Highlights (Unaudited related data for the six months ended 28 February 2022, Unit: RMB) Revenue increased by 48.4% YoY to approximately RMB822.6 million; Adjusted net profit attributable to owners of the Company increased by 32.0% to approximately RMB264.0 million; Interim dividend is HK8.4 cents per share; Number of student enrolments increased by 22.3% YoY to approximately 76,300; Completed the acquisition of 100% stake in Guangdong Huashang Technical School, consolidation of its financial results began from early 2022

(26 April 2022, Hong Kong) Edvantage Group Holdings Limited (“Edvantage Group” or the “Group”, stock code: 0382.HK), the largest private business higher and vocational education group in the Greater Bay Area, announced its unaudited interim results of FY2022 for the 6 months ended 28 February 2022 (“Reporting Period”). During the Reporting Period, based on the strong support of national policies for the vocational education businesses of the Group, as well as its adherence to school running with high compliance and high quality and by closely following national policies, the Group recorded robust performance growth. With improved quality of school running, the education brand has become increasingly prominent.
 
Fulfilled corporate social responsibilities and actively repay society
During the Reporting Period, while the Group focused on school operations, it has also actively fulfilled its corporate social responsibilities. In terms of COVID-19 containment, the Group has donated an initial amount of HK$1 million in February 2022 in support of and contribute to COVID-19 containment efforts of the Hong Kong government and society. In terms of rural revitalisation and common prosperity, the Group has launched the “Huashang Livestream for Farmers”, a programme to revitalise rural areas through livestream sales promotion for agricultural product, both to open up sales channels for agricultural products of farmers, and to nurture hands-on ability and social responsibility of students. To incentivise students, the Group has set up over 50 internal scholarship programmes for students. During the last four school years, the Group has awarded over RMB60 million in scholarships to over 490,000 students, which proved to be incentives to students to improve their general performance.


Smooth progress has been made in industry-education integration with the leading enterprises, national vocational education policy granted strong support
The Group has worked with leading enterprises in the fields of big health, digital culture, digital creativity, education and accounting to cultivate application-oriented and skilled elites with international vision. During the Reporting Period, the Group signed a cooperation agreement on vocational education in medical cosmetology with Lansee, a comprehensive technology group in the beauty industry, to cultivate high-quality medical cosmetologists in medical cosmetology that cater to the needs of the industry. Urban Vocational College of Sichuan (“Urban Vocational College”) led the establishment of a vocational education group specialising in smart health and elderly care in Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, facilitating the formation of a new pattern of elderly care in the Chengdu-Chongqing region. In addition, Guangzhou Huashang College (“Huashang College”), Guangzhou Huashang Vocational College (“Huashang Vocational College”) entered into a cooperation agreement with Shenzhen CMGE Network Technology Co., Ltd., the world’s top mobile game developers and publisher, to jointly train and cultivate application-oriented and skilled international talents in the field of digital culture and digital creativity. Concurrently, Huashang Vocational College collaborated with Shenzhen Dianmao Technology Co., Ltd. to establish the “school of early childhood education industry”, aiming to train high-calibre talents to meet the needs for high-quality development and innovation of the early childhood education industry. In addition, Huashang College collaborated with Rongzhi Sharing Technology and China Distance Education to jointly build Huashang Cloud Accounting Industry School (Operation Centre), a financial cloud sharing training base, to cultivate integrated financial talents.
 
 
Trained highly competitive talents in an innovative way by promoting learning through competitions and promoting teaching through lectures
During the Reporting Period, the Group continuously explored innovative and differentiated school operations, striving to provide students with diversified teaching services. The Group upholds the innovative educational philosophy of “promoting learning through competitions” and “promoting teaching through lectures”. Huashang College and Huashang Vocational College teamed up with schools in Sichuan and overseas schools to hold many competitions at home and abroad and lectures on innovation and entrepreneurship, such as an online communication activity for young people in the Greater Bay Area, CMGE Shenhui Cup design competition, an international elite planning competition and a digital marketing competition, aiming to cultivate highly competitive talents via tying schools at home and abroad, and promote the technological innovation and development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle.
 
Overseas inclusion programme achieved notable result, students and teachers are highly empowered by international school education, cultivate talents with international vision to serve the society
During the Reporting Period, the Group’s 9 schools at home and abroad were highly integrated, and overseas high-quality teaching resources efficiently empowered domestic schools. The Group actively created overseas inclusion classrooms, held lectures for students and teachers, introduced high-quality overseas programmes, and launched dual-degree programmes. In the past three semesters, the number of teachers and students participating in the overseas inclusion programme has grown rapidly, from 115 in the Autumn 2020 Semester to 5,504 in the Autumn 2021 Semester. Moreover, Chinese schools have also introduced the certificate system for the overseas inclusion programme to encourage teachers and students to enhance their competitiveness in various aspects. With the gradual expansion of the overseas inclusion programme, it will strongly and effectively boost the international school running brand of Edvantage.
 
Multi-pronged approach to ensure the employment rate and employment quality of graduates
During the Reporting Period, in order to ensure the employment rate and employment quality of graduates, the Group has actively organised two-way selection recruitment fairs, targeted career counselling lectures and online and offline job fairs. The employment rate of Huashang Vocational College’s graduates was nearly 99%, making the college come out on top among colleges and universities of the same kind in the province. Urban Vocational College’s graduates achieved an employment rate of 95%. It is worth mentioning that a total of nearly 500 graduates from Huashang College in 2021 joined the world’s top 500 and China’s top 100 companies, accounting for approximately 5% of the year’s total number of graduates, representing an increase of approximately 0.7 percentage points year-on-year from 4.3% in the preceding year. Apart from the improvement in the quality of students, the Group, which adheres to the strategy of “growing schools with talents”, also attaches great importance to the establishment of a faculty team, with efforts made in talent introduction and training, improvement of the occupational development mechanism for teachers and so forth to enhance the overall level of teachers in many aspects.
 
Future development
Looking ahead, the Group actively follows the direction of China’s economic development. It cooperates with leading enterprises in the industry to deepen the industry-education integration and cultivate application-oriented and skilled talents with an international vision to better cater to enterprises’ needs for talents. It will fully contribute to the realisation of the national target of “ranking vocational education among the best in the world and basically establishing a skilled society by 2035”. The Group will uphold the philosophy of school operations with high quality and high compliance and continue to actively explore innovative and differentiated school running models to build a high-standard education brand of Edvantage. Efforts will be made to vigorously develop non-formal vocational education while maintaining steady growth in formal vocational education in collaboration with leading enterprises, and effectively combine asset-light and asset-heavy operations to improve operation benefits, with a view to achieving high-quality and sustainable development and create sustainable value for shareholders.