Earnings Labs

Cheetah Mobile Inc. (CMCM)

Q2 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Sep 11, 2025

$5.50

+2.71%

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Same-Day

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1 Month

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Cheetah Mobile Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Helen Zhu, Investor Relations of Cheetah Mobile. Please go ahead.

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Cheetah Mobile's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Fu Sheng; and our Director and CFO, Mr. Thomas Ren. Following management's prepared remarks, we will conduct the Q&A section. Please note that the management's trade will be presented by an AI agent. Before we begin, I refer you to the safe harbor statement in our earnings release, which also applies to our conference call today as we will make forward-looking statements. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Fu Sheng. Please go ahead.

Sheng Fu

Analyst

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. In the second quarter, we delivered our best results since Q1 2021. Revenue grew 58% year-over-year driven by a 39% year-over-year increase in Internet business and an 86% year-over-year increase in AI and other segments. Our operating loss decreased 86% year-over-year, while non-GAAP operating loss was down 97% from last year, almost breakeven. In the first half of 2025, our revenue grew by 47% year-over-year. We believe we can maintain fast growth in the second half of 2025, driven by about 100% year-over-year revenue growth in our AI and other segments, along with a stable Internet business. This shows our turnaround is working and gaining momentum. What is even more important is how we work today. We have made AIA core part of our process working in an AI native way. Our R&D teams are small and flexible using AI every day to design, test and build products, much like open source developers. This helps us move faster and use fewer resources ensures AI allows 1 person to do what once took a whole team. We have been investing in AI since 2016 and at the intersection of AI and robotics today, we now have advantages and experience that are hard to replicate. For example, depo our AI tool that turns video, audio and documents into summaries and my maps times with only 3 full-time employees. Our core Internet business remains solid, thanks to our shift from advertising to a subscription model, which has improved user engagement and retention Today, subscriptions make up about 60% of our Internet revenues. This healthy base gives us the room to invest in new AI products out staying financially disciplined. We are enhancing existing apps like Duba Anti-virus Wallpaper apps and PDF tools with AI agents. For…

Thomas Jintao Ren

Analyst

Thank you, Fu Sheng. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Unless otherwise stated, all financial figures are presented in RMB. In the second quarter of 2025, we continue to make meaningful progress narrowing our losses and improving probability as we remain focused on execution, efficiency and financial discipline. In fact, on a non-GAAP basis, we almost reached a breakeven point on the operating level in Q2. Let me walk you through the key financial results in the quarter. Total revenue reached RMB 295 million, up 58% year-over-year and 14% quarter-over-quarter, marking a strong acceleration. Gross profit increased by 85% year-over-year and 19% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 22 million. Gross margin improved to 76%, up from 65% in the year ago quarter and 73% in the previous quarter. Operating loss narrowed to RMB 11 million, an 86% year-over-year decreased a 58% quarter-over-quarter decrease. On a non-GAAP basis, our operating loss declined $2 million, down 97% year-over-year and 6% quarter-over-quarter. Net loss attributable to Cheetah shareholders decreased by 82% year-over-year and 32% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 23 million. Loan net loss attributable to Cheetah Mobile shareholders now by 87% year-over-year at 35% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 14 billion. These probability improvements reflect our ongoing efforts to sharpen the focus, improve efficiency and optimize our cost structure, particularly as we string from early-stage experimentation to ROI focused execution in our AI initiatives in our PI Autobolics business, we have exited certain compute sensitive directions, such as playing our own foundation models, a strategic shift that significantly reduced infrastructure spend. At the same time, we have streamlined our R&D process by levering AI tools and refocused resources on AI utility applications that generate user value. For example, R&D expenses accounted for 24% of our AI and other segment revenue in the quarter, down from…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question today will come from Thomas Chong of Jefferies.

Thomas Chong

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you. Operator, please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Vicky Wei of Citi.

Yi Jing Wei

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Nancy Liu of JPMorgan.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Operator, please move to the next question. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today will come from Brenda Zhao of CICC.

Liping Zhao

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Operator

Operator

Our next question today will come from [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

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Unknown Executive

Analyst

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Jing Zhu

Analyst

Operator, please move to the next question. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today will come from [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you. Operator, please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

The next question today will come from [indiscernible] Huang of Everbright Securities.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you. Operator, please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today will come from [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you. Operator, please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today will come from [indiscernible] Haitong Securities.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you. Operator, please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today will come from Joanna Ma of CMBI.

Joanna Ma

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unknown Executive

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you. Operator, please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Jack Yang of Mizuho.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

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Unknown Executive

Analyst

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Jing Zhu

Analyst

Operator, can you please check if we have any further questions?

Operator

Operator

Certainly. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I am not showing any additional questions in the question queue.

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Okay. And then we can just end up the call.

Unknown Executive

Analyst

Thank you.

Jing Zhu

Analyst

Thank you so much for joining our conference call today. So if you have any further questions, please just let us know. You can send us email or just give a call. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. We do thank you for attending today's presentation. And you may now disconnect your lines, and have a nice day.