Js Global Lifestyle Co Stock

Dear analysts and investors, good morning. Welcome all of you to come to this 2025 Annual Conference of Global Investors (sic) [ JS Global Lifestyle Company. ] I am [ Jiaohui Zhao ] from our investment department, and this is conducted in Chinese. If you require English interpreting, please switch to English channel. And because there are so many participants today [Operator Instructions]. Thank you so much for cooperation and understanding.

Before the meeting begins, I would like to make a few routine reminders. First, the conference will be recorded. The relevant meeting material will also be published on the company's official website. You're welcome to review them after the meeting.

Second, the management's remarks may contain forward-looking statements regarding future operations. Such statements are subject to uncertainties and actual results may differ from those statements. We also may refer to some certain non-IFRS measures to better present business performance. Please refer to the definition and methodologies provided. So we will get it officially started. The agenda will be as follows: first, management will provide a brief overview of the annual results and the business progress, and then we will come to -- there's a Q&A session to communicate with investors and analysts.

Now first, please allow me to introduce the company's management today. They are: Executive Director, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Han Run; Chief Operating Officer and Head of Finance Office, Mr. Liu Ningqing; Head of Finance of this Joyoung Division, Mr. Kan Jiangang.

So now we will proceed. And we first have Ms. Han Run to make this opening speech, and she will also do this introduction about the key points about the annual operation.

Investors, good morning. Welcome you to come to this 2025 annual performance presentation. And thank you so much for your participation. First, please allow me to give an overview of the company's overall operating performance in 2025.

In 2025, the group achieved a revenue of USD 1.6 billion, up by 4.1% and gross profit was USD 534 million, up by 4.6% and gross margin increased by 0.2% to 32.2%. And from this adjusted basis, we also have $524 billion (sic) [ $524 million ] of third-party revenue is up by 13.2% with a corresponding gross margin of 33.5%. Adjusted net profit reached USD 31.1 million, representing a Y-o-Y increase of 338%. As we can see that the business is actually very strong with third-party business, a significant improvement, and we also can see that the adjusted profitability is also very obvious.

For the full year of 2025, the Joyoung division achieved a modest growth in domestic sales, supported by differentiation of the products. We also have done measures such as improved sales expense control and enhanced expenditure efficiency, it has also realized a profit recovery. SN APAC has also achieved this rapid growth of the revenue. Although we are still in this period of investment, its overall expense ratio has already been improved. It is evident that in 2025, while maintaining steady revenue growth, our group has also further enhanced the growth potential and earnings resilience of its core businesses.

And looking at different markets, the Japanese market continued to maintain its positive development momentum. In the Japanese cordless vacuum cleaner market, Shark's brand strength and product competitiveness continued to improve. At the same time, company continued to launch new products in Japan, including upgraded portable blender and cooking appliances, further enriching the product portfolio of Ninja in Japan.

Our core categories in the Australia and New Zealand markets have also continued to perform strongly, mainly driven by strong performance of new products such as cordless vacuum cleaner, frozen beverage makers and coffee machines. In other countries and regions across APAC, we are also actively expanding and accelerating our presences. So my colleague, Leon, will also provide you a detailed breakdown and analysis of the regions and categories later. We also believe that with the firm implementation of the group's 3 core development strategies in APAC, we are also confident in maintaining the growth momentum of SharkNinja in APAC.

At the same time, the Joyoung division, which focuses on the Mainland Chinese market, we are also undergoing positive changes, driven by policies such as the trade-in programs and the government fund subsidies at various levels of the Chinese government driven this mid- to high-end products. In response, Joyoung has launched our -- a series which leverage core selling points such as high-quality, appealing design, excellent cost performance ratio as well as health and wellness. While enhancing the consumers' quality of life, these products also better address our emotional needs.

And we also have also realized this implementation of the international overseas office and the deployment of the team. In 2026, we will also carry on expansion of Belt and Road countries and Southeast Asia. We will also promote a lot of localized products and to drive this new growth points of Joyoung.

So that's all for me. I would like to give the floor to Leon for further detailed interpretation of all the different regions and different parts of the business.

Thank you, Madam Han. And later, I'm going to share with you our 2025 performances. And by different division, Joyoung 2025 third-party revenue has reached USD 1.032 billion and is having a small growth compared with USD 1.021 billion last year. The main is still about the soybean milk maker and food preparation.

And SN APAC is actually reached a very high growth. It's about 56%, and they are mainly driven by several different aspects. The first one is about the new product being so successful and the new category being improved significantly as well as expenditure and exploration about the new markets. You also can see that while SN APAC is continuously unleashing the growth momentum. Our Joyoung business is also operating steadily.

If we break down by different regions, the growth are mainly coming from ANZ and Japan. ANZ is actually the most outstanding growth, up by 73.5% Y-o-Y and driven by increased market share in core categories, [indiscernible] about cordless vacuum cleaners and ice cream maker and smoothie maker as well as the new coffee machine we promoted to market at the end of the year, which all have driven the positive growth.

The revenue was USD 158 million in Japan, up by 41.1% with this fierce competition. Our cordless vacuum cleaner has also still continued its growth and the successful launch of this blender further driven growth in the food preparation. And the Korea's revenue grew by 28.2% Y-o-Y to USD 91 million, maintaining steady growth, mainly benefiting from the continued increases in market share in cleaning and food preparation like our blender.

And the Chinese revenue was USD 1.017 billion, up by 1.3% despite the fierce competition. We also have the differentiated products and driven by this diversification, we are also having a quite good revenue growth, but it's partly offset by the decline of the categories such as rice cooker. And other regions, revenue was USD 44 million, up by 51.7%, it's mainly from the success expansion in Southeast Asia, like Singapore and Malaysia.

And the gross profit and gross margin, you also can see in 2025, our gross margin from third-party revenue was 33.5%, represented a slight decrease. And with the SharkNinja APAC segment driven by factors such as higher freight costs compared to prior periods with our high gross margin of that. Generally speaking, I think that the gross margin, we are still performing very stably. And with the fierce competition, our resilience of the profitability have also been strengthened.

Now let's check the operation efficiency. In 2025, the gross inventory turnover days were 48 days. The trade receivable and notes receivable turnover days were 98 days. The trade payable and notes payable turnover days were 175 days compared with last year, there was no significant changes. It could be able to support the pace of business expenditure as well as the growth in the different regions.

Now let's check this capital structure. In 2025, our CapEx was USD 29 (sic) [ USD 29 million ] with no significant change compared to last year. Until the end of 2025, our total debt structure was about USD 80 million and USD 50 million was a 1-year loan denominated in RMB and then the remaining was a loan denominated in USD maturing in January 2027.

Meanwhile, until the end of 2024, the previous noncurrent liabilities have all been paid back. And we also can see from the perspective of overall debt structure, the group's debt-to-equity ratio increased from 0.05x in 2024 to 0.14x in 2025, which is a very stable range. It has supported the healthy development of the business expansion as well as maintained the flexibility financially.

From business, now let's first check Joyoung. As Ms. Han mentioned, our core category internal sales has achieved a very good growth and the soymilk maker category grew by 30%, mainly due to the launch of differentiated innovative products to set industry trend and effectively address the pain points. Water purifier is more catering to the Chinese consumer needs. The cookware category reversed its decline and achieved a growth of 3% Y-o-Y, reflecting a positive impact of adjustments in product and channel strategies. Overall, Joyoung has maintained our growth in our fundamental traditional advantages.

And the next thing is about the growth in emerging channel is also very good quality, taking Douyin as an example. Our market share in Douyin from 6.1% in 2023 to be improved to 6.9% in '25, showing a continuous growth trend and our relative price index from 214 in 2023 to 275 in 2025, significantly higher than the peers. This demonstrates we not only expanded our growth and also realized a better operating quality and better price tier upgrades.

So there are two points. The first one, we constantly adhere to self-live broadcasting as this is format on the Douyin channel and implemented various live stream methods. And next is also we have increased the high-end and mid-end products with differentiated innovation to set us apart. In 2026, we also will look at several aspects, products, channels and efficiency. Product side -- from product side, we will focus on this definition of new consumer scenarios, adopting mid- to high-end pricing and purchasing systematic innovation.

On the channel front, we also further streamline our store matrix and implement unified pricing and achieving omnichannel data tracking, increasing the proportion of direct operating channels. The final goal is very obvious. We hope to have more market share, better gross margin and optimizing the efficiency.

Now let's check SN APAC. First, Japan. According to GfK data, Shark's market share in 2025 has reached 24%, 22%, 25% and 25% in 4 quarters of 2025, two 25% in the last 2 quarters. That is to say our brand strength and competitiveness have also been continuously improved. And we are also promoting some new products, for example, portable blender and Ninja Crispi, Ninja Possible Cooker. These new cookware products have also opened up new growth opportunities in the future.

Next page, we could also see ANZ. ANZ performance is still very, very bright and the Shark cleaning revenue up by 16% Y-o-Y. Ninja food preparation revenue has grown up by 168% Y-o-Y and cooking and beverage up by 79%. And we also have this PowerDetect Clean technology and automatic dust collection, new version of cordless vacuum cleaner has seen a very good performance. We have also promoted a lot of new products in the fan category like FlexBreeze, Tower Fans and HydroGo have all got a very good market response.

For food preparation category, the overall category, what we are having stand in -- our products like Ninja Slushi, ice cream maker as well as the new generation of this very high emotional value, Ninja Swirl ice cream maker have all seen very bright, very prosperous development. And Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier in coffee category established our market leadership with just a few weeks of the launch. This is a new product approaching the end of last year for this new category. We only have 1 SKU, only 2 colors, have already achieved a very good result in Australia. Generally speaking, ANZ market has already formed a growth pattern driven by multi-categories.

For South Korea, in 2025, our revenue has reached USD 91 million and continued our strong growth, and it is having a further improvement compared with 17 million (sic) [ USD 71 million ] last year by different categories, Shark cleaning up by 44%, beauty & home grew by 63%, food preparation from Ninja up by 3%, cooking and beverage grew by 21%. The growth mainly coming from our floor cleaning and Ninja's blender, the categories -- especially the light cordless vacuums in the one-key clear and smart IQ detection technologies, there have been a strong growth. And Ninja Blast Max, which is the portable convenient blender and the Detect Power Blender, these new types of the blender have also enhanced the food preparation category, maintaining its strong position as the second largest category.

So facing 2026, SN APAC will continuously innovate the core categories and expand into the new categories. For example, Ninja Crispi in 2025, at the year-end, we launched the products. So in '26, we will continuously iterate the product and Ninja Swirl, Ninja Luxe Cafe and Shark FlexBreeze HydroGo. The fan products will also continuously boost the growth for the future.

And also, we have seen the newly expanded market are starting to contribute more revenues. And in the past 2 years in New Zealand, Japan and South SN APAC has scaled up, and we also expanded to other SEA markets. And in the second half of '25, we also accessed into Taiwan, China. And in this newly expanded market, the revenue has been increased from $13 million to $29 million in '25 with a year-on-year growth of 129%. It means that in these new markets, we are scaling up, which has also provided new flexibility and elasticity for the future growth.

So generally speaking, in '25, there had been several features for our group's growth. The first is third-party business growth is strong. And the second is the net profit after adjustment has been enhanced strongly. And the APAC has continued to act as a growth engine and Joyoung maintained a steady growth. And the innovation channel development and the regional expansion has been going on smoothly. So going forward, we will continuously focus on product innovation, channel optimization, operational efficiency and regional expansion so we can promote the high-quality and sustainable development. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Han and Leon for your sharing. Next, we will start the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Let's start the first question, please raise your hand, okay that will come from Ruilin from CLSA.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

So I am Feng Ruilin, an analyst from [indiscernible]. So I have 3 questions. I will ask them one by one. The first question is about the gross margin. We can see that the third-party transaction has maintained a high growth, but I can also see that the gross margin had dropped slightly. So my question to the management is what are the reasons behind this?

And also in New Zealand, Australia and Japan, the competition has been more ferocious. So I'm wondering whether there will be some impact on the gross margin because of the competition and whether you're going to adopt some measures to maintain a relatively steady gross margin. This is my first question about gross margin.

Okay, Ruilin. And Leon, can answer the first question?

Okay. Thank you very much for your question. And you're very careful about the indicators. Indeed, there has been a slight change of the gross margin. Let me explain a little bit. So in Joyoung segment, the gross margin in the first half had dropped slightly, but in the second half, it increased a little bit because of the optimization of the product structure.

And the second thing because SN APAC had a higher proportion. And at the group level, the gross margin has increased and SN part has been contributing to that enhancement. And also for SN APAC, there is accounting measure impact, the freight accounting to the cost in '24 and '25, this number have been increased a little bit. And the gross margin of the product itself, excluding these factors, had been very stable. And in '26, we will continue to improve the gross margin, mainly through the optimization of the product mix to offset the headwind of the competition.

And also understand that in New Zealand, Australia and Japan, there have been more competition, especially by the price down from our competitors. So you may have seen that over the past few years, we continuously promote the new products, the vacuum cleaners, and food preparation products, and we introduce new products to the market every year and facing the competition and the price stress, on the one hand, we are going to moderately reduce the price for the existing products. But more importantly, we are going to emphasize on the introduction of the new products, especially those with high profitability and the gross margins so that we are able to maintain a very healthy gross margin level.

It's very clear. So my second question is [ then ] about the net profit margin. So you can see that on the financial report, the adjusted net profit had increased a lot. So I wonder whether you can break it down to us a little bit. What are the reasons for the increase? And also in my previous exchange with the company, I remember that you have mentioned the equity incentives for the employees. If I remember that correct, it should be a 3-year period, and I think it's close to the end. And I wonder whether the net profit will no longer be influenced by this equity incentives project.

Okay. I will continue to answer your second question. Indeed, about RSU, it's a 3-year period starting from '23 ending '25 and it will have a very limited impact on our performance in '26 because some of the RSU is related to the period of taking positions of employees. So most of it has been accrued by the end of '25.

So speaking of adjusted net profit growth, it's been tripled and it's reached USD 31.1 million and there have been several recoveries. The first is optimization of the real-time price expense and the enhancement of the displacement efficiency, we have recovered the net profit. And in '24, it was a abnormal drop. And the second thing is that although APAC is still in investment period, as we had mentioned, we will have a 3- to 5-year investment window. But in '25, including the investment of the new products, expansion of the teams, as well as investment of the new offices, we have more detailed and intensive management. And in terms of the profit contributions SN APAC has been stronger.

So going forward, I would like to report to you about our measures in consolidating our net profit. The first is to enhance the mature market like ANZ and Japan. We will have a more efficient management such as the inventory promotions and receivables, collection of the fees. And the second is to continue to optimize the portfolio of products such as gross margin and net margin will be further improved. So we wanted to have a higher proportion of the categories and the products that drives the high profitability.

And the second is to coordinate the supply chain management so that we can reduce the cost and improve efficiency. Number four, we will have a more prudent investment in the new markets. Although in APAC, we're still in the investment stage, but does not mean that we will just carelessly spend a lot of money on these markets. We will have a very careful and prudent investment strategy.

Okay. It's very clear. And my last question, it's a more long-term question. So we can see SharkNinja APAC had a scaled up. It's no longer a very small business. So I'd like to ask the management at the revenue side, can you give us a guidance? Or at the bottom line, can you give us a guidance what are your measures to maintain the long-term profitability?

Well, this is a very good question, but you may also have seen that in the previous years, we didn't provide any specific guidance. But from my side, what I can tell you is that we will definitely continue to maintain a healthy and sustainable growth to promote the expansion of the market. And I believe this market will maintain strong. We will be able to be in a very strong position.

So going forward, the APAC market is still big. And if you take a look at the peers in the same categories SN APAC is one of the fastest-growing company. And especially in New Zealand and Australia and Japan, excluding our brand, then you will see that the whole market is dropping. So we are actually driving the growth of the whole market. And we believe that in '26, we will continue this momentum of growth. And as we have mentioned before, with the efficient management, improvement of cash flow and profitability management, we will maintain the healthy and high-quality growth.

No more questions from my side, and I wish your business going better and better.

And next, let's welcome the next investor.

[ Julien Fung ] from Huatai Home Appliances. Dear management, I have 2 questions about the SN APAC business architecture. So the first question is about the New Zealand and Australian market. As you have said, it's very competitive in this market. But in '25, you still maintained a high double-digit growth. It's a very nice performance. So can you tell us the reason for such a growth?

And the second question is about the outlook for the New Zealand and Australian market in '26.

Okay. Thank you very much. I would like to answer this question. Actually, we have repeatedly mentioned to you that in the New Zealand, Australian market has been more and more competitive, and we have seen some of the competitors taking different strategies to enhance their position. The reason why we are able to have such great success in this market is because that we had always been following through our strategy that is the continuous market share growth of the core categories and the introduction of the new categories and products. So let me introduce one by one.

So for Ninja, we have several key products that is performing very well. For example, the Slushi product. And since the launch of this product, it has been growing continuously. And this kind of growth has pushed the growth of the total performance and also the coffee makers and Leon also mentioned the Luxe Cafe has a very impressive performance. Since the launch of the product in Sydney and Melbourne, we had a store pop-up store of the Cafe lab. In the first month, we have become listing on the top of the retail platforms.

So we have been dominating those sales rankings for a very long period. So these 2 star products has been beyond our expectations. And in the second half of the year, we also have the Ninja Swirl by CREAMi, the ice cream maker had also been very successful. And in the cleaning products, the new generation vacuum cleaner also had used the smart technologies such as the automatic dust capture and it also helps us to gain more shares. And this is the main reason for us to have the steady growth in '25. So in '26 and beyond, we believe that from the top line, we will continuously enhance our strategy that is to continuously promote innovation and to optimize the product mix, so we can make sure that the development is more balanced.

And another message we wanted to deliver to you and also Leon had mentioned about it, that is in the New Zealand and Australian market, also including in Japan, this belongs to relatively mature market. And going on, our focus will switch from quickly scaling up to high-quality scaling up. So we will improve the efficiency of the management, for example, the adjustment of the advertising fees and operation fees, et cetera. So this kind of mature market can back up to our cash flows. So it will become the driver of the growth.

Okay. My second question is related to the Japanese market. And Leon had mentioned that Japan has a relatively high market share of the cleaning products and also in Japan, there are some strong local brands in home appliances. So what's your take on your progress and performance in the Japan market in '25? And what's your outlook for '26 and '27 in Japan? This is my second question.

Okay, [indiscernible] So a lot of people have already communicated with us, including Shark and Ninja in Japan. We have already got a very good strong performance. We also can see for cleaning category, we have already had this very high market share, but we also can see that you still see that for such a high share for our market share is still steadily increasing for 2024, you can see for this cordless vacuum cleaner was about 20%. At the end of 2025, we can see it obviously being improved to 25%. They are actually attributed to the 2 key products like PowerClean 360 and [ Featherweight 3.0 ] for the strong products are driving us in the Japanese market as a very strong position. I have also shared with you that because for Japan, the competition of cordless cleaner was very fierce. A lot of competitors are taking very aggressive pricing strategy.

This occasion, we also can see that the overall market of the cordless vacuum cleaner is declining without Shark. We also can see for Shark cleaning category in Japan, we have already achieved this double-digit increase. It has been far greater than the average performance of the industry. So this is precisely proving that our growth is attributed by the growth of our product quality as well as the improvement of the market share instead of like this tailwind brought by the industry. What you have cared about cookware and food preparation category. After this Ninja Fresh, we have already established a rough recognition of the market and later, our Ninja Blast Max is also further prolonging our momentum of growth.

Our market share has also got about like 3% to 4% growth. And for afterwards growth, we are still quite confident. As we all know that in Japan, our market new product promotion have always been quite cautious. And before launching the market, we also will do a lot of market consumer localization as well as product test to avoid any repetitive inconvenience measures to guarantee our good word of mouth and repeated purchase. And what you have mentioned like heating product, we have also got like Ninja CRISPi. As Leon mentioned, it has just been promoted to market in the end of 2025. In '26, we also do further expansion to make sure that the sales quantity will also be further amplified. Just like Shark cleaning and home categories, we will also have some new products to be launched. That's all.

I also look forward to our new products will have even greater competitiveness in Japan, South Korea and ANZ.

And let's have this third investor for the question. Okay. Now let's have Guangfa Home Appliances, [indiscernible] to propose the question.

Can you hear me? I'm very honored to have this opportunity. I am analyst from Guangfa Home Appliance. I would like to have a question -- 2 questions about Joyoung. And the first thing is for our revenue from Joyoung domestically has rebounded. We would like to know that for 2026, this growth could it be further expanded? Or is it like 2025, the government subsidy has overused the market potential and the 2026 will decline. So we would like Kenny answer that.

First of all, please bear with me. In China, in 2025, we have already achieved growth with our overall benchmarking with the industry peers. Our growth is better than the industry average. And a lot of analysts have also noticed that in H1 2026 -- 2025, we had this national subsidy. And after Q3, the national subsidy has also gradually phased out. So our own performance still maintained a growth in Q3 and Q4. And the national policy of government subsidy has helped us year around, but the overall proportion was not very significant.

Now let's come back to our interpretation about the business and performance in 2025. Our growth still mainly comes from our strong category like blender and soy milk maker. We have achieved very good growth because of our product confidence. I think this is the time honored advantage accumulated by us in the past few years. This is also the source of momentum and confidence for further growth in 2026. And for new categories, for example, cookware and water purifier, as we have also mentioned, for Joyoung or some other niche categories and for the new categories, we have also achieved some improvement.

At the same time, with the cost ratio control as well as the overall improvement of expenditure, we have also optimized our profitability. These are all the experiences we have collected in fierce competition that we could still focus on for the Polish, in 2026, I believe we will further promote some differentiated new products in food processing and preparation as well as cookers. No matter it's about rice cooker or high-pressure cooker, we will still promote the growth of scale and profitability. At the same time, we also will have the niche categories in water purifier and cookware. We also will give full play to our hero products.

And this is also what we are going to promote our further growth in 2026 as defined strategy and tactics. In channel aspect, even if without the national subsidy, we will still use the adjustment and optimization of our channel structure to further amplify our in-house operation online and more nimbly and flexibly with our own insights about user data and online data, we also hope to sensitively adjust or grasp the consumers' consumption trends and habits to further focus on our mid- and high-end products to have the product structure further optimized.

Generally speaking, I have to say that in 2025, with our stable development, we will still guarantee our profitability could also be guaranteed in 2026 and then to promote the improvement of our scale.

And I have another question. This is, the tariff of China and U.S. has also been declined a little bit. But due to the tariff war last year, our export business was negatively influenced in 2026. Do we have some expectations about our export business of Joyoung?

For our export business, there are mainly 2 parts. The first is SN and JS related business. And the next is about our own international business. In 2025, what is the most negatively hit was the SN business related ones because of the tariff influence, it has declined significantly. We expect in 2026, it will still have a further reduction. It will be narrowed gradually. And from Joyoung's overall business, we also hope to further amplify our Joyoung international overseas business.

And we have also announced our announcement that we are changing our overseas business as is authorized distribution model. This also includes the JS Global and our subsidiary. We think that the change of that could also further utilize our JS Global APAC mature market and channel advantages, and it could also have a better value, given foreplay too. It could also facilitate our Joyoung's OBM business, could be further and the long-term grown as our long-term expectation.

We also expect that in 2026, it is also the first year of our business adjustment. We will also lay a solid foundation for that. We also hope to cooperate with the JS and our subsidiaries to do better synergy with better results achieved and to offset the negative influence brought by external environment.

I also wish everything will have a smooth development in the future of the company.

Because of limited time. We will have the last question. Now let's invite Wang Wencong from Citic Securities.

Can hear me?

Yes. We can hear you, Wencong.

I am from Citic home appliance analyst, Wang Wencong. I have some questions about the new markets. I would like to propose the question to the management team. First, we have seen that for South Korea, the growth speed was very fast. And this year, the speed slowed down slightly. I would like to know that currently, for South Korean market, what are the main driving forces of the revenue growth? Generally speaking, the overall market size, what is the scale of the market with our own products? And afterwards, what is our strategic management and plan for the South Korean market? This is my first question.

Okay. I will invite Leon to answer the question.

Thank you for the question. First of all, let me do the breakdown of the growth of 2025 in South Korea. First is the Shark cleaning category for floor cleaning category, it has achieved a steady growth. It is attributed to our intelligent IQ technology and one button clearing technology, including Featherweight and [ CAN ] 360. So the feature is very obvious. It could actually go forward and go backward, they put all vacuuming the dust as well as these impurities. I don't know maybe in South Korea, have you seen that we invited a spokesperson of [indiscernible] that's very well received in the market.

And for Ninja is our blender, including Ninja Blast Max. This is our newer generation, greater size of the blender and the digital power, autonomous sensing -- intelligent sensing with silent noise, very, very good Silent IQ technology for all those products have already promoted our overall growth. From the market share of 2025, we also can see for the category of food processing, we have increased them by 800 basis points to 21.4%. It's a very leading position. South Korea, the growth speed, as you mentioned, is not as fast as before.

And for South Korean market for the scale and expectation, what would that be? From our perspective, to be frank, as you can tell in South Korea, previously, we operated more by the distributor model. We also can see that our distributor was named as Cosmo. They have 2 listed companies in South Korea as a listed group. For them, operational-wise, they are pillar businesses of petrochemical as well as battery, have run into some difficulties. They have also influenced our distribution business, especially about cash flow. In order to deal with this unexpected situation, we have also made a very fast decision with the decision made by the management team.

We are actually researching about this restructuring and very soon, we will do part of this in-house management by ourselves like ANZ and some of them are online and offline about this smaller share of the business. We will still have this distributor to do that. And to a certain extent, it would alleviate the pressure of our supplier. On the other side, it would also allow us to get a faster entrance into the direct sales and direct operation to lay a solid foundation for the future growth. I believe we could see the final result very soon. And this year, we also expect the growth to be very satisfying. And I think in other validated markets with proven experience, we could also rapidly grow the product.

Speaking of the total scale of the Korean market, we believe that, that is similar to the Japanese market and even compared to the market size in Australia. So I believe that by category, if you compare it with as in America or Europe, in Korea, it is very limited. So we believe there is huge potential for the Korean market, and we could continue to grow there.

Got it, thank you, Leon. It's very clear. So this is about the Korean market. And my second question is about -- after the spin-off in APAC and Europe and the U.S. so the R&D have been taken place in the West and we pay the product development fees and can we count that as the R&D expense of the company? And also in U.S. and Europe, their product target more on the Caucasian consumers and integrate or adapt to their culture as well. And in Southeast Asian market, we have the Confucianism in cultures or the East Asia cultures and will strengthen the development of the local R&D team to adapt to the local culture.

Thank you, for your question. This is also something we have paid a lot of attention to. Just as you have said, after the spinoff, most of the products has continued the style of SharkNinja U.S. or SharkNinja Global. Some of the new products are also mainly from that part. So I'd like to remind you, for example, in Japan, the reason why we are able to achieve over $160 million sales revenue in Japan, it is because a very special situation.

Well, the cordless vacuum cleaner of truck, especially the lightweight one, it has a base station, and this is specifically developed for Japan. And after the localization strategy, we have developed those local products and then we introduced the products from Japan to Europe and the U.S., and we have seen a very good performance, especially in Europe. And after the spin-off, we have been paying the license fee whether it is counted as the R&D expense, maybe it's a positioning fee. So for APAC, it's more about sales. And at the moment, we haven't covered the full functions as that of the U.S. and Europe. But that will definitely be the development direction.

So a new message for you, Wencong. So we have been developing the product development team in APAC region, and the team is scaling up. And for example, you mentioned about the North and East Asian market, we will also adapt to the consumer needs there. If you have noticed before, then we have a Flex style product shortly launched in Korea and Japan because it was a very successful product in U.S. and Europe. However, it did not have a very good response from the market.

Well, indeed, this is our experience, and we have been strengthening the development of the beauty and the thermal products to adapt to the local market needs. And we will develop based on the demand of the local markets and leverage that as a U.S. or as a global R&D capabilities as well as Joyoung's China R&D capabilities. All of these will support the development.

And this is the synergy among these segments. they can have a coordinated development, and we believe that this strategy works. And going forward, we will strengthen our capabilities, including the engineering, the quality and the product development capabilities so that we can form a more comprehensive ecosystem in SN APAC.

Thank you, Leon. It's very clear. I have a final question. At the moment, SN APAC prioritizes the New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and Korean market where the consumption power is relatively high. And in your presentation, you also mentioned that you are expanding some emerging markets like those from Southeast Asia and most of them are developing countries and the consumption power is not as strong compared with the developed market. And in China, we also have some low entry point products to compete. And my question is that for these emerging markets, what are your strategies to access?

Thank you. This is an excellent question. You already have pointed out the differences of these Asian markets. Some are very close to the U.S. and Europe levels like New Zealand and Australia. We also have Japan and South Korea with a specific Eastern and North Asia cultures. We also have the Southeast Asia countries with a lot of emerging markets that we intend to explore and they have the dense population there. So what we want to share with you is that in the second half of '25, we access the Taiwan, China market. And of course, the market there also has very high consumption power and big similarities of culture, high acceptance of the products that we have launched in Japan and Korea. So this year, very soon, we're going to access Hong Kong, China market, although it's relatively small, but we believe that consumption power there is strong and the brand recognition is also high.

And we have achieved some recognitions of central products in Japan and Korea, and we believe that those products will be suitable for Hong Kong because we foresee the acceptance will be high. And Southeast Asia is very different because although they have dense population, but the products that we intend to sell, the customer group we wanted to target on are very limited. We do not want to target on everyone. So our initial strategy is to target on those who are relatively more well-loved and in cities that are better off to conduct marketing. We will not have a whole nationwide strategy.

So it's the beginning of '26. And the social media platform have been very strong. So we will utilize those channels to target on those well-loved groups of the consumers who have the consumption power to buy our products to let them know who we are, and what our value is, and how we can help them to improve their lives from the function or design and emotion perspective. So we will definitely have a more targeted strategy to do the marketing and to gain consumer insight and to be very specific, our consumer market, what we know is that when they get up in the morning, what kind of social channels, social media channels they use, what kind of cars they drive to go to work. So we will get all these details and what are their main activities after work. So whether they go to the gym or not, how much attention they pay to health, et cetera.

So all of these details are included in our market investigation to help us gain a better consumer insight. So this will help us to have a more targeted strategy to engage or touch these consumers. So this is our strategy in Southeast Asian market.

Thank you, Leon. Very clear. I believe that the management has a very clear idea about the strategies to expand the market. Thank you, again. Very detailed answer.

Thank you all. And that is the end of the Q&A session. And finally, I'd like to welcome Run Han to deliver the closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you for your participation and questions. Overall, in 2025, amid a complex and volatile market environment, the group still achieved continuous optimization of the revenue structure and the steady growth of the core businesses. As in APAC continue to serve as a growth engine, Joyoung business also consolidated its foundation through product and channel adjustments. Looking ahead, we will continue to focus on product innovation as our core strategy. We will further strengthen channel and operational capabilities and steadily expand the key markets and new product categories. We will drive the group to achieve higher quality and more sustainable development. And thank you all for your attention and support.

Thank you, Madam, Han. If you have any more questions, you can contact the IR team of the company. Thank you again for your support and attention to JS Global. And that is the end of today's session. Thank you.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Dear investors and analysts, good morning. Welcome to this JS Global 2026 Interim Results Presentation. So I am the moderator today, Poppy. Today, our meeting will be conducted in Chinese. If you need English interpretation, please switch to English channel. [Operator Instructions]

Before we get started, let me make a few reminders. First of all, this conference call will be recorded, and it will be published on the company's official website simultaneously. Welcome to consult after the meeting.

Secondly, in the management's speech, there may be expectations for future operation and the forward-looking statements, which are uncertain and actual results may differ from the statements. We may also mention some non-IFRS metrics to better present the business performance. So for relevant definitions [indiscernible], please refer to the announcement and presentation materials.

So now let's get started. Here is today's agenda. We will have the management team to briefly present the interim results and business progress, then we will come to the Q&A session to discuss with all the investors and analysts.

So now let's introduce the company's management attending today's meeting. We have Ms. Han Run, Executive Director, CEO and CFO of the company; Mr. Liu Yin Qing, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Finance; Mr. Miao Minxin, the Secretary of the Board of Directors of Joyoung. So now let's enter the management presentation session. First, speaking by Ms. Han Run. She will present the key points of company's annual business report. So thank you.

Thank you, Poppy. Dear investors, good morning. Welcome you to this JS 2026 interim results presentation, and thank you so much for your continued attention and support for our company. So first, let me briefly walk you through the group's overall operating performance for the first half of 2026.

In H1 2026, the group recorded revenue of USD 741 million, gross profit was USD 229 million with a gross margin of 30.9%. On the adjusted basis, revenue from third-party customers reached USD 711 million. Adjusted net profit was USD 14.8 million, up 9.6% Y-o-Y. Although revenue and gross margin in the first half were impacted by weaker consumer demand in Mainland China, business transformation in South Korea and intensified competition in certain markets, our group still has recorded a net profit of USD 13 million, turning from loss to profit compared with the same period last year with overall profitability improved.

By business segment, SharkNinja APAC continued to demonstrate resilience in development. In H1, revenue from third-party customers grew 6.2% Y-o-Y. Excluding the impact of the South Korea business transformation, the growth would be 31.4%. The NAZ market continued to perform well with steady growth in core categories such as cooking, beverage and cleaning. Japan market grew at constant currency.

We also have made positive progress in emerging markets such as India and Southeast Asia. The South Korea market has also completed our transition to DTC and resumed our sales in the second quarter. We will also continue to strengthen our local operations and channel development to drive business improvements.

From Joyoung perspective, in H1, the domestic small home appliance market continued to face challenges from the weak demand and intensified competition. In response to the market changes, Joyoung continued to drive product innovation and channel optimization around its core categories. Market shares in key categories such as soymilk makers and blender remained stable, while the share of direct sales channel also further increased. In H2, Joyoung will also continue to launch new products in core categories, continuously enhance product competitiveness and channel operational efficiency and share the improvement in market size and share.

That's all for my brief introduction. I will hand over to Leon to give you further details on the performance of each business and regions. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Han. So now I will update to you about the overall performance of our group in H1. So now let's just first look at the overall financial performance. As mentioned by Ms. Han, our H1 revenue was USD 741 million, Y-o-Y decreased by 4.3% and revenue from third party was USD 711 million, a Y-o-Y decrease of 1.2%. Revenue performance was mainly affected by the weak demand of Joyoung business in China and transformation of the business in South Korea.

And in terms of profitability, the group's gross margin was USD 229 million and Y-o-Y decrease of 7.7%. The gross margin was 30.9%, Y-o-Y decrease of 1.2%. So according to the third-party revenue, the gross profit was also USD 229 million, a Y-o-Y decrease of 5.3%. Gross margin was 32.2%, a Y-o-Y decrease of 1.3%. Although we have the pressure on revenue and the gross margin, our net profit still has been achieved at USD 11 million (sic) [ USD 13 million ] in H1, turning a profit compared with the same period last year. And our adjusted net profit was USD 14.8 million, increase of 9.6% Y-o-Y. And net profit adjusted margin rose from 1.7% to 2%. This mainly reflected our group's effort in expense management and nonoperating items changes and business structure adjustment.

So for the next page, let's look at different segments. In H1 2026, Joyoung's third-party revenue was $467 million, slight decrease compared with $490 million in the same period of time due to the relatively weak sales of blender, rice cooker and electric kettles. And it is offset by the decline by the growth of soymilk makers and cookware.

So SharkNinja, our third-party revenue in Asia Pacific was $244 million with a Y-o-Y increase of 6.2%. The apparent growth was also mainly affected by the business transformation in South Korea, existing the impact of South Korea business, as Ms. Han mentioned. If we exclude that, the revenue in APAC actually increased by 31.5%. The growth was mainly driven by the strong performance of cooking and beverage categories, especially our air fryer, Crispi and our newly launched espresso machine, thanks to their excellent performance.

So from the revenue structure, SN APAC percentage of the third-party revenue has increased from 31.9% to 34.4%. This has already shown this a continuous increase of our APAC revenue to the group's overall one. So in terms of regional distribution, ANZ is a major source of growth driver in H1 this year. The number has increased from USD 96 million to USD 129 million, mainly driven by the strong performance of air fryers. And the espresso machine was also launched at the end of 2025. It has brought about an overall positive performance in H1 of this year, and there was also continuous growth in cordless vacuum cleaners. Japanese market revenue decreased from USD 66 million to USD 63 million, mainly due to the depreciation of the Japanese Yen. Calculated at constant exchange rate, Japan's market revenue increased by 2.6% with very good growth in fans and air fryer. The cordless vacuum cleaner were affected by market competition and price pressure canceling each other due to this compensation of a different development.

So South Korea's market revenue dropped from USD 58 million to USD 18 million, mainly due to the transition to a direct sales mode. So this sale in the first quarter was greatly affected by that. After the transition to direct sales in second quarter, sales also improved, but not enough to offset the impact of the first quarter's disruption.

Revenue in other regions increased from USD 17 million to USD 44 million, reflecting the progress of our emerging market expansion. In Chinese market, it decreased from USD 483 million to USD 457 million. This is mainly due to the weak demand.

So the next page is our gross margin from the third-party revenue in H1 2026 and it decreased from USD 241.6 million to USD 229 million. The gross margin dropped from 33.5% to 32.2%. When we break them down, we also can see that Joyoung's Y-o-Y impact on gross profit was negative USD 22.2 million, mainly due to the changes in product mix, government subsidy adjustments and it's also the increase of the transportation fee after the proportion of direct sales increase.

SN APAC continued to contribute of USD 9.5 million in gross profit, mainly due to the launch of new products with higher gross margin and continuous product cost optimization. So generally speaking, group-wise, the decline of our gross margin mainly comes from the pressure of Joyoung business, which is partially offset by the improvement of SN APAC. So in the future, we will also continue to optimize the product mix and the supply chain and improve operational efficiency to continuously improve the profit quality.

For the next page, for our operational efficiency in H1 2026, our entire inventory days of turnover was 57 days, lower than 59 days in H1 2025. It was slightly higher than the full year level of 2025. Our receivables and notes receivable turnover days were 101, higher than 97 in H1 2025. And accounts receivable and notes receivable turnover days were 198, relatively stable compared with last year. Overall inventory management remained relatively stable.

We will pay continued attention to this for the accounts receivable and the notes receivable with our combination of business and channel structure changes. So in the second half of the year and beyond, the group will also continue to strengthen inventory planning, preparation and payment collection and the supply chain and support business growth as well as improving the efficiency of our capital use.

For the next page, we also can see that the group continuously to maintain a balanced and prudent capital structure. H1 2026, our CapEx was USD 18 million, lower than USD 21 million in the same period last year. As of June 30, 2026, the group's interest-bearing loans amounted to USD 79 million, of which noncurrent loans were USD 44 million with a loan of USD 35 million and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.15x. It has slightly increased from 0.14x, but it is still basically flat. So overall, it is still at a very low level.

The current capital structure is mainly focusing on the group's continued expansion in investment in product innovation, market expansion, especially in the APAC region and daily operations. We will still continue to strike a balance between business investment, capital efficiency and financial stability.

Next, we will move on to the APAC business updates. Sorry about it. H1 for different market performances were quite different. ANZ and emerging markets still maintain quite strong growth and the Japanese market still maintained a growth under the fixed exchange rate. After the conversion of the business mode, South Korean market has also seen a rapid advance.

So now I will break them down by markets to share with you the new product launches and the second half of the year's product planning. ANZ market, the performance was very strong, and our third-party revenue increased by 34% Y-o-Y, exceeded USD 100 million, reaching USD 129 million. In the context of the overall pressure of the industry, the growth of the business mainly comes from the continuous product innovation and efficient market execution.

In terms of categories, Ninja's Cooking & Beverage have increased by 124% Y-o-Y and Ninja Food Processing increased by 14%. Shark Cleaning increased by 22%. And our beauty and home products grew by 73%. Shark growth are contributed mainly by floor cleaning and beauty products and the cordless vacuum cleaner maintained a good performance. And we also can see that the Shark CryoGlow with LED light mask has marked our brand entering the market skin care field and our espresso machine as well as our blender and Crispi air fryer have also been a hit, becoming the main growth drivers.

We have more frozen categories, including the ice cream makers, the coffee makers, some cooking products and beauty and hair care products, et cetera.

Now let's take a look at the Japan market. The consumption environment of Japan is more precautious. The consumers pay more attention to the value to money of the products. So this is the trend we have observed in the first half of the year. And there is ferocious pricing competition of the cordless vacuum. Affected by that, the revenue of the cleaning products have been dropped by 14% year-on-year. For different price ranges and consumption demand, our company has been diversifying the portfolio for the cordless vacuums and we have introduced the differentiated products and the revenue have been improved. And in May and June, the revenue had been growing by 20% year-on-year.

The categories of the other types had been performing very positively. The Shark Beauty and home (sic) [ Shark Beauty & Comfort ] have been growing by 284% and Ninja Food Preparation grew by 4%. And in the second half of 2025, we launched the beverage products, and there is no comparable revenue. And we have seen a great performance since the launch of this product. And at the same time, with the TurboBlade of Shark and Ninja Crispi and some other new products, we are actively expanding the category coverage in Japan. And we will keep an eye on the improvement of sales of the market and to keep reacting to the changes.

And these are the emerging markets and emerging markets had to become a new growth point for us in APAC. In first half year, there had been a contribution of $35 million with a year-on-year growth of 240%. And we accessed in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan, China. And in the first half of 2026, we also accessed into Hong Kong, China and India market.

And since the launch of the products in India, we have seen a very strong momentum. And the trend of the sales in India is outperforming other emerging markets. And as for Hong Kong, China, after the launch of the new products, we also have seen a good performance. We just get started in June in Hong Kong, China, and we have some pop-up stores offline and the online sales are also good. So we're still incubating and expanding in the emerging markets and priority now is to have the pace introduction of new products, establish and expand the local channels and better execute the market so that we can expand the consumer coverage. The efficiency of investment in various markets varies. And based on the operation foundation, we will have corresponding strategies.

And next, I'd like to talk about NPD. New product innovation has become a very important driving point for the SN APAC expansion. And in the first half of this year, we had a series of new products launched. For example, we have the EvoPower, the lightweight cordless vacuum cleaner covering the growing market segment that is of cost effectiveness. And in terms of the coffee makers, we have the Ninja Luxe Café, which is a high-end all-in-one coffee platform and allowing the consumers to make coffee at a high standard.

And the Ninja Crispi is a portable glass air fryer integrating the convenience and versatility, continue to be welcomed by the consumers in APAC. And the Shark TurboBlade, which is a power fan, a blade-less fan, supports the customization mode and expands the home environment category. In Japan, Australia and New Zealand, it has been very popular. And we also have the CryoGlow, which is the scientific beauty product. So all in all, we have a comprehensive expansion of products, including coffee, cooking, home and beauty. We plan to continuously promote the product launch in the second half of the year.

And in drinking products, we have promoted the Ninja BlendBOSS in several markets, it will enhance the small-scale blender market and the Slushi Max and

Twist have expanded the highly successful slushi market. And the Ninja Crispi Pro, which is a larger machine with higher power and more cooking modes can meet the needs of family meals, snacks and side dishes.

And in terms of the beauty products, we have the FacialPro Glow. It will further diversify the Shark beauty line. And for cleaning, we will introduce the PowerClean 360 Pro upgrade, which is a cordless vacuum cleaner. We also have the new upgraded automatic empty dock.

So all of these products has reflected the expansion of the category and applications of the company corresponding to the market demand. And we will pace ourselves according to the performance and include the feedback of the consumers and the readiness of the local channels as well as the varying market environment. So we will keep the investors updated.

In terms of Joyoung, the demand for small household appliances in Chinese market remained weak. Therefore, there have been some headwinds and the pressures. And Joyoung continued to focus on the core categories, efficiency and competitiveness as well as product innovation capabilities to enhance our operational efficiency.

And next, I'd like to introduce the share of the core categories, the product innovation strategies and the DTC market channel development.

Despite the pressure on revenue, Joyoung's online market share in multiple core categories remained resilient. For example, the blender increased from 41.4% to 46%, up by 4.6% and soymilk maker increased from 38% to 46%, up by 8 percentage points and pressure cooker 9.8% to 12% and water purifier up from 2.1% to 3% and cookware up from 1.5% (sic) [ 1.8% ] to 2% and rice cooker was about 10.9% in market share dropped slightly to 10%. So with the overall weak demand, Joyoung has maintained its strong competitiveness in several categories such as the blender and soymilk maker.

And we still have three pathways to optimize our innovation. The first is to keep pace with market trends and accelerate the R&D and go-to-market. The second is the expansion of the scenarios. Targeting on the demand of consumers, we have optimized the formats and enhanced the daily usage. And number three is the strengthening of the product content and the channels so we can explore how to create better hit products. And with these three methods, we can better meet the demand of the consumers and to improve the efficiency of go-to-market and commercialization.

In terms of the channels, the four main online channels already have the DTC layouts and based on the GMV, JD accounts for 69% and Tmall 61%, both of them are over 60%. Douyin's DTC also account for 28% and the PDD 13%. The DTC operation basis for JD and Tmall are relatively stable and the company is penetrating more in Douyin and PDD. DTC helps us to better reach out to our consumers and to coordinate between the branding, product content and the channel operations. And it will also bring changes to the fulfillment, freight and operational investment. Therefore, we will continuously pay attention to quality of channel growth and efficiency of the expansion.

So this is the basic construction of the financial and the business performance of the first half year. And overall, the revenue had been under pressure, but we strive to turn to a profit and adjusted net profit maintained continuous growth. And SN APAC, excluding the transformation to South Korea, we have maintained rapid growth, and we have seen strong performance in New Zealand and Australian market. And with weak demand, Joyoung has maintained competitiveness and market share of the core categories and adjusted the product and the channel mix.

Okay. Next, we can have further discussions.

Thank you, Madam Han and Leon for your sharing. Next, we will have a Q&A. [Operator Instructions] Now let's invite the first investor. Let's welcome Feng Ruilin from CLSA.

Can you hear me?

Ruilin, we can hear you fine.

I am from CLSA. I'm an analyst, and I have 2 questions. The first is related to the gross margin. And SN APAC, the revenue is slightly growing compared with the same period last year. But according to the industry data, there had been a cost increase of the raw material, but the gross margin of APAC has been growing great. So I have calculated it, there had been about 10% of growth of the gross profit margin. And the gross margin also have been growing by 1% to 2%. So why is that so?

And the second question is that in the first half, the group has turned to profit and the bottom line is also quite satisfying. And the adjusted profit have been growing by 9.6% year-on-year. So can you split the contribution by segment? That means the contribution from SN APAC and Joyoung separately.

Okay. These are my 2 questions.

Leon, please answer the question.

Thank you, Ruilin. Good question, indeed. The first question is about the gross profit margin. And in 2026 first half, indeed, the cost of the raw material and the components have been growing and we have faced certain pressure. On the one hand, we have seen the impact of the U.S. Iran war and there have been impacts on the oil price. The plastic parts have been more expensive and also for some commodity like copper and other metals, there have been some impact as well. But generally speaking, against this backdrop, we maintained a growth of about over 1 point in gross profit margin.

So there are several reasons. The first is introduction of new products with high gross profit margin. And in the second -- in the year-end last year, we have launched some beauty products and coffee makers, the hair care products contributing to higher revenue and gross profit margin and some air fryers and beverage products like SLUSHi, CREAMi have been growing steadily. And these categories not only contributed to the revenue, but also diversified our product lines, not only in cordless vacuum and cleaning, cooking products, but also to some new categories such as the beverage and food preparation and Shark and Ninja as a percentage in revenue have been also growing.

The second reason is a more balanced development, especially in Ninja. We have an optimization to cost and have better sourcing in material and parts and optimize our product design as well. So actually, we have been doing that every year. But this year, we have seen a more effective results, and we have the VAVE department that is optimization of engineering and design.

So for the specific work, not just by lowering the product standard, but when we are ensuring the consumer experience and product performance, we are actually lowering the unit cost through VAVE. And with the optimization of the products, it has also positively influenced the increase of the raw material price, and it is offsetting the promotional pressure.

The third point is when we are expanding our business scale, the efficiency of our supply chain and operation have also been significantly improved as our APAC business scale expands, including the company's procurement and logistics because some of the transportation fee has been calculated as our cost, including storage arrangements and the distribution, we all have a better room for bargaining and the optimization space. So APAC has also pivoted from simply expanding its scale to the gradual shifting to more refined cost management and efficiency management.

So to sum up, cost-wise, the same like other companies, we are under huge pressure, especially first half of this year. And with our sales and new product launches and the VAVE, including our scale economy, scale effect and our continuous refined management, the lean management has improved our gross margin in H1 this year. This has also reflected that after 3 years after the spin-off, SN APAC management capability is also maturer. Previously, we have also mentioned in H2 2025, an important goal of 2026 is in APAC region, except for scale growth, we also hope to have more mature and more refined management. This is also in H1, what we have already seen here.

And the second point is about net profit, adjusted net profit, as we mentioned, we have grown by 9.6%. Group-wise, it is -- last year, it was about USD 13 million. And this year, we have turned from loss to a profit. If we look at the breakdown, the Joyoung segment is still under huge pressure. We have also seen that last Friday, we have already released the interim report. The net profit still decreased by 40%. It's because of the product structure and what we mentioned about the closure of governmental subsidy policy and the improvement of this DTC has actually increased the transportation cost. So these have all added to our overall pressure on profit.

And in response, Joyoung has controlled our administrative expense and improved operational efficiency. This has somewhat offset the pressure. But overall, we are still under pressure in H1 this year, soymilk maker and cookware categories have all achieved growth and the core categories like soymilk maker, rice cooker, pressure cooker and water purifier, as we mentioned, their market shares have all increased. Although the market has not fully stabilized. However, from our perspective, we think our core products are still having a strong competitive edge from a market perspective. So the current focus is still having the result of these market practices and new products to be fully translated into our advantage of our product mix. And later on our profit performance.

So the products in SN APAC has also been continuously improving. First of all, the gross profit, as mentioned before, this growth, including the increase of the gross margin is actually it could be translated into our good improvement of the net profit. And additionally, for SN South Asia and by improving our market efficiency, including our investment in marketing in relatively maturer markets such as ANZ, Australia and New Zealand, the market perception of our brands are already quite high. And our marketing efficiency, marketing control are also more in place, leading to better ROI.

So all of these measures have already made our business maintained a very high growth and our expense have also been under good control. Gross profit has also been improved, making the net profit of APAC being on the right track, so contributing to the overall growth.

That's all for the answers of the two questions.

Now, let's connect to the second analyst. Now let's invite Fan Junhao from Huatai Securities.

I'm having 2 questions. First of all, Joyoung, Y-o-Y speaking, you can also see that H2 last year was actually having a relatively low base. And as mentioned before, we'll continue to launch new products in H2 and optimize channel efficiency. So I would like to ask that in H2, would Joyoung have an opportunity to narrow the revenue gap?

The second thing is about SN APAC, as we mentioned before, like blenders and coffee machine. And we also can see that SharkNinja in North America and Europe, we have gradually seen the out-of-stock experience. I would like to say that if APAC region, if these new big hits also would have this out-of-stock crisis, how do we plan for that? Or if there is out-of-stock situation, how do we make it up?

So the first question about Joyoung, we will invite Mr. Miao Minxin to make the answer. He is the Secretary of the Board of Directors of Joyoung.

Junhao, I would like to answer this question. So first of all, domestic small household appliances, indeed, we have seen throughout H1, the demand is relatively weak, but the demand is also differentiated. The channel structure is changing rapidly and the competition is also intensifying. This is the objective market that we have already experienced. So Y-o-Y wise, our domestic sales has also declined by 11%. As I have already mentioned, this is subject to the lower sale of blender and rice cooker, et cetera. But as I said, the blender, we still have a very good market share, which is being increased. So we can see that when we are seeing this relatively poor data environment, we are still working hard to improve our capabilities so that our core categories can achieve some growth. For example, soymilk maker and cookware have also achieved quite good growth.

At the same time, we have also made changes to our product mix, increased the proportion of DTC, it will increase our transportation costs, influencing our gross margin. So you can see that in H1, our gross margin has also been under some pressure in H1. However, Joyoung, we will still continue to focus on soymilk maker, blender, rice cooker, pressure cooker and the water purifier. These core categories with strong brand foundation and our core competitiveness, we will still maintain our advantage in these categories.

And in H1, with the backdrop of increasing market share in multiple categories, we still think there are some improvements. But we think overall, due to the environmental problem or because of the demand being weakened, we are still having relatively weak performance. Revenue is under a short-term pressure. But market share-wise, we still hope to grow the share continuously. So from the retail perspective and market share perspective, we hope to achieve the growth of Joyoung as a brand. So this is for H1 or the direction for H2.

And channel-wise, in JD, Tmall, Douyin and Pinduoduo, our DTC shares have also been relatively high. So as what Leon introduced in the previous slide, we can also see the same data. With DTC, it could help us to better understand the consumer data, including prices, inventory and other market dynamics. It will also make further improvements and lay a solid foundation for the improvement of the efficiency of subsequent channels.

In H2 this year, Joyoung will still focus on the core categories to restore the declining categories and maximize the key categories volume for the categories with a small scale but beautiful promise, we will create some new hits and further improve our channel efficiency. Product-wise, we will also continue the strengthening of the features such as health materials, lightness, convenience, cleanliness, smart control and low noise. It will make our future users intuitively feel the improvements of the product value. We'll also make efforts from this perspective to make our success rate of core categories launches and conversion efficiency. And then it will actually make our ROE of the investment to be better and improve gradually.

And we will also be on different platforms to make some product combination as well as resource inputs. For example, we will enhance our content e-commerce live streaming matrix of self broadcasting, including the instant retail and the synergy between traditional shelf e-commerce and the optimized the efficiency of DTC as a whole. And we also are very confident to increase the overall revenue, the performance in H2 and improve the year-round development, and we will also pay attention to the changes of the profit side.

Thank you, Max, for the answer of the Joyoung part. For the second question, [indiscernible] is about this SN APAC product layout and the launches as well as the direction. We will invite Leon to help answer the question.

Okay. Thank you Junhao for the question. This is a very good observation. We have already seen that in H1 SN U.S. has already announced the report saying that the growth is quite considerable. We have some hits. Indeed, we have seen some limitations of the manufacturing capacity. And what I would like to report to you is since H1 this year, we have been actively coordinating the manufacturing capacity. And in the last few months of Q2 this year, we have added some new suppliers, including what [indiscernible] mentioned about the coffee machine, the coffee maker. Indeed, supplier side, we have seen some changes, including some new production lines. It will help us to guarantee the manufacturing capacity as much as possible. Indeed, there will be some pressure, but indeed, we are quite different from some competitors. Indeed, we are short of manufacturing capacity, except for the improvement of the manufacturing capacity and the supplier side tooling manufacturing line, we are also actively exploring in APAC perspective.

We also need to invest more in the functions, except for marketing. We are also increasing the function of engineering. And maybe later, we will gradually invest in the tooling of the [indiscernible] products of the hit products to make sure that the APAC hit products could have the continuous supply. And for SN's overall manufacturing capacity, we also have the designated production lines just for APAC. This is the second measure.

The third, for product matrix, we also will actively explore 2 aspects. One is SN Europe and America for the existing products. On the basis of the existing products, we will also dig out some hits suitable for APAC as well. Compared with America, the categories that we have already answered to are still quite limited. So we still have big opportunities here. Second level is APAC, we will have this APAC first new strategy for APAC region. We will have some APAC exclusive SN products. For example, in the last few days on Instagram, we have already done the preview on August 25, that is tomorrow, where we will have the premier of Ninja products of SN APAC.

And here, I would like to give a little spoiler. You can see this is more like a soup maker. It is more like a heating and blending blender, I have to say. We could understand it like that. It will be first launched in Japan. In the second half of the year, we will also have some more APAC first products. They could also be called APAC exclusive products. And for APAC, new product functionality, we are also expanding this continuously. In the future, I believe let's just wait and see. We will definitely see some product enhancements. I believe that through local development and local R&D products, they will also better adjusted to the more diversified, very unique APAC market demand.

Next, let's invite Wang Wencong from CITIC Securities.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Let me ask. I am Wang Wencong analyst from CITIC Securities. And I'd like to focus on 2 questions about the market in Japan and South Korea because according to the data, we have observed 2 things. The first is the Japanese market has ferocious competition. And I'd like to ask what will be the countermeasures of the competition in Japan? And the second is what will be the growth momentum in Japan?

And the second question is about the South Korea transformation in the first, second and it had hindered some growth. But you have mentioned that we have finished stock digestion in April. So I'd like to ask the management what's your expectations of the Korean market in the second half of the year?

Okay. About the Japan and the South Korea market, I'd like to invite Leon to answer the question.

Okay. Thank you. Wencong, great question. Indeed, these two markets had caught our attention. And indeed, we have faced a big competition pressure in Japan. And there are several countermeasures. Actually, in the first half of the year, we had been observing the market development, and we have seen some competitors continuously dropping their prices. We have lowered the price to a very low level. And we have seen some local Japanese brands launching AEDs, the automatic debris collection products and reacting to that in Q2, we have launched more cost-effective products. If you go to market, you will observe some new ones, but the prices are more affordable, more competitive.

And at the same time, we also launched new products. In July, we have launched the Generation 3 lightweight EvoPower product. So all of these products can help us to consolidate our position in Japan.

In the cordless vacuum category, we have mentioned that starting from the second half of Q2 till today, the cordless vacuum market share have been growing. And we are also expanding the categories actively. And in the past few years, we have been mentioning that in Japan as our core APAC market is a very good starting point to roll out our cordless vacuum category and the Ninja products.

And last year, we launched the Crispi products, and we have seen very positive reactions. And we have a [ great ] breakthrough in the online sales. And if you have studied the Japanese market, you would know that the offline market is huge and consumers like to go to the chain stores or the large electronic stores. And [indiscernible], we would like to invest more on the social media platforms to promote the online sales. And in the second half of the year, we will also continue to expand the Ninja product.

And the soup maker I have just mentioned now will also be first launched in Japan. So the second strategy is to promote more Ninja products. And also, I have mentioned that in the first half of the year, we have launched the bladeless fan. And the TurboBlade power fan has also received great feedback in Japan, and these are some of the changes, and we're confident to continuously leverage on these strategies to make progress.

Number three, in Japan, based on the SN product, we would have some changes of the size and weight and affordabilities. For example, the hit products like Crispi would be customized to the Japanese market. We will have a modification of the classic model to meet the needs in Japan. With these methods, we can further expand the product categories and to reduce the dependence on the cordless vacuum cleaner and to have a more balanced market portfolio, especially with the introduction of the Ninja product. So this is my answer to our strategies in Japan. And I believe that you will see the changes in the second half of the year, whether from the performance of the market share or some other financial indicators.

In South Korea, indeed, we have made the transition. And I'd say that the transition has been very efficient. And since the second half of last year, from the perspective of distributors, there might be some problems in operation. At the Board level, at the management level, we have made a decision to explore the possibilities of DTC. And after we have made this transition decision, we have very quickly made adjustment in less than half a year.

For the online business, the sales had been completely switched to DTC model. And after the switch in April, there had been some inventory at the distributor side to be digested. But what I can share with you is that in the second half of the year, we already started to have the high year-on-year growth. And we're very confident to hit the annual goal. We believe that we can be at least better than the annual sales last year. But of course, it takes time to recover. And if you have some understanding of the South Korea market, you would realize that its synergy with other APAC markets is relatively small, mainly from the market level. The online retailers are mainly Coupang and NAVER. So Amazon is not present in South Korea, and this is a very local feature.

And about the offline business, for example, the department stores or the chain electronic stores, all of these are very special channels in South Korea. So right now, we have done a very good job in the channel development. So we are very positive and bullish about the business growth and performance this year. Thank you.

And that is the end of the Q&A session. And finally, let's invite Madam Han to give us closing remarks.

Okay. Overall, in first half 2026, the group proactively pushed ahead with the business adjustments amid a complicated market landscape and achieved improved profitability. SN APAC remained resilient and Joyoung. So, just now Leon mentioned about the adjustment in South Korea. According to the sales results in July, it's quite encouraging. And Joyoung continued its efforts in product innovation and channel optimization.

Looking ahead to the second half of the year, the group will remain product innovation-driven, deepen its footprint in key markets, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea and expand steadily into India, South Asia, Southeast Asia and other Asia Pacific markets. We will also strengthen management of product mix, supply chain, expenses and operational efficiency and strike a balance between business scale, profitability and capital efficiency and pursue higher quality and sustainable growth of the group.

Thank you again for your attention and support. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Han. If you have further questions, welcome you to contact the IR team of the company. Thank you again for your attention and support to JS Global Lifestyle. That is the end of this meeting. Thank you.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]