Weibo Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 23, 2024

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Weibo Reports First Quarter 2024 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Sandra Shang, IR Head. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Weibo's Q4 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me today are our Chief Executive Officer, Gaofei Wang and our Chief Financial Officer, Fei Cao. The conference call is also being broadcasted on the Internet and is available through Weibo's IR website. Before the management remarks, I would like to read you the Safe Harbor statement in connection with today's conference call.

Speaker 1

During today's conference call, we may make forward looking statements. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements of our beliefs and expectations. Forward looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward looking statements. Weibo assumes no obligation to update the forward looking statements in this conference call and elsewhere.

Speaker 1

Further information regarding this and other risks is included in Weibo's Annual Report on Form 20 F and other filings with the SEC. All the information provided in this press release is occurring as a date hereof. Weibo assumes no obligation to update such information, except as required and applicable law. Additionally, I'd like to remind you that our discussion today includes certain non GAAP measures, which exclude stock based compensation and certain other expenses. We use non GAAP financial measures to gain a better understanding of Weibo's comparative operating performance and the future prospects.

Speaker 1

Our non GAAP financials exclude certain expenses, gains or losses and other items that are not expected to result in future cash payments or are non recurring in nature or are not indicative of our core operating results and outlook. Please refer to our press release for more information about our non GAAP measures. Following management prepared remarks, we will open the lines for a brief Q and A session. With this, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Gaofei Wang. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call. On today's call, I'll share with you highlights on Weibo's product monetization in the Q1 of 2024. On user front, in the Q1, Weibo's MAU reached 588,000,000 and average DAUs reached 255,000,000. In light of an already sizable user community and increasingly mature user mindset, We have proactively adjust our user strategy in 2024 with more channel budget allocated to the acquisition and engagement of high quality users.

Speaker 1

We are dedicated to further enhancing Weibo's product competitiveness, leveraging optimized channel strategy, social features and differentiation in hot trends. On the monetization front, in the last 2 years, we have been focusing on increasing commercial value for Weibo's hot trends through combining entertainment and IP related hot trends content with advertisers' marketing demand. This quarter, we enhanced the hot trend effect of the spring festival, leveraging Weibo's advantages in hot trend marketing. Despite the overall sluggish ad market in the Q1 of 2024, our total revenues reached US395.5 million dollars and our total ad revenues reached US339 million dollars On a constant currency basis, both our total revenues and ad revenues will be flat year over year. For the Q1 of 2024, our non GAAP operating income reached US125.8 million dollars representing a non GAAP operating margin of 32%, a modest pickup year over year.

Speaker 1

Next, I'll introduce our progress in product operations and monetization in the Q1. In 2024, we still focus on growing user scale and engagement, strengthening the competitiveness of company's whole system and improving operating efficiency as our key strategic objectives. We keep optimizing channel collaboration, improving the competitiveness of social and hot trend products and strengthening key content verticals to further enhance the overall competitiveness and healthy development of Weibo's content ecosystem. We believe execution of this strategy will lay solid foundation for our top line recovery from user, content and monetization side, enabling us to capture market opportunities once macro economy gets better and brand ad demand improves. On the channel front, we maintain close collaboration with handset manufacturers, focusing on the acquisition of high value users and promotion of user engagement.

Speaker 1

We also invested to further refine accuracy of algorithm and targeting capability of our business model in order to create enriched content offerings for our channel users and increase user engagement, which lays foundation for monetization. On social attributes, in the Q1, we continue to execute strategies to focus on the development of content verticals to further recover the vertical content ecosystem. On the one hand, we focus on adjusting the algorithm of relationship based feed and interest based feed to distribute personalized vertical content for users, reinforce recommendation on real time feedback and promote social conversion. As a result, the per capita content consumption and interaction efficiency of these two feeds continue to increase sequentially. On the other hand, in 2024, we stepped up investment in UGC content and improve generation of high quality UGC content on Weibo.

Speaker 1

We encourage users to create more high quality content around house trends and verticals on Weibo to improve user engagement and enrich and diversify content in vertical areas. For example, in the Weibo mobile photography context, we introduced multi split tracks, co created content with media and handset manufacturers and opened offline photography exhibition to encourage ordinary users to share photography of scenery, culture and life, etcetera on Weibo. As a result, over 6,000,000 users participate in the contest in 5 months and contribute approximately 3,000,000 photos. This year, we will organize more similar activities and encourage users to participate in the content generation, leveraging Weibo's influence and enrich Weibo's content ecosystem. Additionally, we further upgraded the posting and interaction functions for the Super Topic product in order to boost the user engagement within the community.

Speaker 1

That is to say, users can gain traffic incentives on high quality content they posted, while also enjoy the social interaction around the interest based content within the Super Topic community. In the Q1, the number of posts users who posted and interaction in the Super Topics community all grew double digit compared with Q4 last year. The super topic has become an important channel to cultivate interest based high quality content creators. Our content ecosystem, in the Q1, while maintaining our competitiveness in content, entertainment and other advantaged IP related verticals, We focus on increasing investment in verticals such as digital, automotive, game, fashion and beauty and healthcare to enhance the competitiveness of Weibo's ecosystem and further improve monetization efficiency. On call trends and IP content in the Q1 with abundant entertainment content released during spring festival, we integrated content operation of Hot Trends Entertainment and various vertical areas to engage broader users to consume and interact around the content related to the swing festival, leveraging our advantages in these areas.

Speaker 1

As a result, the overall traffic of the platform increased significantly during the period. Total views of content related to Spring Festival Gala this year reached 100,000,000,000 and related discussions surpassed 300,000,000, up 50% year over year. The increase of traffic in hot trends during the spring festival also created significant commercial value. On the one hand, such cross vertical operation amplified the hot trends and IP effect on the platform and improved the platform's operating efficiency and established Weibo's influence in key industries. On the other hand, as hot trends become increasingly standardized and the process of hot trends marketing becomes smoother, we will also bring a sustainable revenue growth going forward.

Speaker 1

We are confident that Weibo will maintain its leading position in the industry in the future culture and operation and marketing. On industry related content verticals, this year, we will continue to execute against some of the key strategies we adopted in the Q4 last year. First, we strive to strengthen construction of vertical content ecosystem. To elaborate, we'll beef up our support of vertical content, engaging cross vertical accounts and media outlets in the generation and distribution of popular vertical content. 2nd, we will divert more traffic to vertical accounts to promote the growth of high quality accounts in vertical areas and empower them to gain higher commercial returns with their own content on Weibo platform.

Speaker 1

In addition to the healthcare industry mentioned in last quarter's conference call, we also achieved notable growth in automobile, digital products and online games in this quarter. We are encouraged to see significant increase in the number of Golden and Orange Verify accounts and their traffic interaction as well as ad revenues generated on an annual basis. In particular, for the online game vertical, the number of Golden and Orange Verify accounts increased by nearly 50% year over year, with traffic and interaction increasing over 20% and their revenues from marketing activities nearly tripled. As a result, we have gradually integrated the content and monetization ecosystem in a closer and healthy manner for the online game vertical. In terms of the cosmetic and beauty vertical, we achieved notable growth in the number of heartrends and Golden Verify accounts in the past 2 quarters, leveraging our traffic support and Hot Wheels operations.

Speaker 1

However, due to the fierce competition from other platform and accounts, Weibo's content ecosystem in the cosmetic and beauty vertical has now returned to an effective growth trajectory. We need to keep up our investment, find a stable and effective roadmap to optimize the content ecosystem in order to reinforce our competitiveness in this vertical. Moving on to monetization. In 2024, we will continue to beef up our efforts to reinforce our monetization competitiveness. Leveraging Weibo's strength in hot trends and IPs as well as driving vertical content ecosystem, we will sharpen our competitive edge of our content marketing and performance ad products in the hope of enhancing our capabilities to navigate through business risk in key industries.

Speaker 1

Amid a relative soft end market in the Q1, our ad revenue were flattish year over year on a constant currency basis. During the spring festival, we accustomed the platform resources to customers' marketing campaigns. By integrating the hot trends of Weibo and market hype for clients, we seek to accommodate customers' promotion budget as well as much as possible. As a result, our gross ad revenues related to the Spring Festival ad placements increased by 50% year over year, of which gross ad revenue connected to the Spring Festival IPs doubled year over year. With our diversified marketing offerings and products, customers from more industries can participate in the Spring Festival marketing campaigns.

Speaker 1

Therefore, our gross revenue from e commerce, online games, footwear and apparel, healthcare, digital product and food and beverage sectors, etcetera, all more than doubled year over year. For example, during the spring festival, the beverage brand, 1,000,000,000 launched the Send Good Wishes campaigns on Weibo through the hot topics around the brand ambassador, Dong Shunxi, such as Spring Festival of Greetings, Aspicious Words and the popularity of works. Over 300 celebrities posted GoodRish under the topic of good luck in the year of the dragon to create auspicious atmosphere and enhance the brand's mindset of the auspicious GE culture. As a result, the customer successfully built market hype with its brand exposure on Weibo increasing 2 90 percentage, which drove the growth of e commerce sales of the brand during the spring festival season grew growing 20% year over year. By industry, we are pleased to see the handset and online game industry the same double digit growth year over year.

Speaker 1

The handset sectors continue to grow over high base as we capture higher volume share among customers at budget, thanks to the customers' recognition on our hot trend marketing offerings. As for the online games, with the tailwinds from game license approval and the clients' growing demand in content marketing, and revenue from the game sector also grew significantly. On the fleet side, despite a sequential recovery, the cosmetic and beauty sector continued to decline year over year as we previously expected. This was mainly because the consumers concept and trends are gradually shifting toward more cost effective products. As a result, the sales of the international beauty brands were still under pressure, which negatively affected the pace of new product launch and thus their scalable budgets.

Speaker 1

That said, we are pleased to see continuous improvement of domestic beauty brands in product quality and brand marketing, leading to increased brand ad placement on Weibo since the second half of last year. In the Q1, ad revenues from domestic beauty brands grew over 50% year over year. However, the growth still cannot fully offset the impact of the decline in the international brands on our overall revenue yet. In order to boost clients' willingness of new product marketing and improve its performance, we will strengthen cooperation with e commerce platforms and domestic brands and actively explore the synergetic promotion of new product in FMCG industry on social and e commerce platforms and provide clients with better marketing support. We hope these efforts will translate into more stable growth in the FMCG industry in the coming quarters.

Speaker 1

In the Q2, we will test the in-depth cooperation with Tmall, focusing on the beauty, footwear and apparel industries. Leveraging Weibo's strength in health and marketing, we aim to create full funnel value to customers for their new product launch from social influence to e commerce conversion and thus enhance customers' perception of Weibo's value in house and marketing. Overall speaking, although revenues from certain industries such as cosmetic and beauty industry fell short of expectation and drove the overall revenue growth, We delivered distant operating profit, which further increased from last year, thanks to the solid execution of our efficiency initiatives, Leveraging improved operating efficiency, stable profitability and healthy cash flow, we further elevated our financial flexibility, giving us ample room to invest in the vertical company ecosystem to drive user growth and engagements as well as strengthen our monetization competitiveness. With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for a financial review. Thank you, Gaofei, and hello, everyone.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Weibo's Q1 2024 earnings conference call. Let's start with user metrics. In March 2024, Weibo's end use reached 588,000,000 and average DAUs reached 255,000,000. Given our massive user base and increasingly mature user mindset, we have proactively adjusted our user strategy in 2024, which put more emphasis on the acquisition and engagement of high quality users, leveraging effective channel investments, optimize the social features and our depreciation in house trends. Turning to financials.

Speaker 1

As a reminder, my prepared remarks will focus on GAAP results. All monetary amounts are in U. S. Dollar terms and all comparisons are on a year over year basis unless otherwise noted. We continued to experience headwinds to our financials due to the volatility our freight exchange rates in the last 12 months.

Speaker 1

Since our business primarily operates in China, while we report our financials in U. S. Dollars, our financial performance was affected by adverse currency movements. Now let me walk you through our financial highlights for the Q1 of 2024. Weibo's Q1 2024 net revenue was $395,500,000 a decrease of 4% or flattish on a constant currency basis.

Speaker 1

Our operating income was $125,800,000 representing operating margin of 32%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached $106,600,000 representing a net margin of 27%. Diluted EPS was $0.41 Let me give more color on the Q1 2024 revenue performance. Weibo's advertising and marketing revenues for the Q1 2024 was 339,000,000, dollars a decrease of 5% or flattish on a constant currency basis, reflecting low seasonality and a tepid macro environment. Mobile ad revenues were $322,500,000 contributing approximately 90 5 percent of total ad revenue.

Speaker 1

In terms of growth, the online game and the 3C product sectors demonstrated strong momentum, both booking double digit growth. For the online game sector, we benefited from normalization in game license approval and captured ad budget of newly launched blockbuster titles. We are also encouraged to see the solid ad wallet increase of handset sector continue into 2024, leveraging our years of cultivation around content ecosystem in the 1st day vertical. For the FMCG category, it continued our descending trajectory year over year, though delivering sequential growth. Within the FMCG category, the food and beverage and the apparel sectors already returned to positive growth, while the cosmetic and the personal care sector still face the challenges from lack of new product pipeline and in turn competition among ad platform.

Speaker 1

The ad product, promoting speed ad was the largest, followed by social display and the topic and search. Ad revenue from Alibaba for the first quarter was $22,600,000 an increase of 23% or 29% on a constant currency basis. We are pleased to see the solid ad growth from Alibaba continue into 2024, thus to its moderate pickup in ad budget amidst the intensity by the competition landscape. Before turning to web segment, let me share some preliminary color on the trends entering the Q2 of 2024. On the upside, advertisers actively embrace the campaign window before the opening of Summer Olympics.

Speaker 1

Consumption sentiment also seems to be bottoming out with the holiday effect and execution of economic stimulus packages. We hope for further recovery of our ad business in the second half of the year, driven by 9 last quarter's events as well as a relatively easier comparable base. Turning to VAS. VAS revenues were $56,500,000 in the 1st quarter, a decrease of 3% or an increase of 1% on a constant currency basis. Turning to costs and expenses.

Speaker 1

Total costs and expenses for the Q1 were $269,700,000 a decrease of 5%, mainly due to lower personnel related expenses and the marketing spend. Operating income in the Q1 was RMB 125,800,000, dollars representing operating margin of 32% compared to 31% in the same period last year. Turning to income tax. Under GAAP measure, income tax expense for the Q1 was $25,000,000 compared to $21,900,000 last year. Net income attributable to Weibo in the Q1 was $106,600,000 a decrease of 4% or flattish in renminbi term.

Speaker 1

Net margin was 27% flattish versus the same period last year. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow items as of March 31, 2024, Weibo's cash, cash equivalents and short term investments totaled RMB 3,250,000,000. In the 1st quarter, cash provided by operating activities was $139,500,000 Capital expenditures totaled $21,700,000 and depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to $14,800,000 Before turning to the plan A session, we are pleased to announce that we have completed distribution of special dividend of $0.82 per ordinary share or ADS to our shareholders with asset amount approximately $200,000,000 Looking forward, we remain highly committed to consistently returning value to our shareholders and explore various ways to enhance shareholder return, including but not limited to distributing dividends. Besides, I would also like to provide updates on our ESG initiatives. In April, we released our 3rd ESG report, which details the company's initiatives and progress in key ESG areas such as cybersecurity and privacy protection, human capital, content quality, social responsibility and the green operations in several.

Speaker 1

DST practice described in the report showcase our long term commitment to sustainable development, current impact on our user, content creator, employees, business partners and other stakeholders. Weibo is thus far in the vision of making the world a better place with the power of Weibo. Looking ahead, we will strive to further refine our ESG governance system and enhance our ESG performance. We invite all participants and stakeholders around Weibo's ecosystem to jointly achieve the sustainable development goals of the company as well as the society. You may visit our IR website to obtain more information of our DST disclosure.

Speaker 1

With that, let me now turn the call over to the operator for the Thank

Operator

Thank you. We will now take our first question. This is from Felix Lu from UBS. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you management for taking my question and congratulations on the Q1 beat to consensus expectations. My question is on your outlook for the advertisement business in the second quarter and second half. How is advertiser sentiment trending? And how do you expect or how do you expect your advertisement business to perform? And could you maybe elaborate a little bit more on your ad strategy?

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 3

All right. Thank you very much for the question. First of all, let's talk about our expectation on Q2 and also the second half as well, overall speaking. So in last year, from Q1 all the way till Q4, we have been seeing an increasing of the certainties of the advertisement industry. And in 2024 each quarter, but still we are keeping a very cautious manner in this area in terms of our expectation of the recovery of the sentiment.

Speaker 3

So of course, in Q1, this was more optimistic than our expectations. Apart from the cosmetic and beauty products industry, we've been seeing a slow recovery and also a quite normal sentiment of the rest of the other advertisers from the other industries. And also in Q2, especially in March and also in April, of course, that we have seen some of the positive trend except that seems that the consumption seems to be slowing down. However, still, we believe that the expectation in the second half in Q3 and Q4 is more optimistic than the Q1 and also Q2 of this year. Okay.

Speaker 3

And also with the limited budget on the advertising, most of these budgets went to the effective based advertisement, for instance, the live stream advertisement. And also, it is pretty much focusing on the branding as well as some of the promotion of the new brands. This is going to be focused on the some of the hot topics like the IP of the entertainment programs or the holidays like the Chinese New Year, etcetera. So we've been seeing a pretty much obvious trend of the indication of the budget in these areas in the past quarters. And of course, another very important thing is that we have to really focus on the hot topic for marketing and also some of the relevant areas like the hot topics of the festivals and also some of the IPs as well as the e commerce focus, for instance, the 618 or Double 11 shopping festival.

Speaker 3

And also, we have to pretty much focus on the new product marketing and also the new brand market as well. So that is to say that against the overall trend, we still need to focus on the core competitiveness areas of Weibo as a whole? Okay. Okay. And also in terms of the overall industry, we have seen that in Q2 and also in the second half.

Speaker 3

We've been seeing some of the focuses of the driver of the overall demand from the shoes industry and footwear, for instance, and also the gaming, food and beverage and also the healthcare, etcetera. So in the second half of the year, we are going to pretty much focus on these hot IPs. And also, we're going to have a lot of activities that could pretty much drive up the budget of the advertising like the Olympic Games. So, that is to say that the industry is like the footwear as well as the food and beverage are going to be contributive to the advertisement industry in the second half of the year. And also, we've been seeing a very good effectiveness and turning up, pretty much the focus on the factor based investments from the gaming industry, which used to be the case.

Speaker 3

But now we have been seeing more and more focus shifted to the content based advertisements and also some of the hot topic based advertisements. So that is to say that the overall structure and also the ecosystem of the advertisements from the gaming industry is getting better. And also, as a result, we are expecting a positive result and a more optimistic recovery in the second half of the year. And also, apart from that, for the other kind of industries like the headsets and also automotives, according to our estimation, the base number was still quite high. So we've been seeing some of the challenges in terms of development of these industries.

Speaker 3

But still, we think that there's still some of the uncertainties whether we're going to maintain the same growth rate as of 2023. However, still, we need to based on our differentiated strategies and also core competence in terms of the content marketing. And also we believe that we still have a very good high ability in terms of the anti risk availability. And also, we've seen that for the asset industry, some of the high end assets. We do see a more allocation of the budget of advertisement.

Speaker 3

And also in the Q2 of the year, we are able to pay attention to the increasing of this particular budget. But still, now we do need to be aware that there is still less new headsets promoted. And also in the automotive industry, we've been seeing a very good recovery. But overall trend is like that, but still there is a price war and also some subsidies policies. So the profit of the automotive industry is actually getting down.

Speaker 3

As a result, some of the budget of the development is getting shrinked. And also for the other industries, we do see some of the pressures, prices like the cosmetics and also the beauty care products. As I have mentioned that we've been seeing a very good overall quarterly performance and a recovery of the performance, but still there is a certain reduction over the past. So this is pretty much an understanding of that. So in Q2, we have to focus on different topics of that like the other bits and also the others to do more marketing on this.

Speaker 3

Okay. All right. And also, I would like to share some of the colors on some of the stressful industries. For instance, cosmetics, as I have already said that in details, we had around 5 percent reduction in terms of the overall revenue from this particular sector in Q1. And also, we do see now we have been shifted our attention to the collaborations with the domestic beauty products brands.

Speaker 3

And also we've been seeing a kind of a very small percentage against the total revenue contribution, which is only 20%. But still, there is a lot of a stressful situation for the decline of the revenue from the international famous brands of the beauty care products. So this is one of the problems, which is that the international brands are having actually a driven down of durable sales. And also second, we did not recover fully in terms of our whole ecosystem. And also we are waiting to fully recover our core competence and competitive edges.

Speaker 3

So in 2023, the overall revenue from this particular industry was decreased. But and also you can see that on a year on year basis in Q1, we still had a little bit reduction versus the same period last year. But still, because of the low base in the first half of the year, we are expecting a pretty much positive trend for this cosmetic and beauty product industry in the second half of this year. That's for this industry and sector. Thank you.

Speaker 3

And also in terms of the overall strategy of boosting this revenue from the business ministry, first of all, we need to really focus on the particular market trend and also focus on the core business models that we already had. For instance, emphasizing still on the advertisement based on the IP hot topics and also the customer related hot topics and also increasing the sales and penetration of these areas. So for instance, like the Olympic Games and also increasing our sales and promotion during these competition days and also some of the very important e commerce festivals. So the current stage, we've been seeing a very good improvement of the overall penetration of our products in this occasions. But still comparing with some of the other brands like the IT or YOUKU or Tencent Videos, still we're accounting for only several like only accounting for dozens of a percentage against their total customer base, but still we are having a very positive trend on this area.

Speaker 3

And also in terms of the other hot topics related to customers, for instance, some of the new product launching and also like the new headsets and also the new automotives and also some of the e commerce festivals like the 618 or Double 11 Festival, we are now having a very good success rate of our product promotion, for instance, 50% to 70%. And also sometimes, if we really focus on these key areas, the overall success rate could be as high as 90%. So still, it takes a little bit time for us to reach a final economy of scale. But still, what we need to do is still focus on the overall trend and also know what's the best industry that we have to cover for different years. For instance, many years ago, we were doing a very good job in terms of advertisement into the industries like entertainment and also movies and TV series and also the headsets.

Speaker 3

And 2 years ago, we were doing good jobs in the area of automotives and also gaming. And of course, that in recent several quarters, it was not that successful in promoting the investment business among the cosmetic and beauty products industry, but still we will keep our eyes on the development trend and the recovery trend of this industry and also really focus on those industries that are we believe that are most suitable industries and also sectors for different quarters accordingly.

Speaker 1

And

Speaker 3

also now you can see that if we're comparing the brand based marketing versus the effect based advertisement still, we've been seeing the latter part experiencing some of the pressure. And also you can see that the pricing trend for the kind of brand based marketing and advertisement is always better than the effectiveness based advertisement. But still, we have taken some of the measures in coping with that challenge. For instance, we are purchasing the traffic and also using some of the traffic to have a very good recovery of the effective place based advertisement and also to have a stabilized performance within this year. And also in the near future, within this year, we are going to emphasize more on our investment and also the implementation of better and more precise algorithm to really boost the performance of this particular part.

Speaker 3

This is all my answer. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will now take our next question. Next question is from Daisy Chen from Haitong International. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

I'll check-in myself. Thank you, management for taking my question. My question is about the user base. This quarter we noted that the number of active users have decreased. But good point is that the revenue per user has improved in RB times.

Speaker 4

We think that indicates the improvement of our user quality. As you just mentioned that you will adjust your user growth strategy this year. Can you tell us more about the adjustments and what kind of user data will be the forecast this year? And maybe is there any is there a ceiling of the user base that you feel comfortable? Thank you, management.

Speaker 3

So actually, in last year Q4 and also the second half of the year, we were already discussing our strategy on this particular area. And now, of course, that we are focusing on DAU and also MAU, but still we truly believe that not only that, we have seen that the ARPU generated from the different headset types and also different brands is actually pretty much different. For instance, we've been seeing actually the ARPU for those smartphone brands like Huawei and also iPhone is 2 to 4 times higher than the other brands. So as a result, we have to really focus on those really competitive ones. For instance, especially focusing on those users that is actually able to generate more opinions on the social top or hot trends and also in terms of the UGC as well.

Speaker 3

So that is to say that if we need to spend the budget in acquiring those users, we are going to focus on those users with a higher ARPU and also the users that are able to generate more content and also are more interactive. So normally, of course, the overall spending is around 2 to 3 times more expensive than those users with a lower performance, but still we may see a very good positive trend. So still we have tested that notion last year and we're going to keep doing so. So for instance, in Q1 of this year, we purposely gave up on some of the cheap to get or low cost to get users in terms of their interactivity and also the ARPU generation. So we expect to have a very good DAU increase because of this focus.

Speaker 3

And also second, we do expect some of the frequency of the use and by switching on the Weibo app, for instance, really we'll focus on those high frequency users. For instance, we might have a turn on of the app 10 or more times during the day, and this is really going to contribute to overall ad inventory. And also in the future, we believe that with higher activity and interactivity and also the higher and more content contribution, this is going to increase the core competence of Weibo as a whole. Okay. And also, we are going to see that in terms of the overall MAUs, we have been seeing around 20% of the users that are these purchased and also the acquired users.

Speaker 3

And of course, that's now against those particular acquired users. So the percentage of those users with a higher ARPU is quite limited. But still, our strategy is that we want to keep a very stable performance of the DAU figure or a slight increase of the DAU number. And also in the future, we will be focusing on the increasing of those high ARPU generated users number against the overall DAU. And also a very important thing is that we really want to focus on the user activity and also the particular content generation capability and also the higher ARPU in order to, on the overall basis, improve and boost the core competence of Weibo as a whole.

Speaker 3

And also now, we have seen that against those terminal users and app users of the brand iPhone and also Huawei, we've been seeing 40% of our users that are using the app and also the terminal. This is already higher than the other social media platforms. But still internally, we wish that this particular figure could go up all the way to about 50% or even higher. So in terms of the user generation capability or capability of generating content and also the users' interactivity, etcetera. These performance indicators are really important to us because that is going to help us to drive the overall competence with a double digit impact.

Speaker 3

Okay. And last but not least, I would like to say that in terms of the whole channel fee, it is keeping flat throughout the whole year. And also not only we want to keep a very stable growth of the overall MAU, but still we really wanted to make sure that we had a very organic growth for it. But sometimes in June and also in December, we had a lot of hot news happening and also some of the hot social plans happening. So we do not we actually have seen the increase of the overall revenue, but not organically, but pretty much organically due to the natural incident happening during these 2 months, but not because of our channel strategy.

Speaker 3

So in the future, of course, our core strategy is that we really want to keep a stable or a slight increase on the DAU number. But more importantly, we have to focus on the percentage of those high ARPU users against the DAU, which could have around 5% to 10% of the increase, which is going to be better. And also for the whole Weibo platform, we're going to focus on the content UGC related content and also the improvement of the overall interactivity and also the content generation. This will be the focus of our effectiveness while taking some of the appropriate channel related strategies. This is the answer for the strategy of our channel.

Speaker 3

Okay. Right. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. And we have no further questions. In that case, I will hand the conference back to the speakers for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thanks, operator. This wraps up our conference call today. Thank you for joining us to see you next quarter.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.

Powered by Quartr

Key Takeaways

  • Weibo’s Q1 MAUs reached 588 million and DAUs hit 255 million, with management reallocating channel budgets to acquire higher-value users and optimizing algorithms to boost engagement.
  • Q1 revenue totaled $395.5 million (flat YoY on constant currency), with ad revenues of $339 million, non-GAAP operating income of $125.8 million (32% margin) and net income of $106.6 million (EPS $0.41).
  • Spring Festival “hot trend marketing” generated record engagement—100 billion content views and 300 million discussions (+50% YoY)—driving ad placements up 50% and IP-related ad revenues doubling YoY.
  • Investments in verticals paid off: the online games segment saw 50% more verified accounts, 20% traffic growth and triple-digit revenue gains, while domestic beauty brands’ ad revenues rose over 50% despite an overall cosmetics downturn.
  • Looking ahead, Weibo expects ad revenue recovery in H2 supported by the Olympics and e-commerce campaigns, and will test full-funnel partnerships with Tmall to strengthen social-to-commerce conversion in beauty, apparel and footwear.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Weibo Q1 2024
00:00 / 00:00