Gridsum Holding Inc. (NASDAQ:GSUM)

Third Quarter 2019 Financial Results

• Net revenues decreased 25%, to RMB60.1 million (US$8.4 million), from RMB80.5 million in the comparable period of 2018.
  
• Net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders decreased 35%, to RMB126.7 million (US$17.7 million), from RMB193.9 million in the comparable period of 2018.
• NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB3.68 (US$0.51), compared with RMB6.29 in the comparable period of 2018.
• NON-GAAP NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Non-GAAP net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB3.36 (US$0.47), compared with RMB5.93 in the comparable period of 2018.

BEIJING, July 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that in response to the non-binding proposal received by the Company's Board of Directors on July 15, 2019 (the "Proposal") from Guosheng Qi, Guofa Yu, their respective affiliated entities, and Beta Dynamic Limited, the Board of Directors of Gridsum has formed a special committee (the "Special Committee") comprised of three independent directors Mr. Dannis Cheuk Yin Lee, Mr. Xudong Gaoand Mr. Feng Lu, to evaluate the Proposal and any other alternative transactions. Mr. Lee has been appointed as Chairman of the Special Committee.

No decisions have been made by the Special Committee with respect to the Company's response to the Proposal or any other alternative transaction. The Special Committee has not set a definitive timetable for the completion of its evaluation of the Proposal or any other alternative transaction, and does not currently intend to announce developments unless and in the event a definitive agreement has been reached. There can be no assurance that any definitive offer will be made, that any agreement will be executed or that the transactions contemplated by the Proposal or any other alternative transaction will be approved or consummated.

BEIJING, July 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that its Board of Directors (the "Board") has received a preliminary non-binding proposal letter, dated July 15, 2019, from Guosheng Qi, chairman of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer of the Company, Guofa Yu, a director and the Chief Operating Officer of the Company, and their respective affiliated entities, and Beta Dynamic Limited, an affiliate of Hammer Capital Private Investments Limited (collectively, the "Consortium Members"), proposing to acquire the Company in a going private transaction (the "Transaction") for US$3.80 in cash per American depositary share (each representing one Class B ordinary share of the Company), or US$3.80 in cash per ordinary share. A copy of the preliminary non-binding proposal letter is attached as Exhibit A to this press release.

According to the proposal letter, the Consortium Members intend to finance the Transaction with a combination of debt and equity capital. The equity financing will be provided by the Consortium Members in the form of cash and rollover equity in the Company. The debt financing is expected to be provided by loans from third party financial institutions.

The Board cautions the Company's shareholders and others considering trading in its securities that the Board has just received the preliminary non-binding proposal letter from the Consortium Members, and that no decisions have been made of any kind with respect to the Company's response to the Transaction. There can be no assurance that any definitive offer will be made, that any agreement will be executed, or that this or any other transaction will be approved or consummated. The Company does not undertake any obligation to provide any updates with respect to this or any other transaction, except as required under applicable law.

BEIJING, April 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced it has entered into a strategic alliance with ShineWing, the largest domestic accounting and consulting firm in China, to intelligentize professional services.

Gridsum and ShineWing will work together to promote the application of big data and AI within professional services and marks a significant milestone for both parties. Under the terms of agreement, Gridsum will leverage its deep experience in developing emerging AI, and big data analytic technologies and apply them to ShineWing's professional services practice in auditing, assurance, management consulting, construction consulting, and taxation and accounting. Gridsum and ShineWing's experience in strategic development planning and project implementation will help companies digitally transform themselves in addition to further developing IIOT and intelligent manufacturing in China.

In addition, Gridsum and ShineWing will jointly develop an innovative Platform as a Service, which will provide a one-stop platform for high-end intelligentized professional services to companies across a variety of industries. Both parties will also strengthen cooperation between leading international think tanks and universities to intelligentize the formation of China's public policy.

Mr. Ke Zhang, Chairman of ShineWing, commented, "The digital economy has been widely recognized as the new driving force behind today's society. Informationization is having a significant impact on economic development, which affects organizations across all industries. With Gridsum as our partner, ShineWing will have the necessary resources to dive deep into a variety of businesses, solve root problems, and better serve our customers while promoting their digital transformation."

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are entering the era of digital transformation and informationization. Applying AI and big data can solve a number of problems that affect many industries and will facilitate corporate transformation and data governance. I strongly believe that our cooperation with ShineWing will boost the transformation from a labor-intensive model to a refined and intelligentized system across all industries, which will greatly benefit China's digital revolution."

BEIJING, April 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported its audited financial results for the year ended December 31, 2018.

Highlights

• Net revenues decreased by 8% to RMB431.2 million (US$62.7 million) from RMB469.5 million in 2017.
• Net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders increased to RMB521.3 million (US$75.8 million) from RMB239.0 million in 2017.

Full Year 2018 Financial Results

REVENUES: Net revenues decreased by 8% to RMB431.2 million (US$62.7 million) from RMB469.5 million in 2017.

Enterprise revenues increased by 3% to RMB387.6 million (US$56.4million) from RMB377.0 million in 2017, mainly due to growth in sales of Social Listening solutions recorded during the first half of 2018. However, Enterprise revenues experienced a decline in the second half of 2018, reflecting customer attrition and prolonged contract renewal processes as a result of the delayed filing of the Company's 2017 annual report on Form 20-F with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and a slowdown in the Chinese economy.

E-Government and other revenues decreased by 48% to RMB53.1 million (US$7.7 million) from RMB102.2 million in 2017, reflecting the challenging business environment associated with China's government reorganization in 2018. This decrease was primarily attributable to the lengthening of the sales cycle, lower budgeted spending for E-Government solutions in 2018 and a decline in the Company's e-Government and other customer base from 58 to 43.

COST OF REVENUES: Cost of revenues was RMB100.9 million (US$14.7 million), compared with RMB94.6 million in 2017. The rise was primarily due to a RMB5.8 millionincrease in outsourcing service fees, mainly related to the Company's search engine optimization and social media optimization businesses, as the Company re-assigned more internal resources to research and development activities.

GROSS PROFIT AND GROSS MARGIN: Gross profit decreased by 12% to RMB330.4 million (US$48.1 million) from RMB374.9 million in 2017, while gross margin decreased to 76.6% from 79.8%.

OPERATING EXPENSES: Total operating expenses were RMB882.1 million (US$128.3 million), compared with RMB594.1 million in 2017.

• Sales and marketing expenses were RMB166.2 million (US$24.2 million), compared with RMB192.4 million in 2017. The decrease was primarily due to a RMB27.3 milliondecrease in industry reports and analysis purchase expenses and a RMB14.9 milliondecrease in advertising expenses, partially offset by a RMB14.9 million increase in personnel and related costs.
• Research and development expenses were RMB533.6 million (US$77.6 million), compared with RMB257.9 million in 2017. The increase was primarily the result of substantial foundation investments in the Company's Industrial AI capabilities, knowledge graph, data warehouse capacity, and IIoT platform and applications. The Company expects research and development expenses to decline year over year in absolute amount (and as a percentage of net revenues) in 2019 and, also decrease over the longer term as a percentage of net revenues.
• General and administrative expenses were RMB182.3 million (US$26.5 million), compared with RMB143.7 million in 2017. The increase was primarily due to a RMB22.3 million increase in professional fees incurred for accounting and legal matters which were significantly inflated by issues related to the delayed filing of the Company's 2017 annual report on Form 20-F with the SEC and associated with the Company's internal investigation and changes of auditor, and a RMB16.9 millionincrease in office leasing expenses, partially offset by a RMB10.4 million decrease in allowance for doubtful accounts.

LOSS FROM OPERATIONS: Loss from operations was RMB551.7 million (US$80.2 million), compared with RMB219.2 million in 2017.

NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB521.3 million (US$75.8 million), compared with RMB239.0 million in 2017. The increase was primarily due to the declines in net revenues and an increase in operating expenses, especially research and development expenses, as the Company aims to capture the opportunities in its Intelligent CRM, judicial, and IIoT business segments.

NON-GAAP NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders, which is defined as net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders before share-based compensation expense, was RMB482.3 million (US$70.1 million), compared with RMB216.1 million in 2017.

EBITDA: Loss before interest, income tax, depreciation and amortization was RMB493.1 million (US$71.7 million), compared with RMB197.9 million in 2017. The increase was mainly due to an increase in loss from operations of RMB332.5 million.

ADJUSTED EBITDA: Adjusted loss before interest, income tax, depreciation and amortization, which excludes share-based compensation expenses, was RMB454.1 million (US$66.0 million), compared with RMB175.0 million in 2017.

NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS:Net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB16.91(US$2.46), compared with RMB7.90 in 2017.

NON-GAAP NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Non-GAAP net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB15.65 (US$2.28), compared with RMB7.14 in 2017.

Each ADS represents one Class B ordinary share. For purposes of determining net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders, the weighted average number of ordinary shares for the full year 2018 was 30,827,600. As of December 31, 2018, the total number of ordinary shares outstanding was 30,833,390.

Balance Sheet

As of December 31, 2018, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of RMB92.7 million (US$13.5 million), and restricted cash of RMB1.3 million (US$0.2 million).

BEIJING, Feb. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced it has signed a strategic technology partnership agreement with New H3C Group ("New H3C"), a world-leading digital solutions provider, to promote the implementation of integrated intelligent solutions.

Under the terms of agreement, Gridsum and New H3C will leverage their respective technological capabilities to jointly build a platform to promote the industrial transformation and digitization of enterprises. This partnership will allow corporate clients to systematically reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and enhance management of the manufacturing process to drive China's digital economic development.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "New H3C is helping to drive the innovation of digital solutions across China's many industries. We are excited to have the opportunity to work with them to apply our cutting-edge technologies to the manufacturing process. Both companies share a similar philosophy and vision for the future and believe this will greatly benefit China's efforts to digitalize and transform industries."

BEIJING, Jan. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported that it has received a letter from The Nasdaq Stock Market ("Nasdaq"), dated January 11, 2019, notifying the Company that it has regained compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rules 5250(c)(1) and 5250(c)(2), and that the Company is in compliance with all other applicable requirements for continued listing on The Nasdaq Capital Market as required by the decision of the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the "Panel") dated January 4, 2019.  Accordingly, the Panel determined to continue the listing of the Company's securities on Nasdaq and has closed the matter.

BEIJING, Jan. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has expanded its relationship with NIKE, Inc. ("NIKE") (NYSE: NKE), the world's leading designer, marketer and distributor of authentic athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for a wide variety of sports and fitness activities, with the addition of data analysis, consulting, and data modelling services.

NIKE's Consumer Direct Sciences team, which is responsible for building and deepening an holistic view of NIKE's consumers through data and analytics, will leverage Gridsum's strong data analysis, modeling, and consulting services, derived from insights generated by the Company's cutting edge Marketing Automation Suite, to further drive the value and efficiency of the data collected through NIKE's Mainland China official website and official flagship store on Tmall.com. Gridsum's cloud-based big-data analytics and AI capabilities will analyze NIKE's consumer behavior across multiple marketing channels to strengthen its advertising strategy with highly-targeted marketing content, improve its portfolio of products and build sophisticated customer profiles.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are extremely excited to expand our working relationship with a globally respected brand such as NIKE. Leveraging our big data analysis, modeling, consulting and data visualization capabilities, we will help NIKE to better understand the behavior of their existing and potential customers and improve the consumer experience. I am confident that our extensive experience in natural language processing, data mining, machine learning and deep learning technologies will continue to create significant value for our clients by helping them to improve their digital marketing strategies and allowing them to make better business decisions."

BEIJING, Jan. 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported its unaudited financial results for the six months ended June 30, 2018.

Highlights

Net revenues increased by 39.3% to RMB249.3 million (US$37.7 million) from RMB178.9 million in the comparable period of 2017, driven by a 52.1% rise in Enterprise revenues.
Gross profit increased by 42.9% to RMB210.0 million (US$31.7 million) from RMB147.0 million in the comparable period of 2017.
First Half of 2018 Financial Results

REVENUES: Net revenues increased by 39.3% to RMB249.3 million (US$37.7 million) from RMB178.9 million in the comparable period of 2017, driven by a 52.1% increase in Enterprise revenues.

Enterprise revenues increased by 52.1% to RMB224.2 million (US$33.9 million) from RMB147.4 million in the comparable period of 2017, mainly due to strong growth in our Social Listening solutions.

E-Government and other revenues decreased by 16.6% to RMB30.5 million (US$4.6 million) from RMB36.5 million in the comparable period of 2017, mainly due to a lengthening of the sales cycle for E-Government solutions associated with the governmental reorganization that occurred during this period.

COST OF REVENUES: Cost of revenues was RMB39.3 million (US$5.9 million), compared with RMB32.0 million in the comparable period of 2017. The rise was primarily due to a RMB9.0 million increase in system maintenance and system security expenses.

GROSS PROFIT AND GROSS MARGIN: Gross profit increased by 42.9% to RMB210.0 million (US$31.7 million) from RMB147.0 million in the comparable period of 2017. Gross margin increased to 84.2% from 82.1%. The increase was primarily attributable to the evolution of our sales mix with our Social Listening solutions carrying a higher gross margin than our core Marketing Automation solutions.

OPERATING EXPENSES: Total operating expenses were RMB376.7 million (US$56.9 million), compared with RMB247.2 million in the comparable period of 2017. As a percentage of net revenues, operating expenses were 151.1%, compared with 138.2% in the comparable period of 2017.

Sales and marketing expenses were RMB77.3 million (US$11.7 million), compared with RMB88.0 million in the comparable period of 2017. The decrease was primarily due to a RMB14.9 million decrease in advertising expenses and a RMB11.1 million decrease in marketing promotion expenses, partially offset by a RMB9.8 million increase in personnel costs.
Research and development expenses were RMB226.5 million (US$34.2 million), compared with RMB109.1 million in the comparable period of 2017. The increase was primarily due to a RMB63.1 million increase in technical service fees in connection with the Company's continued focus on the development and maintenance of market-leading data-warehouse software, and a RMB36.8 million increase in outsourcing fees associated with contracting specialized user interface, security and other module development. The increases primarily reflect the Company's strong commitment to enhancing its capabilities in technology and innovation and productizing that technology into compelling client solutions.
General and administrative expenses were RMB72.9 million (US$11.0 million), compared with RMB50.2 million in the comparable period of 2017. The increase was primarily due to a RMB17.5 million increase in professional fees incurred in connection with the audit committee's internal investigation and a RMB5.2 million increase in personnel cost.
LOSS FROM OPERATIONS: Loss from operations was RMB166.7 million (US$25.2 million), compared with a loss from operations of RMB100.3 million in the comparable period of 2017.

NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB182.0 million (US$27.5 million), compared with RMB113.9 million in the comparable period of 2017. The increase was primarily due to an increase in operating expenses, especially research and development expenses, as the Company aims to capture the opportunities in its Intelligent CRM, judicial, and IIoT business segments.

NON-GAAP NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders, which is defined as net loss attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders before share-based compensation expense, was RMB165.1 million (US$25.0 million), compared with RMB104.0 million in the comparable period of 2017.

EBITDA: Loss before interest, income tax, depreciation and amortization for the first half of 2018 was RMB152.6 million (US$23.1 million), compared with RMB89.6 million in the comparable period of 2017. The increase was mainly due to an increase in loss from operations of RMB66.5 million, an increase in foreign exchange expense and interest expenses of RMB2.0 million and RMB0.5 million, respectively, and an increase in depreciation and amortization expenses of RMB2.0 million.

ADJUSTED EBITDA: Adjusted loss before interest, income tax, depreciation and amortization, which excludes share-based compensation expenses, was RMB135.7 million (US$20.5 million), compared with RMB79.6 million in the comparable period of 2017.

NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB5.90 (US$0.89), compared with RMB3.83 in the comparable period of 2017.

NON-GAAP NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM'S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Non-GAAP net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders was RMB5.36 (US$0.81), compared with RMB3.49 in the comparable period of 2017.

Each ADS represents one Class B ordinary share. For purposes of determining net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum's ordinary shareholders, the weighted average number of ordinary shares for the first half of 2018 was 30,824,175. As of June 30, 2018, the total number of ordinary shares outstanding was 30,825,740.

Balance Sheet

As of June 30, 2018, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of RMB60.2 million (US$9.1 million), and restricted cash of RMB150.2 million (US$22.7 million).

Outlook

2018 was a very challenging year for the Company. For example, the filing of our annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2017 was delayed in part due to inadequate internal control over financial reporting and changes of auditor. Our ability to secure new financing has declined. Some customers have reduced their level of business with us or not renewed their contracts, and our ability to sign up new customers has weakened. We also lost a number of sales and other employees. These have had an adverse effect on our financial results.

BEIJING, Jan. 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported that it has received a letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of The Nasdaq Stock Market ("Nasdaq"), dated January 2, 2019, notifying the Company that it was not in compliance with the requirements for continued listing under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(2) because it did not file its report on Form 6-K containing an interim balance sheet and income statement for the six month period ended June 30, 2018 ("2018 Interim Report"), by December 31, 2018.  As described in the letter, the failure to file the 2018 Interim Report qualified as a separate basis for delisting which the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the "Panel") would consider in connection with the Company's listing, and allowing the Company to present its views with respect to the additional deficiency in a letter to the Panel no later than January 9, 2019.

Separately, on January 4, 2019, the Company received a letter from the Panel indicating that the Panel had granted the Company until the Company's requested date of January 31, 2019 to regain compliance with its reporting obligations, and requesting that the Company provide the Panel with an update with respect to, among other things, the completion of the Company's audit and filing of the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2017 (the "2017 Annual Report"), by no later than January 11, 2019.

The Company provided a response to both letters on January 7, 2019.  Later on January 7, 2019, the Company filed both the 2017 Annual Report and the 2018 Interim Report with the SEC; therefore, the Company has now filed all periodic reports required under applicable SEC and Nasdaq regulations.

BEIJING, Jan. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, has issued a Letter to Shareholders, the full text of which follows.

Dear Fellow Shareholders:

2018 was an extremely challenging year for our company. Over the past five years, our main focus has been to drive growth by bringing global best-of-breed big data and AI technology solutions to the emerging enterprise SaaS market and our blue-chip enterprise, government and legal clients in China. From a technology standpoint, we remain among the best companies in the world. However, with the benefit of hindsight, we came to learn that we needed to strengthen our processes and controls over our accounting and financial reporting to keep pace with the company's successes and growth. 

As you may be aware, we have previously provided information on the investigation by our Audit Committee into our accounting processes. This investigation, which was conducted with assistance from external legal and accounting advisors, was concluded in October 2018. In line with its findings and our broader efforts to improve accounting and financial reporting, we have taken a number of initiatives to improve our internal controls.

Our auditor has now completed its audit of our financial statements for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016 and 2017. As a result of the audit process and our experience with sales and collection trends, we determined that it was appropriate to change our revenue recognition method for certain revenues. In the process, we also identified other adjustments relating to cost accruals, expense cutoff procedures and classification changes, which resulted in restatements of our previously-issued audited consolidated financial statements for the years ended December 31, 2015 and 2016. A summary of these restatements can be found under Note 2(a) of our consolidated financial statements in our 2017 Form 20-F.

With the filing of our 2017 Form 20-F, and the filing of our financial results for the first six months of 2018, we have started to emerge from the most difficult period in our company's life. We believe we have regained compliance with the SEC filing requirements. We plan to file our results for the last two quarters of 2018, and our 2018 Form 20-F, in the next months, within the statutory time period. We plan to return to quarterly filings after this.

We have always been committed to following high standards of corporate governance and transparency and will continue to do so. We have learned from the experiences described above.  Unfortunately, the company has suffered some client and staff defections and a marked slowdown in our momentum. We have, however, continued to invest heavily in research and development. In particular, we continue to see strong potential in sectors where we had already initiated investments that presented substantial opportunities that would have otherwise been lost. As a result, our performance in 2018 and 2019 will be negatively impacted. In terms of net revenues, despite the growth seen in the first half of 2018, we will experience a down year in 2018 based on our preliminary review.

However, we hope that 2019 will be a key year for us to rebuild momentum. We need to focus on driving a recovery in our core marketing automation business against a backdrop of a tough macroeconomic environment as well as the challenges we have faced as a company. We also need to focus on scaling our new and emerging products through our client base. Longer-term, we believe we are well positioned to leverage our strong technical competitive advantages in areas such as Intelligent CRM, legal solutions, IIoT and associated big data and AI-grade data warehousing.

As the company's largest shareholder, I am fully aware that the company has not performed as well as we expected. I am truly sorry for this. I can only ask for your patience and continued trust in us. Our management team and our technology team remain intact and, more than ever, fully dedicated to regaining momentum and driving the business while remaining cognizant of the critical need for a solid foundation of supporting processes and structures. Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer

BEIJING, Nov.13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (GSUM), announced that Nasdaq has scheduled the Company's hearing before the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the "Panel") for December 13, 2018.  At the hearing, the Company will present its plan to evidence compliance with the Nasdaq listing criteria - specifically, the filing requirement - and request the continued listing of the Company's securities on Nasdaq pending the Company's compliance therewith.

Nasdaq has indicated that the Panel will issue its determination regarding the Company's listing status likely within 30 days of the hearing. The Panel has the discretion to grant the Company an extension of up to 360 days from the deadline for the filing of the Company's first late filing, or April 30, 2019.

As previously disclosed, the Company's request for a hearing automatically stayed the delisting of the Company's securities for 15 calendar days, or until November 21, 2018. The Company expects to receive a separate determination from the Panel regarding the Company's request for a further extension of the stay - at least pending the ultimate conclusion of the hearing process - prior to November 21, 2018.

The Company continues to make significant progress in working with its independent auditors to finalize its audited financial statements as of and for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016 and 2017.

BEIJING, Oct. 31, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (GSUM), announced that it received a letter from the Staff of the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq Stock Market ("Nasdaq") notifying the Company that since it remains delinquent in filing its Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017 (the "2017 Annual Report"), it has not regained compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1) (the "Rule"), which requires timely filing of periodic reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Previously, Nasdaq granted the Company an extension until October 29, 2018 to file all delinquent periodic reports. As described in the letter, as a result of the continued delinquency, the Company's American depositary shares are subject to delisting unless the Company timely requests a hearing before a Nasdaq Hearings Panel ("Panel").

The Company intends to timely request a hearing before the Panel to present its plan for regaining compliance with the Rule and request continued listing pending its return to compliance. The hearing request automatically stays the delisting for a period of 15 calendar days from the date of the deadline to request a hearing. The Company will present information to the Panel, which will make a decision based on the plan for regaining compliance and the Company's presentation, whether to grant the Company an extension of time within which to regain compliance with the Rule for a period of up to 360 days from the original due date of the Company's first late filing.

The Company recently concluded its audit committee investigation, announced on April 23, 2018. The Company has made significant progress in implementing, and continues to action, a number of remedial steps to bolster substantially its financial controls and contract management processes as recommended by the audit committee. The Company continues to make significant progress in working with its independent auditors to finalize its audited financial statements as of and for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016 and 2017.

BEIJING, Sept. 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, announced today that it has won first place in the 2018 Chinese AI and Law Challenge ("CAIL2018").

CAIL2018 was both initiated and led by the Information Centre of the Supreme People's Court and the Central Youth Development Department of the Communist Youth League of China, and co-organized by various organizations, including the China Justice Big Data Institute, Chinese Information Processing Society of China, CETC Youth League committee, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

CAIL2018 facilitates academic exchange and promotes the use of natural language processing and AI in the legal sector. There were more than 600 teams from both China and overseas participating in CAIL2018. Participants included engineers from top academic institutions including Tsinghua University and Peking University and internationally renowned companies such as Google and Microsoft. At CAIL2018, judges assessed contestants on their analysis of criminal case datasets and their application of AI across three categories including crime prediction, legislative recommendation, and judgement outcomes prediction.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are proud that our team, competing under the name 'Nevermore', ranked top among their peers in the crime prediction and legislative recommendation categories, resulting in winning first place at the event. This further proves Gridsum's competitive advantages in the legal AI sector. We will continue to leverage our AI and natural language processing capabilities to support and develop China's smart court initiatives."

BEIJING, Aug. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (Nasdaq: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported that it has received a letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of The Nasdaq Stock Market ("Nasdaq"), dated August 21, 2018.  The letter notified the Company that the Nasdaq staff has determined to grant the Company additional time to regain compliance with Nasdaq's listing requirements, provided the Company files its annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2017 ("2017 Annual Report") by October 29, 2018, and provides the Nasdaq staff with an update on the Audit Committee's internal investigation on or before September 28, 2018. In the event the Company does not satisfy such terms, the Nasdaq staff will provide written notification that the Company's securities will be delisted, and the Company may appeal that determination to a Nasdaq Hearings Panel. The Company expects to satisfy the Nasdaq requirements, including by filing its 2017 Annual Report on Form 20-F by October 29, 2018.

BEIJING, Aug. 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has cooperated with the Mobile Marketing Association China ("MMA China") on a General Invalid Traffic ("GIVT") List program to launch a Distributed Invalid Traffic Filter System (the "DIF System").

Invalid traffic is a substantial problem for marketers. The cutting edge of GIVT consists of traffic identified through routine means of filtration executed through application of machine intelligence, lists and other standardized parameter checks. In practice, GIVT traffic is identified via pattern recognition leveraging available lists of IP addresses, IMEI numbers, browser identifiers and other signatures, or from activity clearly matching non-human patterns of behavior, such as a click frequency.

Gridsum was the major contributor in adopting blockchain technology into the DIF System, with RTBAsia, the leader of the GIVT List working group leading the research and development of the DIF System. Blockchain technology features smart contracts and consensus mechanisms, allowing the DIF System to merge and filter-out invalid advertising traffic in real time.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "Gridsum was among the first members to join the GIVT List working group and the DIF Consortium Blockchain. With the use of blockchain technology, we believe that the DIF System can significantly enhance the responsiveness and traceability of the GIVT List. We remain committed to working with MMA China to solve the industry's key bottlenecks and hope that more companies join us in building a vigorous digital marketing ecosystem in China."

BEIJING, Aug. 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has been ranked among the 2018 Top 50 Chinese Big Data Enterprises by the Big Data Industry Alliance of China (the "Alliance"). Gridsum was recognized along with Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, Lenovo, Inspur, Didi Chuxing, Xiaomi, and Microsoft (China).

The Alliance is a non-profit organization focused on facilitating the development of the big data industry in China. The Alliance is jointly run by a number of respected institutions and is led by China Center for Information and Industry Development (CCID), a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The Alliance assessed potential nominees on a number of metrics including their big data application capabilities, investments in big data research and development, product innovation, case studies, financing needs and growth potential.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "More than 2,000 enterprises were assessed this year and we are excited to have been ranked among the top 50. Once again, this demonstrates our leading R&D capabilities and achievements in the big data industry. Our investment and allocation of resources towards R&D innovations and leveraging our core competency in big data analytics and AI to develop new enterprise-focused products are clearly paying off and well recognized. We will continue to leverage our extensive experience and technology to innovate new solutions to add more value to our clients and help them to make better data-driven decisions."

BEIJING, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has been appointed as the OTT Monitoring Standards Group Leader at the Mobile Marketing Association China ("MMA China"). Gridsum's role is to recruit group members and draft the first OTT advertising monitoring standards in China.

The OTT (over-the-top) advertising industry is growing rapidly. Compared with other advertising delivery platforms, OTT advertisements allow marketers to reach consumers directly with interactive and highly targeted content, making it a rapidly growing and increasingly popular medium.

To date, advertisers have doubted the KPIs and influence of OTT advertising due to opaque data and inadequate monitoring, which has severely impacted the development of this new form of marketing. Gridsum, along with MMA China, intends to encourage the implementation of standards and regulatory reform in order to help promote the smooth development of the industry.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "It is our honor to be appointed as the group leader of MMA China's efforts to develop OTT advertising monitoring standards. We are happy to announce that the first draft has already been completed. We believe that having such standards will enhance the user experience, ensure data integrity and validity, and promote a robust OTT advertising ecosystem in China."

BEIJING, July 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has signed Sino-US United MetLife Insurance Company Limited ("MetLife") as a new client for its Marketing Automation suite.

MetLife will leverage Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite, cloud-based big-data analytics and AI capabilities to create highly-targeted marketing content and drive its digital marketing campaigns across a number of platforms including Baidu, Sougou, Qihoo360, Shenma and Jinri Toutiao. 

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I am excited to welcome MetLife to our growing portfolio of clients and look forward to leveraging our powerful AI-driven Marketing Automation suite and extensive knowledge and experience across China's broad range of digital marketing environments to help them achieve their KPIs. Our Marketing Automation suite's intelligent, multi-platform bid-optimization solution will enable MetLife to directly manage and automate a greater share of their digital marketing spending while generating a higher return on their content marketing strategy investment. I believe this partnership once again demonstrates our strategy of leveraging our core technology competence to build highly scalable big data analytics and AI solutions that can be applied in a number of different areas and the attractiveness of the solutions we have on offer in allowing clients to make better data-driven business decisions and increase marketing sales efficiency."    

BEIJING, July 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced it has renewed and expanded its relationship with Olay, the world's number one female facial skincare brand, as a marketing automation client.

Olay will leverage incremental solutions within Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite to enhance brand awareness and optimize its advertisement placements. Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite leverages cloud-based big-data analytics and AI capabilities to analyze Olay's data generated from Baidu and JD.com's e-commerce platforms to identify potential consumers for Olay to expand their customer base, to create highly-targeted marketing content and to increase conversion rates.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are very excited to be working with Olay. This is also notably the first time that Olay has worked with a China-based, rather than a global, solutions provider for the China market in the new solutions areas covered by our expanded remit. This further validates our global best-of-breed technology platform. Over the past few years, we have strengthened our ability to provide our clients with highly-targeted multi-channel marketing automation solutions to further increase their conversion rates. Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite is able to rapidly match Baidu's Dynamic Products Ads with JD.com's client SKU records to adjust a client's marketing strategy based on search patterns. We are committed to helping more companies explore new marketing opportunities and improve their user experience by innovating new products that optimize customers business on a data-driven basis and increase marketing and sales efficiency."

BEIJING, July 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has renewed its contract with SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Co Ltd. ("SAIC VW"), an automobile manufacturing company headquartered in Anting, China and a joint venture between Volkswagen Group and SAIC Motor.

SAIC VW engaged Gridsum in 2016 to transform their digital marketing strategies and stay abreast of market trends by monitoring their official website and digital media placements using Gridsum's cutting-edge Marketing Automation Suite. Leveraging its big data analysis and AI-driven marketing and sales intelligence technology, Gridsum's Marking Automation Suite optimizes digital media monitoring and advertising placements to increase conversion rates, efficiently place bids to improve advertising efficiency and lower labor costs.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I am pleased to renew our contract with SAIC VW and further deepen our relationship after working closely with them over the past few years. We believe this contract renewal demonstrates the effectiveness and value our solutions bring for SAIC VW and their continued trust in Gridsum. We will continue build out and innovate new marketing solutions to help our clients making incisive and effective data-driven decisions and enhance their digital marketing initiatives going forward

BEIJING, June 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced it has signed Lianjia, an online platform for real estate transactions headquartered in Beijing, as a new client. Lianjai will adopt Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite for its open-listing platforms, Lianjia.com and Ke.com.

Lianjia recently launched Ke.com, a mobile application for property listings that includes virtual reality property tours. Lianjia will leverage Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite to increase the platform's visibility by optimizing advertisement placements on Baidu's news feed, and to enhance the conversion rate of its listing platform.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "With the rapid growth in mobile marketing, more companies have begun to focus on news feed advertising and consider it to be one of the key focal areas of content marketing. Combining our AI-driven Marketing Automation suite features which include our intelligent, multi-platform bid-optimization solution and our extensive expertise in news feed marketing, we are able to help Lianjia increase the number of application downloads and the conversion rate. Currently, Gridsum's news feed advertising optimization solution has covered a wide range of popular media, including Baidu's news feed, Jinri Toutiao, Tencent's Wide Click-through, WeChat Moments, and Tik Tok. We are dedicated to helping more companies like Lianjia improve news feed marketing strategies and make data-driven decisions to maximize their returns."

BEIJING, June 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has jointly published a white paper on teens' and other minors' internet safety in China with Renmin University of China ("RUC") titled "Internet-Related Crimes Involving Minors."

Gridsum leveraged its deep experience in big data analysis, natural language processing, and applying AI within China's legal ecosystem to analyze 15,645 juvenile cases involving the internet from 2014 to 2017 on China Judgements Online, a Chinese government court case database.

Key findings from the white paper include:

Internet-related crimes involving minors accounted for 10.2% of all crimes involving minors during the period and continue to increase every year.
Second and third tier cities in China's western regions have the highest incidence of internet-related crimes involving minors.
Minors accounted for 55.7% of defendants and 25.86% of victims for internet-related minor crimes.
Minor offenders were generally given lenient punishments while crimes involving minor victims were punished more severely, reflecting the strong judicial protections in place for minors.
Frequent access to internet cafes and internet addiction are two major causes for internet-related crimes involving minors.
Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are proud to have jointly published this white paper on teens' and other minors' Internet-safety in China with Renmin University of China. Leveraging our big data analysis capability and experience in applying AI within China's legal ecosystem, this white paper will provide valuable insights into teens' and other minors' crimes involving the internet which will help strengthen policy and legal protections for this important group. We will continue to work closely with respected and leading institutions across the Chinese legal ecosystem to promote a healthy internet environment for minors."

BEIJING, June 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has joined the China Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance ("AIIA") alongside IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Thundersoft as council members.

Under the guidance of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Network Information Office, the AIIA was formed by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and a number of other respected institutions. The AIIA's focus is to promote the development of the AI industry by creating a platform that serves enterprises and local government in the implementation of China's "Internet + artificial intelligence action plan" and the development of "Internet +".

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I am proud we have been accepted as an AIIA council member alongside our globally respected peers. I believe this demonstrates the quality and recognition our products and technologies are well received across the AI industry and the value-add they can bring to our clients. Joining the AIIA will allow us to work alongside and learn from our peers in the development of AI technologies and participate in the formulation of policy. We will continue to develop new and innovative AI and big data solutions to help our clients make better business decisions and drive their business KPIs."

BEIJING, May 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it was recognized at the 2018 IAI International Advertising Awards ("IAI") with three awards, including the Bronze Award in Auto Marketing Category for General Motor's China market crossover utility vehicle Baojun 510 marketing campaign, and the Excellence Award in Platform Marketing for its marketing automation suite's "Grow Model" application. Mr. Aaron Feng Li, Gridsum's co-President, was also recognized with the 2018 Influential People in Digital Marketing Award.

Launched in 1999, the IAI is a well-known Chinese advertising award that has been in operation for over 17 years. The IAI is hosted by the Advertising School of the Communication University of China, the China Advertising Association of Commerce, and is jointly organized by the IAI International Advertising Institute, and strategically supported by the CCTV Advertising Management Center. This year, the IAI assessed a broad range of categories and companies, including 1,607 brands, and 2,056 ads from 437 companies.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I am thrilled that Gridsum was recognized for its excellence in technology and digital marketing. This follows our recognition earlier this year with several other advertising awards, including the Digital China Annual Awards and Golden Mouse Awards. I believe this recognition demonstrates to our current and potential clients the effectiveness of our marketing automation suite and the value-add that our digital marketing capabilities can generate for them. We will continue to develop new and innovative intelligent marketing solutions to help our clients to optimize their marketing efficiency and drive their business KPIs."

BEIJING, May 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has signed SFbest.com ("SFbest"), a subsidiary of SF Holding Company Limited (002352.SZ), as a new client.

SFbest is an online e-commerce platform for selling high quality fresh food in China. SFbest will leverage Gridsum's cutting edge Marketing Automation Suite to further drive uptake of its mobile application. Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite leverages cloud-based big-data analytics and AI capabilities to analyze SFbest consumer behavior across multiple marketing channels, including social media, search, newsfeeds, and app stores, to create highly-targeted marketing content that focuses on individuals rather than broader demographics and optimizes digital marketing spending.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I'm pleased to welcome SFbest.com to our growing portfolio of clients. By integrating and analyzing media and user data across a broad range of digital marketing environments, our Marketing Automation suite will help SFbest.com to automate a greater share of their digital marketing spending and further promote the uptake of its mobile application. The number of mobile application downloads for e-commerce platforms such as SFbest is critical to their success and we are proud to have been selected to help them with this. I believe our Marketing Automation Suite will be a key facilitator in helping SFbest increase mobile application uptake rates and marketing and sales efficiency."

BEIJING, May 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced it has been recently awarded ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification by the British Standards Institution for its information security management system ("ISMS").

The ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification is an internationally recognized and prestigious framework that helps organizations keep data secure by specifying the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving information security management. The ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification also includes a security of information risk assessment and risk treatment.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are extremely pleased to have been awarded ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification which I believe is an acknowledgment of our market leading credentials in data security, privacy, and protection of our clients' data. We believe the nature of our business, which incorporates powerful big-data analytics solutions across a broad range of digital marketing environments and multiple devices, requires us to take the responsibility of maintaining a high standard of data security for our customers. This certification demonstrates to all our current and potential clients that our ISMS meet international standards and that we have the ability to handle information rapidly and securely. We will continue to improve and optimize our ISMS as the environment evolves in order to maintain the highest standards in data protection."

BEIJING, May 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that, in response to the non-binding proposal from FutureX Capital Limited received by the Company's Board of Directors on May 8, 2018 (the "Proposal"), the Board of Directors of Gridsum has formed a special committee (the "Special Committee") comprised of the three independent directors Mr. Peter Andrew Schloss, Mr. Xudong Gao, and Mr. Thomas A. Melcher, to evaluate the Proposal and any other alternative transactions. Mr. Schloss has been appointed as Chairman of the Special Committee.

No decisions have been made by the Special Committee with respect to the Company's response to the Proposal or any other alternative transaction. The Special Committee has not set a definitive timetable for the completion of its evaluation of the Proposal or any other alternative transaction, and does not currently intend to announce developments unless and in the event a definitive agreement has been reached. There can be no assurance that any definitive offer will be made, that any agreement will be executed or that the transactions contemplated by the Proposal or any other alternative transaction will be approved or consummated.

BEIJING, May 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that its Board of Directors (the "Board") has received a preliminary non-binding proposal letter, dated May 8, 2018, from FutureX Capital Limited (the "Proposing Buyer"), proposing to acquire all outstanding shares of the Company that the Proposing Buyer does not already own for US$8.70 in cash per American depositary share (each representing one Class B ordinary share of the Company) in a going private transaction (the "Transaction").  A copy of the preliminary non-binding proposal letter is attached as Exhibit A to this press release.

According to the proposal letter, the Proposing Buyer intends to fund the consideration payable in the Transaction primarily with equity capital from the Proposing Buyer and any additional members the Proposing Buyer accepts into a consortium of buyers, and possibly some debt capital. As the Proposing Buyer proceeds with its due diligence evaluation, it may consider inviting certain shareholders of the Company to participate in the Transaction.

Gridsum Holding Inc Ads (NASDAQ:GSUM) ($5.02; $154.2M market cap), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions in Chinaannounced the completion of investment from FutureX Capital. On May 1, 2018 we stated that GSUM announced this proposed investment from FutureX where FutureX would purchase a $40 million convertible note with a $6.50 conversion price.  Quotes from management regarding closing of this transaction:

"The completion of this financing is a positive sign of the support Gridsum has from the capital markets, and our focus on the future of our business, core competencies, and addressable markets.  Strengthening our balance sheet will put us in a better position to continue enhancing our big-data analytics and AI solutions, and to expand our capability and leadership in the AI industry in China."

BEIJING, May 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced the completion of its issuance and sale of a US$40 million convertible note (the "Note") to FutureX Innovation SPC (the "Investor"), an affiliate of FutureX Capital Limited ("FutureX"), for a total consideration of US$40 million. FutureX is an emerging China-based private equity firm led by Cynthia Zhang, who founded the overseas PE platform of ChinaAMC, a leading asset manager in China. FutureX's key areas of focus include technology, software and AI. The issuance and sale of the Note were made pursuant to the convertible note purchase agreement dated April 30, 2018 (the "Note Purchase Agreement") between the Company and the Investor. In accordance with the Note Purchase Agreement, the Company also entered into a registration rights agreement with the Investor.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "The completion of this financing is a positive sign of the support Gridsum has from the capital markets, and our focus on the future of our business, core competencies, and addressable markets.  Strengthening our balance sheet will put us in a better position to continue enhancing our big-data analytics and AI solutions, and to expand our capability and leadership in the AI industry in China."

BEIJING, May 3, 2018  /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has expanded its marketing automation suite with a new "Grow Model" application, which further enriches its product ecosystem and customer value-add.

Leveraging Gridsum's deep experience in developing big data and AI-empowered solutions, the Company recently launched the "Grow Model" to further expand the depth and breadth of the Company's marketing automation suite. The application can analyze the full spectrum of a customer's lifecycle, from attraction to the brand, purchase behavior (both first purchase and repeat purchases), to actions for winning back lost customers. The new application is already being used by many well-known brands including Pantene, Olay, Pampers, Mead Johnson and Babikins, and has also received industry wide recognition such as the China Interactive Marketing Academy Award for Excellence and the 2018 IAI International Advertising Awards for Excellence Award.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "It is always rewarding when we receive positive feedback from our customers after using our new applications. This premiumization era, demands that brands understand their users' behavior in a more timely and sophisticated manner than ever before as consumers have extensive access to information and are becoming more rational in selecting a product. The "Grow Model" application comprehensively analyzes factors that affect users' decisions at different stages of the purchase process and integrates cross-category behavior data to explore potential consumption needs and achieve precision marketing.  It also allows marketers to more effectively make data-driven decisions in their marketing strategy, as the model has multiple data sources including from search, e-commerce, public opinion, operator, online video, router, and research data. Our consistent focus on developing best-of-breed solutions strives to uncover a detailed consumer profile and associated behaviors by analyzing the customer purchase lifecycle, which will in-turn lead to more business opportunities for our marketing automation solutions clients."

Gridsum Holding Inc Ads (NASDAQ:GSUM) ($5.02; $154.2M market cap), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions in China announced a proposed investment from FutureX Capital, an emerging China-based private equity firm.  FutureX will purchase a $40 million convertible note.

“The Note will be convertible, in whole or in part at the holder's option, into Class B ordinary shares of the Company at a conversion price of US$6.50. This conversion price represents a 21.5% premium to the April 27, 2018 closing price of the Company's American depositary shares (the "ADSs"), each representing one Class B ordinary share.”

Investors should note the company recently received a non-compliance letter from the NASDAQ due to the company not filing its annual report.  On April 23, 2018 we stated the company announced its annual audit suspension due to certain financial issues with its annual report. Full details can be seenhere.

BEIJING, May 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported that on April 30, 2018, it entered into a convertible note purchase agreement (the "Note Purchase Agreement") with FutureX Innovation SPC (the "Investor"), an affiliate of FutureX Capital Limited ("FutureX"). FutureX is an emerging China-based private equity firm led by Cynthia Zhang,  who founded the overseas PE platform of ChinaAMC, a leading asset manager in China. FutureX's key areas of focus include technology, software and AI. Pursuant to the Note Purchase Agreement,  the Investor will purchase from the Company a convertible note in the principal value of US$40 million (the "Note"), subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, for a purchase price of US$40 million. The Note will be convertible, in whole or in part at the holder's option, into Class B ordinary shares of the Company at a conversion price of US$6.50. This conversion price represents a 21.5% premium to the April 27, 2018 closing price of the Company's American depositary shares (the "ADSs"), each representing one Class B ordinary share. The conversion price will be subject to customary adjustments in the case of share splits, share combinations, dividends, spin-offs, recapitalizations and certain other events.

The Note will have a term of 18 months and bears interest at 2.80% per annum. The Note will include other customary terms and covenants, including certain events of default after which the Notes may be due and payable immediately. Additionally, in the event of a fundamental change (as defined in the Note), the holders of the Note may require the Company to repurchase the Note at a price equal to 100% of the principal amount of Notes, plus accrued and unpaid interest. The Investor agrees not to transfer or sell the Note, the Class B ordinary shares or any other securities of the Company, or enter into any swap, short sale or similar arrangements relating to such securities, for a period of 6 months after the issuance of the Note. In connection with this transaction, the Company also agrees to enter into a registration rights agreement (the "Registration Rights Agreement") with the Investor, under which the Investor will have the right to require the Company to file a registration statement covering the offer and sale of the Class B ordinary shares issued upon conversion of the Note within 15 months following the issuance of the Note, as well as certain customary piggyback registration rights.

BEIJING, April 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported that it has received a letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of The Nasdaq Stock Market ("Nasdaq"), dated April 27, 2018 ("Nasdaq Letter"), notifying the Company that it is not in compliance with the requirements for continued listing under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1), because it is unable to timely file its annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2017 ("2017 Annual Report").

Under Nasdaq Listing Rules, the Company has 60 calendar days from the date of the Nasdaq Letter to submit a plan as to how it plans to regain compliance with Nasdaq's continued listing requirements ("Compliance Plan"). If Nasdaq accepts the Company's Compliance Plan, Nasdaq may grant the Company an exception of up to 180 calendar days from the due date of the 2017 Annual Report, or until October 29, 2018, to regain compliance.  If Nasdaq does not accept the Compliance Plan, the Company will have the opportunity to appeal that decision to a Nasdaq Hearings Panel. The Company intends to file submit its Compliance Plan within the prescribed 60-day period, and, if Nasdaq grants the exception, to file its 2017 Annual Report within the permitted period.

The Nasdaq Letter has no immediate impact on the listing of the American depositary shares representing the Company's Class B ordinary shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

BEIJING, April 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has integrated its "Marketing Dissector" with Tencent's Social Ads platform, entering a new age of multi-platform integrated marketing solutions.

Tencent's leading social media platform has over 800 million users and incorporates numerous advertising options. By connecting with Tencent's Social Ads platform, Gridsum's Marketing Dissector clients will now be able to leverage Gridsum's marketing automation SaaS suite to further automate their marketing strategy, further monitor and analyze the effectiveness of ad placements across multi-platforms, obtain valid data references for the selection of media channels and further optimize their marketing budget allocation.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are one of very few companies in China that have successfully linked our marketing automation solutions across the Tencent, Google, and Baidu social platforms. The nature of the advertising industry is evolving rapidly, requiring clients to not only have a much deeper understanding of the intelligence data behind their placements, but also to simultaneously analyze and optimize performance in real-time. The powerful database architecture of our Marketing Dissector can support multi-dimensional, custom data queries of both structured and unstructured data, providing clients with a solution that meets the needs of today's advertisers. We continue to focus on using our platform's unique distributed data architecture and real-time, multi-dimensional correlation analysis technology to help clients understand the complex relationships between data to gather new business insights and make better decisions. Our enterprise-AI layer then allows for the automation of optimized marketing solutions to drive clients' business KPIs."

BEIJING, April 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or "Company") (NASDAQ:  GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today reported that on April 20, 2018, PricewaterhouseCoopers Zhong Tian LLP ("PwC"), the Company's independent registered public accounting firm, notified the Company's Board of Directors and Audit Committee that PwC's audit report for the Company's financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2016 should no longer be relied upon. Therefore, investors should not rely on that audit opinion.

In its letter, dated April 16, 2018 ("PwC Letter"), PwC informed the Company of certain issues it had identified in conducting its audit of the Company's financial results for the year ended December 31, 2017. Those issues relate to certain revenue recognition, cash flow, cost and expense items, and their underlying documentation which PwC had previously raised with the Company. Of the items specifically identified in the PwC Letter, the Company estimates a 2016 revenue impact of approximately RMB 2 million and a 2016 expense impact of approximately RMB 6 million. There can be no assurance that the Company or PwC will not identify more items as the Company finalizes the review. The Audit Committee Chairman and the Company's Co-Chief Financial Officer have discussed the topics covered by the PwC Letter with representatives of PwC. The Company's Audit Committee is fully investigating these issues with assistance from external legal and accounting advisors and is working diligently toward an expeditious conclusion of the investigation. The Company undertakes no obligation to update its disclosures on this topic until the Audit Committee investigation is complete. Because PwC will not be in a position to issue reports on the Company's financial statements until the Audit Committee completes its review and PwC is satisfied that any outstanding issues have been satisfactorily addressed, the Company's 20-F filing will be delayed until such audit is completed.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "For many years, starting well before our IPO, we have been committed to transparency and good corporate governance and remain so. When we became aware of certain accounting issues, we immediately took measures to address this situation. Our Audit Committee started an investigation and appointed a respected global law firm to conduct that review with the assistance of 'big four' forensic accounting specialists. This work is still ongoing. I have full confidence in the integrity and professionalism of all parties involved and we hope to report our results as soon as practicable after that work concludes.

Meanwhile, we continue to make good progress in our efforts to grow the Company and expand our product range and client base. Our fundamentals and business prospects remain robust, and we look forward to continuing to work toward increasing shareholder value."

Fourth Quarter 2017 Financial Results

• Total revenue was $107,522,441, a decline of 28% compared to the previous year. Gross profit decreased 19% to $44,365,351.
• Reported earnings per share were $0.05. However, if one excludes the special charges, the unrealized currency changes, and the new U.S. tax rate, earnings per share would have been $0.59*.

“We were having a good year,” Mr. Liu continued, “before the shutdown. The one-time issues, changes in currency valuation, and the new tax law do distort the underlying strength of our business.”

Mr. Liu Xiaobin, the President and CEO of Gulf stated, “Despite having to close our factories for four months, we ended the year in an extremely strong cash position. This cash position gives Gulf the ability to finish its rectification, build its new chemical factory, drill natural gas wells, and make attractive acquisitions.

BEIJING, Feb. 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that China Southern Airlines Company Limited ("China Southern Airlines") (NYSE: ZNH) has launched a Chinese New Year marketing campaign using Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite. The marketing campaign will employ virtual reality ("VR") and augmented reality ("AR") technologies to create an immersive 360-degree advertising experience for users across multiple marketing channels including Baidu apps, Baidu Tieba, Weibo and WeChat. This is the first marketing campaign of its kind for an airline in China.

The Chinese New Year marketing campaign is leveraging Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite, cloud-based big-data analytics and AI capabilities to create a variety of highly-targeted marketing content. Gridsum began collaborating with China Southern Airlines in June 2017 to improve its search engine marketing campaigns on Baidu. By the end of 2017, China Southern Airline's return on its investment in search engine marketing had significantly improved from 2016, resulting in the expansion of the scope of service which now includes other search engines such as Qihoo360, Sogou, and Google among others.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "The Chinese New Year holiday is one of the most important travel periods in China and we are excited to support this first-of-its-kind marketing campaign for China Southern Airlines. By leveraging our deep experience in generating innovative highly-targeted marketing content for cross-platform campaigns, our Marketing Automation suite will help China Southern Airlines on their marketing strategy and further improve their business KPIs during China's peak travel season. With an expanded mandate from China Southern Airlines, we will continue to work closely with them to develop new value-added services and marketing content in order to help them make better data-driven business decisions and increase marketing and sales efficiency."

BEIJING, Feb. 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that Vipshop Holdings Limited (VIPS) ("Vipshop"), a leading online discount retailer for brands in China, has been using its Marketing Automation suite successfully for several months.

Vipshop is leveraging Gridsum's cutting edge marketing and sales intelligence technology to further drive its market share and business KPIs in China's rapidly growing e-commerce sector. Gridsum's Marketing Automation suite leverages the Company's cloud-based big-data analytics and AI capabilities to analyze Vipshop consumer behavior to create highly-targeted marketing content and optimize its digital marketing spending.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "Getting a potential consumer's attention within seconds is crucial in today's highly-competitive e-commerce market. Our natural language processing (NLP) technologies enable the extraction of information about entities, correlations, sentiments and emotions from vast amounts of data including varieties of digitized documents, text converted from audio and video streams and other digital content. This helps our clients to better understand the profiles and behavior of their potential customers. Combining our NLP technologies together with our AI-driven Marketing Automation suite features which include our intelligent, multi-platform bid-optimization solution, we are able to help Vipshop improve their content marketing strategy and directly manage and automate a greater share of their digital marketing spending. Vipshop has fantastic brand recognition and I am pleased that our AI and big-data-driven Marketing Automation suite is helping them make incisive and effective data-driven decisions and increase marketing and sales efficiency."

BEIJING, Jan. 31, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Bee® China ("Bee®"), an energy and facility systems consulting and service firm that offers resource efficiency assessment, intelligence and solutions, to jointly develop and implement optimal operation and management strategies in various energy systems, smart campuses and industrial plants.

According to the terms of the strategic cooperation framework agreement, Gridsum and Bee® will leverage each of their competitive strengths to develop Industrial Internet of Things ("IIoT") solutions that promote and facilitate energy conservation, emission reduction, big data provision, cloud and fog computation and automation platforms, and modernize/optimize resource management for China's private and public sectors.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I eagerly look forward to working closely with Bee® on developing IIoT solutions that will leverage our deep experience in cloud-based big-data analytics and extensive AI capabilities. This agreement marks another milestone in our IIoT development. It not only grows our presence in China's IIoT space following our agreement late last year to jointly develop an IIoT cloud platform with Shandong Province and other IIoT engagements, but also demonstrates our effectiveness and strategy to leverage our core technology competence to build highly scalable big data analytics and AI solutions that can be customized and applied in a number of different areas. Both Bee® and Gridsum share similar philosophies and visions which I believe when combined with our respective technology capabilities, will greatly benefit China's drive to conserve energy and reduce emissions."

BEIJING, Dec. 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has partnered with Peking University Law School to establish the Peking University Legal AI Lab and Research Institute (the "Legal AI Lab") to focus on the analysis, development and application of AI across China's legal ecosystem.

The Legal AI Lab was officially launched today at a ceremony attended by Ms. Jingyi Ye, Deputy Party Committee Secretary of Peking University, Mr. Shouwen Zhang, Dean of Peking University Law School and Director of the Legal AI Lab, Mr. Xiaolei Yang, Vice President of Peking University Law School and Executive Director of the Legal AI Lab, and Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are excited to be at the forefront of China's legal AI development and to have the opportunity to work in close cooperation with globally renowned legal academic institutions and individuals. The combination of Peking University's highly-experienced legal community and our cutting-edge AI and big data technology will directly benefit the development and application of AI across China's judicial system as it migrates towards a 'Smart Court' initiative."

Gridsum will leverage its unparalleled capabilities in big data and AI, as well as its deep experience in developing enterprise-focused AI applications, to provide technical and research expertise to the Legal AI Lab. Gridsum is ideally positioned to support the Legal AI Lab having set the benchmark for the successful integration of AI into the legal system with the launch of the "Faxin Wei Su" Platform in November 2017, a litigation service on WeChat's micro application platform. Working in close partnership with Peking University Law School and the Legal AI Lab is another step in Gridsum's broader strategy of developing a comprehensive suite of legal solutions targeting courts, prosecutors, law firms and others within the judicial ecosystem. The rollout of Gridsum's legal services product suite is accelerating within China's court system.

In July 2017, China's State Council announced its "Next Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" which articulated an agenda for China to develop a first-mover advantage and become a premier global AI innovation center. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently announced a more detailed short-term action plan in a follow up to China's State Council's. In The "Three-year Action Plan for Promoting the Development of a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Industry (2018-2020)," the government specifically targets the research of AI-related policies, laws and regulations that create a healthy and sustainable environment for the industry to grow. 

BEIJING, Dec. 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has signed a three-year contract extension from 2018-2020 with L'Oréal.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "L'Oréal was one of the first major multinational companies in China to subscribe to our marketing automation suite back in 2009. Since then, we have developed a deep relationship that now covers multiple areas of the company's digital marketing strategy, including social media, user experience optimization and bid-to-business-KPI optimization. We believe the signing of this significant three-year contract extension with one of our oldest clients is a testament to the quality of our solutions, our deep relationships with our clients, and our proven ability to help L'Oréal optimize its business on a data-driven basis."

BEIJING, Dec. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and enterprise focused artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has launched its AI-driven, Software as a Service ("SaaS"), Intelligent CRM Solution for the China market.

The Intelligent CRM Solution is a cloud-based, marketing-centric CRM solution tailor-made for both multinational and local companies operating in China. The solution leverages Gridsum's expertise in big data analytics and AI, combining Gridsum's "best of breed" marketing technology with leading sales intelligence technologies spanning multiple customer devices and integrating with key social networking platforms. The solution will also leverage Blockchain technologies in a number of specific areas going forward. It sets Gridsum apart from its competitors in a China SaaS CRM market expected to grow from an estimated RMB5.59 billion (US$0.85 billion) in 2017 to an estimated RMB15.1 billion (US$2.28 billion) by 2020[1], representing a CAGR of 39.3%.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "We are excited to launch our Intelligent CRM Solution after substantial research, development and real world operation. As the number of online and offline points of contact with consumers multiply, it has become infinitely more difficult for companies to identify and win potential customers in the most efficient manner. As Chinese consumers increasingly embrace 'new retail', our solution will help our clients to automate and, through machine learning, efficiently acquire, develop and manage both potential and existing customers through a variety of activities. By converging a client's business intelligence data with Gridsum Prophet and our marketing automation suite, we will be able to substantially drive sales efficiency with significant, immediate and quantifiable KPI enhancement for our clients. The market opportunity in China for marketing-centric CRM solutions is huge given the proliferation of mobile devices, the deep penetration that social media networks have, and the emergence of a new era of retail. The development of this product is another step in our strategy to leverage our core platform and capabilities into other areas of our clients' organizations, and to cross-sell and upsell our existing products and services to create greater value for clients."

Leveraging Gridsum's core competency and competitive advantages in big data analytics and AI, the Company combined cutting edge marketing and sales intelligence technology to create a CRM solution that specifically caters to enterprises operating in China. Both multinational companies and leading local companies in China have tended to use process-centric, system-heavy, legacy on-premises CRM systems that focus on tracking historical client contacts rather than leveraging advanced cloud-based solutions that are marketing-centric and focus on driving sales. This creates a substantial market opportunity for Gridsum which has already begun to cross-market and upsell the solution to its impressive existing portfolio of marketing automation and other clients.

Gridsum's Intelligent CRM Solution allows its clients to leverage both online and offline data derived from their digital marketing and sales divisions and customers' digital footprints, to drive sales and close orders in a more efficient and KPI-enhancing manner. The solution leverages Gridsum's AI Engine, the "Gridsum Prophet", and its marketing automation suite, as well as Gridsum's deep experience in seamlessly interfacing its marketing automation suite with its clients' sales infrastructure and systems, to create a ground breaking and tailor-made marketing-centric CRM solution for the China market.

Gridsum's Intelligent CRM solution will allow clients to automate and increase sales efficiency across their entire businesses by marketing to individual customers rather than broader demographics. The solution is designed and optimized as a powerful and complete standalone CRM solution. It also has advanced "plug and play" dynamics allowing it to seamlessly integrate with a client's legacy systems where necessary. With machine learning, Gridsum's clients will be able to automate the identification, prioritization and "valuation" of promising leads and relationships and sort through massive amounts of data related to multiple areas of their business - from marketing and sales, to loyalty programs, e-commerce, promotions, and more - to easily track customers throughout the different stages of the customer lifecycle. By seamlessly integrating multiple social platforms, Gridsum clients will also be able to create a "social map" of their customers' professional and social networks, matching this to their own organizations, to further drive the sales process.

Additionally, Gridsum's Intelligent CRM Solution will increasingly leverage key Blockchain technology features going forward to: accelerate and automate the often cumbersome contractual processes associated with sales and customer support; facilitate customer loyalty program modules built into the solution; support our clients' ecommerce; and integrate over the longer term into corporate ERP systems to effectively turn the supply chain into a "demand chain" profit center. This distinguishes Gridsum as an early mover and pioneer in this area in the China market. The company expects these features to grow in importance as the use of blockchain technology becomes more widespread in the China market and globally.

Gridsum Holding Inc. (NASDAQ:GSUM)($10.00; $307.0M market cap), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions in China, announced Q3 2017 results:

• Sales of $22.8 million vs. $14.9 million in the prior year; ahead of analyst estimates of $21.7 million

• Non-GAAP loss per share of $0.15 vs a loss of $0.31 in the prior year; missed analyst estimates of a loss of $0.08

• Company Reiterates FY2017 Net Revenues Outlook and Broadens Relationship with Tencent

Quotes from management:

"Overall, our strategy remains the same -- to leverage our leading big-data analytics and enterprise-focused artificial intelligence platform to help companies and other organizations make better decisions and drive an immediate and quantifiable KPI impact for our clients. While we have been able to grow quickly by attracting a number of companies to our platform, there remains enormous potential to broaden the types of organizations that we serve, and extensive untapped opportunity across the corporate world, including different parts of our current clients' organizations, that we can reach with new products and services. The enterprise software market in China remains relatively greenfield with few well developed domestic players. As companies in China become increasingly sophisticated, we believe that our intelligent cloud-based solutions can help them make important data-driven decisions that will be vital to their future growth."

Notably, the company reiterated its guidance for the full year 2017 and reiterated that it expects Q4 to be GAAP profitable.

BEIJING, Nov. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that it has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Tencent Cloud and Shandong Guohui Investment Co. Ltd., ("Guohui"), a company owned by the Shandong Province State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission to jointly develop an industrial internet of things cloud platform ("IIoT Cloud Platform") in Shandong Province.

According to the strategic cooperation agreement, Gridsum, Tencent and Guohui will leverage each of their competitive strengths to jointly develop the IIoT Cloud Platform and support the emergence of a smart industrial manufacturing cluster in Shandong Province. It is anticipated that the IIoT Cloud Platform will revolutionize the manufacturing ecosystem in Shandong Province by leveraging "Industry 4.0" methodologies to greatly improve the efficiency and acquisition of vast quantities of information which will be analyzed and processed at very fast speeds. The IIoT Cloud Platform will greatly improve manufacturers' ability to interconnect, increase efficiency, reduce production times and costs and build their businesses out to scale. The centerpiece of the IIoT Cloud Platform will be an industrial cloud and big data R&D center in Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province. Once completed, the industrial R&D center is expected to be amongst China's largest.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I am extremely excited to be part of Shandong Province's efforts to transition towards smart manufacturing. In August, Mr. Xijian Liu joined us as our chief strategy officer. He also heads our newly established IIoT division.  Mr. Liu's more than three decades of IT and strategic management experience at one of the largest state-owned petrol chemical enterprises in China laid a solid foundation for our rapid development in the IIOT space. Our core competency and competitive advantage is our ability to process massive amounts of data, leveraging advanced analytics and AI, to help organizations make better decisions and substantially drive their KPIs. This is a great example of how our cloud-based big data analytics and AI capabilities can rapidly expand a business' horizons and revolutionize manufacturing. I believe this agreement endorses the high-quality and reputation of our technology and our ability to work in close cooperation with Tencent to really build something transformative. This agreement also paves the way for further expanding our strategic partnership with Tencent as we develop new ways to leverage each other's strengths. This development also highlights the transformative nature of IIoT as defining a substantial strategic opportunity for Gridsum."

BEIJING, Nov. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that Gridsum, in cooperation with Tencent and the PRC People's Court Press, launched the "Faxin Wei Su" Platform ("the Platform"), a litigation service on WeChat's micro application platform, on November 7, 2017.

The Platform integrates Faxin, Gridsum's Chinese legal information platform which was jointly developed by Gridsum and the PRC People's Court Press as a part of Gridsum's broader legal solutions suite, with Tencent's WeChat app, China's largest social media and messaging platform, to provide the world's first integrated online litigation and remote trial handling service.

Gridsum, leveraging its unparalleled capabilities in big data, combines the expansive reach and user interface of WeChat with Faxin's extensive legal knowledgebase. The Platform provides both the courts and litigants with a fast and secure channel to match similar cases, make case status inquiries, submit files, and set appointments during the litigation process. All parties can join a trial remotely through the Platform and produce and question evidence throughout the process. All documents, including trial records, settlement agreements and other related files can also be accessed online after the trial is over. The Platform's diversified dispute resolution system provides efficient and flexible tools for remote trials and should help ease congestion in a highly crowded court system.

Gridsum, Tencent and the PRC People's Court Press will continue to work closely in actively exploring new technologies, setting up Smart Court Laboratories, and managing the implementation and operation of the platform.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, "I am excited to have the opportunity to work jointly with Tencent and the PRC People's Court Press to launch the Platform. By integrating Faxin's data resources and our big data and extensive artificial intelligence capabilities with Tencent's WeChat app, the Platform will help China's judicial system migrate towards a 'Smart Court' initiative and greatly benefit prosecutors, law firms and others within the judicial system. We remain committed to helping China as it reforms its judicial process and working to promote and develop new technology like this platform."     

Faxin Wei Su forms part of Gridsum's broader and comprehensive suite of legal solutions targeting courts, prosecutors, law firms and others within the judicial system. The rollout of Gridsum's legal services product suite is accelerating within China's court system. This development further highlights the Company's expectations for solid triple-digit growth in revenues from its legal suite in 2017.

BEIJING, Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence ("AI") solutions in China, today announced that management participated in a panel discussion and showcased its AI-enabled Intellectual Property Guiding Cases Service Platform ("IP Platform") at a seminar organized by Stanford Law School's China Guiding Cases Project ("CGCP"). The seminar was titled "On Building China's New IP Case System: A Discussion with Chinese Judges as well as Legal and Big Data Experts," and was held on October 19, 2017 at Stanford Law School.

Gridsum was represented by Mr. John Jiyang Liu, chief technology officer, Ms. Scarlett Huijie He, VP of business development, Mr. Meng Wang, general manager of Gridsum legal services division and a former Beijing Haidian District Court Judge, and Ms. Yi Shu, director of Gridsum legal services division and a former Beijing Haidian District Court Judge.

Mr. Liu also participated in a panel discussion alongside two judges from the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, Mr. Shuwei Jiang and Mr. Yijun Liu; as well as Prof. Leon Lee, executive director of the Case Law Research Center, School of Law of the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing; Judge William A. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Stanford Law School Dean Elizabeth Magill; and Dr. Mei Ying Gechlik, founder and director of the CGCP. During the discussion, Mr. Liu explained the functionality and technology behind Gridsum's AI capabilities and the IP Platform for legal case analytics as well as the Company's collaboration with China's Supreme Court. Mr. Liu also gave a live demonstration of the IP Platform, which was jointly developed by Gridsum and the Beijing Intellectual Property Law Association and designed for the Supreme People's Court's Intellectual Property Case Guidance and Research (Beijing) Base.

The seminar was organized by Dr. Gechlik and was attended by top intellectual property experts from China and the United States, as well as legal experts, law faculty and law students from the Silicon Valley area. The seminar explored topics including the enforceability of, and counterparty commitment to, judgements and rulings made by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, whether the case law database will be open to the public, and whether foreign businesses and patent-holders will be able to use the system to protect their own intellectual property rights within China. 

"I'm proud to have had the opportunity to showcase and discuss our AI platform's capabilities and how they can be applied to China's IP guiding cases system," commented Mr. Liu. "The IP Platform and its legal solutions form an integral part of our broader and comprehensive suite of legal solutions targeting China's 'Smart Court' initiative, along with prosecutors, law firms and others within the judicial ecosystem. We will continue to leverage our AI engine, including its real-time data analytics and massive processing power, to develop new and innovative tools for Gridsum's rapidly growing legal services division."

The rollout of Gridsum's legal services product suite is accelerating within China's court system as it becomes a "must have" product for the court system itself as well as law firms, corporations, and other related groups. This development further highlights the Company's expectations for solid triple-digit growth in revenues from its legal suite in 2017.

AI has been promoted to a higher level of China's national strategy, and the construction of a "Smart Court" system and "Smart Government" have also been positioned as important targets by the Chinese government. The Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan recently issued by the State Council outlined a goal of building an intelligent society and promoting intelligent social government. The plan is viewed as a key priority for the country and should help create new business opportunities for companies such as Gridsum that have rich experience in the AI and big data sectors.

**Executive Casts - Gridsum Holding Inc.

GSUM ($9.87) has joined Executive Casts, hosted on geoinvesting.com, to connect with investors on a number of subjects.  The service serves as a platform for company executives to talk about their business and products, backgrounds, industry trends, goals, expectations and much more.  In the series highlighted today, GSUM CEO Guosheng Qi talks about his own background and involvement in the tech space, entrepreneurship and corporate governance in China.  Please enjoy the clip here. https://geoinvesting.com/guosheng-qi-gsum-entrepreneurship/

The full interview can also be viewed here. https://geoinvesting.com/gridsum-holding-inc/

BEIJING, Aug. 30, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (NASDAQ:GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence solutions in China, won the government contract for the Remote Trial Service Information Construction Project of Beijing Intellectual Property Court, according to the official announcement of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Finance about government procurement on August 21, 2017. It is another major achievement for Gridsum’s legal services business after the Intellectual Property Case Study Guidance and Service Platform jointly developed by Beijing Intellectual Property Law Association and Gridsum. It also indicates that Gridsum continues to be a key software solution provider in China’s Smart Court initiative.

The Remote Trial Service forms part of Gridsum’s comprehensive suite of legal solutions targeted at courts, prosecutors, law firms and others within the judicial ecosystem. Gridsum’s broader legal solutions suite continues to see substantial growth, ahead of the company’s expectations.

The Remote Trial Service enables trials that used to happen in court rooms to be handled online, so that parties involved anywhere in the country or across the globe are able to participate in the trial process through the online platform conveniently and securely.

Compared with traditional legal services, the Remote Trial Service system takes full advantage of Internet technologies to file cases online, communicate via camera, and allow parties, including litigants and professional agents, to automate their legal processes such as case filing, payment of litigation fees, testifying and reviewing files online. Court trial sessions can also be conducted through the online platform, so that litigants do not have to be present at every trial session physically. In this way, the Remote Trial System saves and optimizes judicial resources, and improves judicial efficiency.

Gridsum’s Legal Service Division has developed a series of intelligent products for assisting court intelligence. The Company also launched the Intelligent Voice Recognition System jointly developed with Tencent Cloud to help improve the efficiency of the legal system across China. In addition, the Chinese Legal Information Platform (Faxin) established by the Company in collaboration with the PRC Supreme People’s Court Press, and the Intellectual Property Case Study Guidance and Service Platform developed for the Supreme People’s Court’s Intellectual Property Case Study Base in Beijing were also highly recognized by the Supreme People’s Court and other professionals in the realm of law.

Powered by Gridsum’s global “best of breed” distributed big data platform and AI engine performing real-time data analysis, processing massive amounts of structured and unstructured data, Gridsum offers a number of solution suites targeted toward enterprises, legal ecosystem participants, the government and other organizations. These product suites encompass multi-device data analysis, digital marketing, brand management and advanced data visualization with the goal of using advanced big data analytics and AI to enable companies and other organizations to make better decisions, drive their KPI’s and be more efficient.

Second Quarter 2017 Financial Results

• Net revenues increased by 43.8% to RMB120.9 million (US$17.8 million) from RMB84.1 million in the comparable period in 2016, driven by a 34.6% growth in Enterprise revenues and a 123.9% increase in e-Government and other revenues.
• NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM’S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum’s ordinary shareholders for the second quarter of 2017 was RMB1.09 (US$0.16) as compared to RMB1.83 in the comparable period of 2016.
• NON-GAAP NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM’S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Non-GAAP net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum’s ordinary shareholders for the second quarter of 2017 was RMB0.92 (US$0.14) as compared to RMB1.57 in the comparable period of 2016.

“We delivered strong financial and operating results once again in the second quarter of 2017,” stated Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum. “Our topline maintained its robust growth trajectory, primarily driven by solid customer base expansion and increased Average Revenue Per User (‘ARPU’). We remain on target to grow our customer count by 30% to 40% in 2017. In particular, we were very effective in cross-selling and upselling our products and services to existing clients.

“During this quarter, our Marketing Dissector 3.0 product suite went live. Some of the most important features of this suite are those that allow our clients to utilize, in a responsible and non-brand-dilutive manner, many of the new media that are currently disrupting the digital marketing landscape, including newsfeed, video, WeChat search, short video and other social. We believe that these new features including, in many areas, automated bidding on these new platforms for client KPI optimization, were key to both new client wins and ARPU growth from existing clients during Q2.

“During the second quarter, we won a number of additional marquee clients including Cisco, Chubb, Hainan Airlines, Michael Kors and China Life. We also saw the renewal rate among our most important 20 clients remain at 100% for the second quarter. Notable Q2 client renewals included Agoda, GAP, JD.com, and DF Nissan.”

“On the strategic side, we made significant progress in three areas during the quarter,” commented Ravi Sarathy, co-Chief Financial Officer of Gridsum. “First, we created a strategic partnership with a well-known local marketing firm that has good reach into potential new Gridsum clients across enterprise sectors. That partnership is targeted toward selling our social listening/brand management product suite and also our intelligent PR product suite. Second, we engaged in a pilot project with Accenture as a strategic marketing partner, focused on selling our marketing automation solutions. Third, we continued to target full launch of our Intelligent CRM product at the end of 2017 with a small CRM acqui-hire of a team with deep Oracle Siebel experience.

“Our current partnership with Tencent Cloud, focused toward our legal services suite and the legal space, continues to progress ahead of expectations. The partnership is now on an exclusive basis for the legal space and, although it is still at an early stage, we have begun discussions with Tencent about cooperation in other areas including WeChat.”

Mr. Michael Zhang, co-Chief Financial Officer of the Company, commented, “In the second quarter of 2017, our net revenues increased by 43.8% year over year to RMB120.9 million, driven by a 34.6% increase in our Enterprise revenues and a 123.9% increase in e-Government and other revenues. Although our gross margin declined from 87.2% to 83.3% year over year, it is within our budgeted range and expectations as we increased our investment in optimizing and enhancing the performance and security of our system and database. During the quarter, we also increased our spending in sales and marketing as well as research and development, consistent with our strategy of augmenting our brand recognition and solidifying our technology leadership. At the same time, we are carefully monitoring the ROI of our investments and making sure that our cost structure is optimized for efficiency. Going forward, we will continue to prudently invest in our future growth.”

Financial Outlook

For the full year of 2017, the Company has increased its guidance. Net revenues are now expected to be in the range of RMB628 million to RMB640 million, representing approximately 58% year-over-year growth at the mid-point. These forecasts reflect the Company's current and preliminary view, which may be subject to change.

BEIJING, Aug. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gridsum Holding Inc. ("Gridsum" or the "Company") (GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence solutions in China, held its partner conference in Beijing to enhance its legal and e-government solutions in China and to further scale Gridsum’s ecosystem in those areas and beyond. Tencent Cloud played a key role in the conference demonstrating the close relationship between the companies and building the foundation for further and broader cooperation going forward.

Gridsum and Tencent Cloud jointly developed an integrated speech-to-text solution for court trials and conferences. This advanced AI-enabled Intelligent Voice Recognition System converts voice into text in real time during court proceedings. The system leverages both Gridsum’s vertically-focused enterprise-AI engine, optimized for the legal space, and Tencent’s world-leading consumer-focused Chinese-language speech recognition engine. Gridsum adapted the Tencent speech recognition technology to create a high-accuracy and high-reliability speech-to-text and text-to-speech application for the highly specialized legal space. This technology was surrounded and integrated with/into a comprehensive Software as a Service (SaaS) suite of solutions for the juridical system including judges, courts, law firms and corporates. Gridsum is working in collaboration with the Supreme Court Press to disseminate these solutions throughout the Chinese juridical system. Gridsum and Tencent Cloud have exclusive rights to distribute this AI-enabled Intelligent Voice Recognition System in China’s nationwide legal system.

The growth results of the two divisions, e-government and legal service sectors, in terms of financial performance are substantial. In 2016, revenues generated from e-Government and other, the majority of which consists of revenues from e-government and legal service solutions increased by 101.6%, and this figure reached 112.4% in the first quarter of 2017. Gridsum expects its legal solutions revenues to deliver substantial triple-digit growth in 2017.

This is the first time Gridsum has held a partner conference since the Company was established. Michael Yang Xu, Co-president of Gridsum said in the opening speech, “We hope to leverage this opportunity to showcase our technology strength and express our willingness to expand business cooperation with more companies. We are also looking forward to building a thriving industry ecosystem that drives the development of an AI-enabled society together with our partners. ”

AI has been promoted to the higher level of China’s national strategy, and the construction of a “Smart Court” system and “Smart Government” have also been positioned as important targets by the Chinese government. The Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan recently issued by the State Council, outlined building an intelligent society and promoting intelligent social government as key priorities, and further promoting the development of smart governance and smart courts as one of the important targets, which creates new business opportunities for companies like Gridsum with rich experience in the AI and big data sectors.

Through Research Center for e-Government, a non-governmental entity established under Gridsum’s cooperation agreement with the State Information Center of China, Gridsum has provided big data analytics services to over 3,000 government websites, and provided the Internet opinion analysis on government policies based on big data perspectives for National Development and Reform Commission, State Forestry Administration, State Administration of Taxation and various other government agencies.

Gridsum launched its legal sector solutions in 2015. Gridsum leveraged its advantages in natural language processing, data mining and distributed computing technologies, and developed a variety of products to help legal service personnel, such as judges and lawyers, handle cases more efficiently. For example, the Intelligent Voice Recognition System is able to liberate court personnel from substantial routine work so that they can focus more on the key essence of legal cases.

BEIJING, June 16, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gridsum Holding Inc. (“Gridsum” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ:GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence solutions in China, today announced the debut of the Intelligent Voice Recognition System jointly developed with Tencent Cloud to help improve the efficiency of the legal system across China.

The advanced AI-enabled Intelligent Voice Recognition System converts voice into text in real time during court proceedings. The system leverages both Gridsum’s vertically-focused enterprise-AI engine, optimized for the legal space, and Tencent’s world-leading consumer-focused Chinese-language speech recognition engine. Gridsum adapted the Tencent speech recognition technology to create a high-accuracy and high-reliability speech-to-text and text-to-speech application for the highly specialized legal space. This technology was surrounded and integrated with/into a comprehensive Software as a Service (SaaS) suite of solutions for the juridical system including judges, courts, law firms and corporates. Gridsum is working in collaboration with the Supreme Court Press to disseminate these solutions throughout the Chinese juridical system.

On June 10, the system was demonstrated to senior government officials, including Zhou Qiang, the chief justice and president of China’s Supreme People’s Court, at the Intermediate People’s Court of Chongzuo City in Guangxi. The system fully demonstrates the power of information technology and targeted AI to provide more effective legal services, Chief Justice Zhou said after the demonstration. 

The Intelligent Voice Recognition System helps improve the efficiency of legal services in China by liberating court personnel from a substantial volume of routine work. It’s being implemented by more than 40 courts nationwide, including the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, which utilizes advanced technologies to spearhead judicial reform. The Intelligent Voice Recognition System is one of the most important applications of the two companies’ Intelligent Court Solutions suite, which can provide multiple services, such as long-distance court trials, and facial recognition of the plaintiff and the defendant. These form an important part of Gridsum’s broader Legal Services product suite.

The rollout of Gridsum’s legal services product suite is accelerating within China’s court system as it becomes a “must have” product through both the court system itself as well as other parts of the juridical ecosystem, including law firms and corporations involved in the legal system. This development underpins the company’s expectations for solid triple-digit growth in revenues from its legal suite during 2017.

The Intelligent Voice Recognition System will also be applied for voice-to-text conversion of Vietnamese and other languages to drive judicial cooperation between China and neighboring nations in South and Southeast Asia. This will allow the system to support China’s important strategy for the promotion of common development with the Eurasian countries, which is known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Intelligent courts will strengthen legal services collaboration between China and its neighboring countries by assisting with the resolution of cross-border legal disputes through the creation of a stable, fair, transparent and predictable legal environment, Chief Justice Zhou said.

The Intelligent Voice Recognition System jointly developed by Gridsum and Tencent Cloud is a global best-of-breed product. Key dynamics of the product include the following:

• A highly focused AI optimized for the legal sector: it adopts industry-leading voice recognition modeling methods and acoustic modeling technologies. With an ultra-large-scale language model -- and through the application of machine learning to the huge amount of content codified in laws and regulations, court verdicts and other corpus -- a customized engine was created to effectively identify and recognize legal terms and context.
• Outstanding performance: with real-time speech-to-text transcription in courts, text is generated in milliseconds with accuracy of 95%. The efficiency of the trial process could be significantly improved. It supports custom “hot” words recognition, allowing the accuracy for names of people and organizations, and special words to reach 90%. The pre-learning mechanism for case files and documents works especially well for intellectual property cases related to Internet, chemistry, physics and trademark, with a 50% increase in accuracy.
• Highly secured and reliable data: deployed on the private network of the People's Court, its data packets adopt unique encryption formats and algorithms from Tencent Cloud, which ensure highly secured audio data packet transmission.  Meanwhile, with an improved access authorization mechanism on the client end, the security of services and business are well managed and controlled; and it supports multiple backup storage of audio files, which ensures data security and reliability.
  About Gridsum

First Quarter 2017 Financial Results

• Net revenues increased by 57.3% to RMB100.6 million (US$14.6 million) from RMB64.0 million in the comparable period in 2016, driven by 51.5% growth in Enterprise revenues and a 112.4% increase in e-Government and other revenues.
• NON-GAAP NET LOSS PER ADS ATTRIBUTABLE TO GRIDSUM’S ORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS: Non-GAAP net loss per ADS attributable to Gridsum’s ordinary shareholders for the first quarter of 2017 narrowed by 38.4% to RMB1.75 (US$0.25), as compared with RMB2.84 in the comparable period in 2016.

“The first quarter of 2017 was another solid quarter with robust financial and operating results,” stated Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum. “We are pleased to see our topline continue its strong growth momentum, primarily driven by solid customer base expansion, which we target to grow by 30-40% in 2017, and a steady increase in Average Revenue Per User (“ARPU”). Meanwhile, we are glad to report that for the third consecutive year, Gridsum was named one of the Top 10 companies in Beijing's high-tech Zhongguancun district in terms of the number of the patent applications filed. This is a strong testament to our innovation DNA and unwavering commitment to continuing to drive market leading R&D efforts. This commitment is exemplified by the fact that we have filed 1,653 patent applications in China, of which 583 are big-data focused and 148 are explicitly Enterprise-AI focused, as of March 31, 2017. In addition, we have consolidated all of our AI activities strategically, technically and organizationally into a new division: Gridsum Prophet, which encompasses all of our AI capabilities: machine learning, natural language processing, image recognition, predictive industry modeling, and knowledge graph. We believe that the increased intelligent features of our products that come from this will continue to be key going forward in driving new customer acquisition and ARPU growth.”

Mr. Qi continued, “We have also strengthened our partnership with Tencent Cloud, having jointly developed an integrated speech to text solution for court trials and conferences, which we have the exclusive right to distribute in China’s nationwide court system. We see tremendous growth opportunities in front of us and will continue to penetrate into new markets, including financial services and intelligent CRM. With our first-mover advantage and cutting-edge technology, we will continue to enhance and build upon our product offerings and capitalize on the immense potential in the market. We believe we can further fortify our position as China’s leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics, machine learning and AI solutions, and generate great value for our shareholders going forward.”

Mr. Michael Zhang, Chief Financial Officer of the Company, commented, “In the first quarter of 2017, our net revenues increased by 57.3% year over year to RMB100.6 million, driven by a solid 51.5% increase in our Enterprise revenues and 112.4% increase in e-Government and other revenues. The significant growth of our e-Government and other business was primarily driven by the better-than-expected performance in all the three revenue streams of e-Government, new media and legal services with legal services, in particular, exhibiting exceptional growth. To fuel further topline growth, we will leverage our superior sales efficiency and continue our targeted investment in sales and marketing to broaden our market visibility. R&D will remain another key area of focused investment to strengthen our technology leadership and drive expansion into new products and services.”

Financial Outlook

For the full year of 2017, the Company retains its previous outlook that net revenues are expected to be in the range of RMB622 million to RMB634 million, representing approximately 57% year-over-year growth at the mid-point. These forecasts reflect the Company's current and preliminary view, which may be subject to change.

BEIJING, May 25, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gridsum Holding Inc. (“Gridsum” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ:GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics, machine learning and AI solutions in China, today announced that, as a part of its strategic evolution, it has consolidated all of its artificial intelligence (“AI”) activities strategically, technically and organizationally into a new division called the Gridsum Prophet.

TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP AND EVOLUTION

Gridsum is a first mover in China in big data intelligence. Since 2005, the Company has utilized a distributed big-data computing architecture, developed and implemented sophisticated natural language processing (“NLP”), and leveraged machine learning directed toward large enterprise clients. During that time, from serving large enterprise customers, the Company has accumulated deep domain knowledge and expertise as well as a massive amount of data that fuels its machine learning algorithms.

LEADERSHIP IN ENTERPRISE AI IN CHINA

Since this early inception, the Company has continued to stay at the forefront through focus and investment, hiring and training extraordinary engineers and architects and, importantly, playing an active and leading role in the AI academic and developer communities. The Company believes it is currently the technology market leader in the China enterprise-focused AI space with a global best-of-breed Enterprise-AI engine.

As of March 31, 2017, Gridsum has filed 1,653 patent applications in China, of which 583 are big-data focused and 148 are explicitly Enterprise-AI focused. The Company believes this is the largest number of Enterprise-AI focused patents for a company in China today.

Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, stated, “We are excited to launch our new AI engine, Gridsum Prophet. AI is playing an increasingly key role in developing and optimizing our intelligent products and solutions across the board and providing quantifiable value-add to our enterprise and other customers. Through Gridsum Prophet, we are taking strategic moves to further accelerate our AI development in a more concentrated way. New product features driven by Gridsum Prophet have already been key in a double-digit number of both client wins and subscription renewals with substantial ARPU uplift.”

GRIDSUM PROPHET SCOPE

In terms of scope, Gridsum Prophet encompasses all of the Company’s AI capabilities: machine learning, natural language processing, image recognition, predictive industry modeling, and knowledge graph. Gridsum Prophet powers the Company’s intelligent products and solutions across the matrix of clients and industry verticals. It also allows the Company to see cross-industry, product and demographic correlations and relationships to add further value for its clients.

Gridsum Prophet is an explicit and important development area for the Company and is increasingly key in creating new differentiated product features for the Company’s existing products (e.g. marketing automation) and is central in defining and shaping new products, such as the Company’s social listening and brand management suite as well as its legal services and Intelligent CRM product suites.

VALUE ADD

Gridsum Prophet already plays a key role in driving quantifiable value for the Company’s customers. It also defines a key competitive advantage for Gridsum versus other local and global players. This is the case in the marketing technology and broader Business Intelligence ecosystems where Gridsum Prophet is instrumental for the Company in driving new customer acquisition as well as ARPU growth with existing customers.

Gridsum Prophet is also key to the Company’s legal services product suite which, in some areas, Gridsum believes is consistent with passing a “soft” Turing Test - delivering results in a few seconds consistent with multiple man-hours of work by a team of junior lawyers and paralegals. Gridsum Prophet is also central to the development and success, so far in current Beta trials, for the Company’s Intelligent CRM solution.

ENTERPRISE AI COMPARED WITH CONSUMER AI

Consumer-focused AI differs substantially from enterprise-focused AI.

Broadly speaking, consumer AI often leverages the ubiquitous consumer Internet ecosystems across e-commerce, social, mobile, entertainment and others and focuses to quickly solve or facilitate relatively simple (from a mathematical standpoint) but often time-consuming, “painful” or distracting consumer challenges. Consumer AI is incredibly broad in scope, having the potential to revolutionize and facilitate the way people live and, within the next 10 years, will likely touch the lives of most of the people on the planet.

Enterprise AI is different in focus, structure, development, management, application and goals. It requires a very different and focused “organizational DNA” which is particularly rare in China (and elsewhere in Asia). It is focused on creating immediate and quantifiable value for companies with an immediate KPI impact and evolving and increasing that value-add over time.

Enterprise AI hence requires deep domain expertise and knowledge of the target industry and its ecosystem. This allows Gridsum to understand the challenges and opportunities where AI technologies can be effectively applied to delivering immediate and quantifiable value to an enterprise customer whether it is improving efficiency, reducing cost, or allocating marketing budget for optimized ROI. These are often industry-specific drivers and dynamics, typically requiring more focus and depth in a narrower area than consumer AI. To accomplish this, enterprise AI tends to heavily leverage supervised learning techniques to infuse human expertise into the resulting intelligent solutions.

SUPERVISED LEARNING METHODOLOGY

To drive high-value machine learning, Gridsum utilizes its growing team of industry experts and data scientists who also help tailor the Company’s products, solutions, features and UI for specific industries and verticals. This is a key differentiator of enterprise AI (and Gridsum) when compared to the demands and development process for typical consumer AI.

Gridsum uses an iterative learning process whereby high quality raw data is sourced. That data is organized across multiple dimensions and machine learning then produces intermediate results from analyzing the complex relationships within the data. The Company’s industry experts review the results suggested by the system and, based on deep industry expertise, tag these results as relevant, less relevant or irrelevant which is then fed back into the system’s machine learning cycle to further optimize the results, thereby forming a positive optimizing feedback loop.

In addition to the Company’s strong emphasis on supervised learning, it is important to note that Gridsum utilizes deep learning, supervised or unsupervised where appropriate, in areas such as abnormal pattern discovery, image recognition and customer value prediction.

CASE STUDIES

To further explain how Gridsum Prophet works in practice, below are three specific examples of the engine in action.

AUTOMATED CLICK-FRAUD DETECTION & PREVENTION
The Company estimates that over 35% of Internet traffic in China can be defined as “suspicious” (including non-human/bot and “malvertising”). Powered by the vast amount of online behavior data that the Company has been collecting and analyzing for over a decade across a broad range of industries and diverse sets of computing devices and software systems, Gridsum’s supervised and deep learning algorithms continuously improve the coverage and accuracy of click fraud detection and prevention within its Web Dissector and other products. By consolidating all of its abnormal pattern recognition technology into the Prophet engine, the system is now leveraging cross-industry and cross-product machine learning resulting in improved performance. This helps the Company’s clients to substantially and quantifiably improve their ROI from their digital market dollars. 

AUTOMATED MARKETING BUDGET ALLOCATION
By mining historical media buying and performance data and leveraging Gridsum’s deep knowledge and expertise in the China marketing space, the Company’s data science team has developed an automated industry modeling and marketing budget allocation model. This means that a customer can input a desired range of KPI results and the system will then define and allocate a marketing budget to achieve this. This also allows a customer to have an accurate prediction of likely KPI outcomes from their marketing budget and strategy. This heavily leverages Gridsum’s supervised machine learning algorithms that the Company has already successfully used to help clients in the financial industry to allocate their annual digital marketing budget across media channels to achieve optimal return on investment. This moves Gridsum’s products up the value chain to a marketing strategy creation level, and has already resulted in significantly increased ARPU for a number of clients 

This is increasingly important in China today where the largest brands are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate in an increasingly “noisy” and crowded landscape defined by a proliferation of lower-end brands.

The Gridsum Prophet engine here also importantly helps clients to explore new media such as newsfeed, short video and social video in an ROI-focused, controlled, data-driven and results-oriented manner. These features have recently been a key differentiator in a number of the Company’s new customer additions.

CUSTOMER VALUE PREDICTION
In another demonstration of the power of data and deep learning, Gridsum has built a customer value prediction system by analyzing the customers’ online (spanning mobile app, browser and PC) and offline behavior data (contained within a customer’s CRM system and other areas). Using predictive modeling and machine learning, the system has already been helping clients in the automotive industry to effectively improve their sales and call center performance by reducing the average number of calls needed for customer acquisition by as much as 90%.

POTENTIAL FUTURE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Going forward, over the medium and longer term, Gridsum Prophet opens the opportunity for significant future product development. For example:

An intelligent PR product Suite. The Prophet engine could allow for the dynamic tracking of the audience, across multiple online and offline sources of a customer’s PR campaign, with multi-dimensional drill down across multiple KPI’s. Combined with Prophet’s natural language processing capabilities, the engine could also track the online social (and other) “buzz” and response and discussion across social platforms, forums, Q&A environments and other industry focused online environments, visualizing this data at a high level across multiple dimensions with drill-down capability to specific underlying posts where needed. The customer could then dynamically manage its PR campaign (e.g. product launch) in real time based on this feedback.
Financial Services product Suite. Gridsum’s predictive modeling capabilities, which are increasingly differentiating the Company’s marketing automation suite, are already playing a key role in the development of the Company’s financial services product suite which is expected to be launched this year.
Fraud Detection and Prevention Suite. Gridsum’s anomaly detection engine, already driving the click-fraud detection and prevention features of Web Dissector and other products, may have further applications in other areas, such as a broader cyber security focus. Here, abnormal patters in organizational communications, computer, other device and even Travel and Expenses use can be focused on detecting various types of fraud or even inefficient business processes/organizational behaviors.

BEIJING, Sept. 23, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gridsum Holding Inc. (“Gridsum” or the “Company”) (GSUM), a leading provider of sophisticated data analysis software in China, today announced that its initial public offering of 6,700,000 American depositary shares (“ADSs”) was priced at US$13.00 per ADS, with a total offering size of US$87.1 million, assuming no exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional ADSs. Each ADS represents one Class B ordinary share of the Company. The ADSs are expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on September 23, 2016 under the symbol “GSUM.”

The Company has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,005,000 ADSs at the initial public offering price, less the underwriting discounts and commission.

Goldman Sachs (Asia) L.L.C., Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated acted as joint bookrunners for the offering.

Gridsum’s registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and was declared effective on September 22, 2016.