Evoke and OneConnect Financial Technology: Contrasting Strategies in H1 2024

Earnings call: Evoke outlines strategic plans amid H1 2024 results By Investing.com

Evoke has reported its first half of 2024 financial results, meeting its own guidance but still falling short of expectations. CEO Per Widerström and CFO Sean Wilkins addressed the performance issues and detailed the company's strategy to boost profitability and shareholder value. Despite a decrease in net cash and an increase in leverage, Evoke remains cash generative with strong liquidity. The company is confident in its ability to deliver profitable growth in the latter half of 2024, driven by strategic changes, cost savings, and revenue initiatives, including the sale of its U.S. B2C business. Evoke's strategic focus is on three competitive advantages: operational excellence through data and automation, a winning culture, and leading distinct brands. The company has made progress in customer retention and loyalty, which has led to cost savings. Additionally, Evoke is investing in six strategic initiatives to streamline the business for profitability. The company aims to leverage technology powered by AI and intelligent automation to improve profit margins. They also anticipate deleveraging to enhance return on equity and expect neutral net working capital in the second half. Evoke expects to spend £75 million to £80 million in CapEx for the full year and is optimizing core markets to maximize underlying cash flow. The company's trading is in line with the 5% to 9% growth target for H2, and it is confident in the growth potential of 888 Africa. With a focus on creating shareholder value, Evoke is committed to a successful turnaround and delivering on its strategic promises. Evoke's recent financial results and forward-looking statements present a mixed picture that warrants a closer look at the company's financial health and market performance. According to InvestingPro data, Evoke has a market capitalization of $355.78 million, reflecting the market's current valuation of the company. Despite an impressive gross profit margin of 88.18% for the last twelve months as of Q2 2024, concerns arise from the company's negative P/E ratio of -1.64, indicating that it was not profitable during this period. Investors should note that the stock has experienced a significant decline over the past year, with a year-to-date price total return of -37.67%. This trend is corroborated by the InvestingPro Tip that the stock has fared poorly over the last month, with a one-month price total return of -27.39%. The company's share price also sits at 43.66% of its 52-week high, suggesting that the market has considerably adjusted its expectations. However, there is a silver lining as analysts predict that Evoke will be profitable this year, which could signal a turnaround for the company if its strategic initiatives bear fruit. It's also worth noting that Evoke does not pay a dividend, which may influence investment decisions for income-focused shareholders. For readers interested in a deeper analysis, InvestingPro offers additional tips on Evoke, which can be found at https://www.investing.com/pro/EIHDF. These insights could provide valuable context to investors looking to understand the potential risks and opportunities associated with Evoke's stock. Per Widerström: Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for our H1 2024 results. I am Per Widerström, and I've now been the CEO of Evoke for 10 months. We already gave you the key headlines of our first half in our trading update a month ago, and the actual numbers for H1 are exactly in line with the guidance we gave. So, we are going to keep today fairly brief. I will start with a short summary, including the actions we are taking to address performance, including details of our current trading, before Sean walks through the financials. And then, I cover our strategic progress, before taking your questions. The first half financial results are exactly in line with our trading update announcement a few weeks ago, but let me start by reiterating what I said before, that these results are disappointing and are not acceptable. We understand exactly what went wrong and we have taken corrective actions to address the problems. This is what I will take you through in more detail shortly. We are seeing good traction from our decisive actions, and I'm pleased to say that Q3 to date is in line with our 5% to 9% growth targets. We are laser-focused on delivering our commitments for H2 and we have implemented a number of tactical actions focused on short-term performance turnaround to ensure we deliver these targets in the second half. But be in no doubt that the actions we are taking are much more significant than this and are much more strategically positive, focus on our value creation plan, and setting up the business for the longer term. We are seeing steady improvements in our run rates, but I'm really excited about our growing capabilities and what this means for our future profitability. Turning to Slide 3 and to cover current trading and what we are seeing and expect to see in the second half. There is a short summary on the page on what we covered in our trading update around why the H1 performance was behind the plan and actions we have taken to address it. You can also see some of the wide range of initiatives and improvements that we'll be landing across the second half, in particular the improvements in our products, the way we do customer lifecycle management, and our overall customer value propositions. These are fundamental shifts that will drive significant longer-term benefits, but we also expect to see some immediate uplifts as things lands during the course of the second half. We have already made several changes in the past few months to address short-term performance and drive improvements. It's fair to say that a lot of the real exciting initiatives are still to come in Q3 and Q4. In terms of what we are seeing in the business right now, both the end of Q2 and start of Q3 have seen strong underlying progress in our year-on-year growth rate and revenue growth in Q3 up to the 10th of August is consistent with our 5% to 9% growth target range. The period benefits slightly from the timing of the Euros, but the main driver of growth has been strong trends in our core customer cohort of mid-value customers and also strong ongoing growth in online gaming in our core markets. This is really the heart and engine of the business. So, it's pleasing to see this is where the growth is coming from. With that, I'm going to hand over to our CFO, Sean Wilkins, to run through our financials and wider outlook first. And then, I will come back to expand on some of these strategic changes we have been making. Sean Wilkins: Thanks, Per, and good morning, everyone. I'm Sean Wilkins, the CFO, and I've now been with the business for six months. This is a hugely exciting time for the group as we are undertaking a total transformation of the business. This will deliver stronger revenues, stronger growth, higher margins, and more sustainable market-leading positions. As with any transformation of this scale, the route to success is never a straight line. We had some successes and some challenges in the first half, and the results you can see on Slide 5 of the first half are not where we wanted them to be. We already provided the main financial headlines last month, with revenues down 2% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13% to 14%. So, there are no surprises here. As we discussed in the trading update, we didn't see the returns we expected from our increased marketing investment. And with the operational gearing in our retail business, this meant that the adjusted EBITDA of £116 million was about £35 million to £40 million lower than we had expected. This is what we explained in our post-close trading update in July. In the appendix of this presentation, there are some more slides on the reported results, including details of the exceptional items and adjustments, being mainly the purchase price allocation, amortization, integration costs, and the U.S. termination fees already disclosed. What we will cover in more detail today is that the first half is not reflective of all the actions we've taken to secure our performance in H2 and beyond is much stronger. I'll talk a bit more about this after covering our cash flow. Turning to Slide 6 and our cash flow. Net cash, excluding customer balances, dropped by £12 million in the half, resulting a net debt of £1.73 billion. Given the phasing of our marketing investments and cost savings, our adjusted EBITDA on an LTM basis reduced from £308 million at the end of December to £268 million at the end of June 2024. This means that the leverage increased from 5.6x to 6.4x. Alongside this drop in adjusted EBITDA, you can see we paid out over £50 million for exceptional costs in the first half, which is driving the small cash outflow. This includes significant items like costs to exit our U.S. B2C business, which will deliver clear and higher returns in future periods. We expect this increase in leverage to be temporary and expect leverage at the end of 2024 to be much closer to where we began the year. Looking forward, we plan for rapid deleveraging to our 2026 target of below 3.5x. It is important to note that despite profits being below our plan, the business remains highly cash generative, with almost £79 million of underlying business free cash flow in the period. We also have really strong liquidity, with nearly £300 million of total liquidity at the end of June. Turning to Slide 7, I'd like to provide some more details on the improvement in profitability that we expect in the second half. As Per already said, the actions we have taken have driven an improvement in our trading. We are pleased with the improving momentum in our revenue run rate. This chart walks through the main bridging items from half one adjusted EBITDA of £116 million to our half two guidance of £185 million to £195 million. Marketing phasing will add £35 million to £40 million. We significantly increased our marketing in the first half and are seeing some of the benefits of this in our improved run rate into half two. The lower marketing spend in H2 will be a marketing ratio of around 18% to 19% of online revenues, which we see as a more normal rate than the elevated 25% in half one. The phasing of employment costs will add £5 million to £10 million in H2, given the full half impact of actions taken during the first half to improve our operating model. Revenue initiatives will add around £15 million to EBITDA. We have a deep pipeline of initiatives here, some of which Per talked through. We have completely changed the way the finance function supports the business in tracking and driving business. Each of these initiatives is tracked individually, enabling the business to take corrective actions to ensure we're hitting our financial plans. An example of a new initiative which is driving improved revenue and profitability is our recently launched upgraded Betbuilder. This has made it much easier for our customers to place combination Betbuilder bets. With a high-quality product in place, we then skewed the marketing and promotions towards this in the Euros and into the start of the new football season. This new product drives both revenue and profit uplift on its own as more players can place the bets they like, and also increases the efficiency of our marketing and bonuses as we are able to promote a really attractive product. As you know, we are in the process of selling and closing our U.S. B2C business, and this will add a further £4 million to EBITDA in the second half. Finally, we have taken a range of additional cost initiatives, which will save a further £10 million in H2. One of the key learnings in my first six months in the role is that we have loads to go for on the cost side. We continue to see a wide range of manual processes, duplication and inefficiency in our cost base. This ongoing work will lead to a structurally lower cost base, with further annualization impact into 2025, giving us confidence in our 2025 plans. Finally, on Slide 8, a quick update on my financial priorities that I outlined at our full year results. Firstly, we are driving and embedding a cultural shift in the business. This is all about a shift in mindset to deliver value creation. I have quickly restructured the finance team to set a structure that will support greater rigor of our plans and provide greater support to our decision makers and drive high returns. We built rigorous daily, weekly and monthly tracking and increased our reforecasting cycle to monthly to ensure that we can be more accurate and confident with our forecasts. Each element of our plan is tracked and monitored to ensure we are delivering. This enables the business to take corrective actions if we are off course and to quickly scale up investments where we are over-delivering. Secondly, resource allocation is fundamental to creating value. We are in the process of exiting the U.S. B2C business and have made structural changes in our approach to marketing and product investments to drive higher returns through pursuing our strategy. Thirdly, we are making strong progress with our efficiency and operating leverage. We continue to take cost out of the business following our strategy to deliver a more targeted business, investing in the right products and brands in the right countries. We are building a more scalable, more efficient business powered by intelligent automation and AI. I'll now hand back to Per to provide some more details on how we have set up the business for success in H2 of this year and beyond. Per Widerström: Thanks, Sean. Turning to Slide 10, this is a reminder of our commitment to shareholders to create value. As we outline today and our trading update last month, we are not happy with the financial performance in the first half. The scale of transformation is significant and it is needed for us to deliver a short-term trading turnaround as well as ensuring long-term profitable growth and value creation. Our value creation plan does not change. And with the structure improvements we have made in the business, I'm even more confident about our plan to create shareholder value. Turning to Slide 11 with a reminder of our strategy. This is a complete reset of the business built around a clear and compelling strategy. We know where to invest in our core markets and we know how to invest and how to win customers in these markets. During the first half, we have made strong progress with our strategy, building an almost completely new team; new modus operandi, ways of working; and our clear strategic framework to guide the success and value creation of the business. There is, of course, lots still to do and I will not rest until this business is performing the way it should and can do. But I'm really pleased with the progress we have made here to set us up for profitable growth in H2 2024 and beyond. Turning to Slide 12, and just to reiterate and expand on some of the changes we have been making to transform the business. Our first competitive advantage we are investing behind is operational excellence driven by data and automation. We have hired a world-class team for data, intelligent automation and artificial intelligence, who are already driving a step change in our capabilities. We have become much more sophisticated in our play segmentation, enabling us to provide better products and promotions to our core customers who value them the most, driving retention, loyalty, and also higher player values. These improvements are enabling us to do more with less, delivering £30 million of cost savings while providing better outcomes for our customers. And we are already seeing tangible short-term benefits here to our run rates, with an improvement in, for example, our bonus ratios. Our second competitive advantage being invested into is our winning culture. We rebranded the group as Evoke, a critical step to bring together our business into one company focused on execution of our strategy. We have an almost entirely new executive team, bringing in leading talent and experience from inside the sector and outside, as well as strengthening the wider leadership community. And we have radically restructured operating model, removing layers and broadening spans of controls, getting our people across the business closer to the customer and speeding up decision making. Our third competitive advantage we are investing behind is our leading distinct brands. We have relaunched Mr Green as the most distinctive casino brand in the market and we are repositioning William Hill with successful campaigns now being based around, for example, top prize guarantee in racing and top prizes on [indiscernible] and football, and gradually shifting our marketing focus from pure promotions towards highlighting our product excellence. Our investment in our competitive advantages and value creation is underpinned by our six strategic initiatives. These initiatives are fundamental to creating a leaner, more profitable business with investments in capabilities that are enabling us to win customers and win in our target markets. Put simply, we have taken decisive actions to ensure we hit our plans for the second half, and we are making significant structural improvements in our business to ensure we create a better, more profitable business for the future. Turning to Slide 13 and how our actions and priorities are both delivering short-term trading improvements while at the same time, building significantly enhanced capabilities for the future. We will deliver 5% to 9% revenue growth in H2 2024. We are already seeing the benefits of our short-term changes, which include the benefit of new product launches like the Betbuilder, with further new product launches and UX enhancements coming in the next few weeks. This is enabling us to be much more laser focused with our personalized promotions and more effective with our marketing as we highlight the benefit of our leading products rather than just giving free bets. These capabilities will grow substantially in the long term as we roll out our automated customer lifecycle management model, which has already been well under development and will lead to a step change in retention and monetization as we deliver our strategy to give customers a personalized experience delivered by our clear premium brands. Stronger revenues will be magnified for profitability with our more efficient cost base. The second half of this year will benefit from the full £30 million cost savings plan that we announced at the start of this year, the benefit of reducing losses from our U.S. B2C exit, and lower marketing ratio with our more targeted marketing. Over the long term, there is substantial upside potential for our profitability as we capture the benefits of our strategic initiatives. Evoke is becoming a business with leading scalable technology powered by AI and intelligent automation, with a winning organization operating with pace, decisiveness and urgency to deliver improved profit margins. And finally, deleveraging will enhance our return on equity. As Sean mentioned, while leverage is temporarily elevated in the first half, we see a clear route to rapid deleveraging, which will deliver high shareholder returns. Thank you for your continued support. And we are now ready to take your questions. A - Unidentified Company Representative: Thank you very much, Per and Sean. We have our first question on the webcast from Ciaran O' Flynn from Davy. He asks, "Can you provide more detail on the impact of Euro 2024 on current trading?" Sean Wilkins: Yeah. Thanks. I'll take that one. It's Sean Wilkins, CFO. On the Euros, we had very strong margin bookie-friendly results. To a certain extent, that suppressed staking, but overall, it was very successful for us. Betbuilder, which we relaunched shortly before the Euros, was extremely successful during the time. We're taking over 20% of staking. And that means that we're well set out for the new football season, as it's launched over the last 10 days or so. And we launched the Premiere League this Friday. Just one point to note on that. The bookie-friendly results were very much in June, so in the first half. In the second half, i.e., in July and the second half of the tournament, I would say that that was fairly neutral to growth in the second half. So, when we talk about being in line with our targets of 5% to 9% for the second half to date, that doesn't really benefit very much at all from the Euros. Unidentified Company Representative: Thank you. And the next question comes from Eleni from Sona AM. "Could you clarify what percentage of growth came from the Euros in H1? And what are the key events in H2 that can help you achieve the 5% to 9% growth target?" Sean Wilkins: So, let me take the first half. I mean, we haven't disaggregated the growth into Euros and other. It's not something that we are disclosing. I did just say that we got good bookie-friendly results. And obviously, England doing well helped. But yeah, so I think Per is going to take the second half of that question. Per Widerström: Yeah, if we look at H2, we are very much looking forward to also come back later on in terms of how we deliver. But if we look at H2 and the revenue initiatives we do have, I would like to distinguish between two dimensions. First one is the short-term turnaround that we are absolutely all over. And that is about making sure we are focused on our core markets. We are all over when it comes to the bonus efficiency, the improved price positioning, as well as how we are upgrading. And I would say when it comes to customer segmentation, much more sophisticated than this company has ever been before. So that, I would say, is, the short-term drivers when it comes to the H2. But when it comes to the more structural improvements that will also have an impact for the H2 revenue impact that will be customer life cycle management, which is a big driver. And that is going to enable us through the introduction in new customer engagement platform, Bloomreach, to introduce further personalization. And on top of that, we are optimizing how the customer journeys in order to, for example, improve deposit UX. A very important part of the structure change as well is what we do on a customer value proposition CVP. We are seeing a step change now when it comes to the consistency. If we take now William Hill here in U.K., we are consistent in our messaging in terms of the proposition, a pricing perspective as well as from a product perspective. And here, we are absolutely focused on the mid and high-value players. And third dimension, when it comes to the structural change we see that will also have an impact in the short term are the product improvements. It has been mentioned before, but very encouraged to see the impact we have from Betbuilder, also the impact we have on when it comes to improve deposit UX. But going forward now for the H2, there are some really exciting launches to come. By looking at the further improvements of the Betbuilder, we're looking at the impact sub to be introduced. I've mentioned the deposit UX. We will continue but absolutely focused on ensuring a fairly seamless experience from a customer journey perspective. From a retail perspective, we are continuing our efforts when it comes to improving experience when it comes to SSBTs. And as has been previously mentioned, starting Q4 this year and into Q1 next year is the retail gaming machines upgrade that is going to have a material impact when it comes to our opportunity here and commitment to close the gap versus competition. I think we've mentioned that before as well. If we look at the current gaming machines that we do have that as a gross per machine a week by £750 where we look at where market is and also where we expect to be about £1,000 per week. So, we are very much looking forward to these launches and also see the revenue uptick being materialized as well. Unidentified Company Representative: Our next question comes from Ruchi from Western Asset Management. "Can you please update if you had to have conversations with rating agencies post revision of earnings outlook for this year? It will be useful if you can share any feedback you've received. And then, the second question is, can you also guide on working capital and CapEx development in H2?" Sean Wilkins: Yeah, thanks. Let me take that. We've got a very positive ongoing relationship with the ratings agencies. And it would be inappropriate for me to share any of the content of that relationship here. Just looking at cash flow, first half net working capital we saw £23 million improvement in cash, an improvement in net working capital. Guidance for the second half is that, that will be neutral. On CapEx, the first half was £33 million. The full year, we're expecting to see £75 million to £80 million, which was exactly in line with the guidance that I gave earlier in the year. Just let me give you an update on overall on cash flow. In the first half, we saw a cash burn of £37 million, that's ignoring the RCF. In the second half, I'm expecting cash to be neutral, which means that for the full year, I expect that cash burn to be largely what it was in the first half, roughly £40 million out. It is important to remember our liquidity. I think liquidity is at roughly £300 million, so no concerns at all on liquidity. Unidentified Company Representative: Great. The next question comes from Richard Stuber from Deutsche Numis. "Could you please elaborate on strategic progress making on the 40% of international online you define as optimized? And what percentage of international revenue do you expect to come from these optimized markets in the next 12 to 24 months? And the second question is, which of your core international markets were the key drivers of international growth? And do you expect these trends to continue?" Per Widerström: If I take the first one to the strategic progress, we are absolutely focused on the core markets, but those are the four that have previously communicated. And when it comes to the -- and there we do aim for obviously, podium positions for the local strong scale. The optimized market is, as we say, optimized. And that's a clear focus to drive underlying cash flow, maximizing the underlying cash flow, where we obviously see that where we have opportunities to scale our resources, we will do that, but with a very strict and disciplined approach when it comes to return on investment. So, in terms of the short-term trading turnaround, we are absolutely adamant to be, very disciplined when it comes to the return on investment in those optimized markets. The investment we do behind our competitive advantages when it comes to, for example, our customer life cycle management, much more insights driven automated customized cycle management, the way we do when it come -- the way we're focusing product improvements, that will also benefit the optimized market. So, from a strategic perspective, daily trading is very much now in line with the strategy. When it comes to the capabilities that we're investing in to shorten also mid- and long-term future growth, it will also benefit these optimized markets. So, very encouraged with what I see now when it comes to a new team that we have, managing and optimizing these markets, at the same time, capitalizing on the improvement we see now in terms of capability. And also, where we do see, as I mentioned, opportunities scale up, where we do see some really interesting and encouraging markets, there's nothing to say here that some of those market that should be upgraded to core markets going forward. Sean Wilkins: Thanks, Per. Richard, just in terms of the percent that we -- I think the question was what percent of our international revenue comes from our core markets. That's not something which we give out specific guidance on. Like, it would be a sensible sort of rough figure if you think about this over 50% comes from core. And obviously, core is growing significantly faster than optimized. Unidentified Company Representative: The next question is from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). He asks, "Could you give some color on current trading? Should we understand that you are already in the range for H2 or that's incremental improvement from Q2 put you in place to deliver it?" Sean Wilkins: So, I think what we said in the presentation was that we've seen trading to date consistent with 5% to 9%. Just to be clear, that's not us trying to be smart with our words. We have seen in the first part of half two growth of between 5% to 9%. So, it's entirely consistent, it is within that range. Unidentified Company Representative: Great. And then, our next question is from Nicholas from CIFC. "You mentioned revenue growth in Q3 up to the 10th of August is in line with your 5% to 9% target. How is profitability during this period looking compared to 21% margin guidance?" Sean Wilkins: So that's not something that we would disclose at this point, but it does give me an opportunity just to go back to Slide 7. Slide 7 talks about our bridge from half one to half two. And I think one important thing to bring out on that is that four out of five of those blocks are things which are entirely under our control or that have been delivered already. So, if you look at marketing phasing, that is the marketing phasing that we plan. And it is the cost that I expect in the second half. On the OpEx phasing, they are cost savings that have been made already and will flow through in the second half. Look at reduced U.S. losses. We've taken the action on reduced U.S. losses. And if you look at the cost initiatives, there are things that we will be delivering in the second half. The one that has a wider range around it is the revenue initiatives, which -- and I think it would be fair to say the thing that we have very good line of sight to is what -- which of the things that Per mentioned earlier are going to land. The more speculative question is what effect and impact are they going to have once they land. So, good visibility of that bridge between half one and half two is the point I wanted just to make. Unidentified Company Representative: We have another question from James Wheatcroft from Jefferies. He asks, "Please can you give us an update on 888 Africa?" Per Widerström: So, thanks for that question. So, let me take that one. On 888 Africa, I mean it's a fantastic story today. We see the business going from strength to strength. The first half revenues, is up nearly 3 times. And we do continue to see really strong leading cases when it comes to the future growth. So here, I and my team are absolutely confident that this is going to be a very strong value generator for Evoke going forward. And I do look forward to expand on this further in our coming, upcoming sessions. Unidentified Company Representative: Thank you. There are no further questions from the webcast. So, I'd like to hand back to Per for any closing remarks. Per Widerström: Thank you so much for that. So first and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone for joining in the call. And as we have outlined and presented today, we are undertaking a total transformation, a total reset of the business. And while the first half financial results are not where we wanted them to be, I've been really pleased with the improvements we are seeing now, both in the short term and building up for the long term when it comes to overall strength of the business. So, we have started Q3 well with 5% to 9% growth, and I can't wait to tell you more about this quarter back in October. So, I would like to thank you again for your ongoing support. And we are always available to answer any further questions, but let's be absolutely clear that we are 110% focused now to make sure that this turnaround is indeed going to be the success we expect it to be in order for us to deliver, once again, the value creation plan and ultimately, shareholder value. So, thank you so much to everyone joining in the call today.

OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd. (OCFT) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd. (NYSE:OCFT) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 16, 2024 8:00 AM ET Company Participants Rick Chan - Head of IR Shen Chongfeng - Chairman & CEO Luo Yongtao - CFO Conference Call Participants Judy Zhang - Citigroup Operator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to OneConnect Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. We will be having a question-and-answer session after the management's prepared remarks. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Please note this event is being recorded. Now I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Mr. Rick Chan, the company's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Chan. Rick Chan Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Our financial and operating results were released earlier today and currently available on our IR website. Today you will hear from our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Shen Chongfeng, who will give opening remarks and business highlights. Afterwards, our CFO, Mr. Luo Yongtao, will go over a closer look into our financials. And then in question-and-answer session, our management team will be available to you. In today's conference, our management team will make a statement in Mandarin or in English. For those in Mandarin, a consecutive translation will be provided. In case of any discrepancy between the Mandarin version and the English version, our statement in the original language shall prevail. Let me quickly cover the Safe Harbor statement before we start. We will be making forward-looking statements which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be defer materially. Please note that we may present both IRFS and non-IFRS financial measures, with that I am not pleased to turn our call to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Shen Chongfeng. Mr. Shen, please. Shen Chongfeng [Foreign Language] Hello everyone, I'm Shen Chongfeng. Thank you for taking the time to join OneConnect's second quarter and first half of 2024 earnings release. On behalf of OneConnect, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all investors, analysts, and media friends who are with us today. I'm very pleased to take this opportunity to share with you our achievements in this quarter and the first six months of 2024. [Foreign Language] The Central Economic Work Conference has put forward nine key tasks for this year's economic development. The construction of a modernized industrial system led by technical innovation, which is a top priority among the nine tasks, also points out the direction for the development of the financial industry. At the same time, after the five major articles, namely, vigorously developing technology innovation in finance, green finance, financial inclusion, pension finance, and digital finance were unveiled at the Central Financial Work Conference. The National Financial Regulatory Administration followed up with the guidance on banking and insurance industries to implement the five major financial initiatives, a document that maps out systematic implementation of the five major articles. The guidance points out that digital finance ought to focus on efficiency and security. In the next five years, the banking and insurance industries are expected to make strides in digital transformation. With the digital operation and management system basically completed, digital services widely popularized, and the digital regulatory framework and the process in place. [Foreign Language] With digitalization becoming ever more relevant, financial institutions and large SOEs are facing many challenges. OneConnect closely monitors policy and market developments and continues to leverage the unique advantages of technology plus business to improve its product capabilities in our three major business segments, namely digital banking, digital insurance, and Gamma platform, so as to help financial institutions and enterprises to improve their digital operation and service capabilities through digital transformation and strengthen business management, improve service quality, reduce service costs, and empower the development of new quality productive forces in the financial industry. [Foreign Language] In the first half of 2024, profitability has further improved, and overseas business continues to maintain strong growth momentum. Net loss from continuing operations attributable to shareholders improved to RMB70 million in the first half from RMB114 million in the same period last year, a significant year-on-year decrease of about 38%. Both gross profit margin and adjusted gross profit margin remain healthy at 37.1% and 39.4% respectively. In addition, third-party revenue from overseas customers increased by 14.8% year-on-year. Our solid performance is attributable to OneConnect's efforts in product portfolio adjustment, deepening of customer cooperation, continuous expansion of domestic and overseas markets, discipline cost control, and resource allocation efficiency improvement, we have also laid a solid foundation for us to achieve profitability in the medium-term. [Foreign Language] Next, please move on to Page 4 of our slide. Committed to our business philosophy of value, win-win cooperation and quality development, we achieved significant progress in three core priorities, namely, product upgrade, customer expansion, as well as overseas expansion in the first half of 2024. At this stage, we are accelerating export of Ping An Group Technology and upgrade of self-developed products and aggregating resources on high-value products. At the same time, the company has boosted the productivity of its sales team, expanded pipeline and increased third-party revenue growth, but to further optimize revenue structure. On top of that, OneConnect has also ramped up efforts in overseas markets, meeting international market demands by continuously improving our products based on the demands and preferences of local markets. [Foreign Language] Next page. We now remain at a key year in our Stage 2 strategy of broadening customer engagement. We will continue to focus on our financial institution customers, integrate and optimize our products and services to continuously improve our product capabilities around the three major business segments, digital banking, digital insurance, and gamma platforms, to empower financial institutions to improve quality and efficiency and successfully achieve digital transformation. We will also strengthen cooperation with enterprises and industry partners around the world. In addition to the mainland market, we will also expand presence in regions including Hong Kong, China, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and the Middle East. Next, moving on to page 6. [Foreign Language] In retail digital banking, OneConnect has comprehensively upgraded its products with customer centered data driven and AI assisted products to drive intelligent operations in retail banking. Based on data and AI, the company helps retail banking customers, refine customer operations, achieve accurate targeted customer segmentation and asset allocation suggestions through tools such as customer stratification and wealth health diagnosis and so as to help improve their product quality. At the same time, OneConnect has also synergized channel operations for bank's customer group operation using app plus [Ai Plus T+W] (ph), which means the synergized strategy of apps, AI, telephone and website to design and develop AI Corp's model operation and other tools. These products are well received by our banking customers and have been successfully adopted by many banks, including a top five city commercial bank and a foreign bank operating in China. [Foreign Language] Next on Page 7. In credit lending digital banking, OneConnect is vigorously promoting the export of smart credit system, which has already been proven by the domestic market. We see great potential in this solution. We noticed that as development of digital economy accelerates, demand from overseas customers for credit lending digitalization is increasingly robust, and the willingness to pay is relatively higher, especially for customers in the Southeast Asian market. To capitalize the strong overseas market demand, the company has developed an international version of Smart Credit System. Combined with data and risk control product capabilities, we have built an end-to-end easily configurable and iterative smart credit system which engages overseas banking customers through retail business and [SME] (ph) credit lending risk management. The system has been widely used in the Southeast Asian market, improving long-processing efficiency by 40%, the AI automated risk control capabilities by 50%, and iteration efficiency with configurable modules by 30%. [Foreign Language] The development of digital banking retail systems and smart credit systems come from the support and application of technology. OneConnect has therefore established a unified technology platform to continuously improve our competitiveness and market share and further optimize our systems. In the future, the company will continue to ramp up R&D and application efforts to empower more intelligent and convenient financial services for our customers. [Foreign Language] Next, on page 8. In digital insurance, the company has been working on several end-to-end SaaS deployment and cooperation with benchmark cases. This includes providing a state-owned P&C insurer with an end-to-end P&C insurance system to solve the pain points of claim settlement, underwriting, and servicing, helping our customer to reinforce risk controls for claim settlements, enhance underwriting quality, and improve customer experience. By setting a benchmark for multi-product cooperation, we were able to enhance customer stickiness and also achieve continuous customer expansion. So far, OneConnect has successfully landed more than 10 cases and significantly benefit our customers. We believe that these benchmark cases will improve market reputation for OneConnect and open up more potential. [Foreign Language] Next page. In Gamma Platform, OneConnect has successfully leveraged AI in all business links, aiming to empower scenarios such as smart risk management and operation efficiency enhancement. Through a variety of AI technologies, including computer vision, ASR, TTS, and graph computing, our solution helps financial institutions manage risks and improve efficiency in scenarios including remote account registration, insurance [due] (ph) registration, and loan application review. For instance, the application of AI interview robot has achieved automatic loan approval of more than RMB1 billion and has substantially reduced the cost of human agents, saving a total of over RMB2 million. At the same time, our E-KYC solution overseas has incorporated 10-plus anti-counterfeiting technologies with top interception rate in the industry, providing more than 100,000 times of account opening services for banks in Hong Kong every year. The product has been successfully implemented in over 10 overseas governments and financial institutions. [Foreign Language] Next page. Overseas business saw strong momentum and registered remarkable growth in the first half of 2024. Revenue contribution from overseas customers has increased to 21.2% of total third-party revenue. OneConnect's overseas strategy has successfully delivered as we see our products are well received by overseas customers. And over RMB100 million worth of cooperation with overseas customers is in the pipeline in the first half of 2024. The company continued to leverage product and technology advantages to deepen customer engagement and expand cooperation. For example, the company further deepened its cooperation with a leading bank in Vietnam and successfully signed an over RMB10 million product subscription service contract in the first six months of 2024, landing another benchmark case of overseas cooperation and fully demonstrating customer recognition and trust in our products. [Foreign Language] Next page. OneConnect won nine awards from third-party institutions and renowned media outlets in H1, bringing the total number of honors to 314, fully reflecting industry recognition for our products, as well as technical strengths and influence. These honors include KPMG China's leading FinTech 50 and Emerging 50, top 50 overseas service agencies for Chinese enterprises by [Tailian Press] (ph), annual leading financial services platform by the economic observer and excellent solution in risk control and compliance by the financial innovation achievements in the Greater Bay Area. [Foreign Language] As we go further into 2024, technology and the industry revolution continues to evolve. New quality productive forces with artificial intelligence as the core is accelerating to lead the high quality development of industries. We firmly believe that the financial industry has the best use cases for artificial intelligence plus, and it will be a strategic focus for new quality productive forces. OneConnect will continue to empower the upgrade and transformation of the financial industry with technological innovation. In addition to optimizing high-quality offerings such as AI voice assistance, omni-channel agent solutions, and smart credit lending systems, we will also leverage our sufficient cash reserves to invest in R&D of cutting-edge technology products to satisfy the core demands of financial institutions for various business productivity improvements by supporting them to improve efficiency, optimize services, reduce costs and risks, and ultimately empower the upgrade and transformation of the financial industry. And lastly, thank you for your attention and support. [Foreign Language] Next, I'll hand it over to Mr. Luo to give you a detailed introduction of OneConnect financials in Q2 and the first half of 2024. Luo Yongtao Okay. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. As previously reported, we completed the disposal of our virtual banking business to Lufax for consideration of HKD933 million in cash on April 2, 2024. As a result of the disposal, the historical financial results of our virtual banking business segment have been reflected as discontinued operations for the first half of 2024 and for the comparative period in 2023. On the other hand, the historical financial results of the remaining business have been reflected as continuing operations. The financial information we will soon cover is presented on a continuing operations basis, unless otherwise specially stated. Since the start of this year, our focus on improving resources and capital allocation efficiency has generated solid results. We delivered revenue from continuing operations of RMB1.416 billion in the first half of 2024, a decrease of 22.8% compared to the same period last year. Revenue generated from third-party customers decreased by 16.9% to [RMB418 million] (ph) in the first half. But it's worth mentioning that revenue contributed by overseas customers during the first half year increased by 14.8% year-over-year. [Attestment] (ph) to the effectiveness of our overseas market expansion strategy. Our top-line decrease reflects our decision to adopt a quality growth strategy and reduce low margin customized projects. We are encouraged to see that the gross margin for the first half remained relatively stable at 37.1% because of this strategy, and the non-IFRS gross margin was 39.4%. In the second quarter, we completed the sale of a virtual banking business to refocus resources on our core businesses, resulting in a one-time gain recognized from the disposal in the amount of [RMB216 million] (ph). This contributed to our net profit from continuing and discontinued operations attributable to shareholders of RMB139 million compared to a net loss of RMB190 million for the same period of the prior year. And the corresponding net margin improved by 20.2 percentage points year-over-year to 9.8%. Now, let's turn to our revenue mix. Our third-party revenue contributed 34.2% of total revenue in Q2 2024, an increase from 33.6% in Q1 2024, and 30.4% in Q2 last year. The uncertain macro environment and the strategic adjustment of our revenue structure did have an impact on our revenue, which was mainly reflected in a decrease in revenue from business origination and operations support services in the second quarter. Third-party revenue growth remains a key focus of our service, second stage strategy. Once macro pressures subside and as we continue to advance our leadership initiatives, we believe revenue from third-party will improve. We are also glad to see that our overseas business sustained its strong momentum in the second quarter, making up for the shortfalls of the temporarily-reduced demands for certain products and services domestically. In the second quarter, revenue from Lufax decreased by 25.5% to RMB54 million and contributed 7.9% of our total revenue. The revenue decline from Lufax was mainly due to Lufax business operation optimizations, without any lower demand for our business origination, risk management, and implementation services. Revenue from Ping An Group [decreased by 30.9%] (ph) to RMB401 million and contributed 57.9% of our total revenue. As always, OneConnect regards Ping An Group as our most important flagship customer. Our services to Ping An Group also have a proven record of success. For example, In the area of AI technology services, Ping An Group has enabled AI agents through our AI technology to optimize and transform business processes to improve operational efficiency and the customer experience. Our products and services provided with the Ping An Group are robust and comprehensive. Moving on to revenue mix by business type. Implementation revenue decreased by 27.7% year-over-year to RMB169 million, mainly due to a decline in demand for implementation of financial services system domestically. Revenue from business origination services decreased by 69% year-over-year to RMB10 million, primarily due to a decline in transaction volume from loan origination system under digital credit management solutions. Revenue from risk management services decreased by 15.9% year-over-year to RMB61 million, mainly due to a decline in transaction volumes from banking-related risk analytics solutions. Revenue from operations support services decreased by 47.3% year-over-year to RMB131 million, which was primarily due to a shift in business model for a number of auto ecosystem service providers, where we transmission from acting as a contractor to a platform provider. Revenue from cloud services platform was RMB289 million, a decrease of 10.3% year-over-year in the second quarter of last year, mainly due to decreased transaction volumes of cloud services. Revenue from post implementation support services and others increased by 8.2% to RMB32 million. As you can see, our businesses are diverse and we are developing additional products and services around the core technology for business solutions in the financial service industry. We remain committed to diversifying our product mix. Let's turn to revenue mix by product segment. Gamma Platform segment revenue, accounting for 67.2% of our total revenue, decreased by 9.4% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2024, primarily due to reduced demand of our cloud services. Digital banking segment revenue, which accounted for 14.5% of total revenue, reduced by 57.4% year-over-year, mainly due to a decline in transaction volume from business origination and risk management services. Reflecting our continuing efforts to phase out lower value products. Digital insurance segment revenue, which accounted for 18.4% of total revenue, decreased by 33.3% year-over-year, primarily due to the change of business model in auto ecosystem as I just mentioned. Let's now take a look at the customer numbers. Premium card customers decreased to 93 compared to 121 for the same period last year. Despite the decrease in the short-term, we believe the further advancements of our initiatives will help attract more premium card customers to use our products and services in the long run. Now, let's take a look at the gross margin for the quarter. Our gross profit reached RMB253 million in Q2 2024, with the growth margin decreasing slightly year-over-year by 0.9 percentage points to 36.6%. On non-IFRS basis, the gross margin was 38.8%. We do stick to quality growth strategy and we continue our efforts to achieve our profitability target for our continuing operations. Moving on to our expenses and net loss, you can see that we are well on track to reach our mid-term target of profitability. First of all, our research and development expenses came down to RMB186 million from RMB252 million in the prior year. In the second quarter, we continued implementing our Stage 2 strategy that focuses on product integration. As we upgraded and integrated our products, we further improved our product delivery efficiency. Looking ahead, we will keep investing in research and development at a more measured and reasonable pace to enhance our product competitiveness in the market. Our sales and marketing expenses for Q2 decreased to RMB42 million compared with RMB57 million in the prior year. The decrease in sales and marketing expenses mainly benefited from our enhanced sales capability and marketing efficiency. Our general and administrative expenses decreased to RMB66 million from RMB93 million in the prior year. As a percentage of revenue, it decreased to 9.5% from 9.9%. As a result, our net loss from continuing operations attributable to shareholders narrowed significantly by 59% year-over-year to RMB17 million for this quarter. [And the profit] (ph) margin improved by 2 percentage points, including the discontinued operations. We achieved net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB243 million in Q2 2024, as we recognized the gains from the sales of our banking, virtual banking business, as I just mentioned. We are very glad that the company achieved profitability for the first time in its history during the first half of this year. Well, this includes a one-time gain from the sale of the virtual banking business. It's still an integral part of our operations and it is a significant milestone for our company. Now, looking forward to the rest of the year, we continue to see a degree of unpredictability in the market. Meanwhile, as previously announced, we started to phase out our cloud services gradually from July and expect the discontinuation will impact our top-line performance for the second half and the full year of 2024. Despite that, our focus remains on improving third-party revenue by strengthening the competitiveness of our products and services. We will continue to enhance our gross margin, focus on cost controls, and expand overseas markets to stay on our path to achieving midterm profitability. Next two pages, we listed key financial metrics of the second quarter of 2024, including the figures from discontinued operations, the virtual banking business in Hong Kong. Lastly, we summarized the adjustments in the non-IFRS gross margin for reference. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you. Back to you, Rick. Rick Chan Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shen. Thank you, Mr. Luo. Operator, we are open for questions. Please open the line. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] We have Judy Zhang with Citigroup. Your line is open. Judy Zhang [Foreign Language] Let me translate. Thank you for letting me ask the first question. I have two questions. The first question is we thought the company has already realized the profit, has already make profit in first half. So may I ask like why did the company have the dividend payment, dividend payout plan? And secondly, it's -- regarding the overseas business. Can management share with us the strategy for the overseas business? And also, is there any -- like overseas business revenue growth target this year? Thank you. Luo Yongtao Thank you, Judy. For the first question about the dividend, [I'm Luo] (ph) take the first one. And the second question as to the strategy of our office expansion and Mr. Shen take this question. Shen Chongfeng Thank you. [Foreign Language] I will do the translation. [Foreign Language] I'll answer your first question on dividend payout plans. We are very pleased to see that the company has achieved positive earnings for the first time in history. Although this includes one-off contributions from the sale of PAOB, it nevertheless is an integral part of our operations and making profit is a significant milestone to us. [Foreign Language] At the same time, we are glad to know that net loss from continuing operations attributable to shareholders improved to RMB70 million, a significant year-on-year decrease of about 38%, which means we are another step closer to our mid-term profitability target. As we believe we are still at a crucial stage of development, we can generate higher values for shareholders through sustainable and healthy development if we focus more on third-party revenue, R&D and innovation, as well as overseas expansion. [Foreign Language] We will take into account overseas development needs, financial position, regulatory requirements, and the rewards for our shareholders when we consider dividend payout plans. And we will also keep the market updated if there are any new developments. Thank you. Luo Yongtao [Foreign Language] Next, I'll answer your question about our overseas business. Revenue from overseas customers increased by 14.8% and share of third-party revenue and its share of third-party revenue exceeded 20% in H1. Growth momentum in Hong Kong, China, Southeast Asia, and South Africa is very strong, as we actively expand overseas market, sales network, customer engagement, as well as innovative cooperation model. We therefore remain confident about double-digit growth in overseas revenue. [Foreign Language] For our future overseas development, we mainly focus on markets such as Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, China, South Africa, and the Middle East. [Foreign Language] Business-wise, our first focus would be for banking solutions. We successfully landed a top Philippines bank in H1, that is our strategic customer, CIMB. And then for our next move, we will expand markets such as the Philippines and Thailand to export our credit, smart credit lending system overseas. [Foreign Language] For insurance business, based on our successful experience with Old Mutual, we were able to land well-linked insurance, replicating our Omnichannel agent project. [Foreign Language] For Hong Kong markets, in addition to broadening customer engagement, we will also expand to financial industry and government partners. Top retail banks, life insurers, and small lending companies are among our target customers. We will also tap into Hong Kong headquarters through foreign banks operating in China. [Foreign Language] For our next step we will develop deeper insights into the demands of overseas markets and form integrated solutions of our offerings. For instance, we will focus -- we will try to export [PNC] (ph) solutions, auto financing solutions, AI voice assistant, our E-KYC products, and so on and so forth. Thank you. Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We currently have no further questions so I would like to hand it back over to Rick for any closing remarks. Rick Chan Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our IR team, and we appreciate your interest in following us and look forward to speaking with you again. Thank you. Have a good day. Operator Thank you all for joining today's conference call. I can confirm this has now concluded. Thank you again for joining and you may now disconnect your lines.