Executives
Management
Carolyne Sohn - Investor Relations, The Equity Group Amy Tung - Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ma - Chairman and CEO
ATA Creativity Global (AACG)
Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Fri, Jun 2, 2017
$1.20
+0.00%
Same-Day
+3.54%
1 Week
+33.24%
1 Month
+28.61%
vs S&P
+29.18%
Executives
Management
Carolyne Sohn - Investor Relations, The Equity Group Amy Tung - Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ma - Chairman and CEO
Operator
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining today’s ATA Incorporated Fiscal 2017 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Financial Results Conference Call. And it is moment, all participants are in listen-only, and later we’ll have a question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions]. I’d now like to turn the call over to Ms. Carolyne Sohn. Please proceed.
Carolyne Sohn
Analyst
Thank you, operator and hello everyone. Thank you for joining us. Copies of the press release announcing ATA’s fiscal 2017 fourth quarter and year-end results are available at IR section of the Company’s Web site at www.atai.net.cn. As part of this conference call, the Company has a slide presentation available on its Web site. You are 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 Web site for the next 90 days. Before we get started, I would 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 obligations 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 the slide two of the conference call presentation for further information. All U.S. dollar amounts in this conference call relating to the financial results for most recent quarter ended March 31, 2017, are converted from RMB using an exchange rate of RMB6.8832 to US$1, the noon buying rate as of March 31, 2017. All historical conversions are accurate as of the time reported unless otherwise noted. The Company reports its financial results under U.S. GAAP and 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 three. On today's call, the Company’s CFO, Ms. Amy Tung, will provide an overview of operational and financial highlights for fiscal year 2017 and fourth quarter 2017 beginning with slide four. The Company's Chairman and CEO, Mr. Kevin Ma will then discuss ATA’s outlook and growth strategy for the nine month transition period before opening the floor for question. With that, I'll turn the call over to ATA's CFO, Ms. Amy Tung. Please go ahead, Amy.
Amy Tung
Analyst
Thank you, Carolyne. And welcome everyone. Today, I will provide an overview of our operating and financial highlights and then briefly provide an update on our outlook for our nine month transition period 2017. As we announced in our earnings release earlier today, ATA is changing its fiscal year-end from March 31st to December 31st to better reflect the business cycle of the Company and its subsidiary, and align to Company's reporting schedule and processes with its ATA online subsidiary, which has maturated at December 31st year-end date in China. We will file a transition report on Form 20-F after December 31, 2017 to transfer the nine months transition period from April 01, 2017 to December 31, 2017. Overall, ATA's fiscal 2017 was an exceptional year highlighted by our double-digit percentage increase in billable expense, driven by the contingent migration to our reliable and more efficient computer based testing platform. In addition, ATA was able to continue its push into private sector, singing significant recruitment exam contracts with some of China's largest entities. These were important signings for our Company that we believe have ATA well positioned for the future. With that, I will begin on slide five, which lists some of our operating highlights for our fiscal year 2017. During the year, ATA delivered a record 12.1 million billable exams, a 17.5% increase from our previous record of 10.3 million exams in fiscal year 2016. The National Unified Certified Public Accountant or CPA exam saw volume growth in fiscal year 2017. This year marks the first consecutive year that ATA has provided services for the CPA exam. And we successfully delivered the record 2.2 million exams in October 2016 through our partnership with the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants. In fiscal year 2017, we substantially administered new government…
Kevin Ma
Analyst
Thank you, Amy and welcome everyone. I would like to take a moment to also welcome Amy aboard as ATA’s CFO. Amy is no stranger to ATA, having being with our Company for more than 10 years in various roles from plans to operations. I am confident her leadership will be a variable asset to us in the months and years ahead. And with that, it's my pleasure to congratulate all ATA’s employees on achieving yet another year of record billable exam delivered and revenues earned. As we transition to our new December 31st fiscal year end, we expect to continue building upon the positive momentum on our new business areas in fiscal year 2017. As Amy mentioned we signed new clients and successfully delivered several largest payroll exams, as well as enabled smaller recruitment and assessment exams for private clients, many of which have tremendous opportunities for growth down the road. While example such opportunities are that education assessment exams ATA delivered for the Tianjin Nankai Education Bureau in January of this year. This exam was administered to about 7,000 students in Grade 7 through Grade 10 in the Nankai District of Tianjin. And was the first exam ATA delivered for K-12 public Schools in China. We continue to explore similar prospective for this same type of exam in other regions. In addition to gross income and to start the exams, ATA continues to deepen its relationships with corporate clients that see the value of our exams and assessment as those in their HR process, some of our long-term clients in cloud, globally the colonized corporations such as [16.50] [indiscernible] NOL, China Mobile and China Tech, as well as Bank of China and the China Construction Bank. We continue to pursue new business leads on a number of fronts from pay based exam conversions to geographic expansion opportunities to growing existing client relationships. Our testing services business continues to be the foundation of ATA and we’ll remain optimistically as a potential for growth over the long-term. In February, we announced a partnership with MOOC-CN Investment, a special online education firm with Tsinghua Holdings as one of the cornerstone investors, which became a strategic investor in our assessment business subsidiary ATA Learning Data & Technology Beijing Limited. We are pleased to have more of our investments those of confidence and are working to develop education assessment tools and accountant. By leveraging more of our investors to the sources and are sourcing with investments of education we believe that ATA become more quickly penetrated China’s education system. We opportunistically continue to put on for our shareholders and having said that, are pleased to be able to return some capital to our growing shareholders with today's announcement of a cash dividend. All of us as ATA are working harder to accelerate the growth of our business and are looking forward to meeting and speaking with investors when we visited the U.S. latest months.
Carolyne Sohn
Analyst
With that, operator, let's open it up for any questions.
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Patrick Lane. Please proceed.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Thanks for taking my question. And I just want to say, first of all, I really appreciate you guys focusing on the core business, which I think is a terrific strategy. My other question is in terms of the dividend, I think that's terrific. In terms of going forward, is that something that you plan, not necessarily the dollar amount, but is your intention to continue to distribute dividends in the future? Thank you.
Amy Tung
Analyst
Regarding your second question, we intend to declare a portion of our cash generated from operations yearly. The portion will be dependent upon the company for business and planning.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Thank you.
Amy Tung
Analyst
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Operator
And we have no further questions at this moment [Operator Instructions]. We have no more questions.
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, the Equity Group. We’ll look forward to speaking with you all again during our next quarterly report. As always, we welcome any visitors to our office in Beijing. Thank you.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect. Thank you for participation.