After market hours on April 25, YTO Express (600233) released its 2023 annual report and 2024 first quarter report. According to the report, in 2023, YTO Express will achieve operating income of 57.684 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.74%, and net profit attributable to the parent company of 3.723 billion yuan, of which the net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company in the express delivery business will be 3.840 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.15%.
In the first quarter of 2024, YTO Express's operating performance also achieved a steady improvement, with revenue of 15.427 billion yuan in a single quarter, a year-on-year increase of 19.46%, and net profit attributable to the parent company of 943 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.14%, of which the express delivery business achieved a net profit attributable to the parent company of 994 million yuan, an increase of about 11.87% year-on-year. According to industry insiders, the price competition in the express delivery industry in 2023 will be fierce, and the unit price of the industry will continue to decline, and at the same time, in the first quarter of 2023, the company will still achieve such a good express business performance growth in 2023 and the first quarter of 2024.
It is worth noting that under the fierce competition in the express delivery industry, YTO has continued to deepen its main business in recent years, and the results of promoting digital and intelligent development have gradually emerged, and the express delivery business has achieved significant growth in quantity and quality. From 2021 to 2023, the business volume of YTO Express will be 16.543 billion, 17.479 billion, and 21.204 billion respectively, and the business scale will achieve a stable "triple rise". Industry data shows that in 2023, the business volume growth rate of the top express service companies will continue to exceed the average growth rate of the industry, with the total market share of the top two companies being about 39.0%, an increase of about 1.1% year-on-year, and the market share will be further concentrated, and YTO, as one of the top enterprises, will have a market share of 16.1%. In the first quarter of 2024, the completed volume of YTO Express business was 5.568 billion pieces, an increase of 24.88% year-on-year, ranking at the top of the industry.
Digitalization empowers the integrated construction of the whole network, and the comprehensive strength of the franchise network continues to improve
In recent years, the competition in the express delivery industry has gradually changed from price competition to value competition, and the competition dimension has been continuously pushed up, and the high-quality development trend of the industry is significant. In order to expand its own advantages in the fierce industry competition, YTO has continued to promote digital transformation and intelligent development in recent years, from management energy efficiency to cost control to service quality, strong digital capabilities not only deeply empower the company, but also make "digitalization" a prominent capability label of YTO.
At this stage, the competition of franchise express delivery has sunk from the competition at the headquarters level to the competition at the franchisee level, and it is the main line of a new round of industry competition to empower franchisees and help franchisees and end outlets create more value. It is understood that YTO has set up a leading group with the chairman of the board of directors as the leader and the president as the deputy leader, with an executive group and a steering group under it, which will work together to promote the implementation of the "No. 1 Project - Digitalization and Standardization Construction of the Franchise Network", and empower the franchisees in an all-round way in terms of finance, operation and management, help franchisees reduce costs, improve quality and efficiency, create a "non-direct system", comprehensively improve the operation and management capabilities and profitability of the franchise network, and consolidate the foundation for the development of the whole network.
2023 is the year of the full implementation of YTO's "No. 1 Project", and YTO headquarters has dispatched more than 70 landing teams and professional teams across the network to strengthen the energy efficiency of the use of digital tools by the outlets through the consultation of various business links of the franchisees, and to empower the franchisee outlets with digitalization in a targeted manner, so as to fully realize the digitalization, standardization and performance of the franchisees.
According to reports, the project team of YTO headquarters stationed in the YTO Shanghai Songjiang new car franchise outlets, inquired and investigated the operation, delivery, terminal construction, human resources management, customer service administration and other links, and helped sort out and formulate a set of measures and methods to reduce costs, improve quality and increase efficiency, and solve practical problems. Zhi Jiadong, the person in charge of the outlet, said excitedly, "In less than two months, it has helped us increase the business volume of direct delivery by more than 20%, reduce the cost by about 70,000 yuan per month, and the reputation of customers has also been significantly improved." Similarly, YTO Putian franchisees also benefit from this. In June 2023, the project team of the headquarters helped formulate a series of measures to reduce costs and improve quality and efficiency from delivery, operation, transportation capacity, and performance management. Li Guoqiang, the person in charge of YTO Putian, said, "Only the transportation capacity is expected to reduce the cost by 100,000 yuan a month." In this way, we have more confidence and ability to develop the front-end market, improve the customer experience, and create more value for customers. ”
From the digital tools of the system to the multi-party linkage of the headquarters project team, YTO has taken multiple measures to promote the refined management of the whole link from the headquarters to the local franchisees, improve the customer service experience, enhance customer stickiness, and achieve a virtuous circle of efficient management, high-quality service and customer satisfaction. By the end of 2023, the "No. 1 Project" project team has covered more than 1,800 franchisees, and the comprehensive operation strength of the entire network has been significantly improved.
Digital transformation facilitates lean management, reducing costs and increasing efficiency across the entire network
Digitalization not only empowers the integrated management level of YTO's entire network, but also simultaneously improves the company's lean management capabilities, continuously improving quality, reducing costs and increasing efficiency. In 2023, YTO will pay close attention to cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies such as big data, machine vision, natural language understanding, and intelligent adaptive learning, and promote the comprehensive upgrading of digital transformation to create new quality productivity in the express delivery industry. YTO said that during the reporting period, it continued to explore the vertical application of artificial intelligence, deeply excavated the value of data elements, and developed and launched the application "YTO-GPT" on its own, comprehensively reducing the difficulty and cost of learning digital tools and improving the level and efficiency of digital management of the whole network.
In terms of fulfillment, the company has built a regional drawing platform through the application of map technology, developed and applied systems such as "intelligent delivery", and digitized the salesman's experience and knowledge, so as to realize the intelligent stacking of parcels and the intelligent reminder of delivery information, so as to help the salesman reasonably plan the delivery task, optimize and improve the delivery path, and promote the end to reduce the cost of pickup, improve the delivery efficiency and shorten the delivery time. In 2023, the whole journey time of YTO will be shortened by 5.63 hours compared with the same period last year, and the service quality will continue to improve.
In terms of customer service, YTO continues to iterate and optimize various system modules such as "Customer Butler", expand the application scenarios of intelligent customer service, strengthen human-computer interaction, and strengthen "Customer Butler", "Network Butler" and "Walker" At the same time, YTO continues to improve customer service evaluation standards, reconstruct customer service capability index, focus on improving customer repetitive line access, upgrade the control of multiple incoming work orders, promote closed-loop management of customer service work orders, and strive to reduce negative customer feedback. By the end of the reporting period, the customer complaint rate had decreased by nearly 14% year-on-year, and the customer experience had steadily improved.
In terms of cost control, thanks to the company's continuous deepening focus on cost control, the cost of the company's single-ticket express products in 2023 will be 2.18 yuan, a decrease of 5.99% from the same period last year. Among them, the transportation cost of a single ticket was 0.46 yuan, a decrease of 0.05 yuan or 9.67% over the same period last year, the operating cost of a single ticket center was 0.29 yuan, a decrease of 0.02 yuan or 5.37% over the same period last year, and the total core cost was 0.75 yuan, a decrease of 0.07 yuan over the same period last year. YTO's good cost control leaves enough room for its profit improvement.
The international strategy has been continuously implemented, and the aviation layout has built a fortress
As a leading enterprise in the domestic express delivery industry, YTO has continued to deepen its international development strategy in recent years, made efforts to "express delivery to the sea", and gave full play to the resource advantages of overseas sites covering the world, professional teams that are well versed in business, self-owned fleets with diverse structures, and increasingly encrypted route networks. The scale of international express delivery and global supply chain continues to expand, and the network layout covers RCEP member countries, Europe, America and other countries and regions. In 2023, the company's international freight business will operate stably, completing more than 148 million pieces of international express delivery and parcel services, a year-on-year increase of nearly 20%. In addition, YTO also maintains good cooperation with large multinational companies such as Xiaomi, VIVO, Transsion, Zhejiang Dahua, etc., and takes the opportunity of hosting international comprehensive event logistics services such as the Hangzhou Asian Games to further precipitate the integration of international supply chain logistics service capabilities of "warehouse trunk line customs distribution".
At the same time of business development, the company continues to strengthen the infrastructure for international development. In the first quarter of 2024, YTO appointed Zhou Jian, a "express veteran", as the executive director and chief executive officer of YTO International Express, and simultaneously launched the "Wonderful Plan", an international talent discovery project, to build a professional team for global business. As of the end of 2023, the company's own aviation fleet has reached 13 aircraft, including 2 Boeing 767-300s, 10 Boeing 757-200 and 1 ARJ21-700, and has opened more than 130 high-quality routes covering the whole of Asia and the core regions of Eastern Europe. The company has also further expanded the customs clearance network in the form of self-construction, cooperation and alliances, and completed the construction of customs capacity in major domestic ports and some key international ports, and the customs clearance network has basically covered the main ports in the country, and the customs clearance system is becoming more and more mature, which can provide accurate and efficient customs clearance services for multi-format customers.
Industry insiders believe that the high-quality talent team, its own aviation and customs clearance network will be the winning point of the future industry competition, and the high infrastructure barriers it has created will lay a solid foundation for the development of YTO international business.
Industry competition continues to enter a high dimension, and YTO's competitiveness is favored by many parties
Since March 1 this year, the new domestic express delivery regulations have been officially implemented, which has put forward higher requirements for the overall service level of the express delivery industry, and to a certain extent, forced major express companies to continue to strengthen service quality and their own capacity building. The industry believes that the year-on-year growth rate of YTO's business volume and single-ticket revenue performance for the whole year of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 are better than the industry average, which fully demonstrates that the competitiveness of YTO's products is continuously improving, and the company has the ability to achieve a good balance between scale and profit.
Recently, Tianfeng Securities reiterated YTO's "buy" rating in its research report, saying that YTO has continued to empower and iterate on headquarters and franchisees through digital capabilities in recent years, and the profitability of a healthy franchisee network is the foundation for the company to further improve its market share and profitability in the future.
In addition, it is worth noting that according to the top ten shareholder data disclosed by YTO this time, from 2022 to 2023, the top private equity firm Gaoyi Asset Management will continue to increase its weight in YTO, and currently holds 45.08 million shares, accounting for 1.31% of the total shares. In the first quarter of 2024, YTO has been increased by China Universal Fund, a large public offering institution, according to the data, which currently holds 35.06 million shares of China Universal Value Select Mixed Securities Investment Fund, a product of China Universal Wealth, accounting for 1.02% of the total shares. At the same time, the number of YTO shareholders continued to decline, and the shareholding concentration of powerful institutions increased significantly, reflecting market recognition in many aspects.