Earnings Labs

ATA Creativity Global (AACG)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 13, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentleman and welcome to the ATA Incorporated Fiscal Year 2016 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Katina and I'll be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. Later we will facilitate a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I’d now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call Ms Carolyne Sohn. Please proceed.

Carolyne Sohn

Analyst

Thanks Katina and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Copies of the press release announcing ATA’s fiscal 2016 first quarter results are available at the IR section of the Company’s website at www.atai.net.cn. Part of this conference call, the Company has an accompanying slide presentation available on its website. You're also welcome to contact our office at 212-836-9600 and we would be happy to send you a copy. In addition, a replay of this broadcast will be made available at ATA’s website for the next 90 days. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call and any accompanying information discussed herein contains certain forward looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in its forward looking statements are reasonable as of today, those statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ dramatically from those projected. There can be no assurance that those expectations will prove to be correct. Information about the risks associated with investing in ATA is included in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to review before making an investment decision. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward looking statements as a result of new information, future events, changes in market conditions or otherwise, except as required by law. Regarding the disclaimer language, I would also like to refer you to Slide 2 of the conference call presentation for further information. All U.S. dollar amounts in this conference call relating to financial results for the Company’s most recent quarter ended June, 30, 2015 are converted from RMB using an exchange rate of RMB6.2000 to $1.00 the noon buying rate as of June 30, 2015. All historical conversions are accurate as of the time reported unless otherwise noted. The Company reports its financial results under U.S. GAAP in RMB and all percentages calculated in the presentation are based on RMB, unless otherwise noted. For those of you following along with the accompanying PowerPoint presentation, there is an overview of the Company on Slide 3. The Company’s Interim CFO Ms. Shelly Jiang will provide an overview of operational and financial highlights for first quarter 2016 beginning with Slide 4. The Company’s Chairman and CEO, Mr. Kevin Ma, will then discuss ATA’s outlook and growth strategy for the remainder of fiscal year 2016, before opening the floor for questions. With that I’ll turn the call over to ATA’s Interim CFO, Ms. Shelly Jiang. Please go ahead Shelly.

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Thank you, Carolyne and welcome everyone. Today I will provide an overview of our operating and financial highlights for our fiscal first quarter and then briefly discuss our outlook for fiscal year 2016 and beyond. I would like to begin on Slide 5, which lists somewhat our operating highlights. During the first quarter 2016 we delivered approximately RMB2.5 million billable an increase of 11.6% over the prior year period as a result of a significant increase in volumes delivered during the period. We continue to develop new relationships within the private sector of the banking industry and began administering campus recruitment exams for a number of local banks such as Zhongyuan Bank in Henan province and Bank of Ningxia. Additionally over the past couple of months, ATA was selected as the testing services provider for two computer based exams. The first one is the National Patent Agent Qualification Exam, which was previously conducted as a paper and pencil exam and is generally held once a year in November across merit testified and seated at the same time across China. And second, the newly instituted Fund Practitioners Certification Exam, we believe that winning this new project is a testament to its superior service offering and we are confident ATA is well positioned to take advantage of this positive momentum to continue winning new business. ATA also continued to make progress on its consumer initiatives. ATA began working closely with Zhi Shang under continued development of its positive mode by ATP Exam Inventory Navigator or Kao Shi Dao Hang. Its active user base was at 680,000 at the end of quarter 2016. Following this initial transition period, we expect to continue increasing the apps functionality and ease of use for our test centers. We're very pleased that at ATAT one of our…

Kevin Ma

Analyst

Thank you, Shelly. To accelerate the growth of our core testing business we announced in May 2015 that we are exploring their potential listing of our testing service business on a New Third Board in China. We are in the process of restricting our testing service business in a wholly owned subsidiary of ATA in preparation for their potential New Third Board listing. This business is primary conducted with organizations within China, we believe prospective clients will be more willing to engage ATA service if they recognize ATA as the next Chinese Company which will believe is listing on the New Third Board we demonstrated. I’d like to reiterate that we expect to own a substantial majority of their outstanding incurred interest of the testing service business and to continue to consolidated their financial read outs of the business into ATA following a potentially successful New Third Board listing. Slide 13, leads our overall growth strategies that potential New Third Board lifting is part of our plan to strength ATA’s position as a leader in China's testing and assessment match. We are focused on continuing to provide our existing clients with quality service and support with lots of testing technologies and are working to expand upon these relationships while it’s establishing new ones. In fiscal year 2016, we continue to work towards building our consumer initiatives. The first of these initiatives began just over a year ago and are still in this development and that increment retention stages. Through these efforts we have incurred a number of new education marks that we believe provide gross substantial as a natural extensions of our core competence in assessment technologies. As we move forward on our gross initiatives with committed to operating on the strict cost structure that has allowed the company to…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of [Te Koo] representing Insight Global. Please proceed.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I’m wondering if you could give me a timeline New Third Board exercise also approximate cost for the exercise? Thank you.

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Okay. Thank you for the question. The timeline for our New Third Board exercise, we are just in the process of restructuring our testing business and thus far we have completed the removal of our structure and are working to make the testing services business a wholly owned subsidiary of the company. We also plan to submit our application to New Third Board review authorities by the end of September. Assuming a normal review process, we anticipate we will be able to complete the lifting process in Q4 of 2015 calendar year. Regarding the cost we have incurred RMB5.2 million individual income tax paid to the government when entire active interest of ATA online which were transferred from the nominee individual shareholders to a learning and existing and estimated RMB4 million for the professionals involving the exercise and this is my answer and I hope this will help you.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you. So I have a follow-up just something you had said earlier. So I look at the numbers, it look like Q1 was a pretty strong quarter, but Q2 appears to be a bit weak. I was wondering if you could provide some more color on just the wide right revenue pipeline and gross margin for the rest of fiscal year 2016, thanks.

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Okay. Yes our Q1 net revenue increased a lot, which was mainly due to the increased testing revenues contributed from the SAC exam and regarding the Q2 guidance, we take into account our change in timing for the CPA exam in fiscal 2016 and the CAP exam was held in the fiscal second quarter last year, while it will held in Q3 this fiscal year, so excluding the CPA exam we expect second quarter 2015 will be a stronger on the topline compared with last year. With a strong Q1 result, we remain the market guidance of topline between RMB360 million to RMB380 million and the bottom line between RMB28 million to RMB38 million. For the gross margin is expected to be in the range of 50% to 53%. Yes that's my answer, Thank you.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you. Appreciate your answer. So I am back in the queue now.

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of [Lyn]. Please proceed.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Good morning.

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Yes.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Can you give me more color on the consumer market initiatives and when will these initiatives start contributing financially?

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Sorry, could you repeat your question loudly because I can't hear?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, could you give me more color on the consumer market initiatives and when will these initiatives start contributing financially?

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Regarding the consumer market initiatives we continue working on this and through various partnerships and investments. As we have shared a number of these projects have been progress with Zhongyuan recently, launching their platform for financial securities professionals this past April and as a test launching its center at ATA and Cece TOEFL products over the past year. As for the Master Minds, we are negotiating the business cooperation with several key TOEFL content provides whose study materials are adopted by a number of training schools. Through this cooperation with content providers minds expect to calling to discuss and then to the students. And given the early stage of a development of this project it is also too early for us to speculate as to when these initiatives will begin to contribute to the company financially. But we believe the progress we have made thus far to be promising and I hope this answer can help you.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes. Thank you.

Shelly Jiang

Analyst

Thank you. There is a question on the website who was raised by [Peter]. The question is what was the rational for the change in auditor it has created some concern in the market. Judging by the stock price reaction, it would have to have some background. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for the questions. Regarding the change of our auditor, because recently we can see that all before a firm having transitioning their clients to their local peers practicing from. As to our auditors KPMG, this change is only administrative change and the engagement team of KPMG remains substantially the same particularly at a senior level. And both KPMG Hong Kong and KPMG Huazhen are PCAOB-Registered accounting firms. Actually we have had a few discussion with KPMG on this matter and we are comfortable that we hope that no significant impact to the company. So Peter, I hope this answer can help you to understand.

Operator

Operator

There are no further audio questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to management for any closing remarks.

Kevin Ma

Analyst

Thanks again to all of you for joining us. If anyone has questions for us, please feel free to reach out directly to us or our Investor Relations firm, Equity Group. We look forward to speaking with you all again during our second quarter 2016 financial results call. As always we welcome any visitors to our office in Beijing. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.