Shanghai-based, US-listed pre-owned consumer electronics company is nominated in three categories at the IR Impact Awards – Greater China 2025
As a company that facilitates the buying, selling and recycling of pre-owned consumer electronics in China, ATRenew is counter-cyclical, with a model that stands to benefit when consumers look to save on that ‘new’ phone or tablet. Here, Xiaoyi (Jessie) Jin, financial communications and IR at ATRenew, talks to IR Impact about engaging local and international investors, ramping up analyst coverage and planning a trip to meet US-based shareholders – more than four years after listing on the NYSE.
ATRenew is nominated in two categories at the IR Impact Awards – Greater China 2025: best buy-side management, best investor event and a rising star nod for Jin. Winners will be revealed on December 4, at The Conrad Hong Kong.
You’re a Chinese firm listed in the US. How does that impact the way you do IR and how often do you travel to the US?
It’s a pretty unusual situation, because we went public in 2021 and there have been cross-border travel restrictions that mean we still haven’t had the chance to go to the US – neither before nor after IPO.
We’ll likely be planning something in the near future, when interest from US investors comes back to Chinese firms. Currently, we look more at targeting investors based in the Chinese mainland, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in Europe – as well as visiting some of the regional headquarters of the long-only US investors. The other option is to meet someone from the US virtually, in our evening hours. Zoom has really helped us out.
We are the largest second-hand consumer electronics transaction services provider on the Chinese mainland and the vast majority of our businesses are located on the Chinese mainland. It can be challenging for us to explain our unique business model to international investors – especially those located far away like in the US. We do this by taking a systematic approach to virtual roadshows or physical, on-site investor days that help bridge the gap between those who are local and our international investor base.
What are some of the big differences between domestic and international audiences?
International investors are relatively more long-term, with a clearer understanding of the fundamentals. They want a clear picture of the growth trajectory and they rely on some desk research as well as virtual communications with our IR team and management. It takes time to build trust with international investors.
With domestic investors, it is easy to get connected because they can travel to our headquarters, to our operational centers and conduct offline research at our stores. It’s very easy for them to understand how we operate, how we source our supplies, how we standardize our products and services and then distribute those products. These guided tours of our stores and operational centers are available to international investors too. For example, when one of our UK-based shareholders recently traveled to China, we invited him to our operational centers. That really helps someone understand what’s going on with our operations and how we can further improve our operational efficiency.
There are also language and cultural barriers between these two types of investors. However, we enjoy helping them connect the dots. Some of the ways we do are through site visits but there’s also things like having very complete presentation materials on our IR website, where we present our business model in both English and Chinese. Investors can review and read the materials and get a good, quick idea and the key concepts of our business model.
You’re nominated in three categories at the IR Impact Awards – Greater China 2025. What have you been doing differently this past year?
Our team used to be very small. Now, with more people coming on board, we’ve been able to extend our reach to more investors through a more extensive network of sell-side analysts. We have improved our internal understanding of how the buy side and sell side think about public companies, while managing their expectations and helping them to initiate coverage and build out their financial models. We currently have six analysts [covering our stock] but our analyst connections are actually double that: some of them have limited capacity and haven’t been able to issue a report. But the relationships are strong – we constantly talk to them about the markets, what is happening in the industry and what’s going on with our company.
Over the past 12 months, we were able to secure initiation from four sell side analysts, which is a huge improvement compared to a year earlier.
A key concern for the buy and sell side this year has been geopolitical issues. We address this by letting them know what options we have. We try to manage expectations with public information as much as possible during group meetings and we try to open up a bit more and share our views of how a changing environment would influence our industry, reminding investors of the potential growth drivers deriving from certain changes in the macro environment.
Besides a growth in analyst coverage, how do you measure the success of your IR efforts?
It’s a very good question, because sometimes IROs have real difficulty in measuring their KPIs, especially during the year-end review. I have had a lot of discussions with our peers in the industry. Generally speaking, what we are adopting internally is a review covering both quality and quantity. In terms of quality, we look at how things have been done, if there’s any concrete feedback from the sell side and buy side. We definitely chat with our connections in these two fields and get their written feedback or oral feedback that we can put together to the management team.
We get a lot of good feedback around our approach to transparency and responsiveness, for example. We also hear about some areas where we could improve. For instance, can we be more precise when projecting the forecast for the next one or two years? That’s something we have been trying to improve internally, and it is on the radar with management as well.
In terms of quality, we have an internal bookkeeping method to track all communication, the NDRs, conferences and our roadshows. We have the numbers to track our activity and how intense our communication with investors has been. This really shows the great effort we put into this. We’re not sitting idle in the office – we are very busy getting our equity story out!
