(Image source: Visual China)

Recently, Neusoft Education announced its 2023 annual results, with annual revenue of 1,806 billion yuan, an increase of 16.6% over the previous year; company owners should account for about 429 million yuan in adjusted net profit.

Full-time academic higher education has developed in a connotative manner, with outstanding achievements in running schools

According to financial reports, Neusoft Education achieved annual revenue of about RMB 1,806 billion, compared with revenue of RMB 1,548 billion, up 16.6% year on year; Neusoft Education's gross profit was about RMB 865 million, up 29.7% year on year; company owners should account for adjusted net profit of about RMB 429 million, up 12.6% year on year; and basic profit per share was RMB 0.66 yuan, up 11.9% year on year. The dividend ratio was greatly increased in 2023, and the dividend per share increased 121.8% year over year to HK36.6 cents.

Among them, during the reporting period, full-time higher education increased by 23.7% year-on-year. The comprehensive strength and brand influence of the three universities operated by Neusoft Education has been further enhanced, attracting more high-quality students while maintaining a high registration rate. By the end of 2023, the total number of students enrolled in the three schools was nearly 57,000, an increase of about 7.5% over the same period in 2022, reaching another record high. In 2023, Dalian University once again won the first prize of the National Vocational Education Teaching Achievement Award, and is the only first prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award received by Liaoning Province in the field of vocational education. Furthermore, according to data released by the education administration department's employment management system, as of the end of 2023, the implementation rate of the 2023 graduation destination of Dalian University and Chengdu University both exceeded 95%, and the graduation destination implementation rate for 2023 graduates of Guangdong University reached 90%, once again demonstrating Neusoft Education's continuous high-quality contextual development and innovative industry-education integration achievements.

Technological empowerment provides strong support, and the quality and efficiency of the “two-wing business” have both increased

In 2023, Neusoft Education followed the trend of digital transformation in education, with technology empowering education as the main line. Relying on more than 20 years of experience in the IT field, Neusoft Education developed a series of digital education products, forming a comprehensive characteristic 4S product matrix from platform to content, from software to hardware, providing strong support for the expansion of the two wings of the business.

During the reporting period, Neusoft Education released the first metaverse smart health future education platform, launched a special training product that served the competition standards - Neusoft Smart Training System series software, and received widespread attention from dozens of domestic universities. On the basis of integrating and upgrading the original training room, various training rooms such as driverless training rooms, e-commerce big data training rooms, and transportation big data training rooms have been released, forming 23 smart training room products for ten major professional fields such as computers, artificial intelligence, health care, big data, Internet of Things, software development, intelligent applications, and metaverse, to provide customers with integrated practical training solutions. In addition, Neusoft Education gave full play to the advantages of the OMO education model and developed and launched multiple online education platforms, including Neusoft Education Online and Neusoft IT Cloud Academy, to build an “online course+practical training+employment and entrepreneurship” online and offline education ecosystem. As of December 31, 2023, Neusoft Education Online had more than 1.7 million registered users and more than 150,000 course learning users.

Relying on the characteristic 4S product service system, the 2023 education resource export business sold 112 sets of education and teaching platforms and 19 sets of training room products and supporting teaching content to 104 colleges and institutions during the reporting period; in addition, the company deepened large-scale and high-profit professional co-construction cooperation and launched industrial college and professional co-construction cooperation with 62 institutions, covering a total of 280 cooperative projects, covering about 24,000 students.

In 2023, the Group further expanded its continuing education service business. The 2B training business has obtained more than 70 national, provincial and municipal training base qualifications, and implemented 166 2B training programs for 70 institutions in 20 provincial regions across the country, covering about 25,000 students, and the number of participants has tripled from 2022. Continue to expand the 2C training business brand coverage and online and offline delivery methods. The number of trainers is about 25,000 people throughout the year. In addition, in 2023, it was successfully approved as the first batch of pilot units for the construction of national universities for the elderly and co-construction units for national universities for the elderly.

Policy support has been strengthened, and the future prospects of the industry can be expected

In terms of macroeconomic policy, the country proposes to give full play to the leading role of innovation and accelerate the development of new quality productivity. As a new type of productivity, “artificial intelligence” has become the consensus of all walks of life to carry out the “AI+” initiative. On March 28, the Ministry of Education launched the Artificial Intelligence Empowerment Education Campaign to inject new momentum into education development by implementing the “Four Major Actions” around artificial intelligence general education education, the intelligent upgrade of the national smart education platform, the application demonstration of a large-scale model for education, and going overseas for digital education.

Neusoft Education complied with the policy and developed a large model training room. Neusoft Education said that the LLM+RAG knowledge base system in the training room achieved multi-modal understanding based on images, text, etc. uploaded by users, and completed answers to users' questions around the uploaded materials, thereby completing the collection, organization, and creation, training, and application of the knowledge base. Specific implementation details include Big Language Model (LLM), enhanced search generation (RAG), knowledge base system construction, and knowledge base system training. It is scheduled to be released in early May. Neusoft Education's Artificial Intelligence Product Research and Development Center is already involved in “artificial intelligence+education/medical/transportation” products and is developing products related to “artificial intelligence+industry applications”.

Furthermore, in the context of the national implementation of the “Education, Cultural Tourism and Medical Equipment Renewal” policy, Neusoft Education is building a software and hardware training environment supporting the teaching system, intelligent management platforms, and related practical training teaching cases and resources, and launched a series of core products in the direction of “IT+ digital media+health care technology”. Under the National Digital Literacy and Skills Enhancement Action Plan, Neusoft Education has developed and built 373 online courses for college customers, government and enterprise customers and learners by organizing public service themed lectures and planning teacher literacy contests. Relying on Neusoft IT Cloud Academy for teachers and students, it has developed and built 373 online courses around the needs of the digital economy to provide online learners with effective ways to improve their digital literacy and skills; at the same time, it continues to carry out special technical training and certification on digital literacy improvement through Neusoft Education Online, and continues to pay attention to the dynamic needs of new occupations and new business format groups to explore and develop more digital literacy Improve training.

While the country is vigorously implementing strategic actions to digitize education and vocational education has ushered in many favorable policies, the “silver hair economy” has grown rapidly, spawning a broad market space for health care and geriatric education.

Facing the future, Neusoft Education will continue to build a new integrated development ecosystem of “education+technology+medical care”, and is committed to becoming a leading education and health technology innovation service provider in China. Strengthen the “integrated” academic education business, improve the quality of running schools, cultivate high-quality applied digital talents with a sense of social responsibility, innovative spirit, international vision and strong practical ability; expand the “two wings”, that is, education resource export business and continuing education services, and build a 2B/2C integrated smart education platform, digital creative platform and smart health care platform; innovate and improve products and service solutions based on the 4S service model to develop and optimize the two wings Large-scale business development; actively expand the geriatric education and geriatric rehabilitation business fields, closely integrate the individual needs of the elderly in the fields of learning, social networking, health, etc., create a characteristic “LIFECARES” new model of geriatric education, and form an innovative ecosystem with a high degree of interaction, sharing and integration of teaching, medicine, and nursing.