水滴 (WDH) 2026 年第二季法說會：保險業務成長帶動營收成長 72.8%

重點總覽

• 水滴公司 (WDH) 公布 2026 年第二季淨營業收入為 14.48 億人民幣，年增 72.8%，主要受保險收入成長 80.5% 所推動。
• 營業利潤年增 14.3%、季增 39.2% 至約 1.11 億人民幣。歸屬於股東的淨利潤年減 10.3%，但季增 27.9% 至約 1.26 億人民幣。
• 保險相關收入達 13.3 億人民幣。新增客戶數季增 32.3%，長期保險的首年保費則成長 33.4%。
• AI 支援的使用者互動產生了近 1 億人民幣的首年保費。管理層表示，AI 旨在透過帶動收入成長與提升營運效率發揮價值，而非作為獨立營運的業務。
• 管理層設定 2026 全年總收入年增超過 40%、營業利潤年增超過 10% 的目標。
• 董事會批准每股 ADS 發放 0.03 美元股利，並授權在未來 12 個月內實施高達 5,000 萬美元的新股票回購計畫。

核心財務數據

業務與營運表現

保險業務

保險相關收入年增 80.5%、季增 15.4% 至 13.3 億人民幣。分部營業利潤季增 20% 至 1.8 億人民幣。

獲客保持活絡。新增客戶數季增 32.3%，長期保險首年保費成長 33.4%。針對帶病體（既往症患者）客戶的產品貢獻了 3.1 億人民幣的首年保費，失能險則貢獻了 8,400 萬人民幣。

水滴公司繼續擴大低投保門檻產品。新推出的產品包括「容易保」，公司將其描述為無需健康告知且提供 5 年保證續保的長期重疾險。公司還擴展了「吉星高照」，提供無需健康告知的指定疾病終身保障。

應用於面向客戶情境的 AI 產生了近 1 億人民幣的首年保費。由「AI 醫療險專家」促成的首年保費季增 25.6%。截至季末，「KEYI.AI」已回答超過 13,000 個核保問題，而由「AI 超級售前助手」服務的使用者人數季增近 50%。

大病籌款與臨床試驗

截至 2026 年 6 月 30 日，水滴籌已為 382 萬名患者籌集 747 億人民幣，獲得約 4.99 億名捐款者的支持。公司持續升級基於 AI 的風控機制，針對資產隱匿、身份風險以及提交材料不一致等問題進行管控。

數位化臨床試驗解決方案業務本季招募超過 1,500 名患者，年增 54%，使累計招募人數突破 17,000 人。慢性病患者招募量成長 80%，不過管理層指出，這類研究通常篩選失敗率較高，需要更精準且更快速的患者匹配。

「翼尋平台」（E-Find Platform）本季簽約 167 個新項目。與該平台合作的藥企和合同研究組織（CRO）數量超過 255 家。

股東回報

董事會批准每股 ADS 發放 0.03 美元（或每普通股 0.003 美元）的現金股利，預計發放給 2026 年 10 月 9 日登記在冊的股東。總發放金額預計約為 1,080 萬美元，計劃於 11 月初配發。

水滴公司還授權在未來 12 個月內實施高達 5,000 萬美元的股票回購計畫。截至 2026 年 8 月 31 日，自啟動首個回購計畫以來，公司已累計回購 6,290 萬股 ADS，總金額約 1.2 億美元。

管理層指引

針對 2026 全年，管理層設定總收入年增超過 40%、營業利潤年增超過 10% 的目標。

公司預期在 2026 年下半年及 2027 全年維持積極的獲客節奏。管理層預計，當前獲客的價值將在客戶生命週期內，透過續保、向上銷售與交叉銷售逐步實現。

水滴公司預計其整體研發費用率將保持穩定，維持在管理層認為合理的範圍內，同時將更多人才與 Token 相關支出轉向 AI。隨著使用規模擴大，支出可能會增加，但須遵循各應用的投資回報率紀律。

風險與關注焦點

• 由於水滴公司加大對第三方流量管道的投入，銷售與行銷費用大幅上升。這些獲客支出的回報時機與規模仍是重要的營運考量。
• 儘管收入與營業利潤增加，但歸屬於股東的淨利潤仍呈年減，這反映了稅務相關項目及非經常性損益的影響。
• 管理層表示，媒體關於針對保單紅利執行現行稅務法規的報導，影響了近期客戶對香港保險的意願，不過管理層並未將此問題視為專門針對該市場的新政策。
• 慢性病臨床研究雖然擁有較大的患者池，但篩選失敗率也較高，從而提高了對匹配精準度與速度的要求。
• 水滴公司的便攜式 AI 辦公助手及相關智慧硬體項目仍處於早期試銷售階段。管理層表示其目前對財務的影響有限。

分析師問答亮點

香港保險與保單紅利稅務：管理層將近期的關注定調為執行現行稅務法規，而非針對香港保險的新政策。管理層承認這對短期客戶意願有所影響，但表示多元貨幣配置、獲取全球醫療資源及資產傳承規劃等需求驅動因素依然穩固。

帶病體（既往症）保險：水滴公司將此類別視為需求驅動的成長機會。其策略是結合差異化的核保與理賠結構，以及基於健康狀況、年齡和客戶情境的 AI 匹配。管理層認為，帶病體保障、中高端醫療險以及綁定健康管理或養老服務的產品具備強大潛力。

AI 商業化：管理層不打算主要將 AI 作為獨立業務進行商業化。管理層預期 AI 的價值將透過在獲客、風險篩查、諮詢服務及理賠等環節提高轉換率、帶動收入成長與提升營運效率來展現。

獲客支出：管理層表示，目標不僅僅是降低獲客成本，而是透過 AI 改善產品與客戶的匹配度及轉換率。水滴公司計劃繼續擴大觸及範圍，同時尋求來自續保和交叉銷售的長期回報。

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管理層陳述

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by for Waterdrop Inc.'s Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Tracy Lee. Please proceed, Ms. Lee.

Tracy Lee

Thank you, operator. Dear investors and analysts, this is Tracy Lee from Waterdrop Investor Relations. Please note that discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of U.S. Private Securities and the Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but not limited to those outlined in our public filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law.

Also, this call includes discussion of certain non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release for a reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP.

Joining us today on the call are Mr. Shen Peng, our Founder, Chairman and CEO; Mr. Ran Wei, Director and GM of Insurance Business; Mrs. Li Jieru, Finance VP, Head of Strategy and Capital Markets.

Certain members of our management team will deliver their remarks in Mandarin, followed by an English translation. Moreover, a webcast replay will be available on our Investor Relations website.

I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Shen Peng. Please go ahead.

Peng Shen

Dear investors and analysts, thank you for joining Waterdrop's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. In this quarter, we maintained growth momentum and achieved a total revenue of CNY 1.45 billion, up 72.8% year-over-year and the net profit attributable to our ordinary shareholders of CNY 130 million. Since the first quarter of 2022, we have maintained profitability for 18 consecutive quarters.

Segment-wise, our insurance business continued to optimize user acquisition and conversion, driving 80.5% year-over-year revenue growth. Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding had accumulated [indiscernible] medical funds for 3.82 million patients as of the quarter end. Our digital clinical trial solution business performed strongly with quarterly patient enrollment up over 50% year-over-year. This growth trend were underpinned by deep integration of AI across our core business scenarios. As of the end of June, the company has filed 88 large language model patents, including 10 of them overseas.

With strong performance and cash reserves, we continue to prioritize shareholder returns. Our Board recently approved 2 new initiatives. Firstly, the Board has approved a cash dividend of $0.03 per ADS or $0.003 per ordinary share payable to holders of record on October 9, 2026. The aggregate dividend payment is approximately $10.8 million with payments to be made in early November.

Second, the Board approved a share repurchase program of up to $50 million over the next 12 months. Since the initial program launched in 2021, we have repurchased approximately 62.9 million ADS for $121 million as of August 31, 2026.

The company remains committed to sustainable development and to getting back to society in meaningful ways. As of June 30, 2026, Waterdrop Charity platform has partnered with 119 public charitable organizations and launched more than 15,600 charity programs.

Waterdrop remains focused on growth and investment in core businesses. We expect our current incremental investment to continue translating into solid user base and future product potential. We always regard technology as a core driver of this company's growth. Today, our AI capabilities are actively expanded across the platform, enabling us to better capture growth opportunities in our existing businesses and further sharpen our competitive edge. At the same time, we are actively piloting new AI-driven initiatives for global markets and have made early progress in [indiscernible] markets. For full year of 2026, Waterdrop targets more than 40% year-over-year growth in total revenue and over 10% growth in operating profit.

This concludes our overview of Waterdrop's business performance. Now we will walk you through each of our business segments in more detail.

Wei Ran

Hello, everyone. This is Ran Wei. Let me first update you on our insurance business. In the second quarter, insurance-related income reached CNY 1.33 billion, up 80.5% year-over-year and 15.4% quarter-over-quarter. Operating profit was CNY 180 million, up 20% from the previous quarter. With continued refinement in our AI-driven user insight and conversion capabilities, newly acquired customers rose 32.3% sequentially. The first year premiums of long-term insurance grew 33.4% sequentially as we capture market demand for insurance this quarter.

On the product side, our core strategy remains improving the affectability of insurance products. This quarter, we delivered several new products in line with this direction, including the launch of Rongyi Bao, the market's first long-term critical illness insurance product that requires no health disclosure and offers 5-year guaranteed renewability. We also expanded our Jixing Gaozhao product metrics, which now includes the market first specified disease insurance offering lifetime coverage with no health disclosure. During this quarter, products for users with pre-existing conditions contributed CNY 310 million FYP and disability insurance at CNY 84 million.

On the service side, we adopted differentiated scenario-based operations across customer touch points. In this quarter, AI applications across our user-facing interaction scenarios helped generating nearly CNY 100 million in FYP. Among them, AI Pro insurance generates FYP in millions each month. FYP facilitated by our AI Medical Insurance Expert rose by 25.6% sequentially. In WeCom scenario, we executed our strategies directly from the demand identification and user profiling to key moment engagement and batch operation contributing over CNY 10 million in FYP during this quarter.

Long-term insurance sales, the value of AI ultimately comes down to expanding what our life planners can do. As of quarter end, our underwriting assistant KEYI.AI had answered more than 13,000 underwriting questions. Since its launch, our AI Super Pre-Sales Assistant has constantly outperformed human life planners on annual premium per lead. And the number of users it served grew nearly 50% sequentially. Powered by multi-agent collaboration, our AI conversion model captures user preference from natural language interaction, turning them into durable profiles we can draw on over time and proactively surface topics tailored to each user, effectively extending the reach of every life planner we have.

That concludes our update on the insurance business for the second quarter.

Next, let me briefly update on Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding and Healthcare businesses. As of the end of June 2026, Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding had cumulatively contribution from around 499 million donors up to 3.82 million patients and raised a total of CNY 74.7 billion. This quarter, we continue to upgrade our AI driven risk control models, further improving asset concealment detection and sensitive identity detection. By combining semantic analysis of ID information, medical materials and user-generated content, the upgraded engine can better identify heating inconsistency and improve risk control efficiency.

In our health care business, our performance exceeding expectations across several key metrics. We enrolled more than 1,500 patients in this quarter, up 54% year-over-year and cumulative patient surpassing 17,000. Growth was driven by the higher matching efficiency and stronger enrollment capability. Oncology projects remain our core focus, while chronic disease projects are growing most of the sequential growth this quarter. Although chronic disease studies have a larger patient pool, they typically carry a high screening failure rates and place greater demand on matching precision and speed.

Chronic disease enrollment increased 80% year-over-year in the second quarter, further validating our enrollment ability in high screening failures enrolling. Meanwhile, our proven enrollment track record is translating into deeper and broader trust among patient partners. In this quarter, E-Find Platform signed 167 new products and the number of pharmaceutical companies and CROs we partnered with surpassed 255. Going forward, we will continue to optimize operational efficiency and work with our partners to advance digitalization across the clinical business progression.

This concludes our update on the Crowdfunding and Healthcare businesses.

Jieru Li

Hello, everyone. This is Li Jieru. Next, I will walk you through our financial highlights for the second quarter of 2026. Before I go into details, please be reminded that all the numbers quoted here will be in RMB. And please refer to our earnings release for detailed information on our financial performance on both the year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis, respectively.

In the second quarter of 2026, Waterdrop delivered net operating revenue of CNY 1,448 million, up 72.8% year-over-year, maintaining a strong growth momentum. Our insurance business contributed about CNY 1,333 million in revenue, representing an 80.5% increase year-over-year. Net insurance businesses accounted for around 7.9% of total revenue, including CNY 63.6 million from Medical Crowdfunding service fees and CNY 35.2 million from our digital clinical trial solutions.

Total operating costs and expenses came in at about CNY 1,337 million in the second quarter, up 80.5% year-over-year. Operating costs were CNY 537 million, increasing 29% year-over-year. The increase was primarily driven by business scale expansion, including an increase of around CNY 63.8 million in cost of referrals and service fees as well as an increase of CNY 21.4 million in short message service costs and CNY 11.2 million in personnel costs, respectively.

Sales and marketing expenses reached nearly CNY 638 million compared with CNY 199 million in the same quarter of 2025. The year-over-year increase mainly reflect -- the year-over-year increase mainly reflected our active step-up in public domain traffic investment with marketing expenses for third-party traffic channels increasing by about CNY 450 million and marketing-related professional technical service fees increasing by around CNY 21.8 million. G&A expenses were CNY 93.4 million, up 27.2% year-over-year, mainly due to an increase of CNY 33.3 million in allowance for credit losses. This was partially offset by decreases of nearly CNY 10.5 million in personnel costs and share-based compensation expenses.

R&D expenses were CNY 68.8 million, up 32.4% year-over-year. The increase was mainly driven by cloud server fees, token fees and other IT support expenses, which rose by about CNY 11.1 million as well as an increase of CNY 6.3 million in personnel costs and share-based compensation expenses.

For this quarter, operating profit reached about CNY 111 million, up 14.3% year-over-year and 39.2% quarter-over-quarter. However, due to tax-related items and nonrecurring gains and losses, net profit attributable to shareholders was around CNY 126 million, down 10.3% year-over-year, but up 27.9% quarter-over-quarter.

As of June 30, 2026, cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and other cash positions totaled about CNY 2.653 billion. Our cash reserves maintains ample and provide solid support for both business investment and shareholder returns.

In terms of shareholder returns, since the launch of our first share repurchase program, we have cumulatively repurchased 62.9 million ADS for approximately USD 120 million as of August 31, 2026. And recently, the Board approved the sixth share repurchase program under which we plan to repurchase up to $50 million over the next 12 months and also approved the sixth cash dividend of approximately USD 10.8 million.

Overall, both the quality and scale of growth in our core businesses improved this quarter. The continued deployment of AI across every scenario in our business is becoming an important driver of efficiency gains. Meanwhile, we are expanding proactively while investing prudently in new initiatives in global markets, which for now have very limited impact on our current period financial results. As these initiatives reach a larger scale, we will keep the capital markets informed in a timely manner. In the future, the company will remain committed to disciplined strategic investments and continue creating long-term value for users and shareholders.

That concludes the company's financial results for the second quarter of 2026. We will now move on to the Q&A session.

Tracy Lee

[Operator Instructions] We now proceed to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Amy Chen of Citi. Her question is, in terms of the Mainland Chinese business in Hong Kong, media have reported that Mainland tax authorities may tax policy dividends. Has management seen any change either in the international business or domestic business?

Wei Ran

Regarding recent market attention, our reading that what we are seeing reflects the enforcement of tax rules that have long been in place rather than a new policy specifically targeting Hong Kong insurance. In the near term, the media coverage have some effect on our customer sentiment as the differentated value of Hong Kong insurance products like multicurrency allocation, access to global health care resources and inheritance planning are clear and fundamental drivers of the Hong Kong insurance market has not changed.

Turning to the drivers of Mainland China insurance market today, the growth is driven by a rising health protection awareness, policy tailwinds for commercial health insurance, continued product innovation and the structural shift of household savings into long-term assets such as insurance in the current low interest rate environment.

Waterdrop serves as diversifying the customer base across multiple markets and multiple service models and our business mix remains solid, and we're confident in serving user demand wherever it rises.

Tracy Lee

We will now take our next question from [indiscernible] of CICC. The question is, we have noticed that several insurers have recently launched health insurance products targeting customers with preexisting conditions. How does management evaluate this opportunity in this category? And what is product strategy in this area?

Wei Ran

As checkups become more common, the chronic illness and living with pre-existing conditions are far more typical. So a clean standard life is actually quite rare. And traditional health care insurance have a long focus on healthy lives and moving the people with pre-existing conditions still go unprotected. The industry consensus is clear, we're shifting from ensuring more healthy people to protecting the health of more people. This is both the real demand side opportunity and a clear path of commercial insurance expanding its coverage. And early practice with federal-level inclusive health plans, that logic is moving to more the commercial medical insurance, critical illness insurance, disability insurance and others. This is not simply diluting underwriting, it is segmenting the disease risk and building differentiated underwriting and claims. So the certain risk can actually be written and paid. For Waterdrop, lowering coverage threshold is central to our product strategy.

On the supply side, we break the demand down by scenario, age and condition, and co-design terms and coverage with our insurer partners. On the acquisition side, we use platform and AI insights to match the right products to the right customer. So people with pre-existing conditions can actually find something that works for them.

Longer term, our view is that health cover for people with pre-existing conditions can become more like auto insurance, people can actually buy it, claim on it and renew it. Accessibility and sustainability will have to move together.

Tracy Lee

We will now take our next two questions from [indiscernible] of Guotai Junan International. The question is, is there a clear time line for AI agent to start generating commercial value? And how will AI investment impact on R&D expenses ratio going forward? And what other new initiatives is the company currently exploring?

Peng Shen

As previously introduced, our AI is planning across four value chains: acquisition, risk screening, and claims, and it grows series by stage. We are not commercializing AI as a strong stand-alone business and its value will show up in our top line growth and bottom line growth we deliver. And as we introduced earlier in the user targeting and conversion, our AI directly support the user computation and the purchase decision, giving nearly CNY 100 million in FYP.

And in our long-term insurance advisory tools like our KEYI.AI and our AI Pre-Sales Assistant can help our life planners work more efficiently and efficiently and close more cases. On our operation, our AI customer service and quality inspection application have fully absorbed the actual volume as we scale.

In our R&D side, the overall R&D ratio is stable, but we are actively shifting resources towards AI, both in the talent and in token cost. As usage scales, the spend will grow naturally, but we are disciplined about ROI under each scenario, and we will keep the overall ratio to a reasonable range.

And turning to our new initiatives, we are incubating a portable AI office assistant, a smart hardware product that leverage our AI know-how, in-house R&D and China's supply chain strength. It is in pilot sales across major global markets with some encouraging early feedback that said it's still an early stage and its financial impact is limited for now. And the experience we are gaining along the way, both for the business and for the company overall is generally valuable.

Tracy Lee

We will now take our next question from Kate Liu of UOB Kay Hian. Her question is, from product and supply perspective, which insurance category does the management view as having strongest growth potential?

Wei Ran

There are two forces that reshaping our health insurance like the raising health protection awareness and aging population. So the market is shifting from standardized products to more tailored to actual needs. Demand driven coverage, including our insurance for pre-existing conditions, mid- to high-end medical insurance and products bundled with health management and elderly care services. A demand that traditional products never really served is being unlocked. We will keep building in this area. And this category play right into the strength we have built through our online platform. We can reach broadly and target precisely leveraging our AI capability and spot protection gap and specific customer groups, matching them with the right products and deliver better, faster service at the point of user consultation. So we will keep building on what we are uniquely good at.

Tracy Lee

Okay. We will now take our next question from [ Xinyu Mo ] of China Securities. The question is, noticing the strong growth in Q2, could you walk us through your recently customer acquisition investment outcomes and what we can expect on the cost side for the rest of 2026 and into 2027?

Peng Shen

We are still in an investment circle in the user acquisition in Q2, and that speed is already show up in the numbers like insurance revenue and operating profit both grew further from the last quarter. And the new users were actually up more than 30% sequentially. This is a combined result of better reach out and conversion and product supply.

And in terms of the user acquisition strategy, we are -- actually we are not simply pursuing the cost reduction. What matters most for us is how we leverage AI capability to better align our product supply with our user profile and improving conversion efficiency. So currently, AI has been embedded across the entire process from our customer acquisition to service and is continually improving our efficiency across our core scenarios.

For the second half of 2026 and the full year 2027, our strategy direction remains consistent. We continue to expect to maintain an active user acquisition pace, exceeding our reach to target customer segments and broadening user acquisition coverage. And at the same time, we expect the user value generated by the current period acquisition to be gradually realized through renewals and upsells and cross-sells over the sequential user life cycle.

Tracy Lee

We have received no further questions online, and this concludes our Q&A session for today. Thank you to all the investors and analysts for joining us today.

Betsy, operator, back to you.

Operator

We are now approaching the end of the conference call. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.

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