Earnings call transcript: ZTO Express Q1 2025 sees revenue rise, stock gains

ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc reported a notable rise in revenue for the first quarter of 2025, driven by significant parcel volume growth. The company achieved a 9.4% increase in total revenue, reaching RMB 10.9 billion. According to InvestingPro data, ZTO maintains strong financial health with a "GREAT" overall score, and analysis suggests the stock is currently trading below its Fair Value. Despite a decrease in gross profit margin, the stock showed a positive market reaction, with a premarket increase of 2.61%, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s growth strategy and operational efficiency improvements.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue increased by 9.4% to RMB 10.9 billion.
• Parcel volume grew by 19.1%, reaching 8.5 billion parcels.
• Stock price rose by 2.61% in premarket trading.
• Gross profit margin declined by 5.4 points to 24.7%.
• Operating cash flow improved by 16.3% to RMB 2.4 billion.

Company Performance

ZTO Express has demonstrated robust performance in Q1 2025, primarily driven by a 19.1% increase in parcel volume. The company continues to leverage its strong brand recognition and industry-leading service quality to maintain its position in a competitive market. Despite facing intensified price competition and a decline in gross profit margin, ZTO’s focus on operational efficiency and technology investments has bolstered its financial performance.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: RMB 10.9 billion, up 9.4% year-over-year
• Adjusted net income: RMB 2.3 billion, an increase of 1.6%
• Gross profit margin: 24.7%, a decrease of 5.4 points
• Operating cash flow: RMB 2.4 billion, up 16.3%
• Parcel volume: 8.5 billion parcels, a growth of 19.1%

Outlook & Guidance

ZTO Express has set an ambitious full-year parcel volume guidance of 40.8 to 42.2 billion parcels, indicating a projected growth of 20-24% year-over-year. The company plans to continue investing in technology and operational efficiency to support this growth while maintaining high service quality. The strategic focus remains on expanding volume leadership in the express delivery industry.

Executive Commentary

Chairman Mei Song Lai emphasized, "ZTO will adhere to our healthy and sustainable growth goals." CFO Yan highlighted the importance of balancing volume growth with service quality, stating, "We continue to emphasize that volume is important, certainly, it needs to be supported by high quality of services." These statements underline the company’s commitment to sustainable expansion and customer satisfaction.

Risks and Challenges

• Intensifying price competition could pressure profit margins.
• Increasing proportion of lower-value parcels may impact revenue growth.
• Continued pressure on average selling prices could affect profitability.
• Macroeconomic factors and regulatory changes may pose operational challenges.
• Supply chain disruptions could impact delivery efficiency.

ZTO Express’s strategic focus on technology and operational enhancements positions it well to navigate the competitive landscape, although market pressures remain a concern.

Full transcript - ZTO Express Cayman Inc (ZTO) Q1 2025:

Conference Operator: Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sophie Li, Head of Capital Markets.

Please go ahead.

Sophie Li, Head of Capital Markets, ZTO Express: Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. The company’s results and the Investor Relations presentation were released earlier today and are available on the company’s IR website at ir.eq.com. On the call today from CTO are Mr. Mei Song Lai, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Mr.

Biniyan, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Lai will give a brief overview of the company’s business operations and highlights followed by Mr. Yan, who will go through the financials and guidance. They will both be available to answer your questions during the Q and A session that follows.

I remind you that this call may contain forward looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management’s current expectations and the current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the company’s control, which may cause the company’s actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements. Further information regarding this and other risks, uncertainties and factors is included in the company’s filings with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under law. It is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Mei Song Lai. Mr. Lai will read through his prepared remarks in their entirety in Chinese before I translate for him in English.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining today’s conference call. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, ZTO maintained its industry leading service quality, delivered a total parcel volume of 8,500,000,000.0, up 19.1% year over year and achieved an adjusted net income of $2,300,000,000 which increased 1.6 year over year. Our service quality, scale and profitability continue to lead the industry. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, the express delivery industry grow its parcel volume by 21.6%.

However, the proportion of lower value parcels further enlarged and price competition continued to intensify. In addressing the misalignment between volume growth and revenue expansion, we remained focused on service quality and volume growth. And while rejecting rational pricing practices, we strategically increased our penetration into the low value parcel segments. On one hand, continuously improved end to end timeliness and lowered unit costs through process standardization and integration. We were able to lead the way with speed to solidify brand advantages and leverage excellence to further efficiency gains.

On the other hand, as a part of the strategy to build long term competitive advantage, We beat up efforts to empower our network partners through keeping the policies relatively stable yet urge improvements in last mile service capabilities and cost competitiveness. Notably, the company has significant progress in developing differentiated products and services. First, ZTO earned greater trust opportunity deepen collaboration with e commerce platforms and their enterprise customers through continuously improved service quality and coverage. Retail parcel volume increased 46% year over year in first quarter with reverse logistics volume surged over 150%. We strengthened brand awareness and the customer loyalty, enhanced product mix brought a $0.12 positive shift in ASP for core Express services in first quarter.

Second, through digitization and accountability metrics, E and A transportation and sorting costs decreased by $09 year over year, demonstrating ZTO’s commitment to sales improvement as well as its ability to detect problems and come up with practical solutions effectively. Combining continuous cost efficiency gains and the disciplined SG and A spending, we maintained control over profitability amid intense competition. Entering the second quarter, the express delivery industry kept a high growth momentum, yet the price competition further intensified. Despite heated competitive landscape, we remain committed to strategic goals we set at the beginning of this year that is uphold high quality, outpace industry average volume growth and attain a reasonable level of profit. These specific initiatives and measures include the following four aspects.

First, enhance effectiveness of network policy by promoting cross regional collaboration and resource allocation from end to end. Set targets that are clear and aligned with market dynamics as well as tailor made to include performance specific incentive mechanism. Under the principles of fairness, transparency and uniformity, we will adopt tiered approach to specifically unlock volume potential by both new and existing customers, fostering a productive model that comes passive volume, profit and stability. Second, strengthen Last Mile capabilities and profitability by layering or delayering partner network structure appropriate, advancing the build out of network partner sorting capability and efficiencies, furthering initiatives such as establishment of direct linkage between outlets and last mile posts, offering sufficient profit share to incentivize couriers to service retail parcels and integrating commercial opportunities from local living. These efforts aim to reduce last mile costs, increase retail parcel penetration and enrich income diversification for network partners, all of which aim to drive growth in earnings for both outlet operators and the courier.

Third, continuously optimize revenue mix by meeting the quality demand by e commerce platforms and enterprise clients, refining differentiated e commerce logistics products and the supply chain management capabilities, enhancing brand recognition and the customer protection. Last but not the least, maximize resource utilization through systematic and the scientific resource planning, procurement and deployment, activate underutilized resources, optimize route planning and low rates through digitization and data analytics and establishment of a lifecycle management framework to unlock potential for greater operational efficiency. Over the past twenty three years, ZTO has evolved from handling less than 100 packages per day to processing over 100,000,000 parcels today with uncompromising industry leading service quality. And we started out with just a dozen or so employees and became a vast and collaborative network of over tens and thousands of partners and constituents. This transformation reflected the collective wisdom and dedication by everyone under the ZTO brand and embodiment of hope and trust by partners and the customers as well as desire and expectations from the country and society.

In response to today’s white hot competition and the structural challenges in volume compensation, ZTO’s strategic priority is to solidify our leadership in quality and scale while achieving a reasonable level of profit. We believe the shift in competitive landscape is accelerating. ZTO will adhere to our healthy and sustainable growth goals, reinforce our shared success philosophy, embrace data plus experience driven innovation and fulfill our social responsibility and create value. Remain grounded in the present now, we enter ourselves with foundational work and the tasks at hand. Inspired for future prospects, we proactively plan and fortify strategic long lasting mode.

Being practical and progressive, we aim to build an enduring enterprise that will strive for generations to come. Next, let’s welcome our CFO, Ms. Yan to present the financials results and outlook.

Yan, Chief Financial Officer, ZTO Express: Thank you, Chairman Lai and thank you Sophie. Hello to everyone on the call. As I go through our financials, please note that unless specifically mentioned, all numbers quoted are in RMB and percentage changes refer to year over year comparison. Detailed information on our financial performance, unit economics and cash flow are posted on our website, and I’ll go through some of the highlights here. In the first quarter, we adhered to the principle of profitable growth and continued to improve the quality of services customer satisfaction.

Our parcel volume grew 19.1% to reach RMB8.5 billion and we achieved RMB2.3 billion adjusted net income, which increased 1.6%. Total revenue increased 9.4% to RMB10.9 billion for the first quarter. ASP for our core express delivery business decreased 7.8% or competition. The $06 impact of decrease in average weight per parcel and $0.16 in incremental volume incentives were partially offset by the $0.12 positive mix shift from increased proportion of KA volume. Total cost of revenue was billion, which increased 17.9 percent.

Overall unit costs for the core express delivery business remained flat at $0.94 Combined unit costs of sorting and transportation decreased $0.9 for the quarter, benefiting from economies of scale and various cost productivity gain initiatives. Specifically, unit cost of line haul transportation decreased 13.2% to $0.41 driven by more effective route planning in conjunction with improvements in fleet operations. Unit sorting costs decreased 10.4% to $0.27 benefiting from improvements in automation and labor efficiency. Other costs of revenue included KA related pickup and delivery fulfillment costs paid to our network partners and on a total volume denominator basis, it increased $0.10 which was in line with Ka volume increases. Gross profit decreased 10.4% to RMB2.7 billion and gross profit margin rate decreased 5.4 points to 24.7%.

SG and A, excluding SBC, decreased 13.5% to $517,000,000 SG and A expenses, excluding SBC as a percentage of revenue decreased to 4.7% reflecting strong corporate cost efficiency. Income from operations increased 6.1% to $2,400,000,000 and associated margin rate decreased 0.7 points to 22.1%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 0.7% to $3,700,000,000 and operating cash flow was $2,400,000,000 for the quarter, which increased 16.3%. Capital expenditure for Q1 totaled $2,000,000,000 and we anticipate our annual CapEx in 2025 to be between 5,500,000,000.0 to $6,000,000,000 Now moving on to business outlook. Based on our assessment of today’s market conditions and business plan performance outlook, our 2025 full year parcel volume guidance of $40.8 to $42,200,000,000 which equates to a 20% to 24% increase year over year.

These estimates represent management’s current and preliminary view, which are subject to change. Now this concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for questions. Thank you.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session.

Conference Operator: Session.

Conference Moderator: The first question today comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Ronald Keung, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Thank you management for taking my question. The first is want to hear about the competition, particularly into the second quarter, given our target, which is to still grow faster than the industry volumes, seeing that the first quarter, I think, was slightly slower than the industry. So I want to hear how much of investments are we willing to make and take to achieve this volume target? And what will be the implications to absolute profit for the remainder of the year? Second is we’ve seen a very good growth for your retail parcels and also reverse logistics.

I want to hear the scale of this business and some of the main targets for this business. Thank you.

Yan, Chief Financial Officer, ZTO Express: Thank you for your question and I will translate for Chairman’s answer. First of all, our goal to achieve our volume growth and this is still consistent with our strategy, ensuring quality of services and focusing on volume leadership and expanding that leadership while achieving reasonable level of profit. The most recent performance particularly in first quarter while we maintained overall structure of the network policies to be stable, we specifically introduced the existing volume versus incremental volume policies to incentivize our network partners. So on an overall result basis, we have narrowed the gap between our volume growth to industry average. Certainly there is still a gap and then we intend to continue to narrow that because our overall annual strategy remains and our goal or our guidance for the total year continue to is still staying as we reiterated our guidance.

So for the second part of the question, we have focused on upgrading our revenue structure and particularly achieved great results as associate with the retail parcel and particularly reverse logistic parcels. In the first quarter, our daily parcel volume averaged around 6,000,000 and year over year increase of 45%, which is significantly outpacing the overall market growth. And among these, we have the reverse logistics exceeded daily volume of $3,500,000 and a year over year growth over 150%. So these are our continued focus as we deepen our cooperation with major e commerce platforms, which are also expanding their reverse logistic operations so that we are focusing on measures such as reversing transportation capacity, we train our network partners to be more efficient and meeting the quality requirements and implementing incentive policies to ensure service upgrades and expand the operating regions coverage. So as of late, we are looking at our parcel volume increasing even more significantly reaching towards 8,000,000 or even at peak days over 10,000,000 parcels a day.

In connection with the competition, the reverse parcels per unit price also sustained pressure. However, the reverse logistics services has a high barrier for entrance. ZTO’s early mover effort as well as our focus and deep relationship that’s built with the platforms will allow us to continue to outpace the rest because everybody else, our peers are also focusing on this area. We hope to continue to improve the capacity as well as responsiveness to two door delivery and two door pickup to help our couriers in servicing our customers properly. As you are aware that improvements of our network partner as well as our couriers earnings through increasing their proportion of retail parcel to total delivery or e commerce parcel, their earnings will significantly improve and that adds to the stability of our overall network.

Ronald, I hope this answers your question.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Chinlei Zhang with Morgan Stanley. Go ahead.

Conference Moderator: Thank you, Lai Zhong, Anton and Sophie, for taking my question. I have two questions. The first question is about unit revenue and cost. On the unit revenue side, we have seen that in the first quarter, the volume incentives went to This was higher than about RMB0.04 in the first quarter of last year and RMB0.02 for the full year of last year.

So going forward, how should we forecast unit volume incentives going forward for full year? And on the unit cost side, we see that in the first quarter, if we exclude impact from Ka, the unit cost reduction seems to be more significant than we anticipated at the beginning of the year. So taking into consideration of the first quarter performance and also it seems like the fuel price are stay relatively low this year. Do we have any like updated forecast in terms of unit cost reduction for the full year? And my second question is about AI.

So we know that we do have been very proactively explore the application of AI into its management and operations. So maybe can you update us, is there any progress with the AI’s application into business year to date? And going forward, how do you see the potential impact from AI’s application, the merge of AI with our business, the impact from that front in terms of our competitive edge versus peers and in terms of like earnings performance? Thank you.

Yan, Chief Financial Officer, ZTO Express: So we will continue in Kelly’s question.

Sophie Li, Head of Capital Markets, ZTO Express: Can you hear us, operator?

Conference Operator: Your line is coming.

Conference Moderator: Yes, we can hear you. Okay.

Yan, Chief Financial Officer, ZTO Express: Thank you for your question. The first question relates to our unit revenue and cost. The SPA decline largely attribute to two aspects of the Q1 market environment. One is the competition really reached white hot stage. The pricing at the front end is continuously sustained pressure from competition.

And then two, the proportion of lower weight or small parcels continue to increase and that both of these give rise to the necessity of first of all increased incentives to

Conference Moderator: meet

Yan, Chief Financial Officer, ZTO Express: the competition, some of which are specifically targeted to ZTO. And then two, we do have the positive impact from the reverse NKA volume that is growing significantly and outpacing the total market and that contributed about $0.12 to offset the volume incentives and way per parcel decline. So going forward, we continue to emphasize on the fact that volume is important. Certainly, it need to be supported by high quality of services. So balanced approach continues to be our theme and when necessary, the volume will be prioritized focus.

So with high quality of services, the price and the volume will be adjusted accordingly based on the market condition and competitive situations in specific markets and that is our intention to go forward. So again in overall for your first question relating to revenue or per parcel unit revenue, the pricing is largely driven by competition. On the cost side, we have continued to move forward on our cost efficiency gain initiatives. In the first quarter, the parcel per unit transportation cost decreased by $06 and sorting decreased by $03 These cost reduction was both driven by economy of scale from the growth in the business volume and as I mentioned earlier decline in weight and continued cost cutting helped in a way to improve our operating efficiency measures. Specifically, we refined our management of the operating process, continue to strengthen standardization of each segment throughout the whole process and we also scientifically set cost standards as benchmark utilizing information technology tools to track and compare data in real time which allows us to detect anomalies more promptly and pinpoint optimization methodologies or solutions more accurately.

Second, we also optimized compensation structure. We increased the proportion of performance based pay in our wage structure linking incentives to operational efficiency, task complexity and workload thereby motivating employees to work more proactively and more efficiently. And third, we set responsibilities in a much more granular level. We have paired up drivers to specific vehicles and leveraged a parcel tracing system to locate operational along operational process issues or problems that arise. This ensures that responsibility is assigned to each position with clear reward and reprimand mechanism to ensure standardized operations at every step to the extent possible.

In the future, we will continue to upgrade and leverage technology tools to transition from reactive to active management and achieving more precise and proactive control of the entire process quality. And at the same time, we will promote further use of smart technology equipped equipment to reduce dependency on manual labor and further expand cost reduction potential in the transit process. Additionally, we will place greater focus on optimizing cost across the entire production chain by enhancing outlet infrastructure and strengthening the direct linkage between outlets and last mile post which will help further reduce delivery or pickup cost throughout the entire process at the outlet level. The next question relates to our AI application in our business operations. AI has been widely applied in multiple scenarios at ZTO.

For example, in our sorting operation, machine vision technology has effectively reduced sorting errors. Our route planning as another example, our monitoring technology and advanced algorithm have optimized delivery route planning and in order to in order allocation process, our four segment barcode recognition capability are automatically generating much granular level of delivery directions and help us to launch a larger knowledge based model allowing not only our employees to quickly identify work inquiries or guidelines as well as the network couriers to more efficiently planning their delivery route so that their service capacity and capability will be freed up to further focus on retail parcels. Looking ahead, we’ll continue to actively explore the application of artificial intelligence in last mile delivery, autonomous vehicles and other areas to continuously at the right pace matching technology with the operational upgrade and improvements so that we will continue to harvest benefits from ever improving technological advancements. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you very much. The next question comes from Amy Han with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Conference Moderator: Let me translate for myself. So the first question is about cost. So what is our progress in the direct linkage in the first quarter? And how large can direct linkage or, let’s say, the whole value chain cost optimization contribute to our unit cost cuts in the franchise and also in the whole value chain this year? And second question is related to the parcel volume growth in the market competition.

So the June 18 shopping factor there is approaching. So what is our expectation on the parcel volume for the shopping as of the volume growth? And will the price competition be from East in the first six seasons? And because the price competition came earlier and more intense in this year, So what is our view on the room for further ASP drop for the industry?

Yan, Chief Financial Officer, ZTO Express: Thank you very much for your questions. First of all, on our direct linkage from outlet to the last mile of course, it is bit of progress. This year we have focused on optimizing outlet layout and promoting direct sorting and direct delivery to increase the portion of end to end direct linkage. Now this is a critical mission for our overall business focus. The goal is to clearly reduce the last mile delivery cost and increase the outlets earning.

Our goal of $42.640800000000.0 to $42,200,000,000 goal of total year annual volume would translate into about $4,000,000,000 of additional cost savings, hence earning improvements for the network partner at the outlet level. So given an example for the work that we put in mostly relates to introducing sorting equipment to help improve the process efficiency of our outlets. On average, we have installed certain equipment that will automate the sortation work done by the outlets and typically that single machine can sort 8,000 to 9,000 packages per operation timeframe. And for those outlets that have at least 30,000 packages per day are suitable for installing these equipment. So to give you some specific examples, these will help reduce the sorting cost and based on the current situation of $02 for the location fixed cost is about $03 if you bring the package from our sorting super sorting center to the outlets, the transportation cost will be about $05 So this together $0.10 saving equates to the $4,000,000,000 that I referred to earlier.

So this process of establishing direct linkage is aimed at not to our profit statement, but to our network partners to ensure their ability to improve efficiency, reduce cost and secure or solidify the network stability because as you know as competition heats up and into today’s white hot in today’s white hot condition it becomes ever so important to maintain trust, hope and belief of the network partners. So our strategy is very clear as the entire industry sustains pressure from the profit even though volumes are growing as a total yet front end pricing decreasing and proportion of small and light parcels continue to increase everybody including ZTO everybody in the industry are feeling a pinch and as you might be able to see from everybody’s earnings announcement. So we are focusing on ensuring the connectivity between the super sorting center to outlets to the network couriers are properly set so that interests are balanced and aligned. The division of duty as well as the rewards are suited for today’s competitive environment because without a stable network we have no future to speak of. So on that our goal being reiterated for the full year as it draw near to the second half of the year, we would be continue to monitor the market, be flexible and disciplined in our pricing practice and support our network partners in their stability as well as long term trust and belief so that we can all work together to bring in after the storm normalized market growth in the long run.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Yan, Chief Financial Officer, ZTO Express: Thank you everybody again for joining today’s call. As we mentioned that we continue to focus on being our best and putting setting our sights on of course the competition at hand and as well as at the same time allocating necessary resources to build strong momentum in narrowing the gap to the industry growth in volume as well as building for a stronger foundation for the future of our business. And we welcome your question and discussions with us in the next after today’s call and look forward to speaking to you all.

Conference Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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