Chaince Digital Holdings Inc.

And good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you and welcome to Chin Data Group Holdings Limited's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. We will be hosting our question and answer session after management's back remarks. Please note today's event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to the first speaker today, Ms. Joy Zhang, Investor Relations Director of Chin Data Group. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Chin Data's 2021 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I'm Joy, and with us today are Mr. Alex Zhu, our CEO, Mr. Nick Wan, our CFO, and Ms. Zoe Zhuang, our Finance Vice President. On behalf of our CEO, Nick will take you through the quarterly review of our operation performances, and Zoe will present our financial results. Alex, Nick, and Zoe will be here to answer your question afterwards. Now, I'll quickly go through the safe hopper statement. Some of the statements that we're making today regarding our business, operations, and financial performances may be considered forward-looking. And such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainty that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our most recent filed with the FEC, and also in our Form 6K for the quarter ended March 21, 2021, which has been filed with the FEC as well. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP figures. Reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release. which is distributed and available to the public through our investor relations website located at investor.chindatagroup.com. We have also updated our quarterly presentation on the company's investor relation website, which you can refer to as supplementary material for today's call. Without further ado, I will now turn over the call to Nick.

Thank you, Joy. Hello, everyone. Now let's first take a look at some highlights for the first quarter of 2021 on page four of the slide. We delivered solid results once again in the period as we continue to increase capacity, grow revenue, control costs effectively, and build our capacity capability. In terms of our capacity, the number of our in-service data center reached 14 by quarter end. compared with 13 by end of 2020. We grew our total IT capacity in service to 337 megawatts, compared with 291 megawatts by end of 2020. For under construction capacity, we have a total of seven data centers under construction throughout China, India, and Malaysia, with a total IT capacity of 154 megawatts. compared with 198 megawatts by the end of 2020. On power utilization and efficiency, we continue to maintain our energy efficiency performance in the business of efficiently converting electric power into computing power. Our total power consumption in the first quarter was 348 million kilowatt hours. and our year-to-date average PUE by end of the first quarter was 1.19 compared to 1.22 in full year 2020. The number of approved and pending patents by quarter end reached 231 compared with 216 by end of 2020. We continued our effort in capacity build-up And additional patents in the quarter cover initiatives for operation and construction efficiency improvement, such as cooling technology, construction module, and data center equipment, et cetera. With effective cost management practice, we maintain our average construction cost for all in-service data centers at less than US dollar 3 million per megawatt during the quarter, which is well below industry average. On some key financials, our top and bottom line remains strong as revenue and adjusted net income reached historical high and increased by 63.9% and 175.8% year on year to RMB 643.4 million and 109.3 million respectively. Now, let's take a closer look at our data center assets, as you can see on slide six and slide seven. In China, we continued our steady delivery and completed the construction of CN09 project in northern China. This project, along with the capacity expansion on CN8, added a total in-service capacity of 46 megawatts in the first quarter. On contracted capacity, we added a total of 15 megawatts by expanding our collaboration with our existing client, which are CN06 and CN08 in northern China, among which 11 megawatts was converted from existing indication of interest capacity. In particular, high density cabinets with per cabinet density of up to 25 kilowatts to 32 kilowatts will be installed for such newly contracted capacity. The solid fundamental technology that we have long been investing in has made such installation possible. And we will continue to be the trusted partner accommodating to the increasing computing demand of our clients. We added around 17 megawatts utilized capacity in quarter. and it increased our total utilized capacity from 221 megawatts in year-end 2020 to 238 megawatts in the first quarter. Such was contributed by the steady ramp-up in projects, including CN01, CN06, CN08, and CN11A, and CS01. as well as the newly in-service CN09 in northern and southern China respectively. We managed to maintain a high client commitment. As you can see on slide seven, the contracted ratio of all in-service capacity was 90% in the first quarter. Taking into consideration indication of interest capacity, the combined contracted ratio of all in-service capacity would be 91%. For under construction capacity, contracted ratio was 70.3% in the first quarter. Taking into consideration indication of interest capacity, the combined contracted ratio of all under construction capacity would be 81%. On our overseas development, given the pandemic situation in India, The status of our BB101 project is being closely watched, and we will take adequate measures for the execution of the project. Next slide. Our strategy and capacity building. Following the establishment of the three business subgroups in the last quarter, we continued our effort in capacity buildup for the vision of better serving digital leaders and providing the industry with next-generation computing infrastructure solutions with greater diversification and a better cost efficiency and to further strengthen our cost and technical advantages. On our renewable energy initiatives, we are making steady progress in our existing 150 megawatts photovoltaic power generation project in pursuit of our long-term 1,300 megawatts renewable energy development plan. As a recent development, we signed an additional 200 megawatts renewable energy development framework agreement with the local government in April and thus further expanded our planet long-term development capacity to 1,500 megawatts. Going forward, the company will utilize proper internal and external resources to carry on a long-term energy development and to safeguard our business of efficiently converting electric power to computing power. On the environmental and sustainability side, the company published its second ESG report on April 3rd, which is available on our website. Furthermore, Our green effort is being constantly recognized by the society. As a recent development, Greenpeace published its Clean Cloud 2021 report on April 21st and has ranked ChimData number one on Clean Energy Scorecard among all internet cloud and data center companies surveyed, with a total score of 85 out of 100. The scorecard covered a range of topics of energy transparency, energy efficiency and carbon reduction, renewable energy performance, and government and industry influence. We have topped the list for two consecutive years and scored a perfect 40 out of 40 on renewable energy performance this year. On capital markets, MSCI announced the result of its May 2021 quarterly index review on May 12th, 2021. and selected the company for inclusion in the MSCI China All Shares Indexes. The addition of the company will take effect after market close on May 27, 2021. Such signifies the further recognition we are earning from the market. I will now turn over to Zoe, our VP of Finance, to go over our key financial results. for the first quarter of 2021. Being mindful of time, I encourage our listeners to also refer to our earnings press release, which is posted online, and includes our quarterly results, along with other additional details. Please note that all numbers today are in RMB terms, and that all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted.