Q4 2023 OneConnect Financial Technology Co Ltd Earnings Call
Participants
Rick Chan; Head of IR; OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd.
Shen Chongfeng; Chairman and CEO; OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd.
Luo Yongtao; CFO; OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd.
Michael Guo; Non-Executive Director; Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.
Li Jie; CTO; OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd.
Lydia Lin; Analyst; Morgan Stanley
Presentation
Operator
Thanks that you or Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to OneConnect fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call.
(Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.
Now I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Mr. Rick Chan, the company's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Chan.
Rick Chan
Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our 2023 fourth quarter earnings call. Our financial and operating results are released earlier today and currently available on our IR website.
Today, you will hear from our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Shen Chongfeng, who will give opening remarks and business highlights, afterwards, our CFO, Mr. Luo Yongtao, will offer a closer look into our financials. And then in question and answer session, our management team will be available to you.
We have our CTO, Mr. [ Li Jie]; Head of Digital Banking, [Ms. Ellen Jia]; and Head of Corporate Planning and Product Management, Ms. Jessie Shen.
In today's conference, our management team will make statement in Mandarin or English for those in Mandarin, a consecutive translation will be provided in case of any discrepancy between the Mandarin version and the English version. Our statement in the original language should carve out.
Let me quickly cover the Safe Harbor statement before we start, as we are on making forward looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please note that we may present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures.
With that, I'm pleased to turn our call to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Shen Chongfeng. Shen, please.
Shen Chongfeng
(interpreted) Hello, everyone. I'm Shen Chongfeng, thank you for taking your time to join our 2023 fourth quarter and annual results earnings call. Personally and on behalf of OneConnect and I'd like to extend a warm welcome to investors, analysts and friends from media or with us during this call. It's a great pleasure for me to share with you the results we've achieved in the fourth quarter and last year.
So we are doing our homework. We sold 34 guys who are keen on jumbo for Centene onto a coordinating the share matter, Tonya Chin, we have four parallel zones, volume accreditation on lead notification, change in ownership of cauldron and projects. Should that be seen culture body by them clicking through 13 for breaking down the unlocking of the genome?
In 2023 central financial work conference proposed for the first time to build up China's financial strengths, reaffirming the importance of financial sector as the lifeblood of the national economy.
The conference pointed out that technology capacity in many small and medium-sized banks remains to be improved and the high quality development of these institutions is an imperative, at the same time vigorously developing technology, innovation in finance, green finance, financial inclusion, pension finance and digital brands finance, which are known as the five major articles unveiled at the central financial work conference are also included in the government work report for the first time.
With cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data and the unique advantages of technology [process] business. OneConnect continues to improve its product capacity capabilities in our three major business segments, namely digital banking, digital insurance and Gamma platform. So as to improve the development of new quality, productive forces in the financial industry.
In 2023, we achieved significant milestones in loss reduction with net loss attributable to shareholders improving to CNY363 million from CNY872 million in the previous year. The past year also saw proactive adjustments in product portfolio, continuous expense control and improved operational efficiency with the resources effectively allocated to R&D in key products.
These efforts will provide a solid foundation for profitability in the medium term. Committed to our business philosophy of value, win-win cooperation and quality development.
We achieved significant progress in three core priorities, namely product upgrade, customer expansion as well as loss reduction and efficiency improvement. At this stage, we are accelerating exports of Ping An Group technology and upgrade of self-developed products in addition to aggregating resources on high value products.
At the same time, the company also fine tune our project ROI management and cost control, which will put us closer to the medium-term strategy of breakeven and becoming profitable.
Next page. In 2023, we have achieved satisfactory progress and results in products, customers and cost control. The company focused on product upgrade, product standardization accelerating the export of Ping An Group. We experienced strengthening product portfolio and aggregating our resources on high value and high threshold products.
OneConnect also strengthened customer engagement. The company has expanded the business pipeline, developed a deeper understanding of customer needs, improved revenue structure and now can better meet the needs of the and the expectations of our customers and we have established long-term cooperation with them.
At the same time, expense control per capita revenue product, ROI management have all been improved, which translates into higher operational efficiency.
In 2023, non-IFRS gross profit margin exceeded 40%. The number of premium plus customers of the company was over 200 and now loss attributable to shareholders was narrowed by about CNY510 million.
Next page. Last year, we secured cooperation with many large customers as both home and abroad, landing contracts with financial institutions such as [SBF], Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Well Link Life, and Old Mutual, there was 75 customers with a total contract value of over CNY5 million, and the average contract value of such customers increased by 6% year over year.
Centered on the strategy of deepening customer engagement. We continue to strengthen relationship with existing customers in terms of cross selling and implementing new products for existing customers. We have signed contracts with financial institutions, including [quash our] bank postal savings bank of China, [Dajia] Insurance, China Continent insurance, et cetera, to help them continue to succeed on their digital transformation journey.
Next page. While serving financial institutions in Mainland China, the company also export and successful experience abroad, actively expanding its overseas presence and remains committed to empowering a broader market with China's financial technology.
In 2023, revenue contribution from overseas customers increased by over 30% year on year and the proportion of overseas revenue as part of third party customer revenue increased by about 6-percentage-point to 15.7%.
With strong growth momentum in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, South Africa and the Middle East we actively explore overseas market and continue to expand our sales network. OneConnect products are well received by overseas institutions. For example, our comprehensive strategic partnership with Old Mutual proven to be a big success in the development of the South African market.
We've also jointly develop an additional platform for SME financing with the Abu Dhabi global market to export digital and inclusive finance abroad. So far, OneConnect business has covered 20 countries and regions, including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and the UAE, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Africa, and 185 overseas financial institutions, including a top three regional bank in Southeast Asia and 2 of the top 10 global insurance companies.
Our gradual expansion into the overseas market has undoubtedly paved the way for OneConnect to achieve its second stage strategic goals and achieve new top line growth points.
Next page. 2023 remains a key year for Stage 2 strategy that is broadening customer engagement. During this stage, we are committed to unite the core and empower the wins where we focus on financial institutions while expanding ecosystem and overseas.
Next page. In the digital banking segment, our family trust system realized the full closed loop services for family trusts, established investment allocation and account management in 2023, expanding the family wealth [inheritance] scenario for high net worth customers of private bank.
We have built a unified technology base and successfully upgraded our Intelligent Credit Management System, this system not only realizes the comprehensive digital management of credit business, but also provides strong support for credit decision making through smart analysis.
The system has been successfully implemented in a number of non-banking and banking scenarios so far and has been highly recommended by our users. At the same time OneConnect also continues to promote the adoption of self-control technology.
The company's self-developed portfolio management system has successfully accommodated home developed technology in 18 projects, providing sound technical support for the sustainable development of the company's business.
Next page, in Digital Insurance segment. We have upgraded our claims core system over the past year. With advanced technology we provide customers with more intuitive and convenient remote service survey services, which creates significant improvements in user experience during claims processing.
Our new online claims paying no panel not only improve the efficiency of back-end claims just adjusters, but also effectively reduces survey manpower and operating costs. Our innovative deployment model, combining in-house process and SaaS core engine provides more flexible and efficient support for our claims core system.
At the same time, our remote operation platform has added a new core module for claims settlement, making settlement operation more convenient and efficient.
Next page, in Gamma Platform, we fully apply AI capabilities in our business links to further empower customers in risk management and sales, improving both their risk management efficiency and services and service and sales conversion rates.
For example, our AI [individual] robot has over 20, a vision and Dialog risk control capabilities and empowers customers to easily improve risk control efficiencies with a vivid digital human interaction experience. At the same time, we have also launched an AI Wealth Management robot with over 30 car content templates, support presale scripts and provides personalized recommendation of wealth management products, helping account managers gradually improve conversion rates.
Next page, in 2023, the company has gradually expanded its services in Hong Kong, helping to accelerate Hong Kong digital consumption in terms of supporting regulators, the launch of FINI, the company's new IPO clearing platform for Hong Kong Stock Exchange as significantly shortened the time between pricing and trading of new shares from T+5 to T+2, marking another major milestone in the development of Hong Kong capital markets
As for serving financial institutions, OneConnect has developed in-depth understanding of demand in banking and insurance customers from Hong Kong, while providing e-KYC to over 10 financial institutions to establish our market reputation.
We have also implemented solutions such as asset and liability management accounting and risk management service system services in a number of financial institutions in Hong Kong, the company's credit reference Services Agency, also cross-sell with other business lines now providing end to end solution of CRA report + e-KYC certification plus account opened the club loan system for [two] loan issuing banks in Hong Kong.
Next page, we have we have continued to upgrade our presence and enhance our competitiveness overseas in 2023, striving to provide customers with higher value product and service experience and creating overseas flagship projects.
OneConnect life insurance team provided e-deposit insurance system for welding life insurance to reshape their policy issuance process. Our Southeast Asian team upgraded the professional consideration of AI assist system to help overseas customers make informed decisions and innovated in embedded AI intelligent translation module to greatly improve the adaptability and accessibility for multilingual customers in different countries and regions.
Next page, in 2023, our hard work has also won a number of recognitions and honors from third party institutions and renowned media outlets.
For example, the company has one KPMG's China FinTech Enterprise Excellence Award and being included in IDC FinTech Global Top 100 for many years in a row, named as the 2023 Chinese bank or a top FinTech innovation institution.
And I want the 2023 Cailian Press ESG Pioneer Award. Since the beginning of 2024, we have seen a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industry transformation continue to deepen new quality, productive forces with artificial intelligence as the core is accelerating to lead the high quality development of industries.
We firmly believe that the financial industry has the best use cases for artificial intelligence for us and will be a strategic focus for new quality productive forces. OneConnect will continue to empower the upgrade and transformation of the financial industry, with technological innovation focused on serving Premium-plus customers and product improvements and find the core demand of financial institutions for various business productivity improvements.
We also aim to develop products featuring new quality, productive forces such as AI voice assistant and omnichannel channel agents, solution for us to improve efficiency and service, reduce costs and risk for financial institutions. Thank you.
Next, I'll hand it over to Mr. Luo to give you a detailed introduction of OneConnect financials in Q4 and the full year 2023.
Luo Yongtao
Good evening, everyone. I'm pleased to present our financial results for the year of 2023. We have accomplished a solid financial performance, marked by significant progress in reducing losses. This achievement aligns with our strategic objectives of attaining midterm profitability.
While it is true that we encountered a decline in revenue over the past few months during challenging periods, like this that we have the opportunity to exhibit our resilience and capacity to adapt.
We are steadfast in their commitment to exploring new opportunities, evaluating our existing processes and implementing necessary adjustments to position ourselves for renewal growth in the future.
Now let's turn to our financial results. In 2023, we delivered revenue of CNY3.67 billion, decreased by 17.8% compared to the last year, primarily due to a decline in transaction based and a support revenue. Revenue generated from third-party customers decreased by 11.5% to CNY1.31 billion.
We are glad to see gross margin of 2023 was 36.8% and improved by 0.2-percentage-point on a year over year basis, non-IFRS gross margin was 40.3%, improved by 0.2-percentage-point as well. We are thrilled to see net loss attributable to shareholders was CNY363 million as compared to CNY872 million for the prior year.
Net margin attributable to shareholders improved by 9.7-percentage-point to negative 9.9% compared to negative 19.5% for the prior year.
Now let's turn to our revenue mix by customer, in 2023 our third party revenue was CNY1.31 billion, contributing 35.6% of total revenue. Third party revenue growth remains a key focus of our second stage strategy, we will continue to seek opportunities that align with our growth objectives fueling further expansion of our third-party revenue streams.
Revenue from Lufax decreased 41.4% to CNY269 million and contributed 7.3% of our total revenue. The revenue decline from Lufax was mainly due to Lufax business operation optimization, resulting in lower demands for our business origination and the risk management services.
Revenue from Ping An Group decreased 17.2% to CNY2.09 billion, and it contributed 57% of the total revenue, revenue decline from peer group was primarily due to a decline in transaction volume such as operation support and risk management products.
The services provided at Ping An Group, our core technology solutions, which has been deeply embedded into Ping An Group's daily operations. Looking ahead, we will continue to fully support Ping An Group's business reform and look for new cooperation.
Moving on to revenue mix by business type implementation. Revenue decreased by 3.2% on a year over year basis to CNY835 million, mainly due to the lower revenue contribution from new customers as financial institutions recovering from the pandemic, still takes time.
Revenue from business origination services decreased by 65.6% year over year to CNY132 million, primarily due to declines in transaction volumes and our proactive actions of phasing out low-value products in the digital banking segment.
Revenue from risk management services decreased by 22.8% year over year to CNY320 million, mainly due to reduced transaction volume in banking loan solutions because of lower than expected banking activities.
Revenue from Operation Support Services decreased by 24.5% on a year-over-year basis to CNY861 million, which was primarily caused by reduced demand from auto insurance customers and in banking customers.
Revenue from cloud services platform decreased by 5.3% on a year-over-year basis to CNY1.25 billion, revenue for post-implementation support and other services decreased by 47% year over year to CNY127 million.
The decline was primarily due to lower demand for auto ecosystem services. Revenue from POB virtual banking business in Hong Kong increased by 37% to CNY146 million as compared to last year. As you can see, we have been diligent in identifying and improving underperforming areas of our business and as focused on enhancing revenue structure, we will remain committed to integrating our product mix and adopting a stable and sustainable stock based charging model.
Let's turn to revenue mix by product sectors. from a platform sector the focus of product innovation in recent years contributed the biggest chunk of our revenue declined 4.8% in 2023 to CNY1.92 billion and accounted for 52.4% of total revenue.
The decline was mainly caused by reduced transaction volume of our open-platform products. Digital banking sector, which accounted for 25.7% of total revenue, reduced by 35.3% on a year-over-year basis to CNY942 million.
That was mainly caused by reduction in transaction volume of our business origination and risk management services, which are related to our initiatives to out lower value products and the impacts from the lower than expected banking activities.
Digital Insurance sector, which accounted for 17.9% of total revenue, decreased by 25.5% to CNY657 million in 2023, primarily due to reduced demand in auto ecosystem services. In each sector, we phased out products with low margins, products with no technological value added features as well as those with limited potential for the growth in the future.
In addition, commercial banking sector, as I just mentioned before, accounting for 4% of total revenue premium class customers in 2023, the number of premium class customers decreased to 208 as compared with 221 for the same period last year, primarily due to fewer customers in digital banking sector.
We believe as we continue to advance our initiatives, we expect our customer base further expand and the more premium pass customers will use our products and the services.
Now let's take a look at gross margin. We are glad to see our gross margin. Our gross profit reached CNY1.35 billion in 2023. Gross margin improved by 0.2-percentage-point to 36.8%. On non-IFRS basis, gross margin reached 40.3% as we continued our product integration and there's standardization.
In the whole year of 2023, the continued efforts in product integration and delivery efficiency, together with execution on quality growth helped improve our gross profit margin. We will stick to that strategy and to continue the endeavor of achieving higher margins.
Moving on to expenses and net loss attributable to shareholders you can see that we are well on track to our midterm breakeven target. First of all, our research and development expenses came down 32.6% to CNY955 million from CNY1.42 billion in the same period of last year.
As a percentage of revenue, it decreased to 26% in 2023. Our continued investment in technological innovation and organizational capability remains unchanged. As our products we're upgraded and integrated, we further improved our product delivery efficiency.
Looking ahead, we will keep investing in research and development at a more measurable and suitable pace to enhance our product competitiveness in the market.
Our sales and marketing expenses decreased 33% to CNY275 million, compared with CNY411 million in 2022. The improvement in sales and marketing expenses mainly benefited from our continued efficiency, improving efforts, and it decrease in marketing and advertising activities.
Our general and administrative expenses decreased 39% to CNY505 million from CNY825 million in the prior year. As a percentage of revenue, it decreased to 13.8% from 18.5%. The decline in general and administrative expenses was primarily due to stringent cost control measures and a reduced labor cost.
It is worth mentioning again that under a challenging business environment, our net loss attributable to shareholders improved substantially to negative CNY363 million from negative CNY872 million last year. And as a corresponding net margin to shareholders improved 9.6-percentage-point to a negative 9.9%.
This achievement reflects our commitment to enhancing our financial health, and it demonstrates the effectiveness of our actions on our journey towards profitability.
The next page demonstrates the trend of our net margin improvements to shareholders in the past few years. From this page, you can see a clear trajectory of our path to profitability over the years. Our results over the whole year continue to reflect that the effects of our disciplined execution of cost control, accompanied by improved operational efficiency.
Marking another milestone in the path to breakeven. We will continue our productive integration efforts and strive to improve operating efficiency and the business margin.
Looking ahead, we acknowledge the prevailing uncertainties about the pace of full economic recovery. Despite these challenges, our primary focus remains on bolstering third party revenue streams. Our commitment to improving gross profit margins, emphasizing cost control measures and enhancing operational efficiencies remains unwavering as we strive towards sustainable profitability.
Our dedication to achieving our long-term objectives and creating enduring value for shareholders remains resolute. The ongoing efforts to optimize operational efficiency and leverage our resources will persist as integral components of our strategic roadmap.
With a proactive mindset and unwavering resolve, we are well positioned to surmount the current obstacles and emerge stronger in the forthcoming quarters.
Next page, we list key financial metrics of 2023, we summarized IFRS and non-IFRS gross margin results for reference. Lastly, and once again, I would extend my sincere appreciation to our employees, shareholders and partners for their invaluable support and trust in our vision. Together, we will navigate through challenges, capitalize on opportunities and to drive sustainable growth and a success.
Thank you. Back to you Rick.
Rick Chan
Operator, we are open for questions.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Lydia Lin, Morgan Stanley. Lydia, the line is yours.
Lydia Lin
(interpreted) So the first question is we have seen by the press of progress of cutting costs in 2023 and how do we see the further space that the company can tackles in 2024 and what kinds of specific matters that the company has?
And the second question is, I would like to have the management to help us to summarize the generator AI application in the buying companies, product profile and what is the impact from this technology? Thank you.
Rick Chan
Thanks, Lydia. And first question is taken by [Michael Guo], and the second one taken by our [CTO leader.]
Michael Guo
(interpreted) Thank you for your questions. So in 2023 through headcount optimization by improvement, in delivery efficiency and a reduction in expenses from R&D, asset sales and marketing, and we have greatly improved our costs and we have greatly reduced our costs and improved growth metrics such as financial, such as our gross profit margin and all these can be seen from our financial metrics.
For next year, we will continue with our cost control and efficiency improvement measures and reduce costs in our R&Ds and as well as SG&A.
Additionally for the investment of our resources next year on the one hand, we will continue to improve resource allocation efficiency and fine tune our ROI management.
On the other hand, we will aggregate our resources on quality products continue to develop and upgrade products according to our demand development demands and ensure our competitiveness in the market.
Cost control ultimately comes down to the sustainable development of our business. Therefore, we will use our resources more efficiently than means we may invest them in more promising business lines, for instance, our overseas business. Thank you.
Li Jie
(interpreted) I'll answer your question about the app about OneConnect applications of AI and its impact this year. The government's work report included AI plus for the first time, which not only shows increasing importance of AI in China development, but also bodes more significant changes in our everyday lives.
Artificial intelligence plus is the broader concept, which refers to artificial intelligence at the basic and driving technical force and deep and deep, the deep integration of manufacturing, finance, medical care, education, transportation, agriculture and other fields. So as to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.
The financial industry has the best use cases for artificial intelligence plus and will be a strategic focus for new force productivity. OneConnect has been committed to empower financial industry upgrade and transformation focused on serving our Premium-plus customers and product improvements as well as to satisfy the core demand of financial institutions for various business productivity improvements.
We provide products featuring new force productivity such as AI, customer service and omnichannel agents solution. So as to improve efficiency and service, reduce cost and risks for financial institutions.
OneConnect has long developed strong capacity in artificial intelligence, we have won the championships of well-known competitions at home and abroad, such as the third and fifth Chinese machine reading comprehension evaluation.
The free tax extraction track of the on the international semantic assessment competition at a time when larger model see the further breakthroughs our AI team is also actively deploying the exploration and the R&D of related technologies. Thank you.
Operator
[Sean Lee, Quaile Unanim.] Sean, please go ahead.
(spoken in foreign language)
Rick Chan
The first question will be taken by our CTO, Li Jie, and the second one by Michael.
Li Jie
(interpreted) Firstly, I'll address your question about utilizing generated AI and [welcome] to apply AI capacity in all links of the financial industry business. So we offer a fine tune the financial scenario experience AI experienced to our customers.
Our AI customer service solution covers customer service, sales and marketing as well as scenarios such as interviewing. For instance, our AI interview robot offers over 20 dialog and image risk capacities through Vivid, human digital interaction that we help our customers to improve risk management efficiency.
Another example would be our wealth management and tax robot which offers over 30 content app templates and support presets scripts. And so all these solutions will help our customers to improve their conversion rates.
(spoken in foreign language)
Operator
Please go ahead Mr. Michael.
Michael Guo
(interpreted) The adjustments made by both Ping An Group and Ping An bank are measures to cope with the changing market trends.
So our relationship and cooperation with both Ping An Group and its associate companies remains unchanged. Our in-depth cooperation with the group and its associated company aligns our interests together and it's sustainable.
But all sides are happy with our cooperation and relationship. Internal adjustments actually bring us new business opportunities as we will be involved in many important projects.
Thank you.
Operator
We have no further questions on the line. So I'll hand back to Rick for closing remarks.
Rick Chan
Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for joining the call today. If any questions feel free to contact us and appreciate your interest and following us and look forward to speaking to you again.
Operator
This concludes today's call and thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
Portions of this transcript that are marked (interpreted) were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call. The interpreter was provided by the company sponsoring this event.
