Shen Peng
Hello, everyone. This is Shen Peng. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. With the second quarter, in insurance and pharmaceutical industry with the gradual enforcement of regulation, transparency and acceleration have significantly improved, effectively enhancing user experience and satisfaction. This has also led compliance user insurance companies in breaking new growth opportunities. In this setting, the Company's proactively consensus regulatory trends, responds actively to market demand, continually innovates product and optimize service and solidifying a leading edge in these sectors. Regardless of the challenging external environment, the management firmly convinced the adhering to long-term value and maintaining a user-centric approach with secure greater market space. And in the second quarter of 2023, the Company continues to focus on creating value for our users' capability healthy development. The financial performance remains robust with our revenue reached RMB679 million, carrying over an upward trend for the last five quarters, the net profit reached RMB21.7 million, demonstrating the sustainable and high-quality development of the Company's operations. With the same cost of net profit, the Company maintains ample cash reserves as of the end of June. The Company had a total of RMB3.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. The abundant cash reserves helped the Company to face uncertain environment with more confidence and support long-term trend and layout for the future growth. All of our business models achieved strong performance in the future and consolidating our leading position and influence in the industry. First of all, what is our insurance marketplace in [indiscernible] and enhanced business fatality. While exploring diversified customer acquisition channels, we also take the product innovation, thanks to the efforts what we call both SIP and revenue made sequential growth and it continued to contribute stable net profit to the Company. In terms of digital clinical trial solution business due to our excellent performance, the E-find platform gains recognition from both domestic and international partners. We continue to expand the lead time and accelerating drug development for pharmaceutical and we'll also made significant progress in CRO in Q2. Digital clinical trial solution income was RMB29.4 million and achieving a significant year-on-year growth of 167%. In addition, by iterating algorithms capabilities and risk management mechanism, our Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding platform firmly adhered to parent operations and led us to any compassion. Meanwhile, we enhanced product quality propel our service oriented business model and embodies the principle of users first service mode. Along with business development, the Company continued to invest in research and development. In Q2, the Company continued to upgrade technologies like intelligent chatbot deploying AI in various sectors, including operations, sales improving. We strongly accelerated operational efficiency and the Company persists in [indiscernible] technology to empower the industry, in the complex and ever changing macro environment. The Company performed [indiscernible] operating CSR. As of June 30, 2023, the Waterdrop Insurance platform had collaborated with about 110 public charitable organizations to carry out project in [indiscernible] and education support. The program has raised about RMB1.3 billion and raised the contribution from more than 65 million donors. We also continue to decline ESG initiatives and strive to achieve mutual sustainable development between the Company and the society. We benchmark domestic and international ESG standards to establish a compound framework and publish the 2022 ESG report. The report summarizes our company's management and performance in areas like company's governance participation in multilevel medical support system, technology innovation, green and low-carbon initiatives and public welfare. We demonstrate the Company's commitment to high quality and sustainable development in terms of share repurchase as of the end of August 2023. The Company has cumulatively repurchased 37.5 million ADSs shares in the open market with cash for a total consideration of approximately $86.1 million. We also want to announce the expansion of the repurchase plan, which has received approval from all our directors. Within the next 12 months, the Company will repurchase shares in the open market for an amount not exceeding $50 million. This decision is based on the Company's strong confidence in our own value and long-term sustainable development. Meanwhile, this share repurchase will be used for ESOP, which will further motivate our employees. That is a brief review of our business performance in Q2, although facing the challenging macro environment stay fully confident in our healthcare industry. Moving forward to the remaining half of this year, our strategies include business driven by a long and digital transformation. Insurance systems will continue to be [indiscernible] striving to achieve long-term healthy and stable development. Meanwhile, we will continue to enhance key initiatives solidifying the business foundation and provide users with professional and software service. Secondly, the core funding business will continue to [indiscernible] in the first and iterating service model, giving the industry towards high-quality development. We will also adhere to transparent operations and inclement with risk management while actively fulfilling CSR. Thirdly, leveraging big data, the pharmaceutical business will continue to increase industry penetration globally and activate for a new model in order to construct a new long-term growth engine. Fourthly, the Company will make use of its ample cash reserves and take operations and investment opportunities around insurance and healthcare sector. Last but not least, the Company will accelerate technology empowerment and it has AI ability to build core technology competitiveness, thereby supporting the implementation of long-term strategies and inherent industries. The Company will make use of ample cash reserves and take operation and investment opportunity around insurance and healthcare sector. In the current rate, the Company will continuously derive long-term inspire to calibrating user value, strengthening their facility and organic growth and company [indiscernible]. We'll continue to bring insurance and healthcare best service to bring to technology. And now let me give you an update on our insurance business. In the second quarter, in order to enhance service experience and enhancements, the Company committed to use eccentric and high-quality development and continue to explore new service models. During Q2, we achieved RMB219.7 million in [indiscernible] and margins, a 30% sequential growth. Insurance related revenue reached RMB597 million, reflecting 11% Q-o-Q for us. Short-term insurance achieved FYP of RMB1.6 billion, marking a 30% sequential growth. On one hand, the Company further developed our content base either activation capability. In Q2, we increased our [indiscernible] client innovation and spreading high-quality content across medical platforms leading to a sequential growth in the number of end users. On the other hand, we kept accelerating our existing customer base, leveraging AI ability. The Company continues to improve the quality of users to over 90% of short-term insurance renewal rate. Long-term insurance achieved a FYP of RMB590 million, representing a 29% sequential growth. The long-term insurance operating income increased by 38% sequentially. As long-term insurance products continue to expand, the proportion of life insurance premiums within the long-term segment has risen to 57%. During this quarter, the [indiscernible] of long-term insurance need potentially leveraging the insurance were company elevated service model focused on common domains narrowed and intensified user education, which led to a 33% of FYP from private domain operations. The Company also is experiencing called into our policy insurance leading to the sustained improvement in the first year retention rates for marketing product. In Q2, Waterdrop continues to explore new growth channels to facilitating sustainable business growth. For our online brokerage channel, FYP experienced a 113% sequential growth with the decline in interest rates. The Company developed a new insurance, which is focused on illness insurance and life insurance to the younger users in the first and second-tier cities. Sequentially, the number of users for segment insurance grew by 206% and high-quality content and segment proceedings. The [indiscernible] decreased by 25%. Moreover, the team improved the service process and now can control is the first time response within 20 minutes. This leads to a 2Q increase of 49% in productivity per lead and 30% in productivity capital. In terms of offline agents and some market rebound and the team matured, we achieved a remarkable 206% Y-o-Y growth in FYP. We continue to enhance product offering and operational capability. We further upgraded our PD system define functioning models and optimizing the experience for both agents and clients. We elevated recruiting standards and talent in new developments and actively explore agent IP. The average productivity per active agents increased by 201% Y-o-Y, the average number of long-term insurance policy for agents increased by 48% Y-o-Y. During the second quarter, [indiscernible] insurance marketplace continued to enrich the product offering and similar product targeting the basic user growth, taking regular interest in long-term production and innovation medical treatment [indiscernible] ocean lifetime health insurance. It has allows users to take access over these medical service at an affordable price and quickly provide an option for users to transport from shopping medical insurance directly to a 20-year long-term medical insurance thereby maiming the user coverage, targeting elderly, we introduced the [indiscernible]. This product is the first in China to cover many common serious illnesses among the elderly including malignant tumors, that was listed and the annual product innovation list by 2023 China insurance industry is both ranking. For healthy individual, we continue to iterating our Blue Ocean series, which is the first domestic health insurance leading healthcare declaration. In Q2, this product series achieved FYP over RMB100 million. Additionally, we actively explore multichannel sales of [indiscernible] and insurance covering medication, operations and emergency. We saw a sequential increase in FYP. In terms of users with pre-existing positions, we continue to [indiscernible] product innovation. For example, we designed a Waterdrop Carefree series, which can cover [indiscernible] and the FYP of business series of [indiscernible] in the industry, receiving high recognition from patients. In terms of surgical accident insurance, we offer solution across 5,000 departments in 32 hospitals, which help patients against post hospital recovery. As a technology company, we continue to develop our insurance technology. In the second quarter, we increased AI investments, enhancing the team and upgraded our AI-empowered [indiscernible] chatbot insurance service scenario. The chatbot can now communicate with users for more than 20 minutes. We have integrated the chatbot into various business scenarios, including operations, sales and claims. This integration has effectively accelerating service product and saved human cost. In terms of technology export, we continue to strive for excellence with exporting [indiscernible]. We improved the capable and usability and the configurability of both wealth management and wealth tool model. Additionally, we collaborated with three new partners to accelerate the industry transformation towards digital intelligence. This concludes my briefing on the insurance business. So let me hand over to Zetao for an update on our Medical Crowdfunding and Digital Clinical Trial Solution Business.