NaaS Technology Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the NARS Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Cynthia Tan, Senior IR Director. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to NARS Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. The company's results were issued earlier today and are posted online. Joining me on the call today are Ms. Kathy Wong-Yang, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Alex, our President and Chief Financial Officer. For today's agenda, Ms. Wong will provide an overview of our recent performance and highlights, and Mr. Wu will discuss our operating and financial results. Before we continue, I refer you to our safe harbor statement in the earnings past release. which applies to this quote on four looking statements. Also, please note that this quote includes discussion of certain non-IFRS financial measures. Please refer to our R&D series, which contains a reconciliation of non-IFRS measures to the most incredible IFRS measures. Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, all the questions contain the contents of the R&D terms. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Ms. Cathy Wang Yang. Cathy, please go ahead. Hello, everyone. I'm now CEO Cathy Wang Yang. It's my pleasure to share our third quarter 2023 earnings results with all of you to discuss and discuss our recent development. In the third quarter of 2023, our total revenues increased by 536% year-over-year to reach 171 million RMB. Our non-effort net margin, attributable to ordinary shareholders, narrowed by 256 percentage points compared with the same quarter last year. The total charging volume transected through our network during the quarter increased by 36% year-over-year, reaching 1,383 GWh. This accounted for 21.8% of all charging volume collected through public chargers in China during the same period. Since the beginning of 2023, NAS has undergone a fundamental shift in its revenue structure In the second quarter of 2023, the proportion of offline and innovation service revenue exceeded 50% for the first time, reaching 53.4%. In the third quarter, revenue from EPC, energy storage, and other solutions accounted for 81% of the total revenues. We will form our full year 2023 revenue guidance to be between 500 million to 600 million RMB. And we expect our full year 2024 revenue to be between 2 billion to 3 billion RMB, a growth of four to five times. NAS is transforming from a new energy service company into a new energy asset operator. In the third quarter, NASA sent a 204 million RMB energy storage order. In addition, we won the bid for energy green and low carbon supply chain construction project, creating the global PV storage, charging, swapping, benchmarking project for the highway trucks. NASA's international business is farging ahead, contributing 32.7%. of our total energies in the third quarter. In October, NAS become one of the first batch of strategic enterprises of the Hong Kong SAR office for attracting strategic enterprises. On September 22, Sustainable Feeds assigned NAS the highest ESG Entity Score in China ranking second in Asia and fifth worldwide. On October 23, NASA joined United Nations Global Compact Organization. We embrace open source technology, open data access, and an open ecosystem. This commitment to openness paves the way for our global initiative towards carbon neutrality. We look forward to join hands with our partners to advance our vision of improving the world with green energy. Now I will turn our call to Alex, our president and CFO, for a closer look at our operating and financial performance. Thank you.

Thank you, Cassie. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. As Kathleen mentioned, we delivered an excellent performance across our key operating and financial metrics in the third quarter. Our top line growth was exceptional, and we remain the industry leader in China's growing charging services market. Simultaneously, we're expanding from a singular mobility connectivity business to a model that also monetizes our digital analytic capabilities. We're doing this by achieving a rapid expansion of our charging station operation and energy storage businesses, which will allow us to reach our goal of becoming a leading, integrative new energy asset operation and management service provider in China and abroad. In line with our business expansion, we introduced a new revenue reporting structure in the third quarter. Income from mobility connectivity and self-operated charging stations has been consolidated under charging services revenue. Income from our integrated charging infrastructure, PV, and energy storage now falls under energy solutions revenue, while income from our third revenue stream, electricity procurement services, and other services has been renamed new initiatives revenue. To assist with comparison, we have adjusted historical periods accordingly. We think these three revenue categories better describe our extended new energy asset ecosystem and more clearly reflect the direction of our business. For more information, please feel free to refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. We can see our business transition taking shape in our stellar third quarter growth. and we're pleased to be able to show a more visible profitability trajectory. Our total revenues reached an all-time high in the third quarter of RMB $170.9 million. The bulk of this rapid growth came from our energy solutions revenue, which increased by six times quarter over quarter, accounting for 81% of our total revenue in the third quarter. The substantial growth is mainly attributable to the ongoing delivery of energy solution projects to provide renewable energy generation, energy management, and storage solutions. On a year-over-year basis, our financial efficiency has significantly improved in the third quarter. Gross margin increased to 27% from 6% year-over-year, and gross profit increased by 28-fold year-over-year as we started to reap benefits from our expanded know-how and capabilities in delivering and executing energy solution projects. Total operating expenses decreased to RMB 285.3 million in the third quarter from RMB 359.1 million in the last quarter. we are beginning to recognize advantages from the economies of scale, enabling us to gain significant operating leverage. During the third quarter, we substantially improved our operating spend as a percentage of revenue. Our sales and marketing expense ratio dropped sharply to 94% from 252% in the third quarter of 2022. and 177% in the second quarter of 2023. As a percentage of revenues, administrative expenses ratio declined substantially year-over-year to 63% from 95% in the second quarter of 2022. Research and development ratio also declined to 10% of our total revenues, compared with 28% in the same period last year. Our net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was RMB 366.9 million for the third quarter of 2023, compared with a loss of RMB 109.1 million for the same period of 2022. While our non-IFRS net loss was RMB 175.7 million for the third quarter, compared with RMB 96.5 million for the same period of 2022. Net margin improved from negative 406% to negative 214%, whereas non-RFIS net margin improved from negative 359% to negative 103%. As we diligently manage our operating costs and work to narrow our losses, we're looking toward our long-term prospects. Our exponential growth has come from our initiatives, both locally and internationally, as we gain traction across our expanding business. Our network continues to experience high growth in China and total charging volume increased by 66% year-over-year in the third quarter. reaching 1,383 gigawatt hours. The total number of orders rose by 58% year-over-year to nearly 59.2 million. Furthermore, in terms of our assets under operation, we continue to carefully select high-quality charging stations to add to our portfolio. We are also making excellent headway with our energy storage initiatives, propelling the growth and the preparation of PV storage charging station development. By the end of the third quarter, we had already launched 43 integrated charging stations with energy storage covering cities including Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Changsha. On the other hand, our timely execution of the leading Anji PV storage charging swapping project entailing the installation of 458 DCFC chargers, a 4,200 kilowatt distributed PV system, 36 energy storage and charging cabinets, and two leading domestic heavy truck battery swapping stations. This will showcase our integrity solution coupled with the timely execution that continues to win us new business. On the international front, Our recent acquisition of SinoPower to broaden our reach in Hong Kong is already bearing fruits. Total international revenue for the third quarter accounted for more than 32% of our total revenues, compared with 22% in Q2, demonstrating our rapid progress and the strength of our acquisition strategy. As our business gases steam, we are attracting strong support that boosters our momentum. We can see this in our alliances with OSS, ZSY, and China Construction Bank. For example, CCB will provide us with integrated financial services support, encompassing overseas M&A, liquidity loans, project loans, inclusive loans, and financing for global renewable energy asset investment in charging stations, energy storage, PV, among others. This will empower us to extend our global presence in the new energy sector, thereby fostering green, low-carbon, and sustainable development in the energy industry. This recognition from our strategic partners is helping us advance the new energy sector and its underlying infrastructure as we work to expand our presence in the new energy globally. I'm also pleased to provide an update on our recent financial activities. In July and September 2023, we issued US$30 million and US$40 million convertible notes to LMR partners. As of today, US$33 million has been converted into ADS, highlighting our upward momentum. The remaining principal amount of the notes totaling US$37 million. We appreciate the trust of ALMR partners, which further fuels our commitment to continued growth and success. Looking ahead, we are on track to deliver our previously announced full-year revenue guidance of between RMB 500 million and RMB 600 million, which is a five to six times increase from 2022. With our added visibility and new growth, We would also like to introduce our guidance for 2024. We currently expect full-year 2024 revenues to be between RMB 2 billion and RMB 3 billion. In summary, we're making considerable progress in establishing NAS as a leading global provider of new energy asset operations and management services. We are broadening our one-stop charging services, advancing integrated energy systems, and leveraging our strategic acquisitions to increase our global footprint. On top of our robust top line growth, driven by both charging service and energy solutions, we also continue to drive a more favorable revenue mix with more high margin business. Our operating margins are also improving rapidly, benefiting from economies of scale and optimized operating costs. Our margin expansion is a testament to our commitment to both financial efficiency and that we are achieving sustainable growth in the right way. As we continue to grow our business both in China and abroad, we remain dedicated to provide sustainable new energy solutions while exploring new opportunities for growth that drive the industry forward. This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we're now ready to take questions. Thank you.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star, then 1 on your telephone. Wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star, then 2. And if you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask your question. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. Thank you very much. Our first question comes from Kelly Zhao at Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hello. Firstly, congratulations about your strong circle results. I have two questions. Firstly, it's about the revenue guidance you just mentioned to us about the revenue in 2004, right? So can you share more color about the ghost driver of your energy solution business in China and also overseas markets? And the second question is about the margin outlook. So can you share more color on your margin improvement? So basically helping us to know how to forecast the margin trend of your energy solution business going forward.

Okay. Thank you, Kelly. Those are two very good questions. For your first question regarding energy solution business and its growth drivers, let's look at what it's doing right now. So we have seen significant contribution from energy solutions in Q3. Out of the Q3 revenues, the energy solutions have contributed only 139 million, which is a year-over-year 500% growth. Now, if you look at the drivers, there are basically three segments that we're looking at in that business. Number one is what we call the EPC. The EPC revenue driver is effectively we have the data advantage, we have the industry know-how, and we have a very strong customer base. that will give us the capability to build the complex projects, and that will also give us the capability that we can give to our customers, that we can pick the right spot to build those charging stations. Number two is the energy storage. For energy storage, the revenue driver, there are two folds. The first one is we know that this year we have the 380 contracted stations that we want to build the energy storage solutions in. In Q3 so far, we've delivered 43 out of the 380. So the line share of the contracted stations that are yet to be delivered should be delivered in Q4 this year. If we look at the median term, that we picked 1,880 stations out of the 73,000 stations that we've connected to. These 1,880 stations are good candidates for us to build the energy storage solutions in. So we've already picked those stations. We already know where they are. The next step that we need to do in the midterm is to get those stations constructed and built. to get this energy storage solutions built. So that's for energy storage. For overseas, I think it's quite easy to see that the overseas revenue has already contributed 32% of our overall revenue in Q3 this year. And we expect the overseas revenue to be about 40% of our 2024 revenue. If we look at the short-term drivers, we know that in Senna Power, for example, we have a $70 million backlog that has already been secured and committed. We just need to get them delivered in Q4. We also know that Senna Power is very quickly expanding into EV charging. We have one three out of five contracts under EHSS, which is the government-sponsored UV charging project. We can also see clear synergy coming from NAS after the acquisition of SinoPower. We can see the financial support. We can see the UVG know-how that has now been integrated into Hong Kong SinoPower. So I think overall, we can see clear growth momentum and very clear growth drivers for the energy solution business. For your second question regarding margin, you're absolutely right. We have witnessed good margin training in this quarter. In Q3 2023, we're basically driving the margin improvement through two major levers. The first one is revenue mix. The second one is operating average. In revenue mix, 2023 Q3, 81% revenue is from energy solution with profitable margin. Energy storage business, if you take that as an example, enjoys EBITDA margin of between 10% to 15%. The same EBITDA margin applies to solar power business. So as we get more business in those lines, we tend to have a higher margin. The second thing is on operating leverage. Our total operating expense ratio has declined significantly from 385% in Q3 2022 to 170% in Q3 2023. So if you mix those two together, we think we will generally be seeing better margin going forward, and we'll be seeing improving profitability in the next couple of quarters. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Yee Zendoo from CICC. Please go ahead.

Hello. Could you hear me?

Yes, please.

Hello? First of all, congratulations on your excellent performance in the third quarter, and I have two questions this time. The first one is that you just shared with us the 2024 revenue guidance, which shows a significant increase compared to this year's guidance. So could you explain how that would achieve such rapid growth in 2024? This is the first question. And the second one is about the overseas business. We all know that there's previously acquired charge amps. So what is the recent progress of the overseas business? And how would you predict the revenue contribution of overseas charging pile sales in 2023 and 2024? This is my two questions. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. These are good questions. So the first question is about 2024 revenue guidance. I just would like to take a step back and look at the very, very, to set the stage, right? So based on CIC report, for example, the public charging in China is expected to grow 20 times by 2030, and the public charging volume will be growing 25 times by 2030. And we clearly still see EV coming into the market at a rapid speed. If you look at NASS, NASS is China's largest EV charging network. It has 73,000 charging stations covered, which is about 50% market share, has 768,000 chargers connected which is 42 percent market share and has charged 1383 gigawatt hour of electricity in one quarter which is about 21.8 percent market share and if you look at the capability this is a company that has analytics capability has a very strong big growing customer base and the user traffic and we are working very hard to move to the asset operation business, which is effectively a way to monetize our data, analytics, customer base, traffic, and also the very well-connected customer base in China to run our asset more efficiently. So that is to say the same. Now, if you look at different segments. If you look at the charging station operation, for example, that I've already mentioned the largest EV charging network. I've already mentioned our analytics and charging station base and also a professional operating team. Our objective is to significantly increase the charges on the management by end of 2023 and in 2024. to a number that is much bigger than what we have today. These charges under management will be picked from our extensive network. The charges will be picked from the 768,000 that we're currently connected to, and we are well on track to reach the charge under management goal because we have a number of projects that's currently undergoing. For energy storage, as I mentioned before briefly. Until Q3, we've only delivered 43 out of the 380 contracted stations that we've already signed. In the media term, for example, in 2024, we plan to deliver about 1,500 stations with energy storage solutions. As I mentioned before, these are the are stations that we have very, very carefully picked from the 70,000 stations that we're currently connecting to through our data advantage. We've screened, for example, the ones with the biggest peak and value price differences. And we also selected those ones that have peak electricity saturation rate. So these are the stations that we are very confident that once you put an energy storage solution in, you can make money. So what we plan to do in 2024 is to deliver the rest 1,500 stations that we've already picked. The next segment is about overseas. I mentioned before that we've already seen 32% revenue contribution by Central Power. We aim to increase that to about 40%. with CenterPower and with other assets or other businesses that we acquire. I've already mentioned the very clear traction of CenterPower in our previous questions, so I will not repeat myself. For those segments, if you look at the macro, which is a very much favorable macro, And if you look at those three segments, we have clear growth drivers. So I think we're confident that we can get the guidance that we provided. The next question, in terms of you, which is about the expansion. So I think I sort of mentioned that in my previous question, but I would like to probably highlight a little bit about Hong Kong SinoPower. As I said before, we acquired the company It has been growing very well, and it is very much profitable. We are already seeing, which is two, three months after the acquisition, we are already seeing very strong EBITDA margin contribution from the company. The EBITDA margin can reach 15% for the ones that we're doing. So I think for overseas expansion, what we're doing currently is really a replication of what we've done with Hong Kong Center of Power, which is to choose the right asset, to buy it at the right price, and also, most importantly, to integrate it with our overall business and provide synergy and capabilities as much as we can. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Zoe Feng at TF Securities. Please go ahead.

Hello, this is Zoe from Tim Fong. Your Q3 financial results was very impressive. But based on your current results, you still need to achieve a significant revenue growth in Q4. Can you share more color on how to achieve that? That was my first question. Second question is, You previously disclosed a major contract in the energy storage business. Can you share some updates on the progress of that contract? Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Joey. So first question is about the Q4. So just to recap, we've delivered significant revenue growth in Q3. The Q3 revenue is $171 million, as you have seen, which is a year-over-year growth of more than 500%. But most importantly, within that $171 million, we see September single-month revenue exceeding 100 million RMB. So I believe that is a major step up in our growth trajectory. And I believe we'll be able to stay in that revenue magnitude, if you like, for the rest of Q4. Now, if we break that into business, I would just probably repeat some of the things I said before, but I think those are useful. In energy storage, we still have more than 300 contracts stations to be delivered that we plan to deliver in Q4. In Sandoval, however, we have a clear $70 million backlog in hand. When I say backlog, I mean those are the projects that have already been committed. Some of them we've already started construction. We just haven't finished yet. And we also, as I said before, we're winning three out of five projects or contracts that we have under EHSS. EHSS is a project that we know very well, and we can deliver fairly quickly within one or two months. And in the EPC business, we have disclosed before that we've won a RMB 67 million one-stop PV storage project, the IMG. We've delivered part of that, but there is part of that that will be delivered in Q4. And we're working closely in the EPC place, we're working closely with some of the other domestic local governments that want to build those high-tech charging stations. So we may have more good news to come in that space. For the charging station operation business, what I can reveal is out of the 13 pilot stations, in Chongqing, Hubei, Zhejiang, Henan, and Shaanxi, which is a fairly distributed sample that we've picked, we've achieved 10% charging volume improvement after our operation. So I think that has proved that we have the capability that is driven from our data capabilities, our analytics capabilities, and our operating team know-how. that we've approved through this pilot. So what we aim to do is to increase the number of stations under management, starting from Q4 this year, but definitely going into 2024. So to recap, I think back to your question, I think in every single segment, we have clear sort of drivers that we already have in hand that is within our control. that we can deliver into for this year. Now for energy storage, I just want to give some more details so that people can understand what have we got. So when we say we signed the RMD $200 million worth of contract, that is a contract to build energy storage solutions in 380 charging stations with 580 storage facilities or 580 boxes with a total capacity of 113 MWh and with 224 kWh per storage box. So that's the overview of the contract. As I said before, by end of September, we've delivered 43 out of 380 stations. And the team in our energy storage department is working very hard day and night to deliver the rest of the contracted stations. I believe within this year, they will be able to deliver most of the stations. And using the same methodology, we've gone through the 73,000 stations that we connected. If I can review a little bit more about our methodology, within that 73,000 stations, we use our model, our data-driven model, to sort of filter through. Out of the 73,000 stations, we've identified about 13,000 stations from cities with peak and value price difference exceeding 0.7 yuan, which is the rule of thumb of commercial cities feasibility to do energy storage. Then we further identified 1,880 stations with peak electricity saturation exceeding 80%. So an easy way to understand, those are the stations that have people coming during the peak hour. You don't want to peak the stations and build energy storage when nobody comes at peak hour. So we've identified those stations basically commercially excellent stations that we expect to make good money when those energy storage solutions are to be built. So with those 1,880 stations, we basically covered the next 12 to 18 months of pipeline. And those are the stations that we have connected to and we have some level of control, right? So that has helped us to give the confidence that we have a clear pipeline to deliver for 2024. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Alice Ma at UBS. Please go ahead.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity for asking this question. My question is actually about your reclassification of the revenue. Can we understand that actually the online business in the past classification is very much similar to the current charging service revenue? Except that we have another kind of business model called full station operation model. And my next question is, can you further elaborate more on the full station operation model? What is the business model? And how can it bring impact on your revenue and margin going forward? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Alice. This is an excellent question because this is an important business model for us. So the easy way to understand the operation business model is that we basically operate the stations more efficiently than the current asset owner. So if you separate the layers, there's the layer for asset owners. Those are the people that have invested in assets and they own assets. And there's another layer on top, which are the asset operators. These are the people like us that don't own assets. but we have unique capabilities that we can operate the assets in a more efficient manner. And for us, in the charging business, the operation has a lot to do with digital capabilities, with analytics, and most importantly, with pricing. So what we have is we have the largest charging network, we have covered the most number of chargers, and we've charged a large percentage of the public charging market share with the data that we could collect from these chargers and charging stations, we could derive the best running model for a particular charging station. And we could get the right pricing for a charging station for a charger at a particular hour of a particular day. So that helps us to drive for the highest efficiency of those charging stations. And that has been proved by the pilot project that I just mentioned. Out of the 13 piloted stations in seven different provinces, we've managed to achieve a 10% charging volume improvement after our team take over the operation. So that is achieved basically by having the analytic capability and the ability to understand the seasonality, to understand hour by hour charging volume change, the demand change, and to basically forecast and predict what's going to happen from a charging demand perspective. So as I said, we've already proved the capabilities through the pilot projects. Now, if we look at the potential, there is obviously huge potential. We cover 73,000 charging stations. These are all candidates that we could pick to run the operation. And what we do is we will just go through our data model and our analytical tool to find out the ones that have the highest potential for efficiency improvement. And we will try to get those operating rights, if you like, from the asset owners so that we can improve the efficiency and we can obviously generate revenue and make money. And I think the final thing to think about this is I mentioned 73,000 charging stations, but that is not a fixed number. That number is growing very rapidly as the macro market is growing. The number of public charging in China is expected to grow 20 times by 2030. So we're talking about not just with the screening and going through the funnel that has 73,000 stations to choose from, we're also talking about an underlying macro market that is growing very rapidly at the same time. So I believe if you put those two things together, this is a very unique opportunity to combine the macro growth and our unique capability, which we've accumulated over the past couple of years.

Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Xilin Yu at KSAID Securities. Please go ahead. Hello. Can you hear me?

Hello? Yes, please. OK. Thank you for the opportunity to ask. I'm the analyst of the Valuable Capital. My question is about NASK as a long partnership with China Construction Bank. Can you elaborate on how the partnership could support your business? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your question. That's, once again, a very good question. As a context, NASK and its parent company, Rubik's Group, have entered into a partnership with China Construction Bank, one of the biggest banks in China, to provide a credit line up to 2.5 billion RMB for New Lincoln for now. And this is not really the end of the credit line. We're talking about other collaborations at the same time. I believe the partnership with China Construction Bank could boost our financial positions in this fast-growing phase. The world is growing very, very fast. So to get financial support, especially the financial support from one of the biggest banks in China definitely helps. It also helps to accelerate the energy transition and new energy adoption in our value chain. So as you know, new energy transition is a policy that is very well taken by the Chinese government. So this partnership with China Construction Bank definitely helps to drive the speed of our production. And finally, I think this is a mutually beneficial partnership to empower more business partners in our ecosystem. We firmly believe in a win-win situation. I think in the energy space, as we are facing this very unique opportunity that probably happens once in a lifetime, We want to ensure that all the partners that we work with in this ecosystem can get some benefit from us. We want to be the ecosystem integrator that helps everyone to get some benefit. So to work with CCB, that will enable us to have this capability, if you like, to get more business partners into the system. So we are all very excited about this partnership with China Construction Bank, and we all feel very, very proud that we have the support from CCB. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to the company for closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining our call today. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions. Good night and goodbye.

Thank you. That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.