ZOZO Inc

TSE:3092

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Unknown Executive]

It is now time to start the first quarter financial results announcement to ZOZO for fiscal year 2022, ending in March 2023. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we will only be offering live streaming this time. We plan to have this session until 5:35 p.m. After that, on a separate Zoom channel, we will have a Q&A session with the institutional investors from 5:50 p.m.

I'd like to introduce the participants: Representative Director, President and CEO, Kotaro Sawada; Director, Executive Vice President and CFO, Koji Yanagisawa. There will be 2 presenters today.

Now, CFO, Yanagisawa, will take us through the business results.

[Koji Yanagisawa, executive]

Hello, everyone. Now I'd like to walk you through the first quarter earnings results of FY '22 ending in March 2023. And by the way, this presentation document we will be using today, has already been uploaded to the IR page of our website, so please take a look.

And, I want to talk a little bit about the design of this presentation deck. This design was created by our designer, who wanted to increase the number of ZOZO fans by expressing the culture unique to us, which is that we love fashion, we're nice, and we have people who truly enjoy what we do.

So, last year, it was [ Manga ] style, and our -- [ Kuditaro ] was the hero of the story. And this year, the heroes and the heroines of the story will be our employees. You will be able to enjoy a year long story of our staff joining ZOZO, who grow together with the company, while coming into touch with inspiring cultures and people. So, I hope you enjoy it.

Let's jump right in. Here are the highlights for this quarter.

In the first quarter of FY '22, gross merchandise value, GMV, went up by 9.5% year-on-year, landing at JPY 127.9 billion. GMV, excluding other GMV went up by 8.7% year-on-year, landing at JPY 115.9 billion. Operating profit was up by 13.7%, landing at JPY 14.3 billion. Operating profit margin was 12.3%, improving by 0.5% point year-on-year. The progress rate against the disclosed full year plan was 23.5% for GMV, and 27.8% for operating profit. We are progressing steadily. Next slide please.

This is Page 7 of the document. These are the quarterly changes of the consolidated business results. In the first quarter, GMV excluding other GMV was up by 8.7% year-on-year.

The GMV fell below 10% due to the departure of a large brand in our BtoB business in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year. However, the combined total of the ZOZOTOWN and PayPay Mall businesses grew 11.8% year-on-year, continuing double-digit growth.

In the first quarter, sales in the offline market were -- was brisk, especially during the Golden Week holidays, but the brands continued to inject inventory into us actively. Measures to drive traffic and promote sales both turned out to be effective, and the number of the sites visitors and purchases remain favorable. As for the operating income, the cost of sales promotion using points increased compared to the same period of the previous year, but gross profit grew in conjunction with GMV, and some of the costs, including variable costs, were reduced. And we managed to increase the OP by 13.7% year-on-year. Our OP margin was 12.3%.

Regarding the status of price increases for products, which we are often asked by investors, there have been no significant price hikes for spring and summer items currently being sold. But we expect to see price increases from many brands, for the upcoming seasons. So, we need to closely monitor this.

Next, I'd like to share the details of the business results. This is Page 8. Let's look at the increase-decrease analysis of the operating profit. OP was JPY 12.59 billion in the first quarter last year. This term, it became JPY 14.13 billion, up by JPY 1.72 billion. Factors attributable to the growth of the OP were -- actually there were 3: JPY 3.18 billion from the increase of consignment shop commission from the GMV growth; and the sales increase generated by the advertising business, JPY 360 million; the growth of shipping revenue and payment service revenue from the GMV increase, JPY 500 million.

And now factors that drove down the OP were -- there maybe 4 factors: JPY 590 million from the increase in fixed costs impacted by the increase in employees logistic bases and the outsourcing expenses; JPY 510 million from the increase in variable costs that rose in correlation to the GMV, and JPY 560 million from the increase of the actual PR expenses associated mainly with the [ after ] promotional measures using points; and JPY 660 million from other expenses such as the one-off expenses incurred in connection with the increase in the logistic bases and telecommunication expenses due to the rise in cloud server usage.

Next, this is Page 15 of our document. This is the quarterly GMV trend. As we explained, in the BtoB business, we had a brand that left us in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year. Therefore, the composition ratio of its GMV decreased by 2.4 points year-on-year. It is now 2.9%. The shares of other businesses increased because of this.

Next, this is the -- this is Page 19. Let's look at the breakdown of the SG&A as of the end of the first quarter. The SG&A-to-GMV ratio was 22.4%, down 0.4% point from the same period last year. Factors that drove down the SG&A ratio are as follows. We have 3 factors mainly: the operational efficiency of the logistic base has improved, resulting in a 0.3% point decline of the logistic-related expenses under payroll and staff costs; second, order value turned out to be higher than the last year's actual driving down the shipping cost by 0.2% point; and thirdly, a decrease in ZOZOGLASS related expenses and the delayed start of the summer sales compared to last year, pushed back some of the traffic building expenses to the second quarter. Thus, the advertising expenses dropped 0.2% point. On the other hand, the factor that drove up the SG&A ratio was the one-off expenses incurred in connection with the increase in the logistic basis and telecommunication expenses due to more cloud server usage. So that's 0.4% point.

Let's move on to Page 22. This is the actual promotion-related expense changes. We changed how we recorded the point-related expenses in our accounting process last year, and it became difficult to understand this. So, we decided to add a new slide from this year. This is the chart that indicates the sum of the advertising and point costs. In the first quarter, the actual promotion cost, which is the sum of the advertising and point costs, amounted to 2.6% of our GMV, which is approximately JPY 3 billion, and we'd like to continue to share this information to you going forward.

Let's go to Page 20, look at the OP and OPM changes. In the first quarter, promotional costs using the points increased year-on-year. But the increased gross margin in relation to GMV growth decreased cost centering around the variables, contributed positively, landing our OPM at 12.3%, up 0.5% points year-on-year.

Let's now go to Page 24. Moving on to the main KPIs of ZOZOTOWN. And these KPIs hereafter do not include the results of our PayPay Mall or BtoB business. This is strictly the KPIs for ZOZOTOWN only, as it used to be before. The number of total buyers was up by 200,000 from the previous quarter, amounting to 10.61 million, of which active members was 9.26 million, increasing by 220,000 against the previous quarter. Guest buyers decreased by 20,000 finishing at 1.35 million. As for the increase of the active members, we managed to retain the newly recruited members from last year. Also, active TV commercial airing and web ad implementation during ZOZOWEEK in the main summer sales, worked to drive traffic further.

Next, let's go to Page 25 of the deck. This is the number of shops in ZOZOTOWN. As of the end of the first quarter, the number of shops was 1,523, a net increase of 13 shops from the end of the last quarter. We welcomed 21 shops to our platform this quarter. To name a few, we welcomed Maison Margiela Fragrances that sells REPLICA, a fragrance line by Maison Margiela, a French fashion brand. And as you know, there is an iconic luxury brand from the U.K. called Burberry, and we were able to welcome them as well.

Moving on to Page 30. This is the average retail price. It was JPY 3,552, up by 1.8% year-on-year. The increase is attributed mainly to the lowered markdown ratio compared to the same period of last year, and in relation to what I just mentioned about the average retail price. Average order value came to be JPY 7,699, up by 2.6% year-on-year. It's mainly attributed to the increase of the average retail price as the one that you saw earlier and the number of items per shipment. This led to a higher average order value compared to the same period of the previous year.

Next, this is the full year consolidated earnings forecast. There is no change to the full year plan.

And we did add another additional page to the documents. This is not included in the IR document that you will find on the website. We'd like to explain the changes in our shipping policy and the increases in shipping and other costs. We have already started the announcement on ZOZOTOWN to inform that we will change our shipping policy from the current JPY 210 including tax to JPY 250 including tax from the orders placed on August 17.

If I may give you some background, we accepted the application of the fuel surcharge on the product shipping costs in July. And the shipping costs increased because of this. And the shipping policy change is intended to address not only the shipping cost increase, but other cost increases that have already started to occur, as well as possible future cost increases in materials and logistics related matters. I deeply apologize for this change, but this will come into place from August 17th.

And lastly -- this is not included in the IR document either, but lastly, I'd like to announce that we published the integrated report portal on our corporate website. If you're interested, please have a look.

That brings me to the end of my presentation. That will be all for the first quarter financial results announcement of ZOZO for fiscal year 2022 ending in March 2023. Thank you very much for your attention.

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