Bilibili Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 20, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Bilibili delivered its first ever GAAP net profit of RMB89 million in Q4 and an adjusted net profit of RMB452 million, driven by improved operating leverage in high‐margin ad and games segments.
  • Total revenues grew 22% year over year to RMB7.7 billion in Q4 and 28% to RMB26.8 billion for the full year, with advertising up 24% and mobile games surging 79% in the quarter.
  • Daily active users reached 103 million (MAUs 340 million), spending 99 minutes per day on average, representing nearly 70% of China’s Gen Z Plus and underscoring strong engagement.
  • The fan charging program attracted over 8 million participants and saw creator revenues soar over 400% in 2024, highlighting user willingness to pay for exclusive content.
  • Bilibili’s decade of high‐quality video content and community interaction data, combined with open‐source models like DeepSeek, positions it to efficiently develop AI‐driven features.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Bilibili Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Bilibili's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. Today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Juliet Yang
Juliet Yang
Executive Director of Investor Relations at Bilibili

Thank you, Operator. During this call, we'll discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially from those mentioned in today's news release and in this discussion due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filing with SEC and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The non-GAAP financial measure we provide is for comparison purposes only. The definition of this measure and a reconciliation table are available in the news release we issued earlier today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, an investor presentation and a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on the Bilibili IR website at irbilibili.com. Joining us today from Bilibili Senior Management are Mr. Rui Chen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Ms. Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Xin Fan, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call to Mr. Chen.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Thank you, Juliet, and thank you, everyone, for participating in today's call to discuss our Fourth Quarter and 2024 year-end results. 2024 marks a pivotal year for Bilibili. We closed the year with our first GAAP net profit in the Fourth Quarter, while achieving solid growth across the board. We attribute these achievements to the unique proposition of our video community, the growing value of our user base, and our enhanced commercialization efficiency. Looking at these in more detail: First, on our financial performance, we are very happy with the progress made in improving our overall financial metrics this year. Total revenues came in at RMB 7.7 billion in the Fourth Quarter and RMB 26.8 billion for the full year, reflecting year-over-year increases of 22% and 19%, respectively.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Driven by continued improvements in our ad products and infrastructure, our advertising business sustains strong growth, with revenues increasing 24% year-over-year in the Fourth Quarter and 28% for the year. Meanwhile, our mobile games revenues surged by 79% year-over-year in the Fourth Quarter and 40% for the year as we successfully expanded into the strategy game genre. The rapid growth of these high-margin businesses and improved operating leverage drove our Q4 gross profit margin to 36.1%, contributing to 68% year-over-year growth in gross profit. Building on these, we successfully achieved our first quarter of net profit on a GAAP basis at RMB 89 million, and our adjusted net profit reached RMB 452 million in Q4. While opening a new chapter of profitability, our community remains vibrant and highly engaged.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

In the Fourth Quarter, DAUs and MAUs reached 103 million and 340 million, respectively, with users spending an average of 99 minutes daily on our platform. Our user base represents nearly 70% of China's Gen Z+ population, with an average age of 25. They are the golden cohort of consumers with rising spending power and consumption demand. We are also seeing a growing desire among users for fulfillment and empowerment through high-quality video content. As the hub for the young generation, Bilibili is uniquely positioned to meet these evolving needs while unlocking greater commercial value. In addition, under the tailwind of fast-evolving AI technology, the rise of open-source models like DeepSeek is opening up new frontiers for innovation.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

These models will enable more companies like us to skip the demanding and capital-intensive process of developing a model on our own and build on the foundation to develop and implement solutions in a cost-effective way. In this context, high-quality and exclusive data assets are becoming increasingly significant. With our extensive accumulation of high-quality video content and rich community interaction data over the past decade, we are uniquely positioned to apply these AI innovations and fully unleash the potential of our community. Building on the momentum of 2024, we look forward to driving even greater value for our users, creators, and stakeholders in the year ahead. With that overview, let's look at our core pillars of content, community, and commercialization in more detail. Beginning with content and community, growing with our users continues to fuel the natural expansion of our high-quality content offerings.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

In Q4, our average daily video views exceeded 4.8 billion, up 14% year-over-year. On top of our dominance in ACG-related content, we have also built strong user mindshare in Pan Entertainment and Pan Knowledge categories. Meanwhile, as our users enter new life stages, our content offerings are naturally expanding into broader lifestyle and consumption-related areas. In 2024, video views in automotive and baby and maternity grew by nearly 40% and over 70% year-over-year, respectively. Content creators are also the cornerstone of our ecosystem. In January, we honored the top creators at our 2024 Bilibili Power-Up Awards ceremony, recognizing their incredible talent and outstanding contributions to our community. This year's honorees, covering over 100 million followers and spanning diverse categories, are known for their high-quality and fulfilling content. Over 90% of them have been creating content on Bilibili for more than five years.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Notably, 36 out of the top 100 content creators were first-time winners. Meanwhile, we remain committed to empowering content creators to earn more income through our diverse commercialization channels while pursuing their creative passion. In 2024, nearly 3.1 million content creators earned income on our platform. Content creators' total income through our advertising products and VAS services increased by 21% year-over-year. Notably, our fan charging program has been a standout feature, where creators' total earnings increased by nearly 500% in 2024. Turning to our community metrics, our DAUs were more engaged and spent an average of 99 minutes per day on our platform in the Fourth Quarter, compared with 95 minutes in the same period last year. Monthly interactions grew by 10% year-over-year, exceeding 15.5 billion.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

By the end of the year, our official memberships increased by 12% to 258 million, and their 12-month retention rate continued to be around 80%. Moreover, we were thrilled to close 2024 with our New Year's Eve Gala, The Most Beautiful Night of 2024. The event once again proved a must-watch for young audiences, attracting over 230 million views. In addition, during the recent Chinese New Year holiday, we partnered with CCTV for the Spring Festival Gala. As its exclusive Bullet Chat live broadcasting platform and content partner, we offered a unique and interactive viewing experience for this iconic, most-watched TV event in China. On the day of the broadcast, our DAUs increased by nearly 20% compared with Chinese New Year's Eve in 2024.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

These community events have reinforced our leadership among China's young generation while expanding our appeal to a broader user group, bringing more people to our vibrant community. Now, I'd like to talk about the progress of our commercialization in our business lines. First, we made some exciting headway in our advertising business. Our total ad revenues grew by 24% to RMB 2.4 billion for the Fourth Quarter and increased by 28% to RMB 8.2 billion for the full year, both on a year-over-year basis. Ad revenue per DAU also increased by over 20% year-over-year for both Q4 and the full year of 2024. We attribute our industry-leading ad growth to the growing value of our user base, as well as our improved ad efficiency. In 2024, we further opened our ecosystem to embrace more advertising opportunities while enhancing our ad infrastructure, optimizing ad matching algorithms, and upgrading ad products.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

These improvements fueled our strong and sustained advertising growth throughout the year, particularly in performance-based ad revenues, which grew over 40% year-over-year for the full year. Meanwhile, despite the challenging macro environment, brand and native ad revenues also saw double-digit year-over-year growth in 2024. As we gained deeper insights into our users' consumption preferences and patterns throughout the year, more advertisers turned to Bilibili to reach new consumers with better ROIs. In 2024, the number of advertisers on our platform grew by over 30% year-over-year. Games, digital products, and home appliances, e-commerce, internet services, and automotive were the top five industry verticals in the Fourth Quarter. With the recent macro stimulus policy, Bilibili played an important role in empowering 3C and home appliance advertisers to strengthen their brand equity, influence purchasing decisions, and drive direct sales conversions. Additionally, we are attracting more advertisers from emerging verticals.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

In the Fourth Quarter, revenues from transportation and education advertisers grew by over 100% year-over-year. Looking ahead, we remain optimistic about our ad business growth, as we are still in the early stages of unlocking the commercial value of our community. In 2025, we will continue deploying our best resources to build a more efficient ad platform and ad products. Industry-wise, we will continue to explore opportunities in our leading game vertical, including the launch of Bilibili Mini Games and more. We will also actively pursue wider and deeper partnerships with consumer brand advertisers, connecting them with our high-value user base. Turning to our games business, our games revenues increased by 79% to RMB 1.8 billion in Q4 and 40% to RMB 5.6 billion for 2024, both on a year-over-year basis.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

The growth was driven by our hit strategy game San Guo: Mou Ding Tian Xia Sanmou and a contribution from our Japanese ACG title, Jujutsu Kaisen: Phantom Parade, 咒术回战: 幻影夜行, which we launched in overseas markets in November 2024. Sanmou's sustained popularity gives us confidence in its long-term potential. DAUs remain stable across the first five game seasons through our focus on high-quality gameplay while carefully balancing commercialization. We will also enter into its sixth game season on February 22. As we expand its content and features, we believe more young players will be drawn to the SLG genre, solidifying Sanmou as one of our flagship evergreen titles. The game's success is also a milestone in our strategy to diversify game genres, highlighting the strengths of our gaming community. We'll actively explore opportunities like Sanmou to better serve the new generation of gamers. And finally, let's look at our VAS business.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Revenues from our VAS business increased by 8% in Q4 to RMB 3.1 billion and 11% for the full year to RMB 11 billion, both on a year-over-year basis. During the year, both live broadcasting and premium memberships sustained healthy growth, with the gross margin for live broadcasting continuing to improve. By the end of the year, our premium memberships reached 22.7 million, with over 80% on annual subscriptions or auto-renewal packages. As we nurture a healthy live broadcasting ecosystem and a steady premium membership program, we continue to explore products and services uniquely suited to our community features. Notably, our newly introduced fan charging program, which allows paid users to access exclusive, high-quality videos from subscribed creators, attracted over 8 million participants in 2024.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Revenues from the fan charging program surged by over 400% year-over-year during the year, creating a new revenue stream for talented creators to monetize their content. The program's early success also highlights our platform's strength and our users' strong willingness to pay for quality content. In summary, building on our unique community and distinctive product offering, we will continue to unlock its full commercial potential, driving sustainable growth and increased profitability. We are also excited to ride the new wave of AI advancement and further expand beyond what we could have previously imagined. Above all, our core mission remains unchanged: to provide a space where creators and fans come together, connect through shared passion, and enjoy the content and experiences they love. With that, I will turn the call over to Sam to share more financial details. Sam, please go ahead.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Thank you, Mr. Chen. Hello everyone, this is Sam.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

In the interest of time on today's call, I will review our Fourth Quarter highlights as Mr. Chen's remarks have touched on our full-year results at a high level. We encourage you to refer to our press release issued earlier today for a closer look at our full-year results. Throughout the year, we steadily improved our financials, showing the elasticity of our business and our ability to generate profits amid growth. We can see the fruits of our efforts in our Fourth Quarter results, showing continued revenue growth in our core high-margin advertising and games businesses, continued margin expansion, and our first full quarter of GAAP profitability. Total net revenues for the Fourth Quarter were RMB 7.7 billion, up 22% year-over-year. Our total revenue breakdown by revenue stream for Q4 was approximately 40% VAS, 31% advertising, 23% mobile games, and 6% from our IP derivatives and other businesses.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Our cost of revenues increased by 5% year-over-year to RMB 4.9 billion in the Fourth Quarter, while our gross profit rose 68% year-over-year to RMB 2.8 billion. Our gross profit margin reached 36.1% in Q4, up 10 percentage points from 26.1% in the same period last year. Our strong gross profit and margin growth highlight the flexibility and the scalability of our business model. Our total operating expenses were down 10% year-over-year to RMB 2.7 billion in the Fourth Quarter. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 10% year-over-year to RMB 1.2 billion, mainly due to increased marketing expenses for our exclusively licensed games. G&A expenses were RMB 506 million, flat year-over-year. R&D expenses were RMB 919 million, down 31% year-over-year, mainly due to a one-off game termination expense in Q4 2023.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Our operating profit and net profit turned positive to RMB 126 million and RMB 89 million for the Fourth Quarter, respectively marking significant gains from year-over-year losses. Furthermore, our adjusted operating profit and adjusted net profit reached RMB 463 million and RMB 452 million, respectively. Our adjusted net profit ratio in the Fourth Quarter was 6%, compared with an adjusted net loss ratio of 9% in the same period a year ago. Cash flow-wise, we generated RMB 1.4 billion in operating cash flow in the Fourth Quarter and RMB 6 billion for the full year. We also recorded RMB 4.3 billion in free cash flow for the full year. As of December 31, 2024, we had cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, and short-term investments of RMB 16.5 billion, or $2.3 billion. In November 2024, we completed the repurchase rights offer for our December 2026 notes.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

After the completion of this transaction, the aggregate outstanding principal amounts of April 2026 notes, 2027 notes, and December 2026 notes was $13.4 million. Lastly, we announced a share repurchase program of up to $200 million in November 2024 for a 24-month period. The program underscores our commitment to enhancing shareholder returns and reaffirms our confidence in our business's cash flow generation. As of the end of the year, we had repurchased approximately 0.8 million ADRs under this program for a total cost of $16.4 million. Thank you for your attention. We would now like to open the call to your questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator

Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. The company will provide consecutive interpretation for the management statement during the Q&A session. Please note that the English interpretation is for convenience purposes only. In the case of any discrepancy, management statements in their original language will prevail. Now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from Lincoln Kong of Goldman Sachs. Lincoln, it's open. Please ask your question.

Lincoln Kong
Lincoln Kong
Executive Director at Goldman Sachs

[Foreign language] .So thank you, Management, for taking my question. My question is about 2025. So after we're reaching breakeven last year, how should we think about our overall strategy into 2025? And we have seen explosive opportunity from AI. How should we think about AI to integrate with our community? Thank you.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

OK, [Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

So first of all, I would like to highlight that achieving both GAAP and Non-GAAP profitability was a goal that we set around 2022, and looking at now, we are very glad that we have successfully reached it ahead of schedule by the end of 2024。

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Looking at 2025, it indeed is a brand new chapter for us, and we will stick to the model that we have stuck on in the past, which is content plus community. Now that we have reached profitability and achieved a positive operating cycle within our commercialization, across our commercialization, and we'll add another engine to that business model, and achieve sustainable, healthy community growth will be our ultimate target, and for this year, we'll stick to our mission to expand our margin, increase profitability, and maintain a healthy growth of our community.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]。

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

When we think about the strategy going beyond 2025, I would like to reverse the thinking behind how Bilibili can sustain a very healthy growth for the past 15 years. From a user perspective, high-quality content has been an irreplaceable positioning for Bilibili. This is also the same reason that our user has been using our platform for a very long time. When we're thinking about the strategy going forward, high-quality content or videos will be the center of all of our planning, and we believe the high-quality content is something that can transcend economic cycles and serves a gateway to the next era of video industry.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

First of all, I'd like to touch upon high-quality content plus PUGC value.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

I believe that we have already entered an era where there's a very sufficient supply of video content, and probably the era of mass video consumption has already ended. There will be no shortage of video content supply anymore, especially for short-form video. The future of video lies in the quality, not quantity, and Bilibili has a strong user mind share of high-quality content. We have gathered the most talented content creator and the user who appreciate high-quality content the most. We believe this is a common understanding across the majority of the video users. Being the high-quality video content platform, we will become even more competitive and stand a competitive advantage position in the next era of video market.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language].

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Here I'll give an example of one of our content creators, whose name is Shi Pindao.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

He has been producing a series of food documentaries, and as a documentary producer ourselves, we know the competitive advantage of this particular content creator, which he already earned over tens of millions of GMV through monetizing his documentary content. From that example, you can tell that the users are very willing to pay for high-quality content, and there's a great commercial value lies within the high-quality content.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

The second point I would like to raise is the high-quality content plus our self-developed IP assets. I think everyone has been very impressed last year by the success of Black Myth: Wukong and this year's blockbuster anime Ne Zha 2.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Those two success examples further approved our argument that, under this trend of oversupply of video content or content in general, the high-quality content has larger demand, and people will be more inclined to look over the top content, top quality content. Bilibili ourselves, we have built a strong portfolio of self-developed IP. For example, our original Chinese anime Immortal's Journey, 凡人修仙传, we have been running for five consecutive quarters, years, and have become a well-established Chinese IP. Particularly last year in 2024, both its viewership and paid membership hit record highs within our community, and we plan to continue to develop that type of high-quality IPs.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

If you tell me that ten years ago that Bilibili's highest viewership and paid membership anime would be a topic surrounded with a Mortal to Immortal type of topic themes, I would be surprised, but on a second thought, this type of IP would already have a large established viewer and similar to the classic Journey to the West. So that is another supporting evidence that our users or users in general will appreciate high-quality content and reward it with much higher revenue. I believe that Bilibili, as a platform and the center, the highest quality PUGC platform, there will be more and more high-quality IP content emerged from our platform. In no time, we should be able to produce those very high-quality and worldwide known IPs for the mass audience to see.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

The last point I would like to raise is the power of the combination of AI plus high-quality content. I think everyone was very excited about the immense opportunity that AI brings starting from two years ago, and that brings a lot of excitement and progress within every sector. And Bilibili's value lies within the era of AI is that we have the best Chinese video content and data assets across the world, and the evolution of the large language model actually needs more high-quality data assets to unleash its value. And Bilibili happens to be that place that continues to generate high-quality video content and the real-time user feedback towards that content. And for that perspective, it's the best combination between Bilibili and the future AI opportunity.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

On top of the high-quality video asset data asset, another advantage that Bilibili has is that on top of that video content, we have a large number of high-quality comments and bullet chats, which are generated by millions and millions of users who are just in sync with the video content itself. And for that part, it's really a goldmine for the data asset for AI to train, and it continues to evolve. With the emergence of open source and cost-effective AI models like DeepSeek, it makes Bilibili in a much better position to leverage that low-cost AI model to further unleash and discover the value lies within the Bilibili data assets. And we have been doing a lot of tests in the past few weeks and months. There's a lot of surprise for us.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

I will be introducing more progress in the following quarters. Please stay tuned, and we're very excited to share with you. All right, that concludes Mr. Chen's answer. Next question, please.

Operator

Thank you. And now we're going to take our next question. And it comes from the line of Felix Liu from UBS. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Felix Liu
Felix Liu
Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS

[Foreign language], Thank you, management, for taking my question, and congratulations on the very strong advertisement performance in 2024. Could management share more color on the driver for the strong 2024 advertisement growth? And for the advertisement outlook for 2025, what has management observed year to date from the advertiser sentiment, et cetera? And what will be the key focus point and bright spot for your advertisement business in 2025? Thank you.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Indeed, our ad business was performing very well in 2024.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Total ad revenue reached nearly 8.82 billion RMB for the full year, marking a 28% year-over-year growth. That is among the highest growth rate across the industry

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Notably, our high-margin performance-based ads saw over 40% year-over-year growth. That's also driving a significant improvement in our overall gross margin for the advertising business, and that is a big plus to our overall gross margin on a group level as well.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

The success, the reason that drives our advertising revenue comes from two uniqueness that Bilibili platform possesses. One is the high-quality user base, and secondly is that we have strong mind share or strong content offering in terms of high-quality content. Those two reasons are the fundamental drivers for those advertisers to put ads on Bilibili platform.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

In 2024, our users' average age reached 25 years old, a stage of life where consumer demand grows rapidly.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

This makes Bilibili the most ideal and effective platform for advertisers to engage with young consumers based on our communication with various advertisers. It has been a consensus that Bilibili is a perfect platform to help connect and communicate with the young generation, and it's also a very effective platform to influence young users' purchasing decisions.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

And we also attribute our success to our continuous improvement to our one horizontal and vertical commercialization strategy, Yiheng Enzong. regarding to the Yiheng, the one horizontal that refers to our ad infrastructure and our ad product abilities. First of all, overall that in 2024, the number of advertisers grew over 30% year-over-year. We are attracting more advertisers across different industries to come to invest on our platform. And also, we improved our ad product to attract more ad budgets from different advertisers.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

For example, now in Q4, over 65% of native advertisers will also purchase the content promotion product on our platform, and that ratio was 50% a year ago. Moreover, AI played a very important role in helping to drive efficiencies, with our AIGC tools that we are helping our advertisers to improve material creation efficiencies and overall click-through rate. Currently, AI participated in over 10% of ad material creation, with regard to the covers and the titles. For that part, we saw a very significant improvement in the ad conversion rate. Now, let's touch base on the Yiheng Enzong strategies. In 2024, Bilibili continues to secure more ad budget from key industries while also attracting new advertisers from emerging sectors.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Key industries such as games, in 2024, while solidifying our new game open beta testing budgets, we also continue to gain more shares from mini games budgeting. Recently, we launched Bilibili Mini Games program, which has gained a lot of traction and shows strong momentum among our advertisers, and we believe that will be one of the growth drivers for us to continue to gain more shares within the game advertising sector.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Secondly, on our e-commerce sectors, in 2024, we remain committed to the open loop strategy, further strengthening our partnership and with all the major e-commerce platforms. In the past Double 11 shopping festivals, our overall GMV increased by over 150% year-over-year, and Bilibili brought over 50% new consumers to the merchants for all participating industries. That ratio is very valuable under this very intensive competitive environment within the e-commerce industry.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Another example would be in the digital products and home appliances sectors. As people know that young the young users have very strong needs for digital products, and as the average age of our user enters 25, there's also a growing demand for home appliances as well. Plus, with the national subsidy, stimulation within the home appliance sectors, we saw a very strong growth in the digital products and home appliances sectors. It contributes the highest, incremental revenues, in Q4 within our ad sectors.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

And we talked about what we have done in 2024, and, we believe the advertising sector is a fully competitive market and requires real, competitive edge to deliver real results in order to gain shares. If we're looking at 2025 and beyond, what we need to do is continue to strengthen our advertising infrastructure and to drive efficiency.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

We remain overall optimistic and confident about the growth of our advertising business in 2025, and we expect to maintain above industry growth rate. That concludes Mr. Chen's answer. Next question, please.

Operator

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from Wei Fang of Mizuho. Wei Fang, is it open? Please ask your question.

Wei Fang
Wei Fang
Director at Mizuho

Oh, thank you. [Foreign language]

Wei Fang
Wei Fang
Director at Mizuho

Hello, operator? I think, the line is disconnected.

Operator

Excuse me, Mr. Wei Fang, are you still on the line? We will proceed with our next participant. Just give us a moment. And the next question comes from Xueqing Zhang of CICC. Xueqing Zhang, is it open? Please ask your question.

Xueqing Zhang
Xueqing Zhang
Analyst at CICC

[Foreign language], Thanks management for taking my question. My question about your margins. The company's gross profit margin has reached 36% in Q4.

Xueqing Zhang
Xueqing Zhang
Analyst at CICC

How do you view the trends of the gross margin and net margin in 2025 and in the mid to long term? Thank you.

Xueqing Zhang
Xueqing Zhang
Analyst at CICC

This is Sam. Thank you, Xueqing. I will take your question. Our profitability was mainly driven by gross profit and the gross profit margin expansion, which is healthy and sustainable. In Q4, our gross margin reached a record high of 36%, making 10 consecutive quarters of improvement. The key contributors to this improvement include the rising share of high-margin gaming and advertising revenues. They now contribute over half of our total revenue, accounting for 54% of total revenue in Q4. And our fixed-like costs, including content, staff, server, bandwidth costs, further declined their proportion of the revenue from 25% in Q1 to 70% in Q4.

Xueqing Zhang
Xueqing Zhang
Analyst at CICC

Looking ahead, we expect the growth of our revenue will continue driving the steady margin growth, a gross margin expansion in 2025. Over the long term, we are confident that gross margin will reach 40%-45%. On the expenses side, our operating expenses at a percentage of total revenues declined from 36%-37% in 2024, and there's more room to further reduction in the future. We have already achieved 6% operating profit on a GAAP basis in Q4. In the long run, our operating profit margin target remains 15%-20%. Thank you for your question. Operator, next question, please.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from the line of Lei Zhang from Bank of America.

Lei Zhang
Lei Zhang
Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America

Hi, [Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

For us, the top priority for Sanmou is long-term operation, as I discussed in the previous quarter, and, we are the target life cycle for this game will be at least five years. And based on the performances of the first five seasons, we think the team and the game has met that requirement, and the game has consistently ranked among the industry best in terms of user engagement, retention, and the revenue generation

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

That's why I feel quite confident for the next five years, Sanmou will continue to contribute steady performances, and we are also confident that, because SLG by its nature has a longer life cycle, the target that I always bring to the team is that we're hoping to make Sanmou a game that a player can play for a lifelong time.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

That's why we, whenever there's a new game season, the game will be back on the top grossing chart, at least top 10 grossing chart.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

The reason why we are very confident is that we have the determination and also experience in running a long life cycle game. For example, FGO, after nine years of its launch, we still see a double-digit revenue growth for this game. Another game, Azur Lane, which is celebrating its eighth year anniversary, we continue to see the overall growth improving year over year. That's why we are very confident and also determined to make Sanmo a long-lasting, a long life cycle game.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Because Sanmo is also, on the other hand, a new game, and we emphasize and very care about what our players are saying.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

We continuously listen to the player feedback on game experiences and mechanism and actively collaborate with the game developer to incorporate this insights and feedback and adjust the game accordingly. For example, in the game season, upcoming game season six on February 22nd, a lot of the updates and improvement is made according to the user feedback. For example, we'll be launching a new map, a new battle strategies, and new skin system, and also bring a new weather system to enhance overall gameplay.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

We're also preparing for the major updates for this June, which is going to be the one-year anniversary for Sanmou. We're looking to bring a lot of, significant updates to increase the gameplay and improve the overall game experience for, for Sanmou.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Multi-platform expansion will also be one of the strategies for this game this year.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Last Q4 we have launched the game on the PC portal, and this year we're looking to bring this amazing game experience to multiple platforms and multiple scenarios to attract more users to enjoy the game. And for the second half of this year, the overseas launch will be one of the most important tasks for Sanmou. Right now we're focused on the development of the traditional Chinese version of Sanmou, to better serve the overseas players. We'll refine the game experience, adjust the game ecosystem design to better fit to different countries' gamers' preferences. We're also hoping to make Sanmou a favorite SLG strategy game for young players overseas. That concludes Mr. Chen's question and answer session, and we can move to one last question, Operator. Please go ahead.

Operator

Yes, of course. Thank you so much.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Now we're going to take our last question for today, and it comes from Wei Fang from Mizuho. Wei Fang, your line is open, please ask your question.

Wei Fang
Wei Fang
Director at Mizuho

Thank you for screening me. [Foreign language], Now looking ahead for 2025, can you help share your thoughts on how to further expand your user base and also enhance your brand awareness? And also wondering if you could help comment more on the results from your partnership with CCTV's Spring Festival Gala. Thank you.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Firstly I'll talk about the partnership with the Spring Festival Gala. This year, for the very first time, we partner with CCTV's Spring Festival Gala as its exclusive bullet chat live streaming platform.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

At the same time, CCTV also opened an official Spring Festival Gala account on Bilibili, bringing users the highlights from the past 42 years of the Gala history, and our users are welcoming this content with great enthusiasm.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

As a 40 years old, I've been watching Spring Festival Gala for 40 years, but I find out there's going to be new chemistry, compared to the high-quality content in the past with the young generation's feedback through bullet chat and commentaries. It really sparkles new content and new experience.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

I'll talk about some of the results from this project. First of all, I would say through this Spring Festival Gala project, we have achieved various targets. First of all, on the user front, on Chinese New Year's Eve, Bilibili's overall DAU increased by 20% year over year compared to the New Year's Eve in 2024.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

As a platform with over 1 million DAU, one single project can bring 20% DAU increase. That's an amazing result. The second achievement is that we find bullet chats as an irreplaceable part of Bilibili's user experience, which is attracting a lot of users to come specifically for the unique bullet chat experience while watching Spring Festival Gala. During the live stream, total bullet chats exceeded 100 million. Another point is Bilibili is well positioned to host high-quality content on a nationwide basis because the Spring Festival Gala is a high-quality and unique content. Beyond live broadcasting, our users will come specifically to watch or to send bullet chats and commentary on Bilibili to gain exclusive and unique experience, and the success of this partnership has further solidified our judgment on Bilibili's positioning to host nationwide content and nationwide audiences.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Our multi-screen, multi-scenario strategy and positioning has showed Bilibili's unique advantage in family viewing settings during the Spring Festival, and especially for New Year's Eve Gala, which is a high-definition horizontal format video content is very well suited for the big screen viewing. As a result, the OTT user growth exceeded our expectation during the partnership and further reinforced our leadership and user mind share in the living room scenario.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Another success example would be one of the programs that was showed during the New Year's Eve Gala is, Bilibili's self-produced performance Chunyi Hongbao, which became a phenomenal show on the New Year's Gala. That is an original song produced, for our own show back in 2017, and we made it and put it on the New Year's Gala stage.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

It amassed over 560 million views across platforms, topped 183 trending lists, and surpassed tons of impressions. The success of the show also proves that Bilibili not only understands young people and also proved our ability to produce high-quality, nationally loved content on a wider stage.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

To summarize, the partnership, the success of the program shows that Bilibili can bring young generation to the nationwide New Year's Eve Festival Gala. At the same time, increased our user base, further expanded Bilibili name, and also become very integrated campaign within the Bilibili organization. On all the aspects, it has been a very successful project.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

[Foreign language]

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

To answer your previous question, how do we expand our influence through Bilibili brand is that to do project like this.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

In the past, our Most Beautiful Night, the New Year's Gala has been a very successful campaign to attract new users and improve our brand equities, and we've done the similar things among the graduation season, and for this year we have tried out new partnership during Chinese New Year and will continue to launch more Chinese New Year's campaigns like this one going forward, and this year we're also looking to do campaigns tailored, targeted campaigns among summer vacations. We think this type of collaboration and project will further help us to improve our brand equity, improve our brand influences at the same time to facilitate our user growth strategy. That's all, thank you, turn back to you operator.

Operator

Thank you so much, and that concludes the question and answer session.

Rui Chen
Rui Chen
Chairman and CEO at Bilibili

Thank you once again for joining Bilibili's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 financial results and business update conference call today. If you have any further questions, please contact Juliet Yang, Bilibili's Executive Director of Investor Relations, or PR Center Financial Communications. Contact information for IR in both China and the U.S. can be found on today's press release. Thank you and have a great day.

Executives
    • Rui Chen
      Rui Chen
      Chairman and CEO
    • Juliet Yang
      Juliet Yang
      Executive Director of Investor Relations
Analysts
    • Company Representative
    • Lei Zhang
      Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America
    • Xueqing Zhang
      Analyst at CICC
    • Felix Liu
      Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS
    • Translator
    • Wei Fang
      Director at Mizuho
    • Lincoln Kong
      Executive Director at Goldman Sachs
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