LightInTheBox Announces First Quarter 2024 Financial Results Author: Investing.com

LightInTheBox Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE: LITB), a global e-commerce company, reported a significant 52% year-over-year decline in total revenue to $71 million for the first quarter of 2024, citing macroeconomic headwinds and increased competition . The company’s net loss narrowed slightly to $3.8 million from $4 million in the same quarter last year. LightInTheBox management emphasized a strategic shift towards improving profitability and brand development in response to the challenging operating environment.

Key takeaways

LightInTheBox’s total revenues declined 52% year-over-year to $71 million.
Net loss for the quarter narrowed to $3.8 million from $4 million year over year.
The company is shifting from prioritizing sales growth to focusing on profitability.
Operating expenses decreased 47% to $45 million year-over-year.
LightInTheBox purchased 3.2 million ads with a total value of approximately $3.5 million.

Company perspective

LightInTheBox expects total revenue in the second quarter of 2024 to be between $60 million and $70 million.
The company plans to continue to focus on high-quality development and profitability.
LightInTheBox aims to optimize your marketing ROI and build a loyal customer base, especially in key markets like the United States.

Bears highlights

High competition and macroeconomic challenges influenced the company’s results.
There has been a significant decline in revenue due to these external factors.

Bullish highlights

LightInTheBox is implementing a series of strategic adjustments to support new brands and diversify its offerings.
The company is enhancing local marketing efforts and campaigns to strengthen brand recognition and overall competitiveness.

Misses you

Total operating costs, while down, still account for a significant portion of reduced revenues, indicating cost pressures.

The most important questions and answers

No questions were asked during the Q&A session on the earnings call.

LightInTheBox’s management team, including President and CEO Mr. Jian He and Chief Financial Officer Ms. Yuanjun Ye, outlined the company’s strategic response to the current economic situation. The company is aligning its focus from sales growth to profitability and brand awareness, leveraging high-quality products and optimized consumer experiences. Despite declining revenues, LightInTheBox is taking steps to improve operational efficiency and customer service through proprietary technologies. The company’s share repurchase program also reflects its concern for shareholder value. Looking to the future, LightInTheBox anticipates continued challenges but remains committed to adapting its strategies to navigate this evolving market.

InvestingPro Insights

LightInTheBox Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE: LITB) navigates a complex market that is undergoing strategic changes to improve its financial health. Our InvestingPro statistics paint a mixed picture of a company’s current valuation and financial situation.

InvestingPro Data highlights a Market capitalization approximately $74.48 million, indicating the size of the company in the competitive online sales market. Despite the difficult economic environment, LightInTheBox has remained strong Gross profit margin of 57.18% over the last twelve months as of the fourth quarter of 2023, which proves the ability to retain a significant part of revenue after taking into account the cost of goods sold. This margin is particularly important in the context of the company’s efforts to improve profitability.

However, the company’s struggle for profitability is highlighted by, among others, negative P/E ratio (adjusted) of -7.63reflecting investor concerns about future earnings potential and the company’s ability to reverse its net loss position.

Among InvestingPro’s tips, two are particularly relevant to the context of the article:

1. LightInTheBox is quoted at a low revenue valuation multiplewhich may attract investors looking for undervalued opportunities in the e-commerce sector.

2. Company short-term liabilities exceed liquid assetsa point of financial stress that coincides with the article’s emphasis on the need for the company to move toward profitability and operational efficiency.

For readers interested in deeper analysis, InvestingPro offers additional guidance on LightInTheBox, including insight into cash burn rates and stock performance trends. There are 8 more InvestingPro Tips available information that could further assist in making investment decisions. To gain access to these valuable insights, consider using a coupon code PRONEWS24 to get an additional 10% off 1 or 2-year Pro and Pro+ subscriptions at https://www.investing.com/pro/LITB.

Full record – Lghtntbx Hld Adr (LITB) Q1 2024:

Operator: Hello, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on LightInTheBox’s Q1 2024 earnings conference call. All participants are in listen-only mode at this time. Once management has prepared its comments, a question and answer session will be held. Today’s conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Ms. Jenny Cai. Please continue, Jenny.

Jenny Cai: Thank you, operator. Hello everyone and welcome to LightInTheBox’s Q1 2024 earnings conference call. The company’s earnings results were released today via the newswire and are available on IR’s website at ir.lightinthebox.com. Calling today from LightInTheBox is Mr. Jian He, President and CEO; Ms. Yuanjun Ye, Chief Financial Officer; and Ms. Wenyu Liu, Development Director. You will provide an overview of the company’s strategy and recent developments; followed by Ms. Ye who will discuss the financial results. After the prepared remarks, we will open an invitation to ask questions. Before we proceed, please note that today’s discussion may contain forward-looking statements pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results may differ materially from the company’s current expectations. To understand the factors that could cause results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, please refer to the company’s Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable law. Please also note that the LightInTheBox earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial measures as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company’s earnings press release, which includes a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited GAAP measures. I would now like to turn the call over to the President and CEO of LightInTheBox, Mr. He. Please go ahead.

Jian He: Good morning and good evening everyone. Thank you for participating in today’s first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. In the first quarter of 2024, we faced macroeconomic headwinds and increasing competition. This complex landscape has resulted in traffic acquisition costs increasing at the rate of our sales. We have responded to these challenges as part of our growth strategy, shifting from prioritizing sales growth to focusing on improving profitability. We also strived to increase our brand awareness with high-quality products and optimize our consumption experience. We expect a rapidly changing and turbulent operating environment in 2024. In response, we will continue to focus on high-quality growth and profitability. We support new brands and initiate a number of strategy adjustments. Based on our industry knowledge, we strive to further diversify our offer and better adapt it to consumer preferences and requirements. Additionally, we will continue to enhance our local operations and marketing campaigns in key markets such as the United States to bring unchain products to more customers. We believe this initiative will optimize marketing return on investment (ROI) by increasing user traffic and, over time, cultivating a loyal customer base, strengthening our brand recognition and overall competitiveness. We will keep you updated on our progress in future calls (Technical Difficulty). Our ultimate goal remains to deliver high-quality development and sustainable, long-term value for all stakeholders. Therefore, I will now turn the call over to Yuanjun to review our financial results.

Yuanjun Ye: Thank you, Mr. He. Good morning and good evening everyone. Before we begin a detailed discussion of our financial data, please note that, unless otherwise noted, all financial data we present today is expressed in U.S. dollars. Now I would like to share our financial results for the quarter. In the first quarter, our total revenues declined 52% year-over-year to $71 million, primarily due to macroeconomic headwinds and intense competition. Our total operating expenses decreased 47% year-over-year to $45 million from $87 million during the same period last year. The decline was mainly due to a decline in our revenues. Specifically, order fulfillment costs dropped 33% year-over-year to $5.7 million. Sales and marketing expenses decreased 53% year-over-year to $33 million. General and administrative expenses decreased by 20% year over year to USD 7.3 million. Within general and administrative expenses, research and development expenses in the first quarter of 2024 were $4.6 million compared to $5.2 million in the same quarter last year. Going forward, we will execute on our optimized brand strategy while leveraging our proprietary technologies to improve our operational efficiency and customer service. Back to our result. Net loss decreased to $3.8 million from $4 million in the same quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA represents a loss of $3.1 million compared to a loss of $3.1 million in the first quarter of 2024. As he mentioned Mr. He, our strategic goal will be to increase profitability priorities this year. We also aim to return value to our shareholders through our share repurchase program. Since April 17, 2024, the company has purchased 3.2 million ADSs with a total value of approximately $3.5 million. Moving on to the tips. Based on currently available information and the seasonality of the business, we expect total revenue to be in the range of $60 million to $70 million in Q2 2024. This concludes our prepared remarks. We’d be happy to answer a few questions now. Operator, please continue.

Operator: Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Since there are no questions, I would now like to turn to Jenny Cai for some concluding remarks.

Jenny Cai: Thanks again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact LightInTheBox Investor Relations via the contact details provided on our website or Piacente Financial Communications. Have a nice day.

Operator: Thank you. This ends today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You can now disconnect the lines.

End of questions and answers: :

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