This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
Operator
Hello everyone and welcome to our 2023 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Talk.
大家看材料的第三页
Our financial and operating results are released earlier today and currently available on our IELTS website. Today you will hear from our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Shen Chongfeng, who will give you opening remarks and business highlights. Afterwards, our CFO, Mr. Luo Yongtao, will brief you on our latest corporate developments and offer a closer look into our financials. And then in question and answer session, our management team will be available to you. We have our CTO and head of strategy, copy planning and product management, Ms.
Luo Yongtao
In today's conference, our management team will make statement in Mandarin or in English. For those in Mandarin, a context of translation will be provided. In case of any discrepancy between the Mandarin version and the English version,
大家看材料的第三页
Our statement in the original language shall prevail. Let me quickly cover the safe harbor statement before we start. As we will be making forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, please note that we will present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. With that, I'm now pleased to turn the call to our chairman and CEO, Mr. Shen Chongfeng, please. Mr. Shen, please. Hello, everyone. I'm Shen Chongfeng. Thank you for taking the time to dial in OneConnect
Shen Chongfeng
Third quarter earnings release. On behalf of Long Connect, I'd like to welcome investors, analysts, and friends from media to join this call. It's a great pleasure for me to share with you what we have achieved this quarter. A couple of days ago, the Central Financial World Conference has highlighted the importance of technology innovation in finance, green finance, financial inclusion, pension finance, and digital finance. And as an important part of digital economy, digital finance is the pillar of its development.
大家看材料的第三页
In 2023, we tried our best to develop AI based on chatGPT. This time, we used AI as the leading technology, which opened up a wider imagination for the digital transformation of the financial industry. In a research report by McKinsey, it was shown that only AI-based technology will bring a new price of $2,000 to $3,400 billion per year to the banking industry, with a 2.8% to 4.7% annual revenue for the industry. We witnessed new excitement for AI caused by ChatGPT in 2023. This new round of disruptive technology with AI at its center
Shen Chongfeng
has opened up greater possibilities for digital transformation in the financial industry. According to a research paper by McKinsey, generative AI alone can generate another $200 to $340 billion for the banking industry, which represents 2.8% to 2.7% of total industry revenue. Together with a new round of industry structural upgrade in China, steady economic recovery and the transition from previous growth drivers to new ones, we are very excited about demands in digital finance and our performance ahead.
大家看材料的第三页
Our strong growth momentum in the first half of this year continued.
Shen Chongfeng
We achieved solid performance in the third quarter. Net loss attributable to shareholders in the first nine months narrowed by 414 million yuan, or 60%. compared with the same period last year. Gross margin improved by 0.9 percentage points year over year to 36.1%. These metrics mean we are well on track to becoming profitable by medium term. 大家看材料的第三页。 Now please go to page number three. 秉承价值供应高质量发展的经营理念。
大家看材料的第三页
In the third quarter, we have strengthened customer expansion, focused on product growth, deepening the cost-effectiveness, and achieved good results on three core items. At this stage, we are accelerating the promotion of security technology output and natural growth, and gathering resources to achieve high-value products. At the same time, the company has also strengthened the precision headcount control of the project, and further narrowed the cost control, heading towards the strategic end goal of Niu Kui Wei Ying, which is the steady progress.
Shen Chongfeng
Centered around our business philosophy of value, win-win cooperation, and quality development, we achieved significant progress in three core initiatives, namely strengthening customer expansion, focusing on product upgrades, as well as deepening loss reduction and improving efficiency. At this stage, we are also exercising efforts to export PM Group products and upgrade our own products. with more resources centered around high-value products. And at the same time, the company has also fine-tuned ROI management of projects and cost management, which will put us closer to medium-term strategic target of breaking even and becoming profitable.
大家看材料的第三页
第四页 Next, on page four. 在产品方面,我们也在持续不断地进行产品升级,推进经营质量提升。 In terms of products, upgrades continue, further contributing to quality operations.
Shen Chongfeng
To enhance value creation and proactively adjust business structure, OneConnect has sped up with phasing out high customization, low growth margin, and low value products, and strengthened resource management of products to be phased out. 公司重点关注标准化产品和服务的升级与增长,深耕发展半量收费类型的业务。 We have also shifted our focus on upgrading and growing standardized products and services and pivoted towards chargeable volume services.
大家看材料的第三页
OneConnect has also adjusted R&D spending.
Shen Chongfeng
including pooling resources on core heat products and gradually increasing contribution from new products.
大家看材料的第三页
得益于此,今年以来公司产品的迭代速度, 标准化程度和交付效率等都得到了全方位的提升。 Thanks to these efforts, product iterations accelerated, and metrics like product standardization and delivery efficiency have been improved.
Shen Chongfeng
第五页 Next, on page 5.
大家看材料的第三页
2023 remains the key year of Stage 2 strategy, that is, broadening customer engagement. During this stage, we are committed to one body, two wings, where we focus on financial institutions while expanding ecosystem and overseas.
Shen Chongfeng
Next, on page 6.
大家看材料的第三页
在银行板块,第三季度我们与某全国性股份制银行在智慧管理领域牵手千万级别的合作。 In digital banking, we landed a new smart management contract with a joint national bank this quarter. The contract value exceeded over 10 million yuan. 以基财经营管理场景为依托,全面开展数字化转型实践。 We further expanded digital transformation into accounting and financial operations management scenarios.
Shen Chongfeng
With portfolio strategy, the offering runs simulations to select multiple decisive metrics, which are then used to guide asset and liability management and help banks to transform from experience-driven to digitally-driven. It also enables banks to shorten simulations of budget scenarios from one week to 30 minutes and replace monthly metric reviews with daily reviews.
大家看材料的第三页
In addition, we have also set up an economic capital management project in a large state-owned bank. This is the latest implementation of the business bank's capital management method. Implementing the green capital transformation development concept will adjust the risk to the capital return rate as the core basis for resource allocation, provide core testing tools for the general branch, and further enhance the value of the capital management system application.
Shen Chongfeng
Additionally, we also landed an economic capital project in a large national commercial bank, which represents the latest use case of measures for the administration of capital of commercial banks. Our product aims to achieve transformation to capital-efficient development. With risk-adjusted returns on capital as the core standard for capital allocation, We provide measurement tools for banks and their branches, building a flagship case for the application value of economic capital management systems. Next, on page 7.
大家看材料的第三页
In the past few years, we have developed a large-scale new product chain investment around small and medium-sized car insurance companies in risk assessment, cost management, and risk management. Based on our 30-year experience in car insurance management, In digital insurance, we have made significant R&D investment in new solutions. To address 10 points of small and medium-sized auto insurers, namely risk assessment, cost management, and risk management,
Shen Chongfeng
We are prepared to launch an end-to-end solution covering claim settlement plus underwriting plus service, which stems from Ping An Group's experiences in auto insurance operations in over three decades. The beta version is expected to come out late this year, and the official 1.0 version will be unveiled in the second quarter of 2024. Next on page eight.
大家看材料的第三页
In Gamma smart voice version, we will apply artificial intelligence technology to more advanced key business segments. For example, in the loan audit segment, our AI video face recognition robot, video face recognition robot products, comprehensively applied intelligent dialogue, digital people, visual wind control, and other AI systems, helping customers to automatically audit the flow rate, increasing by 30%. In the online wealth management service segment, our AI text machine,
Shen Chongfeng
For Gamma Platform, we further integrated AI into key nodes in our operations. For instance, our AI interview robot incorporates AI technologies such as smart conversation, digital personality, and visualize risk management when reviewing retail loan applications. The solution improves automatic loan approvals by over 30%. In online wealth management services, our AI robot boosts customer conversion by 40% with the help of AI technologies like knowledge graphs and smart recommendations, as well as scenarios like preset scripts and cart templates.
大家看材料的第三页
Next, on page 9.
Shen Chongfeng
完善了业务数据定价体系与报告的可视化分析体系。 With more new landmark projects in this corner, we also further expanded cooperation in two wings, namely ecosystem and overseas. We landed a DAS project in public utilities worth over 10 million yuan, taking up operation and maintenance as well as system construction in this area. On top of that, we kicked off cooperation with the top national bank in asset liability management, with the contract worth also over 10 million yuan. OneConnect's offering will help the bank improve their fund transfer pricing mechanism, as well as enhance their business data pricing mechanism and analysis visualization.
大家看材料的第三页
The new IPO settlement platform, Fannie, which provides technical support, will also be officially launched in the near future. After the platform is launched, the time between the new stock price and the stock price start transaction will be reduced from five business days to two business days. The development of Hong Kong's capital market will lead to a major milestone.
Shen Chongfeng
We are also proud to say that Hong Kong Stock Exchange's brand-new IPO settlement platform, Finny, to which OneConnect provided technology support, is expected to be officially launched soon. With the new platform, the IPO turnaround time from pricing to trading will be shortened from T5 to T2, which marks another important milestone for Hong Kong's capital market. Next, on page 10. Our hard work has brought in multiple awards from third-party and renowned media institutions. We won the first prize of Science and Technology Progress of Guangdong Province in 2022 and made it into IDC Global FinTech Top 100 list for a number of consecutive years. Ping An Financial Cloud received awards from China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
大家看材料的第三页
This September and October, we hosted Retail Banking Digital Transformation Summit and Remote Banking Development Summit in Shenzhen and Shanghai respectively.
Shen Chongfeng
In our exchanges with many executives from banks, we noted firsthand that the industry is under operation and management pressure as a result of narrowing interest rate margin and increasing MPL ratio. Commercial banks, especially medium and small-sized city and rural commercial banks, are in urgent need of leveraging third-party capabilities, enhancing operation management, and improving digitalization. That means broader markets and broader possibilities for top fintech companies in this industry.
大家看材料的第三页
There are still two months to go this year. As the Chinese economy gradually warms up, we will continue to improve operating strategy, target at business structure adjustment and product upgrades,
Shen Chongfeng
maintain stable financial performance, and make steady progress towards medium-term targets. Additionally, we will focus on improving revenue from third parties, seek opportunity to expand international cooperation, capitalizing on digital transformation along the Belt and Road Initiative in regions such as Southeast Asia and Middle East. Thank you. Next, I'll hand it over to Luo Zong to brief you on a recent board resolution and our financial performance in this quarter and the first nine months of this year.
Luo Zong
Thank you, good morning everyone. I'm pleased to share with you some updates about our latest corporate development. Yesterday, we entered into a share purchase agreement with the LUFAX and POB. One collect agreed to sell and the LUFAX agreed to acquire 100% share of POB at a consideration of 933 million Hong Kong dollars in cash. Upon closing, one collect will cease to hold any interest in POB and the POB will cease to be a subsidiary of one collect and will no longer be consolidated into the financial statement of OneCat. POP was established in December 2018. It obtained one of the eight virtual banking licenses in Hong Kong in May 2019 and opened business in September 2020. POB was the first voting bank to provide flexible and efficient banking services with a focus on SMEs and was the first voting bank to participate in the SME Financing Guarantee Scheme launched by the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation. In terms of credit assessment, POB adopted alternative data to support its credit decisions, allowing it to better understand SMEs' financing needs and perform high-quality credit risk assessments. As of the first half of 2023, the revenue of POB was 75 million Hong Kong dollars, or 3.6% of OneFact's total revenue, and the net loss was about 87 million Hong Kong dollars. The purchaser, Lufax, is the leading financial services in Nibbler with strong capital base. rich product lines, and mature risk control and technological capabilities. It offers financing products designed principally to address the needs of small business owners. LUFAX has established relationships with financial institutions in China as funding and credit enhancement partners to provide general unsecured and secured loans under its core regional credit and enablement business model. LUFAX is also listed on New York Stock Exchange and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. OneConnect is a technology as a service provider for the financial services industry in China with an expanding international presence. Taking into account the current business strategy of the group, the directors and management team believe that The disposal represents a good opportunity for One Connect to focus more on technology-driven products and services and allow us to better deploy appropriate resources. Upon completion of the disposal, One Connect will continue to focus our Stage 2 strategy and to enhance existing technology solutions and products. As I just mentioned, upon closing, the disposal will bring us HK$933 million in cash. The company currently intends to apply the proceeds from the disposal as general working capital to improve the core business operations of One Connect and to focus on our technology capabilities and products to facilitate the long-term business development. At this time, we believe that the strong financial and technology capability from LUPEX will help JLB to achieve sustainable and healthy progress going forward. The board and management team undertakes strategic review of our business from time to time with a view to maximizing returns to the shareholders. Next, let's go through the financial results of Q3. We have achieved a solid third quarter. In Q3, we have made substantial progress in loss reduction, which is consistent with our strategic goal to achieve mid-term profitability. Although we have experienced a revenue decline in the past few months, it is during this time that we have the opportunity to showcase our resilience and ability to adapt. We will be exploring new opportunities, assessing our current processes and making necessary adjustments to ensure that we can regain growth momentum in the near future. In the third quarter of 2023, we delivered revenue of 844 million RMB, decreased by 21.1% compared to the same period last year, primarily due to the decline in transaction based and support revenue. Revenue generated from third party customers decreased by 12.6% to 307 million in the third quarter. The number of premium plus customers decreased year over year to 154 from 163 for the same period in 2022. primarily caused by fewer customers in digital banking segments due to slower than expected banking IT spending. We are thrilled to see net loss attributable to shareholders was 91 million, and the corresponding net loss ratio to shareholders improved by 1.6 percentage points on a year-over-year basis to a negative 10.8%. Now let's change to our revenue mix. In the third quarter, our third-party revenue decreased by 12.6% to $307 million compared to Q3 last year, contributing 36.4% of total revenue in Q3. Third-party revenue growth remains the key focus of our second stage strategy. We will continue to seek opportunities that align with our growth objectives, fueling further expansion of our third-party revenue streams. In the third quarter, revenue from LoopX decreased 48.5% to $61 million and contributed 7.2% of our total revenue. The revenue decline from Lufax was mainly due to Lufax business operations optimization, resulting in lower demands for business origination and risk management services. Revenue from Pian Group increased 20.6% to $476 million and contributed 56.4% of the total revenue. Revenue decline from Pian Group was primarily due to a decline in transaction volume, such as operation support and risk management products. The services provided to PN Group are core technology solutions, which have been deeply embedded into PN Group's daily operations. Looking ahead, we will continue to fully support PN Group's business reforms and look for new cooperations. In the first nine months of the year, revenue from third-party customers decreased 8.9%, revenue from Lufax decreased 42.1%, and revenue from Tian Group dropped by 15% for the corresponding period in 2022. Moving on to revenue mix by business type, let's take a look at our Q3 results first. implementation revenue decreased by 13.4 percent on a year-over-year basis to 175 million mainly due to the lower revenue contribution from new customers as financial institutions recovering from the pandemic still takes time revenue from business origination services decreased by 70.9 percent year-over-year to 27 million primarily due to the decline transaction volume and our proactive actions of phasing out lower-value firms in the digital banking segment. Revenue from risk management services decreased by 26.3% year-over-year to 77 million, mainly due to reduced transaction volume in banking loan solutions because of slower-than-expected banking activities in the third quarter. Revenue from operation support services decreased by 33.5% on a year-over-year basis to $195 million, which was currently caused by reduced demand from auto insurance customers and banking customers. Revenue from cloud services platform was $297 million stable on a year-over-year basis in the third quarter. Revenue from post-implementation support and other services decreased by 30.3% year-over-year to 34 million in the third quarter. The decline was primarily due to a low demand for auto ecosystem services. Revenue from JLB, virtual banking business in Hong Kong, increased by 30.4% to 37 million as compared to the third quarter last year. If we look at the first nine months of 2023, implementation revenue increased 13.5%. Revenue from business regulation dropped 65.4%. Risk management decreased 25%. Revenue from operations support declined 23%. Cloud services platform revenue decreased 5.2%. Revenue from post-implementation and other services dropped 32.6% and the POB increased 39.6%. As you can see, we have been diligent in identifying and improving underperforming areas of our business and focus on enhancing revenue structure. We will remain committed to integrating our product mix and adopting a stable and sustainable stock-based charging model. Let's turn to revenue mixed by product sectors. Gamma platform sector, the focus of product innovation in recent years contributed the biggest chunk of our revenue, declined slightly of 2.4% in the quarter of 2023 to 457 million and accounted for 54.1% of total revenue. The decline was mainly caused by reduced transaction volume of our open platform products. Digital banking sector, which accounted for 23.9% of total revenue, reduced by 41.4% on year-over-year basis to 201 million. That was mainly caused by reduction in transaction volume of our business origination services and risk management services. which were related to our initiatives to phase out lower value products and impact from the lower than expected banking activities. Digital insurance sector, which accounted for 17.6% of total revenue, decreased by 35.2% to 149 million in the third quarter of 2023, primarily due to reduced demand in other ecosystem services. In each sector, we faced out products with low margins, products with low technology value added, as well as those with limited potential for growth. In addition, virtual banking sector, as I just mentioned, accounted for 44.4% of total revenue. Customer numbers. In the third quarter of 2023, the number of Premium Plus customers decreased to 154 as compared to 163 from the same period last year. Primarily due to fewer customers in the digital banking sector, we believe as we continue to advance our initiatives, we expect our customer base will be back and further expand. More Premium Plus customers will use our products and services. Now let's take a look at the gross margin. We are very glad to see our gross profit reached 295 million in the third quarter of 2023. Gross margin remains flat at 35%, and on 995 phases, gross margin increased by 1 percentage point to 39.4%. In the first nine months of this year, Our growth margin increased by 0.9 percentage points to 36.1%, and the non-FS growth margin increased by 0.6 percentage points to 39.7%. In the first three quarters of 2023, the continued efforts in product integration, standardization, and delivery efficiency improvement together with execution on quality growth helped improve our gross margin. We will stick to that strategy and continue the endeavor of achieving profitability. Moving on to expenses and net loss attributable to shareholders, you can see that we are well on track to our third mid-term break-even target. First of all, our research and development came down 19.9% to 230 million from 287 million in the same period of last year. As a percentage of ratio, it slightly increased to 27.3% due to the reduction of total revenue. In the third quarter, our continued investment in technological innovation and organizational capabilities remains unchanged. As our products were more upgraded and integrated, we further improved our product delivery efficiency. Looking ahead, we will keep investing in research and development at a more measurable and reasonable pace to enhance our product competitiveness in the market. Our sales and marketing expenses for Q3 decreased 18.3% to $73 million. compared with $94 million in the third quarter of 2022. The improvement in sales and marketing expenses mainly benefited from our continued sales force, increasing efforts, and the decrease in marketing and advertising activities. Our general and administrative expenses decreased 44% 94 million from 167 million in the prior year. As a percentage of revenue, it decreased to 11.1% from 15.7%. The decline in general and administrative expenses was primarily due to stringent cost control matters and reduced labor costs. It is worth mentioning again that under a challenging business environment, Our net loss attributable to shareholders improved substantially to negative 91 million from negative 133 million in the same period last year. And the corresponding net margin to shareholders improved 1.6 percentage points to negative 10.8%. This adjustment reflects our consistent commitment to enhancing our financial health and demonstrates the effectiveness of our actions on the journey towards profitability. The next page demonstrates the trend of our net margin improvements to shareholders in the past few years. From this page, you can see a clear trajectory of our path to profitability over the years. Our first nine months of this year results continue to reflect the effects of our disciplined execution of cost control accompanied by improved operational efficiency, marking another milestone in the path to break-even. We will continue our product integration efforts and strive to improve operating efficiency and business margins. Looking ahead to the rest of the year, Although we continue to see a degree of unpredictability at a macro level, our focus remains on improving third-party revenue where we will continue to enhance gross profit margin, focus on cost control and operational efficiency improvement to stay well on track to the objective of profitability. Next page will list the key financial metrics of third quarter of 2023. Lastly, we summarized adjustments in 954's module for reference. Thank you.
Q3
Thank you, Mr. Law. Operator, we are ready for questions. Please open the line.
Law
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by 2 to restore your question. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. Thank you. Again, as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, to ask any question, please press star, followed by one on your telephone keypad now. We now have our first question from Lydia Lin from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Lydia Lin
Hello, everyone. I'm Lydia from Morgan Stanley. There are two questions. The first one is that there are some changes in the board of directors of Ping An. My question is about the board management changes in Ping An level and are there any new business updates or operational priority changes in OneConnect business that we have observed. And the second question is about the big projects that we have signed up in the quarter this year. When can we expect them to be recognized as our revenue? Thank you.
Ping An
Let me answer the first question.
大家看材料的第三页
The board of directors will conduct a strategic assessment of the company's business in the near future. As a result, there will be a more stable strategic plan and a more stable organizational framework. The board of directors will also make normal changes. The board conducts strategy reviews on the company's business,
Shen Chongfeng
from time to time, and OCIE has established solid strategy planning and is very well organized. We have found very professional and good replacements for design directors. So we are confident that the current management team will continue to achieve quality development. And for the future, our focus will be on the development of quality products as well as to enhance operation efficiency.
Luo Yongtao
第二个问题请Lydia可以再付出一次吗?
Operator
Okay, thank you very much. And for the second question, the second time is the law. Thank you.
Luo Zong
Just now, for the big projects, we will have a period of cross-annuality. For these projects, there will be some revenue flow this year. Of course, its follow-up will be based on the progress of its time, the progress of the project,
Shen Chongfeng
For several major projects that we landed this year, we expect that these projects will last from 2023 to 2024. And for this year, revenue will come in for some of these projects. However, based on the milestones that we can recognize, we believe that more revenue streams will come in steadily next year.
Ping An
Okay, thank you.
Law
Thank you very much. We now have our next question from Li Xixian from World Hygiene On. Please go ahead.
Li Xixian
Good morning, leaders. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I have a question here that is mainly related to our company's customer base. Because our company's customer base, in addition to Ping'an Group and Guanglianfang Revenue Agency, most of our financial customer base is a small and medium-sized financial institution. This time, the Central Financial Work Conference clearly stated that Thank you.
Ping An
Thank you for your question.
Operator
The question will be taken by Mr. Shen, please. Mr. Shen, please answer the question.
大家看材料的第三页
Mr. Shen, please answer the question. Mr. Shen, please answer the question. Mr. Shen, please answer the question. Mr. Shen, please answer the question.
Shen Chongfeng
As I've mentioned in the opening remarks, the Central Financial Work Conference has highlighted the importance of technology innovation in finance as well as green finance and digital finance. So for small and medium-sized financial institutions, especially rural and city commercial banks, their main focus will be about to better serve the real economy and to be more compliant with the regulatory requirements. 那对中小银行在这个金融监管要求,还有呢服务实体经济,再加上 So their target of better serving financial, better serving real economy, being more compliant with regulations, as well as the new trend in neighboring interest rate margin and an increased MTO ratio, have placed them under greater pressure.
大家看材料的第三页
So the implications on small and medium-sized institutions is that there will be an urgent need to enhance their digital capabilities.
Shen Chongfeng
both in their everyday businesses as well as in their internal operations.
大家看材料的第三页
For OneConnect, our offering
Shen Chongfeng
including digital transformation in retail banking, credit management as well as asset liability management. Additionally, our products in Gamma platform will put us in a good position to empower these banks. 这也证明了我们这两年聚焦产品 And these efforts are a testament to our hard work in focusing on products and serving medium and small-sized institutions. And therefore, we are very confident about our development in the following years. Thank you.
Law
Thank you very much. We currently have no further questions. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, to ask any further questions, you can press star followed by one on the telephone keypad now. We now have our next question from Alan Kwan from Citigroup.
Ping An
Please go ahead.
Law
Hi, Allen. Your line has now opened. Please chat if you have put yourself on mute.
Allen
Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to ask a question. I mainly want to ask about the details of our selection. I would like to ask about how you consider selling PAOB to Lu Jinsuo, and some of the main rationale behind it. And I would like to ask about Thanks management for giving me the opportunity to ask the question. I just have a quick follow up on the transaction announced today. Can management share a little bit more color on the rationale behind the divestment of PAOB to look facts? And I'm wondering if management have any plan shareholder return plans regarding the proceeds raised from the investment.
Ping An
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you for your question. For the first question, we will be taken by Mr. Shen, and the second one will be taken by Mr. Luo.
大家看材料的第三页
P.A.O.B. has become the virtual bank for SME financial services in the Greater Bay Area. Its strong performance showcases OneConnect's tech capabilities. When we applied for VB license in Hong Kong back in 2019, we wanted a use case for our end-to-end platform solution to better serve prospective financial institution customers in Hong Kong and overseas.
Shen Chongfeng
and capitalized on increasing demands for digitalization from financial institutions. And for these purposes, we have achieved what we wanted.
大家看材料的第三页
We are positioned as a service provider of commercial technology in the Chinese financial service industry. The company is also continuously conducting our business analysis and focus. The purpose is to bring the biggest return to shareholders. Considering the current business strategy of the company, OneConnect is a technology service provider for financial institutions in China. We conduct strategy reviews on our businesses from time to time,
Shen Chongfeng
to be more focused with our businesses and to maximize returns for our shareholders. Given our current business strategy, the company believes the disposal is a good opportunity for us to focus more on technology-driven products as well as services that are less cash demanding and allocate more resources to technology products and services. After the disposal, OneConnect will continue to pivot to existing technology offerings. 好,谢谢。 Thank you.
Luo Zong
好的,那我回答第二个问题。 那么本次出售PUB获得的款项将作为营运资金进一步充实我们的可用资本的用途。
Shen Chongfeng
So proceeds from this disposal will be used as working capital to improve our cash position and operation.
Luo Zong
那么截止到9月30号的话呢, 我们的合用资金呢, 我们不包括POV的话是17.9个亿。 在我们的这个整个财务状况应该是非常的稳健, 能够足够支撑公司正常的一个发展。 那么这次的这个交易的话呢, As of September 30th, cash, not including cash from PAOB, amounts to 1.79 billion yuan in OC. That means we have sufficient funding for long-term development.
Shen Chongfeng
And with this disposal, we believe that this will help us improve sustainable and healthy development of our business. Under our current strategy, the proceeds will be used to focus on developing technology, products, and capabilities. And these will help us with our long-term healthy and steady development. Thank you.
Law
Thank you very much. I'd like now to hand over back to Rick for any closing remarks. Thank you.
Operator
Okay. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us all today.
大家看材料的第三页
If you have any questions, feel free to contact our team, and we appreciate your interest in following us and look forward to speaking with you soon.
Ping An
Thanks. This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
Disclaimer