NaaS Technology Inc. Q4 FY2023 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to NaaS Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. John Wang, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and hello everyone. And welcome to NaaS fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. The company's results were issued earlier today and are posted online. Joining me on the call today are Ms. Cathy Wang Yang, our Chief Executive Officer; Ms. Wu Ye, our Chief Strategy Officer, and Mr. Alex Wu, our President and Chief Financial Officer. For today's agenda, Ms. Wang will provide an overview of our recent performance and highlights. Ms. Wu will discuss our operating results and Mr. Wu will go through our financial highlights. Before we continue, I refer you to our Safe Harbor statement in the earnings press release, which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements. Also, please note that this call includes discussions of certain non-IFRS financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release, which contains a reconciliation of non-IFRS measures to the most comparable IFRS measures. Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Ms. Cathy Wang Yang. Kathy, please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. I'm NaaS’ CEO, Cathy Wang. It's my pleasure to share NaaS’ fourth quarter and the full year 2023 earnings results with all of you and to discuss our recent developments. In 2023, both our business scale and revenue saw substantial growth. A host of strategic initiatives diversified our income structure, promoting sustainable revenue growth and improving profitability. Total revenue for the full year reached RMB320 million, a year-over-year increase of 245%, while gross profit increased 14 times to RMB89 million. Our full-year gross profit margin extended from 6.6% to 27.7% year-over-year and non-IFRS net margin narrowed by 162% year-over-year. On the operations front, we steadily expanded our charging network. Our full-year charging volume reached nearly 5,000 gigawatt hours, an 81% year-over-year increase, while the total number of new energy vehicles in China increased by 55.8% during the same period. Meanwhile, we strive to improve profitability, our Mobility Connectivity Services net take rate has risen for five consecutive months since September 2023, turning positive in January 2024 and continues to expand in February. While maintaining our strong market position in charging services, we also explored new business models to further diversify our income streams. Revenues from energy solutions reached RMB187 million for the full year 2023, accounting for over 58% of total revenues. This segment growth reflects our progress in shifting from an energy service provider to a comprehensive energy solution provider. Going forward, we will continue to lead the charging services market while exploring new paths to income diversification. The strong foundation we built in 2023 will empower us to consistently improve revenue and profitability, propelling the company's steady development. Now I will turn things over to Ms. Ye Wu, our newly appointed CSO, for a closer look at our operating results.

Thanks Cathy and hello everyone. I'd like to start with a brief overview of how we are leveraging AI in our business. Our AI-powered analytic capabilities are the core advantage driving our profitability. On the supply side, we depend on AI to optimize network performance, predict maintenance needs and reduce operational costs. On the client side, AI analysis helps us understand usage patterns and efficiently deploy resources. Through refined operations and strategic pricing adjustments, we have achieved a healthy balance between growth and profitability. This AI-driven approach has propelled our growth, expanded our market share and solidified our position as an innovator in the new energy sector. As our CEO mentioned, we are fast becoming a global provider of comprehensive energy solutions, leveraging our advantage in digital technology, artificial intelligence and various other areas. We empower the development of the entire new energy industry chain. Our power spans a diverse range of new energy-related services, such as AI-based site selection and asset assessment for charging operators and intelligent operation and maintenance services for charging stations. We can also act as a virtual power plant for grid aggregation. Furthermore, we offer AI-driven risk control models for funders and financial institutions to accelerate asset-side development, thereby propelling the expansion of the entire industry chain. In short, we can address the full spectrum of new energy scenarios with tailored, proven, effective solutions. In addition to cultivating broad in-house capabilities, we have constantly expanded our partnerships to quickly diversify and optimize our income structure. In early 2024, we announced a collaboration with Foshan Chengcheng City Construction Group to advance regional new energy infrastructure construction. We have also partnered with China Construction Third Engineering Bureau in the fields of new energy and new infrastructure to jointly promote charging network development. Furthermore, in February, we won the Zhejiang Energy Bureau's Governance and Supervision Service Platform construction Project, becoming a provincial government supplier in Zhejiang province and contributing our expertise to the construction of charging infrastructure. This marked another significant milestone for NaaS in Zhejiang's new energy sector, following a successful solar panel energy storage, charging, and battery swapping integrated construction project in Anji. Also, in terms of automaker partnership, we cooperated with Great Wall Motors, GAC Energy, and Deepal Automotive to expand the new energy vehicle charging services network, enhance user experience, and broaden user acquisition channels. Before I hand it over to our CFO, let me share an update on our ESG efforts. NaaS is deeply committed to ESG, with the overarching goal of enhancing global transportation, energy efficiency, and sustainability. This month, we were invited to participate in the 6th United Nations Environment Assembly, where we shared energy innovations combining green and digital elements. Our solutions stand as a powerful demonstration of China's commitment to global transportation, energy transformation, and environmental governance. In addition, we recently received a climate change B-level rating certification from the Global Environmental Information Research Center, surpassing the global average C-level rating. As always, we remain dedicated to the field of green development and global carbon neutrality. With that, I'll give the floor to our CFO, Alex for a deeper dive into our financials.

Thanks, Vivian. I'll start with a review of our results for the fourth quarter of 2023. In the fourth quarter, we increased our total revenues by a substantial 119% year-over-year, to RMB64.4 million. This robust growth mainly stems from our mobility connectivity business, which has consistently recorded month-over-month upticks in profitable orders since September 2023, both in terms of their proportion of the total charging volume and total gross transactions. This impressive growth is predominantly the result of our sophisticated data-driven pricing strategy. Additionally, our energy solutions business revenue increased 144% year-over-year, largely due to our ongoing delivery of comprehensive energy solutions, including renewable energy generation, energy management, and storage solutions. Looking at the full year, 2023 was a record-breaking year for NaaS, with all-time high performances in each of our core financial metrics. We drove transformative growth and evolved strategically, solidifying our position as a leader in the energy digitalization sector. As Cathy mentioned, for the full year, our annual revenue grew by an astounding 245%, year-over-year, to an all-time high of RMB320.1 million. Our tremendous growth reflects the scalability of our business model and the increasing demand for our services. We made significant advancements across three key metrics. The charging volume through the NaaS network, which increased by 81% to 4,968 gigawatt-hours. The gross transaction volume, which rose by 64%, to RMB4.7 billion. And the number of orders, which surged by 75%, to RMB213.8 million, equivalent to 6.8 orders transacted through the NaaS network per second. Each of these metrics highlights our central role in driving the expansion of the industry's new energy ecosystem and contributes directly to our revenue growth. Our primary focus has been on refining our operational efficiency across our core business segments, setting clear and ambitious goals for H1. In this way, we increased our three-year gross profit 14-fold from RMB6.2 million in 2022 to RMB88.8 million in 2023. This also drove our gross margin up from 6.6% in 2022 to 27.7% in 2023. Moreover, our non-IFRS net profit margin narrowed by 162%. The improvement in our margin was mainly due to the increased profitability in our charging services, where we're gaining more operating leverage with fixed costs accounting for a smaller portion of our growing revenue base. Positive momentum in our gross and net take rates shows that we're advancing with greater operational efficiency. Our net take rate turned positive for the first time in January 2024 with a positive NTR of 0.75% in February, marking the sixth consecutive month of NTR growth since September 2023. Similarly, we've seen a consistent upward trend in our gross take rate, which improved to 13.02% in February, underscoring our operations-improving fundamentals. With a notable 65% year-over-year increase in transaction volume in the fourth quarter, the progress has climbed in both NTR and GTR further underscores the effectiveness of our refined operational strategy and demonstrates our strong customer stickiness. Our strategic focus remains on high-quality growth and improving profitability as we forge ahead under this approach. Our initiatives to enhance operational efficiency and streamline processes are yielding tangible results, placing us on a strong trajectory to reach monthly break-even at the average level by the end of 2024. In summary, NaaS is firmly on the path toward global leadership in new energy asset management. Our journey is marked by both strong revenue growth and enhanced operational efficiency, driving our sustained growth and advancement in the new energy domain. This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Kelly Zou from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thanks, management, for the presentation. This is Kelly Zou from Jefferies. I have two questions today. Firstly, I would like to ask about what your strategic focus in 2024. And second is about the margin outlook. So basically, what is your view on your Chinese service business margin expansion sustainability in the next two to three years and the key drivers of the market expansion if you can share with me today? Thanks.

Thanks, Kelly. I'd be happy to answer your first question. Firstly, in 2024, we will prioritize margin improvements and aim to achieve profit for a season while preserving our leading position in our platform and network. We're confident in our ability to deliver this result and remain committed to our long-term strategy. From a perspective of margin enhancement, historically, the majority of our losses have been attributed to the use of subsidies in our earliest stage to charging service business. We are encouraged to see NTR turn positive in 2024. Meanwhile, our overhead expenses remain relatively constant. Consequently, we are on track to achieve profitability by the end of 2024. Secondly, on the market expansion side, we have maintained a robust growth trajectory across all of our major metrics. Our expansive ground force of over 100 personnel is repeatedly deployed throughout China to engage with all CPOs. Furthermore, an impressive 70% of our users are organically acquired, highlighting our strength in branding and user acquisition channels. Moreover, once we successfully bring together users and CPOs on our platform, we build out our digital analytic capabilities to empower the charging station stakeholders in expanding their infrastructure and enhancing their operational efficiency. As you can see in our fast-growing charging service and energy system business, we will continue to leverage our technological strengths to monetize through our diverse business channels. In conclusion, NaaS is dedicated to improving the stability and efficiency of the global energy transportation network. With our strong technological capabilities, we are becoming a leading energy asset operator and contribute our effort in the grand paradigm shift of the energy transition. And next, I believe Alex is going to answer your first and second question.

Yeah, Kelly, let me answer your question regarding growth and margin. From the growth perspective, first, let's look at markets. We're at the very early stage of EV penetration in China with only 5% of the vehicles on the road that are EV. Third-party report suggests that charging volume will grow at a CAGR of about 50% in the next seven to eight years, which means the market will grow 16 times by 2030. Public charging, as we both know, will continue to dominate as it's more efficient and requires less infrastructure investment than private charging in China. NaaS in this very promising market is holding a leading position. We have some unique capabilities which will sustain both our growth and our margin improvement. Number one is the analytics capabilities in that we leverage the AI-based digital technology to drive insights and enable use cases like real-time dynamic pricing. We also have a very strong local BD team with more than 100 people in cities. These are the people that understand the local charging market the best, and they have what we call a hands-on approach in all the major cities in China in terms of charging. We also connect to a large number of CPOs. By 2023 year-end, we connected to more than 4,000 CPOs, and we connected to more than 5 million users. As we continue to expand this network, a holistic offering of services can bring EV drivers and station owners together. So with the hyper-growing underlying market, a leading position in this market, and key capabilities that are unique and difficult to replicate, I have great confidence that our growth will be sustained. The same thing can be said for the margin. The connectivity business, the largest part of our business, is currently enjoying a gross profit margin north of 80%, which is super high. Our NTR, as we mentioned in our early release, has been lifted for five consecutive months, along with an expanded NTR. Given the steady growth and controlled overhead, our gross profit will likely gradually cover expenses and margin. That explains why we set the priorities to improve margin and reach EBIT breakeven, echoed to what Vivian just mentioned. Thank you, Kelly.

Thanks, Alex and Vivian.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from the line of an analyst from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. So I have two questions. The first is, you just mentioned the company will reach net profit breakeven this year by the year end. Could you share more details on how you will control the overall cost and improve the profitability from the bottom line perspective? So my second question is about the user growth. Given you have reduced the subsidies a lot this year, so can you share more color on how you are able to achieve online user acquisition and GMV growth? Thank you.

Great. Thanks, Kim. Your first question regarding breakeven, we are confident on the goal. The goal is that we will achieve monthly EBIT breakeven by the end of this year, 2024. There are a couple of drivers for the breakeven. Number one, historically, part of our loss was due to subsidies to charging users, especially in the early stage of the charging service business. Since January 2024, we have managed to maintain our NTR as positive. Hence, our transaction levels have become profitable. I'm confident that we will be able to manage this NTR level for the rest of 2024. Meanwhile, the energy solution business continues to contribute gross profit and more gross profit as the business scales up and maintains a stable gross profit margin. Besides, the overhead from our backend is quite stable and well controlled. So if you put these things together, as a result, with gross profit from our existing business lines scaling up and stable overhead, and with a clear sign of profitability for our main charging service business, our margin will continue to improve, and we'll be able to reach monthly EBIT breakeven by the end of 2024. For your second question, Kim, regarding the online user acquisition and GMV growth, how can we sustain that with reduced user subsidies? I have a couple of points to make. Let's start with the market. China is a very large country with a lot of cities in different tiers. The EV charging service, as we both know, is a localized market. Each city is different. Our experience is that the more balanced local supply and demand, the higher the profitability of the whole value chain in the charging space. The natural increase in EV ownership and traffic will gradually yield a higher profitability for both CPOs and for us and further reduce the need to acquire users through subsidies. So that's a view from the market. Secondly, the view for our operation. We have been making efforts to leverage our market know-how to acquire and maintain users more efficiently. For example, we have deployed a multi-tier membership system that can meet more specified needs for different types of users, such as taxi drivers, private car owners, commercial vehicle drivers, and so on. We have also leveraged our AI technology to further improve our efficiency of the CPOs on our platform by optimizing the real-time charging price for those operators. Our efforts are recognized by our fast-improving operating numbers even when we are reducing user subsidies. For example, we achieved a 114% year-over-year growth in charging service revenue, 55% year-over-year growth in charging volume, 48% year-over-year growth in transaction orders, and 47% growth in GMV. These fast-growing numbers suggest a strong user stickiness in the charging business. The third thing I want to mention is the ecosystem. It's worth mentioning that 68% of our NaaS users overlap with the existing users on our parent company, Newlink Group's gas-fueling app. The synergy between our parent group and NaaS serves as a major advantage for us. In summary, with the three points that I just mentioned, including the market, operation efficiency, and ecosystem, as an early mover in the charging industry, I believe that with all these points, we will be able to achieve online user acquisition and GMV growth while we reduce our subsidies. Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next questions. Next question comes from the line of Wei Xiong from UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You mentioned that NaaS has signed a partnership agreement with EV OEMs such as China’s Deepal, GAC, and Great Wall. What would you see the benefit in such partnership and how will you monetize on these partnerships? Thanks.

Thank you. That's a very good question. Currently, we have established a strong partnership with over 80% of EV OEMs in China, enabling us to provide exceptional user services for their EVs, including NIO, Li Auto, XPeng, ARCFOX, AITO, Deepal, GAC, Great Wall, etc. The collaboration between us and OEMs is extensive and diverse. Certainly, we assist OEMs in integrating the EV charging services into their infotainment systems. Additionally, we provide OEMs with the support they need to develop their own branded EV charging mobile application. Furthermore, many EV chargers owned by OEMs are connected to our platform and enjoy the traffic from our user support. Lastly, through our collaboration with overseas CPOs, we are facilitating OEMs' expansion into the European and Southeast Asian markets. So this partnership gives us many advantages in the EV charging markets. Firstly, new EV drivers are important for our user acquisition. As we build up a partnership with these EV OEMs, the new EV owners will automatically become our users and will have a strong inclination to use the underlying EV charging services that we provide. Secondly, the traffic and charging behavior information could enrich and optimize our digital analytic models, thereby assisting our valued OEM partners in delivering superior service to their EV customers. We can always leverage the experience from this partnership to improve our own energy asset operation models and monetize through our existing channels, such as energy solution business and charging service business. Ultimately, in the era of intelligent transportation, we're confident that we will be able to offer a more comprehensive service and enable the efficient delivery of smart energy in the new world of autonomous driving. Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from the line of Eugene Hsiao from Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. Can you provide any update on the current competition for EV charging? More specifically, are you seeing any lower level of end-user incentives being used in the market? Thanks.

Thanks, Eugene. Thanks for the question. I would like to answer this question from a couple of different angles just to help people get a holistic view of the market. Because I think sometimes there are different views and sometimes there are myths that people see in the market. First, just let's look at, I mentioned that market is a localized market in my previous answers. I would like to probably elaborate that point a little bit more. Let's look at the first batch of cities where we now achieved positive NTR. The first city that we achieved positive NTR in all of China is in Shanghai. So obviously, this is a developed Tier 1 city. What we've seen generally as a trend is that later in those economically advanced regions, such as coastal areas, we have gradually turned our NTR positive. Overall, as EV penetration continues to increase, we will achieve a higher NTR over the larger markets in China. We've already witnessed this generally as a trend. So that's from a localized market perspective. From the supply side, what we've noticed is that the number of CPOs is increasing very, very quickly, which suggests the market is becoming very much fragmented and scattered. Our system indicates that by year-end 2023, we are connected to 4,270 CPOs, which is a 170% year-over-year increase. So that indicates that the supply side is getting more scattered. The other, third indication or data point that I can give is there is obviously a difference between a hyper-growth market and a developed market. If we take Europe as an example, as a developed market, the service fee for EV charging can reach somewhere between €0.60 to €1 per kilowatt hour, and people take that as normal. Looking at that aspect, I think China is still in a fast-growing hyper-growth phase. Once the market becomes more mature, there is a very good opportunity for higher profitability to be achieved across the market value chain. So these are the three angles that I can provide just to help understand the market better. Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. The next question comes from the line of Yiran Liu from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Thanks for the opportunity. As Vivian just mentioned, NaaS would like to be a global provider. May I ask what is your overseas expansion plan? Some details would be very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Yiran, for the question. Firstly, I would like to say certainly China, being the largest and fastest-growing market for EV charging, remains our top priority in our business expansion plan. Given the fast penetration of EV, the high density of EV traffic and the popularity of public EV charging user behavior, independent research predicts a 16-fold increase in charging volume between 2023 and 2030. This implies that our underlying market is growing at approximately 50% CAGR over the next seven years. We are confident that this change will continue to favor other business growth and expansion efforts. But in the meantime, we believe our core technological capabilities can be transferable to other markets. Our digital analytics platform is managing one of the largest networks of EV charging stations and one of the largest EV driver user pools globally. The algorithm derived from our platform will be a valuable asset for us to enter new markets. As we move forward with our global expansion, we're actively engaging different stakeholders in overseas markets. I'm excited to share three key aspects with you. First, we are collaborating with leading Chinese EV OEMs to penetrate into European and Southeast Asian markets and help them to provide charging services and networks in overseas markets. We are also collaborating with overseas CPOs to provide charging services to EV drivers in global markets. Furthermore, we are integrating these capabilities into our advanced infotainment system. Secondly, we're also helping developed countries upgrade their energy infrastructure system with our mature energy solutions, such as solar panels, energy storage, and chargers. Lastly, in January, our NaaS-branded DC and AC chargers opted for CE certification in European markets. Our cutting-edge hardware technology opens up new opportunities for us to expand into markets where EV infrastructure is the key focus for future investments. In summary, we are laying a solid foundation to expand into overseas markets, and we firmly believe that our unique technological strengths will bring benefits to both our partners and ourselves in the global markets. Thank you.

Thank you for the question. The next question comes from Ethan Zhang from Nomura. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks, management for taking my question. So my question is regarding the energy solution business. I noticed there were some fluctuations in the energy solution revenue in Q3 and Q4, and I wonder if you could give us more visibility into the portrait of this business. Thank you.

Thanks for the question. Our energy solution business is mainly a project-based business. It has a seasonality that usually is low in winter and spring, especially around immediately before the Chinese New Year, and will peak in summer and fall. So the seasonality is a natural one, and I think it applies to pretty much all major project-based businesses. With the seasonality considered, though, on a year-over-year basis, we have achieved a significant 2.4 times year-over-year growth in the energy solution business. We believe our core capability lies in the digital analytics capability, which is unique and difficult to replicate. With more partnerships being formed, the core capabilities are gradually recognized by our partners and by the industry. With some of the major projects we win, such as the one in Hubei, clients are impressed with how accurately we can forecast the traffic and pricing of a station that is yet to be built. With the traffic and pricing of a station determined by our AI technology, we are able to tell the client that a certain yield can be expected from a particular station even before it's been built. That is something that is of very high value for potential investors. In 2023, we're also ramping up our service capabilities from end-to-end. Now we have energy solutions covering the full life cycle, from advisory to planning, hardware, procurement, EPC, maintenance, solar, and energy storage. We are capable of providing full services for the new energy asset owners along the industrial value chain. To recap, energy solutions are a vital pillar of our growth. I see it also as a tool where we can monetize our connectivity ecosystem and analytical capabilities. Thanks a lot.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Zoey. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my questions. And congratulations on the positive NTR and improving GTR that you achieved in the past few months. How can we expect the NTR and GTR to perform in Q1 and the rest of 2024? Thanks.

Okay, thanks, Zoey, for your question. You're right. Since September 2023, we have been able to improve our NTR consecutively while we're also expanding our GTR. As we disclosed in our earnings report, both GTR and NTR reached historical highs since our listing. Let me talk about this separately. So for GTR, as we are expanding our operator network and increasing our user base, we have the advantage to negotiate a higher GTR with operators. We believe we can bargain more as the market is growing. Also, since we see the market becoming more scattered, as I explained before, we also think in the mid to long-tail CPOs have a stronger reliance on the traffic provided by us, further improving our bargaining power. That’s for GTR. For net take rate, we are able to achieve a positive net take rate since the beginning of 2024. This achievement is mainly driven from the improved capability to optimize user subsidies. For example, we have deployed a membership system that could meet demands from different types of users. We have also leveraged our AI technology to optimize the real-time charging pricing for our operators. So we're basically doing, giving the subsidy in a smarter way. Hence, we can be more targeted to use our subsidies and thus increase the net take rate while we reduce our subsidies. If I give another benchmark, the experience from our parent company, Newlink's gas-fueling mobile app, is that its NTR has reached between 1.5% to 2% in the gas-fueling industry. I think that can be used as a benchmark when we consider the EV charging space in the long run. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes the Q&A session. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us. Thanks.

This concludes this conference call. You may now disconnect your line. Thank you.