Earnings Labs

Yiren Digital Ltd. (YRD)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 16, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Yirendai Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2016 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 Matthew Li. Please go ahead.

Matthew Li

Analyst

Thank you. And welcome to Yirendai's fourth quarter and full-year 2016 earnings conference call. Our earnings press release and the supplemental presentation slides are now available on our website. Hope you all had the chance to review the materials by now. Today's call features presentations by our Chief Executive Officer Ms. Yihan Fang, and our Chief Financial Officer Mr. Dennis Cong. Mr. Huan Chen, Director of Yirendai and Chief Strategy Officer of CreditEase and Mr. Yang Cao, our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer will join the presenters in the Q&A session. Before beginning, we would like to remind you that discussions during this call contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such statements. Further information regarding potential risks, uncertainties or factors is included in Yirendai's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Yirendai does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law. During this call, we will be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures as supplemental measures to review and assess our operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings press release. With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO. Yihan, please begin.

Yihan Fang

Analyst

Thanks, Matthew, and thank you all for joining the call today. 2016 was a milestone year for the online lending industry in China. The overall industry continue to grow at a remarkable rate, despite increased regulation and further market consolidation as the number of functional players continues to fall. We have also observed more online platforms shifting towards serving lower quality borrowers with small short-duration loans. We have clearly positioned Yirendai differently as the go-to platform for prime borrowers, with our products and services targeting urban salaried workers with credit cards. We had another strong quarter with loan origination volume increasing by 19% sequentially and 102% year-over-year to RMB 6.7 billion. Our full-year 2016 loan origination volume increased 112% year-over-year to RMB 20.3 billion. Meanwhile, accumulated loan origination volume to RMB 32.3 billion and outstanding loan balance to RMB 20.8 billion. During the quarter, we facilitated loans to more than 110,000 qualified borrowers, 57% of these borrowers were acquired through online channels, accounting for 37% of loan origination volume during the quarter. 99% of the loan volume acquired through online channels was facilitated through mobile. As of December 31, 2016, we have cumulatively served more than 500,000 borrowers through our online marketplace. During the quarter, we served close to 200,000 investors, of which invested through our online channels with 85% of them using our investor mobile application. We executed a number of initiatives throughout the year to drive the strong growth momentum of our business. I'm proud to say we made remarkable achievements on many fronts, such as credit underwriting, risk management and product development. Over the past year, we further strengthened our credit underwriting and risk management by expanding the amount of data sources we use in our analytical systems, fine-tuning our risk policies and decision-making endings [ph], and…

Dennis Cong

Analyst

Thanks, Yihan. Hello, everyone. Now, I will go over our fourth quarter and full year 2016 results and provide our business guidance for 2017. We're pleased to conclude full-year 2016 with another strong quarter. In Q4, 2016, we facilitated RMB 6.7 billion loan during the quarter, an increase of 102% when compared with previous year, resulting total 2016 full-year loan origination of RMB 20.3 billion that exceeds our target. Now, looking more closely into our fourth quarter performance, total revenue in Q4 2016 was RMB 1.1 billion representing an increase of 137% year-over-year and 22% on a sequential basis, due to both strong seasonal demand at end of the year and further expansion of market leadership. In Q4 2016, 57% of our borrowers are acquired from online channels, contributing to 37% of the loans facilitated in this quarter, compared to 41% in the previous quarter. The decrease of percentage of loans generated from online channels was mainly due to our tightened risk policy of the online channels after the organized fraud incidents in Q3. As we continue to strengthen our capabilities of online customer acquisition and risk management, we expect loan origination from our online channels will reach 60% in total volume by end of 2017. In terms of our loan product portfolio during the quarter, 87.8% of our new loans facilitates with Product C. As we continue to see strong credit performance of this [price range] [ph]. The product volume mix of Product A, B and C were 4.3%, 3.2% and 4.7% respectively. On the investor side, our annual Yidingying average investment yield on the platform in Q4 2016 was 8.2%, down from 8.7% in the previous quarter, as we continue to benefit from strong investor demand for high quality asset on our platform. In order to better meet…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Richard Xu with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Richard Xu

Analyst

Hi, thank you for the thorough introduction. I just have a question regarding the borrower mix from online and offline channels. I understand that there are some mix change in fourth quarter after the fraud case in second quarter. Just wondering, what was your target for the next - I guess, for next year or for the medium term, and what will be the actions taken to gradually increase the online portion again? Thank you very much.

Dennis Cong

Analyst

Okay. Thanks, Richard. For the 2015, as we continue to ramp up our online acquisition capability and risk management, and developing more channels, we expect our online business to grow faster than our overall portfolio growth. So the expected loan mix for the online channels will grow 40% in the early part of the year to close to 50% or even more than 50% by the end of the year. So overall, volume mix for the 2017, we expect the online portion to be close to 48% or 47% of the total year of volume.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Wen with Blue Lotus. Please go ahead.

Tianli Wen

Analyst · Blue Lotus. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening, [indiscernible] Yihan, Dennis, and merci for taking my question. Good night [ph] and congratulations on the good result. My question is on your guidance. As your well - 2017 loan origination growth is very robust, your revenue take-rate and EBITDA margin are both down. Dennis, you mentioned this is because you are adopting a new accounting policy to spread out the revenues. I just wonder two questions. Number one is will this lead to an increase of your deferred revenue account or any kind of customer advance account. My second question is if you are deferring more revenue to future periods, where cost is booking the current period that supposedly should lead to higher profit margins in the later period. But it looks like your guidance for this year, your EBITDA margin is actually declining as well. I just wonder why that is. Thanks.

Dennis Cong

Analyst · Blue Lotus. Please go ahead.

Yes. Okay. So thanks, Eric, and I will answer your question, maybe the second part first and then we'll address the first part. So in terms of this new product we're introducing, which is a monthly collection fee schedule, it's actually very important for us from a competitive dynamic perspective, because this actually would need the platform to have a very strong cash flow capability to be able to offer this product. And also the user experience, customer experience is going to be strong and our unit economic profitability is actually better. So there are many benefits for us to introducing this. In terms of the impact of our profitability, we are going to start introducing this product mid of this year due to the revenue recognition scheduling. So you're actually going to have - seeing more of the revenue being recognized through the rest of the loan life, while the customer acquisition cost is actually recognized upfront. So near-term, we're actually going to see a negative impact in terms of margin profile, but longer-term, given that the lifetime unit economic profits is actually potentially increasing, so net-net for the lifetime of the loan you're actually going to see improving profitability, but it will actually spread out through two year or three year, whatever the term of the loan is going to be. So I guess near-term, may have some compression on margin, but longer-term it is a matter of the revenue and cost recognition schedule matching. And also as I mentioned in our remarks, given that the recurring and the visibility of the future revenue recognition and also given that most of the cost has been recognized upfront most of these future revenue are actually highly profitable revenues will actually improve our financial profile and earning visibilities. So in terms of whether this will actually change our deferred revenue numbers that we're reporting as a non-GAAP item, it's actually not going to have much an impact from there, because this is not part of our deep-built [ph] so it's completely deferred into the future.

Tianli Wen

Analyst · Blue Lotus. Please go ahead.

Understand, thanks, very helpful.

Dennis Cong

Analyst · Blue Lotus. Please go ahead.

Sure.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Ryan Roberts with MCM Partners. Please go ahead.

Ryan Roberts

Analyst · MCM Partners. Please go ahead.

Good morning, management - actually good evening, management. Thank you for taking my question. Just a quick one for me actually also kind of a follow-up on the guidance, you mentioned that new kind of long tail, the monthly payment product is going to launch I think you said sometime in the middle of the year. And I'm just kind of curious what some of your assumptions are kind of for Q? It looks like that revenue take rate slips from about 16 down about 14, but if these are midpoint, which is kind of curious, if you could kind of give us some color on that.

Dennis Cong

Analyst · MCM Partners. Please go ahead.

Okay. I think for the first quarter of 2017 most of the - the product mix that is actually similar to the 2017. However, as we mentioned that we're getting a very strong traction in term of our online business growth, online customer acquisition, we actually expect our online percentage for the loan volume to increase in 2017 first quarter. So that's where you see a slight dip of our revenue take rate. It's due to the increase in percentage of the online channel products. Even for that, the decrease of the revenue take rate is also part of the deferred revenue into the future. It's not that the revenue that's being missed.

Ryan Roberts

Analyst · MCM Partners. Please go ahead.

Got it. Thanks. That's very helpful. If I could just ask a quick kind of a - a quick second question, just about some of the new wealth management products, we're showing to sell to some of the investors in the platform. I'm just kind of curious could you give us some more detail on kind of where those come from, who they're partnering with, just kind of what kind of needs we're trying to meet for investors? And kind of how we see that business kind of shaping up, let's say into the end of 2017 and maybe kind of beyond?

Yihan Fang

Analyst · MCM Partners. Please go ahead.

Yes. On our investor mobile app we are currently offering some online insurance products as well as some fast loans product. And all of those are selected by us. We are not offering a receipt [ph] market, but we select, very selectively good products that we think completes our customer needs.

Ryan Roberts

Analyst · MCM Partners. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Patricia Chang with CLSA. Please go ahead.

Patricia Chang

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi, good evening management. I have a couple of questions. One is a follow-up on the new product that you mentioned just now and the other one on the guidance. For the new product, can you give us some idea of like who - with what kind of customers are you targeting? Are you targeting existing customers or like sort of like a product features? And how much loan facilitation do you think the new product can generate? And on the full-year guidance for loan facilitation, your full-year target is more than four times higher than the target for the first quarter. So does it have anything to do with this new product launch in the middle of the year or like what are your plans are in the acceleration of the loan facilitation in the second half of the year? Thank you.

Dennis Cong

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead.

Sure. I think the new product indeed we'll actually introduce through certain channels, certain type of customer acquisitions. Basically, we will introduce in this type of products for the customer who own cars, who actually already have properties. So they are slightly different from our current product offering. And then the volume that we expect this product is probably in the 7% or 8% of our business volume in 2017, and it's going to start mid of this year. And then, in terms of our 2017 overall loan volume guidance, of course Q1 has been strong. And usually we see a sequential growth quarter-over-quarter throughout the year. So if you look at the kind of trajectory that we usually follow, you probably - not too difficult to come with the overall total volume for the year. So usually Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 is tend to be a sequential growth through the year as we see our business opportunities unfold.

Patricia Chang

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] This concludes our question-and-answer session. Hold on for one second, we do have another question from Ryan Roberts. Please go ahead.

Ryan Roberts

Analyst

Sorry management, thank you for indulging me. I just want to ask a quick question about YEP, just kind of how you guys are looking at that as kind of being contributor to the overall results, and kind of how you see that kind of growing for the company in the future?

Cao Yang Yiren

Analyst

Hi. Thank you, Robert. This is Yang. And our Yirendai Enabling Platform is of three components, one is for data acquisition and data management, and the other is for anti-fraud, and the final one is for sharing user acquisition. So we have a few key reasons to release that. One is to enable the industry to be more efficient, so because we have the most advanced user-authorized [ph] data technology. So we would like to help partners to be very - in the better way to acquire the data. B:

Ryan Roberts

Analyst

And do you think that rollout is going to happen first half, second half, or kind of when should we look for that?

Dennis Cong

Analyst

It's already happening. And in the path, so we are rolling out, and we're already in process rolling out the partners. And we should be able to see some results in like Q3, Q4 timeframe.

Ryan Roberts

Analyst

Fantastic. Look forward to hearing about it. Thank you very much.

Dennis Cong

Analyst

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. And also concludes our conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.