Shuang Liu
Analyst · Alex Yao of JPMorgan
Thank you, Matthew. Good morning and good evening everyone. We are very pleased to exit the first half of 2014 with strong momentum propelled by robust growth in both total revenues and net income, which exceeded Bloomberg's consensus estimates. Before I get into the second quarter results, I'd like to first reflect on Ifeng's involving company offerings for Chinese internet users in recent months. In the last call, we highlighted Ifeng's role in helping our Chinese audience related to the turbulent and dynamic world around them, especially having major events occur like the Malaysian flight disappearance and terrorist attack in the Kunming train station. Now it seems that these global affairs have intensified and have become even more event driven as we have recently witnessed the escalating Israel-Gaza's crisis, the second Malaysian airline incident, and on a light note, the 2014 FIFA World Cup. As world events continue to drive ordinary citizens' demand for real-time comprehensive news coverage, Ifeng remains on top of this chain, by providing in-depth analysis, thought provoking commentary, live video coverage and a mechanism for users to contribute and discuss. In particular, the 2014 World Cup afforded us the opportunity to attract even more first time users by providing comprehensive and in-depth coverage across our multiple platforms. At the end of June, when the World Cup was in full swing, our PC platform's daily unique visitors reached 45 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 22.5%. This event has also helped us to improve traffic of or sports vertical due to which the World Cup ranked number four amongst our peers, according to a report by Tsinghua University. The same report founded that 44.3% of the internet users in China follow the World Cup news via Ifeng Sports. We are proud to leverage our media DNA to attract sports fans to our platform to read sports related news articles, watch short-form video coverage and participate in interactive discussion forums, all across both PC and mobile platforms. Our performance on the mobile side during this time was especially impressive. A report by the independent mobile internet research firm, Talking Data showed the following. First, during the World Cup, the DAUs on Ifeng news apps increased by 21.3%; second, the application is currently among the top three users most preferred apps in the news app category; and third, our Ifeng mobile website shows promising growth with DAUs increased by 31% during the World Cup. Additionally, in an effort to extend the reach of our brand and connect directly with users and potential users during this exciting time, we launched several marketing and promotional events in Beijing's nightlife and bars districts. These World Cup scene promotional events allows us to reach over 1 million people directly and extend our social media powers to over 10m. The second quarter also witnessed the elevation of our video brand, characterized by the strong performance of new video company platform. We began to air several new in-house productions that were well received by both advertisers and the public. The Match of Taste, our new original food show offering -- introduced Ifeng video in May, achieved a record high 22 million viewers per episode. Now, moving onto our second quarter earnings highlights. In the second quarter financial results we saw steady topline growth and impressive net income expansion. The incremental revenue growth and operating margin improvement were largely supported by the strong performance of our net advertising revenue which grew by over 38.9% year-over-year. The success on advertising side was driven by the rapid growth of traffic across our PC platform, as well as the successful integration of marketing solutions and emergence of our native advertising solutions. The evolving dynamics of internet advertising have drawn our attention towards native advertising and native markets. To focus on this evolution, we recently helped established the native Marketing Research Institute for the purpose of exploring and tailoring native app partnerships and have already seen multiple successful cases impetus thus far. We're optimistic about our native advertising offering as we build it into our overall integrated marketing solutions for advertisers. The impressive ad revenue growth in the second quarter coupled with the recent initiative to consolidate our marketing and sales resources will set the stage for continued growth in brand building, marketing events and advertisement sales. We're excited to promote Ling Jin, formerly Executive Vice President to CMO in part of this new team. We're also happy to promote Ya Li, formerly our COO and long-time Ifeng veteran to President. And welcome onboard our new CTO, Richard Tong. The rapid reorganization of our team and resources will help boost morale, improve efficiency and foster greater innovation in terms marketing solutions integration and the product development. Before I conclude my remarks, I also would like to provide you with an update on ongoing convergence between Ifeng and the Phoenix Satellite TV, as it has been almost six months since I assumed the CEO role of PTV. First, in recent months we began to cover many news events from Malaysian flight incidence to the rampant corruption storm in China. With PTV providing comprehensive and timely news reports in order to enrich our content offerings and improve user selection on multi-screens. Second, Ifeng has become more involved in PTV's content production process by co-producing and co-broadcasting the content on both TV and internet platforms. Two of our recent in-house productions, the Match of Taste and [indiscernible] have been co-broadcasted in cooperation with PTV in the second quarter. Currently, PTV is in the process of revamping its major programs. We are aiming to import more internet creative ideas into TV programs to enhance the interactive functionality of the new programs and further expand PTVs different age demographic in mainland China. Third, we continue to progress in terms of technical integration across the Company platforms in order to further improve content management efficiency. Last, we tend to hold a series of co-marketing events together with PTV in the second half of this year. Such events include the Phoenix financial forum and economic leader award to be held in Q4 2014. These significant developments demonstrate the tangible progress that has been made on the convergence of the Phoenix Group's media resources. Leveraging this success in second quarter and fueled by a large PC and mobile audience, we are excited to hop in to the second half of 2014 with strong momentum. With the growing demand of lifestyle oriented mobile and video conference, we are confident that Ifeng's converged multi-screen platform will continue to grow as we expense its footprint with the new media industry. With this, I'll like to turn the call over to our CFO, Betty Ho.