Qudian Inc. (QD) Q1 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Qudian Inc. (NYSE: QD)Q1 2019 Earnings CallMay 20, 2019, 7:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

  • Prepared Remarks
  • Questions and Answers
  • Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Qudian, Inc. First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Annie Huang, Director of Capital Markets for the Company. Annie, please go ahead.

Annie Huang -- Director of Capital Markets

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Qudian's first quarter 2019 earnings conference call. The Company's results were issued via newswire services earlier today and were posted online. You can download the earnings press release and sign up for the Company's distribution list by visiting our website at ir.qudian.com. Mr. Min Luo, our Founder, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Carl Yeung, our CFO will start the call with their prepared remarks.

Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the Company's results will be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the Company's 20-F as filed with the US SEC. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law.

Please also note that Qudian's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-cash financial measures. Qudian's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures. We also posted a slide presentation on our IR Website providing details on our results in the quarter. We will reference those results in our prepared remarks but will not refer to specific slides during our discussion.

I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Min Luo. Please go ahead.

Min Luo -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Annie. I want to continue to thank all the investors, analysts and the media who have taken interest to join today's call. We have exciting results to share. I will give you a brief overview, then Carl and Annie will give more details. This was another look back quarter. This quarter was a solid start for 2019, with stronger and better operating and financial results. Our core (ph) consumption finance business continued to deliver exceptional risk adjustment profit, driven by strong user demand and the risk management capability.

First on the user side, since our thoughtful and streamlined product and service offering, as well as strong brand recognition, our registered users continued to grow to 73.3 million with little additional marketing costs. In particular, our efforts to activate our dormant user base have paid off evidenced by a sequential growth of 16.6% in new active borrowers.

Second on a founding site we further diversified our institutional funding base and expect to secure sufficient funding for this year. During this quarter, we added five more institutional funding partners and also deepening the cooperation. and also deepened our cooperation with existing partners in scale.

Third asset quality was maintained at our tactical level through our proprietary big data analytics and external partnerships, as of end of Q1 we had done RMB201 billion worth of transactions since we started business in 2014. We have accumulated 185 million number of transactions contributing to a massive scale of transactional and behavior data which gives us clear advantage in data analytics.

Not only a record quarter, it was an exciting quarter from a quarterly and (inaudible) perspective. Beyond income from our loan book business, our open platform initiative began to demonstrate rapid growth. Since its launch in Q3 last year, we have reported over 2.5 million users for our traffic referral partners and around a 136,600 users to our loan referral business partners. Accordingly, our open platform contributed around RMB159 million in revenue for this quarter. That is a big number, a significant achievement over a short period of launch. Looking ahead given this growth visibility, we will continue to invest in our open platform initiative and expand partnerships in funding and user engagement fueling growth beyond our loan book.

Given a exciting and visible growth outlook throughout our core business line, we have discontinued our efforts outside of consumption credit and will stay focused on core consumption credit services. Accordingly, we started to wind down our Dabai Auto business beginning in the second quarter. The existing Dabai staff will be provided opportunities to join our consumption credit units, while we plan to maintain a small operation to provide post-origination services for existing customers until end of loan terms.

Again, it is a great start for 2019, and I am grateful to our pre IPO shareholder help us achieve this milestone as they have accepted gratefully our (ph) H new investors and I am confident exceptional returns will also be delivered to you as well.

Here is Carl with more details.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

With another milestone, and achieved record non-GAAP net income of RMB974.3 million, increasing by 187.9% year-to-year. This came as a result of successfully growing our loan balance while managing risk appropriately. And our loan book grew by 91.2% year-on-year. This demonstrated robust user demand and ample institutional funding.

During this quarter, through successful efforts in testing and activating our dormant user base, new active borrowers increased by 16.6% from last quarter and contributed 18% of total active borrowers. In the meantime, we successfully secured a new RMB10 billion loan facilitation credit balance to serve growing user demand from one of the most established and largest direct banks at a competitive cost.

While our loan book business continued robust growth, our open platform initiative contributed meaningful revenue with little marginal operating costs and zero credit costs. We believe our credit analytics technology and brand influence is ready for full commercialization of our open platform. We intend to build a leading ecosystem of traffic pool, combining our internal user base and users across other leading mobile apps, and then, we add our leading credit big data analytics and we refer these quality transactions to a range of licensed financial institutions.

One recent effort toward our traffic ecosystem for credit service is a strategic minority stake investment in a leading mobile app and they have 15 million monthly active users and giving us exclusive user engagement to Qudian and our app to provide credit and credit referral services. Open platform marks the most exciting part of our Company's future and have proved early success, with two strong quarters of results on a fantastic growth trend.

In order to enhance transparency, we are separately disclosing the revenue from this business under a new revenue line item, referral service fee, for which this quarter again, as Min mentioned, a big number, RMB158.7 million. With our solid Q1 results and ample external funding, we are very confident in our 2019 full year non GAAP net income guidance to again exceed RMB3.5 billion announced back in December 2018.

With guidance well on track and a strong focus on delivering shareholders' value, we bought back all the remaining shares held by Kunlun Group for $103.2 million, an action I believe was welcomed by many investors. Today, we have bought back around $376.8 million worth our own shares or roughly 55.9 million ADSs. We are executing faithfully on our share buyback programs.

Now, for investors focused on EPS, our first quarter 2019 non-GAAP EPS was RMB3.27 or $0.49. This grew 28% from the previous quarter. Now, regarding shares we bought back from Kunlun, we have already canceled all 18.17 million ADSs in the second quarter of 2019. So we really look forward to further enhance our EPS in the coming quarters.

Now, let me pass the floor to Annie, who will share some key financial results.

Annie Huang -- Director of Capital Markets

Our total revenues increased by 22.2% (Technical Difficulty) a substantial increase in loan facilitation income and the financing income partially offset by a decrease in sales income generated by Dabai Auto business. Our financing income increased by 30.1% to RMB1 billion, while loan facilitation income and others substantially increased to RMB644.4 million year-on-year, as a result of a substantial increase in off-balance sheet transactions.

Due to the rapid growth of our open platform, our referral service fee from open platform substantially increased to RMB158.7 million from nil in the first quarter of 2018.

Cost of revenues decreased year-on-year by 62.1% to RMB260.5 million, primarily due to a decrease in funding costs and the decrease in costs associated with Dabai Auto business. The scale down of Dabai Auto business further drove down our sales and marketing expenses by 35% to RMB79.9 million. Sales and marketing associated with our core consumption finance business stayed flat from last quarter.

Our asset quality stayed stable and the provision for receivables decreased by 12% to RMB390.4 million due to a year-on-year decrease in past due on-balance sheet outstanding principal receivables, partially offset by a write down of Dabai Auto business of RMB38 million and M1+ delinquency coverage ratio for this quarter was 1.2 times. Due to the increase in loan tenure, we believe M1+ delinquency rate was not fully representative of loan performance, and therefore, we added actual charge-off rates to supplement the disclosure. As of end of this quarter, our actually charge-off rates by vintage were less than 1.88%. We will continue to evaluate the disclosure of operating metrics that meaningfully represent our loan performances.

Finally, we continue to maintain low leverage. As of end of March 2019, our equity reached around RMB11.8 billion while our outstanding loan balance was RMB24.6 billion. In addition, we had cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of RMB3.1 billion. We believe our low leverage model and sufficient cash reserves will help sustain long term growth.

Again, on guidance, we remain full confident in our growth prospects, given sufficient funding and user demand. Therefore, we're reaffirming our previous guidance and expect our total non-GAAP net income for the full year of 2019 will be greater than RMB3.5 billion, which would represent a 37.3% increase from RMB2.5 billion for 2018.

The above outlook is based on the current market conditions and reflects the Company's preliminary expectations as to market conditions, its regulatory and operating environment, as well as customer demand, all all of which are subject to change.

This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call to questions. Operator Please go ahead.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Mr. John Cai from Morgan Stanley. You may now ask a question.

John Cai -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations on the strong results. So, it's great to hear that we will stay focused on the core consumption credit. So I have two questions related to that. So the first one is basically on the users. I think we are at 0.5 million users with like very little sales and marketing costs, just wondered if the management can share further details on how we achieve that and what's our future plan to continue to enlarge the borrower or the user base?

And the second one is related to the loan, I think we had a very strong quarter-on-quarter loan balance growth this year. And when I look at the per borrower outstanding amount it has -- if my calculations is right, around at RMB4,500, just wonder how much room do we see to further grow from this stage? And also we do have sufficient funding this year, and -- but on the user size, we have these continued increase in outstanding balance per borrowers and we also have this credit referral business, meaning that we are monetizing on this user pools to -- I mean if in a two to three years perspective, when do we see that we might need to maybe buy some external traffics to increase this user base? Thank you very much.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Hey, John. Thank you for the questions asked. I'll answer them one by one. So we did a good job last quarter and growing that new user by 0.5 million. And that's really again driven by -- it's always been too much demand and we always try to fight -- not letting too many people through the door, because we do operate at the core business a risk-based thing. So we continue to offer the low APR, one of the lowest in the industry for our credit size, for ticket size. So that has always been a way that we can drive new users. And we never really spent money on sales and marketing and believe a better product should sell itself.

It's a keen observation. The loan balance per borrower, right now, yes, it's around RMB4,000 plus. We believe we can take it to RMB6,000 plus in the near term with fairly little impact to our credit risk profile. The reason is being that we have observed many of our peers, they have significantly bigger loan balance per borrower than us and their credit metrics have performed quite well. We just had been overly conservative.

Now, regarding growth for the rest of the year, a lot of it will come from the loan balance growth in the coming quarters, some new user growth, but I think the most exciting part is the open platform initiative. If you think about roughly 5.4 million active borrowers, in fact, from the time we launched open platform, we sent 2.5 million users -- above that 5 million to other people, to other platforms, and we referred 160,000 transactions, meaning 160,000 people, right, to our funding partners with no risk undertaking and that number will just continue to grow because that pocket is so deep. We have around 73 million registered users which we can just keep digging.

On top of that as we just mentioned, we made a strategic investment in one of the leading apps in China. They have -- they carry about 15 million MAUs, and now the MAU is exclusive to the Qudian and our consumer credit service. So I don't think we are going to have a user problem at least for some time. So that answers I think part of your third question. We have secured sufficient funding, we got a RMB10 billion credit facilitation program going, we are one of the leading -- largest direct banks in China. I think that that's funding there, the users, our internal pocket is there. We are adding 15 million possible users to this platform. We continue to add more other platforms to this ecosystem. So it's exciting year for us and I think if you look forward the open platform part of the business will just contribute bigger and bigger. So, I am giving some preview. That's why this quarter we separately disclosed that revenue line item so that people can see very clearly that growth rates.

John Cai -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Thank you, Carl. So, just one real quick follow up. What's our latest loan balance and what's the per borrower outstanding balance? Thank you.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

I would really much like to share with you, but my counsel has advised me not to disclose anything beyond what's in the earnings release. So I can assure you it's grown. We continue to be on a very strong growth trajectory. If you look back at our Q1 results, I think we did a good job right. And I think we continue to do a good job.

John Cai -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Thank you very much.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, John.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Tian Hou from T.H. Capital. You may now ask the question.

Tian Hou -- T.H. Capital -- Analyst

Hi. Carl and Min. I really think you guys did a good job and the number shows. And I think it's the first time you guys actually publicly openly talked about the open platform operation. Would you please give some more color on this open platform operation? What's the purpose, who are the participants, how you actually divert the traffic and how you make money out of it? So that is mainly my question.

And also on the funding side, I do realize a lot of state or state-owned trusts are actually participants in those kind of consumer loan business. And so when you say the source of loan that funding side is not going to be a problem going forward, so also can you elaborate a little bit on that? Thank you. That's two of my questions.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Tian, thank you, and always great to hear from you. So I'll answer the question on the funding side first and then I'll talk about the open platform. So, as you know, our loan balance as of end of Q1, as just disclosed, was RMB24.6 billion. So adding another RMB10 billion of credit facilitation from the leading banks would take us beyond RMB30 billion. Beyond RMB30 billion, I think, we'll be well ahead of where -- we talked about in terms of guidance. So we are done pretty much for this year for funding.

We are not -- we do not work with trusts as much as last before. Our current trust participation in the loan book is just around 10%. Yeah. It's just around 10%. Majority of it is banks. So, yeah, I'm actually -- pretty good memory, it's 10.7%. So we don't see any risk there. So -- OK, so that's the funding side.

Open platform, we first talked about it in the third quarter of 2018. We were forming a business where we want to grow beyond our loan book, right, because there's only so much risk appetite that this Company is willing to take. And we had been overall quite conservative. So we started our traffic referrals so for transactions that we may not have sufficient funding to do or we don't think the risk appetite is exactly right for us, but it might be right for some other players, we do a CPC base business, where we send this user across to the other app. Okay. So that's how we generate CPC advertising business. But then our funding partners, which are mostly banks came back and said, well, look, if you guys are so open minded about sharing your 70 million user base, can we go beyond CPC. Can we say you do some more work and you send a transaction over and I'll happily do do a CPS with you. So they're doing a revenue share with us.

So that just took off. So we referred like 160,000 people to our bank partners in Q1 and totally we earned RMB159 million in revenues versus RMB30 million in Q4, almost 5x growth. This is exciting. From the trends and trajectories, there'll be more and more demand for my funding partners to look for the right customer. And we are building a knitting ecosystem of apps where we've become a plug and play into their apps. So, we don't want to replicate other people's business where we buy traffic. Okay. That doesn't make sense in the credit business. You buy traffic you're forced to lend. Okay. That's not smart. So we would put a plug and play entry into their app so that user don't leave that app and can directly get the best in class, regulatory compliant, well-funded loan products supplied by my funding partners.

Tian Hou -- T.H. Capital -- Analyst

This is great. Thank you so much, Carl. Congratulations on a good quarter.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Awesome. Thank you, Tian.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Victor Wang from the CICC. You may now ask the question.

Victor Wang -- CICC -- Analyst

Hi, Carl. This is Victor. Congratulations on a fantastic first quarter results. I may have missed some questions because somehow my line was not connected until the question between you and John. My question is regarding -- I find an interesting slide in your presentation, which is referring to, it seems that QD is considering to expand the business into ASEAN countries. And what is the rationale behind and is there any planning in terms of either the timetable or capital committed for the ASEAN expansion?

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Great. Thank you, Victor. Again, great to hear from you. Sorry, about the line quality. We think we have really figured out one of the best ways to serve the under-served users with our deep, deep experience in China, I mean RMB200 billion worth a transaction is just a massive data that we collected. And we believe some of this know-how and data analytics plus the technology, we're clearing transactions for 100 funding partners every minute -- every hour, so we believe a lot of this can be replicated at a very low cost, which should give us a significant advantage when we enter emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, possibly India, Africa those countries.

Now there is no timetable. We just want to explain to the capital markets our advantages are there, there are room for us to grow and grow and grow. We will not stop growing in China. We will add more growth to this business by looking at opportunities elsewhere overseas because these markets are emerging, there are again a lot of under bank users. And we believe the way we understand credit gives us so much advantage in success there. We don't have any capital marked, we don't know whether we're going to do it ourselves or maybe through M&A. All these are just questions. We may be spending quite a long time investigating, doing due diligence into the right markets in the form of the business that we would take doing these markets. So we'll update the community as we know more, but right now, it's just a thought.

Victor Wang -- CICC -- Analyst

Thank you, Carl. Can I have a follow on question? Considering that your first quarter results is already pushing to RMB1 billion in terms of quarterly profit, and considering that the open platform is likely to drive more revenue and considering that you are adding additional funding, it seems that's the likelihood for you have to revise up the full year profit guidance is very high. Can you share with us what's latest assessment or how should we as sell side analyst community to look at the full year earnings in terms of the range? Thanks.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Good catch, Victor. It's hard to sneak away thinks from you. And yes, so as we approach a RMB1 billion of net income per quarter and will likely with some growth exceed that in the future possibly, it seems like RMB2.5 billion is a vast understatement. But here's how we think about going forward, as you see, our open platform Initiative has done a great job in Q1. We have a lot of hope that it would grow even faster in the upcoming quarters. So that's why right now I'm sticking with the guidance so far. Yes, the funding for sort of the core consumption credit part is there, the users are there, so there should be no problem growing, but we will reassess whether to raise guidance down the future or maybe enhance possibly the quality of our earnings from the aspect that it may not be a underwritten risk undertaking business anymore. It would just be a pure Internet business which should hopefully demand for higher valuation. So we are reassessing all these options. But in any case, RMB2.5 billion feeling will be delivered like we promise. Whether we accept that significantly or enhance the quality significantly, I think both options should add value to my shareholders.

Victor Wang -- CICC -- Analyst

Thank you, Carl.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, VIctor.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Jacky Zuo from Deutsche Bank. You may now ask a question.

Jacky Zuo -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst

Hi. Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on the results. So my first one is follow up on the open platform initiative. Just want to learn about the average ticket size and the total loan originations for this transaction referral business, and roughly our take rate for this type of referral business? And ones again some feedback on the two partners we are currently cooperating, what's their initial feedback on this type of cooperation and a pipeline for on-boarding more partners in the coming quarters? And probably investors also want to learn because they also have options to sign like loan supermarket to acquire online borrowers. So how do they compare with our open platform versus like loan supermarkets?

And second question is about the asset quality. Just want to get some color on the asset quality trend, because I actually observe the P&L item, we actually booked the two items, one is loss of guarantee liability and another one provision for loan receivables. And add up the two items, is actually up from fourth quarter. So just want to get some color on this number. And also we booked some loss on the Dabai Auto business. So any follow up write down of Auto business in the coming quarters?

And also we mentioned we will target some asset quality loan loss range. So what's the current target? And lastly, just a minor one is on e-commerce business. I saw our e-commerce sales revenue actually up year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, so just want to get to updates on the e-commerce front? Thank you.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jacky. Lots of great questions. So regarding our open platform, some of the questions you have regarding Q1, so we referred about RMB1.8 billion, whether it's loan volume or loan balance, it's the same because it's during the quarter. So yeah that's kind of where we are in Q1. So the average ticket size therefore is around RMB8,000. So it's significantly bigger than our current ticket size. So that fits really well with our funding partners as they try to chase for bigger ticket size as they're typically banks.

Since we don't underwrite the risk, we don't really care where the losses are, but we actually do care because we do want to our partners to succeed and do well. As far as we know, the delinquency rates across the loans so far in Q1 and Q4 we generated are extremely low. They are like in sub-1%, sub-0.5% range. So our partners found it incredible. So that's why getting so much confidence that we can offer this to more partners and that part of the business will continue to grow quite well.

Asset quality trend, yes, as I mentioned before, we try to give a very candid discussion about what asset quality means to us. I believe that asset quality must deteriorate over time for many reasons. Number one, we have elongated loan in the past year. Second the liquidity for the whole Internet finance sector has declined given a lot of P2Ps have exited, lot of micro lending companies have gone bust. Yes, bigger players have come in, but they target the bigger ticket size. So I think in the near short term, I expect to continue to see asset quality to decline, but put it in context, if you look at our profit take rates, whether it's Q1 or Q4 or Q3, Q2 before, our profit take rate remains consistent.

What we are seeing is probably about roughly a 1% decline a year in asset quality. But what you're about to see as well is about a 1% decline in my operating costs. So basically our margin take rate has been neutral. So that's where we see things trend. We are delivering extremely consistent risk-adjusted returns, quarter-to-quarter to quarter-to-quarter to quarter-to-quarter. And we believe that trend will continue regardless of whether asset quality increases or decreases. So we're managing that quite well. There has been some markdowns in Dabai, approximately RMB30 million in the first quarter. We still continue to expect to mark down some more in the second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter as we wind down the Dabai business, but the amounts should be immaterial going forward. So we -- our bottom line is this, we should still continue to deliver very consistent margins for our loan balance over time. Does that help with some of the questions, Jacky?

Jacky Zuo -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst

Yeah. Thank you, Carl. Just so last one on the e-commerce sise. So I saw the GMV actually up quarter-on-quarter a lot. So can you share with us some color on that? Are we doing some -- or are we seeing more demand on the e-commerce business?

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. I think e-commerce has been something that we always want and always loved, but e-commerce has never been the biggest part of our profit driver yet because we still are figuring out our optimal risk-adjusted return on this business. So, I know you -- and I have been positively surprised too on our Q1 e-commerce sales, but I don't expect that to grow significantly or if I want to put things in priority, I think the open platform, you're going to see much, much more exciting growth from there.

Jacky Zuo -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you, Carl. Very helpful.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jacky.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And your next question comes from the line Victor Wang from CICC. You may now ask your question.

Victor Wang -- CICC -- Analyst

Hi. I'm going to ask another question and thank you for your patience. The question is regarding capital planning. In the presentation, I saw that you target to manage the operational leverage in terms of the total loan balance versus your own equity in the range of 2 to 3 times. And currently, it stands at 2.1 time and which means that in theory you can actually level up the operation a little bit and you can do it either way by adding more funding or you can actually try to do the business with more lean being capital structure. So that leads to my question. Is there any additional plan in terms of going forward, whether you have an accelerated speed of share buyback plan or is it possible that you will finally begin to introduce a cash dividend payout plan, if you can gradually increase leverage into 3 times?

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Victor. Good observation. Yes, we have consistently operated our business under a conservative approach. So you can observe that we operate the lowest so-called leverage across all of our peers. And we believe we can sustain the stable growth on a good risk-adjusted return that we feel comfortable with at no more than 3x leverage. So there is another 50% growth on that leverage, plus the capital we continue to redeploy back in the Company, the growth should really be there, period.

So how do we think about whether we will operate a leaner capital structure or leverage up to do more? I think the answer lies in open platform. If we can significantly and quickly scale up open platform, then I think there is room for us to operate a leaner capital structure. And how we do with that capital freed up. We would either bring it back to shareholders via, again, share buyback that we have consistently done. We may offer dividends as a possibility, but those are still a bit far away. It all depends on how we perform on open platform. Does it help with the question, Victor? I think it's a little bit too early to call what we do with the cash and the capital. If we can grow significantly the open platform then really this Company doesn't need that much capital anymore.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mr. John Cai from Morgan Stanley. You may now ask the question.

John Cai -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions again. So yeah I'm trying to follow up on the open platform growth. So is there any like context here, meaning that in our -- I mean we look at the applications from a pool basis, how many applications we are generating from our users, how many ID referred, how much potentials we see, and first of all. the penetration rise, so what's the room there? And secondly, I am asking a repeat question, how do you plan to grow this traffic pool? And finally is, so are we thinking that -- so then you mentioned that we might need less capital if the open platform is doing well. So my question is, is there any potential that in the future if there (inaudible) both fit our standard and the other partners standard that we might refer them to the other partners rather then to ourselves? Thank you very much.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Thanks John. So I think if you want to get a more peek into the future of open platform, so first of all immediately out of our own 70 million users that we have, we've marked that about 10 million to 15 million actually are fit for transaction referral not just traffic referral. In the first quarter, we've done around 160,000, plus about a million users on traffic referral, we generated RMB159 million in revenues, which is essentially just profits given after-tax profits. So that's 10 million to 15 million just internally. If you take 10 million, multiply by RMB8,000 again that's just a massive number. And given the take rate we are experiencing, anywhere from 5% to 10% from partner to partner, this would generate a massive, massive cash flow and net income for us.

But on top of that, I think one thing that is exciting is, we found a lot of apps in China do not have the right financial services partners to help the users and to help them monetize. So we are building a pretty sophisticated easy to use, plug and play financial service kind of products as a technology business to link them up with this open platform. So we're adding in the next quarter -- as we close the transaction just now, we're adding 15 million possible users to the open platform. So if you just think of any reasonable translation 1 million to 2 million add RMB8000 per average transaction as we saw in Q1 and a take rate conservatively say anywhere from 5% to 10%, so let's call it 8%, right, that's just going to be a massive earnings driver.

John Cai -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Yeah. Thank you. So just on the I mean -- I mean if the future that the leads we generate actually (inaudible) our standard and the partners' standard do we plan to within them or you refer them out, is that decided yet at the moment?

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. That's a great question. We have not decided yet, but right now given we want to grow the business faster and faster on open platform, we are giving priority to our partners first.

John Cai -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Thank you very much.

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you John.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call over to our presenters. You may continue.

Annie Huang -- Director of Capital Markets

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact Qudian's Investor Relations department through the contact information provided on our website.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.

Duration: 50 minutes

Call participants:

Annie Huang -- Director of Capital Markets

Min Luo -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Carl Yeung -- Chief Financial Officer

John Cai -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Tian Hou -- T.H. Capital -- Analyst

Victor Wang -- CICC -- Analyst

Jacky Zuo -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst

More QD analysis

All earnings call transcripts

10 stocks we like better than Qudian Inc. American Depositary Shares, each representing one Class A Ordinary ShareWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has quadrupled the market.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Qudian Inc. American Depositary Shares, each representing one Class A Ordinary Share wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

See the 10 stocks

*Stock Advisor returns as of March 1, 2019

This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.

Motley Fool Transcribers has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.