Lufax Holding Ltd American Depositary Shares, each representing two (2) Ordinary Shares

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Lufax Holdings Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. Please note, this event is being recorded. Now, I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Ms. Liu Xinyan, the company's head of board office and capital markets. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Our financial and operating results were released by our Newswire services earlier today and are currently available online. Today, you will hear from our chairman and CEO, Mr. Y.S. Cho, who will provide an update of the recent developments and strategies of our business. Our CFO, Mr. Pei-Ting Zhu, will then provide more details on our financial performance and business operations. Before we continue, I would like to refer you to our Safe Harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call, as we will be making forward-looking statements. With that, I'm now pleased to turn over the call to Mr. Y.S. Cho, Chairman and CEO of Lufax. Please.

Thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2024 earning call. During the third quarter, while poor loan demand remained weak as small business owners continue to face a complex macro environment, we saw ongoing growth in our consumer finance business. We are hopeful that policy stimulus measures introduced by the Chinese government in late September will help improve the macro environment. and have a positive impact on our business performance in the long run. Meanwhile, we plan to stay vigilant and prudent in the execution of our business strategies in light of the increased risk exposure on the 100 Guaranteed Business Model. Before we discuss the business details, let me share some updates on the macro environment. In the third quarter, the macro environment remained challenging for small business owners. The SME Development Index declined by 0.3 points quarter over quarter to 88.7 in September. The Business Conditions Index published by the Chung Kong Graduate School of Business also declined from 49.3 in June to 46 in September, suggesting persistent challenges faced by small business sector. On the other hand, we are encouraged by sign of mild recovery in the consumption sector during the third quarter. As the CPI showed improvement from 0.2% in June to 0.4% in September. In late September, we are glad to see that Chinese government announced a number of new stimulus policies, including measures to help the recovery of the real estate sector and increased liquidity, such as a cut to reserve requirements ratio and the lowering of existing mortgage rates. Local governments also launched a series of stimulus initiatives relating to real estate and consumption to boost consumer confidence and strengthen the economy. We believe all of these efforts have a positive impact on SDOs in China. We recognize it will take time for SBOs to benefit from these measures and improve performance, so we remain prudent as we execute our business strategies in the short term. Furthermore, we will also put more emphasis on our non-SBO customers and continue to grow our consumer finance business. This will help us take full advantage of the gradual effects of consumption recovery and will build solid position for our future growth. Now let's turn to our operating results. First, let's take a look at our loan volume. Total new loan sales in the third quarter were 50.5 billion, year over year, and improving by 11.7% from last quarter. The quarter-on-quarter growth despite the macro challenges, was mainly attributable to the continued growth of our consumer finance business, which offset the ongoing weakness in pre-loan demand from high-quality SBOs. New consumer finance loans increased by 27.8% year-over-year and accounted for 52% of our total new-owned sales in the third quarter. as a result of our continued efforts to roll out smaller tickets and revolving product structures. Balance-wise, our total loan balance stood at $213.1 billion as of the end of third quarter, of which consumer finance loans took up 22%. Turning to asset quality, our tightened risk control policies and enhanced risk assessment systems have helped maintain stable asset quality. The C2MC flow rate of Puhui loans remained at 0.9% during the third quarter, despite a decrease of total balance as compared to the second quarter. The asset quality of our consumer finance loans also stayed strong. With the NPL ratio further decreasing to 1.2%, from 1.4% in the second quarter. As loans enabled under the 100% Guarantee Model kept increasing as a percentage of total loans, our balance take rate rose by 1.9% points year over year to 9.7% during the third quarter of 2024. Cost of funds continued to decrease, driven by both monetary policy stimulus and our diversified license strategy. As mentioned during our last earning call, we acquired a nationwide small lending license in July. We started to provide new loans under this newly acquired nationwide small lending license in August. As of the end of third quarter, we have provided more than $1 billion in new loans under this new license. We believe our small lending license has the potential to further reduce our funding cost, diversify our product portfolio, and improve our capital management efficiency. Finally, I want to provide an update on Ping An Group's mandatory general offer. On September 27th, Ping An Group dispatched offer documents and commenced the offer period. If there are no additional requirements from regulators, The offer period will end on October 28. As stated in the offer document, Ping An Group is making the offer solely to comply with applicable rules and has no intention to privatize LUFEX. The intention is that LUFEX will continue to remain an independent entity listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Hong Kong Exchange. Looking ahead, we seek to continue to deepen our synergies with Ping An Group, leveraging its brand, reputation, technological resources, and extensive network to strengthen our market position. I will now turn the call over to Pei-Ching, who will provide more details on our financial performance and business operations.