Weibo Q1 2026 Earnings Report

Weibo EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.34
• Consensus EPS: $0.36
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.02
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.45

Weibo Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $421.33 million
• Expected Revenue: $416.76 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$4.57 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +6.10%

Weibo Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2026
• Date: 5/28/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 28, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 7:00AM ET

Weibo (NASDAQ:WB) (NASDAQ: WB) operates a social media platform in China that enables users to create, share and discover short-form content. Often described as a microblogging service, Weibo supports public posts, multimedia content, hashtags, trending topics, comments, direct messaging and interactions among users, public figures, media organizations and businesses.

The company generates revenue primarily through advertising and marketing services, including promoted content, display advertising and advertising products designed to help brands reach targeted audiences. Weibo also offers value-added services, such as membership features and other tools that support user engagement and content distribution.

Weibo was launched in 2009 by Sina Corporation and later became an independently operated public company. Its platform primarily serves users and advertisers in mainland China, while also reaching Chinese-speaking audiences and organizations in other regions. The company is headquartered in Beijing and has been led by Chief Executive Officer Gaofei Wang, with Charles Chao serving as chairman.

Weibo Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Neutral Sentiment: Weibo reported Q1 2026 revenue of $421.3 million, up 6% year over year, with non-GAAP operating income of $119.8 million and a 28% operating margin. Net income attributable to Weibo was $91.9 million, or $0.34 diluted EPS.
• Positive Sentiment: Advertising revenue rebounded with 9% year-over-year growth to $369.8 million, helped by internet services, local services, automobiles, and AI-related spending. Management said the business is benefiting from better ad matching, content marketing, and deeper AI integration in targeting and creative generation.
• Neutral Sentiment: User metrics were mixed: MAUs declined modestly to 562 million, while DAUs improved slightly to 254 million. Management attributed the MAU pressure to a more selective channel strategy and a focus on retention, while saying core user engagement trends are improving.
• Positive Sentiment: The company said its homepage feed optimization is starting to show results, especially among socially engaged users, with better content consumption, time spent, and interaction rates beginning in March. Video consumption also continued to rise, and Weibo views video as a major driver of retention and user time spent in 2026.
• Positive Sentiment: AI is becoming a larger monetization and product lever, supporting ad targeting, bidding, and creative generation, with AI-generated materials now representing about 40% of usage in bidding ads. Weibo also highlighted growth in AI-related content and creator tools, though it said broader commercialization of AI-generated celebrity/content marketing is still limited by public acceptance and will take time.

Presentation

[Company Representative at Weibo]

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. During today's conference call, we may make forward-looking 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. Further information regarding this and other risks is included in Weibo's annual report on Form 20-F and other filings with the SEC.

[Company Representative at Weibo]

All the information provided in this press release is current as of the date hereof. Weibo assumes no obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. Additionally, I would 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 future prospects. Our non-GAAP financials exclude certain expenses, gains or losses, and other items that are not expected to result in future cash 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. Before loading management prepared remarks, we open the lines for a brief Q&A session. With this, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Gaofei Wang.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

On today's call, I'll share with you highlights on Weibo's product and monetization in the first quarter of 2026.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

On the user front, in March 2026, Weibo's MAU 562 million and average DAUs reached 254 million. Our MAUs experienced a modest decline on both a year-over-year and a quarter-over-quarter basis. This was primarily driven by our strategic focus on enhancing user experience and driving user retention. We have proactively rationalized our channel budget allocation, shifting our focus towards improving the conversion rate of newly acquired users into active users. Concurrently, driven by a recent effort to optimize information feed product experience for our core users, which includes engaged users and click-based users. Coupled with the sustained growth in video content consumption on the platform, the scale and engagement frequency of our core users have maintained a solid trend. As a result, our DAUs achieved modest growth quarter-over-quarter. Our total quarter reached $421.3 million, an increase of 6% year-over-year.

[Translator 1]

Our total ad revenues reached $369.8 million, an increase of 9% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP operating income for the quarter reached $119.8 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 28%.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Next, I will highlight Weibo's key development in the first quarter across user growth and engagement, content ecosystem competitiveness, and monetization.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

On user growth and engagement. In 2026, we will focus on improving user retention and building a high quality, highly engaged, and sustainable user growth framework. In the first-Information feed [Non-English content].

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Moving on to information feed product. In 2026, the strategy focuses on the product optimization after the information feed upgrade, which aligns with our long-term direction. Building on Weibo strength in social network and hot trend discussion, we will further enhance the distribution capabilities of Weibo's distinctive native content, establish a more stable and consistent content consumption experience, and continue to strengthen users trust in the information feed.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Specifically, in the first quarter, we focused on a series of optimization initiatives aimed at balancing the distribution of social content, trending topics, and vertical interest-based content. For Weibo's engaged core users, while ensuring their consumption of social content, we also prioritize improving recommendation efficiency for trending and interest-based content. Meanwhile, we further strengthen the distribution of content from authentic accounts, high-quality original content, and reposted content, while stepping up governance over low-quality and overly promotional content to enhance the consumption experience within our information feeds. These strategies were gradually rolled out throughout the first quarter and began to make positive impacts in March. Looking at the preliminary results, the scale, time spent, and engagement volume of the socially engaged users within our information feed have all shown month-over-month improvement, demonstrating that our strategy is more effectively retaining and serving this specific user cohort.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

These preliminary results have bolstered our confidence to further advance the optimization of information feed product. In the second quarter, building upon the experience improvement for our socially engaged users, we will place greater focus on user groups that rely more heavily on the recommendation feeds and have higher expectation for content matching efficiency. Through the continued optimization of product strategies and content matching algorithms, we aim to improve the seamless content consumption for these users within the recommendation feed, and further strengthen Weibo's competitiveness in recommendation-driven content consumption scenarios.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Moving on to video. Our video business is set to serve as a crucial driver for increasing user time spent and retention throughout 2026. In the first quarter, we continue with the proven path established in the second half of 2025, and saw continued improvement of video consumption. During the first quarter, total time spent on the video playback pages achieved double-digit year-over-year growth, while also maintaining an upward trend quarter-over-quarter. Notably, the growth per capita time spent on video playback pages was even more pronounced.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Specifically, during the first quarter, our video business initiatives centered around two key aspects: distribution and supply. On the distribution side, we continued to optimize the recommendation conversion efficiency for videos across core scenarios such as information feeds and trending feeds. At the same time, we reduced the distribution weight of repetitive, low-quality, and excessively commercialized content. This ensures that the growth in video watch time is increasingly driven by high-quality content and arises in users' meaningful viewing behaviors. On the supply side, we further strengthened the supply of high-quality video content by investing more resources to attract high-quality video content creators, incentivize their content production. This includes celebrity and top KOL live vlogs, trending topic analysis, and derivative creation of popular content, all of which are distinctive to our platforms and strategically skew our traffic distribution towards these high-quality offerings.

[Translator 1]

In the first quarter, both the number of top-tier accounts, for example, the golden and orange verified accounts, publishing original videos and the number of original videos posts recorded double-digit year-over-year growth. Meanwhile, we are also exploring and validating the introduction of more diverse video content formats, such as short plays and video podcasts.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

In the first quarter, leveraging the continued iteration of our video AI large models, we further built on the platform's strength in vertical IP by opening up AI creation tools to the creators, enabling them to produce derivative video content and extend IP-related content. As of April, we had made copyright materials available from over 20 top-tier TV drama and variety show IPs on the platform, and have actively collaborated with partners to launch AI-driven content recreation initiatives, which have attracted nearly 3,000 creators and generated nearly 8,000 pieces of AI content. Meanwhile, we further enhanced Weibo's AI creation platform by providing creators with resources such as graphic text generation tools, trending topic creation tools, video generation capabilities, copyright material, and campaign templates.

[Translator 1]

This empowers creators with richer materials and inspiration, allowing them to translate their content expertise and creative ideas into publishable videos and text-based posts at a significantly lower cost. This, in turn, has helped improve content production efficiency for creators on Weibo.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Moving on to content ecosystem competitiveness. Throughout 2026, we will continue to focus on our three core businesses: trending topics, social network, and search, while further enhancing the health and core competitiveness of our content ecosystem. In the first quarter, our focus within the content ecosystem was on enhancing the quality of trending topic consumption, deepening community interactions, and advancing our AI search capabilities. Through these efforts, we aim to significantly improve users' content consumption efficiency and their overall engagement experience on the platform.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

With respect to hot trends, in the first quarter, we focused on strengthening the influence and credibility of our trending list. We optimize the ranking mechanism, improve the quality of content presented on the list, and enrich the content supply and discussion atmosphere on the landing pages. These efforts drove higher content consumption and more vibrant discussion under the hot trend scenarios. Compared with the fourth quarter last year, both average time spent and average discussion volume per user under the hot trend scenarios increased in the first quarter. The strengthened thickness of user engagement around hot trends further reinforce Weibo's competitive position as a go-to platform for hot trend discovery and public discussion.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

On social attributes, in 2026, we aim to deepen user engagement and increase revisit intention within interest-based communities, leveraging richer community engagement features and stronger interaction mechanisms. In the first quarter, the Super Topics community continued to enhance its product capabilities and standardize event-based operations across categories such as celebrities, IPs, and sports events, which sustainably drove user engagement. As a result, both DAUs and engaged users of Super Topics recorded year-over-year growth. With AI further integrated into product development efficiency and content understanding, we will continue to center on core needs of users of community products, accelerating its iteration of interactive community products and features, and thereby further improving users' social fulfillment and sense of belonging on Weibo.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

On search products, as we continue to enhance our AI capabilities, in the first quarter, we have upgraded our Weibo intelligent search function from a single term Q&A summary one into an AI-powered multi-term follow-up queries, and can understand multi-modal content including videos and image with text. Meanwhile, we integrated AI Agent capabilities into key scenarios such as public figure search and hot trend search, and have conducted product experiments on search landing pages and comment sections. Leveraging AI Agent capabilities will enhance the user search experience and efficiency, and further reinforce the Weibo's differentiated value proposition in the search market.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

Moving on to monetization, we have continued to execute on two key strategies that have underpinned our ad products and sales teams since 2025. First, driving broader adoption of Weibo's unique content marketing value across more industries and clients. Second, systematically improving ad conversion effectiveness by leveraging AI capabilities. In the first quarter, Weibo's ad revenues increased 9% year-over-year. Overall, Weibo continued to leverage its differentiated strength in hot trends plus social plus content marketing across proven marketing scenarios such as new product launches, Chinese New Year campaigns, sports events, and celebrity marketing, leading to growth across multiple key industries.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

By industry, the main growth contributors in the first quarter were verticals such as internet service, local service and automobiles. The internet service sector delivered robust year-over-year growth, primarily driven by incremental budget we captured from the internet service companies. For example, during the Chinese New Year period, various AI large language model players ramp up their marketing investment. Leveraging Weibo strong KOL ecosystem and professional discussion environment in the digital and technology verticals, we effectively fulfilled AI companies marketing need in areas such as new product launches, technology education, and word of mouth building, which resulted in a notable increase in related marketing revenues. We believe that as AI technologies and application continue to evolve, AI related content will become a major incremental driver of Weibo's content ecosystem.

[Translator 1]

In May, the number of AI focused professional content creators, the average daily number of AI related hot trends, and the discussion volume of AI content on Weibo all increased more than 30% compared with January this year. This technological transformation in AI have been continuously stimulating content creation and user discussion on our platform, and will further build a flywheel between content ecosystem enrichment and monetization growth.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

The local service sector was also among the fast growing sector in the first quarter, supported by ongoing competition in food delivery, as well as seasonal boost from the Chinese New Year holiday. The automobile sector delivered double-digit year-over-year growth, primarily driven by favorable policies and new vehicle launches, relatively stable ad spend around new product launches, user reputation building, and brand awareness. The handset sector recorded modest year-over-year growth in the first quarter. Looking ahead, market competition in the sector continue to intensify. Despite ongoing support from trading subsidies, rising chip and memory cost continue to put pressure on handset manufacturers profitability, which may weigh on their ad budget going forward. We will closely track new product launch cycles and client budget dynamics, and optimize our sales strategy accordingly to ensure solid coverage of key clients.

[Translator 1]

Among other verticals, the apparel and footwear sector achieved double-digit year-over-year growth in the first quarter, primarily fueled by the Winter Olympics, concentrated marketing campaigns by sports and outdoor brands, and celebrity endorsement activities. Through which advertiser effectively leveraged events and celebrity moments to boost the brand awareness.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 1]

As mentioned last quarter, we have seen a recovery trend in demand for celebrities and IP-based content marketing from certain brand advertisers. In the first quarter, this trend continued to play out in a number of key industries and campaigns, with related revenues maintaining solid year-over-year growth and providing a meaningful supplement to our overall content marketing business. Celebrity marketing has always been a distinctive component of Weibo's content marketing capabilities. Over the past quarter, we focused more on enhancing service depth and ad placement efficiency for clients in this area. Based on clients' brand objectives, budget levels, and target audience, we integrated Weibo resources in hot trends, IPs, celebrities, and KOL ecosystems to provide more tailored resource matching, content planning, and campaign execution services. This initiative enables clients to effectively achieve brand exposure and user engagement, while our products and service capabilities are still being further refined.

[Translator 1]

We have already seen encouraging execution results and client feedback in some of the pilot projects. Looking forward, we will continue to advance our celebrity and IP content marketing services, positioning them as a key component to deepen collaboration with brand advertisers and enhance our content marketing competitiveness, while driving greater synergy with our overall ad product portfolio. With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for financial review.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

Thank you, Gaofei, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Let's start with user metrics. In March 2026, Weibo's MAUs and average DAUs reached 562 million and 254 million respectively. During the first quarter, we continued to focus on user quality, retention, and engagement. MAUs saw a modest sequential decline, mainly reflecting our ongoing rationalization of channel investment and the transition following our information feed revamp. At the same time, DAUs remained resilient and improved slightly quarter-over-quarter, supported by better retention of core users, continued optimization of the homepage feed experience, and improving video consumption. AI continued to serve as an important enabler across our product, content, and monetization systems. On the monetization side, AI-powered targeting, feeding, and ad creative generation continued to support Promoted Feeds and real-time bidding ad products.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

Internally, we are also expanding the use of AI tools to improve execution efficiency across product, operations, and sales teams. Turning to financials. As a reminder, my prepared remarks will focus on non-GAAP results. Monetary amounts are in U.S. dollar term, and all comparisons are on a year-to-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Now, let me walk you through our financial highlights for the first quarter 2026. Weibo's first quarter 2026 net revenues were $421.3 million, an increase of 6%, or 1% on a constant currency basis. Operating income was $119.8 million, representing operating margin of 28%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached $91.9 million, and the diluted EPS was $0.34. Let me give you more color on the first quarter 2026 revenue performance.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

We started the year with our advertising business returning to year-over-year growth, supported by improving demand from selected verticals and continued execution in content marketing and performance-based ad products. Weibo's advertising and marketing revenues for the first quarter 2026 were $369.8 million, an increase of 9%, or 3% on a constant currency basis. By industry, our largest three verticals were FMCG, e-commerce, and 3C products in terms of growth. Internet services, automobile, and local services were the major contributors. Advertising revenues from internet companies increased primarily due to incremental advertising spend from leading players in the sector. The automobile sector also saw substantial growth, supported by auto-related content ecosystems and ad spend from electric vehicles. For the handset sector, advertising revenues recorded modest growth, but we remain mindful that their marketing budgets may face pressure amid intensified competition with the handset market, as well as rising component costs.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

As for areas facing headwinds, FMCG continued to face a year-over-year gap, although we saw sequential recovery as certain advertisers resumed spending in celebrity and KOL marketing campaigns. The online game sector was still on a descending trend due to lack of blockbuster releases this quarter. By ad product, Promoted Feeds ad was the largest, followed by Social Display, Search, and Topic. Promoted Feeds delivered solid growth, benefiting from better ad matching in the revamped information feed, continued demand for Weibo's differentiated IP and content marketing solutions, and deeper AI integration in targeting, feeding, and creative generation. These product improvements helped advertisers combine brand exposure with more measurable conversion objectives. Ad revenues from Alibaba for the first quarter were $43.3 million, an increase of 2% year-over-year or a decrease of 4% on a constant currency basis.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

The modest decline of revenues from Alibaba was primarily due to high base last year, which included one-off revenues from promotional ad budget for Alibaba's sponsorship of Spring Festival in 2025 and AI-related budget in the first quarter last year. Ad spend from Alibaba highly correlates to its own marketing strategies, which may fluctuate with Alibaba's campaign priorities and product launch schedule, etc. Value added service revenues were $51.6 million in the first quarter, a decrease of 11% or 15% on a constant currency basis. The decrease was primarily attributable to decline in game-related revenue. Turning to costs and expenses. Total costs and expenses for the first quarter was $301.5 million, an increase of 13%, mainly due to higher ad production cost and marketing spends, partially offset by the decrease of general and administration expense.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

During the quarter, we continued to make major investments in selected monetization related initiatives, primarily around advertising product capabilities, content marketing ecosystem, and client service offerings. We will continue to manage the pace of these investments with ROI discipline and within a controllable budget framework. Operating income in the first quarter was $119.8 million, representing operating margin of 28% compared to 33% in the same period last year. While operating margin declined year-over-year due to less investments, we remain focused on balancing near-term execution needs with sustainable profitability and healthy cash flow generation. Turning to income tax. Under GAAP, income tax expenses for the first quarter were $15.7 million compared to $24.3 million last year, mainly due to decrease in deferred tax liability related to equity pickup adjustment.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

Net income attributable to Weibo in the first quarter was $91.9 million, representing a net margin of 22%. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow items. As of March 31st, 2026, Weibo's cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaled $2.59 billion compared to $2.41 billion as of December 31st, 2025. In the first quarter, cash provided by operating activities was $164 million. Capital expenditures totaled $11.9 million, and the depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to $15.5 million. Let me share some color on our shareholder returns. We have completed the distribution of the annual cash dividend of $0.31 for ordinary share or ADSs for the fiscal year 2025, with aggregate amount of approximately $150 million in May 2026.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

We will continue to take a disciplined approach to capital allocation, balancing shareholder returns with the financial flexibility needed to fund our long-term product, AI, and the content ecosystem initiative. Overall, first quarter was a quarter of continued transition and steady execution. While macro consumption sentiment and industry competition remain uncertain, with the initial signs of stabilization in core user engagement and advertising demand. We will continue to balance investment needs with operating efficiency and healthy cash flow generation as we build a more sustainable foundation for long-term development. Before turning to the Q&A session, let me provide you a brief update on ESG front. In April, we published our fifth ESG report highlighting our efforts across social value, tech empowerment, information security, employee development, content ecosystem, and green operations.

[Fei Cao, CFO at Weibo]

MSCI also recently upgraded our ESG rating from BB to AA, recognizing our progress in sustainability, innovation, and social responsibility. Please visit our IR website for more information. With that, let me now turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session.

[Operator]

Thank you so much. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please stand by, we'll compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one. Now we're going to take our first question. It comes now from Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

[Thomas Chong, Analyst at Jefferies]

[Non-English content]. Hi, good evening. Thanks management for taking my questions. Based on the trend so far we see in Q1 and recent months, can management comment about Weibo advertising outlook in Q2? In addition, can management also comment about our advertising strategies, any updates for the full year?

[Thomas Chong, Analyst at Jefferies]

Separate today on AI, can management share about how it benefits advertising and monetization? Thank you.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Thank you for the question. First off, let's talk about the overall recap of Q1 performance as well as the expectation of the second half of the year. First of all, we had a year-on-year growth of about 9% of the advertising revenue in Q1. If we're talking about the definition of RMB, it was about 3% of the growth. In Q1, primarily the advertising revenue growth was driven by the Internet-based software deployment and AI-related investments as well as the other local lifestyle and automotive industry related.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Okay. Next, I would like to say that in Q1, overall speaking, we had a better than expectation growth of our ad revenue in terms of the consumption area. If you are talking about the key accounts that we have, especially from different verticals, we've been seeing a stressful situation. For instance, in terms of automotive sales, they've been experiencing double digit decrease. For the handset, they had also a decrease in terms of their overall revenue because of the additional cost of the memory and most of the handset makers have to adjust their overall price. Also for e-commerce, we've been experiencing also the stressful profitability situation. Even if our ad revenue was growing, we have still a stressful operation for our customers. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Okay. Next, in terms of Q2 and also the future outlook, I think that although we've been seeing a stressful operational situation for consumption industry, we did have the different responses from different customers. First of all, in terms of automotive industry, in the current stage, they've been experiencing some of the decrease of their sales volume. However, they were not just stopping in terms of the promotion activities for the new products and new product launch as well. This year we've been seeing more new product launches than that of last year. In Q1 and Q2, as of the near future, I think that this is going to be accelerated. As you can see that we always have more and more frequent launches of new EVs.

[Translator 2]

Also Weibo is a very good and natural ecosystem to generate and stimulate the discussions around the topics of technology related and new energy related. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

At the same time, for the handset industry, as you can see that it is difficult for us to have a very correct prediction of the performance in the second half of the year. The industry did experience a drop of their sales volume in the first half of this year. Of course, this year, however, still we are seeing more launches of new products and new smartphones, and especially increase in the frequency of smartphone launches for the medium to high-end segment. In summer holiday, we might have been experiencing some of the adjustments of the strategy from the handset industry. Of course, this year we've been seeing Apple practically adjusted their price, causing some of the stressful situations to some of the Chinese handset makers.

[Translator 2]

As a result, our ad revenue and ad budget was primarily related to the frequency of the new product launches of the different verticals as well as the sales, but not necessarily related to the operational result of the customers in different verticals. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Of course. Also lastly, let's talk about some of the other industries like the e-commerce and local lifestyle as well as the FMCG industry. First of all, for the e-commerce, we've already had a very high base number in entering to Q2. Of course, also for the industry, some of the promotion activities and especially budget allocated to the fast food delivery was not as intense as before. This is going to be not that stressful. Also, I would like to comment on FMCG. Entering to the second half of the year, we are going to have the World Cup as activities. I believe that we are trying our best to catch the opportunity to gain that ad revenue or ad budget from that customer. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Also, you can see that talking about the AI topic, as we have already previously stated, that the AI was primarily very effective on the effective based or the performance based ads. You can see that AI was quite useful in terms of the ad material generation, the eCPM, and also the recommendations as well. In terms of those generated materials for the advertisements, the primary consumption rate was already reaching to about 40%. In Q1, in the information based feed, we had a double-digit growth, especially talking about the eCPM and the other relevant areas. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Of course, you know that Weibo is very good at doing the business in the advertisement industry for the brand-based advertisement and key-customer advertisement. We are very good at doing the business of the celebrity-based or the content-based marketing. At the current stage, we've been having a very good progress in terms of adoption of the AI among those KOLs and also the celebrities as well. AI is pretty much useful in generating those ad materials for those KOLs to be very much facilitative. Of course, in Q1 and Q2, we've been seeing some of the headwinds in terms of the adoption rate as well as the acceptance by the public in terms of those ad-generated by AI or those content-generated by AI.

[Translator 2]

At the current stage, we are not doing a massive commercialization as for the front, but still we are going to wait. Still, we are doing some internal testing among KOLs, and the public acceptance is the criteria for us to evaluate before we go massive commercialization. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Thank you.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Operator]

Thank you. We're going to take our next question. Give us a moment. The question comes in of Jenny Yuan from UBS. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

[Jenny Yuan, Analyst at UBS]

[Non-English content].

[Jenny Yuan, Analyst at UBS]

So thanks management for taking my question.

[Translator 1]

Could you please share some updates on the impact of the stated events on user growth? Last quarter we highlighted video strategy as a key focus for this year. Could you please provide an update on the progress so far as well as the key priorities and targets for the next phase? Lastly, could you please also share recent developments on the AI front in terms of user-facing products? Thank you.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Got it. OK, thank you for this question. First of all, as for the update of the information-based feed, we've been seeing that this was actually completed in the middle of Q3 of 2025, and before which we had primarily based on the recommendation-based feed. When we actually had that update and adjustments, we've been seeing a very good improvement of the user experience in the front. In Q1, we had a little bit decrease of MAU and DAU of this side, primarily due to the strategy changes of our channel placement, and also some of the low shipments of the handsets. We had a lower number of pre-installments, and also the users as well. In Q1, you can see that we've been seeing a user acquisition cost increase, because it was actually the hot season in terms of the AI application adoption and also the usage.

[Translator 2]

At the same time still, we are keeping very good number in terms of the social based users and also the click-based users. In after Q2, we are going to see a very good improvement both in terms of the total time spent as well as the interactive volume.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

Got it. In the long run, our overall objective of doing the update and changes of this existing product is that we would like to, first of all, get rid of those user experience that was primarily based on the relationship-based feed. Of course, at the current stage, there are still some of the challenges from the user side in terms of the acceptance and getting used to this new version. Still, in the long run, we have two objectives by doing this kind of change. First is that we hope that we are going to fully release the value of Weibo to those consumers, and at the same time, using our algorithm to better enhance the user experience and also the depth of the user interaction on the social media.

[Translator 2]

Second point is that we hope that our total video consumption in terms of the time spent and also the total video-based consumption could be further improved because of this kind of strategy. We would like to attract more bloggers to be on the Weibo, to open account, and generate more video content. This would be helping them to do more deployment and the placements as well as the generation and production of the video-related content. This would be really helpful for us to increase the time spent on video-related content on Weibo. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

In terms of the overall results of this video strategy for the video front. First of all, of course, we've been seeing actually a very good growth of the number of users consuming the video-related content on Weibo. You can see that this was pretty much forming a new mindset of the consumers on the video-related content. We had a very good double-digit growth year-on-year in terms of the time spent on the video-related content on Weibo. On the supply side of the video content, because of this recommendation-based feed, we hope that we are able to attract more creators and bloggers from outside of Weibo by providing them with more resources and also more budget.

[Translator 2]

Based on this new algorithm and new incentives plan and encouragement plans, we hope that we are able to attract more and more those external bloggers and also content creators to be landing on Weibo and helping us to enrich the supply of video content. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

In terms of the AI, we had a lot of R&D and investment and tried to encourage people to actually use AI to facilitate what they do. When we launched the Zhisou in 2025, we had actually a very good boost in terms of the total volume of search. Still in Q1, we had some of the challenges because at the current stage, we've been seeing a lot of AI tools that were emerging and on the consumption side, or on consumer side, more and more consumers are now trying to use the interactive and dialogue-based search instead of just a pure search function. In Q4, we made that interactive dialogue-based search available and experiencing a 100% of the growth in terms of users and adoption in Q1.

[Translator 2]

Still at the current stage, the base number of the user for this particular feature is only at a level of million. We hope that in the future we are able to further boost that and further strengthen our AI-related strategy on this front. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

[Non-English content].

[Translator 2]

In Q1, especially targeting those content creators, we are now establishing an AI content creating center, facilitating those content creators to generate the text and images as well as video content as well. At the current stage, you can see that we had a lot of important key account or the key content creators that had a very good video generated in that center and those texts and images as well. We've been seeing a very good collaboration with ByteDance and Qwen to actually have the capability to help the content creators to generate a video with a length of one minute long, which primarily it's about several seconds or 10 or so seconds, but we are able to help to generate the videos of one minute long.

[Translator 2]

This, of course, is the feature that is not accessible by all the users. By the current stage we're only providing this to some of the new certified users. In the future we hope that we are able to have a rollout. Before that, we are going to have further consolidation internally. Okay.

[Gaofei Wang, CEO at Weibo]

Okay. Thank you.

[Jenny Yuan, Analyst at UBS]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Dear participants, due to time constraints of today's call, we will not be addressing any further questions. Thank you very much for taking participation. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.

Participants

Executives

• Fei Cao, CFO
• Gaofei Wang, CEO
• Company Representative

Analysts

• Jenny Yuan, Analyst at UBS
• Thomas Chong, Analyst at Jefferies
• Translator 1
• Translator 2