BingEx Limited (FLX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to BingEx 2025 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Helen Wu from Piacente Financial Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially from those mentioned in today's news release and in this discussion due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. The non-GAAP financial measures we provide are for comparison purpose only. The definition of these measures and our consolidation table are available in the news release we issued earlier today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on the FlashEx company's IR website at ir.ishansong.com. Furthermore, throughout the call, we will consistently use the company's brand name FlashEx to refer to its publicly listed entity, BingEx Limited. Joining us today from FlashEx's senior management are Mr. Adam Xue, Founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Hongjian Yu, Co-Founder, Director and Executive President; and Mr. Luke Tang, Chief Financial Officer. We will now turn the call over to Mr. Adam Xue.

Thank you, Helen. Hello, everyone, and welcome to FlashEx's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. In the first quarter, we continued to deepen our strategic focus on core users and core value, aiming to deliver higher-quality, more efficient on-demand dedicated courier services. While refining service details, we also strived to enhance the overall user experience. Our personalized solutions, smoother interactions and faster delivery speeds have made our service more convenient and enjoyable for users. These efforts have not only earned widespread praise from our customer, but also further strengthened FlashEx's competitive edge in on-demand dedicated courier delivery. In the first quarter of 2025, we recorded total revenue of RMB 961 million. Gross margin improved both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter to 13.2%. Adjusted net profit was RMB 49.6 million. Amid growing competition in the delivery industry, FlashEX has remained committed to its unique on-demand dedicated courier model, focused on providing users with reliable service when it matters most. In the first quarter of 2025, FlashEx completed 58 million orders with the gross margin per order continuing to improve. Meanwhile, our service footprint continues to expand, particularly in lower-tier cities where our market penetration has deepened significantly. As of the end of Q1, FlashEx has attracted nearly 2.86 million registered riders and over 100 million registered users, highlighting our brand momentum and industry leadership. In the first quarter of 2025, while strengthening our existing service categories and scenarios, we also further explored our users' diverse needs. We [ parsed ] the FlashEx user base in detail, conducting intense research into users across different age groups and profiles. This allowed us to better understand their preferences, accurately identify their needs and expand into new user cases accordingly. And particularly, the new generation of younger users is showing a strong preference for high-quality services and timely delivery. To better connect with them and gain deeper insight into their lifestyles and consumption habits, we actively engaged with topics they care about and increased our presence on third-party social platforms. Drawing on these insights, we've developed task-specific personalized on-demand delivery services that precisely meet their unique day-to-day needs, further enhancing the user experiences and overall satisfaction. At the same time, we are actively expanding into new forms of cross-industry collaboration. For example, we've seamlessly embedded the FlashEx brand into engaging content through strategic product placements in a range of popular TV shows. This approach has not only elevated brand awareness and visibility, but also enabled us to reach and resonate with our target audience more effectively, strengthening both brand recognition and emotional connection. To further enhance user loyalty and engagement, we remain focused on refining service details and elevating our product offerings, aiming to boost FlashEx's service capabilities across the board. Currently, our average delivery time has improved to just 26 minutes, significantly faster than the industry average, underscoring our competitive edge in the instant delivery industry. It is also worth noting that even amid challenges such as severe weather, major holidays or peak demand periods, FlashEx constantly maintains high fulfillment rates and customer satisfaction. Leveraging our responsive dispatch system, intelligent route planning and comprehensive rider training, we ensure fast, reliable deliveries in any situation. Our ongoing efforts in this regard continue to strengthen FlashEx's reputation for premium service, as well as our users' trust and loyalty. In delivery management, we take precise and proactive approach by optimizing route planning, efficiently allocating riders and tracking orders in real time. We ensure a seamless, efficient operation with constantly high order fulfillment rates. We recognize that delivery efficiency and service quality are what make FlashEx stand out in a competitive market. That is why we continuously invest in technology and innovative management to enhance our performance. In the first quarter of 2025, our tech team accelerated the private deployment of DeepSeek. We draw progress in our digital transformation through algorithm upgrades and architectural optimization. At the same time, we focused on seamlessly integrating DeepSeek with our existing systems, [ striving ] from precise data alignment and fine-tuned algorithm capabilities to ensure close coordination across platforms. These efforts have made interactions smoother and response time faster, significantly enhancing the user experience. On the record side, order assignment and dispatch efficiency have also improved notably, further optimizing our services. Our riders are the heart and the soul of FlashEx on-demand delivery ecosystem. Every timely, accurate delivery and every thoughtful response to users' needs reflects the FlashEx spirit of productivity and dependability. Their commitment not only builds FlashEx's brand reputation, but also spreads warmth and goodwill throughout the community. Since 2019, FlashEx has remained committed to fulfilling its social responsibilities with our fair, transparent and well-structured system for recognizing riders who go above and beyond. We constantly foster positive social values. Each quarter, we carefully select 10 to 20 outstanding riders from a platform of [ indiscernible ] who have demonstrated [ selflessness ] and a strong sense of duty during their deliveries. Some have stepped up to help in moments of crisis, while others constantly devote themselves to charity, spreading warmth through simple yet powerful acts of kindness. Through both material rewards and public recognition, we honor these individuals, while seeking to inspire others, encouraging a culture of compassion, responsibility and integrity across the industry. With this initiative, FlashEx is building a more harmonious society, bringing love and kindness to thousands of households, one delivery at a time. In the first quarter of 2025, we further strengthened support and care for FlashEx riders by enhancing our recognition and rewards program. Along with material incentives, we expanded benefits to include career development opportunities and prioritized access to training resources. Through these efforts, we aim to foster a lasting culture of everyday kindness within the FlashEx rider community, encouraging more riders to embrace and share the spirit of goodwill in their daily work. At the same time, we emphasize our riders' development and growth, using the power of system and big data to improve training efficiency and accelerate onboarding for new riders. By analyzing their learning progress, skill mastery and the real-world challenges they face during deliveries, our data-driven approach helps new riders quickly get up to speed our operational processes, significantly shortening their learning curve and helping them perform with confidence sooner. Looking ahead, FlashEx will remain committed to our on-demand dedicated courier model, broadening its application across more scenarios and enhancing our services to bring our users a better, more efficient and more distinctive delivery experience. That concludes my remarks. Now, I will hand over to our CFO, Luke Tang. Thank you.

Thank you, Adam. Hello, everyone. This is Luke. I'd like to walk you through our first quarter financials. Despite the fierce market competition, we delivered a resilient operational performance in the first quarter, highlighted by improvements in our overall profit margin and the gross margin per order. Before we go through the financials, I'd like to remind you that all numbers are in renminbi and all percentage points -- percentage changes are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Our revenues for the first quarter reached CNY 960.8 million compared to CNY 1,107.7 million in the same period of 2024. The year-over-year decline was primarily due to a decrease in fulfilled orders amid intensified market competition. Our cost of revenues for the quarter decreased by 14.7% to CNY 834.1 million. The decrease was in line with the decline in revenues, primarily due to the reduction in fulfilled orders. Our gross profit was CNY 126.7 million for the first quarter compared with CNY 130.3 million in the same period last year. Gross profit margin grew by 1.4 percentage points to 13.2% for the first quarter. Turning to operating expenses. Our total operating expenses for the first quarter were CNY 116.7 million, consisting of selling and marketing expenses of CNY 49.3 million, general and administrative expenses of CNY 37.9 million, and research and development expenses of CNY 29.5 million. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, our non-GAAP income from operations was CNY 26.6 million for the first quarter. Other income was CNY 9.9 million for the first quarter compared with CNY 19 million for the first quarter of 2024. The year-over-year decrease was primarily due to a lower amount of government grants. Our non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was CNY 49.6 million compared with CNY 64.6 million in the same period of 2024. Our cash position remained healthy with cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments totaling CNY 787.2 million as of the first quarter-end. As we move through 2025, we continue to unlock the full potential of our brand and differentiated business model, expand our service scenarios, and further optimize operational efficiency to drive the company's long-term sustainable growth. That concludes our prepared remarks. We would like now to open the floor to your questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Jessie Xu of Deutsche Bank.

Congrats on a very resilient quarter of results in a challenging environment. My first question is regarding order volume and also competition. We noticed that the order volume year-on-year decrease this quarter has narrowed from last quarter. So just wondering how has the competition landscape changed over the past few months? And if we look ahead, are we expecting further improvements from here? And my second question is about margins and UE. It's very encouraging that both of your gross margin and gross profit per order have improved this quarter compared with same quarter last year. But on the other hand, operating margin slightly decreased. So I want to get more color on the reasons behind. Is it related to some measures we have taken to cope with the fierce industry competition? And how should we think about the margin profile, as well as UE, going forward?

Thank you, Jessie. This is Luke. I will take your 2 questions. For the first question, FlashEx has always remained focused on the on-demand dedicated courier model, continuously refine the service details and improving our operating efficiency. Building on this foundation, we are placing even greater emphasis this year on servicing our core customers and reinforcing our core value proposition. While market competition has always been a reality, we believe that healthy and long-term competition always plays a positive role in elevating service standards across the industry, ultimately delivering a better experience for our users. At the same time, FlashEx remains open to learning from industry peers and drawing on best practices to strengthen our capabilities and better address the evolving and diverse needs of our users. We firmly believe that with our high-quality service and differentiated positioning, FlashEx will continue to maintain a strong competitive edge in this market. For the second question, as I mentioned earlier, focusing on core customers and the core value is one of our top strategic priorities this year. By honing this focus, we aim to further optimize our business customers' structure and unlock more service scenarios for our individual customers, which will allow us to meet and evolving our needs of different user segments with greater precisions. At the same time, we are leveraging big data models and advanced AI-powered operations to enhance our user experience and the overall operational efficiency, while continuously strengthening FlashEx's differentiated positioning and the core competitive advantages in today's market. We expect operational efficiency and user experience to remain relatively stable in the short term. Looking ahead, we are confident that as FlashEx brand value continues to grow and our user base expands, we will achieve sustainable and long-term growth.

Our next question comes from the line of [ Susan Zhang ] from CICC.

I've got 2 questions here today. The first one is regarding recent competition among on-demand retail platform. Have we observed any signals of rising delivery demand, driven by customer subsidies from platforms? If so, how has it influenced the order volume growth of our 2B and 2C business? The second question is, could the management team share how rider incentives have changed since the beginning of this year and provide an outlook on future trends? Thank you, [ Susan ], for your question. This is Adam speaking. For your first question, currently, market competition is largely concentrated in the food delivery sector. Since this inception, FlashEx has remained committed to its differentiated, on-demand dedicated delivery model, striving to provide users with a unique high-quality service experience. From a customer segmentation perspective, our B2B clients are primarily concentrated in high-end dining sector. These customers place a premium on delivery speed, safety and quality assurance. They expect every order to arrive in optimal condition and within the shortest possible time to boost their brand image and ensure customer satisfaction. On the B2C side, service scenarios tend to revolve around items that require high-quality standards in terms of security, timeliness and handling such as important documents, cakes and high-value electronics like laptops and smartphones. These items are either expensive or carry special significance, which makes users particularly sensitive to the quality and reliability of the delivery service. From a delivery method perspective, when users choose FlashEx, what they value most is the high end -- the high-quality, differentiated service experience we offer. Our one-to-one dedicated courier model ensures that each item receives careful, personalized handling throughout the entire delivery process, providing maximum protection and security. At the same time, it allows for precise control over delivery time, ensuring both reliability and peace of mind. Overall, this is due to some differentiation between the business segment FlashEx serves and the sector currently facing the most intense market competition. To date, the impact on our operations has been relatively limited. That said, this wave of market competition has had some positive effects. It has significantly heightened both merchants' and users' awareness of delivery efficiency and reliability. Merchants are paying more attention to how delivery affects their business performance, while users' expectations for delivery service quality are rising. And from a long-term perspective, we believe that this market shift will have a positive and healthy influence on the entire logistics and delivery industry. It will encourage improvements in service standards across the board, leading to a better overall user experience. And for your second question, at FlashEx, we've always placed the well-being and career development of rider at the heart of our development strategy. We fully recognize that riders are vital link to our service chain and that their [ rights ], sense of belonging and professional pride are directly linked to our service quality and long-term growth. That is why we take a comprehensive approach to supporting them, covering areas like welfare and protection, career advancement, operational support and community engagement. Our goal is to create a warm, respectful environment where riders truly feel valued as part of the FlashEx family and foster a strong sense of belonging and pride in their profession. Since the beginning of this year, we further increased our investment in supporting and caring for FlashEx riders. We've continued to refine and enhance our recognition and reward system, providing tangible incentives to encourage dedication and quality service, while also introducing a wider range of initiatives such as expanded career development opportunities and access to training resources. Our goal is for riders to gain more than just financial rewards at FlashEx. We want them to grow professionally, advance their careers and realize their personal potential. It's worth noting that since 2022, the Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security, along with other relevant departments, has launched a trial program in 7 provinces and cities, including Beijing and Jiangsu, to provide occupational injury protection for workers in new forms of employment. Over the past 2 years, the program has expanded to cover 4 key sectors: ride-hailing, food delivery, on-demand delivery and intra-city freight. As an active participant in the pilot, FlashEx has strictly followed all requirements, adopting a per order payment model to ensure that every single delivery includes occupational injury coverage for all riders. This initiative not only provides our riders with greater peace of mind while they work, but also reflects FlashEx's strong sense of corporate social responsibility. Thank you.

That concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Helen Wu for closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining BingEx's 2025 First Quarter Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call today. If you have any further questions, please contact the IR team at FlashEx or Piacente Financial Communications. Thank you, and have a nice day.

Thank you.