- Revenue up 43% year over year to $32.6M (estimates @ $30.9M)
- Net income up 77% year over year to $2.0M or $0.10 EPS (vs analysts $0.07)
- Total operating costs and expenses for the quarter were RMB241.9 million (US$32.8 million), a 43.3% increase year-over-year.
- Cost of revenues increased by 35.2% year-over-year to RMB116.1 million (US$15.7 million), primarily due to the increased number of courses being offered to a larger student base and the greater number of schools and learning centers in operation.
- Selling and marketing expenses increased by 49.9% year-over-year to RMB38.1 million (US$5.2 million), primarily due to brand promotion expenses and headcount increase.
- General and administrative expenses increased by 52.6% year-over-year to RMB87.7 million (US$11.9 million), primarily due to increased headcount as the Company expands its network of schools and learning centers.
- Excluding share-based compensation expenses (non-GAAP), operating margin for the quarter was 5.8%, compared to 4.9% in the corresponding period of the prior year. This increase was primarily due to the improved operating efficiency as revenue growth outpaced the growth in operating costs and expenses.
- Student enrollment up 18.5% year over year to 217,500 (with 1.4 billion people that leaves some room for growth) ;)
- Opened 1 new private kindergarten in Beijing, and 14 new learning centers in the quarter. Total schools now 38, and learning centers 126.
- "During the second quarter of fiscal year 2008, we experienced continued strong growth in our student enrollments and net revenues, enabling us to beat our top line guidance," said Michael Yu, New Oriental's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "Furthermore, we continue to execute on our strategy of leveraging our leading brand name to enter new areas for growth by establishing our pre-school business with the opening of our first kindergarten in Beijing. To further enhance our content offerings in our educational programs and services, we reached an agreement with ETS to sell their TOEFL Practice Online in our training classes and through our bookstores. We also entered a partnership with Heinle ELT, a part of Cengage Learning, formerly Thomson Learning, to launch a line of custom learning materials tailored to our iEnglish brand conversational English language classes."
- New Oriental's Chief Financial Officer, Louis T. Hsieh, stated, "During our second fiscal quarter, we continued our strategy of foregoing short term profit in favor of rapidly expanding our leading nationwide network by establishing 34 new schools and learning centers in the first half of our fiscal year 2008 compared to 19 new schools and learning centers for the entire fiscal year 2007. In order to staff our rapidly growing physical network, we have added over 900 teachers and other employees in the first half of our fiscal year 2008. In addition to increasing our G&A spending, primarily due to headcount increases, we also increased our marketing expenses in the quarter by approximately 50% year-over-year in order to drive strong student enrollment and revenue growth. We expect to continue benefiting from this rapid expansion strategy in the quarters and years to come. Given the vast potential for growth in China's private education market, we are confident that we are well-positioned to continue capturing this lucrative market opportunity."
- Mr. Hsieh added, "We continue to see surging demand for our educational programs and services, and to the best of our knowledge, we have not as yet been adversely impacted by the economic slowdown and related events in the US, as almost all of our revenues are derived from the China market. We also continue to benefit from a strengthening RMB given that virtually all of our revenues are in RMB and are translated into US dollars for financial reporting convenience." (I love how management has the foresight to even mention that, as if it would be a concern - but they still addressed it)
- Mr. Hsieh noted that the second quarter of the Company's fiscal year is typically the slowest in terms of revenues as students are occupied with the beginning of the formal school year.
Outlook
- New Oriental expects its total net revenues in the third quarter of fiscal year 2008 (December 1, 2007 to February 29, 2008) to be in the range of RMB311.2 million (US$42.1 million) to RMB326.5 million (US$44.2 million), representing year-over-year growth in the range of 22.0% to 28.0%, respectively. [Analysts @ $44.75M]
- New Oriental's third fiscal quarter 2008 revenue growth rate will be especially challenging when compared to the third fiscal quarter of 2007 which showed year-over-year net revenue growth of 51.3%. The Company's third fiscal quarter 2007 benefited from the late timing of Chinese New Year in 2007 which fell in the third week of February 2007 allowing Chinese students an extended winter break and a longer period of time to take language training and test prep courses. This will not be the case in 2008 as Chinese New Year falls in the first week of February, a more typical date for the Lunar New Year holiday. In addition, many schools throughout China, including those in Beijing, have decided to shorten the 2008 winter break for students by one week or more in return for extending the 2008 summer recess by a corresponding length of time, in order to allow students time to study and enjoy the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.
I am adding to the fund position here around $70, and will lighten up when it invariably rebounds back to upper $70s. Unfortunately its technically broken its 50 day moving average with this selloff.
Long New Oriental Education in fund and in personal account
