China Chuanglian Education Financial achieved profit turnaround in 2018; Income from Financial Services surges over 160%

Financial Highlights

* Adjusted financial information refers to activities for the year excluding share-based payments and impairment losses charged/reversed.

HONG KONG, CHINA – Media OutReach – 29 March 2019 – China Chuanglian Education Financial Group Limited (HKEx stock code: 2371.HK, the “Group”) announced its annual results and financial position. For the year ended 31 December 2018, the Group recorded a turnover of approximately RMB152.1 million (2017: approximately RMB134.0 million), representing an increase of 13.5% as compared to the last corresponding period. During the year, the Group recorded a turnaround to profit attributable to owners of the Company of approximately RMB7.6 million, (2017: loss attributable to owners of the Company of approximately RMB15.2 million).

The basic earnings per share for the year were approximately 0.15 RMB cents (2017: basic loss per share of approximately 0.33 RMB cents).

Business Review

Educational consultancy and online training and education services

The Group is principally engaged in the provision of the online training and education services in the PRC. Being one of the very few pioneers of online education providers in the PRC, the Group mainly provides vocational training in relation to job adaption and skill enhancement to civil servants and professional technical personnel, such as lawyers, accountants, doctors, teachers, etc., in the PRC. The current population of civil servants and professional technical personnel in the PRC is over 84 million. There are certain requirements under the PRC laws and relevant provisions that, civil servants and professional technical personnel in the PRC are required to undertake an annual required minimum continuing professional training in both public required subjects and relevant professional subjects in order to satisfy their corresponding job requirements and professional development needs.

The Group is currently providing online training and education services to its users through internet and telecommunication networks. The Group is operating over 130 online training and education platforms and a mobile terminal learning platform, Rongxue App* (??App). Currently, the Group has over 5 million of paid users. Since the launch of Rongxue App in 2016, its registered users have increased rapidly to nearly 3 million in the current year.

During the year, the Group continued to expand online training and education business to more geographical areas in the PRC. The Group’s online training and education business currently covers 18 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities as well as 40 cities in the PRC.

In addition to the domestic training and education business, the Group commenced its international training and education business during the year. The Group introduced a high quality international curriculum “Innovation Entrepreneurship” program from a professional development center of a prestige American university to the higher education institutions in the PRC. The Group believes that the “Innovation Entrepreneurship” program can help to enhance the creativity and forward looking capability of the young people in the PRC.

Financial Services

Leveraging on the accurate big data accumulated from the online training, the Group has taken certain steps to expand into financial services business. The Group is one of the promotors of Xinmei Mutual Life Insurance Agency* (“Xinmei Mutua”), the first mutual life insurance agency in the PRC, which launched its formal insurance products in 2017.

In addition, the Group has acquired Beijing Zhongjin Insurance Brokerage Limited* (“Beijing Zhongjin”) and Well Tunes Financial Group Limited (“Well Tunes”) in 2017 in order to act as agent of the insurance products from Xinmei Mutal and other insurance companies. The insurance brokerage business achieved a significant progress and recording a revenue of approximately RMB9.5 million for the Reporting Period.

In order to complete the layout of our financial services business, the Group completed the acquisition of the entire equity interest in Premier Management Limited (“Premier Management”) in September 2018. Premier Management is a corporation licensed under the Securities and Futures Ordinance to conduct type 1 (Dealing in Securities), 4 (Advising on Securities) and 9 (Asset Management) regulated activities. Such acquisition would enable the Group to provide more all rounded financial services to our potential customers inherited from our online education and training business.

Future Plans

Over the past few years, the Group’s online training and education business has gradually increased its geographical coverage in the PRC. In the coming years, the Group will continue to expand its geographical coverage to new business areas and promote the online training and education penetration rate in the existing business areas.

In addition to the business-to-business model the Group has adopted over the past few years, the Group intends to allot more resources in developing the business-to-consumer model in the foreseeable future in order to increase the consumers’ adherence and loyalty to training and education platforms.

Furthermore, the Group plans to launch its online to offline model (“O to O”) whenever it is desirable so that customers can enjoy the convenience of selecting and paying for the suitable training courses online as well as enjoying the better post-sales servicing and interaction with local offices and staff.

In addition to the existing training center in Nanning of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, another new training center in Chengdu of Sichuan Province is expected to commercially launch in 2019 which would give the Group more capability to accommodate the increasing need of O to O training. Also, the increase of O to O training can also help to increase the average revenue per user in the future.

After the launch of international training and education business with the “Innovation Entrepreneurship” program, the Group will seek to increase co-operation with more foreign reputable education institution to provide other programs of high quality international curriculum to suit the different needs and requirements of the different profession in the PRC. The Group believes the introduction of more high quality international curriculum to the PRC market can help to improve the overall quality of education in the PRC as well as the international vision of the professionals in the PRC.

In the coming future, the Group is planning to establish local offices of insurance brokerage business in major cities in the PRC in order to capture the nationwide demand for insurance products and provide high quality post-sales services to the customers. Apart from insurance related business, the Group has taken steps to enter into the securities trading and asset management business to further satisfy the potential financial needs of customers. The Group believes that the potential of financial services business is huge, given possession of huge amount of occupation-specific data which can help to conduct comprehensive analysis of unique needs and requirements of customers.

The Group believes that it is able to benefit from the huge amount of accurate data accumulated from training and education business to further develop its financial services business in the foreseeable future.