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CHENGDU, China, March 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Antelope Enterprise Holdings Limited (NASDAQ Capital Market: AEHL) ("Antelope Enterprise" or the "Company"), which operates KylinCloud, a leading livestreaming social ecommerce platform with 300,000+ anchors and influencers in China, today announced the following Open Letter to the Company's shareholders from Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Weilai 'Will' Zhang.
To Our Valued Shareholders:
First and foremost, we would like to express our gratitude to all of our shareholders for your continued support of Antelope Enterprise. Beginning in 2020, the Company has been engaged in a major strategic transformation of its business operations, and we welcome this opportunity to provide you with an update of our current activities as well as our vision for the future.
Divestiture of the Ceramic Tiles Business
As we had reported in our previous press releases and earnings reports, China's real estate sector has experienced a significant slowdown over the past few years which was exacerbated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. These challenging market conditions caused a significant fall-off in the Company's ceramic tile building materials business. Consequently, the Company enacted a strategic transformation to pivot towards high growth technology areas which included the acquisition of a livestreaming social ecommerce business. As a key element of this transformation, in December 2022 the Company's Board of Directors unanimously agreed to divest of its legacy ceramic tile building materials business. A special meeting of the Company's shareholders was held on February 21, 2023 and the shareholders approved the sale of this business which is expected to close pending satisfaction of customary closing conditions. The divesture of the Company's ceramic tile building materials business, which has been experiencing operating losses, will reduce the Company's cash outlays, and its sale proceeds of $8.5 million payable over a four-year period will help to fund the growth of our new livestreaming social ecommerce business.
Laser Focus on KylinCloud, Our High Growth Livestreaming Social Ecommerce Company
As a result of our corporate transformation, we are now devoting our full resources and energies to developing our 51% owned subsidiary, Hainan Kylin Cloud Services Technology Co., Ltd. ("KylinCloud"), which operates a leading social and livestreaming social ecommerce platform in China. As a first mover in the livestreaming space, KylinCloud provides turnkey livestreaming marketing and broadcasting services to consumer brand companies by matching companies' brand characteristics and products with our 300,000+ anchors and influencers. This results in live broadcasting sales presentations that generate significantly increased sales and profitability for these companies. We believe that KylinCloud has the core competencies and competitive advantages to sustain its leading market share and potentially dominate this key sales channel as a pure play in this sector.
China's Livestreaming Social Ecommerce Sector
We believe that livestreaming social ecommerce is becoming China's growth engine for consumer brands companies since it leverages the content power of livestreaming broadcasts to engage customers and increase product sales. In our view, livestreaming social ecommerce is revolutionizing traditional marketing as a core sales and marketing channel where consumer brand companies interactively relate with consumers on a broad scale. According to China's Ministry of Commerce, in 2022 there were 120 million live broadcasts with a total of 1.1 trillion view and more than 95 million product categories sold; this resulted in livestreaming ecommerce having generated approximately RMB 3.4 trillion (US$ 500 billion). It is expected that livestreaming ecommerce will comprise an ever-increasing percentage of China's ecommerce sales in the years ahead spurred by a consumer ecosystem that includes a young demographic and their high usage rate of mobile devices. We are confident that China's livestreaming social ecommerce sector will experience high double-digit growth for many years to come.
New Governance and New Culture
Over the past few months, we added four new members to the Company's Board who are highly experienced and knowledgeable about the digital economy, and whom we believe will contribute valuable guidance in fulfilling our strategic growth plan. Most importantly, our young, energetic and creative personnel across all staffing positions embody a very strong work ethic and a vibrant team culture that is highly goal oriented. Our Board, senior management and staff are all aligned and committed to rapidly grow Antelope Enterprise to achieve scale, sustain our leading market position and maximize shareholder value.
My Personal Commitment to the Company
As was publicly announced, I invested my personal capital in the Company as a testimony to my firm belief in the future of KylinCloud and the tremendous market opportunity ahead of us. I believe that we have in place the financial resources, digital IT infrastructure and operating infrastructure to achieve sustainable growth. Further, we see the opportunity to leverage our experience and knowhow and extend it towards exploring select international markets such as Southeast Asia and the U.S.
As the newly appointed Chairman of the Board and CEO, I am deeply grateful and passionate about this unique market opportunity, and I committed to lead and inspire our team to achieve resounding success in this sector. I have a long track record in commercializing and scaling growth companies and am genuinely excited by our unique business model, entrepreneurial spirit and execution capabilities that I believe will create long-term value for all of our stakeholders.
About Antelope Enterprise Holdings Limited
Antelope Enterprise Holdings Limited holds a 51% ownership position in Hainan Kylin Cloud Services Technology Co., Ltd ("KylinCloud"), which operates a leading livestreaming social ecommerce platform with 300,000+ anchors and influencers in China. The Company also operates a legacy ceramic tile manufacturing business in China.
For more information, please visit our website at http://www.aehl-kylin.com/, or follow the Company on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AntelopeAEHL. To receive the Company's public announcements, please email investor@aehltd.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
Certain of the statements made in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning and protections of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements include statements with respect to our beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, expectations, anticipations, assumptions, estimates, intentions, and future performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may be beyond our control, and which may cause the actual results, performance, capital, ownership or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, without limitation, the continued stable macroeconomic environment in the PRC, the PRC real estate, construction and technology sectors continuing to exhibit sound long-term fundamentals, our ability to continue to grow our business management, information system consulting, and online social commerce and live streaming business, our ability to keep up with and utilize new technologies to effectively compete within our industry, our ability to attract and engage more anchors and influencers to our platform, and the development of regulatory environment of the online social commerce and live streaming industries in China. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be forward-looking statements. You can identify these forward-looking statements through our use of words such as "may," "will," "anticipate," "assume," "should," "indicate," "would," "believe," "contemplate," "expect," "estimate," "continue," "plan," "point to," "project," "could," "intend," "target" and other similar words and expressions of the future.
All written or oral forward-looking statements attributable to us are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary notice, including, without limitation, those risks and uncertainties described in our annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2021 and otherwise in our SEC reports and filings. Such reports are available upon request from the Company, or from the Securities and Exchange Commission, including through the SEC's Internet website at http://www.sec.gov. We have no obligation and do not undertake to update, revise or correct any of the forward-looking statements after the date hereof, or after the respective dates on which any such statements otherwise are made.
