Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for Dada's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the meeting over to your host for today's call, Ms. Caroline Dong, Head of Investor Relations for Dada. Please proceed, Caroline. Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On the call today from Dada, we have Mr. Jack He, President, and Mr. Beck Chen, CFO. Mr. He will talk about our operations and the company highlights. Mr. Chen will discuss the financials and guidance. Please kindly note that during the Q&A session, Jack will answer questions in Chinese, and the consecutive translation will be provided. In case of any discrepancy between the original remarks and the translated version, statements in the original remarks should prevail. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements. Please refer to our latest specific forward statement in the earnings press release on our IR website, which applies to this call. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please also refer to our earnings press release, which contains a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures. Please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. It is now my pleasure to introduce our President, Mr. He. Jack, please go ahead. Thank you, Caroline, and thank you all for joining us today. During the second quarter of 2023, Dada Group continued to produce strong revenue growth with significantly enhancing our operational efficiency. Our total net revenues increased by 23% year-on-year. We also achieved an important milestone in this quarter by recording our first ever positive adjusted net income. Thanks to a more than 17 percentage points improvement in our adjusted net margin. I will begin today's presentation by discussing our cooperation with JD.com, followed by operational highlights from our two platforms. I will then hand over to Beck, who will take you through our detailed financial results. Let's start with some updates on Dada's cooperation with JD.com. To strengthen our branding awareness among JD.com users, we recently unified the display name of our on-demand retail services across all touchpoints on JD APP as Xiaoshida in Chinese and Shop Now. In particular, the Nearby or Fujin tab was renamed Xiaoshida, and a Xiaoshida tag has been added to search results for products offered by our merchant partners. This unified brand identifies emphasizes our ability to deliver products within one hour, and we believe it will significantly enhance O2O mindshare among JD users. At the same time, we also want to enhance JD Digits offerings by attracting prices in line with JD's everyday low price strategy. During this quarter, we utilized the price-based star rating tool and worked with merchants to further improve the price competitiveness of Xiaoshida products. Far, we have achieved a 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of high star products last March. For the Xiaoshida tab, which was previously known as Nearby or Fujin tab, GM more than quadrupled year-on-year. This impressive growth was driven by exposure and the click-through optimization, which helped the Xiaoshida tab double its DAU. Collaborations with retailers to enrich our product offerings during this quarter. JD Digits cooperated with more than 300,000 annual active retail stores at the end of June 2023. In the supermarket category, based on the list of top 100 supermarket chains in China, released by CCFA in June, we now have established partnerships with 92 out of the top 100 supermarket chains. In June, together with the supermarket merchants, JD Digits launched a deliver free campaign in 10 key cities to improve our user experience. During the campaign, these cities saw 34 percentage point higher user growth rate, and a 2% percentage point higher 15-day repeated purchase rate than other cities. Given the encouraging result, we have now rolled out delivery with benefit to major supermarket chains across the country. We have always focused on helping merchants achieve better efficiency through platform tools, such as our long-lasting merchant-specific membership features that allow merchants to attract and manage their own members online. The function notably increased the sales efficiency. With order conversion rate of members more than 20 percentage point higher than that of non-members. Among merchants that have adopted the membership tool, members already contributed 60% of their total GMV in June. In addition to large supermarket chains, we have also made the most with major convenience store chains. We further strengthened our collaboration with JD Convenience Store, while forming new partnerships, partnerships with uSmile and other leading chains. Total GMV generated by convenience store grew by Nearby 3 times year-on-year in the second quarter. We also made a good progress in consumer electronics category during that quarter. In the smartphone subcategory, driven by faster delivery on top of active pricing in the second quarter. The GMV of our Apple products on our platform grew steadily, while Android brands, such as Xiaomi, continued to see GMV growth several times on a year-on-year base. In the computer and the accessories category, GMV increased by more than 70 year-on-year, and the brands such as Xiao Tiancai, Keda Xinzui, and DJI all achieved a significant growth. Moving next to the home appliance and furnishing category, which neckline out quickly. The home appliance subcategory maintained rapid growth, nearly double GMV year-on-year. We continue to enrich our offerings of air conditioners and other major home appliances, and they established partnerships with kitchen appliance brands such as Fotile. The home furnishing category also grew rapidly, with GMV increasing more than fourfold year-on-year. In particular, we are seeing significant growth in the sales of electronic lock products, thanks to the wide range of merchants on our platform and our ability to offer high-quality delivery and installation services within 4 hours. In addition, we set up new partnerships with sanitary fixture brands such as Kohler and home textile brands such as Huana. We also continued to expand our offerings in liquor category, onboarding more than 5,000 new stores during this quarter. As a result, GMV increased more than 4x year-on-year. Next, let's move on to JD Digits' efforts to expand the deep end cooperation with brands. In the second quarter, we embarked on new partnerships with rice and cooking oil brands, such as Shiyue Daotian, and mom and baby brands such as Dawang Xueku. We currently have auto market partners with about 300 leading domestic and international brands. In terms of branding campaigns, we continue to deepen collaboration with brands to promote omnichannel auto marketing, help brands with users through multiple channels, both on and off JD Digits. For example, in early May, we collaborated with JBL to launch the brand on campus, continue to promote these new products, which drive more than 70% month-on-month increase in serious sales on JDDJ. In addition, through the collaboration with JD.com, we have further optimized the process by which we cooperate with brands on exchanging and advertising the source. At present, we have conducted the source exchange with more than 20 brands, including Nongfu Shanquan, Yuanqi Senlin, and Yu Shenyi, achieving win-win for both sides. I'd like to talk about our efforts to empower both retailers and the brands through technology innovation. As of the end of June, Haibo, our omnichannel O2O operating system for retailers, has been deployed in about 11 software stores across more than 300 retailer chains. In the second quarter, we launched the consumer reviews assistant function in the Haibo system, which enables merchants to automatically reply to consumer reviews across multiple channels and provides an almost review checking, coordinating, monitoring, and other functions. These capabilities empower the chance to provide an efficient customer services and improve our user experience. Merchants using this feature can generate automated replies to all positive and negative reviews, which can 60 higher efficiency at handling less favorable ones. Haibo also began to explore collaboration with brands. We recently launched a series of brand promotion tour on the Haibo system to help brands conduct marketing and promotions on merchants, on sales channels, thereby helping branding improve exposure and the conversion. I will now turn to Dada Now, China's leading local on-demand delivery platform. In the second quarter, Dada Now continued to provide a massive amount of flexible working opportunities. This quarter, the active riders increased by 30 year-over-year, o-o-year. In terms of business progress, let's start with our key or chain merchants business. In the second quarter, our annual flow on demanded delivery services to key merchants increased by more than 20 year-on-year. Thanks to increased our order density and sufficient rider suppliers, our average gross profit per order improved significantly to RMB 0.50. Meanwhile, our fulfillment rate increased to 98%. Thanks to our optimized rider fleet structure and the refined operations. In the supermarket category, volume increased nearly 20 year-on-year. We recently established a new partnership with Freshippo, or Hema, and other supermarket chains. In the grocery care category, we continue to increase the penetration in our partner merchants store. For the 20th consecutive quarter, we maintained a year-on-year revenue growth of more than 100%. We also recently formed a new partnership with grocery chains. Regarding our collaborations with the local life services, we continue to actively support the nationwide rollout of the food delivery business by providing cost efficient and reliable on-demand delivery services across the nation. Moving to our SME and the C2C business. The number of SME and the C2C orders fulfilled in the second quarter increased by 50% year-on-year. This growth was driven by our continued penetration into low-tier cities and our expansion into additional traffic acquisition channels and business scenarios. Lastly, an update on our last mile sources. In the second quarter, we maintained a steady growth in the number of fulfilled orders, despite the higher base in the year ago period. Tell us our operation updates for the two platforms. To wrap up, we continue to post the strong financial results highlighted by our first ever positive adjusted net income. At the same time, we stay committed to drive the digitalization of the sellers and the brands. Bring great on-demand shopping experience to consumers and providing flexible employment opportunities to riders. We are seek to build on this momentum in the quarters ahead as we work to create substantial values for our shareholders. I will now pass the call to Beck to go through our finances. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Before we go over the numbers, just a few housekeeping items in advance. We believe year-over-year comparisons are the most useful way to judge our performance. All% changes I'm going to give will be on year-over-year basis, and all figures are in renminbi, unless otherwise noted. Our total net revenue in the second quarter increased by 23% to 2.8 billion. Net revenues from Dada Now increased by 20% to RMB 980 million, mainly driven by the increases in order volume of intracity delivery service to chain merchants. Net revenues from JDDJ increased by 25% to RMB 1.8 billion, mainly due to the increase in GMV. The increase in online marketing service revenue as a result of the increasing promotional activities, also contributed to the revenue growth of JDDJ. Moving over to the expenses side, operations and support costs were RMB 1.7 billion. The increase was primarily due to an increase in rider costs as a result of increasing order volume for intracity delivery services provided to various chain merchants. Selling and the marketing expenses decreased to RMB 1.1 billion, primarily due to a decrease in advertising and the marketing expenses, and a decrease in incentives to JDDJ consumers. G&A expenses decreased to RMB 56 million as a result of our expense control measures and the decreased share-based compensation expenses. R&D expenses decreased to RMB 102 million, mainly due to the lower R&D personal costs as we enhanced operating efficiency. Our non-GAAP net income attributable to ordinary shareholders of Dada was RMB 8 million, marking the first quarter in our operating history to turn profitable. non-GAAP net margin was 0.3%, improving by more than 17 percentage points year-over-year. As of June 30, 2023, we had RMB 3.9 billion in cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term investments. In terms of the outlook for the third quarter of 2023, we expect total revenue to be between RMB 2.8 billion and RMB 3.0 billion, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 18%-26%. This concludes our prepared remarks, and operator, we are now ready to begin the Q&A session. Thank you. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Ronald Keung from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thank you, Jack, Beck, Caroline. Also congratulations on the first quarter turning to EBITDA positive. That's a very important milestone. I would like to ask two questions. The first is, we see our third quarter revenue guidance. For example, in terms of GMV growth, how do we look at the recent macro situation? Especially, for example, is July possibly softer than usual? How do we judge this from demand, from a macro perspective, filter to our growth? Third quarter, maybe the second half of the year, how do we look at our cooperation with JD and how this drives growth? How do we judge this? Second, I would like to ask about our UE, especially the rider cost. Is it, in the second quarter, our UE turnaround, is there also some factors that make the rider cost go down? How do we judge this rider cost situation? Now I translate it. Thank you, management, and congratulations on the EBITDA turnaround quarter. We'll ask about two questions. One is on macro outlook and our cooperation with JD. Just, both of those, how do we see our third quarter growth outlook, company with your revenue guidance? What's, what is the underlying GMV expectations, and into just broadly second half in this current macro environment? Secondly, we wonder if the unit economics turnaround, how much of those were contributed from a lower rider cost? Can you share how rider costs have been and so how views on that and the outlook as well? Thank you. Yes, thanks for the question, Ronald. For Jack, I may just review some financial numbers, and then Jack can answer the macro question. About the second question, yes, we are seeing the year-over-year rider cost decline, because the number one factor is, we have optimized our algorithm. Number two is, we have a very robust growth, like for the number of orders delivered for Dada Now platform. Number three is, just like Jack mentioned that in the earlier prepared remarks, our Q, in Q2, our quarterly, like, active riders is growing by 30% year-over-year. The rider supply is sufficient and we believe, which will help us to further optimize the rider cost. That our GMV, we believe that for the reporting GMV metrics for the second half of this year, we are expecting, like, more than still expecting more than 20% year-over-year growth in the second half. Yeah, I'll leave it to Jack for the macro question. [audio distortion] Thank you, Ronald. In terms of macro, the economy and consumption was in modest recovery in the first half of this year. We expect uncertainties and consumption recovery in the second half. [audio distortion] In addition, we're pleased to see the new policies and measures that are supportive of private sector growth and investment. Hopefully, the gradual restoration of private corporate confidence and the high-quality development of the private economy will lead to more job creation and sustain the consumer income growth, which will contribute to the further unleash of consumption power. We will remain patient in further enriching our offerings and optimizing our user experience, which we firmly believe will bear fruits in the long run. [audio distortion] Yes, please. In terms of O2O demand, there is some imbalance in the pace of recovery between different types of consumption. The strong rebound in service consumption in the first half has affected the demand for physical goods to some extent, and O2O is no exception. [audio distortion] Heading into the summer, we've seen extraordinarily strong travel demand. In an environment where the overall consumer confidence has yet to fully recover, that may take some more share from physical goods consumption. [audio distortion] That said, consumer migration towards more convenient and efficient shopping is a secular trend. We are convinced that as consumer demand continues to evolve and more local supplies become available online, the O2O penetration rate will further trend up to double digits. [audio distortion]. Yes, please. From our perspective, in Q2, JDDJ recorded over 20% GMV growth year-over-year, despite a relatively high base in the year ago period and continuous optimization in our subsidy ratio. [audio distortion] In terms of our collaboration with JD.com, since we deepened our partnership, Xiaoshida has become our primary user acquisition channel. Currently, the penetration among JD users has steadily rose to mid high single digits. [audio distortion] We will increase our acquisition and retention efficiency through enriching the supply of attractively priced products, waiving and waiving delivery fees. In July and so far in August, we've seen a better user retention. [audio distortion] Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead. [audio distortion] Thanks, management, for taking my questions. Congratulations on reaching profitability in the second quarter. I have two questions. My first question is about the take rate trend as well as the direct margin outlook in the second half. What are the growth drivers, and how should we think about the momentum for online advertising in the second quarter, in the second half of the year? Next question is about JDDJ product mix. Can management share about the product mix in Q2 as well as the trend in the coming quarters, as well as the AOV for the year? Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. Let me answer the financial question. In terms of the take rate and direct margin of JDDJ in Q2, the take rate is 9.9%, and the direct margin is 1.8% as percentage of GMV. For the outlook for the second half of this year, we expect that the overall monetization rate will still maintain stable and grow healthy. We are still targeting to grow our direct margin level above, like, 2%-3% for the second half of this year. The main growth driver for the take rate will be still driven by the online marketing services provided to brand partners. While maybe some of it will be more prudent on that, but still, we will keep to grow this part as the main driver for our optimization of the direct margin level. In terms of the product mix, for second quarter and our overall, like, supermarket contribution, is 45% of the GMV. Just like Jack mentioned in the earliest prepared remarks, our different other physical merchandise categories, like smartphone categories, computer and accessories categories, home and home furnishing categories, home appliance categories, liquor categories. All those categories is growing by several times on a year-over-year basis. We expect for the second half of this year, all these new categories could contribute more to overall GMV and GMV next. In terms of the an average order value metric for the second half. For the second half, let me see. The overall AOV of the platform is RMB 260. We are still targeting to maintain the overall marketplace AOV, and maybe still will grow, grow the AOV for the second half. In terms of the supermarket categories, it's like RMB 190. Maybe there will be some, for example, like preferential iterate fee waiver to some of the customers. For the second half, we expect that the AOV of supermarket will be at least stable on a Q on Q level. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please go ahead. [audio distortion] [audio distortion] So my question is to follow up on the category demand shift. obviously the non FMCG has been growing very well. Can management give a little bit more color in terms of the behavior shift? Especially I think, management mentioned about the big appliance seems to be one of the important driver. If, you know, you can share about the% of GMV coming out from the big appliance, home appliance specifically. Second question is on the online advertising. Given the macro, continue to remain weak, what are the brand, you know, willingness in terms of their ad budget spend on our platform? Thank you. [audio distortion] Thank you for the question. In terms of the category mix of consumer electronics and home appliances, we believe the contribution will further go up in the second half. [audio distortion] for the consumer electronics category will be the brands that introduce several new models in the second half, including from Xiaomi, Huawei, and Apple [audio distortion] In terms of major home appliances, the GMV for this category will remain on the fast growth trajectory, driven by our further enriched product supply and the service of integrated delivery and in- installation. [audio distortion] However, the mix of major home appliances and our total GMV is only in the single digit. [audio distortion] [audio distortion] Nothing, nothing to add from my side. [audio distortion] To answer the second question about the online marketing services revenue. In the second quarter, our commission and online marketing services revenue combined grew by over 30% year-over-year, mainly driven by the growth in online marketing. [audio distortion] You asked about brands potentially cutting their ad budgets and the macro environment. However, we are seeing that our revenue from brands are increasing since O2O has become the fastest growing sales channel in China for more and more brands. They are allocating more ad dollars on our platform. [audio distortion] Another driver for our online marketing service revenue is the increase in our advertiser base. We are now collaborating with about 300 brands in O2O online marketing. [audio distortion] In addition, the revenue growth, the revenue growth driver for our online marketing services is the capability to innovate our product and the technology and marketing on top of sales growth. [audio distortion] In Q3, we will launch key ad products, which will further drive our ad revenue growth. In the, in the testing period, we are seeing very encouraging results from the new products. [audio distortion] Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Eddie Leung from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead. [audio distortion] Thanks management for taking my question and congrats on the profit breakeven. Follow this, can you share with us about the second half of full year's margin trend? Second delay, want to have some updates on our cooperation with JD Group. Any new initiative you can share? If I may, may I follow up on the GMV contribution from JD across different channels? Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the question, Le. For the first question, for the second half of this year, we will still balance the growth rate of our end top line due, especially the growth rate of JDDJ, despite of the right now, the current macro outlook in China. We are balance the growth rate and the improvement of the profitability of the bottom line. This is just the first quarter for us to break even. Of course, we don't expect it to grow. The bottom line profitability and margin are very quickly in a very short term, especially under the current market economic outlook. But we still will grow stably and grow the bottom line in a healthy way. We will also balance the top line growth, because if you don't have any top line growth, your profitability in the long term will be also negatively impacted. For same question, if you can just for the cooperation with JD. We just touched a little bit upon our cooperation with JD.com just now, but I'll summarize a few key initiatives now. First, we unified our brand identity under XiaoShida, and we've seen an improvement in user conversion. For instance, the conversion rate in the XiaoShida app is now 20% higher after we changed the name to XiaoShida from city names. Secondly, we improved the price competitiveness of our XiaoShida products by leveraging our price-based star rating system. As of the end of Q2, the number of high star products or the products with high competitiveness and pricing grew eightfold sequentially, and the average exposure per item increased by more than 10%. In terms of Dada Now, we've strengthened our partnership with different business groups across the JD Group to provide on-demand delivery services in multiple shopping scenarios in the JD ecosystem. For example, we recently began working with the front-end warehouse business unit, and we are providing the on-demand delivery service for all of its orders, and we've seen an increase in JD's contribution in Dada Now's order volume. A stable source of orders is very beneficial to our business stability and profit, as well as long-term development. Thank you for your question. The GMV, and the GMV contribution from JD in Q2 is 67%. We are expecting the penetration from JD will be further enhanced in second half. Thank you. Your next question comes from Andy Chang, from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. [audio distortion] let me translate my question here. With all the questions on cooperation with JD Group, now I'd like to ask a question about, the, no other customers, namely Douyin. Douyin's food delivery business seems to so far make limited progress. However, the Douyin groups, ByteDance groups, are trying to adjust their strategy recently, according to the news. I wonder if the management can provide us with some updates about the cooperation as well as the outlook here? Thank you. Thank you for your question. [audio distortion]. Thank you for your question. Douyin recently launched its food delivery service in more cities, and we have actively supported its geographic expansion. However, the business is still in the early days with limited number of merchants on board. Therefore, the incremental orders is not significant yet to KA business. And to our knowledge, Douyin's contribution to our peers is similarly insubstantial now. [audio distortion] Unlike certain peers, we are pursuing profitable order volume growth on the Douyin platform. Thanks to our edge in cost efficiency, service quality, and network coverage, we are highly confident in gaining a meaningful market share on Douyin in the longer term. Now, [audio distortion] Our Dada Now business not only fulfills Douyin's food delivery orders, but also the one-hour delivery orders of Douyin, Douyin's e-commerce segment. [audio distortion] Similarly, the contribution from Douyin's e-commerce segment is not significant to our business. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Wei Xiong from UBS. Please go ahead. [audio distortion] Um, thank you, management, for taking my questions. Just two follow-ups. First is on the longer term margin trend. How should we think about the margin expansion pace in the next few years? If we look at JDDJ and Dada Now separately, how should we think about the margin trend for each of the segments and their contribution to the longer term margin improvement? Second, just very quickly, how should we think about the revenue outlook for Dada Now in the second half? Thank you. Okay, thanks for the question, Wei. For the long-term margin outlook, we actually didn't change the long-term margin outlook. Separately, JDDJ is a local version of e-commerce marketplace. Like, as a percentage of GMV, we believe that the long-term margin should be 3% of the GMV operating margin, and also for the Dada Now businesses. For example, like, chain restaurants delivery businesses in Q2, our unit economics is about RMB 0.60 after tax. Generally, the gross margin is above, after tax is above 5%. We still expect it to grow the margin at least like 2%-10% in a three-year timeframe. We believe that, as compared to other express and logistic companies, we believe it's totally achievable. In terms of the Dada Now's second half growth outlook, we are confident that they will keep to grow above, at least above 20% on a year-over-year basis. Thank you. Thank you, management. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Miss Caroline Dong for closing remarks. Thank you, operator. In closing, on behalf of Dada's management team, we'd like to thank you for your participation in today's call. If you require any further information, please feel free to reach out to us directly. Thank you for joining us today. This concludes the call. Thank you. This does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Loading workspace