Herman Yu
Analyst · T.H. Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you, Gaofei. Good morning everyone and good evening to those of you in the west. Welcome to Weibo's fourth-quarter 2015 earnings call. As Weibo celebrates its sixth birthday in 2015, we are excited that Weibo has grown to become a leading social media in China with 236 million monthly active users as of December. Gaofei discussed our efforts to expand vertical content on Weibo which will make Weibo more relevant and targeted. As e-commerce further develops in China and shifts toward mobile Internet, we are seeing more and more e-commerce purchases being influenced by the recommendations from key opinion leaders and other Internet influencers, many of whom rely on Weibo to grow and maintain their fan base. As fans economy, or fanconomy, takes off in China, Weibo is benefitting, not only from the large amount of content created by the KOLs and other influencers, but also the associated monetization, for example, from native apps. This illustrates our strategy to grow the interest of Weibo users, content creators, and customers, concurrently. 2015 was an inflection point for videos, especially on mobile in China. And we are seeing short video consumption on Weibo taking off, at an amazing pace. In December, average daily video views grew 1,000% from the same period last year. We are excited about Weibo's unique ability to empower user-generated content, to get noticed, and become wildly popular. Our solid execution in traffic and content strategy in 2015 was reflected in Weibo's financial performance. 2015 marks the third full year of Weibo's monetization. Not only has Weibo achieved profitability this year, our adjusted EBITDA margin grew from 7% in the first quarter, to 25% in the fourth quarter. This illustrates Weibo's operating leverage as a social platform, powered by user-generated content. As our revenue further ramps, we believe Weibo will have significant room to improve our profitability, especially over the medium and long term. Let me give you the top-level numbers for the fourth quarter and full year of 2015. For the fourth quarter, Weibo's total revenue was $140 million, up 42% year over year, or 47%, on a constant currency basis, reaching the high end of our guidance. Non-GAAP net income reached $32.9 million, up 258% year over year, or 267% on a constant currency basis. Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.15, compared to $0.04 a year ago. For the full year 2015, Weibo's revenue reached $477.9 million, up 43% year over year, or 46% on a constant currency basis. Non-GAAP net income was $68.8 million, compared to a net loss of $2.3 million last year. Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.32, compared to a loss of $0.01 last year. Let me give you more color on fourth quarter revenue. Advertising and marketing revenue for the fourth quarter was $129.5 million, up 47% year over year or 53% on a constant currency basis. Revenue from Alibaba was $48.2 million, up 27% year over year, or 32% on a constant currency basis. Non-Alibaba ad revenues was $81.3 million, up 63% or 69% on a constant currency basis. Let me talk more about SMEs. Revenue from small and medium-sized enterprises was $54.8 million, up 133% year over year, or 145% on a constant currency basis, representing 42% of our total ad revenues. Revenue through the SME channel was up 91%, while revenue from the self-service ads, which we began promoting in the fourth quarter of 2014, grew 480%, on a constant currency basis. Weibo self-service ads enable fans' marketing, which helps our users to grow their fan base. Fans' marketing supports fanconomy, which is self-feeding. Users purchase ads to grow their fan base. Once their fan base becomes bigger, their content is viewed more, and any product and service they promote will have higher return on investment. Fan base is a sticky social asset that motivates users to keep coming back to Weibo, to create and share more content and engage with their audience, which reinforces the growth of their fan base. In the fourth quarter, Weibo's total number of ad customers reached 640,000, representing a 34% growth sequentially. The majority of Weibo's customer ads came from self-service customers, which reflects the adoption momentum of Weibo's fans marketing. As Gaofei mentioned, we recently launched a new ad system, which opens up Weibo's fans marketing products to SME through the channel and KA customers, and Weibo's brand ads to SMEs, which we hope to increase Weibo's ARPA. Fans marketing allows businesses to acquire both PC and mobile traffic by simply opening a Weibo enterprise user account. Businesses and brands can focus on marketing their products and services, while leveraging the business tools on our platform, to increase marketing effectiveness. We believe fans marketing is a cost-effective way for businesses and brands to derive PC and mobile traffic, compared to maintaining a website, an HTM L5 site, and an app. Moving on to KAs. Revenue from key accounts, mostly large brand advertisers, in the fourth quarter, was $26.6 million, up 4% on a constant currency basis. Auto is one of our KAs business top industry sectors. And in the fourth quarter, ad revenue from auto customers almost half from the prior year. Despite weak revenue from the auto sector, our KA ad revenue in 2015 grew 11% year over year, on a constant currency basis. We believe our auto ad revenue bottomed in 2015, expect this sector to rebound in 2016. Looking ahead, we also see other bright spots in our KA business. For example, as Gaofei mentioned, we're seeing new advertisers, who historically spend their ad dollars on traditional medial, for example, ad customers from the fast-moving consumer goods industry, to whom we hope to offer video ads and other brand products, later in 2016. Mobile ad revenue in the fourth quarter was up 77% year over year, and 84% on a constant currency basis, representing 60% of total ad revenues. With 83% Weibo's MAUs on mobile, Weibo is poised to take advantage of the trend of ad budgets shifting to mobile internet. Moving on to value-added services. Weibo VAS generated $19.5 million, up 13% year over year, or 18% on a constant currency basis. Games services and membership revenue was up 22% year over year, or 27% on a constant currency basis, while data revenue was down 31% year over year. Turning now to costs and expenses. Total non-GAAP costs and expenses were $116.3 million, up 22%. Cost of sales was $41.8 million, up 63% year over year, while operating expenses totaled $74.1 million, up 6% year over year. The increase in non-GAAP costs and expenses was primarily due to an increase in infrastructure cost, resulting from strong video consumption and traffic growth overall, a increase in game and other revenue share, value-added taxes associated with higher revenues, and higher personnel-related costs. Non-GAAP operating income for the fourth quarter was $32.8 million, up 243% year over year, or $253% on a constant currency basis. Non-GAAP net income was $32.9 million, up 258% year over year, or 267% on a constant currency basis. Adjusted EBITDA, defined as non-GAAP earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, was $37 million, up 131% year over year. Turning to balance sheet and cash flow items. As of December 31, 2015, Weibo's cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaled $335.9 million. Cash provided by operating activities for the fourth quarter was $51.7 million. Capital expenditure totaled $2.7 million, and depreciation and amortization expenses were $4.4 million. On Weibo shares floated in the market, according to our ADR depository form, approximately 16% of Weibo shares outstanding are available for trading in the open market. Turning to Weibo's first quarter 2016 guidance. We estimate that Weibo's total revenue for the first quarter of 2016 to be $111 million to $116 million, which does not take into consideration foreign exchange rate fluctuations. The above guidance assumes that revenue from Ali in the first quarter will drop more than $20 million on a year-over-year basis. We estimate it to be approximately one-tenth of our total revenue and that our non-Ali ads will grow above 80% year over year, which is approximately the run rate that Weibo has been growing in the second half of 2015. In general, we expect revenue from Alibaba to decrease significantly in 2016. At the same time, we are seeing non-Ali ads going quite strong, which when taken as a whole, will allow Weibo to have healthy growth in 2016. Before I turn the call over to the operator, let me quickly recap our call. We ended 2015 on a strong note. Weibo's MAUs reached 236 million and DAUs reached 106 million, giving us significant reach to both users and consumers in China. In 2015, we focused on improving Weibo's user experience through decreasing content clutter, adjusting the algorithm of Weibo's information feed, and expanding our vertical content offering, to improve relevancy and targeting. On the monetization side, we strengthened Weibo's plus-TV program, launched Big Day campaign package, and grew our KA advertiser base, including ad customers on the fast-moving consumer goods sector. The strength of Weibo's advertising in 2015 was led by our SME marketing, which grew 153% year over year, or 155% on a constant currency basis. We saw strength from SMEs through the channel, as well as from self-service native ads, which power fans marketing. Non-Ali ads in 2015 accelerated to 82% year over year, in the second half, from 50% year over year in the first half, on a constant currency basis. As we enter 2016, Weibo is well-positioned to continue our ad revenue momentum, leveraging our strength in social, mobile, and soon video advertising. With that, let me now turn to Q&A. Operator, we're ready for questions. Thanks.