VNET Group, Inc.

Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you and welcome to VNet Group Inc.' 's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We'll be hosting a question and answer session after management's prepared remarks. With us today are Mr Samuel Shen, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of Retail IDC, Mr. Tim Chen, Chief Financial Officer, and Ms. Xin Yuan Liu, Investor Relations Director of the company. I now turn the call over to the first speaker today, Ms. Liu, IR Director of VNet Group, Inc. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Our earnings release was distributed earlier today. and you can find a copy on our website as well as on Newswire services. Please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the SIPPAPA provisions of the U.S. Private Security Litigation Report Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. For detailed discussions of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our latest annual report and other documents filed with the SEC. BNAT does not undertake an obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call will also be available on our IR website at ir.vnet.com. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Samuel.

Thank you, Xinyuan. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Thank you all for joining us on our earnest call today. Despite regulatory uncertainties, we delivered a milestone financial performance this quarter, achieving historical heights for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA, with both figures exceeding the high end of our guidance. Our results demonstrate the strong momentum we have generated through the execution of our dual core strategy. By leveraging our integrated strengths in both wholesale and retail IDC services, we were able to unlock additional demand from the ongoing market migration towards digitalization. and capitalize on more growth opportunities across diverse industry sectors. Since 2019, we have implemented our dual-core growth engine strategy, utilizing our foresight on market trends and our competitive edge in providing camera-neutral and cloud-neutral IDC services. By executing the strategy, we have continuously expanded our market reach and diversified our customer base to better position ourselves for managing the regulatory changes spanning across various industry sectors. We successfully expanded capacity while driving significant improvement in utilization rate for our ramp-up and newly built cabinets. We added 2,388 cabinets on a net basis during the third quarter. Utilization rate for our ramp-up and newly built cabinets increased by 5.5 percentage points to 34.7%, and the compound utilization rate remains stable at around 60%. With our track record of success over the last three quarters, we are confident in our ability to continue delivering strong operating results and expect to achieve our four-year target of delivering 25,000 standard cabinets and a compound utilization rate of 60% in 2021. Now let me provide more detailed business updates for the third quarter. As companies across the nation continue their migration towards digitalization, we have seen growth in overall demand for IT infrastructure from both existing and new customers across all of our business segments. For our wholesale business, we achieved healthy momentum as some of our internet and cloud service customers ramp up cabinet utilization to serve their increasing data processing needs. Meanwhile, we also saw some new add-on orders from these customers for their business expansion. In terms of our retail business, we continue to expand our client base across diverse industry sectors. We forged several notable new customer relationships during the quarter, augmenting their industry leadership and deepening their reach in their respective markets. For instance, in the third quarter, we began providing IDC services for China Chenshin Credit Rating Group, a leading credit rating agency in China, and Real AI, a leading enterprise-level AI security platform in China. At the same time, we continue to secure add-on orders from many of our existing customers. This includes Shiseido, the Japanese multinational cosmetic company, Liepin, a leading talent service platform in China, and Meiyou, a healthy and beauty information sharing platform, just to name a few. Our customer base has become far more diverse, encompassing the cutting-edge technology companies as well as companies from traditional industries, such as financial services, consumer goods, automotive manufacturing, home decoration, and many more. As we further diversify the customer base and industry verticals we serve, we not only actualize continuous service improvements, but also better insulate ourselves from sector-specific market fluctuations and macro risks. Turning to our cloud business, we have started to generate additional interest beyond our cooperation with Microsoft. a global unified commerce and post platform for specialty and luxury retailers, engaged us to assist with its cloud lending in China initiative. Going forward, we will continue to expand our cloud operations service offerings to attract more customers. Finally, I'd like to provide some updates on the progress we're making with our ESG initiatives. Sustainable development has always been at the core of what we do. As a result, our plans generally align with the recent regulatory announcements, driving progress in energy efficiency. During the quarter, our Boxin Data Center in Beijing and Nantong Data Center in Jiangsu Province were awarded the 5A Green Data Center rating at the 2021 Open Data Center Summit hosted by Open Data Center Committee. This is the highest rating for environmental sustainability performance of data centers in China. At the summit ceremony, our Foshan Data Center was also recognized with the Innovative Data Center for Carbon Emission Reduction Award. We plan to remain at the forefront of green development through our continued effort and investment in energy efficiency, energy saving technology, green management, and green innovation. In conclusion, by persistently executing our dual core growth engine strategy, we were able to unlock additional demand from ongoing business digitalization, capitalize on more growth opportunities across diverse industry sectors, and achieve another quarter of solid financial performance. Going forward, we will further deepen our market penetration diversify our sector coverage, broaden our customer base, and augment our technological powers to capture the tremendous growth opportunity born out of the rising tide of digital transformation. By maintaining precision focus on our dual-core strategy execution, we should be able to further expand our market share and augment our leadership position in the carrier and cloud-neutral IDC sector. With that, I will now turn the call over to Tim Chen, our CFO, who will discuss our financial results for the quarter and his thoughts on our future growth. Hi, Tim.