Li Ning Company Limited (2331) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Investors, good morning. Welcome to Li Ning Company Limited's 2022 Annual Results Announcement. Let me introduce to you our management. They are Executive Director and Joint CEO, Mr. Li Ning; Executive Director and Joint CEO, Mr. Qian Wei; Vice President and CFO, Mr. Zhao Dong Sheng. In today's presentation, Mr. Zhao will first go through results highlights and financial review. After that, the Chairman will go through a strategic direction, and then Mr. Qian will go through future outlook and developments, followed by Q&A. Now let me pass the floor to Mr. Zhao.

Good morning. I am Zhao Dong Sheng. Now I'm going to present to you our financial review of 2022. 2022 was not an easy year. As the pandemic continued to affect our lives and also continued to impact the economic and consumption environment while testing company's risk response capabilities and also puts considerable pressure on the company's financial and operating indicators. On the financial side, the company achieved a revenue growth of 14.3% during the year, while gross profit margin dropped by 4.6 percentage points to 48.4% due to rising costs and intensified competition in retail sales promotions. In a volatile market environment, the company achieved a slight increase in net profit to CNY 4.064 billion due to strict control of expenses, coupled with increased government subsidies and interest income. Net profit margin down 2.1 percentage points to 15.7% but remained at a reasonable level. Operating cash flow decreased by [ 40% ]. During the pandemic, we increased support to suppliers and shortened payment cycles to ensure a smooth and efficient supply chain. Together with the increase in raw material prices, there is an increase in procurement amount resulting in the decrease of cash flow from operating activities, but we still achieved positive operating cash flow of CNY 3.914 billion. Although the average working capital increased, it only rose 1 percentage point to 6.8% of revenue compared with the same period and cash conversion cycle was 30 days, which was at a healthy level. On the operations side, we strengthened operational efficiency improvement to reduce negative impact of the epidemic to a certain extent. LI-NING brand retail sell-through based on the high base of the same period in 2021 and the pressure of the rapid spread of the pandemic in the fourth quarter, we finally achieved year-on-year mid-single-digit growth for all channels. Channel inventory increased by mid-20% to 30% mainly due to the expansion of business scale and the company's early deployment according to plans to capture continued business growth opportunities. In addition, the ongoing pandemic in 2022 and the nationwide outbreak in Q4 also put pressure on channel inventory. At the end of 2022, our omnichannel inventory to sales ratio was 4.2 months. This was at a healthy level. Despite the challenging retail environment, off-line new product retail sell-through still achieved mid-single-digit growth. While new product sell-through increased by 3 percentage points in share compared to 2021, the 3-month sell-out rate. Overall speaking, although the retail environment was extremely challenging in 2022 due to COVID-19, the strengthening of operational efficiency eased retail pressure to a certain extent. During the year, our revenue grew 14.3% year-on-year. Thanks to the strategic focus on professional categories. Revenue from footwear grew by 42% year-on-year, and its revenue share increased by 10 points to 52%, with functional categories becoming a key driver of business growth. In the volatile market environment, LI-NING brand maintained a relatively balanced channel development strategy with a balanced share of wholesale and DTC helping us to better balance the risk between channels and finance as well as working capital and profit and loss. Overall, the channel share remained stable. Due to the impact of the pandemic on off-line sales, the direct channel -- the direct retail channel revenue share dropped by 2 points to 21%, while e-commerce channel revenue share increased by 1 percentage point. Due to the company's [ past ] support to distributors and strict requirements for channel efficiency management, the wholesale channel was in a healthy state before the rebound of the pandemic with low percentage of old product inventory and continuous optimization of distributors' operational capacity, which also enabled distributors to maintain confidence in the brand. And the revenue share of wholesale channel increased by 1 percentage point to 48%. The stable channel share also demonstrates the strength of our brand and our continuous improvement in merchandise management and channel management. In terms of off-line sell-through, percentage of new product sell-through within 6 months increased by 3 points to 89%, a very healthy level. The company's strict long-term management of channel inventory has provided a good basis for improvement in the percentage of new product sell-through and also shows the continuous improvement of our retail operation. In terms of same-store performance, same-store sales across all platforms remained flat during the year due to impact of the pandemic and the high base, with e-commerce same-store sales growing by a high single-digit and off-line same-store sales declining by a low single digit. As shown in the chart, same-store pressure in 2022 was mainly reflected in the second and fourth quarters due to the high base pressure in 2021 as well as local area lockdown in 2022, especially the significant rebound of the nationwide pandemic in the fourth quarter, which had a significant negative impact on the consumer side. For example, in Beijing, an important operating area of the company, 70% to 80% of stores were closed in Q4 of 2022. Almost all stores were affected by the pandemic, and 90% of employees were positive, which posed a great challenge to our terminal operations. In terms of channel development, the total number of channel POS in 2022 was 7,603, an increase of 466 over the same period in 2021, including increase of 360 LI-NING brand stores and LI-NING YOUNG stores increased by 106. Despite the disruption of the pandemic, we still actively expanded quality channels against the trend, focusing on the layout of efficient large stores and shopping mall stores, with a number of stores of LN brand increasing by mid-single digit year-over-year. Total sales area and average area of single stores increased by high double digit and low double digit year-over-year, respectively. In terms of sell-through due to the impact of the epidemic and the high base pressure from the same period last year, overall sell-through still increased by mid-single digit year-on-year with e-commerce sell-through achieving mid-10% to 20% growth. Off-line was more affected by the pandemic with low single-digit year-over-year growth in off-line sell-through, including low single-digit year-on-year decline in sales volume, but a low single-digit increase in average selling price under the promotional environment. The wholesale business of LI-NING brand, excluding international market and LI-NING YOUNG business, recorded a 15% year-on-year increase in revenue and 95 more stores for the full year. Revenue of sell-in to specialty stores and categories such as badminton and table tennis grew faster, reaching high end of 30% to 40%. The main reasons include the group's focus on professional categories, which has continued to increase confidence of distributors. The group's organization and restructuring of these businesses in the past 2 years, which has facilitated the rapid development of these categories and a relatively low base for the same period. As shown in the chart on the right, excluding revenue from sell-in to specialty stores, wholesale revenue increased by high single digit while wholesale sell-through decreased by low single-digit year-on-year due to the impact of the pandemic and the pressure of a growth rate of over 50% in the same period of 2021. Under the pandemic, we need to ensure sufficient new product sell-in to drive a post-pandemic sell-through recovery. In the long run, we'll continue to strengthen our distributors' retail operation capability to ensure healthy channel inventory and sustainable channel growth. Direct retail revenue increased 6% year-on-year. Number of stores increased by 265 year-on-year. As shown in the revenue change analysis chart, revenue growth was mainly driven by rapid increase in new stores under direct retail and the transfer of some stores by individual distributors who withdrew from the partnership. Although the pandemic-impacted direct retail revenue growth to a certain extent, there was a high base in the same period last year. We continue to minimize negative impact of the pandemic on direct retail same-store sales performance through our enhanced retail operations capabilities as well as to layout high-quality new store openings to drive revenue growth. During the year, gross margin decreased 4.6 percentage points to 48.4%, mainly due to the following factors. One, direct retail gross margin. Due to deeper discounts and the negative impact of the cost over tag price ratio due to cost increases, the combination of the 2 factors affected 1.3 percentage points of the decline of the group's gross margin. Number two, the gross margin of e-commerce channel. Due to the intensification of promotion competition resulting in deeper discounts and cost pressure in the group's gross margin decline impacted 1.7 percentage points. The gross margin of the wholesale channel due to rising costs of raw materials and labor and a negative impact of cost to tag price ratio, which affected 1.6 percentage points in the decline of the group's gross margin. Rise in inventories, which led to an increase in the provision for inventory price decline as well as an increase in R&D expenses affected 0.3 percentage point in the decline of the gross margin. A decline in the share of the DTC channel resulting in 0.3 percentage point decline in gross margin [indiscernible] business optimized product mix, thus optimizing the overall gross margin performance of the products and driving the gross margin up by 0.6 percentage points. Although the gross margin declined, the 14.3% revenue growth still brought an increase in gross profit of CNY 516 million. On the expense side, we strictly control expenses, but the impact of the epidemic on the consumption side still put pressure on the earnings growth. Sales related variable costs such as direct retail store expenses, platform commissions and logistics expenses increased by a total of CNY 725 million. The increase in direct retail store expenses was related to the number and area of stores opened, while the increase in commission was in line with the increase in e-commerce revenue. Advertising and promotion expenses increased by CNY 500 million and expense ratio increased 0.9 percentage point year-over-year to 8.8%. Increase in marketing expenses was mainly due to increased promotion and sales promotion expenses to drive recovery of sell-through. In addition, we also managed expenses in response to the pandemic to improve efficiency of resource investment and other platform expenses decreased by CNY 20 million. Other income and interests increased by CNY 776 million, mainly due to increased government subsidies and interest income from abundant net cash. Overall, the group's operating profit margin decreased by 3.9 percentage points to 18.9% from 22.8% in the same period last year. And the net profit margin decreased by 2.1 percentage points to 15.7% from 17.8% in same period last year. Regarding channel inventory, total channel inventory in 2022 was up mid-20% to 30% year-on-year. On the one hand, the expansion of our business scale has led to an increase in inventory. On the other hand, as mentioned in the wholesale section, we need to ensure sufficient supply of new products under the pandemic to drive business recovery after the pandemic. Even so our inventory turnover of 4.2 months for both online and off-line channels is still at an industry-leading healthy level. The inventory structure, although not improved over the same period remains within a healthy and reasonable range. Going forward, we will continue to implement rigorous inventory management measures to ensure that inventory turnover efficiency and inventory structure remain healthy over the long term. As for the company's inventory, the amount of inventory costs before provisioning in 2022 increased by 37% due to continuous expansion of business platform and the increase of raw material costs. Our inventory structure is reasonable and controllable. A healthy inventory structure is an important foundation to support the healthy and sustainable growth of the business. We believe that we have further room for improvement through continuous improvement of merchandise efficiency and operational efficiency. In terms of trade receivables, our pre-provision trade receivables increased by a reasonable 5.6% relative to the 14.3% increase in revenue. Accounts receivable turnover days increased by 1 day to 14 days. This is still healthy. As shown in the chart on the right, the proportion of trade receivables within 90 days increased to 84% from 83% in the same period last year. Although the negative impact of the pandemic is unavoidable, our [ past ] support to distributors and strict requirements for channel efficiency management have kept our distributors in a relatively healthy condition, and we'll continue to maintain our support and management strategy for our distributors in the future. In terms of working capital efficiency, our working capital remains at a healthy level with working capital to annualized revenue ratio of 7%, giving us sufficient resources to power our business recovery. During COVID-19, in order to ensure a smooth and efficient supply chain, we increased support to suppliers and shortened payment cycles. Together with the increase in raw material prices, this led to an increase in purchases, resulting in lower cash flow from operating activities. But still we achieved positive operating cash flow of CNY 3.914 billion. Our net cash increased by CNY 568 million to CNY 19.05 billion comparing to same period of the previous year, and we have abundant cash resources. This solid cash base enables us to better manage stress and risk in face of the pandemic while also putting us in a better position to flexibly seize future new business growth opportunities. While the gloom of the pandemic is now lifting and the pace of production and life in China is gradually recovering, we remain cautiously optimistic about the recovery of the economic and consumption environment in 2023. At the same time, we are confident that the long-term growth potential of China's sportswear industry as well as the sustainable growth momentum of the LI-NING brand will continue. For 2023, we expect full year revenue growth will be in the mid-teens or mid-10% to 20% range. And we expect full year net profit margin will remain at a reasonable level in the mid-teens, that is mid-10% to 20% range. So the financial part is as above. Now I would like to invite the Chairman to introduce the key strategic directions for 2023. Thank you.

Thank you, Dong Sheng. Good morning. In 2022, although COVID-19 had caused impact on the economy and consumption with continued optimization of pandemic prevention and control measures and the implementation of various policies to stabilize growth, China's economy will stabilize and improve. And the sports industry will gain momentum as national health awareness increases under the impetus of national policies. Over the years, the company continued to focus on single brand, multi-categories and diversified channel strategy. We deepened product R&D and innovation and integrate sports fashion trends to provide consumers with both professional and fashionable sports products through a multi-category, multichannel matrix, strengthening the competitiveness of brands and products. In the past year, we further focused on professional categories and drove our core competitiveness of the brand with technology, and basketball and running categories continued to gain momentum, leading to growth in a challenging business environment. The gaming shoes matrix of the basketball category has been further improved with the launch of innovative [ hit ] shoes, such as the Evolution, which incorporates the best technology platforms and the latest design concepts to explore the ultimate in professional footwear. We've also opened a basketball home store to provide basketball fans with a more comprehensive display of basketball products and a better shopping experience. Running category focuses on technology-driven comprehensive professional transformation. LI-NING BOOM technology is constantly upgraded in terms of performance in addition to the extension of the launch of BOOM FIBER for shoe uppers technology. This marks the Li Ning professional running shoes matrix entering the era of integration of shoe sole and shoe upper. Relying on the technology platform, we built the top running shoe, Feidian 3 ULTRA, which helped athletes win medals at the Berlin Marathon, placing Chinese running shoes on the podium of the World Marathon Majors for the first time, setting the best record of Chinese running shoes. At the same time, we created hot-selling models for the mass runners. And expanded the mass market through Super Light 19th and Rouge Rabbit series. In 2023, we'll further upgrade the professional running shoes matrix and continue to break through the market share of the running category. Regarding the fitness category, we focus on functional technology to create fitness gear for diverse sports scenarios. Men's fitness upgrades [indiscernible] technology to optimize the wearing experience. And for women's fitness, we continue to deepen the product and market to strengthen consumer mindset. In the future, we'll continue to expand the fitness category and deepen the layout of the niches. For the sports casual category, we continue to tap into sports trend culture. We package unique sports trend [indiscernible] through Chinese Li Ning, Chinese culture, brand crossover and other dimensions to create special products to strengthen the differentiation advantage of LI-NING brand to win in the fierce market competition. In terms of brand marketing, we continue to consolidate the professional sports resources matrix, deepen the layout of marketing resources in basketball, running, table tennis and badminton categories and use high-profile events and athletes as brand endorsement to further drive sales and attention for LI-NING brand professional products. During the year, we entered into a strategic partnership with the League of Legends Pro League, which is an important step in strengthening our e-sports market presence and exploring new possibilities for e-sports in China. We will strengthen our engagement with the [ use ] segment to explore and capture more e-sports market opportunities. In addition, we have entered into a 10-year strategic partnership with the China Secondary School Students Sports Association to develop a new and more effective and efficient way to promote campus sports events, training and campus sports education and public welfare activities to further expand our consumer groups among young people. That's all about our key strategic directions for 2022. Next, I would like to invite our CEO, Mr. Qian Wei, to introduce the operational progress of the company. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman. Good morning. I am Qian Wei. Today, I'm very happy to be able to meet with you face-to-face so that I can give you a report of our business. In 2022, the group continued to focus on improving operational efficiency and driving healthy and strong business growth while preparing for and responding flexibly to the uncertain market environment. In 2022, as the epidemic intensified after March, the group responded to the uncertain external market environment by adjusting business processes and targets on a monthly and weekly basis, ensuring sell-through and controlling inventory. We ultimately achieved a 14.3% year-on-year increase in revenue, and it exceeded CNY 25 billion. At the same time, we continued to build a muscular organization, improve operational efficiency and reduce unnecessary expenses. Operating expense ratio remained at a reasonable level, net profit and net profit margin for 2022 remained solid and in line with our company's expectations under the pandemic last year. In 2022, we continued to aim for operational efficiency improvements and promote realization of muscular corporate body so that we can establish corporate management and operation system that is sustainable and that can sustain high profitability and continue to strengthen our core competitiveness. Next, I will elaborate on our operations in 2022. First, in terms of product merchandising, we continue to strengthen our merchandise operation management capabilities, improve our merchandise planning system and enhance our merchandise operation efficiency while driving business growth. In addition to achieving merchandise focus and improving efficiency of merchandise operations in order to meet the needs of multilevel, multi-store and multi [indiscernible] customers, we continued to optimize our merchandise structure to maintain reasonable level of merchandise width and depth. During the year, the product width increased by a high single-digit year-over-year and the depth increased by low single digit year-on-year. With the prolonged nationwide pandemic and uncertain market environment, we intentionally lowered retail discounts by incorporating the smooth and [indiscernible] level of product sales in order to ensure sell-through and control inventory risk. And the discount rate of new products in the season was in the high 70% to 80% range. Although the new product sell-out rate decreased year-on-year due to inventory shortage, it still reached a reasonable level last year. In terms of inventory, we set a clear inventory target, control inventory risk and ensure sufficient inventory for all business [ nodes ] to create business opportunities under the premise of reasonable channel inventory to sales ratio because we don't want to miss any business opportunity. As the 2023 New Year's Day and the Chinese New Year was quite early, we intentionally put in more inventory to meet the demand of the holiday business. The channel inventory to sales ratio in 2022 increased slightly year-on-year, but the ratio of inventory to sales and new and old product inventory structure was still reasonable and controllable. In terms of retail operations, due to the impact of the pandemic, the retail end faced the pressure of declining footfall for the third consecutive year. But we continue to improve conversion rates and the units per transaction to ensure a healthy and stable retail base, while implementing retail standards and improving retail management system, laying a solid post-pandemic operational and management foundation. During the year due to the impact of the epidemic, off-line retail discounts deepened in mid-single digits, but average selling price still increased by low single digit. And overall conversion rate increased by mid-single digits and units per transaction increased in the high single digits. So overall speaking, we have achieved quite good results on these dimensions. Then let's take a look at our channels. We insisted on the strategy of expanding high-quality profitable stores, and we achieved a 10% to 20% increase in total selling square footage during the year with an average single store area of over 230 square meter and a low single-digit increase in average monthly store productivity. And at the same time, the proportion of big stores further increased by a single-digit percentage points with a number of big stores exceeding 1,600 and the average area above 410 square meters. In terms of channel optimization, we strive for single-store sell-through, profitability and efficiency performance and expanded our profitable quality stores, continue to strengthen the layout of channels in [ mega ] first-tier and second-tier cities and maintained a stable sell-through contribution from high-tier market during the year, while the sell-through contribution from shopping malls increased by single -- mid-single digit. At the same time, we focus on the expansion of high-productivity stores and the closure of low productivity in loss-making stores, upgrading store image and implementing a new 9th generation store image. While at the same time, promoting the construction of 8th generation image stores. And at the end of the year, 8th generation stores accounted for 60%. And under the epidemic, the company was optimistic about the future market development and actively expanded our channels, while developing new store type, basketball home store, more comprehensive display of basketball product mix, and basketball fans can enjoy better quality products and buying experience. In addition, we actively explore the Li Ning [indiscernible] high-quality operation business model with a number of channels growing from 3 in 2021 to 16 and the total full year sell-through exceeding [ 53 million ]. In e-commerce, we ensure that the online business continues to grow, expanding membership and sell-through scale of omnichannel O2O. 2022 business results are in line with the group's expectations overall. During the year, we achieved a high 10% to 20% increase in online direct retail sell-through, but the average discount deepened in the mid-single digits under the disruption of the epidemic. The proportion of online direct retail sell-through decreased slightly but remained stable overall and the number of brand members exceeded 52 million. Omnichannel O2O cross-store sales grew by a low 40% to 50%. In the future, we'll accelerate the establishment of Li Ning's big e-commerce business model and promote the sustainable and healthy development of e-commerce business. For kidswear, we focus on the strategic positioning of professional sports kidswear, improved our professional product matrix and strengthened our product power while optimizing our channel structure and distributor matrix to improve store productivity and achieve overall business growth. And at the same time, we integrated our campus business with our kidswear business in order to realize the integration of product and merchandise functions and enhance business synergy products, channels and distributors. The kidswear retail sell-through grew by high 30% to 40% with average selling price increasing by mid-single digits. Unit per transaction increased by low single digits and same-store sales growth reaching high 10% to 20%. The number of kidswear stores reached 1,308 for the year with average store productivity improving by high 20% to 30%. In terms of supply chain, we clarified our supply chain strategy of changing passive production to proactive production and continue to optimize our supply chain organization. We strengthened quality control awareness among our staff and established a full chain of product quality management mechanism, strictly implementing quality management requirements, standards and systems and continuously focusing on product quality improvement. In terms of production capacity under the background of the pandemic, we effectively ensured productivity, capacity, supply and improve delivery time through a reasonable regionalized product layout and a differentiated supplier structure matrix. During the year, the overall capacity of supply chain increased by a high single digit, footwear capacity increased by low 20% to 30% and apparel capacity remaining stable. In the environment of higher raw materials and labor costs, we are controlling costs through material consolidation reuse, integrated procurement, synergies, suppliers and development of cost optimization. We implemented a supply matrix based on our business strategy and continue to strengthen our supply capabilities in differentiated categories. The total capacity of the group's top suppliers accounted for more concentrated share. In addition, we attached great importance to the sustainable development of our supply chain, improve our ESG management standards and strictly carry out compliance and risk management. We continue to make joint adherence to social responsibility and industry ethics as basic principles in our [ co-operation ] with our suppliers and promote implementation of ESG development strategy together with them. In the year 2022, it was challenging but we continue to push forward with our core business development strategy and pursued operational efficiency to ensure that the company continues to move forward in a steady and stable manner. In 2023, we'll continue to promote the upward development of the entire enterprise with the goal of becoming the first choice of professional sports brands for Chinese consumers, building a process-driven business synergistic operation system, improve digital platform, use data indicators for decisions and use IT to empower efficiency and continue to train and build our talent. At the same time, we attach great importance to sustainable development of the group, integrate our vision and strategy of sustainable development into our operation and development and overall planning and actively promote and deepen ESG-related work by fully adapting our business characteristics. In the future, we'll continue to focus on the 7 main areas of business transformation based on the above points. And we promote the implementation of key strategic tasks, accelerate business model changes, promote long-term and sustainable growth and create continuous value and returns for both our shareholders and also our consumers. We will continue with these efforts. And basically, there will be closed loop consumer operation, and there will be further talent development. We will continue to focus on these main areas of development, and these will be our strategic targets in this year. And this will bring on, we believe, long term and continuous growth for our company. So that ends my report. Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]