Earnings Labs

Bilibili Inc. (BILI)

Q1 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, May 23, 2018

$21.44

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Bilibili’s 2018 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Juliet Yang, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Juliet Yang

Management

Thank you, operator. Please note today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements relating to the future performance of the company and are intended to qualify us for the safe harbor from liability as established by the U.S. Private Security Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions and other factors. Some of these risks are beyond the company's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today's press release and this discussion. A general discussion of risk factors that could affect Bilibili’s business and financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information, except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only. For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the 2018 first quarter financial results news release issued earlier today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, an investor presentation and a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on the Bilibili Investor Relations website at ir.bilibili.com. Joining us today on the call from Bilibili senior management are Mr. Rui Chen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Ms. [ Carli ] Li, Vice Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer; and Mr. Sam Fan, Chief Financial Officer. And now I will turn the call over to Mr. Fan, who will read the prepared remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen.

Xin Fan

Management

Thank you, Juliet. And thank you, everyone, for participating in our first earning call as a public company. I'm pleased to deliver the opening remarks on Mr. Chen's behalf. Our successful IPO on March 28 was a exciting milestone for us. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our supporting shareholders, talented content creators and the role of users and the employees that helped make this happen. We will continue to work tirelessly to fulfill our mission to enrich the everyday life of young generations in China. I'm very pleased to report excellent operational and financial results for the first quarter 2018, with total revenues of RMB 868 million. This marked growth of 105% year-over-year, driven by all 3 of our core business categories: games, advertising and live broadcasting and value-added services. Our community continues to expand with 77 million monthly active users, representing a 35% increase year-over-year. By providing high quality content and unit user interconnectivity, user can [ climb ] up. In the first quarter, our top 5 viewed categories were lifestyle, games, entertainment, technology and anime, taking over 70% of total video views. Over the years, we have successfully developed a robust online entertainment ecosystem, comprising talented content creators and a highly-engaged user base. In the first quarter, 89% of our video views were contributed by Professional User Generated Video, PUGV. To further encourage our content creators, we initiated a cash incentive program in February of this year. Any content creator with over 1,000 friends is eligible for a cash bonus for his or her original content submission, which depends on various metrics, including popularity as well as positive feedback from users. We believe this program has brought our content ecosystem even further, reinforcing Bilibili as one of the largest PUGV platforms in China. The…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Daniel Chen from JPMorgan.

Qi Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language] I will translate myself. First, the question is really regarding our user acquisition strategy. Our MAU actually grow very decently sequentially on a year-over-year basis this quarter. Could management provide some color on your strategy to further grow your user base in the Generation Z? Second question is regarding our gaming revenue, including live broadcasting, advertisement and also membership. This part actually grew very strong sequentially on year-over-year basis. So what's management view on our revenue breakdown in the 3 to 5 years? Are we expecting that this part to account for a much bigger portion? The sub-question is related to our support to the content provider. So we have a scheme to do the revenue sharing with all the content provider. So could we have some update on this front? And what's our strategy to motivate all the content creators to create the valuable user generated content on our platform?

Juliet Yang

Management

Thank you, Daniel.

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. I will translate for Mr. Chen for the first question. As you can see, our user growth is very healthy and on a stable rate, and Mr. Chen concluded 3 reasons. One is our very healthy PUGV ecosystem that we have a very positive virtual cycle that will have more PUGV content creator or creating more content, attracting more users. As we are focused on the depth of the category, we are also expanding the content category. For example, in this quarter, the entertainment verticals are expanding not much faster than our traditional ACG content category. As we expanded to more content verticals, that will attract more content creators to create more high-quality content. So in that way, we don't actually have to spend a lot of money to stimulate the growth of users by -- rather to rely on our healthy ecosystem. That's the first point. The second point is, we also focus on a lot of the new content that attracts young minds' attention. For example, in the live streaming category, we are actively searching for new mobile games that attract a lot of users' attention. We also invested in our own esports team, which is called BLG. All of this content are also driving the growth of our MAUs. And third point is, as you can see, we have excellent long-term and short-term user retention number. We -- at the same time, we are also expanding -- also actively expanding our channel acquisitions, for example, for pre-download, pre-installments or downloads on app stores. Through these 3 areas, we are -- that's how we achieved the sustainable user growth. Chen?

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. I'll translate for Mr. Chen. Mr. Chen gives 3 reasons that how we're going to help our content creator and better incentivize them. So as all of you might know that 89% of our daily VV are contributed by our PUGV. So content -- the way that we -- how we incentivize our content creators remains our top priority. So the first point is we have a very comprehensive service system to support the content creation of our content creators, that we supply them with full access of our backstage data, supply them with tools to analyze how their work has been viewed by different users and what's their feedback and how many of them were from which area, by number of metrics to help them to better analyze and help them to create better content. And we also have a systematic training program to help to train newcomers that to lead them on the way of becoming a top content creator. And second is that content creator incentivize program that we launched in February of this year. As you may know, the top content creator can make decent income on our platform, while what we focus more is how do we create the content creators that just started or in the middle area to bring them to the top. As we mentioned during the conference call that we provide a cash incentivized program for content creators with 10,000 -- 1,000 friends. And the cash bonus is based on the popularity as well as the positive user feedback from this video, not just directly linked with what kind of income that we can receive from this video. So the impact of the incentivized program were --- is very clear. In Q1, the number of active content creator and their content submission number increased significantly year-over-year. And going forward, we'll also supply them with much more comprehensive incentivized programs that will support them from not just on the cash basis, will also provide them with marketing tools and help them to achieve better economic benefit based on various metrics, not simply rely on the traffic income.

Xin Fan

Management

Okay. I will take your second question. If we take a look at revenue mix in 2017, that there were 86% of revenue from the games, 7% from the live broadcasting and 7% from advertising revenue. We are happy to see that we -- when we achieved the record high mobile game revenue in the first quarter of this year, our revenue further diversified because we have -- our user, they have high willingness to pay for quality content and services, and we have great potential for advertising spending as we mentioned in our press release. Now the revenue mix, the contribution from live broadcasting 11% and 8% on the advertising revenues. We foresee that after 3 to 5 years, about 50% of the total revenue have come on our games. And 30% from advertising and 20% from live broadcasting and value-added services. That answers your question.

Operator

Operator

Your next question today comes from the line of Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley.

Chun Poon

Analyst

[Foreign Language] I'll translate my questions. First question is regarding MAU and content creator growth. I would like to understand the split of this MAU and content creator growth by age and also by geographical region. And my second question is regarding the competitive landscapes on the game -- on both the game side and the short video side. PUBG is a very ramp-up service strongly in terms of DAU. Have you seen any impact from PUBG affecting your game user? And second is for short video, the time spent and DAU growth is very strong for these platforms. Do you see any challenge from them taking your user time spent or will create pressure for your MAU growth in future?

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. I will translate the first question. So as we further -- our business grow, we see in 2018, our daily average new user increase has actually accelerated compared to last year. And if we analyze the data, in Q1, the new users we see, the portion that comes from age above -- above age 19 is increasing. And we also see a clear penetration from larger cities, more users from Tier 3 and Tier 4 city are coming in. This is also in line with how the pop-culture are penetrating from more-developed area to less-developed area. And on their interest scope, we noticed that a lot of our new user has more extended interest and habits compared to our old users, and we can see they have much wider habits and interest, for example, in entertainment and documentary. Those verticals are growing very nicely, thanks to our new users that with -- extended interest scope. And that is also a good sign, which means we're extending our content offering as well as our target audience. And lastly is our -- from the platforms, we also see the Android users are coming -- are increasing more than iOS users. This is also in line with how this is divided in China, more -- there's clearly more Android user in the market.

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. So on the competition landscape on the game-wise, clearly, there is no impact from the PUBG games with our games. It's obvious that even before PUBG, there's Honor of Kings and League of Legends. And our game has been performed steadily with a very stable growth rate. The logic behind our game business is different from other regular game companies. That is, our business model is to find our existing massive user base interest and habits and find the right content, the right games that fits their interest and recommend it to them. So we will obviously continue to bring new games and offer the games to our users' benefit. And there's very, very little impact from how the games evolve outside of our ecosystem. And on the data point, you can see our users -- our active game users and our income and the time spent are actually growing. This also supports our theory.

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. On the contrary, actually, the emerging of new pop games actually has a positive impact on our PUGV system as well as our live broadcasting. As you may know that games is our #2 top-viewed content category on our video platform and games live broadcasting is actually #1 in terms of content category on our broadcasting vertical. So once there's a new emerging pop game that, that naturally will [ lead ] more content submission and more viewer viewing the live broadcasting, actually has a much more positive impact on our business. And we welcome more popular games in the market.

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. On your third question on the impact of short video application, whether that has impact on our business, the answer really is no from the data-wise because be that no matter the monthly active user, their time spent, our community retention rate or the engagement level on our community, all of this data are growing very healthy. And the reason we are able to do that is we are a self-sustaining ecosystem. All this content is not produced by several editors. It's actually produced by our content creators. We believe there's no one understands better than our users needs than the content creator themselves. And they follow what's most trendy and what's interesting in the market and produce that content to attract our users. That's why we're always upkeep the most interesting and popular content on our platform. And Bilibili has 9 years operation history. This type of new trendy application or new format of media, we've seen a dozen times, and none of those has affected our business progress. Hope that answers your question.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question today comes from the line of Eddie Leung from Merrill Lynch.

Eddie Leung

Analyst

[Foreign Language] So I have 2 questions. The first one is a little bit about content. It seems like a lot of Internet companies, whether they are short-form or long-form video companies or soft and large Internet platforms, recently talking about enhancement in animation and comic content. So just wondering what's your thought in it. And then secondly, just a small question about your game revenues. So we know that the growth has been driven by self-operated games. So just wondering what's the trend of the jointly-distributed games recently?

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. The first -- I'll translate the first question. The [ certain ] things. The competition has always been there, especially from all the major video platforms, including Tencent, iQiyi and Youku. They have been and will be interested in the anime or ACG area. And we don't think that will change the competition landscape as more of communication of how this industry has great growth potential and as it's likely to continue to grow.

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

Okay. So the reason you asked this question is probably because you heard some of the players are extending their purchase into some of the animation licensed content. While instruction-wise, you would emphasize the reason we are so strong in the ACG area is not because we spend a lot -- the most -- the #1 amount of money in terms of acquiring licensed content. The reason is because we are in this ACG-lover community. We have this community first, then we decided to spend -- to expand with acquiring more licensed content. And we believe the ACG loves the best -- the majority of ACG lovers and ACG content creators are all based on Bilibili. Maybe they have interest community on our platform, and this market position is not something that somebody can spend a little bit money on the content; licensed content can change it.

Xin Fan

Management

And Eddie, to answer the second question. Currently, we have about 127 jointly-operated games and they contribute about 11% of the total game revenues. So the growth trends for the -- is good in terms of operation, also very well in the first quarter.

Operator

Operator

Your next question today comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Crédit Suisse.

Yiu Hung Chong

Analyst

[Foreign Language] I'll translate my questions into English. I have 2 questions. The first question is on our overseas strategies over the next couple of years. And my second question is about the number of advertisers in Q1 and what are the advertising categories?

Rui Chen

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Juliet Yang

Management

So thanks, Thomas, for the question. Let me translate. On overseas expansion strategy, from a long-term perspective, of course, we'll definitely focus on the international market as what Bilibili is doing is focus on the pan-entertainment industry that attracts young minds from all over the world as long as they have their specific interest or habits. But in the short-term, our main focus will definitely remain in Mainland China as China being one of the -- the largest single economy in the world and enjoys the highest economic growth rate. And we have been developing in Mainland for 9 years, and we have already established our leading position. In the short term, we'll definitely focus on the domestic market. And the second question, maybe you can answer for me.

Xin Fan

Management

Yes. To answer the second question, currently, we don't have much advertising customers as we just started to monetize our fees ads. And the top 5 -- or top 2 of the customer for the brands advertising is the food and beverage and Internet services and comics. And for the fees ads, they're education, e-commerce, Internet services.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the question-and-answer session. I will now like to turn the conference back to management for any additional or closing remarks.

Juliet Yang

Management

Thank you, once again, for joining us today. If you have further questions, please contact Juliet Yang, Bilibili's Senior IR Director or TPG Investor Relations. IR contact information in both China and the U.S. can be found in -- on today's press release. Have a great day.