On July 5, a delegation led by Chen Jinbiao, Party Leadership Group Secretary and Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress and Lu Jun, Secretary-General of Standing Committee of Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress visited Anji Headquarters of NaaS (NASDAQ: NAAS), in the company of Sun Xianlong, Party Leadership Group Secretary and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Huzhou Municipal People’s Congress in Zhejiang, Yang Weidong, Member of the Standing Committee of Huzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Zhejiang and Secretary of CPC Anji County Committee, Xu Yanping, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of Huzhou Municipal People's Congress in Zhejiang, He Yuanqing, Secretary-General of the Standing Committee of Huzhou Municipal People's Congress in Zhejiang, and He Xiaohong, Party Leadership Group Secretary and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Anji County People's Congress. The delegation was warmly received by Wang Yang, Founder and CEO of NaaS and Li Xiuming, Vice President of NaaS.

Chen Jinbiao, Party Leadership Group Secretary and Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress (second on the left), Sun Xianlong, Party Leadership Group Secretary and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Huzhou Municipal People’s Congress in Zhejiang (second on the right), Yang Weidong, Member of the Standing Committee of Huzhou Municipal Committee of the CPC in Zhejiang and Secretary of CPC Anji County Committee (first on the right) in a group photo with Wang Yang, Founder and CEO of NaaS (first on the left)

In the NaaS HQ exhibition center, the delegation led by Chen Jinbiao built up a picture of the company's development situation and innovation practice. Chen Jinbiao heaped praise on NaaS as an exemplary and high-growth enterprise fulfilling the philosophy “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”, and inspired the company to proceed with innovation and contribute to green, low-carbon and high-quality development of regional economy in the future. On the other hand, he urged Huzhou and Anji authorities to seize the new opportunity of industrial development and draw more remarkable talents and enterprises, so as to advance ecological civilization building and shape a green development situation with joint effort in the province.

As the first Anji-based EV charging service provider listed on NASDAQ, NaaS delivers one-stop industry solutions from station planning and site selection consulting to EPC engineering, connectivity, operation & maintenance, station management and user-side energy storage, PV, virtual power plants and autonomous charging robots. As of March 31, 2023, NaaS' charging service network had connected 55,000 charging stations and 575,000 chargers. The charging volume in the first quarter was 1.023 billion kWh, representing 21% of the public charging volume in China.

This year, NaaS has expanded its business landscape through investment and cooperation while hastening technology implementation and innovation in integrated PV-storage-charging solutions, virtual power plants, B&B charging service, automatic charging robots, etc.

Taking a crucial move in diversification of energy storage solutions, the company has co-founded a joint venture NewLink Hyper with Hyper Strong, an energy storage system integrator and system service provider. Through launch of virtual power plant and strategic cooperation with TsIntergy Technology and Jingneng International, the company has brought its competence in new power system building to a new level. Besides, the integrated PV-storage-charging demonstration station in the China Bamboo Expo Park, Anji, China was rated one of major sites for pooling together VPP resources.

As always, Zhejiang has been taking the lead in China, regarding promoting the development of electric vehicles (EVs) and accelerating the building of charging infrastructure. Statistics suggest that by the end of 2022, there were 1,348,200 EVs in Zhejiang, accounting for over 10% of the national total. In the year, Zhejiang’s EV penetration was 35.8%, 13.9% higher than the national average. In terms of charging piles, Zhejiang has set in place 7,224 charging and swapping stations and 83,779 public/private charging piles. In 2023 Q1, the charging volume of rural charging piles for private use in Zhejiang exploded 139.2% to 338 million kWh from a year earlier. Till the end of this April, 99,000 public charging facilities were cumulatively completed in the province, including 29,000 in rural areas (29%), making public charging facilities accessible in all counties.

In order to fuel rural charging infrastructure building and satisfy B&B demand for charging convenience, NaaS and Smart Order, an integrated hotel IT solution provider, established a joint venture -Smart Charging, making a foray into B&B charging service market. Later in June, Smart Charging launched “Charging Service for 100 B&Bs in 1 City for 1 Month” campaign, intending to provide charging service solutions to 100+ B&Bs in the target city. So far, the company has deployed charging piles in around 100 B&Bs in Huzhou, the first stop of the campaign, as an act of boosting rural vitalization in Zhejiang Province.

In terms of promoting green and low-carbon development in the industry, NaaS has taken multi-pronged measures of "green source", "green station" and "green use" to help reduce carbon emissions in all procedures of charging service. In 2022, NaaS purchased 393 million kWh of electricity generated by clean energy source (PV, wind power, hydropower), which represented 89.52% of the total electricity purchased. Through building distributed PV and relevant energy storage facilities in charging stations, NaaS plays a vital part in making the best use of clean energy and effectively lowering electricity purchase costs of stations. In collaboration with the strategic partner Fleetin, the company motivates users to engage in cutting carbon emissions by awarding carbon credits. Till the end of 2022, carbon account users totaled 463,000.

In May, NaaS wound up a new round of SPO, with Dr. Adrian Cheng, rich third generation of the Cheng Yu-Tung Family of Hong Kong, and CST Group (00985.HK), an established HK-listed company, as its new strategic investors. In June, NaaS took over Sinopower Holding (Hong Kong) Co., Limited, a leading solar PV energy asset operator in Hong Kong. By entering Hong Kong’s distributed solar power station and EV charging service market, NaaS is taking a crucial step in “going global”. In 2023 Q1, NaaS’ net revenue jumped 150% to CNY 36.2 million, according to its unaudited financial statement. The company is projected to realize net revenue of CNY 500-600 million in 2023, 5-6 times higher than a year earlier.