111, Inc. (NASDAQ:YI) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Junling Liu: Yeah, Lauren, let me just answer your second question about it. And we’re all anticipating that the COVID zero policies will be behind us, we relaxed. And we saw some encouraging developments recently. But that’s still unknown because different provinces have different implementation approaches. And as we speak, some of our warehouses are still under lock down. And we cannot ship goods out, we cannot replenish inventory. So there is also the latest development starting from today that a lot of those drugs were not allowed to sell online anymore, especially those Rx drugs. And also every customer has to register its real name, and there is going to be a verification process. Fortunately, for us, that we’re more focused on the B2B, and that’s the majority of our business.

So the impact to us is a lot smaller than the rest of the other guys in the industry. So we all hope that this is the first step to a post-COVID restriction kind of containment measure. And of course, if we look at a broad picture, we are in a multi trillion-dollar market to quote some numbers in 2021 last year, the market is JPY 8 trillion And it is widely anticipated that by 2030, this market is going to hit JPY 16 trillion. That is more than $2 trillion. And there’s €“ you know, I said a few things early on in my speech that there is a lot of tailwinds for us as well. And I think the biggest tailwind is really the transformation of digital – digitization in the industry. And we are already playing a major role and will continue to play any more important role in the future.

And in terms of expectation, I’m going to expect very good quality growth for the company, both the top line. In the past few years, we focused more on the revenue growth. And obviously, we needed that, we needed that scale. We needed the customer to know us to experience the services we deliver to them. But in the future, I would like to see in addition to the top line growth, we also want to see better margin growth and also the improvement in the bottom line. I hope that answers your question, Lauren.

Unidentified Analyst: Yeah, thanks. That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Zoe Bian with Citi. Please go ahead.

Zoe Bian: Good evening, management. This is Zoe from Citi. I have one question here. So what – may I ask what’s the update of your potential privatization?

Junling Liu: Sorry, the potential?

Zoe Bian: Privatization.

Harvey Wang: Junling, maybe let me answer Zoe’s question on this one. The process is still ongoing. And as we disclosed, we – the company has formed a special committee to work on the proposal and the special committee has recruited the legal and financial advisers. Also the company will make public information regarding the privatization as by special committee. So now it’s within the hands of the special committee and we will disclose when we advise by them according to SEC rules. That’s the latest.

Zoe Bian: Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Gerald Hasten who is a private investor. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Hello. Congratulations on your performance this quarter. I’m gratified to see that the operating cash flow and overall cash flow were in the black for the quarter, which I believe is a major milestone for your company. How do you plan to continue this trend going forward?

Harvey Wang: Yeah. We are pleased to see the positive operating cash flow and overall cash flow for the quarter. Now it mainly attributed to our efforts to continuously reduce the operation loss, as well as we improve – continue to improve our working capital efficiency. Our average accounts payable is about like 40, 45 days and our inventory average turnover is like 25 days. So that gives us a good operating cash flow. Now we have pretty strong confidence when we continue to leverage our scale, to build up scale and improve our margin and getting closer to operating profitability. So the overall cash flow will be continued to be positive. So – and we’re quite confident on that.