To Kingdee International Software Group Company Limited, 2023 interim result announcement. Before we begin, let me introduce the management representative. They are Kingdee Guoji Ruanjianjituan Youxian Gongsi, Dongshihui Zhuxi Jian Shouxi Zhixingguan, Xu Shao Chun Xianxian. Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Robert Xu. Zhixing Dongshi, Shouxi Caiwuguan, Lin Bo Xianxian. Executive Director, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Bo Ling. Kingdee Zhongguo Zongcai, Zhang Yong Xianxian. President of Kingdee Software China, Mr. Jason Zhang. Touzi zhe guanxi bu zongjingli, Wu Chao Xianxian. General Manager of IR Department, Mr. Rex Wu . Now, let's give the floor to Mr. Bo Ling to introduce the Kingdee's interim performance and development strategy in 2023. Welcome.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Lin Bo from Kingdee. I'm the CFO. I visit Hong Kong for a long, for many times, I know a lot of you sitting here. Thank you again for supporting us. My presentation today could be divided into four parts. First, I will talk about the financial overview. Then I will talk about Kingdee Cloud. I will look into the markets of China's enterprise SaaS. Finally, there is appendix of these financial statements. In the first half of 2023, our group revenue is RMB 2.57 billion, up by 16.8% year-on-year. The subscription ARR stands at RMB 2.54 billion, up by 36.3% year-on-year. Cloud service revenue registers RMB 2.04 billion, up by 21.5% year-on-year.
The net loss attributable to shareholders is RMB 284 million, down by 20.5%, and the cash and cash equivalents reaches RMB 3.83 billion, so it is very safe and sound. Let's look at some of our businesses in the first half of 2023. We still commit to, we still commit to the platform plus talent, plus HR, plus ecosystem, and our aim is to build the capability of digitalize, digitalize management for enterprises. This year, we've achieved a lot of honors. We have been ranked number 1 in terms of ESG rating in the sustainability book 1 on 2 by S&P Global. We also ranked number 1 in China's SaaS EPM market by IDC, and it is notably saying that we are actually ranking among top 10 as a hybrid ERP platforms provider for 17 years.
Have served over half of China's top 500 companies. We can also see that our clients, more and more of our clients are SMEs. We have served many technological advanced SMEs. They are very dynamic and energetic in terms of development. Our staff headcount is 11,968, up by 200% year-on-year. As compared to end of last year, this number has increased. Now let's look at financial overview. We can say that since 2017, in addition to 2020, when we are influenced by the pandemic, you can see that our CAGR reached 20%. It is because that we have been committed to our subscription-based business model, which has brought us a stable development. Previously, a lot of people paid attention to Kingdee.
Actually, people are, are saying now whether, what kind of company we are? Are we a product-based company or a subscription-based company? Here you can see in this picture, our growth is double-digit, but the headcount is actually. The, the increased rate of the headcount is decreasing. I've also stressed that these several years are actually representing a turning point for us. Here is our financial summary. As I mentioned before, our group revenue has increased by a little shy of 17%. In terms of net operating cash, cash flow, it is minus 169 million RMB. That's better than last year. The net profit attributable to shareholders is minus 284 million RMB.
For Kingdee, actually, the second half, second half of the year's revenue will be higher than the first half. We believe that we can still maintain the momentum. Our cash flow could reach a very high level. We will also consider about the subscription fee, subscription fee paid by our customers, and we are very confident that our operating operating cash flow could reach over RMB 600 million, and the CAGR rate is expected to be 50%. We are very confident about that based on our sub, our performance in subscription business. Now let's look at the cloud services as well as the share of cloud services. We are promoting our cloud transformation.
As you can see here, the share of our cloud services among all the businesses has reached 79.5%, up by 21.5% to compare with previous years. For the subscription ARR, it has increased by 33.3% year-on-year to RMB 2.54 billion. The macroeconomy has influenced our cloud subscription business a little bit, but I think the momentum is still there. This year, we have seen some of the changes in the industry, but we are still confident about our future development. The financial structure and the financial performance for the subscription business will be better and better in the future. Here is our operating expenses.
With the rise of our revenues, you can see the operating expenses has been decreased, has been adjusted a little bit, because we have delivered a lot of products to our clients. You can see the operating expenses are kind of decreasing. Let's look at the S&M. S&M, sales and marketing expense, it has been down by 3.3 percentage points, reaching 44.8%. For G&A, it has been decreased by 1.4 percentage point. For the R&D expense, although the absolute value is still increasing by 6.6%, however, to compare with the previous years, in terms of the share of R&D expenses, it has been decreased by 2.8 percentage point, because we have adjusted our structure a little bit.
In the future, the structure of our expense will be more rational. In the future, we will, we will shrink further our share of operating expenses. Now let's look at the Kingdee Cloud. Before this meeting, we have shown you a lot of videos about our clients, inter clients, so you can see we have a large customer base. That's-- I hope that could provide you with a new perspective to look at us. First of all, let me show you a little bit about the Cosmic, Kingdee Cosmic. The total contract value is CNY 550 million, new customer is 297, and the ARR growth is 95.9%, and NBR is 108%. The growth is very optimistic, however, it is still a little shy of our expected results.
Here are some of our important clients we have signed this year. For example, like China Building Material is a state-owned enterprise. We also have iFlytek, Midea, and Omic. Here you can see we have helped a lot of state, state-owned enterprises to, to shift to a domestically made software to manage their enterprise. We have helped 177 enterprises in China to, to do that this year. We believe that Kingdee Cloud Cosmic GPT is the best generative AI for enterprise management. Technology is developing fast, and we will always keep up with the updated technology. Of course, we will be very, we will be very vigilant about that. We will also cooperate with other enterprises in the industry. We haven't invested a lot in model layer.
We are actually cooperating with those enterprises providing generative AI, for example, like Baidu, Microsoft, Huawei, and so on. We are putting our capability mainly on service layer and capability layer. With experience, years of experience during the past 30 years in terms of management enterprises, we are actually focusing on the services capability. A lot of people are worried about the safety of using this kind of generative AI. We can assure you that all the data will be stored locally. Some technology details and next in technologies. In our celebration of the 30th year birthday, we've invited many experts to our celebration. I also noticed that some of you sitting here today have attended that conference. In that conference, we have presented a lot of our achievements, AI achievements, to all the attendees.
In the future, we'll have more opportunities like this to help you experience our technology. I think AI has brought us new opportunities for growth in the future. Through the Cosmic GPT, we also have a finance feature. We have established finance AI assistant. These are actually practical application of AI.
For example, the application of AI in finance, in HR. Let's take AI assistant as an example. Previously, the assistant can only do preset A, Q&A, but now they can understand intention and to generate answers. For example, previously, if you ask a question about the reimbursement of the travel fees, in the previous model, the assistant needs to resort to a lot of different data and then analyze, but now it can do it in a very fast way. It can understand the intention of the questions being asked.
I will not give you further illustration on that. Maybe in the future, you can, you can experience this feature by ourselves. Here is an example about our collaboration with Guangdong Airport. We have helped them to improve the efficiency of approval time. Their report production time has been shortened by 47%, and the monthly settlement time has been shortened by 30%. We, we have also provided them GPT customer service. Previously, the customer service is kind of slow. They would only use the word search in a big database, but now this whole process has been simplified with GPT customer service. This is Cosmic GPT plus HR. We have also shown this feature in our celebration previously held.
For example, now this new feature can make recommendation for the HR. They will also tell you some of the logics or reasons behind the selection or decision made by the AI, so as to make the profiling more complete and comprehensive. It will also take into account of the internal or external environment of the enterprise. Here is an example with Hisense. In Hisense, we have helped them to rebuild enterprise management. We not only provide them with the assistance for those experts, it can also help the enterprise to make decisions, to help everyone working in the enterprise to make better decisions. This slide is about Cosmic GPT Plus development. In the area of development, I think GPT is doing really well.
If you have ever paid attention to the generative AI, you, you may know that this generative AI has understood data analysis, process development, coding. It can help us to form construction, compile code, and to write remarks or comments, which can simplify the process of development. It can also decrease the error rate. All in all, Cosmic GPT is actually rebuilding the enterprise digital power, especially in terms of rebuilding experience, rebuilding assignment, and rebuilding decision-making. Experience is very important for clients. In the past, we see that a lot of enterprises, that the leadership team hasn't used the software very often. They, they will only collect the data from the, their assistant or the staff. Now, with it, with, with Cosmic GPT, the management team can get the data by him or herself.
It's like dialoguing, having dialogues with a real person, and this real person is real is so knowledgeable that, so that he or she can answer you literally any question you ask. Let's move on to the next part. I will talk about the Kingdee Cloud Galaxy. The customer base is 34,000, and the NDR is 96%. It is a little bit fluctuating, but still remaining a high level. ARR growth is 28.6%, and operating margin is over 20%. In Galaxy, here on the slide, you may be worried about the active usage, the active subscription among the SMEs, but here you can see, we, actually, among those, these client base, we've done really well. For example, here are some of our clients on the slide.
Yeah.This year, AI is a buzzword. So here I've listed some of the AI enterprises, which are also our clients, for example, like iFlytek and many other companies like Phytium and BeiGene Technology, Sun AI, and so on. It proves that we have, indeed, serve a lot of technological advanced in SMEs, and those companies are very profitable. We have also got other clients like Tongwei and Xingyue Haizhi, and they're actually focusing on the optic membrane. We also have other clients like Roche and many other enterprises in other fields. Our clients are located in different fields, and they are all very dynamic. Since the launch of Galaxy, I said our expected customer base should reach 40,000, and now we've already approaching that target.
Why would I give you an introduction about Galaxy? I really want all the investors to know better about our pattern or momentum of development. At the very beginning, since the launch of Galaxy, this, since 2020, the OPM is only 7%, but now it's 28%. We also have Galaxy flagship. With the 34,000 With the enlarging client base, we believe the OPM will increase further in the future. The clients for Galaxy are actually, most of them are SMEs. We believe Constellation will move a little bit slower. Maybe the road in ahead for Constellation is tougher. However, that is our direction of efforts. Still, let's circle back to Galaxy. We are actually exploring after opportunities.
You can see now, Galaxy customers with annual fee over RMB 100K, has contributed to about 40% of the Galaxy ARR. To compare with to 2022, you can see that not only for the AI enterprises or the PV enterprises, they are growing. The share of the customer with annual fee over RMB 100K, will be larger and larger in the future, because we have always done an upsell for these loyal customers. Those customers with annual fee over RMB 100K, is not only increasing in number, but also the total share of these batch of customers is increasing all the time. Here, about the Jingdou Cloud, the customer base is 39,000, NDR is 89% for Kingdee Cloud Stellar.
For the Jingdou Cloud, the customer base is 279,000, and NDR is 85%. You can see all of these stats on the slide. Among our- all of our clients, those... All the, all the SMEs are very vital, they are very dynamic. Now comes the third part, the outlook of China enterprise SaaS market. Let's look at the platform as a service, PaaS. These are some of our analysis on the slide. According to our estimation, we believe that the product TAM for PaaS could reach CNY 2, 23 billion by 2030. Our focus may be in the application, infrastructure and middleware PaaS, AI or AI PaaS. For China financial software SaaS market outlook, of course, these data are from Gartner.
According to the estimation, the product TAM could reach CNY 47.5 billion. In this area, this is actually our core capability. We will cover all of these links, like the financial, financial close, financial management, and accounting part. We will cover all of these pillars in finance. For HR software as a service market, by 2030, the TAM, product TAM could reach CNY 44 billion. That's a large market. We've collaborated with Huawei, and we want to help them to address their pain points in terms of the transformation of their business. I think our product, in terms of HR, is very competitive. In terms of building a win-win ecosystem, we have collaborated with Xinhua Xing Renjian shareholder, a stockholding company, and we are also cooperating with UI, Handling Information, and KDMG.
Now, 147 enterprises are developing their own product solution based on our Cosmic, Cloud Cosmic platform. We also have a Xu Shao Chun public account. It is being used to enhance customer life cycle experience. We want to develop our new culture. We want to be customer-focused. Customer always comes the first. We also want to make better products to be delivered to the customers and to improve the satisfaction among them. The launch of public account of Xu Shao Chun has improved the customer satisfaction. For example, we have received 385 customer appreciation letters, and the complaints have been reduced. The appreciation from the customers has been increased. For subscription ARR, as for the three-year target, as you can see here, to comply with the guide, we have adjusted a little bit.
Based on our expectation over the environment, macro environment, we have adjusted our target a little bit lower to CNY 3 billion. I hope that investors can pay more attention to the operating cash flow. We are very confident that our operating cash flow could reach CNY 600 million, and in the future, 2-3 years, we believe the CAGR for that could reach 50%. I think that is very natural for us if we can commit to... if we can stick to our business model and the layout of our business in more cities. We need to sustain our operation. We need to do the operation in a sustainable way. There are a lot of trusted products, for example, CNY 3 billion-CNY 4 billion, we have put them in a deposit account.
We haven't invested those into those high-risk products or derivatives. That is all my sharing, and thank you again for your support and your care. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lin. Now, the floor is open for questions. If you have any questions, please feel free to raise that. Before you ask, please tell us your name and the company you come from.
Thank you for giving me this chance. I'm a researcher, David, from Merrill Lynch. First of all, I want to say congratulations to all the performance you've achieved. I have 2 questions. First is about the target of ARR. You said you have adjusted that a little bit lower, but still, the absolute growth rate is still very high. It's 44%. But in the first half of the year, it was 36%, so it's still increasing. What is the driving force behind this increase of ARR? The second question is about the strategy to develop big clients among big companies. We know that Cosmic Constellation are developing really fast against the fierce competition.
We can see many enterprises are entering this battlefield. What is your strategy to develop big clients or key accounts? For example, will you categorize your accounts into super large accounts or large accounts, and how do you categorize them by?
First, let me answer your second question about the key accounts. Since 2020, Kingdee has made more efforts to develop key, key accounts, those large companies, and we have made breakthroughs in those super big companies, and we have launched the products for them, for example, like Huawei, Yixintang , and so on.
Last year, we have signed agreement, contracts with Shanxi Guoliu and China Construction Bank. I think the launch of these products and the signing of the contracts with those big companies have been a testimony for their trust for us. We have, we have also collaborated with Lihuo. In August 1st, we can see that our product is better than ICT products they originally used. In the future, Kingdee will speed up our efforts in big company, and we will focus on several fields. For example, manufacturing of equipment, and another one is bioscience or Medicare, and the third field is new energy. Previously, our focus would be tobacco as well as the real estate industry. We will still make efforts in those industries.
This year we've helped 177 enterprises to use our products and to transform their business. We are very experienced in this regard. After we established collaboration with those super large enterprise, like China Construction Bank and Yixintang . Yesterday, there was a news saying that Microsoft stopped their service to Russia. I think that's a very major event, which will speed up the Chinese enterprises to consider about how to consider to adopt a domestically made enterprises. The Chinese market is very large, and previously, the Chinese software, SaaS or PaaS market, is actually dominated by the international counterparts. Maybe in the future, I hope that more and more enterprises can adopt domestically made software.
We in Kingdee will make more efforts in terms of recruitment of their talents and to develop our products. We hope that in the future, 2 or 3 years, we can have more breakthroughs among the big clients. As for the first question, we've actually asked, we've actually assessed all the orders we've achieved in the first half of the year. After June and July, I think in June and July, we have, we have achieved, we have achieved beyond our expectations, so that is why we give a 44% as our ARR growth expectation.
Thank you for giving me this chance to ask the question. I'm Dan Bing, and also I want to say congratulations to, to you for your performance. Just now, Mr. Lin has talked about your outlook into the future, like in the future, several years, the CAGR could reach 50%. My question is, for example, for Mr. Xu, how do you perceive the strategy or direction for the future 2-3 years in terms of business or products? Do you have any new development path? Can you share, shed a light on your internationalization strategy? In the future, 2-3 years, you know, the cloud transformation has come, has gone to the net... has already been reached a very high level, accounting for 80% of your business. In the future, how do you perceive, how do you sustain your growth with already saturated, cloud business?
Thank you for your question. In the future, 2-3 years or even longer time, for example, like 3-5 years, Kingdee strategy is very clear. First, we will keep carrying out our transformation of cloud subscription-based model. Our cloud subscription, the share of cloud subscription business has accounted for 79%. We also pay attention to the, the, the sustainability of ARR in subscription, cloud subscription. In the future, 3-5 years, we will improve our performance in this regard. We want to become a company fully featuring cloud subscription. We want to be the partners for our clients. This subscription-based model will show our clients that our company is very valuable, just as Mr. Lin has mentioned. Like for the Cloud Stellar or Cloud Cosmic, the customer base is 34,000.
If we can make that tenfold, the value will be astronomical for us. In China, I think it's highly possible that we can extend our customer base by tenfold. Second, in Cosmic Constellation, especially for Cosmic, in the past five years, since the launch of Cosmic, the performance was pretty well. It proves that we are a company equipped with core technologies. With challenges brought by AI, in the future three years, we will enhance our application in AI to better deploy Cosmic GPT and to integrate Cosmic GPT into aPaaS, so as to provide better services and experience for our clients, bring more value to them. Third, Kingdee will upgrade our internationalization strategy. On August 8th, we have issued a announcement saying that by 2026, we will strive to become number one in Asia Pacific market, EPC market.
By 2030, we want to become one of the top five globally. Looking into the future, in the following 3-5 years or even longer, we are very confident. Thank you. Next question?
Thank you for giving me this invitation. Thank you. I'm Harrison, and my question is about Cosmic. Actually, the first half of the year for the growth rate for Cosmic is actually higher in the first half of the year to compare with the second half of the year, and why there is a discrepancy between this growth rate? That's the first question. The second question is about the withdrawal of Huawei from MAT ERP. Will that be a drawback for Kingdee? Because Huawei is a very competitive, is a very strong competitor.
Well, I will answer the question about the... Your first question, because the contract will be fulfilled in the second half. More contract will be fulfilled in the second half of the year for Cosmic. The reason why we are confident about the future development is reasonable, because previously, we have served many big companies. We know that the model is very complicated. We have received many lessons and experience along the way, along the past three to five years, serving those companies. For those big enterprises, those projects are very tough for us because they have been adopter of software from the international vendors for many times. We are actually helping them to transfer their habits. Our recent clients is China Construction Bank.
We successfully deliver our project to China Construction Bank, which is to my surprise, pleasant surprise. I think based on our experience and lessons learned in the past, we believe that we are confident about the future growth of the business, the subscription-based business. The second question is about Huawei. Maybe Mr. John can answer this question. Actually, we've attended the events held by Huawei for two times, and those events have gathered many ERP vendors. We actually are collaborating with Huawei, and Kingdee is a part of the MAT ERP. For Huawei, their positioning for the MAT ERP is only for internal use, and Huawei hasn't clarified the development of this product.
In the future, maybe there are some enterprises adopting Huawei's solution, but now the MAT ERP is only used for internal use. Our aim in Kingdee is actually to help enterprises improve the user experience. For different companies in this regard, we may have different orientations or propositions. For us, we have accumulated several decades of experience, and the Chinese market is very large. I think we are able to have our foothold in the Chinese market, and our focus should be our technology and our services. The landscape is also developing really fast. It's ever-changing. You need to be very responsive. We also hope that Huawei can focus more on the infrastructure building. That is also the expectation of the government of Huawei. Now we can answer questions from online.
Good morning. I'm John Shaodan from CICC. I have two questions. The first question is that in the first half of the year, we have made achievements in terms of the group revenue. How do you perceive the profitability of the company in the future? Second, about the Stella, the profit margin is more than 28%. Do you have any outlook for the profit margin over the following, like 20, for in the long term?
In terms of the growth, we hope that investors should pay more attention to our operating cash flow. We believe that by 2025, we can strike a we, we can reach a balance. I cannot give you an exact timeline. Based on our statements, you can see in the past, no matter, during the time when we are influenced by the COVID, our CAGR has reached about 20% all the way. I think in the future, things will only be easier for us.
We will make sure that in the future, the head count will stay the same. We will explore more clients and to improve our, the share of subscription business. At the same time, we will maintain the head count. I think that is the overall direction of our growth strategy. In terms of the second question, let me still use the example of Constellation. Twenty plus... the OPM reaching 20, 20% is one of our, is still our it is always our direction and expectation.
Please press asterisk, and then press 1 when you wanna ask questions. For live stream, for people watching live streaming, you can put your question in the chat. Next question. Can you hear me?
Okay. I'm Le Changding from CGB. I have 2 questions. The 1st question is about the big clients, enterprise clients. Previously, for Kingdee, most of your clients are those traditionally large end clients, but this, the 1st half of the year, things have been changed a little bit. For Constellation and Cosmic, the customer base increase rate has been decreased a little bit. What is the reason behind that? Also, I want to ask more about the gross margin. 2nd question is about the expense. Actually, the expense has reached a record low, so what did you do to maintain such a low level? What is your outlook for the future development, for the future status of the expense?
For big client, enterprise clients, I think the first half of the year we have contracts, or we have signed several a lot of contracts with them. However, those projects tend to be, can be very large, so the delivery period will be long. Maybe in the future, you can see the return of those businesses with the big clients. The constant actually, some of the projects signed related to Constellation and Cosmic, are actually categorizing to the traditional business. Here, represents only 1%. Maybe only 1 order.
In terms of the gross margin for Constellation, the delivery cost is high, so maybe the gross margin, margin will be low to compare with other products. This year, the overall gross margin for the enterprise has been increased by 2%. For the cost of the eyes, I think in the future will be decreasing. As long as we can improve the share of our subscription-based revenue, we can do a better job in the future. I think that is a result of accumulation. The subscription, the subscription business will bring up our gross margin, definitely. In the past, we have many traditional products.... We would deploy more staff on those traditional products, but now we are doing cloud transformation. We are making, we're actually deploying the Cosmic, Cloud Cosmic more.
The, that is why the expenses have been largely have been decreased this year. We believe the headcount should be controlled so as to guarantee the future development of our company. I think it's a long-term thing. If we can do every step right, the result will be very natural. We hope that in the future, we can, we can leave more work related to the customization as well as delivery to our partners. We want to do. We are, we want to focus more on service providing. If we can have more of our businesses to be subscription-based, the gross margin will definitely be higher.
The third question from online.
I'm Chen Hangul. I have two questions. The previous plan is from 2021 to 2023, that we already approached the end to the previous plan, we've done a really good job. My question is about the influence of AI on the overall landscape as well as your own company, how can we maintain an upper hand in the era of AI? The second question is about the competition, if, for those big clients, big enterprise clients, are they still price sensitive?
The first question is about AI. We attach great importance to AI. I think AI is a disruptive technology, so we will invest more in AI. AI is an important pillar for digitalization. In the future, Kingdee will invest more for better understanding of AI and to launch more technologies to better help these businesses, business, different business scenarios.
For big clients, we believe the competition is always there, and after 2 years of development, I believe that Kingdee's performance has been, and the capability for serving those big clients have been tested. We've also highly recognized by those clients. Our professionalism and experience have been recognized. We believe we are the most professional in this regard. We believe that could be our upper hand. Our experience and expertise will be our upper hand in the competition. The competition will only become fiercer and fiercer, so I hope that through our product and service building, we can have more big clients.
Thank you for your question. Any other questions from the site?
Good morning. I'm Ma Shuwen from Amazing Securities. I have 2 questions. One is a follow-up question on the gross margin, because the subscription will bring up the gross margin. However, one of our direction is to expand our market of, the big clients, and the big clients will focus on customization, which will decrease, the share of subscription in a way to decrease the gross margin. Previously, you've done a really good job in terms of, acquiring SMEs, due to the macroeconomy, economic environment these years, will that be, pessimistic in the future? Will that be influenced?
For SME environment, and we also acknowledge that we are challenged because of the macroeconomy. This year, we focus on the technologically advanced SMEs. Based on our performance, I think we've already done a good job. We've served 43% of the technologically advanced tech SMEs. We will... we have an influence, however, the market is also large enough for us to survive and also thrive.
We can use our expertise to guarantee our own share of the market. Despite all the challenges, the potential ahead of us is still very large, during the past several years, our more than 2,000 vendors, as well as our branch, branches, already understand the demands of our clients. We're - we are very confident that in the future, we can get greater progress in this market. This, another question is about the gross margin for those big companies. In the past several years, we have breaks, made breakthroughs in those benchmark clients and the reference clients, as well as the big clients. Through the collaboration with them, we are actually accumulating experience. For example, like in the industry of tobacco, we are collaborating with Yunnan Tobacco.
With this experience, we are collaborating with more enterprises in this area, for example, Chongqing Tobacco and Jiangxi Tobacco, and so on. In terms of manufacturing, after we collaborated with a very big manufacturing company in China, we acquire another big client in this area, because we have already got this expertise. After 1 years of delivery, we think that the achievements we've got is very prominent. We have replaced 142 original processes of ICP. On August 1st, the settlement period is 7 hours, 50 minutes. ICP, to compare with ICP, the settlement period is 54 hours. We have largely shortened the settlement time for our clients.
In the future, we can see there are more and more enterprises cooperating with us, like the automobile industry, Shanxi Automobile, and many other equipment manufacturing enterprises. They have already seen our best practices. They will be willing to collaborate with us. In the future, with those benchmark enterprises as a reference, we will have a greater development in the future. We will make breakthroughs in our focus industries. Definitely, we will not be a jack of all trades. We will choose the industry to enter in, based on our own experience and expertise. Another focus is that we will develop more partners in the ecosystem. We are collaborating with China Software and the Big Four accounting firms. We are involving those big names in our ecosystem...
as to improve our profitability in this market. I wanna add, add something. For those big companies, why do we stress subscription-based model? Actually, for those big companies, as you mentioned, the gross margin is what will be low at the very beginning. However, as time goes on, in the long term, those big projects will bring us more profits because they will extend their business. In the video, there is, we have a client, Hisense. At the very beginning, we invested a lot in that project, but now Hisense is, we have already received much return from this project. The premise is that we need to have a excellent customer base, in, in which we can collaborate with, to create more value altogether.
For SMEs, in the first half of the year, the overall environment is kind of pessimistic. However, for our clients, small, small-sized enterprises, the growth rate is still 30%, which is really good. For those small enterprises, they're, they're not necessarily small names. For example, like Hongqian, some of the big names in TV industry, they also use our Stellar, Cloud Stellar solution. I'd say, what I want to say is that our clients, although they are categorized as SMEs, they are doing pretty well in their own industry. We still need to provide the best services to them. We also have many AI partners. They are not very big companies, but they are actually leading their industry. We will take into account of the macro economy, all the risks in the environment.
We will also stay in close relation with our clients, and our clients are also developing, they are also growing. I want to add up something. We really focus on the word of mouth, the reputation. I asked, I told all our staff, "If you do not have the confidence to provide great services to the clients, don't do the, don't do the deal." That is our, one of our principle. It is also the secret behind our sustainable development. We need to guarantee the customer satisfaction among all the enterprises. Due to the limited of time, we, let's give the floor to Robert for a closing remark. Thank you again for your support. In face of the macro economy, at the very moment, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Kingdee, I want to have three lines.
First, I think the economy is now, is not decreasing. It's actually embracing a new momentum of development. For some industries, decrease is there. However, for new energy, for bioscience and healthcare, for equipment manufacturing industry, they're actually increasing. I think, in this macroeconomy, Kingdee has made our strategy based on the market segment. The second line I wanna make, statement I wanna make, is that the market is changing. The market is still there. Actually, we are faced with a lot of opportunities. We need to focus. We need to focus on our strategy. Our strategy is featuring our platform plus, plus finance, HR, tax, plus and plus ecosystem. We will consolidate our platform and to empower our platforms with AI.
In finance, tax, HR, we need to we, we need to stick to our expertise in this area as we always do. We also need to establish partnership with our collaborators in the ecosystem to co-create value. In the first half of this year, we've done a really good job to compare with previous years, so we are confident that we are moving towards a brighter future. The third statement I wanna say is that a great company will always be the one who dares to make a move in against the ever-changing environment. Now, this environment is ever-changing. I think the ever-changing environment exactly bring us opportunities, and in the following 30 years, we are confident to become...
In the past 30 years, we have already become the number one in China, and we are very confident that by 2030, in the following seven years, we can also become the world number one. In our focused area, we want to provide quality, highly, high-value services to the clients. I always believe that behind the greatness of China, there should be a software solution provider for those enterprises to better manage themselves. I think Kingdee can be that enterprise, can be the software provider. Thank you again for your support. That's the end for today's meeting. Thank you again for joining, as well your support. See you next time.