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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the uCloudlink Group Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jillian Zeng. Please go ahead.
JZ
Jillian Zeng
Analyst
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on uCloudlink’s fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. The earnings release and our earnings presentation, are now available on our IR website at ir.ucloudlink.com. Joining me on today’s call are Mr. Zhiping Peng, our Co-Founder and Chairman of Board of Directors. Mr. Chaohui Chen, our Co-Founder, Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Yimeng Shi, our Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Chen will begin with an overview of our recent business highlights. Mr. Shi will then discuss our financial and operational highlights for the fourth quarter and full year 2023. They will all be available to take your questions in the Q&A session that follows. Before we proceed, please note that this call may contain forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and observations that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors not under the company's control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different from the results, performance, or expectations implied by these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entity by the cautionary statements, risk factors, and details of the company's filings with the SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, trends in market conditions, or otherwise, except as required by law. Please also note that uCloudlink’s earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of the unaudited GAAP financial information and unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. uCloudlink’s press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Chen. Please go ahead.
CC
Chaohui Chen
Analyst
Thank you, Jillian, and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate everyone taking time out of your busy day. We are very pleased to report another strong set of results in year 2023, highlighted by 19.8% increase in full year revenues to US$85.6 million. 2023 was a milestone in the turnaround of our business following the COVID-19 pandemic. With operating cash inflow of US$6.5 million and net income of US$2.8 million. Our 1.0 international data connectivity services business continued to recover in year 2023. In our major markets, China and Japan, we are seeing the early signs of a recovery in outbound tourism and business travel following the COVID-19 pandemic. With more Chinese tourists begin to use our Roamingman brand services again and the recovery in Japan gaining momentum. Our market share in these major markets is growing, which will create significant growth opportunities for us going forward. With one of the most extensive 5G roaming networks in the world that cover 55 countries and regions, our competitive local full-speed 5G roaming solutions not only offer extensive coverage, but also significantly enhance the user experience, which further expands our user space and cements our leading positions in the roaming market. While working to turn around our business over the past years, we leveraged our existing research and development resources and cutting-edge technologies to explore business opportunities beyond portable Wi-Fi terminals and build and expand the array of comprehensive data connectivity solutions to satisfy a wide range of users' needs. In addition to significantly enhancing the travel experience by catering to the diverse data connectivity needs of various users, we will also offer more intelligent and convenient live applications like item tracking, pattern management, and emerging communication. Among others, through our GlocalMe Life solutions business, we believe that…
YS
Yimeng Shi
Analyst
Thank you, Mr. Chen. Hello everyone, I will go over our operational and financial highlights for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. Average daily active terminals is an important operating metric for us as it measures customer usage trends over each period, which is reflective of our business performance. In the fourth quarter of 2023, average daily active terminals were 316,207 of which 10,075 owned by the Company and 306,132 owned by our business partners, representing an increase of 6.2% from 297,884 in the fourth quarter of 2022. During the fourth quarter of 2023, 47% of daily active terminals were from uCloudlink 2.0 local data connectivity services and 53% of daily active terminals were from uCloudlink 1.0 international data connectivity services. Average daily data usage per terminal was 1.55 gigabytes in December 2023. Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2023 were US$21.7 million, representing an increase of 10.8% from US$19.6 million in the same period of 2022. Revenue from services was US$14.9 million, representing an increase of 19.1% from US$12.5 million in the same period of 2022. Revenue from services as a percentage of total revenues was 68.7% during the fourth quarter of 2023, up from 63.9% during the same period of 2022. During the fourth quarter of 2023, as a percentage of our total revenues, Japan contributed 43.1%, North America contributed 24.3%, mainland China contributed 16.5%, and other countries and regions contributed the remaining 16.1%, compared to 43.7%, 33.9%, 3.0% and 19.4%, respectively, for the same period for 2022. Overall gross margin improved to 52% in the fourth quarter of 2023 from 51.3% for the same period of 2022, while gross margin on services increased to 60.1% in the fourth quarter from 59.4% for the same period of 2022. Excluding share-based compensation, total operating expenses increased…
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Theodore O'Neill with Litchfield Hills Research. Please go ahead.
TO
Theodore O'Neill
Analyst
Thank you very much. I have two questions this morning. My first question is about revenues from data connectivity services of US$11.8 million in the quarter. That is down from US$13.8 million in the third quarter. I was wondering if you could give us some insight into that, and if it was driven by any particular geographic region that was down sequentially more so than others.
CC
Chaohui Chen
Analyst
Hi, Theo. Thanks for your question regarding this data connectivity service for that quarterless change. Yes, you mentioned that two quarters, the third quarters compared with the fourth quarters. Yes, as you know in our disclosures, the international roaming service is a main difference for our growth in service. The seasonal reasons, the third quarter is peak time, is a summer vacation. So that's a peak time for the roaming service. And in the fourth, similarly, it's a little bit down for this roaming service. That's a part, a pattern of the seasonal change.
TO
Theodore O'Neill
Analyst
Is it across all geographies, or is it any particular geography?
CC
Chaohui Chen
Analyst
No, that's overall seasonal change. The fourth quarter of the year is only a short period, like Christmas holidays. But in the third quarter, it's a long summer vacation. So that's the overall seasonal change, not particularly to some particular regions.
TO
Theodore O'Neill
Analyst
Okay, understood. Thank you very much. My other question is about G&A expenses of US$6 million in the quarter. I noticed also last year the G&A expenses rise sequentially from third quarter to the fourth quarter. And this year, the same thing. It went from US$3.8 million in the third quarter to US$6 million in the fourth quarter. And I was wondering what drives that change sequentially from 3Q to 4Q in G&A?
CC
Chaohui Chen
Analyst
Yes, from our understanding, that's a good incentive plan for our employees. We have, as we disclosed, we performance turnaround positions in terms of the revenues growth and also a net income tend to be positive compared with the huge loss in the year 2022. So the management decided to pay a significant increase for annual bonus for the whole company employees. So that's specifically driven by a pay rise in terms of annual bonus. So I think that's a very good motivation to our employees. And we have a tight control on the headcount numbers in the course of years of growth. And this year, the whole company's employees have well motivated to support our growth for this year.
TO
Theodore O'Neill
Analyst
Thank you very much. That explains it to me. Thank you very much.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from Vivian Zang with Diamond Equity Research. Please go ahead.
VZ
Vivian Zang
Analyst · Diamond Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hello. This is Vivian Zang with Diamond Equity. My first question would also be about the fourth quarter revenue, which didn't meet your guidance of US$22 million to US$26 million. So we'd like to know the reason for not meeting these expectations for the first quarter.
YS
Yimeng Shi
Analyst · Diamond Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Yimeng. I answer the questions first, and then Mr. Chen will add some color on this fourth quarter's revenue. A little bit low then is guidance. We just got the guidance is US$22 million at the bottom. Yes, just a small, we achieved US$21.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Just a little bit low then our guidance. That's still on this, our business patents. We just have some hardware orders. We defer some hardware orders to the later periods because we have some commercial terms is agreed by the customers before we deliver this hardware to customers. So that our business, if we're taking into consideration this hardware's deliveries in the normal course, we will meet this guidance. Yes. So that's technically is a change in the final week of the month of December.
CC
Chaohui Chen
Analyst · Diamond Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Yes. By the way, we have another reason to cost less than our expectation. That's because our new product a little bit delayed just for our R&D reason. So that's another reason that caused a little bit less than our expectation.
VZ
Vivian Zang
Analyst · Diamond Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Okay. I understand. So the next question is that, can you share more information about your newly announced GlocalMe Life solutions business? Because Yimeng, like you mentioned, any products or services can be launched or expected to boost the revenue this year in 2024.
YS
Yimeng Shi
Analyst · Diamond Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Yes. So in the traditional, before year 2023, we are majorly rely on our portable Wi-Fi to create the major revenue. And from the last year, the third quarter, we start to launch our new product such as OTA SIM card, such as our GlocalMe Life product. So for the smaller business, early business trial. So this year we will officially launch our GlocalMe Life product. That means we create people who need better connection. Because better connection, what is better, we can create revenue from the data. Another expectation, another aspect, we can create a better life for people. For example, if we get the best network, when the old people, they're falling down, they can, their SOS message can send to the rescue center. The old man normally is easy to falling down in the bathroom and the kitchen. Most of these two area, the signal is very poor. Our product can provide not only the local Wi-Fi connection, home Wi-Fi connection, but also cross carrier, all the signal. Then can help send out this critical SOS message and then can enable these old people get the help, get saved. And another thing in our product I mentioned is about a tracker. Our tracker can find something that a normal tracker and the LTEG [ph] could not find. Because with the GPS scenario, our tracker can send GPS location data via the marketing network. Because in a rural area, in the corner of the building, normally coverage is very poor. So marketing network, of course, can help this message send out than just single carrier network. That's why we call our new generation tracker with the better connection can find out something that the traditional tracker and the LTEG could not find. That's one reason. Another second reason…
VZ
Vivian Zang
Analyst · Diamond Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Okay, I got it. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's all my questions.
OP
Operator
Operator
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jillian Zeng for any closing remarks.
JZ
Jillian Zeng
Analyst
Well thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact UCLOUDLINK’s investor relations through the contact information provided on our website or speak to our investor relations firm, Christensen Advisory. We look forward to speaking to you all again on our next quarterly call. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.
OP
Operator
Operator
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.