ZOZO Inc

TSE:3092

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Unknown Executive]

It is now time to start the financial results announcement of ZOZO for the first quarter of FY 2022 ending in March.

In order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we would only be offering live streaming this time. We plan to have the session until 5:35 p.m.. After that, from 5:50, on a separate Zoom channel, we will have a Q&A session with institutional investors.

I would like to now introduce the participants. Representative Director, President and CEO, Kotaro Sawada.

[Kotaro Sawada, executive]

Hello.

[Unknown Executive]

Director, Executive Vice President and CFO, Koji Yanagisawa.

[Koji Yanagisawa, executive]

Hello.

[Unknown Executive]

Director and COO, Fuminori Hirose.

[Fuminori Hirose, executive]

Hello.

[Unknown Executive]

We have 3 participants today. Our CFO, Yanagisawa, will take us through the business results.

[Koji Yanagisawa, executive]

Good afternoon. Now I would like to walk you through the earnings results of the first quarter of FY 2022, ending in March. This presentation document we will be using today has already been uploaded to our IR page on our website. So please take a look.

I want to just quickly touch on this design of this document. As we explained on the last page of our documents, our designer has written what sort of passion he had in the backdrop of this design. This designer has been working at our company for 15 years, and he wanted to communicate how we have pleasant and good people working at ZOZO, and he thinks that these good people come together to create a unique culture and network that serve as a source of power for ZOZO. And he wanted to use manga as a style of expression to communicate that to you because it takes on a manga style, there's a bit of a hyperbolae, but hopefully, you get a sense of how our staff work every day, and you also get a sense of his passion. There's going to be some parts that you can read and enjoy as manga. So you can sort of try to guess who those characters are. So this is the manga, I'm going to skip this page.

In the first quarter of FY 2020, gross merchandise value GMV went up by 22.5% year-on-year, landing at JPY 116.8 billion. GMV, excluding GMV of other category or others went up by 11.9% year-on-year, landing at JPY 106.7 billion. Operating profit was up by 20.8%, landing at JPY 12.5 billion. Operating profit margin was 11.8%, improving by 0.9 points year-on-year.

Progress rate against the full year target is for GMV, 24.7%, for Operating profit, 26.3% against the plan. It is on track. We were able to finish this quarter quite successfully.

These are the quarterly changes of the business results. In the first quarter, GMV, excluding other category was up by 11.9% year-on-year. We were particularly impacted positively by the digital shift amidst the pandemic in the first quarter last year. And therefore, our figure looks slightly lower than the same period of the previous year.

Although the bars set by the previous year's actuals in the first quarter was very high, our TV commercial work to attract customers and PayPay Mall did well. And we were able to sustain the growth rate of more than 10%.

Regarding operating profit, on top of GMV and ad business growth contributing to the increase of gross profit, we managed to reduce logistics costs and payment collection commission fee, which were to improve OP by 20.8% year-on-year.

Next slide, please. Next. This is Page 8 of the deck. Let's first look at increased decrease analysis of the operating profit. OP was JPY 10.42 billion in the first quarter last year, it was JPY 12.59 billion this year, up by JPY 2.17 billion approximately. Factors attributable to the growth of OP were JPY 3.13 billion from the increase of consignment shop commission due to EMV growth. JPY 600 million from the increase of sales from the advertising business and JPY 900 million from the growth of shipping revenue and payment service revenue coming from the GMV increase.

Factors that drove down the OP were, mainly, there are 4 reasons: namely JPY 750 million from the increase in fixed costs, that included the increase in the number of employees and the number of logistics spaces; and also JPY 950 million from the increase in variable costs that rose in correlation to GMV growth; and JPY 720 million from the increase of promotional expenses due to active airing of TV commercial and JPY 40 million from other expenses.

Next, this is Page 9 of the document. Here's the balance sheet. As a special note, there is an increase in treasury stock, and the background of this will be explained in detail in the next slide.

This is Page 10 of the document. Well, this is the overview of our efforts to adapt ourselves to the Prime section, a new trading market to be formed at Tokyo Stock Exchange in April of 2020. We are considering to shift to this new Prime section. To meet one of the listing criteria of the Prime section, which is to have a tradable share ratio of 35% or more, we decided to purchase treasury stocks from existing shareholders, so that we can increase the ratio of tradable shares by issuing stock acquisition right. When this initiative completes, we expect to achieve more than 35% for the tradable share ratio. So this is the process of the work that we have conducted. Please refer to the document for details.

This is Page 16 of the document. This is the quarterly changes of GMV. During the first quarter, Z Holdings have implemented aggressive promotions driving up PayPay Mall GMV share by 3.8 points year-on-year. PayPay Mall is doing very well. Also, the share of the others, other GMV, which started to be recorded in the second quarter of the previous year, amounted to 8.7% this quarter.

Next slide, please. This is Page 20. SG&A breakdown. SG&A against GMV for the first quarter was 22.8%, down by 0.1% year-on-year. The ratio decrease is attributed to these main reasons. With the application of the new revenue standard, point-related expenses recorded as an SG&A expense last year is now deducted from net sales instead this time. This decreased the promotion expenses by 0.5 points.

In the first quarter of FY 2021, there had been some confusion in operation due to the expansion of COVID-19. But the efficiency of the logistics basis improved, resulting in a 0.5 point decline of logistics-related expenses under payroll and staff costs. Also, payment collection fee decreased by 0.3 point due to improvement of economic conditions, which came with a change of payment collection company, which worked on credit card payment. And also mainly due to the change of packing materials, others decreased by 0.2 point. We changed our packing materials in the middle of the second quarter of the previous year.

Factors that drove up SG&A are advertising expenses related to TV commercial proactive measures to attract customers and free distribution of ZOZOGLASS, this is 1.0 point. Due to the increase of overall employees, payroll costs for employees rose by 0.2 points and same-day delivery service which stalled last year due to the pandemic, we started driving up the shipping cost by 0.1 point.

Next slide, please. Let's now look at OP and OPM changes. GMV growth coupled with gross profit improvement coming from the advertising business and reduction of SG&A contributed to a better OPM year-on-year.

Next slide, please. This is Page 24 of the document. These are the main KPIs of ZOZOTOWN. By the way, these KPIs hereafter, do not include the results of PayPay Mall or B2B business. It's only for ZOZOTOWN.

Number of total buyers was up by 250,000 from the previous quarter, amounting to 9.73 million, of which active members was 8.36 million, increasing by 230,000 against the previous quarter. Guest buyers increased by 20,000, finishing at 1.36 million. Concerning active members, the number of newly recruited active members turned out to be high because of the digital shift driven by COVID-19. And active members that we gained last year are staying with us as well. So that had a positive effect. On the other hand, guest buyers was at the same level as the fourth quarter of the previous year.

Next slide, please. This is Page 25 of your document. Number of shops in ZOZOTOWN. As of the end of the first quarter, the number of shops was 1,448 (sic) [ 1,488 ] shops, net increase of 20 shops from the end of the last quarter. We had 36 shops joining our platform this quarter. To name a few, we welcomed cosmetic brands such as Dior and Galante and luxury brands such as Salvatore Ferragamo and influencer brands such as AIM.

Next slide, please. With respect to average retail price, which is on Page 30 of the document, it was JPY 3,490, up by 1.4% year-on-year. Increase is attributed to the fact that the brands engaged in more aggressive discount last year than usual because of the pandemic, but they did not do that as much this year. This lowered the markdown ratio. Next, please.

Now we're on Page 31. This is average order value. Our average order value was JPY 7,501, up by 1.2% year-on-year. It is mainly due to the rise of average retail price.

Next slide, please. This is Page 33 of the document. This is our full year consolidated business performance forecast and estimated dividends for FY 2020. There is no change to the plan. We will sustain these numbers as our target. Thank you.

That brings me to the end of my part. I'd like to pass the microphone over to Sawada, our Representative Director, President and CEO.

[Kotaro Sawada, executive]

Hello. This is the President and CEO, Sawada, from my side. I would like to give you some supplementary information for the first quarter. Next slide, please. First of all, compared to the previous year, I want to walk you through where we're at.

You might remember this. For the first quarter of the previous year, we were in a very -- we were in the middle of confusion, and we were facing a predicament. But yet, we were able to grow in the first quarter of the previous year. Physical shops were closed and the brands accelerated their digital shift. Also, it was very important for them to lower their inventory. So the brands decided to conduct promotions, to lower the prices and also have advanced summer sale so that they can decrease the amount of inventory by bringing the inventory to us.

So that was what happened in the first quarter of the previous year. These are extraordinary reasons that we had last year. And for this first quarter, we believe that we were able to have healthy growth.

And there are mainly 4 reasons for these healthy results. As Yanagisawa mentioned earlier, we have been able to retain our customers. That's the first reason. And another reason is that the brands are now focusing on e-commerce and digital. And as a result of this, it seems as though the brands expect even more from us. And the third reason is, as it was explained by Yanagisawa, PayPay Mall shop is showing continuous growth. And lastly, ZOZOCOSME, which we launched on the 18th of March, is growing at a good pace. These are the 4 reasons of our healthy growth this time. About these 4 reasons, I would like to walk you through a more detailed explanation.

Next slide, please. First of all, this is about the retainment of customers. Every time we have the financial results announcement, we have communicated that this is not a one-off growth of members. They were sticky, and we created a chart. And I am afraid that we need to disclose actual numbers here. But what you have on the Y axis is -- those who we newly acquired as users, in the previous year, and how many of them stay with us the following year. And this is a cumulative, so it just adds on.

And what's indicated in red line, is the number of newly acquired users that we gained in 2020, and how many of them converted to repeat users. And we have tracked our figures in -- for the past 5 years. We are in the marginal error areas. So although for some years, the figure looks a little bit stronger than this year. But as you can see here, even from the first quarter of this year, that the customers are staying with us. We have been able to retain those newly acquired users. And we have created 2 charts to indicate the active digital shift of the brands.

So we now, on the left, you have the amount of inventory that arrives to ZOZOBASE. How much of inventory, the brands are sending to us. And we are comparing with the same period of previous year and the year before that. And as you can see here, we have been able to gain more inventory than the previous year. So it is going up by 114%. And you can see that they are sending out their inventory to us.

And the chart on the right indicates the advertisement sales, we call this Zozo Ad. Once again, we're comparing the first quarter of this year to the previous year, the same period and the 2 years ago. So basically, we receive sales from the brands to advertise so that we can show their products when people search for a product. So this is our advertisement business. As you can see here, you can see that the brands are now focusing more on digital and EC. They are now investing in online malls. This is one tendency, we can see -- one trend that we can see among the brands. And I believe that this trend is here to stay.

Next slide, please. This is the third point, which is the continuous growth of PayPay Mall shop. So from the latter part of last year we invested in PayPay Mall.

For the first quarter of the previous year, the GMV was quite weak. But this year, it's shown a strong momentum. We have been able to sell more than double of what GMV we had last year. During summer, they did summer PayPay festival and the words of mouth spread. People were talking about this a lot. And we are also conducting a lot of promotions in collaboration with them. They focus on discount. So it tends to be one-offs, but now we see that PayPay Mall is receiving a lot of sticky customers, and they have been able to sustain momentum. So we have high expectation towards PayPay Mall.

Next, this is about some ZOZOCOSME. When we launched ZOZOCOSME, I believe I mentioned this to you as well. What is the strength that we can exercise when handling cosmetics? So we have 9 million existing customers as our user base, and we will be able to approach this user base with new category of cosmetics. And this was the shortcut for us in order to generate more GMV. With this in mind, we aired a lot of TV commercial.

And those who are buying cosmetics, among them, 60% roughly speaking, are purchased together with apparel items. This is what we have learned, and this is exactly what we were aiming to achieve. Apparel items and cosmetics have a good affinity.

So what it means is that the KPI that we have been focusing on is doing very well. And also, when you look at what is selling among cosmetics, it's not really so much of the foundations or skin care products, it's more of makeup items. And I believe that this is also indicative of the fact that apparel items have a good affinity with cosmetics.

For ZOZOCOSME, we are conducting proactive promotions -- called Cosme week. So had a good start, and ZOZOCOSME is doing quite well. And for Cosme, we had not only this but also ZOZOGLASS. We were able to receive 1.11 million orders in total. And this was not a one-off event either even to the state on a -- on an everyday basis, we're receiving a lot of orders. And if you wear these glasses, you get to understand the color of your complexion. And that really matched with the potential wants of the consumers, and it's very easy for people to post this on social media. And this was exactly what we aimed to do with ZOZOGLASS. And this momentum for the demand for ZOZOGLASS is not really dwindling.

And once you understand and evaluate your complexion color, we get to recommend a foundation shade that matches them the most. And the purchase rate of foundation items of those who measure their complexion color using glasses is actually twice as high than the rate of those who have not used the glasses.

So I believe that, this is on target because we were aiming to have high conversion, although the number is still small, those who received the glasses, most of them are evaluating their complexion color using glasses. And we want to further add -- enhance our added value so that we can offer even more products to them based on the results.

And that was the case for ZOZOMAT. When we launched it first, we didn't have that many shoes that had data on ZOZOMAT. If we can increase the number of products that can match with the results of the analysis, then we'll be able to increase the sales. And this has improved by ZOZOMAT already in shoes. So that's exactly the strategy we have for ZOZOCOSME as well.

And we have another big topic for ZOZOCOSME. On the 15th of July, we were able to welcome Chanel. And in June, we welcomed Dior. These are really established cosmetic brands, and we have been yearning to have these wonderful brands on our platform. So we're very delighted to be able to welcome them on board.

When we think of how we approach the youngsters, Chanel and Dior see the value in being on our platform. As a fashion mall, we have our strength among the young audience. And I'm sure you're well aware of this, too. And this is the value that we can share to these brands. They are interested in letting young people buy their products. And they open their shops on our platform, and it's going on track. The youngsters are buying their products on our platform.

So ZOZOTOWN is not just about fashion, it's not just about apparel items, but we also sell cosmetics. So we take the effort to communicate that. But the fact that these 2 wonderful brands are on our platform right now, really contribute to the awareness of ZOZOCOSME. So we feel very grateful towards these 2 brands. So these are the reasons for our healthy growth.

Next slide, please. There are other topics that I would like to share with you. One is YOUR BRAND PROJECT. This is basically, D2C influencer brands. I think these terminologies are interchangeable. We have been working on this from -- since last year.

There are influencers that do not have their own apparel brand that do not produce clothes or fashion items. We approach those influencers. These are influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers. So we approach them. And the number of influencers is growing, and their brands are also growing along with them. And we are trying out different things with them. One is short-term made-to-order model that we are trying out right now. During the previous announcements, I mentioned that we will focus on production. So this is one of the initiatives in that field.

So what does short-term made-to-order model mean? So we will start the production after we receive the order. And we would produce, manufacture in a very short period of time, so there will be no inventory. There aren't that many SKUs yet, but we are trying this model out right now with those SKUs, and it's going quite well.

And we are now focused on growing the number of SKUs and the production. We're now working with influencers brands. And going forward, we would like to approach existing brands so that they could be interested in using this model of ours. And there's also multi-size, which is our know-how, and we've been working on this for quite some time already. We shouldn't just have small, medium and large. We can offer a wider breadth of sizes so that it fits more to people's bodies.

What we would like to do is, combine the knowledge we gained through multi-size, so that we can explore other ways -- different ways, new ways to produce and manufacture.

With this one brand, we are generating about tens of millions of sales already. So I believe that this can garner attention. And this is the last page. We have already released this as news.

In the fall of 2023, we plan to start the operation of this new ZOZOBASE. This is in Tsukuba, it's a little bit further away from other logistic bases that we have, but we decided to operate a new logistic base. And by adding this on to the group of bases that we have, we'll be able to cover roughly JPY 500 billion to JPY 600 billion worth of GMV. And we would introduce more automation or operation that is close to automation. And we are exploring different options of how we can go about doing that.

Thank you. That is it from my side for the financial results of the first quarter. Thank you.

[Unknown Executive]

This brings us to the end of the financial results announcement of ZOZO for the first quarter of FY 2022 ending in March. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]