Gaofei Wang
Analyst · Felix Liu from UBS. Please go ahead
[Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's earnings conference call. Today, I will share with you highlights in Weibo's product monetization in the third quarter of 2024. On the user front, in September, Weibo's MAU reached approximately 587 million and the average DAUs reached approximately 257 million. This improvement is partly due to the adjustment in the user acquisition and growth strategy this year with a focus on attracting higher-quality users with -- through optimized channel strategy. Additionally, our product operation has prioritized at enhancing user engagement and retention on the platform. Combined with the boost from the Olympics, these efforts have led to an increase in overall DAU versus MAU ratio year-over-year. On the monetization front, driven by our enhanced marketing competitiveness in key industries, the positive impact from Olympic hot trends, as well as the strong momentum of the value-added service, Weibo's total revenue in the third quarter reached $464.5 million, up 5% year-over-year, of which ad revenue reached $398.6 million, up 2% year-over-year; and VAS revenue reached $65.9 million, up 25% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP operating income reached $164.5 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 35%. Next, let me share with you our progress made in product and monetization in the third quarter. On the channel front, this year, we'll continue to enhance the display of Weibo's hot trend and social content in key positions of handset devices and improve the targeted reach and content consumption experience of high-quality users in collaboration with manufacturers, aiming to enhance the engagement and retention of channel users. In the third quarter, we partnered with handset manufacturers to particularly increase user reach and the content consumption of Olympic-related hot trends, and as a result, the average DAUs from this channel represent double-digit growth compared to the second quarter. On social attributes, in the third quarter, for information feed products, we continued to increase high-quality content consumption for both relationship-based and interest-based feed, aiming to improve user social interactions. On one hand, leveraging the summer vacation and Olympic-related hot trend effects, we enhanced vertical interest-based content distribution and instant recommendation feedback, catering to the personalized content consumption needs of various users groups. On the other hand, we boost the exposure of account and content with high-quality relationships and interactions, aiming to promote user interaction and enhance social stickiness. As a result, the total interaction on the front page increased by double digit quarter-over-quarter. And meanwhile, we further improved the growth path of user-generated content on Weibo by analyzing user profile, interest, frequency of content generation, and the -- and other characteristics. We provided personalized guidance and tips on the content generation and encouraged content sharing and help users with continuous content generation to gain traffic and accumulate fans. In the third quarter, the number of users who generate UGC increased by 8% quarter-over-quarter, while the number of relationships built among ordinary users rose double digit quarter-over-quarter. On the content ecosystem, in the third quarter, we fully leveraged the marketing advantages of Olympic-related hot trends, amplifying the influence of Weibo's sports IP. Meanwhile, we strengthened content operation across entertainment, digital, automotive, and game verticals, seizing every opportunity to create top trending topics on the platform and strengthening Weibo's user mindset and competitive edge in hot trend marketing. This year, the Paris Olympic Games captured extensive user attention and discussion. Weibo actively engaged media accounts to generate content and lead discussion around Olympic Games, expanding the hot trends from potential gold medal games to gold medal athletes on key sports events, which helped boost the hot trend traffic and elevate the Olympic Games impact. The Olympic-related topic on Weibo surpassed 400 billion views with total user discussion over 400 million. Meanwhile, we continued to improve the monetization efficiency of hot trends. The ad revenue from the Paris Olympics set a historical high for Weibo's event-based sales, significantly surpassing that of the Tokyo Olympics. Weibo remains the primary social platform for Chinese athletes, with 93% of the Chinese Olympic delegation opening their Weibo account and the Weibo is the only social platform with all the Chinese gold medalists have opening an account. Athletes share their competition record and insights in videos or text and images on Weibo and their average daily posts significantly outnumbered their daily posts on the other platforms. During the Paris Olympics, the total number of their fans doubled compared to that of during the Tokyo Olympics. Throughout the games, we witnessed not only the outstanding achievement of the Chinese team, but also the outstanding sports competition skills and the massive influence across platforms of Chinese top athletes like Zheng Qinwen, Pan Zhanle, and Fan Zhendong, as well as the impressive performance of the younger athletes born in the 2000s. Over the past four years, from the Tokyo Olympics of the -- to the Beijing Winter Olympics and now the Paris Olympics, we have continuously refined our operation strategy of event-driven hot trends and improved our operation of the athlete fan ecosystem, achieving a year-over-year increase of active users of sport vertical and a more diverse sports content ecosystem. From a perspective of monetization, we have progressively overcome the limitation of event-based sales, achieving significant revenue growth. These achievements have reinforced our confidence in the development of Weibo's sports content ecosystem in the long run. As the entire country cheered for the Olympics, numerous hot trends emerged in the entertainment, digital, and game verticals in the third quarter, sparking extensive user discussion. For example, in the entertainment vertical, we enhanced collaborations with the newly returned comedy variety shows and summer movies, leveraging Weibo's strength in driving up discussion. This helped boost the popularity and reputation of productions like the movie Successor and a variety show stand-up comedy 2024. As a result, the -- for entertainment work in this quarter, the discussion increased over 20% both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. In the digital vertical, Apple and Huawei, the two major handset manufacturers, both launched new products on September 10th, which became the focal point of industry discussions in the third quarter. Weibo, together with two handset manufacturers, engaged several tech influencers to experience, review, and post content around the new products, providing users with timely and professional appraisal on Weibo. On that day, for both models together, Huawei's tri-fold Mate XT and Apple's iPhone 16, the related content viewership and discussion surpassed 2 billion and 1.7 million times, respectively. This further demonstrates the stability and value we create in the business partnership with advertisers in the long run, while we build the content ecosystem together with our clients, the mobile -- and the mobile manufacturers. In the third quarter, the scale and engagement of golden and orange verified accounts in game vertical continued to grow with the number of such KOLs doubled year-over-year and their average daily posts increasing by more than twofold. This growth further boosted the user engagement among game verticals on Weibo, and in turn, supported our partnership with China's AAA title, Black Myth: Wukong for the -- for its new game release. On launch day of August 1st, Weibo fully leveraged its cross-field strength, engaging 30 golden and orange verified accounts across various interest verticals, including media, digital, cultural tourism, and finance, to promote and discuss the new release. Within 24 hours of the launch, these verified accounts generated 35,000 posts with related topics garnering over 4.5 billion views. Over 8.6 million interactions and over 200 million video views on Weibo, generating substantial online buzz on the launch date. The popularity of this game even influenced the local cultural tourism, which facilitates the offline local economy. Moving on to monetization, in the third quarter, our ad revenue reached $398.6 million, up 2% year-over-year, demonstrating Weibo's ability to capture the clients' marketing budget around mega events and IP-related hot trends. With the Olympic and intensive release of dramas and variety shows during the summer break, we focused on effectively integrating Weibo's hot trend resources in the third quarter. By aligning organic hot trends on Weibo with clients' market hype, we strive to attract and accommodate clients' promotion budget as much as possible. On IP-based hot trends, the biggest hot trend on Weibo in the third quarter was the Paris Olympic Games. Leveraging our experience with the Tokyo Olympic Games and the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Weibo could support the Olympic related sponsors to enhance their brand value and amplify marketing hype with our ad offerings. To elaborate, we focus on integrating the sports and athlete endorsement hot trends with marketing objectives of the sponsors. This unique event-driven marketing model has been widely embraced by clients. This year, we observed a shift in user engagement around the Olympics on Weibo, with users focusing more on athlete stories on and off the field than just the event outcomes. This shift is actually partly due to Weibo's proactive approach in anticipating users' interest and cultivating ecosystem around sports. Over the past two years, we have consistently leveraged sports events to create conscience around sports stars and thus deepen engagement of athletes and their fans. For this year's Olympics, we set a clear direction for hot trends operation in advance, working closely with media Big V in sports, and cross-vertical Big Vs. By highlighting events and athletes, we not only amplify the influence of Olympic related hot trends, but also broaden the scope of discussion. This approach enabled us to expand our client base beyond the traditional event sponsors to any client who wished to leverage Olympic buzz for brand exposure. Compared with the Tokyo Olympics, we are pleased to see a significant increase in both the number of clients and the total revenues from the Paris Olympics. Notably, driven by the Olympic event, our ad revenue from the food and beverage sector delivered strong year-over-year growth, making it one of the primary contributors to ad growth this quarter. In terms of client-based hot trend marketing, we increasingly focused on their new product launch efforts. In series such as product launch events, announcements of celebrity endorsement, and offline session showcase, Weibo leverage content operation, innovative ad products, and repeated targeting of key audiences to boost the popularity and richness of content -- content related to clients' new products during the release cycles. Thanks to these efforts, we reinforced clients' mindset of choosing Weibo as the go-to-platform for product launch marketing. In the third quarter, Weibo covered nearly 50% of the new model launch in the automotive industry, with new product launch campaigns contributing approximately 70% of ad revenue from this sector. As a result, we booked solid year-over-year revenue growth in automotive industry. As for the handset industry, however, revenue modestly declined year-over-year due to clients' product launch pipeline in the third quarter. We expect to see the handset return to growth trajectory in the fourth quarter with a eventful new phone release schedule. Over the past few years, Weibo has notably expanded its wallet share from both the handset and automotive industries. Tapping into industry trends, we have beefed up our content ecosystem around high-end photography for handsets and electric vehicles and also strengthened our hot trend marketing capabilities. For example, this year, we entered a strategic content marketing partnership with Vivo to continuously tell Vivo's brand story around photography, helping the brand gain traction in a high-end market. Following the successful campaign for the Vivo X100 as a photography channel in the fourth quarter last year, we introduced a campaign for the X100 series in the second quarter this year, branding it as concerts go better by aligning with the concert and variety show IPs. Then for the launch of the X200 series in October, we collaborated with media and influencers to highlight Vivo's technological innovation, especially the telephoto lens feature, which generated significant user interest and discussion. This approach led to record-breaking engagement for the product launch with first day sales across all channels surpassing 2 billion -- RMB2 billion, doubling the record of the previous model. Known for the frequent new product launches, we also stepped up our hot trend marketing efforts for footwear and apparel clients, such as expanding our coverage of hot trends in scenarios of fashion shows and celebrity endorsement. In the third quarter, we also strengthened content operation for sports and outdoor products, leveraging multiple celebrity endorsements and the launch of new outdoor jackets. As a result, the footwear and apparel sector delivered double-digit year-over-year growth this quarter, with revenue contribution from new product launch reaching record high in the past two years. For instance, Weibo has established a deep strategic marketing partnership with Bosideng over the past two years, helping the brand secure its position as the leading down jacket brand. In September, Bosideng announced actor Yu Shi as its new brand ambassador. We maximized this endorsement by creating trending topics, engaging fans in brand promotion and aligning the launch with the Mid-Autumn Festival and national holiday travel trends. By linking Bosideng's outdoor jacket features with travel series, we emphasized the brand's unique selling points, such as the three-in-one design and functional versatility. The campaign led to a notable sales increase for Bosideng's outdoor jacket line in the third quarter on the e-commerce platform. Despite tailwinds from Olympics and summer break, for the overall end market, as shown by the Q3 consumer data, we continued to face a relatively sluggish consumer environment, and thus, subdued client marketing demand. Although Weibo achieved both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter growth in ad revenue, driven by summer season and Olympic effect, growth in certain industries still fell short of our expectations. That said, we are encouraged by the similar policy measures introduced by the government in September, and we hope to see this policy gradually take effect and stimulate the macro economy, consumer spending, and related sectors. In light of such market environment, we will continue to focus on reinforcing Weibo's competitive strength in hot trend marketing and content marketing by concentrating our content and product resources. Weibo's unique value proposition of hot trends and content marketing is also the key to sustain our high operating efficiency. On top of that, we are also committed to optimizing our brand and performance-ad offerings so as to improve our competitiveness and expand our market share in these areas. With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for a financial review.