X Financial (NYSE:XYF) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

There’s another company, I’ll just mention it, it’s a , which trades at 1/5 of its cash. They have no debt. And it trades at less than 1x earnings, and levels that make no sense at all because trading below the cash on the balance sheet, particularly if you’re growing the way you are. So my question is, why do you think that’s the case? And to add to that, what do fintechs or lending platforms like you have, what sort of multiple do they trade at, say, in Shenzhen or Shanghai or even Hong Kong? So as a comparison, we could see how U.S. investors are unwilling to pay up versus if you were to somehow get relisted or to go private and sell to somebody else or — there must be a frustration on your part that the Company is priced as low as it is.

Kan Li: So, I’ll take that question. I think it’s really difficult to determine what is the right price for the stock, right? Someone asked us before. And my answer has always been, well, this is really not the question that I’m trying to answer. I think this is a question that the U.S. investors probably have a better answer than we as the management of the Company. Even though, it’s difficult to determine the real price, but I think that we all agree that our valuation is certainly much, much lower than what we should be. So in that sense, that we still hope that some people will take interest in us and buying our stocks. That being said, I think right now the fintech valuation has been extremely, extremely low. And you asked us what is a comparable company to us in terms of either Asia or in Mainland China or Hong Kong market, and I can tell you that there is no fintech stocks in Asia.

So they’re absolutely no comparison. There are some — the so-called fintech company, but I’m really not paying attention as a management of the Company that we don’t really pay too much attention on our stock. But our goal has always been trying to deliver stable growth in terms of both scale and profit for our company. And that has always been our goal. And no matter what is the price of our stock, we are always trying to achieve that goal. And in terms of what is the right valuation model for our company, I think many people can see that we continue to deliver very stable growth, very stable profit. But the concern has always been number one, the supervision — the Supervisory Committee will allow our company to survive or whatever that is.

And I think that’s always been the number one. And the second one, of course, is due to the so-called conflict between China and the U.S. There has always been some uncertainty with regard to how long that our company can be listed in the market, I think that both you and the previous caller have been asking the same question, right? Because of these two huge uncertainties, I don’t think that you will see not high value, not even fair valuation for the fintech companies. So my prediction can be that as long as these two uncertainty exists, that we won’t see a very high valuation or even a fair valuation for our company.