Image source: The Motley Fool. DATEFriday, June 6, 2025 at 8 a.
ETCALL PARTICIPANTSChairman and Chief Executive Officer — Cunjun MaChief Financial Officer — Ron TamCo-Chief Financial Officer — Kenny LoNeed a quote from one of our analysts.
[ tected]TAKEAWAYSOperating Revenue: RMB 284 million for the first quarter of 2025. Gross Written Premiums (GWP): Reached RMB 1. 4 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up 37.
83% sequentially from Q4 2024. First-Year Premiums Facilitated (FYP): RMB 730 million, increasing 37.
83% sequentially, though management acknowledged a YOY decline due to a high base effect in the prior year. Renewal Premiums: Apximately RMB 710 million for the first quarter of 2025, up 64.
6% sequentially from Q4 2024. Total Operating Expenses: Decreased by 29% compared to Q4 2024, enabled by AI integration and workflow automation. Expense-to-Income Ratio: Imved by 11.
5 percentage points quarter over quarter to 29% for the first quarter of 2025. Cash and Equivalent Liquidity: Stood at RMB 202 million (U. $28 million) at the end of Q1 2025.
Customer Growth: Added 90,000 new customers in the first quarter of 2025, bringing the total customer base to 11 million as of Q1 2025.
Long-Term Insurance duct Mix: Maintained focus, with over 90% of total GWP attributed to long-term ducts in Q1 2025.
Repeat Purchase Ratio: 38% for long-term ducts in the first quarter, indicating successful customer lifecycle monetization.
AI-Powered Platform Enhancements: AI agents now automate policy inquiries, duct matching, and claims cessing; Xiaoma Claim facilitated RMB 190 million across 46,000 cases during Q1 2025.
Vietnam Operations (Global Care): Increased total policy count by 29% compared to the first quarter of 2024 and GWP and revenue rose 35.
34% year over year compared to the first quarter of 2024, supported by expanded duct offerings and new partnerships.
International Revenue Contribution Target: On track for overseas to reach 3% of total revenue by 2026. SUMMARYHuize (HUIZ 1.
75%) achieved a sequential rise in premium volume for Q1 2025, marked by cost discipline, customer base expansion, and further integration of AI across cesses.
Management reported international operations as a significant growth lever, outlining concrete advances in Vietnam and pending entry into Singapore.
The company signaled a positive outlook for Q2 and Q3, citing an anticipated regulatory leveling of agency commissions that could benefit independent platforms, with increased agent migration and further duct breadth aiding scalability.
Investment in prietary AI models and digital claim handling is enhancing efficiency and user experience, while the duct suite is recalibrated to meet rising demand for participating and savings-linked offerings amid muted legacy return environments.
CFO Tam said, "the international, in terms of gross margins, is relatively lower than the domestic.
And therefore, I think that will be reflected in what you noted in terms of the gross margin decline in the first quarter of 2025.
"Tam stated, "If such a measure would be implemented in the second half of this year, we do expect that the so-called impact on our will be positive because what that means is that the playing field is leveled among the different channels, among bankers, brokers, and agencies, tied agencies.
"The omnichannel model and third-party distribution are increasingly favored, with China compared to 30%-50% in mature Asian.
Company digital transformation, including AI-powered marketing avatars and end-to-end automation, is now reducing duction time and cost for content and claims workflow, directly impacting expense trends.
Pony Insur, the international arm, is slated for operational launch in Singapore by Q3 2025, with Philippines market entry set for the second half as a secondary priority.
INDUSTRY GLOSSARYGross Written Premiums (GWP): The total premium (pre-reinsurance and cancellations) booked within the reporting period for all insurance contracts sold through the platform.
First-Year Premiums (FYP): Premiums on newly underwritten policies recorded during the first year of coverage, typically used as a measure of new policy sales volume.
Participating Insurance ducts: Insurance policies that vide policyholders with a of the insurer’s surplus or fits, usually in the form of dividends, subject to investment performance.
Expense-to-Income Ratio: A measure of efficiency, calculated as total operating expenses divided by total operating revenue, expressed as a percentage.
Full Conference Call TranscriptCunjun Ma: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Huize Holding Limited's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call.
In 2025, against the backdrop of macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, Huize Holding Limited upholds its customer-centric apach.
Leveraging years of insights into customers' needs, we stay ahead of market trends and are now working alongside leading insurers, continually expanding and refining our duct offerings.
At the same time, we are accelerating the integration of AI across our operations, driving remarkable ductivity imvements, and further optimizing our cost to lay the solid foundation for long-term value creation.
In the first quarter, operating revenue exceeded RMB 280 million with gross written premiums and first-year premiums facilitated on our platform increasing 38. 31% sequentially, reaching RMB 1.
4 billion and RMB 730 million, respectively. Renewal premiums also grew 64. 6% sequentially to apximately RMB 710 million.
Huize Holding Limited remains committed to viding full life cycle insurance solutions for its high-value customers.
By quarter-end, our cumulative number of users surpassed 11 million with 90,000 new clients added during the quarter.
The average age of long-term insurance customers was 35, with over 65% residing in high-tier cities, where we have consistently achieved this advantage over the past few quarters.
In terms of FYP, the average ticket size for long-term ducts rose 58% to over RMB 5,400, underscoring the effectiveness of our successful sustainable customer strategy.
As of March, we had strong partnerships with 43 insurance companies, continuing to develop and launch differentiated customized ducts with insurer partners.
With declining yields on traditional bank deposits and wealth management ducts, demand for wealth tection solutions has intensified.
In response, we partnered with Neutrolife to launch Please Note Free, the savings ducts driving to achieve sustainable returns for customers.
Additionally, we expanded our portfolio of customized participating ducts, building on the full and the series co-launched with Afibacopco.
We partnered with Cathay Ludiadre Life Insurance on Tmall, New June Number Six, participating in incremental whole life insurance ducts.
This was ed by the launch of Xinhai Huishuan, a participating annuity duct we developed with Primerica Fossil Life Insurance.
These customized ducts were designed to cater to the industry-wide demand shift from fixed returns to floating returns, further solidifying our leadership in China's participating insurance segment.
In view of our global expansion strategy, we introduced Xiaotao T Global, a children's critical illness duct co-developed with Cigna and CMB Life Insurance that leverages their overseas resources to offer global client settlement and overseas medical support.
The rapid advancement of generative AI and AI agents is transforming traditional enterprise workflows.
Under our AI plus strategy, we continue to enhance both the user experience and operational efficiency.
We have deployed the Huize AI agent development platform internally with the goal of independent AI ductivity.
Leveraging open-source AI models, we have implemented private domain deployment of large language models to ensure data security and regulatory compliance.
At the same time, we are actively moting the development of local AI agents to accelerate AI agent creation using visualization tools.
This is driving the company-wide ductivity revolution with AI agents acting as a new generation of digital employees.
In the quarter, we have further optimized our cost structure and reduced operating expenses, with total operating expenses falling by 29% sequentially.
Our customer-centric apach leverages innovative nologies to der personalized insurance service experiences.
During the quarter, we launched an AI-powered smart portal on Huize's app offering 24/7 insurance agent support.
Our AI services cover key customer life cycle touchpoints, including policy inquiries and duct matching, serving an average of over 15,000 users daily.
We are also revolutionizing after-sales claims cessing through Xiaoma Claims AI agents, achieving end-to-end automation of claims recording, review, and payout.
With AI now capable of handling all claims reporting, we are now working to extend this innovative feature to our apps and mini-grams.
This innovation is expected to reduce cessing time on Xiaoma Flash Claim from one day to one hour upon full rollout.
During the quarter, Xiaoma Claim facilitated RMB 190 million in claims across 46,000 cases, viding customers with efficient and reliable insurance claim services.
Our international brand, Pony and U, continue to der strong growth momentum, underscoring the vast potential of Southeast Asia.
Vietnamese operation Global Care maintained solid traction and grew total policy count by 29% compared to the first quarter in 2024, with gross written premiums and revenue increasing by 35.
34% year over year, respectively.
We recently partnered with Vitol Post, a leading logistics service vider in the region, to expand our distribution network further, growing our team of independent financial advisers and enhancing the reach and conversion capabilities of the G Cell platform.
On the duct side, GlobalCare launched five-year and ten-year critical illness insurance ducts in collaboration with PBI Insurance, enriching our duct portfolio to better meet customers' diverse tection needs.
Cognition continues to drive the transformation of the Vietnamese insurance market through innovation and marks a crucial milestone of our international expansion.
We are making steady gress in expanding into Singapore and other overseas and are on track to achieve our goal of reaching 3% of total revenue contribution from international by 2026.
Global macro and geopolitical conditions remain volatile, yet insurance demand in China and across Asia stays resilient with digital adoption accelerating.
Drawing on deep customer insights and AI-driven duct innovation, and strong momentum in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian, Huize Holding Limited dered another quarter of solid growth and operating agility.
Looking ahead, we will widen our range of savings and health ducts for high-value clients, embedding our self-hosted large language model platform across the service chain to lift efficiency and experience.
Internationally, Pony Insur will tap into Singapore and other priority, keeping us on track for overseas revenue targets.
Grounded in duct innovation, customer experience, and AI, we will continue to create win-win value for insurers and customers while dering sustainable long-term returns for holders.
This concludes my prepared remarks for today. I will now turn the call to our CFO, Mr. Ron Tam, who will vide an overview of our key financial highlights for the first quarter. Ron Tam: Thank you, Mr.
Ma and Kenny. Good evening, everyone in Asia, and good morning to those in the US.
Despite a challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical environment, we have dered yet another quarter of resilient performance.
During the first quarter, both total gross written premiums (GWP) and first-year premiums facilitated on our platform increased 37. 83% sequentially, reaching RMB 1.
4 billion and RMB 730 million, respectively. Total operating revenue remained at RMB 284 million.
Our financial position remains very robust with a combined balance of cash liquidity of around RMB 202 million or US dollar equivalent $28 million as of the end of March.
This resilient performance was driven by our efficient omnichannel distribution network, our focused efforts to continue to acquire high-quality customers from the market, and the deployment of advanced prietary AI solutions.
Crucially, we have made significant gress in executing on our international expansion strategy, which is a key growth driver for long-term sustainable growth for the company.
Our strategic focus has remained on long-term insurance ducts, which continue to account for over 90% of total GWP facilitated on the platform.
Leveraging our robust omnichannel distribution network and advanced AI solutions, we are significantly strengthening customer acquisition engagement, adding apximately 390,000 new customers during the first quarter of 2025.
This brings our total customer base count to 11 million as of the end of the first quarter.
In addition, the repeat purchase ratio for our long-term insurance ducts stood at a very high level of 38%, demonstrating our ability to continue to unlock the lifetime value of a high-quality customer base through effective upselling and cross-selling.
We have also seen reasonable reductions in all three kinds of operating expenses, ranging from 15. 8% to 48% quarter over quarter, which has imved our expense-to-income ratio by 11.
5 percentage points quarter over quarter to 29% in the first quarter of 2025. In addition, total operating expenses have fallen by 29% compared to the fourth quarter in 2024.
This reduction reflects decisive actions in continued workplace optimization and broad deployment of AI-driven automation, which has sharply reduced manual workloads and boosted efficiency throughout the flow.
These results demonstrate the strength of our intelligent cost control framework in dering real cost savings and ductivity gains in the.
A illustration of our AI-driven ductivity gains is the use of localized AI avatars in marketing.
These avatars can replicate a human voice and appearance in under a minute, ducing highly engaging insurance content that is virtually indistinguishable from a presenter.
Integrated with our content management platform, the system now automates script generation, editing, and distribution, creating a seamless end-to-end workflow.
As a result, we are scaling our social media presence with richer, more compelling content, materially reducing duction time and cost.
Our international growth engine, Pony Insur, dered yet another solid quarter and remains central to our long-term strategy.
Building on the success of our prietary AI toolset in China, we are now looking to deploy these solutions across our overseas operations to line workflows and der a more personalized customer journey.
Vietnam continues to vide a robust of of concept for our Southeast Asia playbook, and we are making steady gress towards entering Singapore this year. These initiatives will further.