X Financial (NYSE:XYF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Frank Fuya Zheng: Yes. I think I answered your last time regarding the same question. I’m a little bit not familiar with this mechanism in terms of how to achieve that. And also, as I just point out, I don’t think even we did that, probably not going to jump our share price. To be little bit frank, I think to jump our — the price into whatever timeframe is not the first priority for our guys, our guys — our priority is to run the business the best we could, and we will do whatever we should do including return the shareholder value. And everything else will fall into place in due time.

Mason Bourne: Yes, I get that. I just — I guess, tender can kind of serve the purpose where you get people that are looking to arbitrage the stock. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge bid. But if you’re looking substantially above the current price, but just if it’s a 1% or 2% spread, you can get people that kind of bring volume into the stock even without necessarily running it up. I get that you try to buyback at the most accretive levels. But it just seems like maybe it’s something potentially worth exploring in my opinion.

Frank Fuya Zheng: Yes, yes. I definitely put in the consideration. As I just said before, let me move my money in terms of from R&D into the U.S. — turning to U.S. dollar first, then with the money in hand, we can talk about maybe — why not maybe try to do that one time or not. But you know my view on that. I don’t think that one deal will solve the valuation issue. I think the valuation issue is not our company specific, it’s actually the industry way, something like that. But that definitely maybe will improve, like from PB of 0.2% to maybe 0.6% or 0.5%. If we can do that, if we can achieve that, why not? So we put that under consideration. Once again, let me focus on converting RMB into the U.S. dollar first, which will be done — you see the news, there’s a big mutual funds based in the U.S. They have a little bit trouble move their own money about $5 million, $6 million to overseas.

They’re actually in their own account, and they’ll make a news out of that because move money out even if it’s own money is not an easy thing. China has a capital control issue. So let me do that first. We are having money in the Hong Kong Bank, we will consider, okay?

Mason Bourne: Okay. And on the Hong Kong piece, last thing for me is, is there anything about — separate listing there? Or this is still just kind of more in trying to move currency?

Frank Fuya Zheng: Just move currently, as we — in terms of our market cap, we are a little far from the Hong Kong listing requirement. So that’s probably not going to be an issue anytime soon.

Operator: And at this time, we will conclude the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Victoria Yu for closing remarks.

Unidentified Company Representative: Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today. If you haven’t got a chance to raise your questions, we will be pleased to answer them through the follow-up context. We look forward to speaking with you again in the near future. Thank you.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. We thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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