China Mengniu Dairy Company Limited (2319) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I am [indiscernible], I am the management trainee of the future staff of Mengniu. I am also the first virtual staff I'm honored to be the MC for today. Right now, Mengniu 2022 annual results announcement is beginning soon. Investors, analysts, media friends, welcome. It has been 3 years. And now Mengniu is announcing results on site [indiscernible] is very honored to be the moderator and MC for today. On behalf of China Mengniu, I would like to welcome all of you -- at the same time, I would like to thank you for your long-term interest and support for Mengniu. Now let me introduce to you our management. They are Mr. Lu Minfang, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director; Ms. Wang Yan, Vice President and Executive Director; Mr. Zhang Ping, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Gao Fei, Senior President for the UHT business division; Mr. Lou Yan, Vice President for chilled products and also fresh milk. Mr. Chen Yiyi, Vice President; Mr. Li Pengcheng, Vice President; Mr. Chris Kwok, Financial Controller and Company Secretary. Once again, thank you, management, for coming. There are 2 parts in today's meeting. In the first part, Mr. Lu will present our company's 2022 results highlight. The second part will be a Q&A. This meeting will be concluded at 10:50. Now may I pass the floor to Mr. Lu.

Dear investors, good morning. I'm delighted to be here finally after 3 years. We are able to meet in person for the past few years. We conducted our result announcement online, and it feels quite different coming here today being in person. We feel better. I think that we're all better connected in being able to see each other. Three years, yes, we have seen a lot of changes and possibly it's a very big change and beyond our expectation. But I also feel that today, we have changed our venue. We have even changed our MC. So now we are using AI to help host our meeting perhaps next time a chatGPT could replace me to be on roadshows, and that will be a big innovation. But of course, for capital markets, we have also seen a lot of changes. So today being here today, we still hope that we could have more communications with everyone, with all our friends to understand about our changes as well as our expectations in the future. In the past 3 years, we have changed a lot as well. We have changed our logo. The elements of the logo in terms of our marketing, campaigns, we have made major changes in addition for Mengniu, in terms of our strategies. We have made adjustments, there are continuations. There are also changes. So taking this opportunity here today, I would like to have an in-depth collaboration and communication with you all. We know that in terms of the performance of Mengniu, and behind this, I think that there are many factors in relation to the market as well as the consumers and the economic situations in Mainland China. So in this backdrop, 2022. 2022 compared with the 2020 and 2021 is an even tougher year for everyone. I think that's the common consensus. We have already uploaded our results on the website last night. And I think that for us, what's very important is that in this uncertain external environment to find a strategy that we are certain about. And matters and campaigns that we are certain that we would like to implement. And therefore, you can see that our total revenue grew by 5.1% and our gross margin. Again, it's still very good even if there is a decline of 1.4%, but this is mainly due to different structures. And we know that for raw milk and raw material and roughly speaking, they have neutralized and even if the raw materials, the price has gone up, but the raw milk price has decreased. And therefore, in terms of the impact on the gross margin for this part, roughly speaking, it's neutralized. And in terms of the main gross margin decline, it's mainly coming from the structure. And in the backdrop of the pandemic, in terms of some of our dairy drinks as well as yogurt because of the shutdown of stores and the reduction of foot traffic, and that has seen a negative growth. In addition, we also have some consolidation of the financial statements, but the percentage is not very high. In terms of our operation, later on, I will talk about our operation expenses coming down, and this will help us to continue to contribute to the positive growth of our operation profit. And you can see that we have actually expanded by 40 bps. And this morning, I was saying that our guidance was about 20 to 30 bps and we were saying that it would be flat. But eventually, after the hard work of the team, in the second half of this year, our whole year operating profit margin has actually expanded by 40 bps, and this has exceeded our target initially. And this is thanks to us focusing on profitable growth and focusing on our strategy implementation. In the meantime, we also have the expansion of our staff, and there is also a CB incentive and even with this, our operating profit margin, we continue to see 40 bps increase. So this is the contribution. But of course, in terms of the milk grounds, financial statement consolidation and that something can be neglected because it only happened in the last months. And overall, our performance, we are very satisfied. And starting from this year, in terms of the lines that we see. And for instance, we have some one-off actions, for instance, with a milk ground as well as some equity gains. And if we exclude all these lines, and you would be able to see that where operational profitability has improved. So this is an overall summary. And later on, we will have a QA session, so we can ask questions in detail. Second part is on our revenue and revenue, of course, is still very important to us and liquid milk is very important here, including our base white milk as well as a fresh milk, and we have seen -- maintained a very strong double-digit growth. And even if we have seen the various reductions of other yogurt drinks and dairy drinks, but we can see that for our base milk and our fresh milk have maintained very strong growth in our ice cream business have also seen over 30% of growth. In terms of milk powder and this, again, is because of the pandemic, and there is a big impact on the birth rate there is a decline as a result. In addition, we have some our cheese business as well as borrower foods it's consolidation of the financial statements, and there is quite a big contribution. So next one, so we will look at cash and CapEx cash flow. So you can see that our net cash increase is quite significant. And this is with the driving force of the operational profit growth, and it has increased by 10.4% to CNY 8.33 billion in addition for our CapEx cycle from last year and the year before, we have reached the peak. So for last year's capital and in terms of the investment in property, plant and equipment has already come down to CNY 5 billion. And I believe that going forward, it will continue to decrease. So in terms of the expansion of our capital expenditure we have already gone into the decrease of phase. And in addition, people are also focused on our sales and administrative expenses, SG&A. So you can see that this has continued to optimize, including, for instance, marketing and efficiency continued to improve -- we continue to focus on our channels and targeted precision marketing, and these are all improving. In addition, in terms of our administrative expenditure because last year, we have a one-off CB. And if we exclude that, it's about 4.1% to 4.2%. So it's very stable. So next, if we look at some efficiency indicators and for instance, and for our inventory turnover, receivables, payables, these are all very healthy, even if end of last year for some of our powder and there was some impact on the turnover days. But overall speaking, it's all stabilized. So very quickly, I have gone over the operation indicators. And I think what's important is that whilst achieving, how do we actually achieve these figures? That's the key today. And coming back to our 5-year strategy. In terms of the impact for the external environment, and we hope to push forward for high-quality growth. And number one is that the challenges we face at the moment is how do we make sure stable growth of profit. And second, to use innovation as well as brand upgrading. We believe that in terms of the channels, we continue to have room for further improvement even if 2022 has been a challenging year. We believe that for Mengniu's way of coping with this, we still feel that we are still very calm. And in terms of our strategy implementations, they are all being pushed forward in a stable fashion. We have not panicked in terms of our cost reduction and efficiency increasement, we can see that we have seen obvious improvement. This is something that we adhere to, and we hope that every year, our operating profit margin will continue to improve, but our strategy will remain the same. And after the pandemic, yes, indeed, in terms of liquid milk as well as the people's focus on health and in terms of some of our basic nutrition business. And I think that it's polarized, so for our very high-end product, they have grown very well. We had our basic product, and they have also grown quite well. And this is in terms of the consumption structure. This is the change that we have seen. And I have also been speaking with the other CEOs of other consumer companies, and they have also seen the same trend and which is a [ bell ] shape polarized trend. And for Mengniu, I think that benefits outweigh the disadvantage. And for our high end, they continue to grow, for instance, for [indiscernible] and our high-end products, and we continue to see them to grow very well. And in addition, for some of the products that we are working on. And therefore, first, we will focus on the basics and second, to focus on the premiumization. In addition, what's more important is that we will continue to improve our marketing ability. And basically, this means can I spend the same amount of money we feel that for our current our marketing efficiency has improved even if you can see that for last year, you can see from the women's football and to World Cup and Olympics, and we have done very well. And so our brand image has also improved quite a bit. But in terms of our marketing cost has not gone up. So you can see the efficiency has improved. In addition, for our digitalization on the media that has already accounted for about half. And so you can see that the continuation of a reduction of the traditional media has helped us to improve the efficiency of our advertisement. And of course, in those 2 pages, you can see that there are some important growth point that we have grasped for instance, ice cream and cheese and adult milk powder, fresh milk. So roughly speaking, for dairy industry and for the important growth points, we have been able to grasp them all and therefore, for our brand as well as for innovation and the channels, we have done very well, and we continue to improve our efficiency. In addition, which is on new retail and some of the changes, again, we are ahead of our peers in terms of all these fresh milk delivery to home business and for Mengniu, we are ahead of our peers in the industry. This is also why that whilst maintaining a strong growth we are able to maintain the improvement of our SG&A efficiency. So very quickly to go over some of the business, and I believe that you can already see this for UHT business, we talk about for white milk. And for instance, Milk Deluxe as well as Milk Deluxe premium and our organic business, we have become the truly #1 in the market. So you can see that even if our competitors have always been in the organic milk business, but Milk Deluxe at the moment in this part of the market we have already overtaken them and become the real #1. Secondly, in terms of our UHT yogurt. We have also done some changes. And you can try our Just Yoghurt product outside the room and you can try, we have the Blueberry. We also have meal replacement, and it is low fat. It is also to replace a normal meal. And for the online business, we have done even better with the UHT. So, online and off-line O2O business, we have done very well in terms of our total members. They have exceeded 55 million for offline. For our RTM business, we continue to see our RTM business to continue to go down. And for these implementations that we have done well. So this is UHT and UHT's milk drink, we have also tried some new innovations. So we hope that after the pandemic, we predicted that in terms of tourism and footfall, leisure, entertainment, there will be some recovery. Therefore, for fruit milk drink, and this is quite a strong brand, and we believe that this is an opportunity for us this year. So now second, on our fresh milk business and ice cream, they are growing both very strongly even if in 2022, and you know that in terms of the pandemic control, actually, in a way, compared with the previous 2 years, the impact on our business is even bigger. But for our fresh milk business, we continue to see double-digit growth and especially for Shiny Meadow, and we have seen growth of 30%. And in addition, for our delivery to home business, we are always #1 on the platform. We also have another new product, you can try it out outside and which is called little Shiny Meadow, and here, we have reduced the fat by 60% and reduced the calorie by 30% so these are the products that are very popular by the young people. And in our convenience store very quickly, we have already overtaken our competitors. In terms of ice cream, so ice cream is also, again, another area that we continue to focus on this product innovation. And when the opportunity came, we were very well prepared. So you can see that for our new product as well as crossing different sectors. For instance, multi-ice-cream, even if it's sold at RMB 60 plus but the product is very good. You can try it. And after 5 minutes, and you don't need to worry about driving, so 3% real multi, and it's a [indiscernible] multi. So I can guarantee the raw material that we have used is really delicious. And you don't need to worry about driving after 5 minutes, 3% alcohol. And in about 1 to 2 months, you can taste this new product together with Tong Ren Tang which is a TCM pharmacy. And you can imagine what kind of product we have and perhaps it has [indiscernible] is a traditional Chinese TCM product, which is a donkey skin. And of course, we are also working with Disney and also Studio Universal, and we have launched some new ice cream and, for instance, the Minions and [indiscernible] which is a Chinese cartoon character. And coming back so what are the challenges that we face and which is for chilled business and yogurt business? On one hand, perhaps it's because of the pandemic. On the other hand, for this chilled business, and I think that in the market, the value was not really done very well by the market. So first of all, for our Yoyi C business we think that this is a great growth engine that we need to do well. And secondly, which is one shot and you can see that this is to boost your immune system [indiscernible] product. And in addition, this -- we hope that this year, we have some better categories in terms of cheese. It's very interesting Mengniu's cheese and milkground cheese and milkground is very strong in the retail and the very recent figure if it's coming from Kantar and our market share is already more than 45% and if it's Nielsen it's about 30%. For Mengniu's cheese, you can see that we are making a major shift. First of all, we are focusing on high end. This is our strategy, we want to produce better cheese product, second our B2B business is very big. And B2B business accounts for about 70% of our cheese business. For this part, even if the gross margin is not that big compared with the retail, but the profitability is still very strong. So in terms of all our solutions from cheese and butter, we have done very well, and I was also on TikTok last time, and I talked about, about how do I say this? Apologies. I forgot about this. And the -- I was asked to do live streaming sessions on TikTok, and I said that, actually, why don't we do something interesting? And why don't we challenge this and is the 30 layers of [indiscernible] cheese and we couldn't finish this and it's about 10 kilo of cheese and 50 people, we couldn't finish eating it. But you can see this is innovation, and our innovation is here. We are becoming more innovative. So using this opportunity, I would like to encourage our team, there are still a lot of opportunities. Finally, let me turn to 2 other challenging business that you may be interested in, formula milk of Yashili. Last year, well, you may say that there is some impact arising from birth rate. But then as you know, for the national standard from last year to this year, there is national standard upgrading and transition. Now we have got the approval for the formula already. So this year in February to March, we have already got approval for all our formulas. So concerning transition between old and new formula, there is some impact on our business. For adults formula, in the past, there was strong growth. However, because of raw material impact, there was big cost impact. So we hope to slow down our process and enhance quality so that we can improve profitability. For Bellamy, in the past 2 years, when it comes to cross-border and daigou that was bigger impact. However, we are very determined. So at the end of last year, we did an overall adjustment the management of Bellamy was actually changed. So I refer to Q1 data, they are very good. So I believe that, first of all, this is a very good brand. And secondly, we still have a lot of opportunities. And number three, challenges on our team will be such that when the pandemic ends, then in relation to daigou and other cross-border business, that will be recovery. So I believe this year, we will see better performance in these 2 business areas. Finally, I would like to talk about marketing. In the past, in the past 5 to 6 years, well, the biggest change is that we are very focused. Marketing of the whole Mengniu brand is concentrated on Olympic Games and World Cup, and we have been accumulating our work because we have signed a long-term investment agreement for more than 10 years. So we can continue to accumulate our effort for our brand. We do not rely on annual or yearly marketing effort that we rely on long-term accumulation for aerospace, 20 years already. So we are determined in some long-term work, this is very critical to long-term brand building and enhancement. If you look at our marketing efforts, for example, about [indiscernible], where we have done a very good job. And actually, some time ago, I went to inner Mongolia to visit [indiscernible]. I think she is really talented. And then for Messi and also another soccer star, of course, they are well known. Now you can see World Cup here on this slide, no matter whether we talk about sponsorship or marketing, we are #1 in World Cup events. So let me declare that we had not been engaged in any internal manipulation. Well, if you talk about Leo Messi and his opponent in the final, well, that is not something that we have included in our script, so to speak. Well, Argentina and France, Argentina versus France match. Well, actually, this shows that our long-term move and also our judgment in relation to winning teams. So if you refer to the final results, you can see that we are very determined. Actually, we also panicked a bit, as you know, about Messi or Argentina. So concerning long-term move, I think you can see that in our Mengniu's brand, it is not only about the soccer star, and also the pop stars. So yes, we have taken some risk to go to see the World Cup. But then actually, I think the final this time is the best match in the past 30 years, it is amazing. And the two soccer stars have not disappointed us. And in the process, well, I keep on saying that in relation to advertising efficiency and also publicity efficiency, they are rising because we are focused, and we have made long-term plan. If you look at the financial data, we have not spent really a lot of money perhaps as you expected, but then we have achieved very good efficiency. So from a brand's point of view, we have to be long term in doing marketing and accumulating our efforts and achievements. So we just had World Cup next year, that will be the Paris Olympics. So next year, I hope that we can deliver to you some very big pleasant surprise in terms of our brand strategy. Finally, let me comment on ESG. Now for ESG, well of course, we also made long-term investment and plans. So since we established our ESG strategy, all the way till now, we have a very clear green strategy. Our development strategy is very clear. So the final result is good. No matter whether you talk about rating and other outcomes, but they are very good. That is because of our sustainable corporate governance, our responsibility sense and also a green and environment-friendly production our ecosystem and industrial chain layout and also our focus on nutrition and health. So all these moves are very clear. We will continue them and under ESG, we also have our dual-carbon strategy. We have already announced our dual-carbon goals. So here, you can see Phase I, II and III, they are very clear through production, raw milk, packaging, transportation. Altogether, there are 6 critical steps in order to achieve our dual-carbon goals. And finally, as such as now, the results are very good. So for supply chain, for our upstream raw milk supply and decarbonization work, it is very satisfactory with zero carbon plant certification is such that we are the first zero carbon plants with dual or 2 certifications. And then in terms of our products and packaging, well, we have passed the CGF Golden Design Rules certification. We are doing a very good job. And then for Yoyi C, label-free packaging and also our ESG management. So actually, we have already formed a cross department, very professional, specialized and in-depth ESG management principle and process. The final outcome is that for MSCI ESG, we are rated A. This is the highest rating in the Chinese food industry and we are a very important constituent in Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Index. And then for ESG Vanguard 50 Index, we are #1. So all central enterprises are being rated, all important big enterprises are being rated, and then we are #1. So in the future, we may have some case studies, which we can communicate with you in greater depth. Now let me turn to 2023. We think that for 2023 -- well, you have been asking about our scale and also our growth rate because we want to create a new Mengniu. Well, definitely, it is not possible to do without scale, but we have to make sure that there is high quality out of the scale, and we have to continue to improve our profit margin. So in terms of improving our penetration rate in the industry and our premiumization, our growth engines have not changed. Over the past 2 years' effort, I think 2023 is a critical year. So in terms of pure scale accumulation all the way to having both scale and profit, I think that is a strategy that we adhere to. And in the future, in terms of high-quality development, we want to achieve best mix of our market cap as well as return. I won't go through the details on this slide. Perhaps later on, we can talk more about our brand online, off-line integration, off-line scenarios, digitalization, nutrition and health and so on. Now I think when we talk about high-quality development, finally, we have actually brand premium, innovation premium and also digitalization premium. So by seizing these 3 items, we can improve our profit margin. And these 3 elements actually until very clear measures, for example, brand premium innovation, digitalization. Digitalization is an area which we have invested significantly and we have also gained benefit from digitalization. Finally, our capabilities, as I said in the past, I would like to refresh our core competencies, our brand power, RTM, digital transformation, innovation capabilities, giving rise to improvement in profitability, our organization improvement. So now you can see that we have already got our talent and manpower in digitalization. So in the area of supply chain and brand, we have enhanced our digitalization capability. Well, I'm not only talking about expansion of scale and improvement of profitability. I'd like to paint a very complete picture of Mengniu first. So in terms of consumption, we want to be first choice of consumers. And then in relation to internationalization and also our management capabilities, these have to be enhanced. We are more responsible, and we make investment in digitalization. And in terms of our culture, we promote continuously our cultural DNA. So in the past 3 years, our experience told us that no matter whether there are opportunities and challenges in the market, opportunities are available for those who are well prepared. So when we talk about our high-quality development strategy and also the building of our 6 major capabilities and competencies and our final success painting or Blueprint. Well, in the coming 3 to 5 years, we will adhere to this strategy, and we will continue to improve our operating capability and profitability. I have joined the company for 6.5 years already. I think right now, we are calmer because in terms of our various capabilities and our mastery of different elements, well, we are more stable in terms of our operation. We have more confidence. Mengniu is a company with innovative and breakthrough capabilities. So the balance between these 2 sides from the management's point of view is such that we can have more confidence. We can rest assured even if we need more innovation and breakthrough, we do have the capability. And in the capital market, we can convince you that we have profitability as well as growth. So we are very confident in that as well. So today, when I look at the situation in the future, I think in the coming 5 to 6 years, the difficulty and workload is going to be heavy, and things will be difficult. But then I think the degree of certainty will be higher than in the past, especially during the pandemic. So my final conclusion is that we have to maintain very strong innovation and breakthrough capability. At the same time, there must be a very certain corporate profit growth and business growth stability, together with our team's effort. So yes, the job will be harder, but we will work harder and things will be more certain. And then our organization will be more creative. So I think that is the overall condition of our team. Thank you very much. So just now I have presented our annual results and also our preliminary views about the coming year. Thank you.