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

Frank Fuya Zheng: In the quarter — I think in the quarter, we did about 218,178 shares ADS and 28,201,772 ordinary Class A share. And actually, we already did in — it’s — another 9 million, almost 10 million, in October.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. So, it’s interesting how you’re executing the buyback. It seems that you’re not able to do it in the open market here in the U.S. because of the volume — the trading volume is very low.

Frank Fuya Zheng: Yes. The volume is indeed is very low, and we are under the law like 10b-5 and 10b-18. So, we only can buy like only like below 25% growth and on a daily basis. Also, we could not get anybody higher than that. So among 218,000,000 shares, only about 86 million is brought from open market during the opening window. Another 132,000 share ADS is bought back from one of the employees who have ADS also during the open window. The order shares also did in open window and 9 million is — we signed a contract with them in open window because they took them some time to set up an account to receive U.S. dollar. So until like October, we pay out money.

Unidentified Analyst: Yes. I hope you will continue to repurchase stock at these levels. You’re obviously trading well below book value. Your price earnings multiple are very, very low.

Frank Fuya Zheng: Yes. We expanded our repurchase program, which has demonstrated our intention to continue to do the buyback. But I think based on current volume, we still expect very low volume will be bought back from open market unless the situation change. But we have — we still have a few one or two individuals willing to sell their Class A share back to us directly. So you will see — the next quarter we’ll see more, but not as big as the number we just already did, really small. But those number, we — I calculate, we already bought back total over 11% of the Class A, Class B share equivalent back from the market. And we’ll continue to do that. We may be another — have another few percentage points to do that. After that, I think we situation will be depending on the market volume. And for the next year, I think we will use a combination of the stock buyback and the dividend payout to return to shareholder value.

Unidentified Analyst: That sounds great. Can you — are you able to…

Frank Fuya Zheng: Most likely in the second half of the year. Most likely, the dividend payout most likely will be happening in the second half of next year because as I talked about, one year to set a mechanism to get RMB converted into the U.S. dollar with like the 5% tax on those dividend payout to the Hong Kong because China has a currency control mechanism where China until now don’t have free conversion for the RMB and the U.S. dollar or other currency, trying to have capital control at place. So, if you want to do that kind of thing, you need to have some mechanism to set up. We are doing that. And we expect to be — next year to be finished in the first half of next year. And the money we use right now, we use our current U.S. dollar, we got through IPO.

Unidentified Analyst: Right. How are you feeling about next fiscal year? Do you still — you’ve obviously dealt with a lot of headwinds, regulatory, economic in fiscal year ’22. Some of those appear to be lifting going forward. So, I would presume that — and you’ve still been able to grow your loan originations even in the face of that. How are you feeling about what the potential growth could be for fiscal for next year?