Ting Li
Analyst · Jefferies
Hello, everyone. I'm Li Ting. Thank you for joining us today. In 2025, our group revenue and social entertainment business regained growth momentum since Q2, and we saw meaningful progress in our segment growth curve of ad tech and other emerging areas. Together, these results are sharing our clear strategic framework as a global technology company with multiple growth engines. Let me start with an overview of our results. In Q4, live streaming maintained a sequential recovery trend where our advertising platform saw accelerated top line growth. Meanwhile, non-GAAP operating profit and cash flow remained robust. In the fourth quarter, total revenue reached $581.9 million, up 7.7% Q-o-Q and 5.9% year-on-year, representing our further positive year-on-year growth since the second half of 2024. Live streaming revenue was $394.4 million, up 1.5% Q-o-Q, marking 3 consecutive quarters of sequential growth. BIGO Ads, including both first and third-party ads generated $128.1 million in revenue, up 61.5% year-on-year with third-party Audience Network revenue growth accelerating to 82.5% year-on-year. Overall, non-live streaming business contributed 32.2% of total group revenue. Non-GAAP operating profit stood at $40.8 million, and operating cash flow totaled $115 million. For the full year, total revenue was $2.12 billion. Live streaming contributed $1.53 million, while BIGO Ads contributed $398.5 million, a 38.5% year-on-year. In particular, BIGO Ads third-party ad revenue, Audience Network, delivered 56.3% year-on-year growth. Non-live streaming businesses represented 28% of total revenue, an increase of 7.9 percentage points compared with 2024. In 2025, non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP EBITDA were $150.8 million and $189.8 million, up 10.8% and 10.9% year-on-year, respectively. As of December 31, we held $3.26 billion in net cash. Our strong operating cash flow and balance sheet continue to support consistent shareholder returns. In 2025, we returned $332 million through share repurchases and dividend. We've improved business visibility and ongoing operational optimization. We are confident we will continue to deliver solid performance. In light of our strong performance and continued double-digit non-GAAP operational profitability improvements in 2025, the Board has approved additional cash dividend of approximately USD 20 million, representing approximately 10% of the total cash dividend declared for the year of 2025. On top of company's regular quarter dividend schedule, this demonstrates our ongoing commitment to drive operational improvement and enhance shareholder returns. Next, let me share our strategic forecast and outlook. We are currently evaluating refinements to our segment reported structure, and we are considering to report our results under 3 major business segments: social entertainment, ad tech and e-commerce SaaS beginning since the first quarter of 2026. This new structure will make it easier to see and understand the progress we make within each business. Our social entertainment business remains the cornerstone of our profitability and cash flow. Meanwhile, BIGO Ads and Shopline are building our next stage of growth with improving mid- to long-term economics and expanding profitability potential. Together, this business has positioned JOYY for a return to sustainable and profitable growth. From a long-term perspective, their combined strengths and synergies will serve as an [ on-field ] engine through which we can eventually penetrate addressable market beyond what would be possible for each business individually. We believe 2026 will be a landmark year for JOYY, marking the resolute beginning of our renewed growth journey and the defining step toward becoming a global diversified multi-engine technology company. Now let's turn to our operating update. In Q4, our core social entertainment business achieved its third consecutive quarter of sequential recovery. Global social MAUs reached 272.1 million, up 2.2% quarter-over-quarter. Traffic from our instant message increased 4.5% Q-o-Q, driven by high user stickiness and user organic growth. Both average user time spent and the retention improved year-on-year. On the revenue side, group live streaming revenue rose to $394.4 million, up 1.5% Q-o-Q. Developed market recorded a strong recovery with revenue climbing 3.5% -- 3.4% Q-o-Q. BIGO's total paying user rose 1.5% Q-o-Q. Okay. On our current [4 ] flagship products, we further enhanced our streamer incentive structure and the integrated AI-driven features across critical stage of the user journey, boosting both engagement and payment efficiency. For example, by integrating LLM architecture and incorporating multi-modal information into our recommendation system, we improved our ability to understand both live streaming content and user interest. The optimized recommendation precision and distribution efficiency led to a 5.6% Q-o-Q increase in Bigo Live's, average viewing time per user in Q4. Furthermore, user adoption of AI-generated virtual gifts continued to grow. As of January 2026, the consumption of AI interactive gifts on Bigo Live has surpassed 30% of total virtual gift consumption. We are making solid progress on our new product lineup, leveraging our established capability and product development, content, payments infrastructure and local operations. We are expanding new product incubation and growth. In Q4, revenue from new products increased 37.9% Q-o-Q, setting new monthly record. In 2026, we expect continued recovery. The paying users are approved for our flagship product, driven by ongoing operational refinement. Meanwhile, we anticipate our new product lineup will sustain robust growth and bring further incremental live streaming revenue. We are confident our social entertainment segment will regain growth momentum, delivering healthy profitability and cash flow for the group. Turning to BIGO Ads. In Q4, BIGO Ads delivered $128.1 million in advertising revenue, up 61.5% year-on-year and 23.3% Q-o-Q. Third-party ad revenue, Audience Network, grew 82.5% year-on-year and 27.3% Q-o-Q, demonstrating accelerated growth momentum on a sequential basis for the third consecutive quarter. We fueled this growth through broader traffic coverage, multi-vertical advertiser expansion and ongoing algorithm optimization. First-party traffic expanded steadily supported by higher MAUs and ad fill rates that drove sequential revenue and profit growth. Third-party traffic also increased with SDK requests growing by 166% year-on-year and 23% Q-o-Q. Our diversified vertical strategy across insurance, e-commerce and IAA games broadened market coverage and allowed us to capture seasonal advertising demand more effectively. Q4 was the peak season for U.S. insurance advertising and the prime [ outright ] for e-commerce campaigns such as Black Friday web-based demand primarily from insurance, and B2C e-commerce advertisers grew 20%, contributing to a boost in revenue. Enhanced placement performance led IAA vertical, primarily casual games, to a 39% sequential increase. Overall, the number of key cohorts increased by 29%, and the total spending of key cohort climbed 34%. [ By writing ], we believe the market continued to be our priority with North America up over 21% Q-o-Q and Western Europe rising 46% Q-o-Q. To take advantage of exciting momentum, we will depend our presence in key verticals, including lead generation ad, e-commerce and games. This multi-vertical approach will serve as our structure and disruptive competitive edge over the mid- to long term. And currently, we will expand our advertiser base and penetrate deeper into development countries while continuously optimizing our algorithm. We have established a 3-year road map for the BIGO Audience Network, targeting a revenue milestone of $1 billion by 2028, accompanied by steady improvement in economics. Finally, a word on Shopline. Beginning in 2026, we are considering to report Shopline as a separate business segment to reflect our confidence in its growth prospects. Over the past year, Shopline maintained double-digit revenue growth, driven by cross-border merchant basis here, double-digit expansion and its rising contribution to revenue. While we have normalized Shopline's R&D spending backed by steady top line and gross profit gains, we see a clear and achievable path for Shopline to reach breakeven while sustaining a double-digit revenue growth trajectory. Turning to capital return. In Q4, we repurchased $67.4 million of shares. For the full year, total repurchases reached $134.6 million with momentum accelerating in the second half. We believe our current valuation does not fully reflect our intrinsic value. We remain committed to actively utilizing our buyback program. Looking ahead, as we continue to scale our business and strengthen our operating profitability, we will work closely with the Board to explore possible measures to further enhance our shareholder return mechanism. In summary, our strategic blueprint and ecosystem potential are only beginning and unfolding. We view 2026 as a fresh start toward our next phase of growth. We remain focused on execution, and we are confident that sustained growth and the profitability improvements will demonstrate our true value, leveraging our integrated ecosystem, which remains committed to strengthening joint position and delivering long-term value for our shareholders. Now that's beginning for Alex Liu.