Betty Li: I will translate by myself. The first one, given the current loan guidance, I think the Company is in good track in maintaining the — in the full year loan origination. But just wonder if you have any outlook for the 2024 loan demand. The second one is I just wonder if the Company has any further share buyback plans.
James Zheng: Okay. I will take the question. Basically, first question is related to the outlook. Second question is about the buyback, right? Basically, for the macro perspective, we still believe there is a considerable amount of uncertainty in the fourth quarter. The overall recovery of the consumption still remain relatively slow. Because at the same time, because of the typical kind of seasonal factor of funding supply in the fourth quarter is a little bit tight, so we expect the overall lending volume in Q4 to be broadly in line with Q3, okay? This is one. Two, obviously, we have other factors affecting the seasonal asset quality. These factors continue to exist as mentioned earlier, right? One is the macro kind of still — the growth is a little bit slow.
And also the — within the loan industry, the impact of the combating illicit financial activities related to the debt collection, this is still kind of affecting the rate of entry into the collection and also the asset from the collection, okay? So based on this, the overall kind of asset quality is still under slight pressure at this point. The short-term risk indicators have still show some fluctuations. So based on all of this, we have basically continue to maintain a prudent approach for Q4, really adhering to the principles of prioritization risks and prudent management. And up to now, as a reminder, actually, we have maintained a pretty good rate of growth. We have completed about RMB 188 billion so far for the first three quarters of this year.
Really, this is about 26.7% year-over-year growth, okay? So we’re going to continue — we’re confident we’ll continue to achieve the RMB245 billion, RMB255 billion GMV growth, this will be 20% to 25%. And in terms of 2024, we’re probably going to wait until after we close this year to give more guidance. By that time, hopefully, we have more certainty about the overall macros next year, okay? That’s the first question. Second question in terms of any buyback plans. As a matter of fact, the Board has approved two buyback plans last year. We completed about RMB50 million buyback, earlier part of this year. And then the Board authorized RMB20 million buyback in November last year. For that, we haven’t done anything yet. But in last quarter, we have declared a dividend plan.
Basically, we declared we’re going to pay out from 15% to 30% of our net income as a dividend payout range. So the first half of this year, we paid out 20% of our net income, and we have completed paying out the dividend in the last month or so. So we will continue to look for ways to return value to our shareholders. Basically, when we close the end of this year, we’re going to come back to look at our dividend planning again to see whether we should continue to pay out for the second half of the dividend for this year, okay? So basically upholding the shareholder value is the #1 priority for us. Thank you. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Operator: We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I’ll now turn the conference back to the Company for any additional closing comments.
Mandy Dong: Well, I think that closes our conference call today. Thank you again, everyone, for joining us today. If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact information on the IR website. Thank you all. Have a good day and a good night. Thank you.
James Zheng: Thank you. Okay. Bye-bye.
Operator: Thank you. That concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
