LexinFintech Holdings Ltd.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LeSing FinTech 3rd Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Ms. Batusha Cheng, Head of Capital Markets. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Le Xin's Q3 Earnings Update. I'm joined today by Jay Hsiao, Chairman and CEO, Sunny Sun, CFO, Jayden Chow, CRO, and Erwin Liu, CTO. During the call, we will discuss business outlook. Any forward-looking statements that we make are based on assumptions as of today. The actual results may differ materially and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all numbers mentioned are in RMB. I will now turn the call over to Sunny to go through the financial performance. Sunny, over to you.

Thank you Patricia. Good morning everyone. It's my pleasure to speak to you. and give you an update on our third quarter results. This quarter marks the execution of structural change of our core businesses, and I'm delighted to say the progress has been encouraging. Loan origination rose 15.6% year on year to 55.9 billion RMB, of which 42.9% was priced within 24%. up from 37.6% in the second quarter. If we look at the last month of Q3, the improvement was even bigger. About half was priced within 24% in September. Average APR for the September intake was 26.8%, down 1.4 percentage point from June. In line with regulatory direction, as we adjust down loan pricing and move away from high APR borrowers. There will be measured slowdown in top line matrix. Total operating revenue reached 2.97 billion RMB in the third quarter, down by 5.9% from last year, and within management expectations. As our CEO, Jay, flagged in the earnings call of last quarter, we placed quality over scale. Growth margins posted 54% increase to 1.5 billion RMB. As a percentage of revenue, growth margin advanced by almost 20 percentage points year over year and held steady quarter on quarter at about 51%. Moving on to expenses. We have stepped up the overall spending to support new growth initiatives, such as the further build-out of Maiya team and Puhui team, as well as the technology upgrade that Ervin, our Chief Technology Officer, is spearheading. At the same time, we have also been streamlining operations and keep a diligent eye on general expenditure. GMA stays on the downtrend, going down by 2% year-over-year and 17% quarter-on-quarter. Net profit rose over 68% year-on-year to 551 million RMB in the sub-quarter. In addition, take rate stayed stable at 3.5% quarter-over-quarter. Top line optimization, cost management, and operational efficiency are critical to profitability and will remain as our priority. There have been constant noises about the sector this year. We understand investors' concern. The third quarter results are proof that we are actively responding to change, and we are determined to enhance the resilience of our businesses. Next, I would like to turn the call over to Jayden, our Chief Risk Officer, to discuss credit performance. Over to you.