Lufax Holding Ltd (NYSE:LU) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 22, 2024 9:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Xinyan Liu - Head of Board Office and Capital Markets
Yong Cho - Co-CEO & Chairman of the Board
Gregory Gibb - Co-CEO & Director
David Choy - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Emma Xu - Bank of America Securities
Chiyao Huang - Morgan Stanley
Yada Li - CICC

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Lufax Holding Limited First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] After the management's prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. Please note, this event is being recorded.

Now I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Ms. Liu Xinyan, the company's Head of Board Office and Capital Markets. Please go ahead, madam.

Xinyan Liu

Thank you very much, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Our quarterly financial and operating results were released by our newswire services earlier today and are currently available online.

Today, you will hear from our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Y.S. Cho, who will provide an update of the macroeconomic trends and the recent development and the strategy of our business. Our co-CEO, Mr. Greg Gibb, will then go through our first quarter results and provide more details on our business priorities. Afterwards, our CFO, Mr. David Choy, will offer a closer look into our financials before we open up the call for questions.

Before we continue, I would like to refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call as we will be making forward-looking statements.

With that, I'm now pleased to turn over the call to Mr. Y.S. Cho, Chairman and CEO of Lufax, please.

Yong Cho

Thank you for joining today's call. In the first quarter, we witnessed an improvement in our early risk indicators. However, high-quality loan demand from small business owners remained subdued. While our increased risk exposure stemming from our 100% guarantee model means, we'll be prudent and patient in new business development. Our emphasis continues to be on quality over quantity.

Before diving into business performance, let's take a look at the macro environment. Overall, the environment showed signs of improvement during the first quarter. The Purchasing Managers' Index or our PMI, which measures prevailing trends in the manufacturing and service industries, both trended positively. The index increased from 49 in December 2023, to 50.8 in March 2024 for manufacturing, while it increased from 49.3 to 52 for services.