ESS Operation Hours and Timing of Publication

The operational hours of ESS on a business day will be between 6.00 a.m. and 11.00 p.m. On a non-business day immediately preceding a business day, ESS will be available between 6.00 p.m. and 8.00 p.m. In order to enable HKEX to perform system maintenance work, login to ESS is prohibited other than its operational hours.

A submission for publication can be made whenever ESS is operational. However, the Listing Rules prohibit the publication of Announcements and Notices (certain headline categories with exception) outside designated publication windows.

No. ESS will not be operational after 11.00 p.m. (i.e. end of ESS operational hours). If you did not log off at that time, you will be forced to log out when you click any button on ESS. All un-submitted data will be lost.

ESS will display a pop up alert message on 30 minutes and then 15 minutes before the end of operational hours. An alert message will also pop up if you log onto the system within 30 minutes before the deadline.

Yes, both ESS and the related hotline service will continue as usual. Documents that have been submitted will be published in the same manner as on a normal working day.

A publication window is a period of the day when announcements and notices submitted and published immediately on the HKEXnews website. Apart from certain limited types of documents that can be published outside the publication windows, the current publication windows applicable to the Announcements and Notices are as follows:

On a normal business day:

• 6.00 a.m. to 8.30 a.m.
• 12.00 noon to 12.30 p.m.
• 4.30 p.m. to 11.00 p.m.

On the eves of Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year when there is no afternoon session:

• 6.00 a.m. to 8.30 a.m.
• 12.30 p.m. to 11.00 p.m.

On a non-business day preceding a business day:

• 6.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.

The above times are submission deadlines for publication. A submission will be successful if approved at any time (up to and including the 59th second) prior to the deadline.

Other documents, such as annual reports can be submitted during ESS operational hours and being published directly on the HKEXnews website. For these documents, we would recommend submission during trading hours to avoid the peak publication period.

Only certain types of announcements and notices that listed below can be published during the non-publication windows:-

• trading halt or suspension announcements;
• announcements that relate to clarification of news reports or unusual price/turnover movements (classified as “standard” or “super”); and
• overseas regulatory announcements.

Upon the submission of AP/PHIP has been approved by the approver through ESS, it will be automatically published on the AP/PHIP designated webpage on the HKEXnews website.

No. If an issuer submits an announcement for publication outside the appropriate publication windows, the announcement will be withheld from publication by ESS and will not be published until the next designated publication window. The issuer should not publish the announcement on its own website until it has been published on the HKEXnews website.

Once the submission has been approved, a submitted document of average file size (i.e. approximately 500KB) should be published on the HKEXnews website in approximately 1 minute. During peak periods or in the case of larger documents, publication may take longer.

After submitting document for publication via ESS, it is a best practice for an issuer to always ensure that a submission has actually been published.

After your documents have been published on the HKEXnews website, ESS will send an email notification to the primary authorised person of the issuer, the submitter and the approver of the document. This email notification contains hyperlinks which link to the English and Chinese documents (if both language versions are submitted at the same time) as published on the Latest Listed Company Information section of the HKEXnews website. Likewise, a similar email notification will be sent to the primary authorised person of the issuer, the submitter and the approver when an amendment to headline categories has been made and published on the HKEXnews website.

Alternatively, you can check on the HKEXnews website whether your documents have been published.

The most common reason for your submission of an announcement not being published on the HKEXnews website is because it was not submitted during one of the designated publication windows. In such cases, your announcement will be published during the next straight through period.

ESS will publish approved submissions on a batch basis. The batched process of publication is scheduled to run once every minute. To ensure that there is even dissemination of information, before an issuer publishes a document on its own website, it is best practice for that issuer to first ensure that a submission via ESS has been published.