Chindata Group Holdings Limited (CD) on Q4 2021 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
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Operator: 00:05 Good morning and good evening ladies and gentlemen. Thank you and welcome to Chindata Group Holdings Limited Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. We will be hosting our question-and-answer session after management's prepared remarks. Please note, today's event is being recorded. 00:23 I’ll now turn the call over to your first speaker today, Mr. Don Zhou from Investor Relations of Chindata Group. Please go ahead, Don.
Don Zhou: 00:34 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Chindata Group’s fourth quarter and full-year 2021 earnings conference call. This is Don from Investor Relations Team of the company. With us today are Mr. Michael Foust, Chairman of the Board of the company; Mr. Wu Huapeng, our newly appointed CEO; Ms. Sandy Xiao, our President; Mr. Nick Wang, our CFO; Mr. Eric Fan, our newly appointed COO; Mr. Zhang Binghua, our newly appointed CTO; and Ms. Zoe Zhuang, our Finance VP. 01:07 In addition to providing a discussion and analysis of our quarterly performance, the company will also like to take this opportunity to share more on our recent management update, as well as the growth plan going forward. 01:21 To being with, Mr. Michael Foust will walk you through the recent management update and the rationale behind. Huapeng will be providing you a comprehensive look at the company’s plan going forward in Chinese, followed by Nick’s English version. Nick will then take you through the quarterly review of our operation performance, and Zoe will present our financial results. Management team will be here to answer your questions afterwards. 01:48 Now, I'll quickly go over the Safe Harbor. Some of the statements that we make today regarding our business, operations, and financial performance may be considered forward-looking, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our filings with the SEC. 02:13 During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release, which is distributed and available to the public through our Investor Relations website located at investors.chindatagroup.com. We have also updated our quarterly presentation on the company's Investor Relations website, which you can refer to as an important supplementary material on today's call. 02:44 Without further ado, I’ll now turn over the call to Mr. Michael Foust. Michael, please go ahead.
Michael Foust: 02:53 Thank you, Don and thank you everyone for joining our earnings call this morning or this evening. As the Chair of the Board of Directors, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our Senior Leadership team. We are very pleased to have this team in place and we’re confident of the leadership of Chindata going forward. As you know, we made the announcement a couple of weeks ago of the appoints of our CEO, our President, COO, and CTO of the company. 03:21 Leading the team, Mr. Huapeng Wu was appointed as our CEO and as a Director of the Board. A little background on Huapeng. He joined Chindata in 2019 as President of our China business and prior to that he was the founder of iTechClub and the founder and headmaster of the 1024 Academy, which both are preeminent platforms that bring together top technology executives for training and idea exchanges. 03:48 Huapeng also served as Vice President of Phoenix New Media and the CTO of Ifeng.com from 2007 to 2013. Huapeng’s performance in the last three years has truly been outstanding. With his 20 years of experience and contacts within China’s technology and data center sectors, Huapeng brought in a series of strategic customers and projects and successfully established solid relationships with local government and our partners in the data center ecosystem. 04:19 After a thorough search process, it became clear to the Board that Huapeng is the best fit as the Group’s new CEO, with his strategic thinking, industry resources, and understanding of the company and our team. 04:34 Ms. Sandy Xiao has been with the company for over two years. With her deep understanding of the company having served as our Chief Operating Officer since August of 2019 and as a Board Director since July 2019, Sandy was appointed as President of Chindata Group. 04:51 Mr. Xinyue Eric Fan joined the company in December 2021 as Vice President of Business Operations and was appointed as our new Chief Operating Officer. Eric has a deep background and strategic planning and operations. He served as Vice President and General Manager of Sekurit Asia with Saint Gobain from 2015 to 2021, and served as Strategic Planning Director of Saint Gobain from 2013 to 2015. 05:25 In addition, Mr. Fan served as an Associate Director at Dow Chemical from 2011 to 2013. And prior to that, Eric was a Senior Manager at Honeywell Building Solutions from 2009 to 2011, and also served as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group for four years from 2006 to 2009. 05:48 In addition, we are very pleased to announce that Mr. Binghua Zhang was appointed as our Chief Technology Officer. Binghua has a very long distinguished background in the IDC industry. Prior to joining Chindata, he was the Technical Director, Senior Director, and the General Manager of the Systems Department and IDC Engineering at Baidu from 2010 to 2022. 06:17 Prior to that, Mr. Zhang served as the Chief Engineer in the Beijing Telecom Planning and Design Institute from 1995 to 2010. We are very pleased to have him join our team and he is a very distinguished, very well-known in the industry. So, we are very happy to have him join us. 06:38 And lastly, we have, as you well know, we have Nick Wang as our CFO, who has been with the company for over two years now. So, we are very well positioned with our management team and the company benefits from this very strong team with diversified experience and expertise covering our business operations, strategic planning, technical knowhow, as well as capital markets operations. 07:07 We are highly confident that under this team Chindata’s business is more diversified, its culture is more open with the solid foundation. So, we can further strength our position as the leading datacenter platform in China and in the Asia Pacific emerging markets. 07:24 So, with this, I’ll turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Huapeng Wu, who will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the company’s plan going forward. Thank you.
Huapeng Wu: 07:37 09:30 Thank you, for introduction Michael. I’ll start by thanking the Board of Directors, their trust and endorsement. It is an honor to shoulder the responsibility operating such an excellent data center enterprise, and I look forward to working in close cooperation with the Board and our management team. 09:52 Let me begin by briefly reviewing the company's business and financial highlights for the fourth quarter and full-year 2021. And then, I will take everyone through a comprehensive look at our development plan. 10:06 On Slide 8, in the fourth quarter of 2021, we've put four new projects under construction, bringing our total number of data centers up to 27. Total capacity increased by 85 megawatts during the fourth quarter to reach 673 megawatts. Specifically, in the fourth quarter, our in-service capacity increased by 70 megawatts to 440 megawatt. 10:36 Our indication by interest capacity increased by 95 megawatts, bringing our total contracted and IOI capacities to 589 megawatts. And our utilized capacity increased by 36 megawatts to 304 megawatts. 10:54 Our total capacity contain a high contracted and IOI ratio of 87.5%. Financially, our full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA both beat our guidance. Revenue totaled RMB2.852 billion for the year 2021, representing a year-over-year increase of 55.8%, which is 0.8% higher than upper range of our guidance. 11:26 Adjusted EBITDA totaled RMB1.49 billion for the year 2021, representing a year-over-year increase of 66.5%, which is 1.5% higher than our upper range of the guidance. Net income turned positive for the year 2021 at RMB316.4 million, with a margin of 11.1%. 12:01 12:47 Next, I want to discuss our
