Weibo NASDAQ: WB executives used the company’s fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings call to outline progress on a major product shift toward an interest-based homepage feed, discuss how AI features are being integrated across the platform, and provide a view of advertising demand by industry as the company heads into 2026.
Fourth quarter and full-year financial results
CEO Gaofei Wang said Weibo’s fourth quarter total revenues rose 4% year-over-year to $473.3 million. Advertising revenue increased 5% to $403.8 million, while value-added services (VAS) revenue declined 2% to $69.5 million. Non-GAAP operating income was $100.4 million, representing a 21% operating margin.
CFO Fei Cao reported GAAP operating income of $104 million for the quarter and net income attributable to Weibo of $66.4 million, with diluted EPS of $0.25. Cao said fourth quarter costs and expenses increased 16% to $372.8 million, driven mainly by higher ad production costs and increased marketing expenses, and that the operating margin fell to 21% from 30% in the prior-year period.
For the full year 2025, management said total revenues were $1.76 billion, “relatively flat” year-over-year, including advertising revenue of $1.5 billion and VAS revenue of $255.6 million. Non-GAAP operating margin was 30%. Cao said full-year net income attributable to Weibo was $439.8 million, with diluted EPS of $1.65, and operating margin of 30% versus 33% in 2024.
User metrics and homepage feed revamp
Wang said Weibo’s monthly active users (MAUs) reached 567 million in December 2025 and average daily active users (DAUs) were 252 million. (Cao reiterated average DAUs of 252 million, but referenced MAUs as 767 million during his prepared remarks.)
Wang attributed 2025 engagement initiatives to a structural upgrade completed in late July that rolled out a new homepage centered on an interest-based recommendation feed, aimed at reducing reliance on relationship-based distribution and improving discovery of high-quality and vertical content.
In the fourth quarter, he said Weibo focused on two priorities:
- Algorithm iteration: Management said it enhanced real-time recommendations using behavioral signals such as clicks, time spent, and interactions, resulting in quarter-over-quarter increases in average feed content consumption and time spent per app session.
- Algorithm-driven audience segmentation: For users who are more socially engaged, the company said it maintained distribution of relationship-based content within the interest-based feed while improving interest-match precision. Wang said key engagement indicators for this cohort improved quarter-over-quarter.
Wang acknowledged that recommendation feeds are highly competitive and that certain metrics can be volatile during the transition, but said stronger consumption among social users and new users supported the company’s direction. He said the company plans to keep improving homepage trust and predictability to support long-term growth and monetization.
Video and AI creation tools
Management positioned video as an area where the interest-based feed shift could improve distribution efficiency. Wang said Weibo’s video strategy in the second half of 2025 focused on improving recommendation efficiency through better alignment of content and scenarios, and on improving video supply quality by incentivizing top-tier creators while managing low-quality content.
Wang said that in the second half of 2025, average daily video viewing time and per-user video viewing time on the playback page both achieved double-digit growth compared with the first half of 2025.
During the Spring Festival, Wang said AI video tools lowered creation barriers and that both the number of original video creators and the volume of original videos increased by more than 40% year-over-year. He said Weibo plans to provide creators with AI tools to support “secondary creation” and content extension around vertical IPs, and cited a Spring Festival movie campaign and a similar model reused for a hit drama as examples of how the approach can drive discussion and visibility.
Search and “Zhisou” intelligent search
Wang said Weibo continued building an “intelligent and convenient” search experience in the fourth quarter by deepening AI to improve intent and content understanding, enhancing high-frequency search scenarios such as hot topics and public figures, and evolving from single-round Q&A to a multi-round conversational assistant. He also said Weibo expanded search implementation to more scenarios including content consumption and social interaction.
Wang said these efforts drove continued growth in intelligent search users and engagement, and that in December Weibo’s intelligent search MAU surpassed 18 million, with average DAUs and search queries each posting double-digit quarter-over-quarter growth.
In the Q&A session, Wang said that in 2025 the only consumer-facing AI product Weibo formally launched was Zhisou, which he characterized as having “tens of millions” of users. He said the company is working to evolve Zhisou beyond text summarization toward multi-modal and multi-turn conversational capabilities, including multi-question answering, and said users could see tests of these capabilities on Weibo.
Advertising trends, AI-driven monetization, and capital return
Advertising remained the company’s largest revenue source. Cao said fourth quarter advertising and marketing revenues increased 5% year-over-year to $403.8 million (up 2% on a constant-currency basis). Mobile ad revenue was $379.2 million, or about 94% of ad revenue. He said the quarter trended better than management expected despite “weak consumption data by industry.”
By vertical, Cao said the largest categories in the quarter were e-commerce, 3C products, and FMCG. He highlighted e-commerce, local services, internet services, and automobiles as key growth contributors, while noting headwinds from FMCG and 3C products (including a tough comparison tied to handset trade-in subsidies last year) and continued weakness in online games due to budget contraction.
For full year 2025, Cao said ad revenue was flat overall, with growth in e-commerce, internet services, and automobiles offset by declines in FMCG, fresh food products, and online games. He attributed some of the tougher comparison to incremental ad budgets tied to the Paris Olympics and blockbuster game releases in 2024. He also said promoted feed ads were the largest ad product in 2025, followed by social display on topics and search.
Both Wang and Cao described AI as increasingly embedded in Weibo’s advertising infrastructure. Cao said Weibo’s real-time bidding feed ad product benefited from AI integration that enabled smarter targeting and generative AI ad creative solutions. Wang added that in December, AI-generated creative accounted for 40% of consumption in promoted feed ads and the real-time bidding system, which he said reduced advertisers’ creative costs and improved monetization efficiency through ongoing optimization of bidding models and conversion paths.
Cao also disclosed a pickup in advertising from Alibaba, with fourth quarter ad revenues from Alibaba of $50 million, up 24%, and full-year Alibaba ad revenues of $173.8 million, up 49%.
On profitability, Cao said income tax expense increased in the quarter and full year primarily due to withholding tax accrued related to earnings of wholly foreign-owned enterprises expected to be remitted to Weibo Hong Kong Limited to fund U.S. dollar needs for operations and potential investments, as well as recognition of deferred tax liability related to equity pickup gains in 2025.
Weibo ended 2025 with $2.41 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. Fourth quarter operating cash flow was $181.4 million and full-year operating cash flow was $519.5 million.
Finally, Cao said Weibo’s board approved an annual cash dividend of $0.61 per ordinary share or ADS for fiscal year 2025, alongside an annual dividend policy. The total payout is expected to be approximately $150 million, with payment expected in May 2026.
About Weibo NASDAQ: WB
Weibo Corporation operates one of China’s leading social media and microblogging platforms under the brand name Weibo. Launched in August 2009 by Sina Corporation, Weibo enables users to create, share and engage with short-form posts in real time. The platform supports text, images, videos and live streams, and offers features such as trending topics, hashtag campaigns and public discussion forums to facilitate user interaction and content discovery.
Weibo’s product suite extends beyond basic social networking to include digital content services such as live streaming, online games, value-added messaging and e-commerce integrations.
Further Reading
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