Gaofei Wang
Analyst · Thomas Chong of Jefferies
[Foreign Language] Thank you. Hello, everyone. And welcome to Weibo's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. [Foreign Language] On today's call, I will share with you highlights in Weibo's user, product and monetization in the second quarter of 2021. [Foreign Language] On the user front, Weibo's MAUs reached 566 million and average DAUs reached 246 million in June 2021, adding approximately 43 million and 16 million users year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter respectively, which represented the highest net addition number among the recent four quarters. In June, 94% of Weibo's MAU came from mobile. [Foreign Language] On the monetization front, leveraging further optimization in our competitive strategy and ad product offerings for cine industries, our total revenues reached $574.5 million in the second quarter, an increase of 48% year-over-year. Advertising and marketing revenues reached $502.3 million, an increase of 47% year-over-year. 94% of our ad revenues came from mobile. Our non-GAAP operating income in the second quarter reached $223.2 million [Foreign Language] Next, let me elaborate on our progress made in the areas of product and monetization in Q2. [Foreign Language] On the product front, starting from 2021, we have further enhanced Weibo's differentiated platform in key features such as social functions and hot trends. Coupled with effective channel strategies, we have further grown our user base and engagement. Meanwhile, we beefed up the investments in video products to reinforce users' mindset of using Weibo for video posting and consumption, so as to enhance our product's competitiveness. [Foreign Language] On the channel front, we backed up our channel investment with focus on improving user engagement, leveraging Weibo's advantage in user acquisition costs. Meanwhile, we reinforced the synergy between channel investment and subsequent content consumption, and thereby improving user engagement and retention with better consumption experience and retention of our channel users with better cooperation with major channel partners, such as handset manufacturers and operators in the areas of social features, hot trends and vertical content [indiscernible] in the second quarter. User content partnership would not only increase Weibo's user acquisition scale from major channels and elevate our [indiscernible], but also create synergies to both parties' ecosystems, which enabled us to further strengthen our partnership. As a result, the number of users we acquire from channel partners more than doubled in Q [ph] and year-over-year with nice user engagement levels. [Foreign Language] On the product front, I'd like to share with you our key initiatives on Weibo's information feeds and video. On information feeds, our core strategy in 2021 is to enhance Weibo's key social features and competitiveness, and thus drive users' business and interaction among Weibo's core user group. For relationship-based fee, in the second quarter, we further strengthened the data mining and distribution of quality social content, and thus improved our content diversity and the consumption experience. With stronger social attributes, we're pleased to see significantly higher social interaction level, leading to better consumption and retention based on relationship-based fee. In addition, DAUs of our Super Topic product continues to grow rapidly in the second quarter. Particularly, we're encouraged to see notable growth in verticals such as gaming, TV series, and variety show and campus [indiscernible], demonstrating users' robust demand on the interest based social front. The Super Topic products has not only driven users social stickiness on Weibo, but also shed light on our roadmap to further optimize our fee products. For usage-based fee, in the second quarter, thanks to tech optimization in our recommendation system, we give more weight to video content in content distribution for interest-based fees to further serve users' consumption needs. We're accepting a new version of interest-base fees based on a revamped video recommendation system, which hopefully will be launched in the second half of the year. [Foreign Language] Moving on to video, in 2021, we focused on accelerating the content visualization for Weibo's content creators through our video accounts program, and thus increased video content generation and consistent. Meanwhile, we advertised our cultivating users mindset of using Weibo for video consumption through [indiscernible]. Leveraging ongoing progress made in our video accounts program, we are pleased to see the further visualization trend among content creators. As of June, the number of registered video accounts surpassed the 10 million mark, among which over 30,000 already had more than 1 million followers. As a result, the number of original video submission under the video account program more than doubled quarter-over-quarter. The substantial growth in video accounts not only enable us to enhance video content exposure and consumption in core feeds, but also help us to continuously optimize our recommendation capabilities around video content as best to further improve the overall video distribution efficiency, especially in video community and video recommendation feeds. Currently, we're pleased to see an uplift in users' consumption [indiscernible] in our video community and video recommendations feeds compared with the end of last year, which also brought forth incremental ad inventory in video recommendations feeds. On live streaming, we launched the feature of joint mic live streaming in the first quarter and continuously refine its functions. We're encouraged to see a wider recommendation among Weibo's top content creators on the product in the second quarter. Top media agencies and a number of KOLs have already used this feature for regular content generation to build up IPs and boost fan stickiness as such format measure could effectively lower the barrier of video and live streaming generation for those traditionally text and picture based offers. Looking forward, we'll set up our investment around key joint mic live streaming IPs to strengthen the brand recognition of Weibo's live streaming feature and further drive user engagement. [Foreign Language] Let me share with you more color on our monetization strategies and progress made this quarter. In 2021, we will further strengthen the competitive edge of our social app products, solidify our industry-specific marketing capabilities, and unleash the potential and efficiency of traffic monetization, so as we improve Weibo's monetization scale and market competitiveness. [Foreign Language] From an industry perspective, our ad revenues increased 47% year-over-year in the second quarter, benefiting from the recovery of overall marketing demand as well as improvements in our industry-specific ad offerings for key sectors. Leveraging our unique competitive edge in the market, we continue to deliver robust year-over-year growth in key sectors. For example, FMCG sector such as food and beverage and beauty and personal care booked solid growth in the first half of the year. Based upon years of experience in these key sectors and our platform value proposition, Weibo has developed a unique marketing playbook and refine our service capabilities, and thus continuously improve our ad performance. In addition to the commercial brand industry, we have also developed our capabilities to serve the brand cross performance marketing needs of sectors such as gaming and e-commerce. With the further synergies as our sales and operation teams, our ad offerings and service earned better recognition among customers, leading to strong growth in both the branding and performance driven ad dollars from these key sectors. [Foreign Language] On the ad product front, in the second quarter, we'll continue to innovate Weibo's differentiated content marketing offerings, while optimizing feed ad products to enhance our monetization efficiency. On content marketing, in 2021, apart from sectors such as FMCG, automobile and cellphone, we have also gradually extended content marketing to the gaming industry, which used to be a purely performance-driven sector. We helped customers drive more topic discussions around their newly launched games, as well as accumulate social assets and engagement. As a result, we successfully tapped into higher ad wallet in the gaming sector as such content marketing offerings resonated greatly with customers' needs. For example, half a month upon launch of the blockbuster game [indiscernible], the cumulative views and discussions around related topics reached around 5 billion and over 1.3 million respectively. Followers of these official accounts increased by nearly three times within half a month. These content marketing ad offerings effectively entice customers to raise their brand and content budget on Weibo. Our feed ad product, leveraging refined traffic distribution capabilities with the better matched traffic of higher conversion potential with performance driven industry, so as to maximize our feed monetization efficiency. Moreover, we continue to improve our tech capabilities of ad products for performance-based industries, such as gaming and e-commerce, leading to a notable growth eCPM of each of these industries on an annual basis. [Foreign Language] Next, let me share our thoughts on regulatory impact facing the overall advertising industry. In the first half of 2021, government departments have gradually tightened regulation on the launch spring ad format, and we have taken a proactive approach in product rectification accordingly. In the short term, we expect that such rectification may impact on our launch spring campaigns of certain performance driven customers. That said, as for Weibo, revenue contribution from performance based launch spring ad is relatively low, and such impact on our overall advertising revenue is manageable. We also believe that the industry norm on ad formats will facilitate the healthy growth of internet companies in the long run, with such standards gradually affected and implemented in the entire market. Also, let's talk about education. In the context of more rigid compliance requirements facing the overall internet industry, the tightening regulation on K-12 educators face impact on their marketing demands, with top tier education customers cut back or even cease their campaigns. That said, the education sector only took less than 2% of our total ad revenue in the first half of the year. And thus, our risk exposure is quite limited. In light of recent policies, we will take steps to further optimize our sales structure for customers in the Internet sector and deepen our efforts to tap into the incremental ad wallet of the emerging consumption economy. Finally, we pointed out Apple's new [indiscernible] policy as a potential headwind last quarter, and let me give you an update so far. Leveraging model training and optimization, our alternative approach delivers solid attribution results, and thus have earned recognition among our customers gradually. As such, the impact from [indiscernible] has been less than widely feared as well as our own expectation. [Foreign Language] Lastly, let me take this opportunity to share with you the momentum we've seen during the recent Tokyo Olympic Games. Leveraging Weibo's unique positioning to serve public conversation and our massive user scale, we're encouraged to see strong momentum in key metrics, such as hot trends, topic discussion and engagement of athletes' accounts. Built upon years of cultivation on our sports ecosystem around athletes, media and professionals, Weibo has become the go to platform for Chinese Olympic teams to join on and for our users find media updates and discussion around Olympics-related topics. As a result, Weibo's MAUs, traffic and interaction all reached record high in July 2021, giving us confidence in further reinforcing our competitive moat based on unique value proposition. [Foreign Language] Furthermore, on the monetization front, we're delighted to see the [indiscernible] momentum in the first half of the year continuing into the third quarter. For instance, our differentiated social marketing playbook featuring hot trends and athlete endorsements resonated greatly with the Olympic Games sponsors such as ANTA, which enabled us to capture higher brand cross performance ad customers and their wallet. With such good momentum, we are well positioned to tap into incremental marketing opportunities in the second half of the year. [Foreign Language] With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for a financial review.