Coupang Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 6, 2024

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

everyone. My name is Christa, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Coupon 20 24 2nd Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike Parker, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Speaker 1

Thanks, operator. Welcome, everyone, to Coupang's Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. I'm pleased to be joined on the call today by our Founder and CEO, Bomm Kim and our CFO, Gor Organon. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, reflects management's views as of today's date only. We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information, except as required by law.

Speaker 1

Certain statements made on today's call include forward looking statements. Actual results may differ materially. Additional information about factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in today's press release and in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10 ks and subsequent filings. During today's call, we may present both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures. Additional disclosures regarding these non GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release, our slides accompanying this webcast and our SEC filings, which are posted on the company's Investor Relations website.

Speaker 1

And now, I'll turn the call over to Baum.

Speaker 2

Thanks everyone for joining us today. Before we dive into the results for Q2, here are 3 takeaways from another strong quarter. First, our results continue to be driven by years of investment and innovation to provide what we believe is the best retail customer experience on the planet. 2nd, our focus on innovation and operational excellence helps us break traditional trade offs, so we can provide that superior customer experience at the lowest cost and in turn strengthen growth and profitability. One example, we deliver the vast majority of our fresh orders using eco bags that replaced almost all of the delivery related disposable packaging.

Speaker 2

That saves us packaging costs, helps the environment and allows us to provide free delivery within hours and do so profitably. That's just one example of how we strive to provide the best customer experience at the lowest cost and generate growth while expanding profitability, not one at the expense of the other. 3rd, our developing offerings are generating strong growth and exciting momentum for the future. Our historical investments in product commerce were misunderstood at the time, but today help generate the strong growth and cash flows you see each quarter. We believe our investments in developing offerings are building the next set of offerings that will further compound our growth and cash flow generation in the future.

Speaker 2

Now, a few numbers to highlight from our 2nd quarter performance. This quarter, we grew constant currency revenues 30% over last year or 23% excluding Farfetch, which we acquired in Q1 of this year. And adjusting for the fulfillment and logistics by coupon or FLC accounting change we began in Q2 of last year, the growth would have been 6 60 bps higher than the 23% constant currency growth rate excluding Farfetch. Our product commerce active customers grew 12% year over year. It's important to note, however, that while new customers contribute to future growth, our growth today and tomorrow is powered primarily by the increasing spend of our existing customers.

Speaker 2

And we believe our future growth opportunity is massive and largely untapped, because we still account for a small percentage of overall retail spend, even of our oldest and best customer cohorts. That's why all of our customer cohorts continue to increase their spend, even our oldest and highest spending cohorts. We can't stress enough how small a share we are of the massive and highly fragmented $560,000,000,000 commerce opportunity in the market and how early we are in that journey. This quarter, we saw the growth in our marketplace, which includes both 3rd party and FLC, significantly outpaced the growth of our overall business. With the 13th consecutive quarter, our marketplace sales have grown faster than our 1st party sales.

Speaker 2

Marketplace sellers are not only growing faster than our 1st party, they're also growing exponentially faster than the overall Korean retail market. Many of these marketplace sellers who have enjoyed this tremendous growth are SMEs, and that doesn't include sellers who were once SMEs, but are now large businesses, thanks to the growth they've enjoyed on coupon. We're proud that we've helped over 9,000 SMEs graduate from SME status since 2020. We continue to invest in services that power that marketplace growth and FLC's growth trajectory is worth highlighting. In Q2, the number of sellers joining FLC grew 25% quarter over quarter and over 150% year over year.

Speaker 2

Now, a few words on developing offerings. We continue to be pleased with the progress and momentum we're seeing in Eats, where customer adoption continues on its strong trajectory since we launched our Wow! Free delivery program last quarter. And merchants are benefiting from that growth. In just 3 months, restaurants on Coupang on average have seen a nearly 30 percent growth in volumes.

Speaker 2

In Taiwan, we're focused on breaking the same trade offs for the Taiwanese customer that we did for the Korean customer to win their loyalty and trust. Our conviction of the potential in Taiwan is as strong as ever. On a side note, while Korean products are just part of the assortment that we offer to customers in Taiwan, we're enabling tens of thousands of Korean companies to get their products to Taiwanese consumers, and our growth has helped triple their total sales volumes this year over last year. On Farfetch, as we stated last quarter, our goal is to generate close to positive adjusted EBITDA on a run rate basis by the end of the calendar year. We're executing to plan and it's on track to achieve these goals for the year so far.

Speaker 2

Though we're still in the very early stages of our journey, we're excited about Farfetch's progress and potential. It's important to highlight that in the markets we serve, we see massive potential that is still largely untapped. And our strategy to capture that potential has been unwavering, disciplined investment and operational excellence that deliver customer well, the best selection, service and savings for our customers. We believe to our core that the happiness of our customers is the key to maximizing opportunities in the long term for our suppliers, merchants, employees and shareholders. Now, I'll turn the call over to Gaurav to review our results in greater detail.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Bong. This quarter, we saw a continuation of the strong momentum across our business that we reported in Q1. In Q2, we again delivered robust growth in revenue, product commerce active customers, gross profit and adjusted EBITDA. As we go through the numbers, I want to remind everyone of our acquisition of Farfetch that was completed at the end of January this year. Q2 represents the Q1 consolidating 3 full months of Farfetch operating results with no Farfetch financials included in the prior year comp.

Speaker 3

Wherever possible, I will provide results for the quarter with and without Farfetch to highlight the performance of our existing business and the impact from the Farfetch acquisition. Our total net revenues grew 25% year over year in Q2 or 18% excluding the impact of Farfetch. Adjusting for the effects of changes in foreign currency, total net revenues grew 30% or 23% excluding Farfetch. As a reminder, beginning in Q2 last year, we made certain changes to FLC revenue accounting, changing the accounting from gross to net on than the 23% constant currency growth rate, than the 23% constant currency growth rate excluding Farfetch. Within our Product Commerce segment, Q2 revenues grew 13% year over year or 18% in constant currency.

Speaker 3

This growth rate would have been 6 80 bps higher after adjusting for the FLC accounting change. With the total retail spend in Korea growing at just 1%, Coupang continues to be a growing value destination for consumers and the primary source of consistent growth for sellers and suppliers in Korea. Net revenues for product commerce active customers grew 5% year over year in constant currency. This includes the short term diluted impact of the large number of new product commerce active customers we have added over the last few quarters as well as the impact of the FLC accounting change. The impact of new customers is dilutive because new customers spent less initially, but we have seen their spend levels grow in line with the trajectory of older cohorts over time.

Speaker 3

It's important to note that the vast majority of our growth is powered by increasing spend of our existing customers. We continue to see the spend levels of all our cohorts increase, even our oldest and highest spending. We believe there is still a long runway for growth given that we account for a small percentage of their overall retail spend. As we have shared previously, we believe we have a significant opportunity to grow that small percentage of overall retail spend to much higher levels by improving our selection, service and savings for customers. As Bong noted, we continue to be encouraged by the progress we are seeing within our Developing Offerings segment.

Speaker 3

Developing Offerings revenue grew over 4 70% year over year or 177% excluding Farfetch. On a constant currency basis, Developing Offering segment revenue grew over 480% or 188% excluding Farfetch. Given the evolving mix of the various offerings, services and channels within our business, we believe a primary indicator of the underlying growth in our business is gross profit. This quarter, we again delivered a record quarter of gross profit reaching over $2,100,000,000 growing over 40% year over year with a gross margin of 29.3%. Excluding Farfetch, we delivered $1,900,000,000 in gross profit for a growth rate of 27% and a margin of 28.3%.

Speaker 3

This represents an improvement of 2 20 basis points year over year, accelerating even faster than the growth we saw last quarter. Product Commerce gross profit increased 26% year over year to over $1,900,000,000 and a record gross profit margin of 30.3%. This represents a 3 10 basis points improvement over last year and 200 basis points over last quarter. Our margin improvement this quarter was driven by strong growth rates in categories with higher margin composition as well as higher efficiencies across operations, including benefits from greater utilization of automation and technology, including AI. We also continue to benefit from further optimization in our supply chain and the scaling of margin accretive offering.

Speaker 3

We expect these drivers to continue contributing to further margin expansion over the quarters years to come. OG and A expense as a percentage of revenue this quarter increased 600 basis points versus last year. This change was primarily due to the inclusion of Farfetch and its related restructuring costs as well as the estimated $121,000,000 administrative fine that we accrued as announced by the Korea Fair Trade Commission. We generated $3,000,000 of income before income taxes and a $77,000,000 of net loss attributable to coupon stockholders this quarter. This resulted in diluted loss per share of $0.04 Excluding Farfetch and the estimated accrued time, net income attributable to Coupang stockholders was approximately $124,000,000 for the quarter and diluted earnings per share was 0 point 0 $7 Our consolidated business reported $330,000,000 of as well as the accrued time.

Speaker 3

This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.5%. The trailing 12 month adjusted EBITDA was $1,100,000,000 with a margin of 4.2%. Excluding Farfetch, we recorded $361,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA this quarter and $1,200,000,000 over the trailing 12 months. With a trailing 12 month adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.6%. We remain confident in our ability to continue expanding consolidated margins on an annual basis going forward.

Speaker 3

Product Commerce segment delivered $530,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA with a record margin of 8.2%. This represents a margin expansion of over 100 basis points over the last year. This growth in margin was driven by the expansion in gross profit margin as well as the benefits from further improvements in operational efficiencies. Our segment adjusted EBITDA in developing offerings was a $200,000,000 loss for the quarter, relatively flat to the last quarter and increasing $93,000,000 year over year. This increase was driven by additional investment in these early stage opportunities as well as a $31,000,000 impact from the consolidation of Farfetch.

Speaker 3

We remain encouraged by the progress we are making in Farfetch. Our team is focused on doing one of the things we do best at Coupang, driving operational efficiencies through discipline and process improvement. We remain convinced of the ability for Farfetch to get close to positive adjusted EBITDA run rate by the end of this year. Our ending cash balance at the end of Q2 was roughly $5,800,000,000 increasing 22% over the last year. We generated $2,200,000,000 in operating cash flow and $1,500,000,000 of free cash flow over the trailing 12 months.

Speaker 3

As we guided to last quarter, in Q2, we saw an increase in the effective income tax rate driven by consolidation of pre tax losses in Farfetch and non deductible expenses. As a reminder, this is just an accounting tax rate as we expect our cash tax obligation this year to be closer to 20% to 25%, excluding Farfetch losses. Operator, we are now ready to begin the Q and A.

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Stanley Yang. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Thanks for the opportunity to ask the question. I have a congratulations on strong results on major core metrics line items. My first question is about product commerce margin. We saw strong expansion margin expansion in the Q2. Can you please provide more color on the margin drivers in the Q2?

Speaker 4

And also, overall in 2024, what are the current major tailwind and headwind for your product commerce margin trend? Is rapidly growing FSP increasing in margin accuracies? My second question is about the Eats side. So the Eats market share gain momentum seems to be even stronger in the Q2. Is East standalone margin improving with the economy of scale?

Speaker 4

That's my first question on this note, the sub question on the first question, the second question. And going forward, will you prioritize top line focused margin, market share gain strategy going forward or do you look for more balanced strategy between the growth and profitability?

Speaker 2

Hi, Stanley. Thanks for the questions. On Product Commerce, as you mentioned, Q2, we generated we recorded significant improvements, generating nearly $2,000,000,000 of gross profit, margin of 30%, which represents an improvement of over 300 bps year over year. The drivers of that margin expansion continue to be the same that we've seen over the last several quarters years. These are improvements, continuous improvements in our operations and supply chain, scaling of margin accretive offerings, greater utilization of automation technology, including AI.

Speaker 2

And we still have a lot of opportunity to improve on these variables. That's one reason why we provided the long term guidance of over 10% adjusted EBITDA. And we've pointed this out in the past, margins may be uneven quarter to quarter, but we expect our profit margin to continue its march upwards over time towards that target. On Eats, as you point out, we've continued to see strong momentum there, great adoption and increase in frequency from Wow members who are discovering Eats because of our unlimited free delivery benefit. It's important to note that we're doing that while also continuing to improve our cost structure.

Speaker 2

That's aided by the benefits of scale, our focus on operational excellence. Eats is currently unit economics positive and we see that only continuing to improve as Eats scales. And as is the case with product commerce, we're obsessed with providing customers with selection, service and savings, not one at the expense of the other. We'll continue to focus on breaking trade offs between selection service savings, between growth and economics to provide the best experience in restaurant delivery and commerce more broadly.

Speaker 3

Stanley, you had one more question in between on FLC margins. So I'll just jump in here. So as Vam had mentioned in his note, we are excited about the progress FLC is making. In Q2, the number of sellers joining FLC grew 25% quarter over quarter and over 150% year over year. So overall, FLC is accretive from margin perspective, but there are still many areas that need improvement.

Speaker 3

We are making investments to onboard merchants and we'll continue to improve our suboptimal processes and tech systems there.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Cha.

Speaker 3

Cha. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I have 2. The first question is on developing offering.

Speaker 5

So I've noticed the developing offering loss has increased to $200,000,000 in 2nd quarter. So just simply extrapolating this for the year, would you say there's a potential for coupon to go meaningfully go over $750,000,000 loss guidance for developing offerings? And it would be helpful if you could elaborate a little bit more on the key the moving parts for the bigger loss compared to the Q1. And my second question is around G and A for Product Commerce. Seems like gross profit margin increase has been the key driver for the adjusted EBITDA margin improvement for Product Commerce lately And we don't really have much insights into the cadence of G and A for Product Commerce going forward.

Speaker 5

So could you explain on what the drivers are for the G and A increase and when we could expect some operating leverage coming from this slide? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes, Rick. Thanks for your questions. So on developing offerings, last quarter, we updated a full year guidance of adjusted EBITDA losses of roughly $750,000,000 this year, including Farfetch. So while the timing of these expenses within the various components of developing offerings may fluctuate quarter to quarter, we still believe our full year actual results will be in line with the guidance that we have previously provided. On overhead expenses, our expenses as a percentage of revenue this quarter increased versus last year.

Speaker 3

This was primarily due to the inclusion of Farfetch, its related restructuring costs, the increased investments in developing offerings as well as estimated $121,000,000 administrative fine that we previously mentioned. Within our core operations, we are also investing in technology and infrastructure to build a stronger foundation for future scalability. So while these investments may temporarily decrease our operating margins in the near term, we will leverage on these costs in the next couple of years and we believe they will create long term value as they help us better serve customers and support our future growth.

Operator

The next question is from Seem Park from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I also have two questions. First of all, just to follow-up on what Stan had asked, I think this quarter the gross profit margin improvement for product commerce was particularly more impressive. And so maybe I know that the 3 the mix of operational insufficiencies and the faster growth of higher margin products is the drivers. Could you maybe share just a little bit more color as to for this quarter within those drivers, what was particularly more evident?

Speaker 6

My second question is with regards to Taiwan, and I'm very cognizant that management would not like to give any forward looking, I guess, guidance on Taiwan. But at least looking back, can we at least get a sense as to how far coupons services have been rolled out in Taiwan, what is available, what is not available, what kind of coverage you have next morning delivery, is that available in Taiwan and to most residents,

Speaker 7

Can you get some sense on that, please? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Hi, Shao Young. Thanks for the questions. I think on I think it's important to highlight that on our margin expansion that we really are early on these variables on our improvement journey on these variables. There's still a lot of room. And so the reason why you continue to see these margin improvements happen over the last few years on a continuous basis.

Speaker 2

Now there are fluctuations quarter to quarter. The improvement is not always in a straight line. But we believe we're on a long term trajectory to continue to improve all of these variables over time to achieve our long term guidance of over 10% adjusted EBITDA. On Taiwan, it is too early to share details, but I can share that we continue to be very encouraged by the momentum and progress we're seeing there. Our customer experience, selection service savings, none of them are quite at the levels that we've now built in Korea yet, but we are able to start in a much better place.

Speaker 2

And that strong start is in part due to the fact that we're able to leverage in Taiwan a lot of what we've built in Korea. We started in a very different place, our selection, processes, fulfillment logistics optimization, supply chain management, our technology stack, all of these things we've invested and refined over a decade. We're fortunate to be able to leverage a lot of that in Taiwan. So while we are early in the journey and the experience is not where we'd like to be yet, both on the customer experience and operational excellence. We're very excited about the momentum and progress we're making and we'll continue to be very disciplined with any increased level of spend, investing only when we're convinced about the returns we can generate.

Speaker 2

We're also pleased that we won't have to make the same kind of investments in many areas, because we're able to leverage the investments we've already made in the Korean market. Just generally, the potential to create meaningful differentiated differentiation in customer experience and meaningful returns for our shareholders, we think is extremely high and we're very excited about the opportunity we see in Taiwan.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Zhong Xiao from Barclays. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Thank you very much for taking my questions. First, I have a follow-up question about the margins. I think, Bong, just talked about your long term target of EBITDA margin of 10% or more. I was wondering, could you talk about just for your 1P business, do you think that's also achievable? And in that sort of the margin guide, the gross margin as a few of my peers have highlighted this quarter was particularly strong.

Speaker 7

Do you feel there's more room to go, the higher margin categories, could you talk about what are those categories, are there new categories you're seeing you're going to expect to further growth in those categories? My second question is about the WAN membership fee increase. I was wondering, I know the fee the higher fee kicked in beginning of August a few days ago for the existing members, but as the new members, I think the higher fee kicked in 3 months ago. I was wondering if you could talk about in terms of the member new members sign ups or the existing member churn, if any comments will be appreciated. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Hi, John. Thanks for the questions. We see a lot of opportunity. I think both Gaurav and I mentioned earlier that we still represent a very small percentage of overall retail spend. There's a lot of expansion potential that we see in spend in almost every category.

Speaker 2

So that's just a general trend that I think we represent a very small percentage of a fragment and a massive $560,000,000,000 commerce opportunity. And that spend will go up as we increase selection across all those categories, improve our service and continue to expand savings for our customers. On Wow! We generally disclose our Wow! Membership numbers on an annual basis.

Speaker 2

So we will share more at year end. And our focus continues to be on creating massive value surplus for our members. Maybe this is a good chance for us to expand a little bit on what value surplus is for our customers there. We create value surplus throughout the 14 different benefits that we built over the years and added to the program. As an example, let me just take one of those benefits, free delivery savings, and parents with young children, some of the most time and resource constrained customers in the market.

Speaker 2

For a monthly fee that's equivalent to roughly the cost of 2 deliveries, These customers save on 23 free deliveries a month. That's saving more than 10 times the amount they pay. And that's just from free delivery, not including the savings they get on free returns, exclusive discounts, free video streaming, and not to mention hours they say from skipping trips to the store to better spend with their children. And we're really focused, laser focused on increasing these benefits and savings to serve our existing customers and to attract the tens of millions of retail shoppers who have yet to join Wow! And that's where our focus is to continue to strive to make Wow!

Speaker 2

The best deal on the planet for our customers.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of James Lee with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. 2 here, 1 on food delivery. Now, given your market share gains, could you maybe talk about some of the competitive responses you've seen in the market? In terms of restaurant selections in general, maybe help us understand what do you plan to reach maybe parity with your number one tier in the market?

Speaker 7

And also in terms of potential M and A, I was wondering under what conditions would kind of acquisition make sense in that space? Thanks.

Speaker 2

So the second question, when you said parity, James, could you clarify parity on what dimension?

Speaker 7

In terms of restaurant selections.

Speaker 2

I see. We are each generally speaking, we are making we have we're continuing to add selection. I would say that in some places our selection is better, probably some places selection is still has areas of improvement to go. I think the most important thing is that we continue to focus on all three of those pillars, not in selection, service, savings, delivering on all three pillars of that has been key to winning long term customer loyalty to continuing to unlock a lot of growth for the program. So I think that generally is our focus.

Speaker 2

There are no plans for M and A. I think we just are focused on interim execution in that space.

Operator

There are no further questions. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you and you may now disconnect.

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