Tuya Inc. (TUYA) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Tuya Inc.'s Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be informed that today's conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to your first speaker today, Ms. Regina Wang, Investor Relations Associate Director of Tuya. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining us today is our Founder and CEO, Mr. Jerry Wang; and our Co-Founder and CFO, Mr. Alex Yang. Our results and webcast of the conference call are available at ir.tuya.com. A replay of this call will also be available on our IR website in a few hours. Before we continue, I'd like to refer you to our safe harbor statements in our earnings press release, which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Founder and CEO, Mr. Jerry Wang. Jerry, please?

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Tuya's earnings conference call for the second quarter of 2026. Tuya maintained a solid growth momentum during the quarter, despite the continued complexity of the global operating environment. Our total revenue reached USD 92.9 million, a year-over-year increase of 16%, with growth accelerating from the first quarter. Within this, revenue from our core PaaS business increased 16.9% year-over-year. These results reflect the ongoing rising smart product penetration, including steady demand home appliances, increased adoption of differentiated solutions such as smart door locks and growing demand for emerging AI-enabled product categories and also underscore the resilience of our platform business across different regions and product categories. In terms of strategic execution, we continue to advance our AI-driven development strategy extending our AI capabilities beyond foundation models and stand-alone features towards platformization, productization and scenario-based deployment. In the second quarter, shipment volumes of AI companion product solutions continues to expand and consumer acceptance of new forms of AI hardware began to be validated. Meanwhile, we launched the Tuya CoBuilder, which applies coding to AI hardware development, enabling developers to cover the core development process from product concept to physical device validation using natural language, further shortening AI hardware development cycles. This development further reinforce AI evolution from a mere conversational tool into a technology that operates in real physical environment and participate in sensing, understanding and execution. Looking ahead, we will deepen our focus on the following 3 key areas: First, we will continue to advance AI-native application and product innovation, centering on high-potential scenarios such as AI home, AI energy and AI robots. We will drive the large-scale adoption of AI across a broader range of physical devices. Second, we will continue to enhance AI development tools, such as AI coding, agent orchestration and cloud-edge-device collaboration, further shortening the cycle from ideation and development to deployment on physical devices for AI hardware. Third, we will advance the global expansion of proven solutions while further strengthening our development ecosystem and industry partnerships to jointly explore long-term opportunities in the AI application market. Now, let me turn the call over to our Co-Founder and CFO, Alex Yang, who will share more details about our financial performance and business progress.

Hello, everyone. This is Alex. I will now provide a brief overview of our second quarter results. Please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures are in U.S. dollars and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis. In the second quarter of 2026, we generated total revenue of approximately USD 92.9 million, up 16% year-over-year and accelerating from the 8.3% growth recorded in the first quarter. Our PaaS business maintained strong growth where revenue from the smart home and robot product segment has also increased by double digits. Of our total revenue, the PaaS business generated revenue of about USD 67.9 million, a year-over-year increase of 16.9%, serving as the important growth drivers for the quarter. At the end of the second quarter, the number of PaaS premium customers for the trailing 12 months reached 318, contributing approximately 89.5% of the PaaS revenue with our core customer base remaining stable. The AI application and others segment generated revenue of about USD 11.5 million, a year-over-year increase of 3.9%, primarily driven by growth in cloud-based storage revenue such as video cloud storage. We continued to advance the value-added services, including video and AI-driven energy saving, among others, with AI-enabled applications capabilities while gradually strengthening our new and recurring service capability. Smart home and robot products revenue was about USD 13.5 million, a year-over-year increase of 23.2%, primarily driven by growing customer demand from smart security, energy and other differentiated smart products. We will continue to increase the contribution of high value-added products and strengthen their integration with software and value-added services. Looking at the specific driver of PaaS growth. Home appliances, smart door locks, electronics and energy products and AI companion product solutions performed relatively well during the quarter. Growth in the home appliances segment was mainly driven by customers' rollout of the smart-enabled models, the expansion of their geographic reach, a higher contribution from smart-enabled products and the migration of certain overseas brand projects from customers' legacy solutions into Tuya's. Growth in smart door locks was primarily driven by increased adoption of audio-video and low-power Wi-Fi solutions. By comparison, demand recovery in categories such as traditional lighting and IP cameras has been relatively slow, reflecting continued divergency in performance across products and regions. In AI companion products, shipment volumes of the devices powered by our solutions continue to expand. During the June 18 Shopping Festival in China, Fuzozo, built on Tuya's solutions, ranked first in the AI toy categories on Tmall, while a number of other ecosystem products also delivered strong ranking and sales performance across major e-commerce platforms. This provided early validation of both consumer acceptance and the commercialization potential of the new form of AI device. Beyond basic voice interactions, we have building out capabilities in multimodal perception, persona and memory, content services and user engagement, helping customers accelerate the development and mass production of the AI-native consumer hardware. In the energy sector, solutions, including EV chargers, smart power distribution, metering and home energy management maintained solid growth. We are expanding our AI energy capabilities from electricity consumption, analytics, abnormal alerts and personalized recommendations towards dynamic electricity tariff management and user authorized automated device coordination. Within the smart home ecosystem, customers' adoption of Matter-based solutions continue to increase across categories such as electronic products, lighting and climate control. In parallel, we enhanced local control, multiprotocol interoperabilities and third-party ecosystem compatibilities. On margin side, our blended gross margin for this quarter was 46.3%. By segment, gross margin for PaaS was 46.8%, gross margin for AI application and others were 72% and gross margin for smart home and robot products was 21.9%. Gross margin fluctuations were mainly driven by the volatilities in upstream semiconductors cost and changes in business mix in line of the expectation. Despite this, gross profit increased by 11.1% year-over-year to approximately USD 43 million. On expenses, we maintained disciplined expense management while continuing to invest on AI R&D and platform capability. GAAP operating expenses for this quarter were approximately USD 33.7 million, down 10.4% year-over-year, primarily due to the lower share-based compensation expenses. In terms of profitability, we recorded GAAP profit from operations of approximately USD 9.3 million with a GAAP operating margin of 10%. Non-GAAP profit from operations was approximately USD 9.6 million, a year-over-year increase by 11.7%, while non-GAAP operating margin remained in the double digit at 10.3%. While delivering revenue growth, we maintained relatively stable core operating profitability. Net profit for the quarter was approximately $18.6 million, while non-GAAP net profit was approximately $18.9 million. The year-over-year decline in non-GAAP net profit was primarily due to the lower financial income and foreign exchange losses, while core operating profit continued to grow. On cash flow side, net cash generated from operating activities was $6.2 million during the quarter and remained positive. At the end of the second quarter, the company's total liquid assets, including cash and cash equivalents, term deposits and treasury securities amounted to approximately USD 976 million, continuing to provide ample resources to support development of AI capability, global business expansion and our ability to navigate external uncertainties and a long-term strategy investment. Next, I'll briefly walk you through our progress in the AI developer ecosystem. At the end of the second quarter of 2026, the number of registered developers on our platform exceeded 2.09 million. Launched during the second quarter, Tuya CoBuilder served as an AI developer gateway to the Tuya developer platform, applying AI coding to AI hardware development. By describing their requirements in natural language, developers can complete product definition, add user interface, embedded firmware, AI agents, and workflow development in one place, and then proceed directly to the device flashing and debugging. This covers the core development process from product concept to physical devices validation and help shorten the AI hardware development cycles. In just over a month since launch, Tuya CoBuilder's AI-powered panel generation capabilities has expanded to cover 30 product categories, with average generation time for a single panel reduced to approximately 190 seconds only. This progress demonstrates that we are advancing our developer tools beyond development assistance towards end-to-end delivery capability, spanning product definition, software generation and deployment on physical devices. At the application layer, we continue to enhance Hey Tuya's device task execution capabilities, control reliability and response efficiency while exploring subscription-based and value-added services across scenarios such as AI-driven energy saving, pet care and video understanding. Certain scenarios has already begun to generate early payment and renewals. We'll continue to focus on high-frequency use cases and long-term user value. From a broader perspective, AI capabilities are gradually expanding beyond single model integrations and in compact device sensing, contextual understanding, memory, agent orchestration and device-side execution. We'll continue to leverage the strength of our platform, device ecosystem and global developer base to translate AI capability into a scalable commercial value across a broader range of the real-world scenarios. In summary, our revenue growth accelerated in the second quarter of 2026 with the PaaS business continuing to serve as a primary growth engine. Meanwhile, our AI capabilities are being commercialized in parallel across multiple paths, including PaaS, smart products and AI applications. Despite the impact on gross margin from semiconductor supply chain price fluctuation and business mix change, we maintained stable operating profitability and ample financial resources. Looking ahead, we'll remain focused on AI-native applications, physical AI scenarios and developer platform capability and continue to advance the transformation of AI technologies from tool-level capabilities into tangible and scalable commercial value. Thank you, all. Operator, right now we can begin the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Yang Liu of Morgan Stanley.

Congratulations on the solid earnings. My question is about the future demand outlook. Based on your discussion with key customers, in current environment, what is the growth or demand outlook going into the second half of 2026? If you can provide a little bit more breakdown by geographic that will be even better, like what's the demand profile in U.S. or in Europe and ASEAN, et cetera.

Okay. Thank you, Liu. So right now, we see that the end demand and internal momentum is still within our expectation. So as we speak in the beginning of this year that the entire customers and the consumer side, they're looking forward to -- still to consuming more and transfer more legacy devices and solutions into the new AI one that we provide. So this momentum continues. So what we see that we have the accelerated type of rebalancing on the demand side. So this will be the overall view. So we see that the recovery will not come overnight. So it's gradually climbing. What we found here is the momentum still continue, especially based on this kind of positive -- very positive sell-through feedback from the end user side. That's the first one. If I break down into the geographic areas, so there are different type of demand drivers. Europe still shows very strong on the demand side, especially for all type of energy-related segments. So including the new AI HMS, so home management solutions, we provide as a total solution or include different type of energy efficiency improvement single device. No matter we provide as a PaaS or we provide as a home and robot products to the solution together. That shows very strong demand still. That's the first one. And on Southeast Asia and Latin America, the driving forces majorly come from our strong channels in the telecom carriers. So we were trying to establish a strategic partnership along with them around 2.5 years ago, and we're starting to scale and commercialize that part. So through their own channels to deliver some comprehensive total solutions for their users in the IoT field. That's a very strong potential and a very promising one because they're running on a B2B cycle. By the end of the time, it's a B2C, but they run really strong B2B cycles rather than the retail side. They are campaigning on that. That's for Southeast Asia and Latin America. And the Middle East is still kind of in a pause right now because of the military conflict going on in the second quarter. So right now, we still kind of wait and see. The customer is still there and the customer is still doing a lot of preparations, including the product development and the new concept definitions and type of stuff. But right now, that the -- I think that overall, the business is not coming back yet. And we're looking forward to have better scenarios, perhaps maybe end of Q3 or Q4. We're looking forward to have some agreement for those conflicting countries, and then we'll be able to catch the demand. And so that way overall. And North America is that the sell-through is still there, but some price sensitive, especially low price type of devices that show kind of fluctuations and by the pricing risk coming from the supply chain side. And so we are -- we structured that type of product mix along with the customers and to deliver a better sell-through in the second half of this year. And so I think that will be overall. And for China, right now, we see some really good promising categories, including part of the home appliances. But we can find that recently that the major brands right now, they are speeding up the transformation from the legacy type of devices into the smart one. And from first-generation IoT type of smart devices into the AI one. So we are catching the transformation trend and helping a lot of China brands to do that. And the second one is that in China, so some AI-native categories starting to boom in like the AI companion. So our first market, we start to break through for AI companion categories is from China. So that's why [indiscernible] in Tmall. So we see that based on a large target consumer scale in China and where we find the right type of applications and coming on with a very active customer base, and we'll try to find more potentials in the new type of innovations in China.

We will now take our next question from Timothy Zhao of Goldman Sachs.

Congrats on the very solid results. My question is on your gross profit margin. I noticed that in the second quarter, the IoT PaaS margin declined on a year-on-year basis, although stabilized sequentially, while your smartphone and robot products margin actually declined sequentially and year-on-year. Just wondering if you can share more color on what were the margin drivers behind. And what is your margin outlook for these 2 segments for the third quarter and the rest of this year?

Okay. Yes. So first of all, that as everyone knows that the upstream cost fluctuations started to increase over 2 quarters on a global basis. And we are the last one to catch the impact because of buying forces. So for the -- in Q2, what we're doing is that the major of the product we just passed through the cost raise. And so which means that we maintain the gross profit and -- but we don't stick to the gross margin. And -- but till now that we really built a very good buffering on the inventory and cost balance between now and future. And in next 2 quarters or 3 and when we have the confidence that we'll be able to work through a more stable cost level of my major type of materials we needed. So we're looking for either to stabilize the gross margin, and we figure out whatever or all the possibilities that by offering new capabilities, new technologies, we'd like to improve the gross margins overall. So that's pretty much that. So for the customer side, we really show our kindness that we best pass through the cost. But in the future, well, anything happens, so we don't -- we're looking for the most positive way to help the company to run -- continue to run the business. So it's not stick to the cost, but more stick to the value and the competence that we deliver to the customers to help them get through that.

We will now take our next question from Kai Xiao of CICC.

This is Kai. I have 2 questions, 1 is on Tuya CoBuilder you mentioned in the quarter. I wonder what's the current adoption status of Tuya CoBuilder and what's the company's medium...

Okay. So CoBuilder is something we have to do for a couple of quarters. So starting from second half of last year, some departments in Tuya R&D centers will really start to do the AI coding and to improve our own coding efficiency and also to bring more ROIs on the R&D side. So we start to do that are the major users of that. And while we have enough experience, how we'll be able to use that and deliver the right ROI and be able to know how to manage that. And we start to think about we need to duplicate our experience and open that to our customers. So at the beginning of this year, we'll start to build CoBuilder and we're happy to launch it at the second quarter. And so we believe that will be the new type of default gateway in the future for many developers, even not only device developers, many developers to lower the bar. And including me like right now, including my financial department. So many of them, they don't know coding at all for their entire lifetime, but they're trying to write their own agent to improve their own workflow, to improve their own individual efficiencies. I believe some of you did that, too. So CoBuilder will be kind of sure where -- how -- I mean, how low the bar can reach and how easy those ideal developers will come with some innovative ideas that they can really quickly to testify the innovations and to validate whether those kind of crazy ideas make senses for some of the users and build the demo and get some pilot users and starting to run, including the [indiscernible] and scale it. So CoBuilder, we believe will be kind of the -- in the hardware world, should be kind of the momentum, like, wow, you have the [ cloud ] code maybe 1 year before. And we believe that will be default gateway. And so we continue to bring that to -- in Q2, well, after we launched it and then we continue to do a lot of webinar trainings for those developers, even while they don't know what coding means and how they can deal with it, and we're starting to train a lot of developers. And also in the same time, we'll use this tool to attract those not developer at this moment, but they're more considered as a product manager, maybe in some and hardware company. And in the past, the strength or capability for those type of talents, user insight, product definition and interfacing design and psychological understanding. So right now, we offer them a better tool that they can transfer that part with or without allowing any of their engineers, they'll be able to sketch that out themselves. Yes. So that -- we believe that will be the value of the CoBuilder. And so we can use that to enlarge the developer -- entire developer base by building up a better target and also be able to improve my customers' R&D efficiencies in the long run.

We will now take our next question from the line of Matt Ma of Jefferies.

I have a question on the AI application segment. So it seems like in Q2, the revenue growth has been decelerated from 17% in the first quarter. I'm just curious what is the reason behind that? I calculated it, it seems that Q2 growth is only 3%. And what can get this line back to a double-digit growth? And then also on the segment margin, on the Q1 call, you pointed that a seasonal rebound in device usage from Q2 would help you to increase the margin for this segment, but it doesn't seems that have come through. Could you walk us through what could actually happen in this quarter or the coming quarters to help to the margin recovery for this segment?

Okay. Matt, I'm sorry, I lost the second question. So is the margin for which segment? You mean the home and robot?

AI application.

Okay. AI application. Got it. So the first one is thank you for the question. And so for AI applications, right now, the growth slowing majorly come from the mix of my offering. So as you might know that in that segment, they cover 2 offers. So one is B2B and especially some of the project-based customization services we provide for the key customers. And the second part of that is the B2C, so direct services we offer for the consumer, which are the user of the devices. So they activated my value-added services through subscription. So the growth major is that we gradually still slowing, and we don't want to handle those kind of B2B projects for a long time. So the B2B project made the revenue and the growth slower. But actually, the CN grows good. So my CN services recurring revenue growth in Q2 is 22%. We're happy to see that change because we want to have their segment in the B2C will be able to cover more and more portion of this segment because we believe that will be a better value for that. So that's for the first question. And so the second question about the -- so the margin is on the application segment, right? You asking the margin for...

Yes.

Yes. So for this one is the same is the segment we want to have more is based on the cloud and based on the AI capability. So that will be a higher valued one. So 70% up is the target margin for this segment. So right now, we'll hit it. So in the future, we'd like to hit between 75% to 80%. And the driver for that, the first one I explained so we don't want to have those kind of project and customization-based services take a larger portion because that's kind of more labor-centric and lower margin type of services. We're trying to lower the entire portion of that. So by increasing more and more cloud-based on B2C side. And on the B2C side, not only enlarge the contribution percentage on revenue. But also in the same time, while we scale the services and be able to improve more and more efficient architecture on the technical side. So we'll be able to figure out a better way to manage the cost and LLM functions in the long run. So through that, we'll be able to push the cloud-based services margin from 70% to 75% and 80%.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to the management team for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact IR team of Tuya. Good bye and see you next quarter.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.