FINV FinVolution Group
$3.40
FinVolution Group Q2 F2026 Earnings Call Transcript
AI Conference Call Analysis
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Conference Call Operator
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for participating in the second quarter 2026 earnings conference call for Finvolution Group. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to your host, Yam Cheng, Head of Capital Market for the company. Yam, please go ahead. Yes, Min.
Yam Cheng
Head of Capital Market
Hi all, thank you for joining our call. Welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. The company's results were issued through Newswire Services earlier today and are posted online. You can download the earnings release and sign up for the company's email alerts by visiting the IR section of our website. Mr. Tim Lee, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Alexis Xu, We will start the call with the prepared remarks and conclude with a Q&A section. During this call, we will be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures to review and assess our operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings press release. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor conditions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties are included in the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Finally, we posted a presentation on our IR website providing details of our results. Before I turn over to our CEO, we are dialing in from multiple locations, so if there is any delay in connection, please bear with us. I will now turn over to our CEO team. Team, please go ahead.
Tim Lee
Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Yam, and thanks everyone for joining us. Let me start with the big picture. For years, we have pursued one clear strategy. Internationalization. In a word, this volatile, that strategy matters more than ever. It let us take what we have learned and put it to work in markets that are ready for FinTech. And it helps us diversify away from any single market. That strategy served us well this quarter, and it is exactly where we are headed. Overall, the second quarter was a solid one. In China, a stable risk backdrop, together with the preemptive actions we took in early quarters, gave us a constructive environment to operate in. Overseas, momentum in Indonesia and Australia more than offset a deliberate temporary pullback in the Philippines. That is our diversification strategy working as a design. Let me turn to the results. Given the results in China in the fourth quarter of last year, the sequential trend is the most telling measure. Group volume rose 5% sequentially to 45 billion RMB and the revenue moved instead up 6% to 3.4 billion RMB. Net profit was 427 million RMB up 1%. But the finger we are most encouraged by is overseas. 54 million RMB in operating profit, up 17% sequentially. Overseas now account for roughly 27% of group revenue, and that share will keep rising for the rest of the year. Now let me dive into the two segments, starting with our Chinese mainland. At a high level, we booked 41 billion RMB in loan volume, up 6.5% quarter over quarter, a healthy continuation of the recovery that began at the beginning of 2026. That said, the industry was rattled by an isolated credit incident, which adversely impacted the risk and funding dynamics. I will walk you through in a bit. Right now, we are watching three priorities closely. I said quality, fundings, and regulation. First, I said quality. Coming into 2026, we expected a gradual recovery following the regulatory reset in the fourth quarter of last year. Two quarters in that played out as we expected through the first half. This continued to ease through the second quarter. C2M2 came down again from 0.68% to 0.56%. So we grew the book selectively focusing on the high quality repeat borrowers as we know well. The strategies generated 6% sequential growth in unique borrowers while keeping credit quality firm. Vintage credit cost was steady at roughly 2.7%. The environment has since turned. In July, an isolated credit event led institutional funding partners to reduce funding for loan facilitation. Many smaller platforms either excited or sharply cut loan origination. Separately, a regulation campaign around the collection industry has tightened the collection capacity across the industry. This creates a risk headwind for us in the coming quarters. While it is in the early stage, we are staying cautious on the risk of our portfolio. On funding, let me be direct. The same tightening sits behind our funding outlook. Our own funding held up well in the second quarter, but beginning in July, We are seeing the industry as a whole titan. As an institution, turn more cautious. For us, that could mean meaningfully lower origination volume and some upward pressure on funding costs. Here is how we are managing it. Our balance sheet and liquidity give us room. And our asset quality and compliance record matter more when funding partners get selected. We've already began allocating liquidity towards our China funding base, and we'll prioritize funding stability over near-term growth until the environment normalizes. On regulation, the new fee disclosure requirements took effect on August 1st, and we are compliant The online marketing rules take effect at the end of September and we are ready working with our partners to be ready. Now let's move on to the overseas segment. Our overseas segment is performing well. Volume rose 19% year-over-year and revenue reached 930 million RMB, up 18%. More important, These numbers are backed by real demand. Our unique borrowers more than doubled from a year ago to 5.3 million. Over the past two years, we have reached several important milestones. We have built a diversified portfolio of markets where temporary weakness in any one country can be offset by strength in the others. Last year, We absorbed an interest rate camp in Indonesia on the strength of the Philippines. This quarter, we deliberately dialed back origination as a new rate camp took effect in the Philippines. And that gap was fueled by structural growth in Indonesia and the progress we keep making in our newest market, Australia. As the country's growth is more balanced, and as we add more profitable markets, our growth trajectory would be increasingly predictable and certain. Our playbook remains the same, products expansion and customer upgrade. We use broad portfolio of easy-to-use financing products to attract customers to try out, and progressively cross-sell. and other credit solutions to build better unit economics over time. In Indonesia, Offline Buy Now Pay Later continues to lead the growth. Our partnership in various offline consumption scenarios continues to proliferate. Offline Buy Now Pay Later is now around 25% of the volume, comparing to single-digit contribution a year ago. In the Philippines, The rate camp took effect this quarter. We slowed down deliberately to protect quality. The same approach we have taken through past transition. And growth has typically returned once the new pricing settles in. In Australia, we further expanded our offerings to large ticket size. Lower interest rate products to attract consumers with strong credit profiles. for higher credit limit. While this is still preliminary, we plan to continue to pursue customer upgrade as core strategy. We also made further investment in building the opening banking infrastructure, giving us direct access to bank statement data and a far sharper grade on each borrower. Finally, ESG. In our business, trust is everything. In June, we published our eighth annual ESG report. On fraud prevention, we made 60 upgrades to our anti-fraud system, flagged more than 9,000 suspicious activities each day, and blocked over 17,000 fraud attempts. We also launched our own consumer protection system, Golden Satin Nail. It systematically integrates early risk warnings, complaint analysts, compliance users, and data dashboards to drive consumer protection governance from post-incidence handling towards proactive warning. And this resolves 74.5% of cases on first contact, with customer satisfaction at 98.5%. With that, let me hand it to Alexis for a closer look at the numbers.
Alexis Xu
Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Tim, and hello, everyone. Let me walk you through our key results for the second quarter. And please refer to our earnings press release for further details. Now let me discuss each of the segments. First, China. Market in China remains in a gradual recovery model. China's real GDP growth slowed down from 5% in the first quarter to 4.3% in the second quarter, on the back of subdued household consumer confidence. First, in Q2, revenue was on the 2.4 billion, up 8% sequentially, a direct result of recovering low volume during the quarter. Take rate stabilized at about 3.2%. in line with the first quarter. On risk, asset quality, our new loans held steady at 2.7%. Early risk indicators show signs of improvement on outstanding loans. The day one delinquency take up slightly from 5.2% to 5.3%, while the 30-day collection rate strengthened from 87% to 89%. Overall, C2M2 improved to 0.56% from 0.68% below the Q3 2025 level. While disappointed to a portfolio of improving credit quality, we are vigilant on the risk uptick following various industry events this July. Separately, funding costs rose a further 30 basis points increasingly. to 3.7%. Institutional funding supply began to tighten toward the end of the quarter, and we expect further upward pressure on funding costs in the coming quarters. On customer acquisition, we raised our risk appetite for repeated borrowers. Combined with acquisition costs holding at an attractive level, that bought our overall customer acquisition course down quarter over quarter. As a result, China's operating profit grew 4.3% sequentially to RMB 625 million. Sending to the overseas, overseas revenue rose 18% year-over-year to RMB 930 million. partially dragged by our deliberate pullback in loan origination in the Philippines. One priority for our overseas segment is to balance profitability with growth. By its nature, this business recognizes customer acquisition costs and credit loss upfront, while revenue is earned over time. That means profit is inherently back-loaded and the rapid growth on its own would leave the early years deeply unprofitable. We manage it deliberately against this dynamic, ensuring we deliver profit even as we scale. The second quarter was a case in point. RMB 54 million in operating profit, up 17% quarter-over-quarter and more than double year-over-year. Earlier this year, we guided to US $13 million of full-year EBITDA. Doubling from last year, we remain confident in delivery. During the quarter, we added 2.2 million new borrowers in the quarter, up 29% sequentially. Offline buy-not-pay later in Indonesia drove most of the new borrower momentum, a sign that our offline expansion is translating directly into new customers rather than just brand awareness. The Philippines continues to absorb the impact of the industry's new interest rate cap. We pre-actively scaled back originations this over the past two quarters. But the momentum should soon restart. In Australia, unique borrowers grow 22% sequentially, driven by effective online marketing, a wider product range, and a cleaner apps experience. Going into the next quarter, we continue to be mindful of the macros such as oil price may impose on currency as well as credit quality in market we operate. On a group basis, net revenue reached RMB 3.4 billion of 6% sequentially on the back of higher loan volume. Operating profit came in at RMB 529 million, which included a one-off intangible assets impairment of RMB 64 million. Excluding that impact, operating profit was up 8% sequentially. Net income was RMB $427 million, up 1% sequentially. We held RMB $6.4 billion in cash and short-term investments and leveraged that at 2.1 times, near historical lows. That balance sheet strength gives us the flexibility to navigate a tighter funding environment in China. Our shareholder returns. Our capital allocation is clear. We prioritize business growth first and use buybacks as our flexible level. Size to market conditions, trading volume, and the share price. In the second quarter, we repurchased the US 27.4 million of shares, bringing first half of 2026 repurchase to US 66.8 million. Now to our outlook. We are reiterating our full year revenue guidance of RMB 11.5 billion to RMB 12.9 billion based on information currently available. We set that range conservatively at the start of the year given industry volatility. Our first half performance tracked ahead of our internal plan. That gives us a cushion. The outperformance we delivered in the first half year helps absorb the softer second half we now expect as funding and credit conditions tighten. Given that near-term pressure, We would expect to land in the lower part of the range unless the operating environment substantially changes to summer. China is moving through a transition that we believe will favor players with strong compliance and operational know-how. Overseas is becoming a second growing source of profit. We go into the third quarter clear-eyed about the funding and the regulatory pressure ahead, and committed to the same simple execution that has carried us this far. Of course, both capital allocation and operations were focused on one goal, lasting, compounding returns for our shareholders. Thank you. We will now hand the call to the operator for questions.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask questions, please dial star 11 and wait for your name to be announced. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your questions to management in Chinese, we ask that you please kindly repeat your questions in English. One moment for our first question. The first questions will come from the line of Cindy Wang of China Renaissance. Please go ahead.
Cindy Wang
Analyst, China Renaissance
Thank you, Mr. Guan, for giving me this opportunity to ask a question. I have two questions I would like to ask. First, I would like to ask, after the orange platform incident, what kind of business adjustments have the company made to ensure that the risk can be controlled? And at present, why do we see the financial sector's public security situation? Thanks for taking my call. I have two questions here. First, Following the GE platform incident, what business adjustment did the company make to ensure risk control? What is the current funding supply situation? And will the recent exit of small size platform would lead to a resurgence of industry risk? And what are the recent changes in the company early risk indicators? What is the current interest rate adjustment situation in the Philippines, and will it affect the growth rate of overseas new loan volume this year? Thank you.
Alexis Xu
Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Cindy. I will take your questions. I think you have two questions, and your first question is a very big and multi-part question. So I will break it into different pieces. Let's start with what we are seeing on the funding side. After the June event, the credit and the liquidity issues at the individual platform did trigger some border volatilities in the funding across the loan position industry. So the first impact is the tightening of the financial institutions. The event raised concerns among the financial institutions about the fund flow safety. and the compliance of the platform. Since July, a lot of institutions have launched for internal self-checks and do some reviews for their partners. Some of them pause the business during that process, took a wait-and-see approach. That led to a fairly sharp near-term pullback in funding supply across the whole market. I think most of the small and middle-sized platforms have either existed or pulled back sharply on lending, and we are relatively less impacted, but our China volume was down around 50% in July. And looking at August, we believe institutional confidence has started to stabilize. But the funding recovery is still coming back at a slower pace. And what we have done to adjust our business for the for the challenge. So first is the transparency. We have worked very closely with our financial institution partners, give them the visibility into our fund flows and the repayment path, kept everything very clear, closed the loop, complex process. We believe it will help to ease their concerns And secondly, during this period, we have prioritized the quality over the skill. Further refined our customer segmentation, raised the underwriting bar, and prioritized the findings for our high-risk quality customers. And then turn to the funding outlook. I think over the long term, Financial institutions will keep reducing their exposure to those small platforms and focus on the big platforms that there are combined, will capitalize and have a strong risk track record. That's where we see it. I can show you some figures. In the second quarter, we had RMB 6.4 billion in cash and short investment. Cash flows stayed solid through July and August. And the latest number is RMB 7.5 billion. And on top of that, we have got roughly RMB 5 billion in highly liquidity assets. I mean, those cash we can recover very quickly in the near term. The aggregator number is 12.5 billion in total. That gives us a real resilience and forms the foundation for our leading positions in this industry and our long-term relationships with the founding partners. We think in the near term, there will still be some volatility as the institutions still need time to rebuild their risk appetite and work through their process reviews. So maybe in the next one or two quarters, I think, it comes down to two things. First, it depends on how fast institutions get through their self-checks and system fix. The pace varies a lot case by case. So industry-wide recovery hasn't quite caught up yet. and secondly, I think whether the border credit environment stays stable. As PL and SAS keep existing and assuming there is no new extreme event, so in that case, I would expect risk appetite and the confidence to gradually come back with the self-checked RAPA. Last, I will talk about our early risk indicators. This round of founding titan also overlapped with the regulatory action in the collection industry at the end of July. So collection results got tighter. And recovery efficiency took a bit of heat too. That added some challenges on top. Actually, we have seen some movement in our early risk indicators as a result. Our latest reading is up around 20% versus the second quarter. Given all of that, we are standing profit-focused resident tracing skill. We are also taking a more conservative posture on risk sharpening, how we identify higher risk barriers speeding up model iteration and tighten the acquisition spend. All our goal is at protecting our unit economics. So that's my answer for your first questions. And your second question is about Philippines. The Philippines sold out a new interest rate cap effective from April 1st. So heading to that, we took a pretty deliberate, cautious approach in the first half. We actually slowed down the originations on purpose to give ourselves room to adjust the business. Yes, short-term volume in the Philippines did take a hit, as we have mentioned before. But based on our experience navigating similar pricing adjustment in Indonesia before, We believe this kind of recovery typically takes about two or three quarters. So we expect the Philippines business will return to growth in the third quarter. And after the adjustment, the new regulator framework setting and as our mix shifts further toward high-quality borrowers, we have still got room to optimize both credit costs and funding costs, and the growth peaks back up from there. And to be clear, in the Philippines, I think we are not just cutting prices to comply with the new rules. We are using this as a chance to push a deeper structure upgrade across the B&As. For example, on the RIC side, We have raised our underwriting bar and the pullback on the marginal segment where raise and returns were not linear. Well, growing the share of higher quality borrowers, the ones with more stable repayment behavior and better repeated borrowing performance. And on the product side, we are continuing to diversify beyond the online cash loan product We have expanded into more scenario-based products like our binopilated product with the local smart shop company and carousel. That lets us more beyond a single cash loan product into a broader range of consumption and payment use case. We can match our better quality customers with the right credit line, tenure, and product, and then build the lifetime value through repeat borrowings. Now zooming out to the overseas business as a whole, the fee adjustment in the Philippines in the first half doesn't change the overall growth trajectory for our overseas markets. and there is rally thanks to the multi-market full point. The Q2 pullback in the Philippines was largely offset by the struggles in our Indonesia and Australia market. So heading to the second half, we expect the momentum in Indonesia and Australia to continue and also we expect and the Philippines to work through this adjustment period to get back to sequential goals. So for the full year, we are confident to expect the overseas volume to grow at a double-digit rate year-over-year. Okay, thank you.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Please hold for our next question. The next question now comes from the line of Alex Yeh of UBS. Please go ahead.
Alex Yeh
Analyst, UBS
Thank you for the opportunity to ask me this question. I have two questions. The first one is about capital costs. I would like to ask what level of capital costs we see in July and August compared to the second quarter. And do you think the capital costs will continue to rise in the next two quarters? The second question is about the use of capital. As domestic capital supply becomes a bottleneck, will we make some adjustments to the use of free capital? And how should we look forward to the recovery rhythm of 1-2 seasons in the future? So to translate for my question, first question is about the funding cost. So what have been the latest funding cost in recent months compared to Q2 and what's your expectation for the coming one to two quarters? Second question is that given funding supply has become a major bottleneck at the moment, so is there any adjustment that the company is going to make with regard to the utilization of your self In relation to that, how should we think about the pace of buyback in the coming one to two quarters? Thank you.
Alexis Xu
Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Alex. Your first question is about funding. We are seeing funding costs tick up in the third quarter, relatively to the second quarter, about around 30 basis points in July. And we expect the gradually upward trend to continue over the next quarter or two. So just given the border funding environment in China right now. And we believe short-term funding volatility is largely a matter of competence. So over the long run, we don't see the competitiveness of the quality asset strategy. If anything, it will only get stronger. Your second question is about the capital deployment and the buyback pace. So recently, you know, the funding tightness from that industry event has met a lot of financial institutions more focused on the compliance and the capital strengths and on Our side, we are leading into our own strong balance sheet and ample cash reserves. We have showed the figures before. We are offering a solid safety quotient and credit enhancement in our funding partnerships to work with them to build the institutional confidence and speed up the recovery. Now, we are also looking at and exploring the possibilities at the capital injections into our licensed business. For example, the micro-lending company as a way to diversify our funding sources and improve the stability. So that's for our China business. And on the other side, even near In the short-term, there is some pressures in the China market. Our long-term overseas build-out is already paying off. We are moving into a profit-release phase. So frankly, we have also noticed a lot of our peers accelerating their own overseas business lately. But for us, that's a valid two things. that we were ahead of the curve on this and the strategy itself was the right one. So with a mature, skilled overseas business already in pace, we have got a lot more patience and confidence to navigate the bumps in China. If anything, that's made us even more committed to exploring investment overseas For example, the founder acquisition in Australia the first quarter last year also gave us valuable experience entering the new market through M&A. So going forward, replicating the playbook through the capital allocation may be the smart move and can really help us to drive a healthy and fast growth overseas business. And the last on the buyback page, as we have mentioned, we will prioritize the study operations in business first. The study business in China and the fast growth business in overseas market. And from there, we will keep the flexibility to execute the buyback plan based on the share price and the market liquidity. But it will not change our long-term directions on shareholder returns. We will remain committed to return the capital to maximize the long-term shareholder's value. OK, operation, please continue.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next questions will come from the line of Youyou Fan from CICC. Please go ahead.
Youyou Fan
Analyst, CICC
Hello, thank you for giving me this opportunity to ask a question. I am Fan Youyou, an analyst at Zhongjin. I would like to ask about international business. Because the company also mentioned a year-round profit target for overseas business this year. In fact, from the distribution data of the first half of the year, the overall progress is still very well on track. So maybe I want to ask the management, if we look at the second half of the year, what will be the main driving force of our international business profit growth? I will quickly translate it here. Thanks for taking my question. This is Yoyo Fan from CIC. My question is on overseas business. We can see that the overseas business is well on track based on the first half of your data. So looking ahead to the second half of this year, what will be the key drivers of our overseas profit growth? Thank you.
Alex Yeh
Analyst, UBS
Okay.
Alexis Xu
Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Yoyo. Before I get into the specific drivers for the second half, Let me give you a bit of context. Looking back at how our overseas business has developed, I would say it has been marked by real foresight and the proactive strategy from the start. Back in 2018, eight years ago, when our China business was still enjoying strong growth, the group We have already made global expansion a long-term strategic priority. So over the past eight years, we have steadily built up our overseas foundation, securing license, establishing the local operations, and building out our fundings ecosystem. We proved that the model from zero to one in Indonesia and then replicate the experience in the Philippines and the other countries, and acquired the fund and entering Australia, upgraded the whole approach into what we now call the strategy, legal class. As the years of deliberate groundwork and sustained investment that allowed our overseas business to become what it is today, are material second profit engine delivering steady and meaningful profit for the group. And then let me go and get into the details in the second half. Looking ahead, we expect our three major overseas markets to work together in a very very complementary way. Indonesia contribute to the bulk of the incremental growth and the Philippines gradually recover, and Australia continues its rapid expansion. For Indonesia, which is the largest one, it already accounts for more than 50% of both our overseas volume and revenue. Even with the seasonal drag from remittance, we still delivered a solid 13% growth versus the second half year 2025 in the first half. So the second half chance to benefit from the traditional peak season. So we would expect some further improvement in growth. We are also continuing to build out offline binoculate products through our multi-finance lessons. And the customer segment tends to be high quality. Longer tenure and a larger ticket size, which will help us to keep improving our overall customer mix and finally drive the healthy returns. Okay, that's for Indonesia. And on the Philippines, in the first half, we made a deliberate choice to tighten up response to the new interest rate cap to raise our underwriting standards and to clean up our customer mix. So after the new price environment stabilized, we would expect the Philippines' volume to start to recover sequentially in the second half. And as the share of the high-quality customers keep rising, that will continue to bring risk down and support the ongoing improvement in the unit economics. And for Australia, as the news starts in our overseas expansion, It's very high compliance, high value developed market and the growth has been fast since we consolidated at the end of last year. And you know, in the second quarter, unit borrowers were up 22% quarter over quarter. It drove the volume to 70% sequentially. So we would expect Australia to keep going put up the double-digit secretion goals in the second half. Given the Australian customer tends to have larger ticket size and better risk performance overall, we think Australian contribution overseas profit will keep increasing as the customer base grows and more of our acquisition shifts to our partnering apps. So that's for our three major overseas markets. And in summary, our overseas business is no longer dependent on any single market. It's built on three things working together. And maybe in the near future, there will be more countries added in. Border products, diversification, continue the customer mix upgrade and our legal plus global platform so together we have built a cross regional growth structure that is really resilient through the cycle that's what give us the ability to to to better regulatory shifts in any single market and stays on track towards the long-term goal yeah you know uh we have a Our ambitious target by 2030, we expect the overseas revenue to reach more than 50% of the total group revenue. Okay, that's all for my answer. Thank you.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Questions now? I would like to turn the call back over to the company for closing.
Yam Cheng
Head of Capital Market
Thank you. Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please reach out to the Investor Relations team.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you very much.