NaaS Technology Inc. Q1 FY2021 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us and welcome to the RISE Education First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that today’s conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your first speaker, Mr. Aaron Li. Thank you. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone and welcome to RISE Education’s first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Today, you will hear from Ms. Lihong Wang, Chairwoman and CEO and Mr. Warren Wang, CFO. Lihong will go over recent business updates, operations and the company’s long-term strategy. Warren will go over the financial results for the quarter. Both will be available to take your questions in the Q&A session that follows. Before we proceed, I would like to remind you that today’s discussion may contain certain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. To understand the factors that could cause results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements, please refer to our Form 20-F filed with SEC on April 19, 2021. We do not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required under the applicable law. Throughout today’s call, Lihong and Warren will be referring to the earnings presentation that has been uploaded to our IR website as a supplement to today’s call. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Lihong. Lihong, please go ahead.

Thank you, Aaron. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call today. We are pleased that 2021 started off on a positive note, with the business recovering strongly compared with the prior year. Despite the resurgence of COVID-19 in certain areas of Northern China and recently introduced regulatory restrictions, we still managed to deliver strong year-over-year improvement on both our top line and bottom line in Q1. We are pleased with the overall business performance when measured against the unfavorable macro environment. Moving ahead, given the critical regulatory changes we are facing right now as an industry, we are working to fully upgrade RISE into a multiform aptitude training provider in order to proactively navigate the challenging environment of the domestic education market and drive sustainable long-term development of our business. Now, I would like to give you some details of our quarterly results first. Please turn to Slide 3 for our financial and operational highlights for Q1 2021. Revenues were RMB262 million in Q1, up 140% from the same period of 2020. We also significantly narrowed our adjusted EBITDA loss and adjusted net loss on a yearly basis. Total number of new students enrolled for RISE regular courses was 5,846 in Q1 compared with 1,507 for Q1 2020. We saw a quarter-over-quarter decrease in the number of new students’ enrollments. This was mainly due to strong seasonality in the ELT market, where students’ enrollments are usually lower during the Chinese New Year season in Q1 as well as the recently introduced regulatory restrictions in Beijing. During the quarter, all of our learning centers were in full offline operation, except for those in Beijing. Due to the resurgence of COVID-19, our learning centers in Beijing and Shijiazhuang were temporarily closed since late January. In the panic situation east, all of our learning centers in Shijiazhuang resumed offline operations by the end of March. Only one of our learning centers in Beijing reopened in March while the offline operations of all other learning centers in Beijing remain suspended due to regulatory reasons. These factors did impact our new student enrollment in Q1 and was the main reason for the sequential decline in the number of students in class for RISE regular courses. We believe this is temporary. We expect our learning centers in Beijing will gradually reopen once we satisfy regulatory requirements. We expect both our enrollment and students in class to be better on track accordingly. As of March 31, 2021, the cumulative number of enrolled students who paid for regular courses and other courses since January 2019 exceeded 215,000 and 100,000, respectively. Based on these extensive fee-paying student bases, we will execute our business upgrade plan to drive our long-term growth. With respect to capacity expansion as of the end of March 2021, we have self-operated 95 learning centers nationwide compared with 92 in December 2020. Our franchise partners opened another 10 new centers in Q1, bringing the total number of franchise learning centers to 230 at the end of March compared with 220 at the end of December 2020. Now on to Slide 4, here I want to highlight the strong growth momentum we have gained in all cities other than in Beijing. All of our self-owned learning centers in all cities other than Beijing resumed full offline operation by the end of Q1 2021. It is encouraging to see that despite strong seasonality in Q1 of 2021, our learning centers in all cities other than Beijing registered quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year increases in new students enrollments and students in class for RISE regular courses. This demonstrated the trust and strong approval that parents and students have towards the RISE brand, our reputation and our diversified offerings under the OMO model. Retention rates in all cities other than Beijing saw sequential improvement, including the retention rates of both Shanghai and Shijiazhuang, which have significantly increased by 7 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. Even when our learning centers in Beijing couldn’t reopen by the end of March 2021, we still managed to maintain a stable retention rate in Beijing, with only a 1 percentage point decline on a sequential basis. New student enrollments in Beijing also significantly increased on a yearly basis. In addition, we saw a very low refund rate in Beijing, only 7.6% in Q1. Thanks to our proven and mature OMO model, we have the resources and the flexibility when necessary to switch between online and offline courses seamlessly, which is highly appreciated by the students and parents. Moving to Slide 5, our franchise business also saw strong year-over-year growth in both new enrollments and revenues. By the end of March 31, we expanded our offline franchise learning centers to 430, with a total number of students in class of more than 110,000. As franchisees are an important part of our ecosystem, we will further deepen our cooperation with the existing franchisees and explore more opportunities to expand the franchisee base and jointly promote the development of aptitude education in China. Now on to Slide 6, we continued our efforts to diversify our course offerings to build our aptitude education ecosystem. As we mentioned earlier, our light course about Chinese New Year traditions launched in Q1 attracted about 35,000 enrollments, which proved to be an effective marketing channel. In March, we launched the new app to provide more diversified selections of live courses and online picture books. For our 1-4 premium online English small classes, we proactively expanded our customer acquisition channels to increase new enrollments, which saw about 46% sequential growth in Q1. In summary, we are actively working on transforming RISE into a multiform aptitude training platform. And now I would like to invite our CFO, Warren to talk about our first quarter financials. After that, I will give you an update on our business and branding upgrade plans and our business outlook for 2021.

Thank you, Lihong. Let me now go through our financial results for the first quarter of 2021. Before I begin, please note that all numbers stated are in RMB. Let’s take a look at Slide 7. Despite unfavorable macro environmental conditions, we generated RMB77.2 million of operational cash inflow during the first quarter compared with cash outflows of RMB82.4 million and RMB108.5 million in the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2020, respectively. This was mainly attributed to a couple of key factors: firstly, the strong market demand for our diverse course offerings; and secondly, RISE brand exposure and solid reputation built on extensive experience in the sector and high-quality. In addition, we continue to optimize costs with overweight offline marketing channels and improved performance on new student acquisition and retention. This healthy cash flow has laid a solid foundation for further business expansion and to navigate any possible changes that may emerge in the macro environment. Turning to Slide 8, total revenues increased 140% year-over-year to RMB261.5 million. Revenues from educational programs increased by 125% to RMB229.5 million. The year-over-year increase in revenues from educational programs was primarily due to the redemption of online and offline operations of our self-owned learning centers as a result of the subsiding COVID-19 pandemic and our quick OMO strategy deployment. Although there are still ongoing uncertainties and challenges arising from the impact of COVID-19, we believe that we are well positioned to mitigate risks. Franchise revenues increased by 420.6% to RMB31.8 million. The year-over-year increase was primarily due to the growth in current franchise revenue as a result of subsidy in the COVID-19 pandemic. Other revenues decreased by 69.2% year-over-year to RMB0.3 million. Cost of revenues increased 13.8% year-over-year to RMB162.2 million. The increase was primarily due to an increase in rental expenses as a result of the termination of rental concessions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in teachers’ compensations as a result of increased teaching hours and the resumption of employers’ contributions for social insurance and payroll taxes. Additionally, the increase was also due to an increase in referral fees paid to franchisees for new franchise business. Non-GAAP cost of revenues increased by 14.8% to RMB158.7 million. As a result of the foregoing, gross profit was RMB99.3 million compared with gross loss of RMB33.6 million for the first quarter of 2020. Now, on to Slide 9, total operating expenses increased 37.1% year-over-year to RMB134.1 million. Non-GAAP operating expenses were RMB132.9 million. Selling and marketing expenses increased by 48.9% year-over-year to RMB64.3 million compared with RMB43.2 million for the first quarter of 2020. The increase was primarily associated with increased online/offline marketing channel expenses coupled with incentive-based salary rises from our marketing staff. Non-GAAP selling and marketing expenses increased by 50.7% year-over-year to RMB33.6 million. General and administrative expenses increased by 27.8% year-over-year to RMB69.7 million compared with RMB54.6 million for the first quarter of 2020, the increase was mainly attributable to increased personnel costs. Non-GAAP general and administrative expenses increased by 24.7% year-over-year to RMB69.3 million. Operating loss was RMB34.8 million compared with operating loss of RMB131.4 million for the same period of the prior year. Non-GAAP operating loss was RMB30 million as compared with non-GAAP operating loss of RMB127.1 million for the same period of the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA loss was RMB5.1 million. Turning to Slide 10, net loss attributable to RISE was RMB24.6 million. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to RISE was RMB19.9 million. Basic and diluted net loss attributable to RISE per ADS was RMB0.44. Basic and diluted non-GAAP net loss attributable to RISE per ADS was RMB0.35. Net cash inflow from operating activities was RMB77.2 million compared with net cash outflow from operating activities of RMB82.4 million for the same period of the prior year. The increase was mainly due to the increased tuition fees collected for RISE regular courses as a result of the subsiding COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 31, 2021, we had combined cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of RMB692.9 million as compared with RMB639.2 million as of December 31, 2020. Current and non-current deferred revenue and customer advances was RMB696.4 million as of March 31, 2021, representing an increase of 15.7% from RMB601.9 million as of December 31, 2020. The growth was primarily due to the increased tuition fee collection as a result of the subsiding COVID-19 pandemic. Deferred revenue and customer advances mainly consist of upfront tuition payments from students and initial franchise fees from our franchisees. With that, I would now like to hand the call back to Lihong to give you an update on our business and branding plans and business outlook. Thank you.

Yes. Thanks, Warren. Now on Slide 11, as you know, our macro environmental factors have a profound influence on the entire after-school tutoring market in China. Over the past 2 months, we have been facing educational bureau implemented or tested a series of regulatory requirements related to the after-school tutoring sector, including restrictions on subject-based education and fund supervision. These regulations have broadly affected the entire sector. The accelerated growth of the after-school tutoring market in China has no doubt brought some chaotic problems. So, we believe that it was necessary for the government to define clear regulations to promote the long-term and healthy development of the education industry and we fully appreciate and support the government’s initiatives. We believe that there will be both challenges and opportunities for the after-school tutoring sector to shift its focus to the original building blocks of a well-rounded education system. We have entered a new chapter for RISE to fully upgrade into a multiform aptitude training platform. Look, over 14 years’ history, we think RISE platform has four strong pillars: first, we are a market leading education brand; second, we have academic capability and strong course development and training capabilities; third, we have a student base with more than 150,000 students in class; last but not least, a nationwide network of self-owned and franchise centers over 500 centers nationwide and an IT operating system that can support online education as well. So, let me elaborate on those four strong pillars: the first one, market-leading brand and the second one, academic capabilities. During the past 14 years, we have specialized in English language training or ELT services. At the same time, we have also been a dedicated practitioner of aptitude education because we have always advocated for our students to develop well-rounded foundations. Unlike most test-oriented courses, our curriculums are designed to foster leadership and cognitive skills in students while developing their self-confidence and sense of independence. This is fully in line with the education concept advocated by the government and the public in China. In addition, we have developed and executed our plans since early 2020 to directly tap opportunities in the STEAM markets. Our experience and expertise in aptitude education and our deep dive into these new segments have laid a solid foundation for the development of our complete aptitude education ecosystem. I also mentioned our nationwide offline and online network with a strong student base. Our large-scale offline network now has more than 500 learning centers in total, including self-owned learning centers and franchised learning centers. The influence and recognition of the RISE brand has helped us to penetrate more Chinese cities. In combination with our RISE+ online platform, our courses and service offerings under the OMO model were accessible to a very large pool of students nationwide. As of the end of March 2021, there were more than 150,000 students in class from class and our franchisees. In addition, we also served more students in our RISE courses. This large-sized private traffic has enabled us to lower customer acquisition costs, or CAC, as compared with the CAC of new students’ acquisitions through other means. To unlock the traffic value of our sizable student base, we can adapt to multiple monetization approaches to explore more opportunities in aptitude screening catering to different learning stages. In addition, we continue to enhance our digital capabilities with further investment to improve our overall operational efficiencies and have made solid progress on this front recently, including the continuous improvement of our proprietary online classroom technology, course delivery system, AI classroom supervision system, new teacher training system and our AI teaching and lesson preparation system. Additionally, we have built up strong curriculum development capabilities to ensure that our course offerings are up-to-date, engaging and effective. All these competitive advantages will continue to help us to develop our aptitude education ecosystem and drive long-term growth for our shareholders. Turning to Slide 12, we see the structure of our multiform aptitude training platform, in addition to our core ELT courses as well as other existing courses such as Edge, a premium English training brand. We have also launched two new brands: Hiyeah and WhySTEAM. These two new brands significantly enhance our aptitude training system to cover ELT, social skills and STEAM ability development programs. RISE ELT, Hiyeah and WhySTEAM courses target students of varying ages starting from 6 years old and above 3 to 8 years old and their parents, respectively. I will give you more details about these three businesses in the following slides. Moving to Slide 13, ELT will remain our core business. Over the years, we have strengthened our leading position with an experienced management team, complemented by strong research and curriculum development capabilities, and diversified high-quality course offerings. At present, our ELT courses target students above 3 years old. With regulation changes, we can shift ELT to serve students above 6 years old. Currently, offline schools that have resumed operations in Beijing are delivering courses to students above 6 years old as required by regulatory authorities. To attract new student enrollment, we will continue to innovate course offerings with enhanced immersion learning experiences and personalized teaching approaches based on our OMO model. Now, on to Slide 14, Hiyeah is our newly introduced brand, focusing on children’s social emotional development and related family education support. The course targets children between 3 to 8 years old and their parents. Research continues to highlight the benefits of social emotional learnings and the importance of having a growth mindset as the strongest foundation for children to develop into healthy and holistic young people. Those are the fundamental series behind our course design to address the need for children to develop healthy identities, manage emotional intelligence, create and maintain supportive relationships, and achieve individual and collective goals. Currently, we are working on introducing Hiyeah courses at our self-owned learning centers or SOLCs. In addition, we will launch separate Hiyeah learning centers transformed from certain revamped venues of existing SOLCs. Now, on to Slide 15, WhySTEAM focuses on STEAM-oriented aptitude development of children based on cognitive skills training and development, which includes math, logic thinking, science, literacy and science exploration. The courses are designed for children under 8 years old and help them nurture a deep understanding of conceptual thinking and innovative problem-solving. We believe cognitive thinking skills are a crucial part of children's development and parents are increasingly placing high value on this. We have received very positive feedback on our STEAM courses, which were introduced into the market last year under the name of RISE mass logic thinking. Under this new branding, WhySTEAM, we will continue to improve the learning experience of our students and accelerate our business expansion in this segment. Moving to Slide 16, our business outlook for 2021, we are proactively upgrading our business to navigate macro environmental challenges and explore untapped opportunities ahead. We will hold a press conference in Beijing to officially announce our business and branding upgrade on May 28, 2021. For our ELT business, we expect our learning centers to continue their normal operation with solid growth momentum. The learning centers in Beijing that cater to students above 6 years old are expected to gradually resume offline operations as well. For Hiyeah, we expect to open the first offline learning center in June 2021, which will be transformed from a revamped venue of an existing stock in Beijing. For WhySTEAM, we have opened 3 WhySTEAM courses in Beijing in March and are in preparation to offer this class in 3 self-owned learning centers in Shanghai. The first franchised learning center in Zhengzhou will be opened by the end of Q2 or actually in June. So far, WhySTEAM courses have received very positive feedback from more than 50 franchisees who have shown interest in introducing WhySTEAM into their offerings. As of this date, more than 20 franchisees have signed a Letter of Intent. Last but not least, we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to acquire a franchise learning center in Chengdu, which has a proven track record of solid performance. This franchisee is our largest franchisee in terms of revenue contribution and has more than 30 learning centers in Chengdu with about 13,000 students in class. Given all these factors, we reaffirm our guidance for our revenue to be in the range of RMB1.42 billion to RMB1.73 billion for the full year 2021. With that, I would now like to hand the call over to the operator, so we can begin the Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you. Your first question comes from Sheng Zhong of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my question and thanks for a very comprehensive introduction about your results and the new business. So I am very interested in your new initiatives, including Hiyeah and WhySTEAM. Can you give us more color on the market potential you see in these two areas and with the current competition landscape? And what’s your operation model like your pricing, your positioning? And maybe also how much revenue contribution you would expect from this new business this year and next year? This is the first question. And the second question is regarding to our current major business, ELT, you also mentioned there was some regulatory uncertainty here. So, could you share with us more color on your communication with the government, especially in the Beijing reopening process. What do you see the government attitude towards tutoring for children below 6 years old, because at the same time, we see some online players, they already removed their online courses for children below 6 years old? So that’s my question. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Sheng. So, on the first question, maybe I start with WhySTEAM, because this is of course extended from our mass logic thinking. To be frank, this is the second largest area after English. The demand from students and parents is pretty high, partially proved by, I would say, online players like competitors. For us, we believe our strength is offline. So, the WhySTEAM is extended from mass logics to include more science literacy and science exploration, partially to make it more comprehensive. But just to be frank, we don’t want this to be subject to the regulation in terms of what they call subject-based courses to be categorized as mathematics. So for us, the positioning is to try to be the offline number one player in the market. And the pricing right now to the market is a bit, I would say, pretty competitive for 3-month courses we price below RMB6,000. We do think with offline more interactive immersion experience, this could be quite attractive. For Hiyeah, this – I would say, one is, you can call it a new course. The first purpose is to, in some ways, if the regulation prohibits us from teaching English below 6 years old, we wanted to convert our students into this class to prevent losing our current student base. Then the second, of course, this is focused on social emotional development and also growth mindset. In these two major areas, it is actually quite common in teaching courses overseas. However, in China, there is, I would say, a lack of very good offerings in this space. However, families – parents are very focused on preparing their kids to be able to blend into society and schools. So, we see very strong demand. In terms of competition, there is not much competition offering comprehensive courses. However, there are one or two players offering partially, including the social emotional growth mindset. Two names, I can give you one called competitors. They started as kids who have trouble learning, but expanded into the social emotional space. They are quite small. The second player is another competitor. They are much more focused on oral delivery. However, for us, our oral communication is only part of the courses. We do see very strong potential. However, for Hiyeah, this year, the majority of the students would come from the ELT age below 6 if regulation really targets that space to prohibit learning English as a subject. So there is less focus on generating additional revenue. In the long run, however, we do think this course will have high demand and can be a separate business avenue. However, this year is not the focus. So, that’s the first answer related to your first question. On the second question, regarding the current ELT business, as I mentioned, in Beijing, it is not officially – there is no official so-called regulation put in place. However, each district and also Beijing Education Bureau from a lot from the so-called the oral communication, we see a couple of areas that they are very much focused on. The first one is the license, including the centers that you have to have an education license. The second is a teacher needs to have a license. Then the third area is really the so-called – I think I mentioned the – what’s the right word? The fund supervision, meaning you have to have a deposit to guarantee that you have the capital to run schools. Each district has a very different requirement. So this is the third element. The fourth element is also not written. So far, they prefer or they – in some way, only let you get students aged above 6 come to the classroom. So you cannot offer offline classes for children below age 6. All these are not on paper. However, we have to satisfy their requirements to resume offline schools. So far, we have three offline schools resumed, teaching children above 6 years old. So if these requirements become official and implement across the city as you mentioned that this will definitely have an impact on our business, also competitors as well. Therefore, our strategy is to continue the offline teaching for age above 6. And then for age below 6, once they have an official requirement, we will convert them into Hiyeah. In fact, even before that, the first two schools under Hiyeah will be launched in mid-June. And for the – we use the existing facility, we will convert those students in those two schools into Hiyeah first, so test all the marketing materials and teaching methodologies prepared for the launch to cover Beijing if the requirement becomes real. In terms of online players, my understanding is so far, there is no clear regulation yet. However, if the regulation becomes official and public, that will apply to all players, including online players. But that’s my personal understanding.

Thank you very much. That is very helpful. And may I follow-up, one quick question for Hiyeah and WhySTEAM? Are the course contents internally developed?

Yes. WhySTEAM started from mass logics. We also tried out STEAM courses in 2019. So we combine these two together to be the new RISE team courses. And Hiyeah, we have also studied similar courses overseas. And of course, in China, the education guidance also included areas like social, emotional and growth mindset. So we combine those with the leadership courses from the English ELP. So this is, I would say, partially take over some of the content from the ELT courses and then develop more into social, emotional and growth mindset. This will hopefully be taught in – be taught in English and Chinese. However, we’re less focused on English language.

Thanks management for taking my questions. So I have two questions. The first one is still about regulation, considering there is still some suspension of the offline learning center. Would you share some color on your expectations for the new student enrollment growth for the upcoming quarters? And the second one is about user acquisition strategy, given the high percentage of your traffic relies on offline referrals. If there are further restrictions on offline learning centers, what would be your marketing spending plan to acquire new users for the rest of the year? Thank you.

Okay. As I mentioned, Beijing, we actually will see – resume more schools for offline learning. The restriction is that you have children age above 6. With the offline learning center opened, we definitely see better enrollment in those schools. However, even in the first quarter, when all the Beijing centers were closed, Beijing new enrollments still see, I would say, pretty good results. As I mentioned earlier, the enrollment for all other cities see very strong growth quarter-over-quarter year-over-year. In the second quarter, I think that trend will continue. And of course, Shijiazhuang resumed the offline operation at the end of March. So the Q2 will also be stronger. The Beijing, I think may still see softened enrollment. However, once we resume more offline centers, we will see better traction. That’s one point. The second point is that we are shifting to more efforts to acquire students aged 5 years old, so that they can come to school when they are getting to the right age group. On that front, I do think we need to look at the whole market if we are restricted, everyone else would be restricted as well. So the courses that you can offer will be limited, and the so-called educational providers will be a number of players will be fewer. And with our reputation and ability to navigate these challenges, we actually think in the future, you will see fewer players getting more market share, although it may not happen in the near quarter. But in the long run, the so-called bigger players or stronger players, the players who can comply with the government’s regulations will be there. Of course, the second quarter in terms of seasonality, it’s never a very strong quarter. So I think we will see a normal quarter, maybe a little bit weaker because of the Beijing situation. But overall, outside Beijing are very strong. The second question regarding acquisition costs. In fact, I mentioned government and regulator advertising channels and the language that you can use for advertisement. So this actually affects a lot of the online channels much significantly. For us, we have a very large offline network. From the acquisition cost perspective, you can see that our acquisition cost actually is controlled very well. We still think the offline channel has a very strong advantage. This year, the strategy for RISE is to overweight the offline channel, and we are doing it according to this strategy. In Beijing, in fact, you can still have a demo with students and their parents. So it is not entirely off the market. That’s why in Beijing, we still be able to have new student enrollment. Going forward, we will continue this strategy to have a balanced deployment in terms of online and offline advertising and offline promotion. The other point is we are building the best courses to attract private traffic. Going forward, hopefully, the private traffic can help us to generate leads and to convert students into our courses, ELT, Hiyeah and WhySTEAM. For the private traffic, our strategy is, one, of course, to have light courses, diversified courses. The second approach is to cooperate with other companies in different industries. For example, we trialed activities or host events at the Walmart Sam’s Club in Shijiazhuang. When we actually got pretty good and accurate leads, these are the tools that we can expand our lead and private traffic pool and help further conversion into our regular or main courses.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Lei Yang of China Galaxy International. Please ask your question.

Okay, thank you management for the opportunity to ask questions. I have two questions. So the first one is, because your offline classes have not resumed largely currently, could you elaborate more on your OMO learning system? And what part of the OMO learning is playing in your new businesses? And also about – the second question is about the sales contribution of each of your brands. Could you elaborate more on this? Thank you.

Okay. So when we articulated the OMO model last year, my point is that we can offer pure online, pure offline and online merging with offline really depends on the situation and age group. When offline can be resumed or can be utilized for age below 6, we encourage all offline learning given the better experience and also interaction offline. For age above 6, when offline is available, we offer OMO model, meaning during weekdays, one course will be offered online, focusing more on subjects to have better experience in terms of language, in terms of learning grammar and reading comprehension. Then the two courses will be offered offline during weekends. So these are more student school. This OMO model better suits the experience and also the so-called the time management for our students. And this is also part of the benefit of our network. As I mentioned, we have both an offline network and online platform. The OMO is the strategy for RISE. Therefore, all the new businesses will be able to blend into the business. For example, the new Hiyeah courses, each course targets students. At the same time, we will offer video – short videos to parents. So the parents understand what students are learning. At the same time, they can be supportive in this so-called social, emotional growth mindset development because we do think this matters for the whole family and not just the students. So the OMO model will continue. Even for the camp and social studies, we will have an OMO model within the business. The second question regarding the sales contribution. Right now, as we planned, the WhySTEAM will go through both SOCs and franchisees model. Therefore, the sales contribution from direct-owned and the franchisees will be according to the plan we had in the beginning of the year. This year, the contribution will be small. This is a year that we wanted to open more centers, but the revenue recognition may need some time to realize – the cash revenue will, of course, realize earlier. For Hiyeah, as I mentioned, the first or critical objective for Hiyeah this year is to convert our students below age 6 in the ELP space so that we can keep the business in a healthy status. However, if we do see this is very attractive, we can, of course, open separate independent centers, both in SOCs area and franchisee areas. But I don’t think this will be the key component this year. This could be the revenue potential or growth potential in the future.

Your next question comes from an unknown participant. Please go ahead with your question. Hello, management. Thank you for taking my question. And I have two simple questions. First, how does the potential regulation affect our original strategy on expansion and marketing? And what is our long-term strategy now, like in 3 to 5 years? Thank you.

So the first question is about marketing or about the network? Both?

Both.

Okay. As I mentioned, we deploy the so-called the – or we acquire students utilizing all channels, online and offline. With our offline network, we easily can do offline promotion around the school. So that this is – this will continue to be our major channel. Of course, we use online channels like the search engine, the social media as well. I think it will be a combination. But for RISE, we always wanted to utilize our offline network. In terms of network expansion, so far, in Beijing, the license approval is actually very difficult. However, a supermajority of our schools already have licensed. We actually feel this is an advantage. Part of the, I would say, it becomes a scarce asset. Outside Beijing, we continue to see very normal operations. That’s why you see that the franchisee partners opened some more schools in the franchisee areas. Going forward, we will see how regulation will – what’s the regulation and how do we cope with the regulation. But comes to the strategy, I do think once we have that license, naturally, we can expand beyond ELT. So of course, the courses require educational licenses, definitely not only English. How to expand into other courses? We are thinking about that. Some can be self-developed. Some can, in fact, invite other partners so that we can have our school's utilization increase. But I would say for the near-term, we wanted to focus on our ELT, Hiyeah and WhySTEAM, this is the core courses we offer. At the same time, we are building that private traffic pool target, what we call the RISE can and also social studies kind of social practice. I do feel these are a market that has very strong demand. And RISE already had experience in the past to manage that. My – I would – maybe go beyond RISE. I feel the regulation will definitely change the landscape. So in 3 to 5 years, I personally think you will see more companies with both online and offline capabilities to get their mergers and acquisitions very likely to happen. And at the same time, multi-subjects or a platform that can offer multi-subjects for aptitude training will definitely become leaders. That’s also why RISE is going along this strategy. I think a single course will be very difficult to survive. So for RISE, we will be focused on building the online and offline platform and adding aptitude-related courses to extend our lifetime value, as well as all these courses are in a way definitely compliant with the government requirement. So that’s kind of an explanation. Maybe we can articulate better in the coming months. But so far, I think the business upgrade and branding upgrades give you a preview of what we are trying to do.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, that will be our final question and the end of our conference call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.