ZOZO, Inc. (3092) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Interpreted] It is time to start the full year financial results briefing and Q&A session of ZOZO for FY 2023 ending in March 2024. Good evening. My name is Yusaku Kobayashi. We have on the call 2 members from ZOZO: Director, Executive Vice President and CFO, Koji Yanagisawa; and VP of Strategic Planning and Development Department, me, Yusaku Kobayashi. First, CFO, Yanagisawa, will take you through the financial results.

[Interpreted] Good evening. I am Yanagisawa. I'd like to walk you through the financial results. As for FY '23, our gross merchandise sale GMV rose by 5.5% year-on-year, amounting to JPY 574.3 billion. Our GMV, excluding other GMV went up 7.1% year-on-year, landing at JPY 536.9 billion. Our operating profit rose by 6.5% year-on-year, landing at JPY 60 billion, and our operating profit margin OEM was 11.2%, decreasing by 0.1 point year-on-year. In terms of the achievement rate against the company plan, our GMV, excluding other GMV turned out to be 100.3%, and it was 100.1% for OP and both have reached the targets. GMV for ZOZOTOWN business trended lower than the plan, impacted by the abnormal weather, but GMV for Yahoo! Shopping, thanks to the effect of active promotions, trended significantly higher than the plan, thus GMV, excluding other GMV, which directly impacts the margin, achieved the target. Despite some expenses exceeding the plan OP also surpassed the plan due to successful cost reductions and cost controls. And both GMV and OP reached record highs. Let's go to Page 10 of the handout. Here are the quarterly consolidated financial results. In the fourth quarter accounting period, GMV, excluding other GMV grew 6.4% year-on-year. Because the amount of the provision for bonuses was reduced compared to the previous year, and the company was cost conscious, the operating profit increased by 22.0% year-on-year, which is quite high. Next, let's go to Page 11 of the handout. Let's look at the increase/decrease analysis of the OP. OP was JPY 56.42 billion in the previous fiscal year. In the FY '23, it amounted to JPY 60.07 billion, up by approximately JPY 3.65 billion. And the factors attributable to the growth of the OP can be explained with 3 reasons. The first one is plus JPY 10.09 billion from the gross profit growth resulting from ZOZOTOWN and Line Yahoo! Commerce GMV expansions. And the second one is plus JPY 1.96 billion from the sales increase generated by the advertising business. And the third is plus JPY 1.43 billion from the growth of the shipping revenue and others coming mainly from the GMV expansion. And mainly, there are 4 factors that drove down the OP. First one is minus JPY 2.51 billion from the increase in fixed costs, impacted by the rise in the number of employees and logistic bases and others. And secondly, minus JPY 3.51 billion from the increase in variable costs that rose in correlation to the GMV. And the third one is JPY 1.43 billion from the increase of actual PR expenses associated mainly with point-related expenses. And then the last one is minus JPY 2.38 billion from other expenses, such as the purchase of equipment to start the operation of the new logistic base, increasing cloud server expenses and transferring of some outsourcing commissions to the [indiscernible]. And by the way, Yahoo! Shopping was renamed Line Yahoo! Commerce from this fiscal year. And since ZOZO used -- set up a shop in Yahoo! Auction in March of 2024, Line Yahoo! Commerce figure is the sum of Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auction. And let's now skip 2 pages and go to Page 13. Here are the cash flow trends. I'd like to explain 2 special variable factors. So the first one is about cash flows from investing activities. So this included expenditures for the opening of the new logistics center, which impacted both previous and the current fiscal years. And the second one is cash flows from financing activities. So this includes the acquisitions of treasury stock. Let's now go to Page 23 of the handout. This is the breakdown of SG&A. The SG&A expenses to GMV ratio was 22.9%, flat from the previous year. And there are mainly 4 main factors that drove down the SG&A ratio, and these are the following. Due to a change in the amount of the year-end bonus payment and recording of parts of the engineering personnel costs going to the software asset cost, payroll costs for employees under payroll costs for employees under payroll staff costs decreased by 0.2 points. And secondly, the outsourcing commission decreased by 0.2 points due to the transfer of some expenses that have been included in the outsourcing commission in the previous fiscal year to other accounts. And thirdly, the order value turned out to be higher than in the same period of the previous year, and this resulted in a 0.3 point shipping cost decline. And fourthly, due to a change in the use of actual promotional expenses, point-related expenses ratio rose year-on-year and thus, the advertising expenses came down by 0.3 points. On the other hand, there are also 4 key factors that drove up the SG&A ratio. Increased inventory supply and the warm winter deteriorated the stock turnover ratio and led to the lowering of operating efficiency, resulting in a 0.1 point increase in logistics-related expenses under payroll and staff costs. And secondly, a new logistics space started its operation and thus, the rent expense increased by 0.2 points. And thirdly, depreciation rose by 0.2 points. As the depreciation of the material handling equipment kicked off with the start of the new logistic base operation. And lastly, others increased 0.3 points, mainly due to the purchase of equipment for the new logistics base operation, an increase in cloud server expenses and a change in how to recognize the outsourcing conditions. Let's now go to Page 27. This is the breakdown of SG&A expenses by quarter. In the fourth quarter accounting period, the SG&A expenses to GMV ratio was 22.9%, down 1.8 points from the same period last year. And the two main reasons for the decrease in the SG&A ratio are as follows. First, compared to the previous year, the amount recorded as the year-end bonus decreased leading to a 0.8 point decrease in payroll costs for employees against GMV ratio under payroll and staff costs. And secondly, a 1.1 point decrease in the advertising expenses over GMV in comparison with the same period of the previous year due to the impact of reduced spending on measures to attract customers. Okay. Let's now go to Page 26. Here is the actual promotion-related expenses trend. In the fourth quarter, our actual promotion-related expenses, which is the sum of the advertising expenses and the point-related costs turned out to be 4.0% of GMV. The year-to-date promotion expenses from the beginning of the year to GMV ratio was 4.1%, and this is as generally planned. Let's go to Page 24. Here are the OP and OPM trends. Although fixed costs increased in the fourth quarter due to the expenses of the new logistics space and other factors, however, the company was able to curb some costs, mainly variable costs, and OPM increased by 1.4 points from the same period of the previous year, landing at 10.5%. Let's go to Page 28. And I am moving on to the main KPIs at ZOZOTOWN. The number of total buyers was down by 9,000 from the previous quarter, amounting to 11.68 million, of which active members was 10.78 million, increasing by 50,000, and thus, buyers decreased by 60,000, finishing at 890,000. The number of active members increased less than expected. The effects of the warm winter during the main winter sales period and the cold temperatures since the start of the spring shopping season slowed down the acquisition of new members. Now let's go to Page 29. This is the number of shops on ZOZOTOWN. As of the end of the fourth quarter, the number of shops was 1,595, a net decrease of 10 shops from the end of the previous quarter. We welcomed 17 new shop store platform this quarter. To name a few, we now have Korean online fashion store, MUSINSA and a Shiseido Group brand, NARS. Although we were able to invite new stores as planned, there were many store closures due to the consolidation or disappearance of the brands. And a reason is -- thus, our number of shops slightly decreased from the previous quarter. Let's go to Page 34. This is the average retail price. Our average retail price was JPY 4,003, up by 0.4% year-on-year. The brands continue to increase their list prices for this fall and winter season, but the ARP was at the same level as the previous year. The main factors were that outerwear and other expensive items did not sell as much because of the warm winter during the winter sales period as well. Let's now go to Page 35. This is the average order value. Our average order value was JPY 8,735, up 5.2% year-on-year. Although the average retail price was pretty much flat, the number of items purchased per order increased and then this brought up the average order value. The number of items per order increased because we gave more days to free shipping on purchases over JPY 12,000 or more promotions than last year, and then the ratio of combined purchases rose thanks to it. Next, I'd like to share our business plan for the ongoing FY 2024. GMV plus 6.1% from the previous year, JPY 609.2 billion; GMV, excluding other GMV, plus 6.6%, JPY 572.2 billion; net sales, plus 8.8% from the previous year, JPY 214.4 billion; OP, plus 6.9%, JPY 64.2 billion; and OPM, 11.2%, are the plans. We will continue to target a dividend payout ratio of 70% or higher. The dividend per share is expected to be JPY 107. And the FY 2024 targets by business segment is on Page 38. First of all, for the ZOZOTOWN business, we aim to keep growing by continuing to expand the number of buyers and increase the usage rate of ZOZOTOWN within fashion consumptions. On the other hand, for Line Yahoo! Commerce, we will continue to aim for double-digit growth, supported by the sales promotions of Line. Lastly, I'd like to report on the results of the shareholder return initiatives announced in October last year. So first of all, regarding the dividends, we revised our dividend forecast today. And as a result, the year-end dividend will be JPY 55. The total dividend will be JPY 104 and the payout ratio will be 70.2%. And the acquisitions of the treasury stocks as well as the cancellation of the treasury stocks took place as planned. And as a result of these efforts, ROE for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, remained high at 55%. And then from here on, I'd like to share with you the explanation provided by our CEO, Sawada, during the announcement. So this is the first page, and this is a quick review of what we have explained before. This is more of a medium to long-term vision, but we aim to achieve JPY 800 billion for GMV and JPY 15 million for the number of the buyers. And we also want to raise our purchase percentage within the fashion consumptions from 20% to 25%. And to this end, we are progressing steadily. And so for our ZOZOTOWN, I would like to do the first two, which is the attraction of a broader range of customers and improvement of frequency of purchase per customer. And outside of our growth for ZOZOTOWN, we also want to do the following production support, expansion of the cosmetics category and its next step in monetization of technology for future expansion plans. And I'd like to briefly explain what we have engaged -- what we will engage in, in the first half. And I'd like to start from the first point, which is the attraction of a broader range of customers. So in the first half, we decided to really target and zero in on specific target segments and gain their recall. And then these segments are the young age segment and then the families. And especially for the female teens, specifically speaking, female teens from age 15 to 19, we were able to increase their recall rates, as you can see on the chart. And indicated in black line is ZOZO, and we also have 3 other competitors on the chart, and we are becoming the top recalled brand. And this is about the improvement of purchase frequency per customer, and we have been explaining this from before. And this is, in summary, all about how to increase the contact frequency. And we're not going to just focus on the selling and the buying, we want people to associate ZOZO to fashion. And for this, we're working on more of the upstream areas. And one example of the initiatives we're engaged with is niaulab, which is a physical real store where we resolve this mystery of niau or finding the styling or the coordination that actually looks good on you. And then when people experience niau, meaning finding the look or the outfit that actually looks good on them, would it work to bring up the number of visits? And then you have the chart that indicates the results of people experiencing niaulab, and then we're able to start to prove that, that has a positive correlation to the traffic and the number of visits. Let's skip 2 pages. I'd like to now talk about the production support. So this is about Made by ZOZO that we have been sharing with you from before. The number of production types increased to 307%, and the number of units produced increased to 136% of the previous year's results. And let's go to the fourth point, which is expansion of the cosmetics category and the next step. So the GMV, a result of FY '23 turned out to be JPY 11.3 billion. We were able -- we were finally able to surpass JPY 10 billion. And the percentage of active members who purchased cosmetics turned out to be 23.6%. And then for this ongoing fiscal year, we'd like to aim for JPY 13 billion worth of GMV for cosmetics. And aside from the cosmetics, we are selecting other categories to go into, and we've already started the preparation for it. And we hope to be able to start the operation launch of this in the next fiscal year. And then this is about ZOZOFIT. We have been selling ZOZOSUIT in order to have people measure their bodies in the U.S. And finally, in January of this year, we have been able to offer a technology that enables people to measure their bodies without the ZOZOSUIT. And we have switched to the download model or subscription model. And this is about B2B business that we're doing here in Japan. And for this service, we offer ZOZOSUIT for measurement to businesses where businesses that require measurement of cast members for their costumes or the measurement of their employees, for -- to create uniforms for airlines, for example. We're gradually starting to see that sort of demand. And then we have not met the airline clients just yet. So this is the type of -- but we're starting to see gradually. Sorry for the long explanation, but that is my part.

[Interpreted] [Operator Instructions]

First question is really, I understand that the active member -- the new members were a bit weaker than expected, partly due to weather and maybe seasonality. Is the aim to increase that active member in the next couple of quarters? And how are you thinking about using points and promotions?

[Interpreted] So for the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year, it is true that we had an unfavorable result because of the weather. And then due to this, the number of buyers didn't grow as much. And we're now in the first quarter of the new fiscal year, and it's gradually starting to pick up. The temperature is getting warmer. And we're starting to be able to gradually sell spring season clothes. And then thanks to this, the number of buyers is gradually growing as well. And in terms of the initiatives, they don't really change all that much. So we're going to continue to focus on existing type of initiatives such as points return or brand coupons or personalized discount and run them efficiency so that our buyers will be able to make a purchase when they want to make a purchase.

Great. May I ask the second question? So in terms of shipping costs, I know that in the last quarter, you offered free shipping for people who bought above JPY 12,000. But now you are -- obviously, your shipping companies have increased prices, and so you are passing that cost to customers. Are you planning to use more coupons or points to offset that cost increase to the customer?

[Interpreted] Well, so it is true that the shipping cost that our users pay did change. It did increase in April this year. But so far, we haven't seen a significant negative impact. So therefore, we're not really intending to reduce the impact of this by offering them coupons and promotions.

Great. Sorry, if I may ask one last question. Why were the points lower in the last quarter versus Q3?

[Interpreted] You mean the point cost? Okay. It is true that the total point cost did decrease. So I'd like to explain the details of that. So in the third quarter, we have the November ZOZOWEEK and the year-end high season. And that's why we had more proportion of points. On the other hand, for the fourth quarter, the points were quite concentrated in January when we have the full-on winter sales. So that's the reason. And just to build on that in the third quarter. That was the [ core ] high season for cosmetics, meaning this is the period where we can sell the GWP most for cosmetics, and that's why we decided to use more points in the third quarter. But in the fourth quarter, we decided to curb our point cost for cosmetics. Okay. Thank you very much. [ Bradley-san ], you're up next.

I guess my first question is just on the total promotion cost assumption for this year. I think this year that you just ended as a percentage of your GMV, your total promotion cost was 4.1%. I guess what is your assumption for this fiscal year that you just guided to?

[Interpreted] So for FY '24 ongoing fiscal year, I think it will be pretty much the same, a little bit larger than FY '23 ratio, so a little over 4% probably.

Understood. And in terms of where you plan to spend some of the promotion cost and what sort of, I guess, KPIs you look to drive, this past quarter, you did more promotions around sort of the free shipping bar and raising value through that. Is that sort of a more of an ongoing strategy where you tried to drive more items per shipment through promotions like that this year? Or was that more of a sort of a temporary initiative in the fourth quarter given some of the weather and external headwinds that you experienced in the quarter?

[Interpreted] So I want to first mention that our free shipping promotion was more to stimulate the demand. So it's more like a spot or ad hoc initiatives, and we don't intend to continue -- we don't intend to have this as a continuous initiative or something that we are set to do. And then if we do too much of this, then people will start to wait for the next free shipping period to start. So we have to make sure that people don't wait for this. We have to do this in a more quiet way, that's the trick. And then this was the case for the previous fiscal year as well, we don't really decide at the beginning of the fiscal year to do, okay, so this and this and this are the types of promotions that we will implement. It's more decided in an agile and nimble way. So I guess the KPI we have is this total cost against GMV ratio of a little over 4.1%, that's the KPI we have. And of course, internally, we have monthly GMV targets, and then we also have the breakdown to determine how many -- how much traffic we want to actualize in the conversion rate and how much spend that we can expect from them. But -- and then based on this, we will think of the promotions to achieve it, but there's really nothing that we can announce to external parties.

Understood. Just as a quick follow-up to that, I guess what I'm trying to really understand is just as your sort of base of GMV starts to get larger and larger, the percentage growth, obviously, in order to maintain that, which is what you sort of guided to this year, you're going to have to grow absolute numbers much more. I'm trying to understand, I guess, how do I sort of reconcile the 6.5% of ZOZOTOWN GMV growth this year. This past year, your active buyers was sort of growing low to mid-single digits year-over-year. Your spend per active buyer is sort of flat to slight growth. And so from a continuation of this use trends perspective, it starts to look like maybe 6% to 7% of growth becomes a little bit more challenging as the base gets bigger and bigger. But maybe as you spend more promotion, there's a way to get there. Can you just help me understand sort of the bridge of that growth?

[Interpreted] So I believe that the premise of the discussion point goes back to this chart. So direction-wise, it is true that, as you mentioned, the GMV base is expanding, and the absolute number is expanding as well. But we're thinking that from 2 approaches, one, we believe that there is more potential for the increase of buyers -- the number of buyers. And we also believe that we'll be able to further increase the buying frequency. And then in terms of growing the number of buyers, we're going to stick to the types of promotions that we have always done. For example, airing of TV commercial, issuing brand coupons and offering personalized discounts. So these are all existing promotions that we intend to continue to do in order to increase the number of buyers. And another thing in terms of increasing the purchase frequency. We also want to increase our first recall rate. So that will be -- sorry, so this is about the number of buyers once again. What we would like to do is to enhance our first recall rate so that we'll be able to have more number of people that come to ZOZOTOWN to make a purchase.

[Operator Instructions] Once again, the floor is yours.

Just 2 questions. One is LY Corp GMV growth was pretty good last quarter. You're targeting about 10% for this year, March 25. Why are you expecting a deceleration? And how do you make guidance for this?

[Interpreted] So in the last period, they actively engaged in promotions, and that's why the LY GMV growth rate turned out to be quite significant. But for this ongoing fiscal year, we still don't have visibility on the activeness or how engaged they will be in the promotions. And that's why for the time being, we guided 10% growth. And just to build on that, so we had the third quarter and the fourth quarter of FY '23. And then if you compare that to the third quarter and the fourth quarter of FY '22, which is 1 year ago, they virtually have no promotions. So it looks as though on the outset that the growth rate was really high for the third and fourth quarter of FY '23.

Yes. That's super helpful. And then last question for me. Your dividend payout is in line with what you target for the medium term. How are you thinking about share buybacks?

[Interpreted] Thank you. So for the next 5 years on the average, we are planning to have a total payout ratio of 80% or more. And then out of that 80%, 70% to be the payout ratio and then the other remaining 10% going to buybacks.

So my question, rather, is you did not announce any buyback this time. Should we just think about during the course of the year, you will opportunistically announce a buyback?

[Interpreted] So I said 80%, that's for the next 5 years. And then so it doesn't mean that there is a need to do the buybacks where it's 10% of this every year. So we will closely monitor the situation of our cash flows and our businesses to make that decision.

Right. Okay. Yes. Share price has been really weak, that's why I asked.

[Interpreted] Okay. It is now time to finish this call. Thank you very much for joining in the conference call. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]