Aurora Mobile Q1 2026 Earnings Report

Aurora Mobile EPS Results

• Actual EPS: N/A
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Aurora Mobile Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Aurora Mobile Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2026
• Date: 5/26/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, May 26, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 7:30AM ET

Aurora Mobile (NASDAQ:JG) (NASDAQ: JG) is a China‐based technology company specializing in mobile messaging and big data analytics. The company provides a one‐stop platform for developers and enterprises to integrate push notification services, in‐app messaging, and real‐time event tracking through a lightweight software development kit (SDK). Aurora Mobile’s platform is designed to help app publishers and brands enhance user engagement, retention and monetization by delivering timely and personalized content across mobile and web channels.

The company’s core offerings include smart push notifications, targeted messaging, user behavior analytics and data‐driven marketing tools. Its SDK supports multiple operating systems and popular development frameworks, allowing clients to deploy notifications, in‐app alerts and surveys with minimal coding effort. Aurora Mobile also offers audience segmentation and data enrichment services, enabling customers to craft precise marketing campaigns and measure campaign performance through comprehensive dashboards.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Beijing, Aurora Mobile primarily serves clients in China, with an expanding footprint across other Asia‐Pacific markets. The company went public on the Nasdaq Global Market in December 2018, and its leadership team is led by founder and CEO Xiangdong Yang. Over the years, Aurora Mobile has built a diverse client base spanning gaming, e‐commerce, media and enterprise software sectors, positioning itself as a key partner for mobile application developers seeking to optimize user engagement through real‐time data insights.

Aurora Mobile Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Aurora Mobile reported Q1 2026 revenue of CNY 93.3 million, up 5% year over year, and delivered its fourth consecutive quarter of GAAP net profit.
• Positive Sentiment: EngageLab remained the main growth engine, with March ARR reaching a record $11.7 million, up 172% year over year, and Q1 recognized revenue rising 210% to CNY 24 million.
• Positive Sentiment: The core Developer Subscription Services business hit a historical high of CNY 64.9 million, growing 21% year over year as both customer count and ARPU improved.
• Positive Sentiment: Profitability metrics improved meaningfully, with gross profit up 13% and gross margin expanding 490 basis points year over year, helping support future earnings.
• Neutral Sentiment: Not all segments performed well: vertical applications declined, including Financial Risk Management revenue down 18% year over year and Market Intelligence down 25%, as management cited regulatory changes and weaker demand.

Presentation

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Aurora Mobile first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Christian Arnell. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

[Christian Arnell, Managing Director at Christensen]

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Aurora Mobile's earnings release was distributed earlier today and is available on the IR website at ir.jiguang.cn. On the call today are Mr. Weidong Luo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Shan-Nen Bong, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Guangyan Chen, General Manager. Following their prepared remarks, they will be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

[Christian Arnell, Managing Director at Christensen]

These forward-looking statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions, which are difficult to predict and may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties, and/or factors are included in the company's filings with the U.S. SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required under applicable law. With that, I'd now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Luo. Please go ahead.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Thanks, Christian. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Aurora Mobile's 2026 first quarter earnings call. Before I comment on our Q1 results, I would like to remind everyone that we have uploaded the quarterly earnings deck on our IR website. You may refer to the deck as we proceed with the call today. As we've done in the past, the suitable description that I would give to the first quarter of 2026 is, a good spring brings a good year.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Within this first quarter of 2026, our achievements are as follows. Firstly, in this quarter, the group recorded revenue of RMB 93.3 million, representing a solid 5% year-over-year growth. Secondly, our global flagship product, EngageLab, continues to shine. The EngageLab ARR for March 2026 surged to a record high of $11.7 million, representing 172% year-over-year growth. Thirdly, gross profit grew by 13% year-over-year.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Gross margin improved by 490 basis points between the years. Along the way, we delivered the fourth consecutive quarters of GAAP net profit. Trust you would agree with me. The Q1 that we have delivered was indeed a fairly good set of financials, and this is a great way to kick off a brand-new 2026 financial year. Let me now share more on the business aspect. Q1 of each year is always the top quarter for majority, if not all, of businesses. Just to share, within the first quarter of the year, we have the shorter month of February, coupled with the long Chinese New Year holidays, business activities tend to be slower at this time of the year.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Despite the slower quarter of the year, we worked harder and smarter and managed to pull through with relatively excellent results. Our total Q1 group revenue reached RMB 93.3 million, representing a solid 5% year-over-year growth. In this quarter, developer services recorded great 15% revenue growth year-over-year, but vertical applications revenues dipped 19% year-over-year. Developer services revenues, which consist of subscription service and Value-Added Services, delivered strong performance with 15% growth year-over-year, but decreased 6% quarter-over-quarter.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Our core business, Developer Subscription Services, delivered another quarter of excellent revenue number of RMB 64.9 million, representing growth of 21% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year revenue growth was mainly driven by increases in both customer number and ARPU. In this quarter, subscription revenue recorded its highest level in history yet, at RMB 64.9 million, surpassing the RMB 61.9 million high level in Q4 of 2025. Let's move on to the update on our global flagship product, EngageLab.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

As we have seen in the past 12-18 months, EngageLab is now the indisputable primary driver of revenue growth for Aurora Mobile, and it is on great acceleration path. First, EngageLab ARR has refreshed its own record and achieved a new milestone of $11.7 million as of March 2026. For the second consecutive quarter, we recorded very remarkable year-over-year ARR growth. In this quarter, the growth was 172%. Secondly, EngageLab continues to record another strong quarter. Cumulated signed contract value amounted to RMB 185 million by the end of Q1 of 2026.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

In Q1 alone, we won and signed up about RMB 28 million worth of new contracts. It has again shown the great growth momentum for this business. Thirdly, we continue to witness the influx of new global customers signing up to purchase EngageLab. In this quarter alone, we have converted and won over 223 new customers all over the world. The customer number has grown by 120% year-over-year to 1,864. We are very pleased with the new wins.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Fourthly, the recognized revenue for EngageLab in Q1 of 2026 reached RMB 24 million, representing an outstanding 210% growth year-over-year. We continue to see great strength in EngageLab business expansion. The revenue growth, new wins, and great ARR numbers were all results of the great work done by the team to meet and exceed overseas customers' needs and expectations quarter-over-quarter. We saw more customers converted to using EngageLab platform due to the superior suite of products we have to address their needs.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Equally important is our service-oriented mindset to attend to and resolve customer issues on a timely basis. Let me take a few minutes to share with you on our Aurora Mobile competitive advantages based on what I have witnessed for the past 18-24 months, and why we can grow the EngageLab revenue with strength quarter-over-quarter. Firstly, over the years, we have built mature, highly concurrent, and elastically scalable underlying infrastructure polished through years of commercial operation.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

This infrastructure supports massive data processing, real-time delivery, and global traffic scheduling for our customers. Secondly, we have completed global market layout at an early stage and have established solid brand recognition in overseas digital service sectors. Thirdly, we possess exclusive capabilities helping our customers to unify their full lifecycle user data, covering acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, and conversion.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Fourthly, our products are equipped with self-developed native AI technology deeply embedded in full-product scenarios, together with standardized automated workflow engines. Our solutions help customers boost operational efficiency, realize intelligent management, and cut labor costs significantly. Fifthly, we have spent considerable effort ensuring we fully comply with global stringent data regulations, including privacy protection, cross-border data transmission, and regional data residency rules, meeting market access requirements across Europe, America, Southeast Asia, and other key regions.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Sixth, equally important is our lightweight architecture features easy access and low development barriers, friendly to developers and enterprise technical teams for fast integration and launch. It can times the lower potential customers' reaching decision barriers and greatly improve market replication efficiency. I believe these competitive advantages will no doubt solidify our position in the global user engagement space and market. These advantages are pivotal to long-term revenue acceleration in the years to come.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

On to our global expansion roadmap. We made great progress in Q1 of 2026. Within the first three months of 2026, we managed to sign up and finalize nine other new overseas partners. These overseas partners will help us to sell into the local customers in their respective countries. As of now, we have 26 independent partners globally working together to help us further expand our reach and footprint to more overseas customers.

[Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO at Aurora Mobile]

Within subscription revenue, some of the notable wins in this quarter include, but are not limited to, the largest courier delivery company in the world for their China operations, SF Express, Guotai Securities, [Thomu] Security, and JD International. Value-added services revenues were RMB 6.7 million, down 53% quarter-over-quarter. The decrease was mainly attributable to the absence of the traditional quarterly online shopping festivals, namely the Double 11 or Double 12 in Q1. Let me pass the call over to Shan-Nen, who will take you through the metrics on vertical applications and financial performance for this quarter.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Okay. Thanks, Chris. Next, I'll go over the revenue for vertical applications that includes Financial Risk Management and Market Intelligence. Overall, vertical application revenue decreased year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. Within vertical application, Financial Risk Management revenue decreased 18% year-over-year and 29% quarter-over-quarter. The recent regulatory updates within the financial industry have resulted more headwinds for this segment of the business, but we are making necessary adjustments in terms of products and go-to-market approach to move forward.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Despite the tough operating environment, we still managed to win new contracts as the demand for our products and services is still there. The customers that sign up or renew in Q1 include, but not limited to, Fenqile, Xiaoying Puhui, Ping An Puhui, Zhonglian Xiaojin, and many more licensed credit or financial institutions throughout China. Market intelligence revenue increased by 3% quarter-over-quarter but decreased by 25% year-over-year due to the weak market condition and demand for Chinese APP data. This result is in line with our expectations. Coming to the other P&L items.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Our gross profit recorded another good quarter with 13% year-over-year growth. The remaining RMB 66.3 million gross profit that we had in Q1 gave a great foundation for the rest of the year in 2026. Our gross margin also recorded significant improvement by 490 basis point year-over-year. This again signifies the healthy business model that we are operating in. With this healthy level of margin, we are poised to record good bottom-line numbers going forward. On net profit, following the great momentum that we had in 2025, we started year 2026 with another GAAP net profit quarter.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

This is a great achievement as Q1 is a cyclically slow quarter for each year. On to operating expenses. Q1 OpEx was at RMB 66.1 million, down 3% quarter-over-quarter, but up 9% year-over-year. The OpEx is within our forecast, and we're happy with the level where they are. I'll now dive deeper into the individual OpEx category. For R&D expenses, it increased by 17% year-over-year to RMB 28.7 million, mainly due to the higher staff cost and associated expenses. Technical service fee also contributed to the year-over-year increase.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Selling and marketing expenses increased by 11% year-over-year to RMB 25.9 million, mainly due to the higher staff cost driven by overseas business expansion. G&A expenses decreased by 9% year-over-year to RMB 11.5 million, mainly due to the decrease in bad debt provision resulting from improved collection efficiency. Next, I'll share three very important KPI that we closely monitor. On net dollar retention rate, a commonly used KPI for SaaS company, stood at 103% for our core developer subscription business for the trailing 12-month period ended March 31st, 2026.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

This is the third consecutive quarter where the NDR number has exceeded the 100% threshold. This is the best testimony on the great product and services we are selling. In summary, customers continue to increase their spending with us over time. Secondly, another financial KPI for tracking the performance of SaaS company is the total deferred revenue. This represents cash collected in advance from customers for future contract performance, and it stood at RMB 173.9 million as of March 31st, 2026. This high deferred revenue balance is the best proof that SaaS business model that we are in is working well.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

In short, we have secured RMB 173.9 million worth of future revenue as of March 31st, 2026. Thirdly, we continue to maintain a healthy level of ARR turnover days at 42 days. This low turnover days ensure we have great cash liquidity while mitigating the risk of bad and doubtful debts. Cash collection is one of the key KPIs that we have for our sales team. Let us now recap on Chris' comment on, "A good spring brings a good year," at the beginning of this call. In view of the slower quarter in Q1 of each year, we have achieved and delivered a terrific set of Q1 numbers.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Firstly, we achieved GAAP net profit in the very first quarter of 2026. This marks our fourth consecutive quarter of net profit. Secondly, our core developer subscription business achieved a historical record high of RMB 64.9 million revenue this quarter. Third, our flagship product, EngageLab, continued to scale rapidly across the globe. Our EngageLab business exceeded its own past record in this quarter. The ARR in March reached $11.7 million. This represents a stunning 172% year-over-year growth.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Fourth, gross margin grew by 490 basis points year-over-year, the highest it has been for the past eight quarters, and the gross profit grew by 13% year-over-year. Last but not least, our net dollar retention for core developer service stood strongly at 103%. Although Q1 has been a tough quarter, but we have been resilient and managed to navigate through these rough waters. In Q1 2026 result that we have presented today's big volume, we deliver revenue growth, and our EngageLab business continued to scale new highs, and this lays solid foundation for the rest of 2026.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

We are very committed to expanding the business on a global level and continue to be highly disciplined in our spending. We believe this combination is the appropriate strategy to bring the business forward. Lastly, before I conclude, I'll give a quick update on the share repurchase plan. In this quarter, ended March 31st, 2026, we repurchased 42,000 ADS. Cumulatively, we have repurchased a total of 441,000 ADS since the start of our repurchase program. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are happy to take the question now. Operator, please proceed.

[Operator]

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. One moment for our first question. The first question comes from the line of William Chan from Spiga Capital. Please go ahead.

[William Chan, Analyst at Spiga Capital]

Good evening, Edmund. Thank you for taking my question. Based on the Q1 numbers you have released earlier today, it is a really good set of financial statements. We have revisited and reanalyzed the company IR for the past five quarters. It appears that things are moving in the right direction operationally and financially.

[William Chan, Analyst at Spiga Capital]

The revenue, especially EngageLab, has been showing great growth momentum. Gross profits and margins are pretty solid. Most importantly, the company has turned a full-year profit in 2025 and again in this quarter. My question for the management is how we should look at Aurora Mobile for the financial year 2026. Thank you.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Hi, William. Let me take this question. Yes, you are right. We are very pleased with the Q1 results for the beginning of 2026, and you are right to point out too, for the entire financial year of 2025 and Q1 of 2026, we have been consistently delivering solid financial numbers quarter-over-quarter without fail. This has proven that the business model and the execution capability of the management are standing up to the test quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. In the call earlier, you have heard Chris share on Aurora Mobile's competitive advantages in the market that propel the growth that we have seen today.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

These competitive advantages are real and continue to fuel our growth acceleration in the future. Customers are switching to us and buy our services because of these advantages that we have in the marketplace. At this point, I'd like to add that maybe it is time now to re-look at Aurora Mobile and why it is time to invest right now. There's no doubt that the current valuation is at the low side. Let me share with you on our long-term valuation logic. I believe our valuation logic includes the following aspects.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

One, our solid and foundational domestic core business delivers stable cash flow and strong cyclical resilience. Secondly, through our global flagship product, EngageLab, our scalable global SaaS expansion brings clear, predictable long-term growth curves. Through GPTBots.ai, the in-depth native AI integration empower us and our business to gain tech premium and valuation re-rating upside. Our exclusive full-scenario contextual platform builds replicable competitive moats and operational defensibility. Equally important is the alignment of outcome-based enterprise software trend.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

This significantly enhance our long-term monetization capability and profit elasticity. What all this means is, I think Aurora Mobile should not be valued purely as a traditional infrastructure company, nor as a purely as a single point AI tool. Our corporate framework should reflect platform synergy, global SaaS growth, and AI upside altogether. I believe the above is a better way to view and value Aurora Mobile as a whole for now. Hope this answer your question, William.

[William Chan, Analyst at Spiga Capital]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jack Sun from Gelonghui Research. Please go ahead.

[Jack Sun, Analyst at Gelonghui Research]

Hi, Management. I'm Jack from Gelonghui Research. I look at the Q1 earnings with one particular focus on EngageLab. We have been seeing EngageLab growing every quarters with good numbers from customer numbers, contractual value signed to impressive ARR growth. My question for the Management is how much fuel is left in the tank for EngageLab? In other words, how long can this EngageLab growth can be sustained? Thanks.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Jack, let me take this question, too. Yeah, this is a good question, but a very tough one that you have for us today. My short answer to your question is, yeah, we still have a long way to go in terms of the growth of EngageLab. You're right, and a lot of people have been saying our EngageLab business has been growing from day one of its launch about three years ago. As of now, after three years, we are still growing, but we are only gaining a fraction of the market globally. Let me share with you on your question. Let me answer your question in two aspects.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Firstly, let's look at the geography. If we zoom further into Southeast Asia market, where we generate about 40% of EngageLab business, we are nowhere near market dominant position. What that means is the room for growth, even in just Southeast Asia itself, is huge. Overall, the global user engagement market is vast. Besides Southeast Asia, the other markets are sizable too. For example, Asia Pacific includes Australia and New Zealand, Middle East, and European market.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Right now, we are just at the tip of the iceberg. The market is so huge that we believe it can provide many years of growth to come. The second aspect is the industry that we are selling into. Again, as of now, we have not dominated any particular industry vertical at all. As a matter of fact, majority, if not all businesses in all industry vertical have needs to engage with their users. Let me share with you on the actual examples.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

One, all apps will need to send notification to its user, be it promotional or simply inform its user to update the latest version of app. A second example is online merchant would like to send notification to its user on the timing of the merchant delivery. Coffee apps such as Starbucks and Luckin Coffee, both are our clients, informing customers that their lattes or americanos are ready to pick up. Fourthly, airline companies needing to inform their passenger on upcoming flight, the check-in gate or the boarding gate.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

These are just some of the real-life examples that notifications are being deployed in daily life, and I'm sure you can appreciate its application. Notifications or user engagement are simply omnipresent for most, if not all, enterprise in all industry. Therefore, the market is there for us to capture with both hands. Back to your question, there's still a lot of fuel left in the tank for our EngageLab business. The EngageLab market landscape remains vast, which equips us with a substantial multi-year growth headroom for further penetrate for more markets and drive steady revenue growth. Hope this answers your question.

[Jack Sun, Analyst at Gelonghui Research]

Yeah. That's very clear. Thanks a lot.

[Operator]

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. That is star one and one to ask a question. We are now going to take our next question. This question comes from the line of Mike Tang from Bartic Research. Please go ahead.

[Mike Tang, Analyst at Bartic Research]

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on a great quarter. Just a quick question from me. I've noticed that from a year-over-year perspective, both revenue and gross profit, in terms of the growth rate, seems to have fallen a bit compared to fourth quarter. Can you just maybe talk about some of the reasons behind that? Thank you.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Sure, Michael, thanks for your interest on Aurora Mobile and your question. Let me take this call. Probably you appreciate Q1 is a traditionally slow quarter amongst the four quarters within a year, but still managed to see great results from our core developer solution business, where year-over-year revenue achieved a solid 21% growth that Chris talked about too, reaching an all-time high of RMB 64.9 million. Also in this quarter, gross profit rose by 13% year-over-year. The overall slow growth that you mentioned was mainly attributable to the revenue from other sector, which is the value-added service and vertical application.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

Let me share with you the reason. One is the fact that advertising business was pressured by the seasonality, Q1 is traditionally a slow season for the industry. Without the traffic catalyst such as e-commerce shopping festival and coupled with the long Chinese New Year holidays, marketing spending by brand clients remains slow and leading to the current market condition that you have seen in Q1. Secondly, the slower demand for vertical application.

[Shan-Nen Bong, CFO at Aurora Mobile]

The macroeconomic headwinds have softened our overall client demand. In particular, the Financial Risk Management business was also impacted by the recent regulatory adjustment that I shared earlier on. For the remaining three quarters of 2026, our core developer solution business is poised for substantial growth with meaningful revenue expansion. Meanwhile, our overseas business, EngageLab, is expected to accelerate and benefit from our global footprint will further be unlocked and realized. Hope we answered your question, Mike.

[Mike Tang, Analyst at Bartic Research]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. There are no further questions for today. I will now hand the call back to Christian Arnell for closing remarks.

[Christian Arnell, Managing Director at Christensen]

Thank you everyone for joining our call tonight. If you have any further questions and comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to the IR team. This concludes the call. Have a good evening, and thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Shan-Nen Bong, CFO
• Weidong Luo, Chairman and CEO

Analysts

• Christian Arnell, Managing Director at Christensen
• Jack Sun, Analyst at Gelonghui Research
• Mike Tang, Analyst at Bartic Research
• William Chan, Analyst at Spiga Capital