Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:KC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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HenryHe : I’ll probably put some additional color on this question as well. So if you remember on the year IPO 2020, we spent about RMB 1 billion on the CapEx. So first of all, I’ll mention point is as a company, we do have capacity and experience to managing spending RMB 1 billion, whatever with purpose, and we do have a very experienced team. And we do know the supply chain. And also, we have a good partnership with our ecosystem partner, including our shareholders, group as well as Xiaomi, managing the complexity of buying those big chunk of assets at a reasonable price given the past experience. That’s the first point. The second point is, I think your question is coming from more about investments, not only about products.

If you look at the investment, we’re putting into 2 buckets. The team, the technology R&D team, which our senior people as a team managing today, we have quite a lot of very experienced engineering programmers. And those expenses is not a CapEx. And expenses are booked on our P&L income statement. And as we mentioned, we spent over RMB 1 billion every year on those expenses and R&D investment. So I think we do not hesitate to invest into R&D and products. So I think that’s very clear. However, if you are looking into the cash flow item on the capital expenditures, which I want to say, also going to have a different model because as our CEO has also mentioned, we see the great financial opportunities were coming from both Internet clients as well as implementation and application of the user cases from a lot of diversified and non-iconic clients, especially from traditional enterprises.

And those business model will not pursue Kingsoft Cloud on capital because they will build their own environment and providing the whole computing capabilities. And we call it as an OpEx model. So I think we are not going to wait to see those good business opportunities, but we will balance out. We need to spend money ourselves on our IDC or we build a computing environment and help our enterprise cloud clients use the AI capability and then using their money to create revenue. I think those are the 2 choices we both have our hand and is not costing ourselves on 1 side. And the last point I would put us way is I think the question is not really about whether to spend a lot is about who is band for. So I think selecting the right clients is also very important.

I think it’s our eco partner, including our shareholders, for example, Xiaomi and the Ting Hong Cloud Kinsa office to build for the office software the EV cars. We will go 100% to make investment and spend CapEx. However, for the company and the customers which do not fall into the criteria that mentioned, repeating customers counting technology, we’ll probably will be step back a little bit. So I think this last question about who we spend money for, also very important. And hopefully, it’s helpful for you.

Operator: Thank you. And at this point, I would now hand back to Nicole Shan for closing remarks.

Nicole Shan : Thank you, operator. Thanks, everyone. This concludes our earnings call. Thank you again for joining us today. If you have any other customers, please feel free to contact us. Look forward to speaking with you the next quarter. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.

Operator: This does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

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