Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (0388.HK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to HKEX 2021 Full Year Results Analyst Presentation. Today, we are very pleased to have our Chief Executive Officer, Nicolas Aguzin; and our Group CFO, Vanessa Lau. We will first present our key highlights in 2021, financial performance review followed by business and strategic updates. Then we are happy to take some of your questions. [Operator Instructions] Over to you, Gucho.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. It is my pleasure today to be talking with you, investors, analysts here in Hong Kong and around the world. We're again presenting our results virtually today as Hong Kong continues to battle the pandemic. I remain hopeful though that we will be back face-to-face very soon. And in the meantime, I hope that you're all staying safe and healthy. Today, I'm delighted to be presenting my first set of full year results for HKEX as CEO of the business. HKEX had a good year in 2021. Against a turbulent backdrop, the team has remained very focused and worked hard to support the development and rollout of new products, new initiatives and new enhancements to our market. This has helped to ensure the continuing attractiveness and competitiveness of our markets and of HKEX. I will let Vanessa go into more details on numbers later, but let me just share with you a few of the highlights. We are today announcing record revenue for the full year of HKD 21 billion, that's up 9% year-on-year. Core business revenue for the full year was also up 10%. Profits reached a record high of HKD 12.5 billion, up 9% on the same period last year. A key driver of the record numbers was the very robust trading volumes, especially those observed in Q1. Our average daily turnover in the cash market was up 29% year-on-year to HKD 167 billion. Trading volumes slowed in the second half after the very strong first half, impacted by a range of macro factors and market sentiment, but they remain in line with the long-term trend and are still at reasonable levels. Our connection and proximity to Mainland China remains our key strength. This is evident by the performance of our Connect franchise, with turnover across all Connect platforms, achieving new highs for the year. On the listing front, Hong Kong's IPO market performed well for the full year despite at times a challenging backdrop. In 2021, fundraising was down by 21% from an exceptionally strong 2020, but we remain a top global fundraising center, welcoming a total of 98 new listings, which together raised HKD 331 billion. I'm particularly pleased to note that our pipeline remains strong. Whilst we have also enhanced our listing franchise by introducing a new high-quality Hong Kong SPAC regime and streamlined listing requirement for overseas issuers. I'm pleased to tell you that we have already received 7 SPAC listing applications so far. In 2021, HKEX also strengthened its position as Asia's trading and risk management hub, adding new products and new tools to support the needs of global investors. This included the highly successful launch of Hong Kong's first A-share derivatives product. Last Wednesday, for the first time, the product became the most heavily traded offshore Asia futures contract anywhere by value, and this only 4 months into launch, great news for us and for the market. I will expand on some of these areas shortly. But now let me hand over to Vanessa, who will talk through our annual results in more detail. Vanessa, over to you.

Thank you, Gucho. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm Vanessa Lau, and would now like to share with you our 2021 financial results. 2021 started exceptionally well, and the year overall was good for HKEX. And today, we're very pleased to be reporting record financial results. Against 2020, total revenue and other income was up 9% to $21 billion. Our core business revenue, excluding net investment income from corporate funds and HKEX Foundation Donation income was up 10% against prior year, driven by record headline ADT of $167 billion and record Stock Connect trading volumes. This was partly offset by lower margin fund investment income, reflecting the low interest rate environment. Our EBITDA margin was up 1% year-on-year, increasing to 78%. Profit after tax, earnings per share and dividend per share all reached record highs, with profit after tax at $12.5 billion, earnings per share at $9.91 and dividend per share at $8.87, all up 9% year-on-year. Turning to the next page on our detailed financials. Driven by record ADT and Stock Connect volumes, our core business showed double-digit growth year-on-year for both revenue and profit. OpEx was up 2%, reflecting higher IT costs and higher marketing expenses on new products. As reported in the second quarter, there was a one-off deferred tax charge of $160 million on LME's acquired intangible assets, resulting from an increase in the U.K. corporate tax rate from 19% to 25% effective April 2023. Notwithstanding this, we are pleased to report that both group full year profit after tax and earnings per share reached record highs. Moving on to the next page, where we look at our rolling quarter-on-quarter performance. Q4 revenue was 11% lower than Q3, driven by lower volumes in our cash and derivatives markets as well as seasonal decreases in depository fees in Q4. This was partly offset by gains on long-term equity investment valuations and fair value gains from collective investment schemes in Q4 compared with losses in Q3. Q4 profit after tax was 18% lower than Q3, primarily due to the seasonally higher OpEx towards the end of the year. Now let's look at our Q4 performance versus the prior year period. Q4 revenue in 2021 was 7% lower than 2020, attributable to lower fair value gains on our collective investment schemes and reduced interest income, but partly offset by gains on long-term equity investment valuations. Trading and clearing revenues remained broadly flat as higher northbound and LME volumes offset the softness in cash market ADT. Q4 2021 profit after tax was 9% lower against last year, directly linked to the lower overall revenue. Moving on to look at the trend line. Despite the softer volumes in Q4, you can see that we continue the long-term upward trend on both revenue and profit. Q1 2021 profit was significantly above the trend line due to exceptionally buoyant volumes, and Q2 to Q4 volumes returned to normalized levels. Despite lower net investment income due to the low interest rate environment, 2021 profit was at a record high. This demonstrates the resiliency and robustness of our core business and also our cost discipline, which has helped us maintain an attractive EBITDA margin over the last few years. Next, we take a look at the year-on-year performance of our operating segments. We're pleased to report that all segments posted higher revenues year-on-year, which offset the lower net investment income. I would highlight 3 particular drivers, which showed significant growth. Firstly, record headline ADT drove cash market revenue up significantly. Stock Connect volumes continued to perform well with both Northbound and Southbound ADT reaching record highs. As a result, Stock Connect generated record revenue for the fifth consecutive year of $2.7 billion, contributing 13% to group total revenue and other income in 2021. Secondly, depository fees increased by 22% to $1.5 billion, driven by the increase in Stock Connect portfolio fees from higher portfolio values, higher scrip fees from more companies having their book close this year, and higher stock withdrawal fees. Lastly, listing fees were up 15% as the number of newly listed derivative warrants and CBBCs reached record highs, and the IPO pipeline remains strong. Corporate items was down as a result of lower fair value gains on the external portfolio, partly offset by gains on long-term equity investment valuations and higher HKEX Foundation donation income. Moving on to investment income. Net investment income was $1.3 billion, 41% lower than 2020. Net investment income comprises of internally managed corporate funds, margin and clearinghouse funds and an actively managed external portfolio. In 2021, there was a fair value adjustment relating to equity investments of $121 million, which included a valuation adjustment on our holding in Changzhou of $112 million based on its latest valuation. Excluding these fair value gains, internally managed funds were down by $922 million year-on-year due to lower interest rates as reflected by the significant drop in HIBOR overnight 3-month and 12-month rates by 91%, 82% and 68%, respectively, against the prior year. The external portfolio made a gain of $364 million compared with $487 million in the prior year. It has generated a cumulative gain of $2.2 billion since its inception in December 2016. Lastly, let's look at our operating expenses. OpEx was up 2%, reflecting our continued investments in technology infrastructures and strategic initiatives as well as incentives to attract new customer volumes. Overall, this has been a good year for HKEX, and we're very pleased with another set of record results. Looking ahead, we believe Stock Connect will continue to be a key revenue driver and the newly launched MSCI Asia derivative contracts should encourage more fund flows. The IPO pipeline continues to be strong and the introduction of the new listing regime for SPACs and overseas issuers should bring additional benefits. We are well placed to capture future growth opportunities, and we will continue to focus on strong execution of our strategy, which will be supported by further investments in technology, talent and risk management. With that, I'll hand back to Gucho for our business and strategic update.

Thank you very much, Vanessa. As our annual financial results highlight, we continue to deliver a very good robust performance, thanks to a consistent strategy, a focused and dedicated team and the resilience of our organization. The robustness of our core businesses is reflected not only in the 29% rise in our cash market ADT last year, but also in the strength of our derivatives market and the records set across our Connect franchise, with Stock Connect revenues jumping 41% to HKD 2.7 billion. In fact, we saw record ADT levels across all our Connect schemes. Clearly, various macro developments in the region and the continued impact of the global pandemic, all contributed to weaker market sentiment and the market decline in Hong Kong's benchmark indices as we moved into the final months of 2021. These declines, coupled with a spotlight on regulatory changes in China, created a more subdued trading environment that also reduced volatility. Given this, volumes fell back to more normalized levels during the last 2 quarters of the year. That said, our volumes during the year still compare favorably with the longer-term historic trends, which show a steady and consistent increase in activity. These macro and regulatory developments also contributed to a slowdown in momentum in listings after an exceptionally strong first quarter. We were, however, pleased to see the increasing proportion of new economy and biotech companies that make Hong Kong their home market, with these companies accounting for 88% of total IPO funds raised for 2021. In all, we welcomed a total of 98 new listings, including 20 biotech company listings, 5 secondary listings and 6 listings with weighted voting rights structures. We also welcomed 8 U.S.-listed Chinese companies, complete homecoming listings in Hong Kong, including 3 dual primary listings. Importantly, our pipeline remains very healthy and strong. And as at the end of January, we had nearly 150 active listing applications. During the period, HKEX remained focused on developing its business and reinforcing the attractiveness of Hong Kong's market. We proactively undertook a program of new product development, microstructure enhancements as well as new initiatives, all focused on strengthening our position as Asia's global marketplace and setting us very solidly on the right course to capture the many opportunities that we have ahead. In the listing space, we introduced a high-quality SPAC regime and enhanced and streamlined listings for overseas issuers. This gives prospective issuers from Hong Kong, China and around the world, even more channels through which they can raise capital on our markets. We included eligible A shares listed on the STAR Market and corresponding H shares in Stock Connect. We also announced eligible ETFs which soon we included in Stock Connect, and we implemented multiple enhancements to Bond Connect and supported the launch of Southbound Bond Connect. We looked to reinforce HKEX as Asia's premier trading and risk management hub. We launched the MSCI China A 50 Connect Index Futures, underpinning Hong Kong's positions as the region's preferred risk management center. We launched Mini USD Offshore Renminbi futures, and TECH Index Options, and we also announced Derivative Holiday Trading that will go live in April of this year. And we made further enhancements to the ETF Market. During the year, we have also continued to modernize our operations and infrastructure. Among the key highlights we confirmed the launch of FINI, our game-changing solution to shorten the IPO settlement cycle to just 2 days. This will go live in late 2022. We rolled out a new pre-trade risk management system in our derivative markets. We introduced a new LME electronic warranting solution, and we completed the upgrade of multiple core trading systems. Sustainability sat very squarely at the heart of all that we did during the year as a business, as a market operator and as a regulator. Our focus has been very much on supporting the long-term growth of Hong Kong as a leading international financial center, and reinforcing our commitment to the prosperity of all our communities. We have seen an increase in the number of ESG-related bond listings on our market last year, while the HKEX Foundation launched the new HKEX Impact Funding Scheme. Also, the LME added more resources to help participants meet its responsible sourcing requirements. And finally, we were very proud to have joined the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, making a group commitment to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. We also continue to support and educate the market on the importance of good corporate citizenship, ESG factors and also sustainability. We published our practical Net Zero guide for business, launched our ESG Academy, enacted as a vocal and passionate champion for areas such as diversity and good governance. After 9 years in the job, I can safely say that the macro backdrop remains challenging, but there is no doubt in my mind that HKX is very well positioned to drive and embrace new opportunities and to meet them -- and to meet the challenges head on. As I said recently, we have a ringside seat as witnesses of what I like to call the Big Bang of finance and this present HKEX with the most extraordinary opportunities. Looking ahead, our cash market trading volumes have returned to more normalized levels after an exceptionally strong Q1 in 2021, while Stock Connect volumes remained steady. Our IPO pipeline is strong, underpinned by Chinese homecoming listings and the new SPAC regime, which is gaining traction and recognition. But we do have headwinds to manage through. This include persistent inflationary pressures, tightening of monetary policy, upcoming interest rate hikes as well as continuing geopolitical tensions, the current Ukraine situation plus the ongoing pandemic and travel restrictions. We are committed to building a modern, relevant, competitive and attractive marketplace, one that supports businesses and investors, creates jobs and opportunities, powers game-changing technologies and new ideas and leads to a sustainable future focused on our shared success. As such, we will make continued investments in technology, talent and risk management, and this will underpin our focused strategy. I look forward to giving all of you, investors and analysts a full update on our strategy as part of our Corporate Day to be held in late March. More to come on this. So in conclusion, we're very pleased with the good performance of the business. Now more than ever, the world needs more connections, not less. I would like to thank my great HKEX team for their hard and fantastic work over the last year. I look forward to partnering with my colleagues and all of our customers and friends for a fruitful 2022. So I will stop here now and very happy to take some questions.

Thank you very much, Gucho, and Vanessa, for your sharing. And now we'll open for questions. So operator, could you please give the audience instruction again, how to raise questions either via webcast and audio.

[Operator Instructions]

Thank you, operator. So we will take the first question from Gary of HSBC. So Gary, over to you.

Two questions, if I may. Firstly, a small one on A 50. I understand there's a fee waiver. What's our planning to basically end the fee waiver. And can you also quantify that now, we do not directly generate the fee from A 50, thus the activity of that market benefit our primary market transaction as well as maybe Northbound. Have you been doing some of those sort of sideline secondary implications that is favorable to the exchange? Second question on homecoming. Can you better understand, there are, of course, different form of homecoming. One is, of course, IPO. The other being the conversion of the ADR back into Hong Kong. Can you comment on the momentum of that? And primarily because you're definitely seeing the clock is ticking towards the effective of the holding Foreign Company Accountable Act in the U.S. How should we basically gauge the development of that? What are the, for example, difficulties as you are hearing maybe from companies that is currently in the ADR positions, planning to come back the key considerations and the way that we are trying to address them? And then on the GDR conversion, clearly, thanks for the disclosures there in the slides already, but just maybe on a year-to-date perspective, additional process on that would be great.

Okay. Thank you very much, Gary. Let me take your first question on the A 50. And as you know, that product, the MSCI A 50 Connect Index Futures was launched 4 months ago, a very, very successful launch, actually the most successful launch ever had at HKEX. And I believe it's the same situation for MSCI. We saw last Wednesday in the middle of the role at total volume reaching in terms of volume traded over $4.2 billion notional. So it was a really, really good number, but we're still in the early days of this. And yes, the fee waiver will expire at the -- in the middle of this year. And I mean we're looking forward to that product starting to have an impact in our numbers. Of course, the question is also whether this has impact beyond just like the fee itself. And there is a lot of value in creating this A share ecosystem where you can trade and hedge your exposure in the same venue. So it does have an impact in our, let's call it, ecosystem revenues. Besides that, of course, we are already making some revenues as a result of the post-trade activities that take place around that product. So there is, for sure, an impact in our business, very, very positive network effect, I would say. And we look forward to leveraging this in the future as much as possible. So the second part of the question, the homecoming IPOs. I mean, we're very fortunate we have here with us our Head of Listing, Bonnie Chan. So I'm going to let her address that one in detail.

Thank you, Gucho, and thank you, Gary, for your question about homecoming. I would say that the homecoming trend has gained momentum since we introduced Chapter 19C back in 2018. If you recall, that chapter was to enable Mainland companies, which has an overseas listing, say, for example, an NYSE or NASDAQ to come back to Hong Kong for secondary listing, provided that, of course, they meet the requirements contained in that chapter. And since we introduced that chapter, we have seen quite a number of these companies, including, for example, Alibaba, JD, et cetera taking advantage of that chapter to come back. What we have done as a sequel to Chapter 19C is in 2021, we've also completed a consultation exercise on enhancing our overseas listing regime. And one of the proposals in that consultation exercise was to facilitate the migration or the upgrading of these secondary listed companies to a dual primary status. And in fact, as you would have noticed, very recently, a few of these homecoming IPOs have opted for a dual primary listing instead of a secondary listing, XPeng being a very good example of that. And by now, I think the market has appreciated the benefit of doing so, which is that if you are dual primary listed, you are therefore Stock Connect eligible. And in fact, upon XPeng announcing that they became Stock Connect eligible, and that was probably about 2 weeks ago. We noticed -- we saw that their stock price, in fact, popped over 10% intraday. So to answer your question, we -- the homecoming trend, it's very prominent and gaining a lot of momentum. We continue to see a lot of expression of interest by companies listed in the U.S. that they do want to sort of pursue a listing. I would say the trend, it's more tilting towards a dual primary. I think the attraction of Stock Connect inclusion, it's very -- it's a very appealing factor in the consideration of these companies. And I think in 2022, we are most likely going to see a lot more of these homecoming candidates getting traded on our exchange.

Thank you, Gucho and Bonnie for sharing. Next question will come from Yafei from Citibank.

I have 2 questions as well. The first one is to refer to your Slide 24. This is a super useful slide, giving us the migration of secondary listings to Hong Kong. We are seeing a strong trend progressing over the years. So also looking at the very right-hand side of that slide, the Hong Kong Ex trading volume as a percentage of total volume for some of the stocks is still a very small percentage. I think on the sell side, we've all given our own estimates of how much upside there are from further migrations of ADRs and homecoming. Just wanted to hear your thoughts, management thoughts on how much further ADT upside do you think there are from this migration or from incrementally more stocks coming back as a secondary listing? Second part is more referring to the IPO pipeline, that we are seeing, has been relatively sluggish. And the pipeline is healthy, but there has been a little bit absent of the large transaction that we have seen in the past. So just wanted to understand when do you expect that trend to perhaps change? What is stopping some of the key mega deals from coming to the market now in your opinion?

Okay. So the first question around the percentages traded in Hong Kong versus other venues and the impact of homecoming, a few data points just like to give you is the fact that we do see a lot more activity from new economy companies relative to others in terms of like the volume traded when they come to our exchange. And of course, also the mega caps, as you can see in that chart, are the ones that probably do the best. And you can see they are the first 3, 4 names, their evolution since the day of IPO to today, it has improved a lot, and it gained a lot of traction. It's a little bit tougher on the smaller names, but the ones that compose the majority of the trading and the volume and the market cap are the bigger names. I cannot give you a number of how much space there is, but what we know is that most of the activity in our market is actually centered around new economy. So we can -- and we can also see the trend, which is an upwards trend. I mean when does it stop? I mean, it's hard to predict exactly when that will stop. But we look forward for that trend to continue coming to the market. And the more liquidity we have, the more liquidity we'll attract. So this is a little bit of like a snowball effect that the more interest you have in the market, the more interest is generated for others. So that was the first one. The second one which is related to the IPO pipeline. So issuers are constantly monitoring the market. When we look at the pipeline, there's 2 things to consider. These are companies that have filed their A1. So the 2 things to think are one, which ones are the ones that have already been approved and are ready to go out and which are the ones that are going -- that are in the middle of that process. In terms of like the important question that you had is, so what will make them decide to go. And it's a combination of things. One, how much capability do they have of actually doing okay without raising that additional capital. Some companies, they actually do need the extra capital. I mean they can generate great growth opportunities by raising that capital. So they will go a bit independently of where the market is -- or where the markets are. Other companies will probably say it's better to wait for a better environment, and I'll wait for valuations to go up or I'll wait for investors to be a little bit more on a risk-on mode. Today, investors are quite a bit in a risk-off mode, given everything that's going on geopolitically in the globe and the potential questions around inflation expectations and things like that. So it's not going to be uniform for everyone. Some companies are still going out. I mean we've had several offerings in the first 6 weeks of the year. And so we do see every week a new offering or a couple of offerings, but it's true that it's quite a bit more subdued today, and we look forward to the environment normalizing, hopefully soon.

Thank you, Gucho. Next question, we will have Gurpreet from Goldman Sachs Group.

Just want to follow up on an earlier question, I think, from Gary. Specifically focusing on a secondary listed company today, that would want to avail of the new listing norms and want to convert to a dual primary listing in Hong Kong. So let's say, I, as a company hypothetically speaking, are convinced today. So what all do I need to do? I'm guessing more disclosures, et cetera, in line with how Hong Kong Exchange rules are, right? So in your mind, how much time maybe one does that take for the issuer? And that's the first one. And second question maybe is for Vanessa. Very good cost control, we saw with the 2021 results, and that was a positive surprise. Given the outlook, at least from our side that this could also be a challenging year for revenues, what kind of cost outlook are we looking out for? And how does the management balance given that there is need to invest, and we know that Gucho could be presenting a plan next month? So how do you balance both these things?

All right. I'll take the first question, Bonnie here. So the question is how quickly can a company upgrade themselves from a secondary listing to a dual primary status and how long it would take. I think in order to answer that question, maybe I should take a minute to explain the difference between the secondary listing and a dual primary listing. The key difference actually lies with the ongoing obligations between the 2 status. If you are a dual primary-listed issuer, essentially, you have to comply with the whole set of listing rules in terms of your ongoing obligations, including, for example, how you handle connected transactions, putting them to a shareholder -- independent shareholders board, that's the requirement under our Chapter 14A. Whereas for a secondary listing, we take the view that because you have another primary regulator. We defer to that set of primary regulator to be primarily responsible in regulating you. And therefore, as a result, when they -- the secondary listed issuer can gain -- get a lot of waivers from the ongoing obligations. Now that I've explained the difference, I can go on to explain the process. As a result of that difference, what it entails for a company to upgrade themselves from a secondary-listed status to a primary is effectively for them to come to us and tell us whether or not they are happy to just give up all their waivers or if they still do want to retain certain waivers say, for example, a connected transaction-related waiver. They will apply to us for a bespoke, a stand-alone one-off waiver. And once that process is done, then effectively, they can upgrade themselves. I would say that we have already received a lot of indication of interest from a number of these secondary-listed issuers who want to convert into a dual primary status. And therefore, they are working -- I think they're working through with their adviser to figure out whether or not they can just give up all their waivers on a full-blown manner or whether or not they would still want to retain certain waivers. And that's the process that they are going through. So all in all, it wouldn't be a very long-winded process. It will be, I would say, measured in terms of weeks as opposed to months. And we -- I think without -- obviously, citing real examples, you should be able to see some development in that regard very soon in the year.

And Gurpreet, I'll take the question on OpEx. I think the way to think about how we manage our OpEx and indeed, our CapEx is on a long-term basis. So if you look at our OpEx in the last 5 years, we've grown at about 6%. So last year, the growth, as you mentioned, 2% only is low. But we look at all of this on a long term. So if we think about where we are now, we need to continue to invest in a number of key areas, including talent and IT infrastructures and also risk management. Now as everybody knows, the fight for talent is now on, especially in Hong Kong, so the costs are actually going up, but we can't stop here. So although we cannot control every day what happens to the market volumes, what is within our control is actually how we manage our investments, both in OpEx and CapEx. And to deliver on our strategy, we need to continue to invest in these areas. And if you look at what we have done in managing our long-term trend, all these investments in terms of talent, in terms of upgrading our systems has resulted in a very positive upward trend, revenue was up 12% a year in the last 5 years, profit up 14% annually. So it's a long-term story. So whatever happens this year, last year was a great year. This year, we're seeing lower volumes now, which will likely persist into the quarter, if not beyond. We will continue with our long-term investments because this is what we need in order to deliver the long-term value for our shareholders.

Thank you, Bonnie and Vanessa. Next question, we will have Michael from BoA.

This is Michael Li calling from Bank of America Securities. I have 2 questions, maybe about big pictures. So the first thing is about liquidity in Hong Kong. I know that I mean, homecoming listing and more IPOs from Mainland China, this definitely is a good change. But there is also some concerns on liquidity in Hong Kong, which is about like 5% of U.S. turnover every day. So what are the measures could Hong Kong Exchange or Hong Kong government take to improve the liquidity in Hong Kong, more inflow from Southbound or cut down duty tax? So this is the first question. The second question is about IPO strategy. So certainly, we had a very, very successful IPO reform in 2018. We attracted a lot of Internet companies. But now that Chinese government encourages more like smaller companies with hardcore technologies or advanced manufacturing, these kind of companies to get listed. So any measures we will take to attract this kind of companies to Hong Kong? And as these companies are usually small cap companies and traditionally, Hong Kong investors are not interested in small cap companies. What can Hong Kong exchange do to help those companies to get listed in Hong Kong and attract investors?

Okay. So thank you, Michael, for your question. As it relates to liquidity, you're absolutely right. That is like a key area of focus for us in the sense that it's very important for the growth of the market that we have the right liquidity. And as I mentioned before, liquidity attracts liquidity in itself. So we have to do to make sure that we invest in this. What we're doing around it is making sure that we build an ecosystem around the whole set of financial assets that will encourage people to actually operate in this market, trade in this market and fundamentally on anything related to China. So we talked about the MSCI A 50 Connect Index and how that can possibly have a good impact in the whole infrastructure. But then you have other areas, ETFs is one that we've been doing quite a bit. You've seen that ETF volume for Hong Kong ETFs actually doubled in 2021. And that is also helping the whole market. And we -- you've seen also what we've been doing around, for example, biotech. It's not about just the listing, then we're trying to create a biotech index and ETF that is also helpful in enhancing the volume. Other things, we're just facilitating how people interact. I'll give you another good example that was just mentioned by the FS yesterday. I mean the idea of allowing, for example, Southbound Stock Connect to trade directly in renminbi is also another example that should encourage people to -- if they can invest directly in renminbi, that should also encourage their activities because today, what they have to do is they have to fix the price in Hong Kong dollars, and they have a transaction that is initially quoted in renminbi, but they will only know at the next day what is the trading price. So it's a really cumbersome process. So making sure that you're working the whole ecosystem, and we've also been changing some of the microstructures around, for example, holiday trading, trying to make it easier for people to head some of our offshore products when there is a holiday in Hong Kong, that's also another activity. So we have to continue looking at all the elements that compose this infrastructure, including our structured products, which you know it's like the largest structured product market in the world that also will come into play. So all those things make the market hopefully more vibrant, more healthy, and we have a lot of work to do on this front, but it's a key priority for us. And the second question was -- I think it was a continuation of listing -- technology. Okay. So yes, I mean the issue of technology, once again, let me also mention now the announcement by FS yesterday around large-scale advanced technology company. These are companies that may or may not have revenues, I mean, mostly with almost no revenues, but they are large scale because they're doing large projects with huge potential, a lot of investments in R&D. And so the thought and the proposal and the work group that has been set up to work on this is to try to create a new chapter where people can actually have those companies accessing the market. These are companies that -- as I said, they may be large in market cap but small in terms of revenue because, I mean, if you're working on something that will only have revenues in 3, 4, 5 years, but don't fit into the biotech chapter, today, you really don't have a good way of operating. And what we're trying to do, we're seeing more and more companies of this type out there. We're trying to make sure that we can attract those companies. So I don't know if I fully addressed your last question there.

Cool. Thank you very much, Gucho. I think that's the end of our session today. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining all of us today and wish you a good health, and have a very good evening. Thank you.