ATA Creativity Global

Greetings and welcome to ATA Creativity Global's first quarter 2021 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Should anyone need operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Caroline Song of the Equity Group. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. The press release announcing ATA Creativity Global's or ACG's results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2021 is available at the IR section of the company's website at www.atai.net.cn. As part of this conference call, the company has an accompanying slide presentation available on its website. A replay of this broadcast will also be made available at ACG's website for the next 90 days. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call and any accompanying information discussed herein contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as anticipate, believe, expect future, plan, outlook, and will, and include, among other things, statements regarding ACG's future growth and results of operations, ACG's plans for mergers and acquisitions generally, ACG's growth strategy, anticipated growth prospects and subsequent business activities, market demand for ACG's portfolio training programs and other education services, the impact of COVID-19 on ACG and its operations, and ACG's plan and anticipated benefits of the measures implemented in response to COVID-19. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable as of today. Those statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ dramatically from those projected. There can be no assurance that those expectations will prove to be correct. Information about the risks associated with investing in ACG is included in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to review before making an investment decision. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, changes in marketing conditions or otherwise, except as required by law. Regarding the disclaimer language, I would also like to refer you to slide two of the conference call presentation for further information. All U.S. dollar amounts in this conference call relating to financial results for first quarter ended March 31st, 2021 are converted from RMB using exchange rate of 6.5518 RMB to one U.S. dollar. The new and buying rate as of March 31st, 2021. All historical conversions are accurate as of the time reported unless otherwise noted. The company reports its financial results under US GAAP and RMB and all percentages calculated in the presentation are based on RMB unless otherwise noted. For those of you following along with the company PowerPoint presentation, there is an overview of the company on slide three. In addition, we are more than happy to take investor questions during today's Q&A session or via email to the company. On today's call, the company's CFO, Ms. Amy Tung, will provide a brief overview of operating and financial highlights for the first quarter of 2021. Chairman and CEO Kevin Ma and President Mr. Jun Zhang will follow with an update on the company's outlook and its long-term growth strategy before opening the floor for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to ACG's CFO, Ms. Amy Tung. Please go ahead, Amy.

Thank you, Caroline, and welcome, everyone. Good evening to those in America. We appreciate everyone's time. We are pleased to have gotten off to a strong start to the year, reporting a 41.6% increase in total student enrollment to 964 students in the first quarter of the year. In a promising sign that we are fully in the post-pandemic recovery, we saw significant year-over-year growth across our major programs, portfolio training, overseas study counseling, research-based learning and foreign language training. Our primary offering, the portfolio training program enrolled 528 students during the period, an increase of 30.7% from 404 in the same period last year. Credit hours delivered for portfolio training increased 5.5% to 27,865. Having risen to meet the challenges of the 2020 pandemic, which we took as an opportunity to reinforce the foundation of our business and explore additional growth areas, we are gratified to begin realizing some of the tangible results of these efforts here in the first quarter of 2021, which is generally impacted by some seasonality due to the timing of the Spring Festival holiday. We are hopeful that the road to recovery will continue on a positive trajectory as recommendations against COVID-19 progress globally. At this time, we are working closely with our overseas partner institutions to prepare for our summer programs. Given the current circumstances of the global pandemic, we have determined with our partners to offer alternative programming to students this summer. International travel continue to be in a place of uncertainty, and we feel this is the best way to maintain the health and safety of our students. We are pleased to be offering domestic learning experiences in China, as well as various online boot camps in partnership with overseas institutions. With that, let's move to financials for the quarter. Total net revenues for the first quarter of 2021 increased 15% to 37.6 million RMB from 32.7 million RMB in the first quarter of 2020. This top-line improvement was primarily driven by an overall increase in services delivered across our major programs as we continued to recover in a post-pandemic environment. Growth margin was 39.6% during the 2021 first quarter, up from 35.8% in the prior year period. Net loss attributable to ACG improved to 19 million RMB from 20.5 million RMB in the prior year period. This was primarily a result of an approximate 3.2 million RMB improvement in loss from operations during the period, which was offset by a 1.7 million RMB in these benefits from non-reputable, non-controlling interest. Moving to the balance sheet, we continue to be in a solid financial position with $14.6 million in cash and cash equivalents. Working capital deficit was $26.5 million, and total shareholders' equity was $27.2 million at March 31, 2021. compared to working capital deficits of $23.6 million and shareholders' equity of $30.5 million respectively at December 31, 2020. With that, I would now like to turn it over to Kevin, who will expand upon our outlook and growth strategy. Kevin.

Thank you, Amy. We are extremely pleased to see The ten-round demonstrated by the elements we achieved during the first quarter of 2021. Over 40% of year-over-year growth in total elements with increased across all lines of business. It's a very promising start to the year. As the public health situation in China has remained stable over the past several months, We are optimistic that this positive elementary will continue over the course of the year as more and more of the global population gets vaccinated against the COVID-19 and we maintain this path to a post-pandemic recovery. This will be aided by our new centralized system for monitoring sales leads as well as the newer offering we have announced in the past year. ATG's stellar reputation has been upheld by the consistent courage of our curriculum and the teaching staff. As well as the positive outcomes, we have helped the students who are pursuing creative study achieve. This is regardless of where coursework is delivered in person or online. Our mission is to provide students with all the tools and support they need for success at ACG and we believe we are better equipped to deliver on this promise than before. In a post-pandemic world, I believe most everyone is looking to take advantage of real-world experience where we can fully interact with one another face-to-face. Distance learning is an excellent alternative that offers a great deal of flexibility, but we can't experience a place if you don't actually go there in person. That being said, many students continue to be interested in pursuing study abroad, and we are prepared to meet that demand when it's safe to do so. As Andy mentioned, it's unlikely that we'll be offering international study abroad programs this summer, but our partner institution has decided this is the best path forward under the current circumstances. We are pleased that students have enjoyed the new domestic travel programs and online bootcamp alternatives we have developed and look forward to once again working with our partners to make these options available this summer. I'd now like to hand it over to Jun Zhang, FAG's president, to provide an update on our current growth initiatives. and H.B. Mark Singh Mandarin, which will be followed by an English translation. Jun, please go ahead.

Thank you, Kevin. In 2021, while we continue to conduct world-class courses at PE institutions, we have retained the choice to complete part of the courses online for students. We plan to continue to expand online course services and will continue to develop new courses. In order to deal with the pandemic, we have invested a lot of energy in developing research services, Thank you. Thank you. and our partners to carry out on-line and off-line project exploration. Within ACG, we actually explore various methods that can be used for technology. It has now become part of our teaching service and sales process. And it allows our teaching service team to make better use and play in 2021. Thank you, Kevin.

During the first quarter of 2021, we continued to offer in-person delivery of coursework with an option to complete some courses online. We anticipate expanding our online course offerings and continue to develop completely new programming as well. In response to the pandemic, we put a great deal of effort into developing our research-based learning services and have been quite pleased with the positive reception of our new domestic educational tours and online boot camps and internship opportunities. We found new and innovative ways to continue partnering with overseas institutions despite the restrictions on international travel and can anticipate continuing to do so as we head into summer 2021. We are prepared to support the demand for research-based learning experiences regardless of how worldwide travel is impacted and look forward to working with our partner institutions on virtual programming for this summer. We continue looking at ways in which we can leverage technology throughout the ECG organization. It is now a crucial component of our education delivery method as well as our sales process and will enable us to better utilize the talents of our teaching staff in 2021. With the help of technology, we look forward to serving a larger population of students across China and providing them with opportunities to study the creative arts that they may not otherwise have had access to. With that, I'll turn it back over to Kevin.

Thanks. ACE believes we are well positioned, both operationally and financially, to capitalize on the various growth opportunities before us. Particularly, as the world continues on a road to recovery post-pandemic, students have decided to postpone their studies gradually, resuming their coursework. and several persisted throughout the pandemic with great success. We are honored to have played a role in their success. Everyone please stay safe and healthy. With that coverage, let's open it up for questions.

At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment please as we poll for questions. And once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. There seem to be no questions at this time, so I'll pass it back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thanks again to all of you for joining us. If anyone has questions for us, please feel free to reach our directory to us or our investor relations firm, the ACTI Group. We are always available to speak to investors and look forward to speaking with you all during our next quarterly call. Thank you.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.