[年报]科大讯飞(002230):2021年年度报告（英文简版）
原标题:科大讯飞:2021年年度报告（英文简版） The Board of Directors, the Board of Supervisors, directors, supervisors and senior management members of iFLYTEK Co., Ltd. (the "Company") warrant, under joint and several liability, that the information in this Annual Report is authentic, accurate and complete, and contains no false records, misleading statements or material omissions. Liu Qingfeng, Chairman of the Company; Wang Ming, head of accounting affairs; and Cai Shang, head of the accounting department (accounting supervisor) hereby declare that the financial statements in this Annual Report are authentic, accurate and complete. All the directors attended the meeting of the Board of Directors which reviewed this report. For the purpose of the report, the statements on future development plans and business objectives are what is planned by the Company. They do not constitute substantive commitments by the Company to its investors. Hence, investors and interested parties should be fully aware of the risks and understand the difference between plans, forecasts and commitments. The Company analyzes its possible risk exposures and responses in "XI.iii. Risk Exposures of the Company and Responses" in "Section III Management Discussion and Analysis" of the report. Investors are advised to read this part. Profit distribution plan of the Company approved at the meeting of the Board of Directors: Based on 2,324,325,245 shares of the Company on 31 March 2022, distribute a cash dividend of RMB1.00 (before tax) per ten shares and zero bonus share (before tax), with no capital reserve converted into share capital. CONTENTS Section I Important Notice, Contents and Definitions ...................................................................................................................... 2 Section II Corporate Information and Main Financial Indicators ...................................................................................................... 8 Section III Management Discussions and Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 13 Section IV Corporate Governance ................................................................................................................................................. 64 Section V Environmental and Social Responsibility ..................................................................................................................... 111 Section VI Significant Events ..................................................................................................................................................... 117 Section VII Changes in Shares and Particulars of Shareholders .................................................................................................... 132 List of Documents for Inspection I. The financial statements signed and sealed by the legal representative, head of accounting affairs, and head of the accounting department; II. The original of the Auditor's Report stamped with the corporate seal of the accounting firm, and signed and sealed by the CPAs; III. Originals of all the documents and announcements published by the Company on the newspapers designated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (“CSRC”) during the reporting period; and IV. The original of the 2021 Annual Report signed by the Chairman. Definitions
Accounting firm engaged by the Company
VI. Main Accounting Data and Financial Indicators Whether the Company needs to make retroactive adjustments to or restate accounting data for prior years □ Yes √ No
three fiscal years were all negative, and the most recent year's audit report shows uncertainty in the Company's capacity of continued operation. □ Yes √ No The lower of the Company's net profit before and after excluding non-recurring profits and losses were negative. □ Yes √ No VII. Differences in Accounting Data under Chinese and Foreign Accounting Standards 1. Net profit and net assets differences in the financial reports disclosed under IFRS and under CAS □ Applicable √ Not applicable There was no difference in net profit and net assets in the financial reports disclosed under IFRS and that disclosed under CAS during the Report Period. 2. Net profit and net assets differences in the financial reports disclosed under foreign accounting standards and under CAS □ Applicable √ Not applicable accounting standards and under CAS during the reporting period. VIII. Quarterly Key Financial Indicators Unit: RMB
indicators in quarterly and semi-annual reports disclosed by the Company □ Yes √ No IX. Non-recurring Profit and Loss Items and Amounts √ Applicable □ Not applicable Unit: RMB
Information Disclosure for Companies Offering Securities to the Public No.1 – Non-recurring Profits and Losses as recurring profits and losses □ Applicable √ Not applicable The Company did not define non-recurring profit and loss items specified in the Explanatory Announcement on Information Disclosure for Companies Offering Securities to the Public No.1 – Non-recurring Profits and Losses as recurring profits and losses. Section III Management Discussions and Analysis I. Industry Overview during the Reporting Period The Company is required to comply with the disclosure requirements for the software and information technology services industry as stated in the Guidelines of Self-discipline Regulation for Shenzhen Stock Exchange Listed Companies of No. 3: Industry Information Disclosure. 1. Development opportunities for the AI industry On 12 January 2022, the State Council released the Development Plan for Digital Economy during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period. The plan specifies the guiding ideology, basic principles, development goals, key tasks th and supportive measures for promoting the healthy development of the digital economy during the 14 Five-Year Plan period. According to the development goals proposed in the plan, China’s digital economy will seek across-the-board expansion by 2025, and the value added of core industries of the digital economy will account for 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP). AI is the key driver in the development of the digital economy, and all major global science and technology powers attach great importance to technological advancements and industrial development of artificial intelligence. China has already listed AI in its new infrastructure construction and has put forward and launched the “National Program for Medium-to-Long-Term Scientific and Technological Development (2021 – 2035)”, prioritizing the development of the three main driving forces—AI, quantum information and integrated circuits. It has become a major historic campaign in China’s economic and social development to apply AI to meet people’s shortages, build a “happy China” and integrate the technology with the th real economy to build industrial capabilities. The 14 Five-Year Plan has listed AI as a “top priority” in frontier technology, a move that will unquestionably drive China’s AI industry forward by leaps and bounds. The Report on the Work of the Government, delivered at the “Two Sessions” in 2021, stressed the use of scientific and technological innovations to drive high-quality development and step up support to people’s livelihoods. It also proposed measures to improve public well-being, including the development of fairer and higher quality education and the building of an educational system for all-round development; the quality and balanced development of compulsory education and integrated development for urban and rural areas, so every child would have the opportunity to succeed; the development of technologies for disease prevention, treatment and other purposes related to public well-being, building of health systems, extensive reform of disease prevention and control systems, innovation in building coordination mechanisms of healthcare and disease prevention, nurturing of general practitioners (GPs) and doctors in rural areas, improvement of medical services in counties and expedited building of a tiered medical system; and the strengthened development of digital governments and the sharing of administrative data. The key development proposals stated above provide favourable policies and a macro-environment for the Company to continue to drive key advancements in AI and industrial development, as well as the large-scale application of products and solutions in smart education, smart healthcare, smart cities and other business areas. Pursuing “tangible applications that may be promoted in large scale with the results proven by statistics and”, iFLYTEK, “the national AI team”, has been committed to using AI to tackle major issues in social development over the years. iFLYTEK Applications in major fields have been generating exemplary results, and strategic bases underpinning sustainable development have also taken shape. Meanwhile, capitalizing on its credibility as “the national AI team”, iFLYTEK focuses on addressing users’ rigid demands. In addition to continuing its investment by a wide margin over others in key technologies, the Company has integrated key innovative technologies to gain advantages in “systematic innovation”. The strategic bases and “systematic innovation” will become iFLYTEK’s core competitive advantages, as it will not only be one step ahead but will become a true leader in AI development. 2. Uncertainty in the international situation prompting independent innovation of original core technologies According to documents released by the United States Department of Commerce on 7 October 2019 (EST), some Chinese technology companies, including iFLYTEK, were included on the Entity List by the U.S. government. iFLYTEK remains committed to independent innovation in core technologies and possesses world-leading core technologies such as smart speech and AI. In recent years, technologies developed by the Company have continued to come out top in international tests, including machine translation, natural language understanding, image recognition, image understanding, knowledge graph, knowledge discovery and machine reasoning. Since all of these core technologies have been independently researched and developed by iFLYTEK, the Company also owns their independent intellectual property rights and is thus not passive in terms of core technologies. After being included on the Entity List, iFLYTEK has quickly switched to a non-U.S. supply chain system made up of mainly domestic suppliers, enabling itself to continuously provide customers with quality products and services. The Company’s operations have not been significantly impacted. The Central Economic Work Conference in 2020 laid out eight major tasks for 2021, and the first two were strengthening China’s scientific and technological capabilities of strategic importance and increasing independent control over industrial and supply chains. Under the strategic planning for “persisting in driving development with innovations and expediting the development of a modern industrial system; and persisting in giving innovation a key role in China’s modernization and providing strategic support to China’s development with independent technology”, China will continue to strengthen its scientific and technological capabilities of strategic importance and step up its investment in independent innovations. The move will facilitate companies such as iFLYTEK to independently innovate and extensively apply core AI technologies into different industries. II. Business Highlights during the Reporting Period (i) Business overview Since its founding, iFLYTEK has remained devoted to the research on core technologies, including smart speech, natural language understanding, machine learning and reasoning and independent learning. Being an international leader in the technologies, the Company actively promotes the research and development and industrial application of AI products. iFLYTEK is committed to enabling machines to “listen and talk, think and understand” and to “creating a better world with AI”. The Company is firmly focused on its indomitable development strategy, whereby it will take a lead internationally with its core technologies that will be extensively adopted by industries. iFLYTEK is also strongly committed to its AI strategy of “platform + tracks”. In terms of the platform that empowers developers, it relies on the iFLYTEK Open Platform, China’s first open AI platform, to provide developers with one-stop AI solutions and to further the development of the AI industry. In terms of the tracks of application, iFLYTEK has achieved positive interplay between innovative original technologies and industrial application in fields such as education, healthcare, office and smart cities. Figure 1 An overview of key products and customers 1. Smart education In terms of education, guided by the ideal of “AI-empowered teaching according to students' abilities” and in response to the major national educational mission, iFLYTEK has fully applied core AI technologies to education and learning. The Company provides students, teachers and education supervisors at all levels with more targeted and expedited services. This helps the amassing of data during teaching and learning and alleviates the burden on teachers and students, which improves efficiency and promotes educational advancements. To date, iFLYTEK smart educational products have been adopted by 32 provincial-level places in China and foreign markets such as Japan and Singapore. iFLYTEK smart education focuses on “alleviating students’ burden while improving teaching quality; reducing tests while scientifically assessing teaching results; promoting all-round education while satisfying the demands of building scientific and technological capabilities”. As a result, business systems targeting government, business and individual customers have been developed. The business to government chiefly involves the development in regions such as municipalities, counties and districts, which covers general solutions based on students’ aptitude for all the schools and users in the regions. The business to corporate customers chiefly involves school development, which includes targeted teaching based on big data and English-listening and -speaking tests. The business to individual customers chiefly involves independent purchases made by parents, which includes AI-powered learning pads and individualized learning handbooks. Figure 2 Overview of smart education business 2. Smart healthcare business In terms of healthcare, iFLYTEK’s mission is to create “an AI diagnosis assistant for every doctor and an AI health assistant for every person”. With its world-leading AI technologies, the Company provides community-level doctors with general practice diagnosis assistance using core technologies, such as medical-semantic computing, medical NLP, medical-knowledge inference and medical-data mining. They standardize the diagnostic and treatment processes, reduce misdiagnosis and diagnostic errors, provide AI general practice clinical support to doctors in making clinical decisions and enhance medical service standards and efficiency. Furthermore, they provide health commissions with smart supervision services in diagnostic processes and quality based on real-time data. The medical test robot operating based on iFLYTEK’s core AI technology passed the written test of the National Vocational Physician Qualification Examination in 2017 with a total score of 456, surpassing 96.3% of human candidates across China; it became the world’s first AI system to pass a national vocational physician qualification examination. Products based on the medical test robot, such as iFLYTEK Smart Healthcare General Practice Medical Assistant, have been extensively adopted by medical institutions. 3. Smart city business In terms of smart cities business, iFLYTEK focuses on government digitalization while improving the efficiency in political and legal administration. The Company provides AI-based products and general solutions for urban governance, administrative services and industrial development. This empowers urban development and connects user data of organizations, allowing data feedback, iteration, learning and improvement while creating a model of continuous urban service driven by data. 4. Open Platform and consumer business As one of the first “national next-generation open AI innovation platforms”, iFLYTEK Open Platform is an AI technological and ecological service platform based on the Company’s internationally leading AI technology and big-data operational capability. The platform provides developers and industry partners with comprehensive industry-chain services through technological, market and business-model empowerment. Building upon it, the Company has developed capability platforms, including an AI marketing platform and a smart-industry platform, which will further diversify the ecology of the AI industry. including smart notebooks, smart recorders and the iFLYREC app. Original unstructured data, such as audios, and images, generated at work may be swiftly processed and turned into text data easy to save and search, thus enhancing work and learning efficiency. 5. AI solutions for corporate customers, such as operators, smart automobiles and smart finance iFLYTEK provides operators, automobile manufacturers and financial institutions with AI-application solutions: (1) For operators The iFLYTKE business focuses on customers such as China’s top three telecommunications operators and radio and television administrations and facilitates their digitalization. The Company provides households, companies and individuals with products and applications such as smart home voice platform, smart customer service and smart AI services. Building upon iFLYTEK’s multi-modal interactive capability and the contents amassed from the open platform, the smart home-television voice-interaction platform offers general solutions for scenarios such as film and entertainment, children’s all-round development, elderly care and home security, helping operators improve the business value of household users. Meanwhile, the Company’s smart customer service introduces AI at multiple service points to help operators improve user satisfaction and reduce user complaints. (2) For automobile manufacturers The Company’s smart automobile business targets automobile manufacturers at home and abroad and offers products and solutions such as the FEIYU smart assistant, FEIYU OS, FEIYU vehicle audio-management system and AI sales and services. The FEIYU smart assistant fully integrates speech, vision and scene perception to solve issues such as monotonous in-car interaction, fragmented interaction models and high learning costs, so as to create natural multi-modal interactions between drivers and their vehicles. The FEIYU OS combines AI algorithm with big data to provide dedicated in-car services, allowing users to enjoy the highly efficient customized information and entertainment services anytime, anywhere. The smart audio-management system offers the ultimate in-car audio experience, while AI sales and service focus on enhancing automobile and dealer sales and services. The above-mentioned products have already been adopted by mainstream domestic and joint-venture automobile manufacturers in China, including FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor Corporation, Changan Auto, SAIC Motor, GAC Group, BAIC Group, JAC Motors, Chery Automobile, Great Wall Motor, BYD Company, Geely Auto, Volkswagen, Audi, Toyota, Honda and Ford, as well as emerging manufacturers, such as NIO, Lixiang, HiPhi, Weltmeister and Leapmotor. (3) For financial institutions Smart financial services primarily involve offering comprehensive digital-management and -operational solutions for financial institutions, such as banks, insurers and securities companies. The AI-powered financial solutions include AI middle office, data middle office, knowledge middle office, financial-marketing platform, smart customer service, smart outlets, digital staff, smart risk control, assisted review and approval, smart consumer protection and smart office work. (ii) Main business development during the reporting period 1. Smart education business th The 19 meeting of the CPC Central Committee Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission in May 2021 reviewed and approved the Opinions on Further Reducing the Burden of Homework and Off-Campus by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the General Office of the State Council in July 2021. The Double Reduction policy emphasizes “further improvement in education quality and services, logical and reasonable assignments and satisfactory after-school services that will lead students back to more on-campus learning”. The Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Building of New Educational Infrastructure to Devise a High-Quality Educational Support System, released by the Ministry of Education and five other departments in July 2021, specified that “where the conditions allow, regions should popularize personal-learning terminals that meet technical standards and meet learning needs”. The Plan for IT Application during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period, released in December 2021, specified “elevating the level of digital education infrastructure to promote educational reforms that combine information technology, smart technologies and education practices”. The policies mentioned above provide favourable policy support and a conducive macro-environment for the extensive application of AI in realizing teaching according to students' aptitude and the development of Company’s smart education business. iFLYTEK’s smart education products and solutions have been widely adopted for teaching and learning, and they are recognised by governments, favoured by teachers and trusted by parents. 1.1 Extensive replication of the success of teaching according to students' aptitude in different regions During the reporting period, iFLYTEK’s comprehensive smart education solutions for teaching according to students' aptitude continued to be adopted. They have been adopted and widely applied in nearly 20 districts, counties and cities including Jinshui District in Zhengzhou City, Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone, Qingdao West Coast New Area, Dadong District in Shenyang City, Changchun City in Jilin Province and Yijiang District in Wuhu City. A large amount of data has already been generated proving their effectiveness. Taking Bengbu City in Anhui Province for example, after the adoption of iFLYTEK’s general solutions for teaching according to students' aptitude, the city was nominated by the Ministry of Education as a pilot zone for “new teaching and learning models based on teaching reforms and integrated information technology” in August 2020. It was also nominated by the Ministry of Education as a “model area for smart education” for 2020 in February 2021. In September the same year, it was nominated by the Ministry of Education as one of the second batch of areas that promote teacher education with AI. Bengbu is one of the only two Chinese regions (the other one, Haidian District of Beijing) selected for all of the three demonstration and pilot projects mentioned above. During the reporting period, the provinces adopting the smart test-grading technology tot he College Entrance Examinations increased from nine to 12 across China. As for English listening and speaking test business, during the reporting period, our system has been deployed in the College Entrance Examinations in 4 additional provinces and municipalities and in the high school entrance examinations in 29 cities, which increases the total numbers of College Entrance Examinations organizing provinces covered to 14, and the high school entrance examinations organizing cities covered to 87. 1.2 Significant increase in the value of products targeting schools During the reporting period, following the implementation of the “Double Reduction” policy, demands have grown further for application scenarios such as smart classrooms, big data-based targeted teaching, flexible assignments, independent learning, all-round education and smart management. For the classroom scenario, core technologies such as big data and AI analyse students’ knowledge based on their tests, classroom interactions and assignments and offer customized solutions for their weaknesses. The technologies will also allow teachers to gain an accurate understanding of the students and focus on typical and individual questions. Furthermore, teachers will be able to give assignments that are flexible and personalized while reducing ineffective and repetitive tasks, so as to help enhance learning efficiency and promote the implementation of the “Double Reduction” policy. In 2021, the flexible-assignment solution has helped about 120,000 teachers give over 60,000 assignments to nearly 4 million students in over 8,000 schools. The “Double Reduction” policy focusing on on-campus teaching and learning has opened up the untapped market of after-school services. iFLYTEK’s after-school service solutions target educational regulators, third-party organisations, schools, teachers, parents and students. The solutions offer services with strong support and to higher standards and tackle seven key issues, including the supply of course resources, educational administration and management, course assessments and data monitoring. To date, iFLYTEK’s after-school services cover 4,000 schools in over 170 districts and counties. Figure 3 The launch of iFLYTEK’s after-school service solutions 1.3 Student-oriented AI independent learning products continue to prove their worth Against the background of the “Double Reduction” policy, schools have put forward higher requirements for setting tiered, flexible and personalized assignments, generating even stronger demand for individualized learning handbooks. iFLYTEK’s individualized learning handbooks have achieved breakthroughs in core technologies and production innovation. The human-powered question-suggestion engine has won an accepted recommendation rate of over 95%, cutting students’ ineffective learning time by nearly 60% and helping them solve an average of over 80% of previously incorrectly answered questions. During the reporting period, the number of schools adopting iFLYTEK’s individualized learning handbooks increased by 50%, increasing the user base by 40% over the same period of last year and the repurchase rate also grew from 75% to 90%. iFLYTEK’s AI learning pads boast a “4+1 standard”, that is, they are able to “make learning analysis, recommend learning materials, improve language skills and boost confidence with satisfying results with whole-process protection”. With the help of AI, the learning pads help students learn independently and improve efficiency. Sales of the learning pads to individual consumers surged by 150% in 2021, while the gross （未完）  |