微博（09898.HK，WB.US）2025年第一季度业绩电话会
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会议摘要
Weibo reported stable Q1 2025 revenues of $396.9 million, up 1% YoY, with 591 million MAUs and 261 million DAUs. The company is prioritizing user value, integrating large language models to enhance recommendation and search functions, and investing in vertical and video content. Technological advancements and AI integration have improved search capabilities and user experience. Advertising revenues grew 1% YoY, driven by e-commerce, internet services, and the automobile sector. Weibo is focusing on content marketing and product conversion capability, maintaining a healthy operating margin and investing in AI transformation to drive user growth and engagement.
会议速览
Weba Reports 2025 First Quarter Financial Results Conference CallParticipants are briefed on the listen-only mode for the conference call, with instructions for asking questions. The call is recorded, focusing on Weba's fourth quarter 2025 earnings.
2025 Q1 Earnings Conference Call OverviewThe conference call, broadcasted online and accessible via a dedicated website, includes forward-looking statements and reviews of non-GAAP measures, with the CEO set to discuss the quarter's earnings.
Wave Product and Monetization Update: Q1 2025In Q1 2025, MAUs hit 591 million with average VAUs at 261 million. Total revenues reached $396.9M, up 1% YoY on a constant currency basis. Total AIR revenues were $339.1M, and non-NCAA operating income hit $129.5M, representing a 3% margin.
2025 Q1 Strategy and Performance UpdateThe company aims to lead in entertainment and social products by enhancing recommendations, investing in video content, and strengthening user growth and monetization, achieving notable Q1 2025 profits.
Weibo's Q1 2025 Strategy Update: Enhancing Social Interactions and AI IntegrationIn Q1 2025, Weibo focused on upgrading its social products and recommendation system to boost user growth and engagement, particularly in relationship-based feeds. Efforts included enhancing social interactions, strengthening connections between content creators and fans, and integrating AI capabilities across the platform. The strategy involved optimizing the homepage interface and recommendation algorithms, leveraging large language models to improve content consumption experiences. Additionally, Weibo capitalized on the Spring Festival to drive user engagement and content consumption, achieving significant growth in user activity and revenue from trend marketing. AI-related topics gained traction, accelerating public discussions on AI and fostering a more AI-embracing user base.
Weibo's AI Integration and Monetization Strategies in 2025Weibo has integrated AI technology into multiple business scenarios, enhancing search capabilities and user experience. The intelligent search product, updated in March, offers more comprehensive and reliable results, significantly increasing user engagement. Additionally, the company is piloting AI applications in social and advertising products, aiming to strengthen its core competitiveness. Monetization strategies focus on capturing marketing demands around new product launches and major events, while investing in real-time bidding information products to enhance revenue capture.
Industry Trends and Resilient Growth Strategies Amidst Economic ShiftsDespite facing challenges in sectors like online games and beauty/personal care, the company observes solid growth in autostradale, e-commerce, dairy products, and food industries. Strategies include leveraging policy tailwinds, enhancing content marketing, and refining sales approaches to maintain resilience in ad revenues and capture incremental budgets, particularly through celebrity endorsements and new product launches.
Q1 2025 Financial Results and AI-Driven Growth StrategyThe company reported stable revenue and improved operating margins due to efficiency initiatives. Growth was driven by enhanced product capabilities, better client understanding, and AI technology integration, aiming to capture performance-based ad budgets and deepen engagement within the webo ecosystem.
Weibo's 2025 Q1 Earnings Call: User Growth, Revenue Stabilization, and ESG CommitmentIn the first quarter of 2025, Weibo reported an increase in users and stable revenue, with notable contributions from e-commerce, internet services, and the automobile sector. The company also highlighted its commitment to sustainability through its first ESG report.
Weibo's AI Integration and Monetization StrategiesDiscusses the progress and future strategies of integrating AI, specifically large language models, into Weibo's products to enhance user engagement and improve advertising monetization.
Weibo's AI Search Integration and Its Impact on User Engagement and Advertising RevenueIn March 2025, Weibo launched AI search powered by deep sea technology, seeing a significant boost in MAUs reaching over 30 million and an increase in per capita query volume. This enhancement particularly improved user engagement in news and entertainment content, leading to a 5% increase in user consumption and improved vocabulary query and user retention. Although not fully commercialized, the AI search has positively impacted advertising revenues, particularly in information feed-related revenues, with a 10% improvement in CTR rates. The company plans to further invest in product development to boost user numbers and activity, aiming to maintain its competitive edge in news and entertainment search.
Q2 Advertising Outlook and Strategy Emphasizing Vertical Growth and AI AdvertisingThe management discusses expectations for Q2 advertising performance, highlighting growth in automotive, e-commerce, and healthcare sectors. They address challenges in the gaming industry and the strategy to leverage AI advertisements and domestic brand increases. Core competitive advantages lie in new product and content-based marketing, with a focus on stabilizing demand and maximizing budget allocation from targeted sectors.
Strategic Investment in Performance and Information-Based Ads Drives GrowthInvestments in performance-based ads post-2023 have yielded significant growth, with a focus on enhancing user awareness and acquiring new customers through AI and innovative technologies.
Closing Remarks and Adjournment of May 26, 2025 Conference CallThe conference call concludes with thanks to participants, announcing the end of the session and anticipation for the next quarter's call.
要点回答
Q：What are the financial highlights of the first quarter of 2025?
A：The financial highlights include a total revenue of $396.9 million, flat year over year and up 1% year over year on a constant currency basis. The company's non-GAAP operating income reached $129.5 million, representing a margin of 3.3 percent.
Q：What is the company's overall strategy for 2025?
A：The company's overall strategy for 2025 is to focus on user value, maintain a leading position in hot trends and entertainment sectors, and solidify its competitive edge in social products. It will prioritize enhancing recommendations and search functions with large language models, investing in vertical and video content ecosystems, and improving user growth, competitiveness of the company ecosystem, and monetization.
Q：How did the company plan to enhance user growth and engagement?
A：The company planned to enhance user growth and engagement by integrating social products and upgrading the recommendation system to drive user interaction on a relationship-based feed. This involved strengthening social interactions and the synergy between content distribution mechanisms, as well as extending the distribution of high-quality content from super topics to the interest-based feed. The upgraded information feed, powered by large language models, is expected to open to users during the second quarter.
Q：What were the focuses during the Spring Festival for user engagement?
A：During the Spring Festival, the company focused on leveraging platform strength in celebrity friends, ecosystems, holiday scenes, and cross-vertical operations. They integrated hot topics, human content, and vertical content to drive user consumption and interaction around related content. This included discussing the Spring Festival Gala and electronic envelopes on Weibo, attracting over 30 million users, and achieving substantial increases in average daily use and traffic compared to the same period last year.
Q：How is the company integrating AI across its platform products?
A：The company is integrating AI across its platform products by focusing on several strategic areas such as AI-powered search, social interaction, company ecosystems, content recommendation, and commercial advertising. Technological advancements driven by foundational large language models have led to topics related to AI gaining cross-platform traction on Weibo, resulting in a better understanding of AI among users and more adoption of AI capabilities across platform products.
Q：What are the key developments in intelligent search and AI applications mentioned in the speech?
A：In March, the intelligent search product of the company surpassed 30 million daily active users (DAUs) and showed a significant improvement in search satisfaction metrics. The company is actively piloting AI applications in social and advertising products and is investing in AI transformation to enhance the core competitiveness of its existing products.
Q：What is the focus of the monetization strategy and how is the advertising revenue growth described?
A：The monetization strategy focuses on establishing We as the go-to platform for content marketing across industries and enhancing product conversion capability. In the first quarter, advertising revenues grew 1% year over year on a constant currency basis. The company aims to capture client marketing demand around new product launches and major events, as well as invest in real-time bidding products, which resulted in positive revenue growth.
Q：What are the notable trends in different industries according to the company's observation?
A：The company observed solid growth across several industries including the auto sector, which experienced deliverable growth with contributions from both the NUV brand and traditional original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The e-commerce, dairy product, and food sectors also booked a solid growth, especially leveraging the key market window during the Spring Festival. The beauty and personal care sector experienced a year-over-year decline but showed sequential growth. The online game sector continued to face a year-over-year decline due to high base effects from major campaigns and a decrease in the number of new and blockbuster games launched starting from mid-last year.
Q：How is the company responding to the pressure on the online game industry and the beauty and personal care sector?
A：To address the pressure on the online game industry, the company is focusing on refining its sales strategy based on market conditions and leveraging its competitive advantages. It is also supporting high-quality content creation and strengthening synergies between its content and monetization ecosystems. In the beauty and personal care sector, the impact on overall revenue from this industry has narrowed, and the company is continuing to support high-quality content generation and strengthen content monetization.
Q：What drives the revenue growth in the government and real sectors?
A：Revenue growth in the government and real sectors is primarily driven by enhanced product capabilities and a better understanding of client needs. The company is committed to further integrating AI technology to improve the user experience of ad consumption and streamline client ad placements, enabling the capture of performance-based ad budgets.
Q：What were the key financial highlights for the first quarter mentioned in the speech?
A：In the first quarter of 2025, the company's operating margin remained healthy and improved year over year thanks to effective execution of efficiency initiatives, augmented revenue efficiency, stable profitability, and healthy cash flow. This enhanced financial flexibility allowed further investment in the AI transformation and strengthening of the Weibo ecosystem competitiveness.
Q：What user metrics were reported for March 2025?
A：In March 2025, the company's monthly active users (MAUs) reached 591 million, and daily active users (DAUs) were 261 million, indicating a year-over-year addition of 3 million and 6 million users, respectively. The company maintained a healthy DAU/MAU ratio, indicating strong user engagement.
Q：What were the main factors behind Alibaba's robust ad revenue growth?
A：Alibaba's robust ad revenue growth of 89% was primarily driven by its high-profile sponsorship of the Spring Festival GA and the value-added service revenue, which increased by 2% over year, largely fueled by higher ARPU in membership services.
Q：What was the change in operating income and what was the impact of operating efficiency and net interest for Weibo in the first quarter?
A：Weibo's operating income in the first quarter was $129.5 million, an increase of 3% with an operating margin of 33%, compared to 32% in the same period last year. The increase was primarily attributable to operating efficiency and higher net interest and other income.
Q：How did Weibo's cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments change from December 31, 2024, to March 31, 2025?
A：Weibo's cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments decreased from $2.35 billion as of December 31, 2024, to $2.08 billion as of March 31, 2025, mainly due to the purchase of long-term wealth investment products in the first quarter of 2025.
Q：What does the ESG report highlight about Weibo's performance and commitments?
A：The ESG report highlights Weibo's performance across key areas including green operations, employee development, content social responsibility, information security, technological innovation, underscoring its long-term commitment to sustainability.
Q：How has the integration of D3 and other large language models affected the product advertising?
A：The integration of D3 and other large language models has improved the company's product advertising, specifically in the app format, ECPM, and the ability of advertisers to deliver more targeted ads.
Q：What has been the user response to the new AI search feature introduced by Weibo?
A：Weibo has been providing an AI search feature based on open source models. After integrating DeepSea into its facility, there has been a very good improvement in effectiveness, with the number of users reaching over 30 million in March. The volume of queries and user retention have also improved.
Q：Has Weibo started the commercialization of its AI search feature, and what are the expected benefits?
A：Weibo has not yet started the official commercialization of its AI search feature, but it has seen a good support and boost to revenues from the partial commercialization. This includes an increase in per capita query volume and building a differentiated competitive edge in the field of hot topics, news, and entertainment related content search.
Q：Does Weibo have plans to make its intelligent search an independent product?
A：Weibo does not have plans to make its intelligent search an independent product. The focus is on maintaining its advantage in the intelligent search in areas of all topics, news-related contents, and entertainment-related contents.
Q：How is Weibo collaborating with partners to bring more users to the Weibo platform?
A：Weibo is collaborating with partners such as headphone makers in China to pre-install Weibo's intelligent search ranking list. This allows users to be directed to Weibo through the terminal of the partner device, thus bringing more users to the Weibo platform.
Q：What are the expectations for the intelligent search function of Weibo in the second quarter and beyond?
A：In the second quarter and the near future, Weibo expects to roll out a new user experience for its intelligent search function. This includes an improvement from the previous QA format to incorporating trial new multimedia generated results, which have shown significant success. The company will invest more in the product this year to boost the number of users and their activity, in order to build a better competitive edge.
Q：How has AI contributed to the improvement of advertisement revenues related to information-based ads?
A：AI has facilitated a notable boost in advertisement revenues related to information-based ads, with a 10% improvement in the click-through-rate (CTR) observed. However, the effectiveness of AI on overall advertising revenues, especially information feed-related revenues, remains limited despite these improvements.
Q：Can management comment on the growth sentiments and expectations across different industry verticals?
A：Management expects a strong performance from the automotive and e-commerce industries in Q2, which have been positively affected by national subsidy policies. The health industry, particularly due to an increase in demand and aging society, is also seen as promising, along with a rebound in the Hessa vertical after a decrease in Q1 revenue due to manufacturers' marketing cycle adjustments. However, the gaming industry continues to face challenges and potential impacts from budgetary constraints. Management plans to leverage AI and performance-based ads, especially for internet app-related ads, to mitigate these challenges.
Q：What is the core competitive edge of the company's advertising products and strategies?
A：The company's core competitive edge in advertising is its reputation as a platform focusing on new product marketing and content-based marketing. It has made significant strides in operations and maintained this competitive advantage, especially during brand new product launches. The company plans to continue capitalizing on these opportunities, focusing on new product launches and hot topics to enhance its competitive edge.
Q：What is the company's strategy for performance-based ads and information-based ad sheet pricing?
A：The company has been investing heavily in performance-based ads and has seen growth in the second half of the previous year. Going forward, it will continue to focus on information-based ad sheet pricing, using AI and innovative technologies to increase user awareness and attract new customers, in an effort to drive revenue growth from these areas.
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