KANZHUN Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• KANZHUN posted stronger first-quarter results, with revenue up about 8% year over year and adjusted operating income up 17.8%, while margins improved and operating cash flow rose 19%. Management also said the business benefited from lower costs, including reduced share-based compensation.
• User and customer growth remained solid despite a later Chinese New Year shifting part of the hiring season into March and April. Paid enterprise customers reached 7.1 million, average monthly active users rose to 60.9 million, and blue-collar revenue topped 40% of platform revenue for the first time.
• The company emphasized its AI strategy, saying more than 10 million users accessed AI services monthly and AI tools improved recruitment efficiency and retention. KANZHUN also reiterated its capital return plan and guided second-quarter revenue to CNY 2.38 billion to CNY 2.42 billion, implying 13.2% to 15.1% growth.

KANZHUN NASDAQ: BZ reported higher first-quarter revenue and profit as the operator of the BOSS Zhipin recruitment platform said user growth remained strong despite a later Chinese New Year that shifted more of the peak hiring season into March and April.

Founder, Chairman and CEO Peng Zhao said the company generated first-quarter revenue of CNY 2.07 billion, up 7.6% year over year. Deputy CFO Wenbei Wang later described revenue as CNY 2.1 billion, up 8% year over year, and said the quarter represented “a solid start” marked by continued user and engagement growth.

The company said paid enterprise customers reached 7.1 million for the 12 months ended March 31, 2026, an increase of 10.9% from a year earlier and 4.4% from the prior quarter. Average monthly active users on the BOSS Zhipin app reached 60.9 million in the first quarter, up 5.7% year over year, while March MAU exceeded 72 million.

Zhao said the March figure was more than 10 million above the quarterly average because the 2026 Chinese New Year fell on Feb. 17, compared with Jan. 29 in 2025, leaving only March within this year’s first-quarter peak recruitment season. In a response to UBS analyst Wei Xiong, Zhao said April MAU was also close to March levels and that newly added job postings during the period were up about 10% year over year.

Profitability Expands as Costs Decline

KANZHUN reported adjusted operating income excluding share-based compensation of more than CNY 810 million, up 17.8% year over year. Adjusted operating margin was 39.4%, up 3.4 percentage points from the prior-year period.

Wang said total operating costs and expenses declined 3% year over year to CNY 1.4 billion. Share-based compensation fell 24% year over year to CNY 191 million, representing 9.2% of revenue. She said the company expects share-based compensation as a percentage of revenue to remain around 9% in 2026.

Gross margin increased 1.8 percentage points to 85.6%, helped by lower employee-related expenses and reduced app store commission fees beginning in March, partially offset by higher server bandwidth costs. Adjusted research and development expenses rose 5% year over year to CNY 351 million, driven mainly by cloud service fees and server depreciation tied to AI infrastructure.

Net income reached CNY 1.1 billion, aided by CNY 614 million of investment income from fair value changes related to an invested company that went public in January 2026. Excluding share-based compensation and net gains from that investment, adjusted net income rose 12% to CNY 856 million. Operating cash flow was CNY 1.2 billion, up 19% year over year, and cash, short-term deposits and short-term investments excluding securities totaled CNY 19.8 billion at quarter-end.

Blue-Collar Revenue Tops 40% of Platform Revenue

Zhao said the platform continued to grow across blue-collar workers, lower-tier cities and small and medium-sized enterprises, while white-collar and large-enterprise hiring demand also improved.

Among newly acquired users this year through April 30, excluding fresh graduates, nearly two-thirds were blue-collar workers, Zhao said. Blue-collar revenue exceeded 40% of total platform revenue for the first time in the first quarter.

White-collar demand also accelerated after Chinese New Year, according to Zhao. Active job postings for software engineers increased 10.9% from January to April compared with 2025. Zhao said the company had not seen “the kind of alarming large scale reduction in programmer positions that some have feared,” while revenue from AI-related roles on the platform grew by more than 100%.

Manufacturing, electronics, telecommunications, semiconductors, transportation and logistics, urban services and professional services led year-over-year growth on the platform. Zhao also said large enterprises showed a notable recovery during spring recruitment, with companies employing 1,000 to fewer than 10,000 workers delivering the fastest year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter.

Management Outlines AI Strategy

Zhao devoted a large portion of the call to KANZHUN’s view of artificial intelligence, saying the company believes AI’s opportunities for its business model and industry position outweigh the risks. He also said standalone AI agents on either the enterprise or job-seeker side have not been capable of challenging the company’s current model, while agents embedded into BOSS Zhipin’s two-sided network can improve information collection, processing and dissemination.

The company said more than 10 million users per month accessed AI services on the platform in the first quarter. Zhao said AI agent applications improved time efficiency from initial chat to successful mutual consent by 60%, while broad AI use helped user retention reach its highest level since 2020. Average achievements per enterprise user rose by a double-digit percentage, he said.

Zhao described four AI priorities:

• Investing in AI to support a closed-loop, results-oriented recruitment model focused on candidate onboarding.
• Maintaining resources for AI science, particularly small-model training and development.
• Continuing large-scale investment in AI applications that benefit the two-sided recruitment ecosystem.
• Allowing AI-driven revenue growth to emerge through higher platform efficiency, user satisfaction and reputation.

In the Q&A session, Zhao said AI-supported closed-loop service experiments were among the company’s fastest-growing initiatives in the first quarter, with some growing more than 100% and others more than 50%. However, he said the revenue base remains small, at about CNY 50 million in the first quarter.

Buybacks Continue; Second-Quarter Revenue Guidance Issued

KANZHUN said it has repurchased more than $200 million of shares since the start of the year, representing about 3% of total outstanding shares. Since 2022, the company has repurchased close to 10% of total shares, Zhao said.

The company reiterated a shareholder return plan announced last quarter, under which annual buybacks and dividends over the next three years will be no less than 50% of the prior year’s adjusted net income.

For the second quarter of 2026, KANZHUN expects revenue of CNY 2.38 billion to CNY 2.42 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 13.2% to 15.1%. Zhao also said full-year cash collection growth is expected to accelerate from last year and reach at least double-digit growth.

On overseas expansion, Zhao said the company’s OfferToday app in Hong Kong has approximately 50,000 daily active users. He said revenue is not the current priority for the Hong Kong business, which is intended to test the company’s two-sided model outside mainland China and build an international team.

About KANZHUN NASDAQ: BZ

Kanzhun Ltd. NASDAQ: BZ operates a leading AI-driven online recruitment platform under the brand name Boss Zhipin. The platform leverages algorithmic job matching and instant in-app messaging to connect job seekers and employers, streamlining the hiring process and reducing time-to-fill. By combining machine-learning recommendations with direct recruiter interactions, Kanzhun aims to create a more efficient, personalized recruitment experience compared with traditional job boards.

Beyond its core peer-to-peer marketplace, Kanzhun provides a suite of premium services for corporate clients, including employer branding packages, targeted marketing campaigns and SaaS-based human capital management tools.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to contact@marketbeat.com.