. As a company [indiscernible] of cash balance in RMB and reports in US dollars, it benefit from exchange gains in times [indiscernible] exchange of RMB and incurs exchange losses in times of relative exchange of the US dollars. Basic and diluted net income per ADS were US$0.79 and US$0.72 respectively for this quarter. Non-GAAP basic and diluted net income per ADS, which excludes share-based compensation expenses were US$0.87 and US$0.78, respectively. Finally, before I give our guidance for the third quarter, I would like to clarify some key points. First, September 3 has been made a holiday by the state council this year in memory of the 70th anniversary of the victory of the World War II, even though we are [indiscernible] by one way of our small class cost could be delayed to the first quarter in all cities, we managed to hold classes in more than cities on September 3 and the revenue in the third quarter is better than vacations Second, the acquisition of Firstleap is to be done in two stages. And according to the relevant US GAAP guidance the economy will consolidate Firstleap into its financial statements upon pending the effective [indiscernible] of Firstleap. As a result, our third quarter guidance does not again does not reflect the revenue estimate of Firstleap Education. We estimate total net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2016 to grow 40% to 43% year-over-year in RMB terms. Taking into consideration of the recent significant change in RMB exchange rate against the US dollar, we expects total net revenues for the third quarter of fiscal year 2016 to be between US$135.1 million and US$138.1 million, representing an increase of 36% to 39% on a year-over-year basis, assuming no material change in exchange rates. If we achieve the guidance of 36% to 39% revenue growth in Q2, then we will have achieved 41% to 42% year-over-year top line growth for the first nine months of the year. Given the strong results in the first half of fiscal year 2016 and [indiscernible] we are more optimistic for the full year of the 2016 than earlier in the year. We now estimate total net revenue for fiscal year 2016 to grow 40% to 42% in RMB terms, as compared to the 35% year-on-year revenue growth recorded last year. This estimation reflects comments current expectations which is starting to change. That concludes my prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.