Qudian Inc. (NYSE: QD) reported a 53% jump in earnings for the third quarter of 2019 helped by higher revenues despite the overall industry credit deterioration. The bottom line came in line with the analysts’ expectations while the top line exceeded consensus estimates.
Net income soared by 53% to $146 million or $0.46 per American Depository Shares (ADS). Adjusted earnings surged by 53% to $148.6 million or $0.47 per ADS. The overall industry credit deteriorated due to the macroeconomic environment and reduced liquidity as non-complaint players exit the credit market.
Total revenues jumped by 34.3% to $362.5 million primarily due to the ramp-up of the open-platform initiative. Loan facilitation income and other related income increased by 72.6% while financing income fell by 17% due to a decrease in the average on-balance sheet loan balance.
Transaction services fee and other related income, which relate to transaction services and traffic referral services provided by our open-platform, substantially increased to $139 million from nil for the same period last year.
The total number of registered users as of Sep 30, 2019, increased by 12% year-over-year to 78.3 million. On a sequential basis, the number of outstanding borrowers from loan book business and transaction services business rose by 3.4% to 6.3 million.
New active borrowers from loan book business and transaction services business for this quarter increased by 15.2% to 669,111 from 580,727 last year, as a result of incremental user growth driven by transaction services business.
The company expects to continue a conservative approach on its risk-taking book into the final quarter of 2019 and thus revised its full-year guidance accordingly. The company now expects adjusted net income for the full year 2019 of RMB4 billion, which will represent about a 57% increase over a year ago. This was due to the recent strategy for the company to reduce the risk-taking loan balance and focus on higher-quality borrowers via open-platform.
In addition, Qudian announced the replacement of Lianzhu Lv from its board of directors by Long Xu, Qudian’s SVP. Xu joined Qudian in 2016 and has focused on key operations including products, human resources, and customer engagement.