New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. That’s very helpful.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Lucy Yu from Bank of America .

Lucy Yu: Congratulations on a profitable quarter. Could you please give us some color on the revenue breakdown this quarter and as well as the margin profile for different business lines. I know Steve, you already mentioned the new business is 10% OP margin. How about the rest?

Sisi Zhao: Yes. For the reported quarter, the overseas related business, including the overseas test prep and consulting contributed roughly about 21% of total revenue. And the domestic as the adult university students business contributed roughly about 6%. And the school business, including our remaining like high school business and also the new initiatives for younger students together contributing roughly over 40% of total revenue. And the rest are Koolearn and some other businesses; so that’s the rough contribution.

Stephen Yang: Lucy, I just want to share with you the margins by different business lines. the overseas-related business, overseas test flat combined with the consulting business. The margin for the whole year, fiscal year 2023 will be around 10% to 15% margin. What I’m saying the margin is before the corporate overhead. And the and the University study business, I think the margin profile, I think the business will be breakeven in this year. And the school business, including the remaining business and the new initiatives, as is said, contributed 45% of total revenue. The merger should be somewhere around 20% to 25% or even a little bit higher. And so the other — this is the big others, including the cooler and often others. I think if you follow the numbers, the cooler first half of the year report, I think you will see more the color on the margin profile of the cooler and the others.

Lucy Yu: One follow-up. Could you also talk about the Y-o-Y growth for different business lines in this quarter?

Stephen Yang: Year-over-year, I think it could be revenue contribution.

Sisi Zhao: Yes. We talked about it in the prepared remarks. So for this quarter, like U.S. dollar term, overseas tax prep business increased by roughly 17%. Actually, for RMB term, you should add another 10%, 15% more. The university students business is stable and U.S. dollar term is negative 8% but RMB term is positive. And the yes, the school business actually increased because of the new initiatives and also Koolearn and other business increased a lot.

Lucy Yu: Thank you so much.

Operator: We’ll now take our next question — our next question comes from the line of Candis Chan from Daiwa.

Candis Chan: Congratulations on the very strong set of results and also the strong guidance for next quarter. So my first question is related to the third quarter revenue guidance and also the profitability that we are aiming for. So firstly, can you give us a rough breakdown of revenue for the third quarter. And also in terms of the operating margin, how should we look at it for the third quarter given the strong revenue.

Stephen Yang: Okay. In the Q3 forecast, I think number one, the overseas-related business, test prep and consulting business will contribute 24%, 25% of total revenue in Q3. And the second, the adults and the university students business contributed 2% of total revenue because of the covet. And the school business, including the traditional business, the remaining business and with the new initiatives will contribute 43%, 44% of total revenue. And the other 30% comes from the cooler Dongfang and the other business like the book or the other the 2B business. And the margin profile, I think the margins — we — I think let us start the margin analysis from this quarter. In Q2, you saw our GP margin and OP margin increased a lot compared to last year.

And I think it’s mainly driven by the following reasons; the number one is, in the last year, Q2 in for the last whole year, the first 3 quarters, we had the considerable one-off cost related to the class cancellation, the learning center closures and the staff layoffs. In this quarter and even in this whole year, we have no one-off costs. Number two, I think the downside and learning center numbers led to the lower fixed cost. So it drives the margin up per learning center. Number three is the new businesses, the margin is over 10% this year. I think it’s good news for us. And also the recovery of the remaining business, for example, like the overseas related business generated higher margins than that of last year. And the last reason the number for the done, the cooler, the livestream e-commerce business enjoys higher margin.

So it makes the margin drives margin up for the whole group. And going forward, I think all business lines, we will contribute even higher profit and drive the whole margin up year-over-year. So we are quite optimistic of the margin profile of the whole year fiscal year 2023.

Candis Chan: Great. So my second question is related to the regulations recently in late December that we saw that the new document are about the non-academic tutoring activities. So do we see any impact on our business overall, like in terms of pricing and also the expansion?

Stephen Yang: Yes. Actually, since the government has issued the policy last year, I think we have been actively exploring the new business direction and follow all the central and local government authorities, the rules. And so yes, you mentioned the new rules in last October in October last year. I think there will be no material impact actively impact our business.

Operator: We’ll move on to our next question. We have a follow-up question from the line of Felix Liu from UBS.