17 Education & Technology Group Inc.

Good evening and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by for 17 EdTech's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the meeting over to your host for today's call, Mr. Raymond Wong, 17 EdTech's investor relations director. Please proceed, Raymond.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our earnings release was distributed earlier today and is available on our IR website. On the call with me today are Mr. Andy Chang Liu, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, and Mr. Michael Chao Du, director and chief financial officer. Andy will walk you through our latest business performance and strategies, followed by Michael. who will discuss our financial performance and guidance. They will be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session after their prepared remarks. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined in Section 20E of the Security Change Act of 1934 and the U.S. Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These four working statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and are related to events that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the company's control. This risk may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially. Further information regarding this and other risk, uncertainties, and factors is included in the company's findings with the U.S. SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required under applicable law. It is now my pleasure to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Andy. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Raymond. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our first quarter earning calls. We had another quarter of robust top-line growth. Net revenues increased by 107% year-over-year to RMB 474.2 million, which exceeded the high end of our guidance by RMB 2.2 million. 2.2 million. 274.2 million. For the past quarter, our MAUs of in-school applications for students demonstrated strong resilience among the latest changes in regular environments. Average MAUs of in-school applications for students for the first quarter only decreased by 5.5% year-over-year to 18.9 million. MAUs of in-school applications for students in March decreased by 21.3% year-over-year to 18.6 million. If you compare student MAUs in March 2021, which was the first month of the 2021 spring semester, with student MAUs in semester 2020, which was the first month of the 2024 semester, it only decreased by 8%. The decline in March was partially a result of high level of student MAUs in March 2020 as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. One of the students were encouraged to use more tools like ours to continue their study at home. There were concern in the market about the regular environment since the start of the year. We are closely monitoring the policy changes very carefully. From in-school perspective, we saw policies regulating digital homework moderating over the last few months. From the initial notice on strengthening cell phone management in primary and secondary schools, published on January 18, that strict limits cell phone use and prohibits assigning homework on cell phone, to a more gentle five-year working plan published on April 28 that says not to rely on digital products to assign homework. We also see further notices promoting using various information technology measures to diagnose students' homework in a notice on student homework management published on April 8th. We clearly see there are still strong demands for schools and government to use technology to improve in-school learning experience and efficiency in various scenarios, including homework. We are still confident that the room for growth of our in-school applications for students remain strong in the next few years. 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of our company, which reflected on what we set out to do, have thus updated our vision based on the latest trends in education. Over the past decade, driven by our mission to make learning beautiful, we started helping primary school students to practice their English listening and speaking skills with technology. We rapidly expanded our services to a full range of education scenarios across subjects and grades, including class preparation, class delivery, homework-related activities, and academic assessment. Three years ago, we launched our online after-school tutoring business to further enhance the learning experience for our users. As our business continues to grow, our vision crystallized, that is, through integrating in-school and after-school scenarios to become a platform that delivers high-quality education driven by technology and artisan spirit. We believe that with our technology and insight into students' in-school learning progress, we are well positioned to help Chinese hundreds of thousands of public schools to improve the learning experience efficiency for their students. We believe This only implements what we think the public schools can finally bring about industry-wide reform that can truly alleviate the burden on students and parents. So what defines a beautiful learning experience? What should ideal education look like? Our understanding of this improves as our business and understanding of our users' growth to high-quality education should satisfy through key words, equality, personalization, and ability-oriented. From 1977 to 2021, China's education system has made tremendous achievements. Three key factors remain to be improved after past 45 years. Equality, personalization, and ability-oriented education. First, equality. Generally speaking, China has achieved a lot in delivering basic education to almost all Chinese citizens, a first step in equality. For the next few decades, the focus will be on how to provide equal access to quality education. In the past, and likely over the next decade as well, lower tier cities will still strive for improvement in the equality education resources, especially content and teachers. Based on the current status, in China's education system, the most feasible solution to the unequal distribution of educational resources is by leveraging high-quality educational content and technology rather than just relying on teachers. There are needs for companies to enter China's hundreds and thousands of schools to provide tailor-made, high-quality educational content for every teacher. so that teachers can teach and students can learn more effectively and efficiently. I believe that this would probably be the most practical way to narrow the resource gap in education between lower-city and top-tier cities. We see clearly what high-quality content can bring to educational equality. We have been and will continue to invest in our in-school business, content and technology. This is not limited to content related to homework activity, but also covers areas like class preparation, class delivery, and academic assessment. The second key word is personalization. Public schools will still continue to play a dominant role in China's education system. Large classes with more than 40 or even 50 students will remain the cases at most public schools. There is still a long way to go before the class size of public schools in China will be reduced to around 20 students. Personalizations for more effective and efficient students will be difficult under such a situation without the help of technology. Evaluation is one of the most important stepping stones to achieve higher levels of personalized education. Last year, tens of millions of students in China completed academic assessments on our platform. Please note that what I referred to was not homework, but academic assessment. In the future, more and more formative data will increasingly replace summative data to generate a more comprehensive profile of the learning progress of each student, where the evaluation of a student's academic performance will be less reliant on a single exam, but all his or her performance along the way. With these profiles, public schools' teachers as well as instructors and tutors as our online large classes can better serve students in a personalized way. The provision of targeted learning recommendations and tutoring-based on-through and accurate understanding of each student's learning progress and weakness are the key to personalized education. This is also what we are striving for to achieve with our investment in technology and products under our integrated model. Ability-oriented education is the third thing that will help make learning beautiful. Despite limitations exist, we are pleased to see that the DUNCO and GALCO reforms have made a lot of progress over the years and modules designed to measure the capability and personal development of students were introduced. For example, listening tests were introduced as a new session for English tests across China. Oral tests were introduced at a lot of other studies. Reading has become more and more important in Chinese tests, and problem solving and application of math formulas in daily life scenarios have become more and more important in math tests. Going forward, tests designed to access students' real-world The capabilities will for sure take up greater weights of the Dunca and Gaokao exams. China will for sure make major progress in its basic education system over the next 10 years with the assistance of internet, technology, content, and data. Over the next decades, a company will have huge growth opportunity if it can, first, Leverage technology and precisely recommend content tailored to the needs of teachers and students in both in-school and off-school centers and help narrow the gap for educational resources. Second, facilitate personalized education through comprehensive and accurate student assessment. Third, meet the underlying need for ability-oriented education and all-around personal development, which are the emerging trends in modern education. Next, I would like to talk about how I can see the education industry in the longer run. There has been a lot of attention around potential regulatory policies on the education sector. However, I would like to direct everyone's attention to look at the industry from a longer-term perspective. China's education system has reached a stage where online education and the Internet has become indispensable. This is well recognized in the 14th Five-Year Plan that was approved this March, in which the government clearly stated its intention to actively develop develop online classroom, and utilize the advantages of online education. The online classroom and online education mentioned in the 14th Five-Year Plan are not limited to online school, but also include the digitalization of various in-school education scenarios. The education authorities also wrote out a series of supporting policies on online education, online homework, and personalized homework. For example, in the opinions on strengthening the construction and application of online education resources in primary and secondary schools, 教育部等五部门关于大力加强中小学线上教育教育资源建设的应用意见 and the notice of strengthening homework management in schools and compulsory education 关于加强义务教育学校作业管理的通知 the government introduced new requirements to leverage technology to make in-school teachings more efficient and tailored to the needs of students in the guidance on curbing among students, among school children. Issued on April 20th, the authorities take on take an approach to allow teaching time using digital products, which should be less than 30% of total teaching time. We believe these policies will benefit the industry in the long run and support orderly, healthily, and sustainably growth. It is also clear that the education authorities now have a clear vision about the current situation and future direction of the education system. China has also included in its 14th five-year plan a long-term goal of becoming a strong country in education by 2035. Guided by our vision, we believe that we can support the government's efforts to improve education. We aim to improve the learning experience for students, address the challenges of educational inequality, tailor education to meet students' individual educational needs, and stimulate students to pursue all around development through ability-oriented education. Ultimately, Education is to serve students, whether it's done in school or after school, whether it's delivered by teachers, instructors, or by teachers after school, and whether it is conducted online or offline. Only by improving the learning efficiency and truly alleviating the burden on students and parents can we maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of education. We believe that the best approach is to truly connect in-school and after-school learning, identify the problems and arise in school, and solve them in school and after school in a more personalized manner. Our teachers nowadays are able to see the in-school learning data of students, understand their weak points, and access premium localized educational content in various regions in China. The premium Localized content and unique insights into the learning process of students are the huge value brought to students by the in-school and after-school integrated model. Our next priority is to deepen these functions and to cover more students and regions. This is the rationale behind our integrated model. The essence of the integrated model is not just the low customer acquisition cost, but to leverage our integration of in-school and after-school operations, technology, and data in after-school tutoring to address the issues identified in school in a more personalized way so that eventually we can help students improve their academic performance in an effective way, efficient way, and alleviate their burden. No matter in-school and after-school products and services, we will always focus on creating value for our users. This is the only way for us to develop the leading products and maintain our leading position in both in-school and after-school markets and become a great company. Now I will turn the call over to Michael, our CFO, to walk you through our latest financial performance. Thank you.