Herman Yu
Analyst · Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead
Thank you, Gaofei. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Let me now walk you through our financial highlights. Revenues came in solid for the first quarter of 2015. Weibo’s total revenue grew 43% year-over-year to $96.3 million which was above our guidance of $93 million to $96 million. The scale of revenues that Weibo has reached allow us to have a profitable quarter. Non-GAAP net income attributed to Weibo’s ordinary shareholders was $2.9 million compared to a non-GAAP loss of $4.8 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP EBITDA was $6.9 million compared to a negative $5 million for the same period last year. Let me give you more color on revenues. Weibo’s advertising and marketing revenues for the first quarter of 2015 was $79.2 million, up 53% year-over-year. The strength of our advertising growth was led by our small and medium sized enterprise business which generated $22 million in revenues in the first quarter, up 125% from last year. The first quarter is historically the slowest season for many of our advertising sectors such as e-commerce and fast moving consumer goods. However, SME revenues was down only 6% sequentially as the seasonal down trend was blunted this year by the increased spending from our O2O and app developer customers as well as the strong momentum that our self-service marketing platform is experiencing. As mentioned on last quarter’s call Weibo self-service was launched in the fourth quarter of 2014 and we include such revenues in the SME category. For the first quarter total SME customers including self-service was approximately 388,000 up 21% from last quarter. As our self-service platform becomes more establish we're seeing some smaller SME customers whom I have otherwise purchased Weibo marketing services from SME distributors used Weibo self-service. To this reason, we have combined a total SME market direct and indirect together for the purpose of showing revenues in number of customers. This is consistent with our strategy over the long-term to have the smaller SMEs who require minimum service support to go to our self-service platform and have the larger SMEs in those who require value-added services go to our SME distributors. Weibo self-service marketing platform is a service available to businesses and individuals who wish to build an active fan base. On some social platforms this is known as people marketing we call this [indiscernible] fan's economy. Based on Weibo social interest graph recommendation engine, we allow users to purchase fans by promoting the self-service customer accounts to users whom we think are likely to select for following. Since the new fans are obtained, we believe to the Weibo customer this will alter value. Through Weibo self-service users can also purchase services to ensure that their fans see the fee that they are promoting. We then empower our users to strengthen their relationship with their fans by offering group chat, promotional tools like Lucky Money and Coupon Giveaway and Weibo Pay to enable close loop transactions. We also are working with third party service providers to offer services to our users to enable them to more effectively build their following. People marketing, a model that has worked for social platforms in western markets and we believe this is a big opportunity in China. Moving on to KA, revenues from our key accounts mostly large brand advertisers were $22.7 million a drop of 15% quarter-over-quarter. The sequential decrease was anticipated as lunar New Year occurred late this year in the mid of February. As Gaofei mentioned during the first quarter we hosted a large social marketing event evolving 17 million participating known as [indiscernible] Envelope Fly which allowed business and celebrities among others to give away Lucky Money and coupons to recruit new fans and increase interaction with their existing fans. Feedback from our KA customers were quite positive. The success of this event positive feedback on Weibo plus TV and opening up promoted fees to KA customers as well as the launch of advertising on We Chat have our customers asking to learn more about social marketing. In April, we hosted three customers’ seminars across China, in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong to educate brand advertisers about big day. This customer event was designed to educate brand advertisers on how fans economy marketing works as well as using Weibo social marketing for new product launches. Given that China has been facing a macroeconomic slowdown over the last couple of years, many businesses are adapting to this environment by launching new products to reignite revenue growth. Big Day is a social marketing solution that we are offering to brand advertisers to help them generate buzz in the initial launch period of their new products. Revenue from Alibaba in the first quarter of $34.5 million representing a growth of 74% year-over-year and a decrease of 9% quarter-over-quarter. Historically, the first quarter is the slow season for Alibaba. By working with Alibaba and AliPay at a strategic level integrating our product and promotional offerings for the Red Envelope giveaway event allow us to derive incremental revenues that dampen the typical sequential declines of Ali revenues in the first quarter. We are developing other strategic initiatives with Alibaba that we hope will turn into recurring promotions overtime. However revenues from such strategic initiatives do not occur in a linear fashion as they need to factor in the targeted customer audience and be plan around other promotional events in the industry. For this reason a big portion of the new businesses with Alibaba that was originally planned for the second quarter we expect we’ll still launch in the second quarter but revenue for which maybe push back into the second half of this year to meet revenue recognition requirements. For the first quarter of 2015 Weibo’s mobile ad revenues reached approximately 58% of Weibo’s total advertising revenues compared to 31% for the same period last year with an MAU of 198 million businesses on Weibo have an advantage to be able to target both PC and mobile users. At the same time when users begin to access the internet more from a mobile devices such as the peer Lunar New Year Weibo offers an advantage as 80% of our MAUs or 170 million are on mobile. Weibo’s strength on mobile can be seen from first quarter mobile advertising results which was down only 2% year-over-year and was up 185% year-over-year. Moving to value added services, Weibo value added services revenues increased 9% year-over-year to $17.1 million, game related services revenue was $10.9 million up 52% year-over-year membership revenues were $3.6 million up 17% year-over-year and data licensing revenues was $2.6 million down 52% year-over-year were 11% quarter-over-quarter. As we explained on the last call we made a strategic shift in the fourth quarter of last year for data licensing and we may see further decline from search revenue. Turning now to cost and expenses, as a reminder unless otherwise noted any comments will focus on non-GAAP financial measures which excludes stock-based compensation, change in fair value of investor option liability and amortization of intangible assets and related income tax effects. Total cost in expenses were $94.7 million up 30% year-over-year. Cost of revenue was $28.7 million up 66% year-over-year. Higher cost of revenue growth can be attributed to two primary factors higher bandwidth and other infrastructure cost resulting from traffic growth as well as the launch of Weibo native video in the fourth quarter of last year and two higher revenue share cost associated Weibo value added services. Operating expenses totaled $66 million up 18% year-over-year primarily due to increase in headcount related cost as well as marketing expenditures. For the first quarter we recorded an operating income $1.6 million compared to a loss of $5.6 million for the same period last year this is a great achievement for Weibo as we are able to grow revenue at a pace ties to growth rate of our operating expenditures. Non-operating income for the first quarter was $1.5 million, compared to non-operating $0.3 million last year. Income tax expense for the first quarter was $0.1 million compared to a tax benefit of $0.5 million last year. Non-GAAP net earnings attributable to Weibo ordinary shareholders for the first quarter was $2.9 million, compared to a loss of $4.8 million last year. Non-GAAP diluted net income per share was $0.01, compared to a loss of $0.03 per share last year. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, other non-operating income and share based compensation expenses were $6.9 million compared to a negative $5 million last year. Turning balance sheet and cash flow items, as of March 31, 2015 Weibo’s cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled $452.5 million cash provided by operating activities for the first quarter of 2015 was $7.5 million capital expenditure total $3.8 million and depreciation and amortization expenses $5.6 million. Turning to Weibo’s second quarter 2015 guidance, we estimate that Weibo’s total revenue for the second quarter of 2015 will be $102 million or $105 million recognizing the situation around strategic initiatives with Alibaba as explained above. Before I turn over to the operator let me quickly summarize this quarter. Weibo’s traffic is growing as fast as pace since our IPO particularly mobile traffic which is seeing growth rate of 57% year-over-year. Social marketing is at an early stage in China but we believe this will be a huge market similar trends we see in the western markets. As social marketing kicks-off in China we are in a good position to benefit given our user scale and brand chain, the viral nature of Weibo and the steady increases of business fundamentals that we have put in place to enable businesses and individuals to perform people marketing. On the cost side, this was the first time in the first quarter that we turn profitable and we are growing operating expenses less than half the rate of our revenue growth. With that let me now turn to Q&A. Operator, we are ready for questions.