Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the first quarter of 2021 earnings conference call for LightInTheBox Holding Co., Ltd. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Rene Vanguestaine for opening remarks and introductions. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Annie. Hello, everyone, welcome to LightInTheBox first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. The company's earnings results were released earlier today and are available on the company's IR website, as well as through PR Newswire. Today, you will hear from LightInTheBox Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jian He, who will give an overview of the company's strategies and recent developments, followed by Ms. Yuanjun Ye, the company's Chief Financial Officer, who will go over financial results. Together with them today is Wenyu Liu, the company's Chief Growth Officer. All will be available for Q&A at the end of this presentation. Before we proceed, I would like to remind you of our safe harbor statement. Please note that the discussion today may contain certain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. To understand the factors that could cause results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements, please refer to our Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21st, 2021. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. He. Mr. Jian He, please go ahead. Thanks, Rene. Thank you everyone for joining us today. We have a very solid first quarter, kick-starting the year with a revenue of $112 million, up 118% from the same period of 2020, and in line with our prior guidance. As we continued to execute our established strategy, we are pleased to see the growth across all of our major operating regions. Our gross profit margin in Q1 was 46.6%, largely flat compared with the same period of 2020, while adjusted EBITDA grew by close to 60% year-over-year. Product sales increased 119% compared to Q1 last year, and the revenues from apparel increased 166%. Among all categories, apparel is still the largest, which contributing 53% of total product sales in Q1 compared with the 43% in Q1 last year. This category has a full spectrum ranging from adult fashion, casual wear, sportswear, children's clothes, and so on, which covers customers' daily needs for various occasions. We have been leveraging on technology to improve operation efficiency and build a strong foundation for cross-border e-commerce. R&D spending came to $4.9 million in Q1 2021, compared with $3.5 million in the same quarter last year. As we continue to invest in R&D, we have better insights in our customers' needs and wants, which drive the improvements of the supply chain in terms of the product quality, design, and the production cycle. We can also be more proactive to the fast-changing and diversified consumer needs with the help of technology. For 2021, we will continue to implement the strategies to achieve sustainable growth and enhance our platform to be more responsive and user-friendly so that customers will enjoy the convenience of online shopping even more on all the websites and the mobile app. I will now turn the call over to Yuanjun Ye to go through the financial results. Thank you, Mr. He, thank you everyone for joining the call. I will now review our financial results for the first quarter. Let me remind you that all numbers quoted are in U.S. dollars. Total revenue was $112 million, up 117.5% year-over-year from $61.5 million. This was mainly driven by strong growth in product sales, which were $109.4 million versus $49.9 million the same period in 2020, and the growth in services and other, which was $2.6 million compared with $1.6 million the same quarter of 2020. Included in product sales, revenues from apparel increased by 166% to $57.6 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared with $21.7 million in the first quarter of 2020. Gross profit was $52.3 million, compared with $23.9 million during the same period last year. Gross margin was 46.6%, slightly higher than 46.4% in the same quarter of 2020, primarily due to our continued efforts to optimize the supply chain. Total operating expenses were $50.9 million, compared with $27.1 million during the same quarter of 2020. The increase was mainly due to the increase in selling and marketing expenses. Of operating expenses, fulfillment expenses were $7.2 million, compared with $5 million in the same quarter of 2020. As a percentage of total revenue, fulfillment expenses were 6.5%, compared with 9.8% in the same quarter of 2020 and 6.7% in the fourth quarter of 2020. Selling and marketing expenses were $35.6 million, compared with $14.8 million in the same quarter of 2020. As a percentage of total revenue, selling and marketing expenses were 31.8%, compared with 28.7% in the same quarter of 2020 and 33.1% in the fourth quarter of 2020. G&A expenses were $8.4 million, compared with $7.3 million in the same quarter of 2020. As a percentage of total revenue, G&A expenses were 7.5%, compared with 14.1% in the same quarter of 2020 and 7.9% in the fourth quarter of 2020. Included in G&A expenses, R&D expenses were $4.9 million, compared with $3.5 million in the same quarter of 2020 and $4.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA, which represent income from operations before share-based compensation expense, interest income, interest expense, income tax expense, depreciation, and amortization expenses, was $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared with $1.4 million in the same quarter of 2020. Net income was $1.4 million, compared with $0.7 million in the same quarter of 2020. Net income per American Depositary Share was $0.01, compared with $0.01 in the same quarter of 2020. As of March 31st, 2021, we had cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of $60.1 million, compared with $65.5 million as of December 31, 2020. Finally, for the second quarter 2021 guidance, based on information currently available and business seasonality, we expect net revenues to be between $130 million and $145 million, representing a growth rate between 14% and 27% compared with the second quarter of 2020. Excluding the net revenues from sales of personal protective equipment, which are no longer sold in 2021, the year-over-year growth in net revenue for the second quarter of 2021 will be 48% to 65%. This concludes our prepared remarks. At this point, we are ready to take some questions. Operator? Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound or hash key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Once again, please press star one for your questions. Our first question comes from the line of Matt Hu of National Securities. Line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. Great quarter. Thanks. Certainly on the top line. That's the third fourth quarter in a row where you have all shown tremendous growth on the top line. Got a question for you, though. The profitability is not at the same level as your top-line growth. Last quarter, you actually had a small loss, even though you were up 100% or something plus. Then this quarter, you have a small profit and a small increase in EBITDA. Can you give me a reason for that, please? Thank you for the question. Actually the first quarter, we have this change associated with some certain legacy issue. We had a slightly lower profit in terms of the percentage. I'm sorry. I missed that. You're saying that this first quarter, you actually had a slightly smaller gross profit or what have you? I didn't catch that because it looked like you came into the penny like last year, but your EBITDA was slightly higher, $2 million. Okay. Sorry. Let me rephrase my answer. It gives you a change in legacy issue in terms of the supply chain efficiency. It's slightly lower as compared to last year quarter four. Yeah, that is the reason why the bottom line didn't really grow as big one. All right. What is your strategy, your game plan, to increase the bottom line? Are you just reinvesting most of your revenue gains back into the company? You have a very nice balance sheet. The cash was slightly lower than last quarter. You're an e-commerce company, and you're trading well below one times sales, which is quite unusual. There's a big opportunity here for investors like myself to be able to invest in a company whose business model has changed the last few years, your product mix and what have you, so that if you can see some money falling to the bottom line, this stock could be worth several times what it is currently. Obviously, at the end of the day, you've got to make some money. If not, if you could explain the strategy as to, one, just focusing on growth versus profitability, or is profitability going to come in the near term? Okay. As you have been seeing for the past two years, we have already stabilized the overall efficiency, and we have a better bottom line performance over the past two years. In this coming year, even the few years so going forward, definitely our whole priority will be, first of all, the revenue growth. Secondly, will be the cash flow. Thirdly, it comes to the profit. As an e-commerce company, we can't only have good profits without any revenue growth. I believe for us, we are trying to have a healthy and sustainable growth, followed by a good cash flow, followed by the bottom line performance. I see. You expect for the year, seasonally, your first quarter is not your strongest, so that's what made this quarter very exciting as far as your performance. Do you expect to be profitable for the year on a net income basis? That's a good question. I can't make any conclusion right now. I can't really give any guidance. I'm not any fortune teller. Definitely, we are running this company, and we hope we can have a sustainable growth as for as the profit performance. What we are trying to do, as you can see for the past two years, we are trying to stabilize the operational efficiency in order to reduce the overall cost. This coming year, even though we are going to have better revenue growth, but at the same time, we are still looking closely at all the cost factors and to try to stabilize the bottom line as well. All right. As long as ultimately that's your goal. If I look back at, say, even Amazon, for many, many years, they were not profitable, and it was part of their strategy to grow and to reinvest any cash flows they had back into the company. It was not falling to the bottom line. They were not profitable. However, they were growing dramatically. I'm hoping that you all have a similar strategy because, for many years, your company did not grow, but you've had really explosive, really strong growth over the last year. Presumably, you have a lot larger customer base that are repeat customers, and that on a run rate right now, it looks like you'll do $500 million at the least this year, assuming that this is the seasonally weakest quarter. For a company whose market capitalization is significantly below, as an investor, I would expect to see dramatic growth in your share price. Hopefully that's the goal of your company, to see a higher share price. Okay. I think I'm going to address this concern a few points. First of all, as the online retail e-commerce platform, cash flow is very important. Even though Amazon was not profit at all, but it has positive cash flow. That's why we are also emphasizing on cash flow. At least for a healthy retail company, positive cash flow is pretty important. Secondly, as you've mentioned, yes, we have a big customer base. For the past two years, we have tried our best to improve the supply chain, try to provide our customers with better quality products at lower cost. We need some time to have a stronger customer base so that we can have more returning customers and reduce the marketing spending. All right. That sounds good to me. All right. Thanks so much for your time. Again, congratulations on a great quarter and for some very strong guidance you gave for the second quarter. Thank you. Thank you for your question, too. Thank you. Thank you.
Loading workspace