Earnings Labs

JOYY, Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A (JOYY)

Q2 2017 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 14, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to YY’s Second Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only-mode. With us today is Mr. David Xueling Li, Chairman and acting CEO of YY; Mr. Rong jie Dong, CEO of Huya Broadcasting; Mr. Bing Jin, CFO of YY; and Ms. Ting Lee COO of YY. Following management prepared remarks, we will conduct a Q&A session. 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. I now turn the call over to Mr. David Xueling Li, Chairman, acting CEO of YY. Please go ahead, sir.

Bing Jin

Management

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2017 earnings conference call. This is Bing Jin, the CFO of YY. I will now speak on behalf of our Chairman and acting CEO, David Xueling Li. I’m excited to return as the acting CEO of the company, and I’m very delighted to talk to old and new friends here. I’m also pleased to help reinvigorate the vision and execution strategy for YY and believe we still have massive growth potential. After I resumed my role of acting CEO in the second quarter, we have introduced new strategic initiatives to attract more users and enhance user engagement on our live streaming social media platform. We are delighted to see good forward results of these new initiatives and pleased to report strong financial and operating results in the second quarter. Our total net revenue for the second quarter of 2017 reached RMB2.61 billion and exceeded the high end of our previous guidance range. In particular, our live streaming business, including YY Live and Huya, maintained rapid growth. On YY Live, we launched a small-room online social game called Happy Werewolf Kill in April this year. It has quickly become a very popular social game on mobile devices. Also during the second quarter, we introduced short-form video services in YY Live with more diverse content and social features. As a result, we were able to attract a much younger generation to our ecosystem and further enhanced user engagement and stickiness on our platform. In addition to YY Live, Huya continues to deliver impressive results in both revenue generation and user growth. We believe Huya is well positioned to capture even greater market opportunities in the future. Overall, we are very pleased with the result we achieved during the second quarter. We have…

Operator

Operator

Sure sir. Ladies and gentlemen we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is coming from the line of Zoe Zhao from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question.

Zoe Zhao

Analyst

Hi, thanks management for taking my question and congratulations to your return and very strong quarter. I’ve got several questions. First, what is the driver behind an accelerating revenue growth in Q3? And second, could David or [Dong Rong jie] share with us the pipeline for new products and some ideas? And just a quick housekeeping question. What is the MAU and paying user breakdown between YY and Huya? Translating myself. [Foreign Language]

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

Okay. Let me do the translation. So first of all, I’m very glad to be back to the company. And then as you all witnessed in the past quarter, we have done a lot of new initiatives. I will summarize into, below 2 major ones. One, the first one, we are trying to make sure that we have, we need to make the entertainment grassroot and really touch more audience in the room. So traditionally, our live showroom are dominated by a single host with 10,000 or even more than that, a lot of people watching at the same time. So the participation feeling for a single user is very low. So recently, we have initiated a new strategy, is to introduce Happy Contest feature. As an introduction of that feature, it basically allows the 2 hosts to compete among each other across the show, live showroom. So on first hand, it reduced the pressure for a single host because they have more opportunity to talk to each other and have fun and compete. And secondly, it reduced the entry barrier for a host because the 2 hosts can find more common ground to compete. And then you add a lot of new content in the showroom as well. On the other hand, it also allows the user to participate more. So in the future, we will continue to expand more into the way of engaging more hosts, maybe to -- 3 or 4 to even 8 hosts across different rooms. So as we have more hosts in the room, then the number of participants can actually decrease. So we don’t need to have that many users in that room. So everybody is becoming a very important participant in that showroom. And then we have -- we bring a lot of community sense to our ecosystem. So that’s the first category we’re doing. Second category is we will try new ways to attract new traffic. So that’s the reason why we launched the Happy Werewolf Kill in the second quarter. It is a multi-person, small-room, audio-based social game, usually 6 people to as much -- as many as 10 to 12 people playing that Happy Werewolf Kill game at the same time. So in summary, we are -- on the upstream, we are trying to find new ways to get the user. In the downstream, we are trying to get more user to participate and have more fun feature in the live showroom. And then certainly, also, we have launched the short-form video to bring more happiness and to lower the content-creation barrier for users. So the happy -- the short -- Happy Werewolf Kill game and also short-form video allow us to attract a lot of younger generation to our ecosystem. [Foreign Language]

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

[Foreign Language]. Shall we go to next question?

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Binnie Wong from Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question.

Binnie Wong

Analyst

Thanks for taking my questions. So first congrats on a solid quarter. We actually saw very nice growth in mobile MAU and your ARPU but then, following up on the first question, is that paying users have seen some sequential decline. What are the reasons for the decline in paying users? And second question is that, if you look at the revenue outlook, it’s actually quite solid, quite upbeat into third quarter. Can you share with us how we should think about it by segment? And what are the key drivers to give management the confidence for such a robust outlook? And lastly is just that we look at Huya’s user traffic as being -- catching up with our close competitor, so -- which is positive to see. But we also see that leading game platform like Tencent is also launching their own game broadcasting. How do you think that will change the competitive landscape of Huya? Thank you. Will you be able to translate into... [Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

Yes. Maybe let me take the question on the paying user and also the revenue driver in the third quarter, and maybe Dong Rong jie can talk about Huya. So for the paying user, in general, YY Live paying user is more or less the same as the first quarter. Huya’s paying user is actually declining a little bit. There is a reason, because the first quarter is the high peak season for Huya due to the Chinese Spring Festival holidays, so a lot of students actually have more time to watch the live show, live game show on Huya platform. So that’s why second quarter the paying user of Huya declined a little bit. In terms of the revenue driver in the third quarter, I wouldn’t go into detail, but I think YY Live, as we continue to launch more new features, attract new user traffic, as Xueling described and also with the [indiscernible], with the Happy Contact feature and also with more and more, I will say, [indiscernible], the annual caller competition event, we do think third quarter for YY Live will continue to grow very strongly from the revenue side. And also, for Huya, Huya’s revenue and also user has been growing very rapidly. I think that pattern will continue in the third quarter as well. So that’s why we give, I will say, pretty confident guidance for the third quarter revenue. [Foreign Language]

Rong jie Dong

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

So actually, for Tencent and NetEase, they have been doing this game live broadcasting for quite a long time, over 1 year, so it’s a known fact already. And certainly, it is a highly competitive market. And gaming is only one part of the whole ecosystem. It’s a complement component for the whole ecosystem. So from our perspective, we actually welcome more competitors to this bigger market.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question is coming from the line of Yuma Chen [ph] from Citigroup.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

My question is regarding the short-form video that introduced in second quarter. Could you share more about the user metrics, like the operations update, including penetration and [MAU]? And also, could you also touch upon the monetization strategy going forward, please? Thank you.

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

So we have already incorporated the short-form video features in YY Live. And we aim to provide more service in terms of the user interaction and engagement. We are not going to copy the existing product -- or features in the market. We are going to offer more innovative features.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Eileen Deng from Deutsche Bank.

Eileen Deng

Analyst

[Foreign Language] Now I will translate this into English. I have a question on Happy Werewolf Kill IPP. Can management share with us some operating metrics on this app as well as the long-term strategy on the monetization? And also, how do you see the synergy between this app and our other new products, which is the existing core products? And also, given the success of this launch, we’ve seen many other similar apps emerging. And how do you see this competitive environment changing now? Thank you.

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

I will do translation. So hi, everyone. I’m Lee Ting, COO of YY. Very glad to know everyone. For Happy Werewolf Kill, that was the app focused on multi-person, small-room audio social game, and it is our very first app and try in terms of multi-people social and also small-room play method. So it is also a very good way of attracting much younger generation, and actually, we become very successful in doing that. But in terms of the product itself, it is still in the very early stage, and it’s only entry point for us to penetrate into a massive younger generation. So even though Happy Werewolf Kill had already been one of the leading product in the market, but I think it’s still very early stage, so we cannot disclose too much operating metrics at this stage. But I will encourage everybody to pay attention to that product and see how that evolves.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Natalie Wu from CICC.

Natalie Wu

Analyst

My question is regarding the short video initiative. How do you plan to penetrate into the market apart from adding short video clips into currently existing product mix? And for sharing, you mentioned that you will use an innovative method. Can you elaborate in more details about that? What kind of related budget will you set aside for that, let’s say, for the rest of 2017 and for maybe 2018? [Foreign Language]

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

Okay. I’ll do the translation. So our short-form video is a content generator in essence. So content play a very important role in short-form video concept. And because of that, there’s no single monopoly player in the market, and I do think it is -- short-form video market is still very early stage. If you look at the U.S., Snapchat and Instagram, they have all shifted towards video-based social kind of model. So that means we still have a lot of opportunities. For us, the most important thing is to find our own characteristics for short-form video, and we’re trying to make sure that the product is designed to the maximum efficiency and user friendliness to really differentiate us from the other market competitor. And so that’s the basic spirit and philosophy behind our short-form video service and short-form video app. In terms of the marketing and -- sales, marketing budget for the whole year for the short-form video, I think that was -- that is still within our current budget.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Chi Tsang from HSBC. Please ask your question.

Qin Wang

Analyst

Hi, management. This is Qin Wang speaking on behalf of Chi Tsang. So I have several small questions. First question is regarding to our -- to Tantan. So can management elaborate more about any potential cooperation opportunity in the future with Tantan? And secondly is about the vertical content strategy. It seems that in this quarter, the gross margin expanded a little bit Q-o-Q and Y-o-Y. So does that imply that we actually are spending less in the vertical content? So what will be our vertical content strategy going forward in the future? [Foreign Language]

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

Okay. So for the first question regarding Tantan, we do think Tantan is a very excellent, outstanding company. In terms of the business growth, it’s very healthy. But I think the current focus of Tantan should be on expanding their user base even further. On the other hand, YY does have a lot of monetization experience in terms of live showroom. So we will continue to discuss with Tantan in terms of experience sharing and maybe in the future for cooperation for the live streaming services as well. In terms of the content investment in verticals, the content is still very important for our ecosystem so we’ll continue to expand a lot of content categories. For example, we have launched more UGC content in terms of the outdoor. And that, outdoor itself doesn’t require a lot of investment cost, so that’s why you see we actually achieved cost efficiency for content generation. And by the way, let me also add from my CFO perspective. The reason for gross margin expansion in the second quarter is mostly due to the margin expansion from Huya as Huya’s user growth is very healthy and Huya CDN and broadband cost has operating leverage. So that’s why Huya’s gross margin has been improving quite a lot in the second quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Jialong Shi from Nomura.

Jialong Shi

Analyst

I have a housekeeping question for, about Huya. And I just wonder, for your Huya business, do you have to pay Tencent or other game operators for the game content streamed on Huya platform? And if you do have to pay for some of the content, just wonder what’s the pricing trend for such paid content. [Foreign Language]

Rong jie Dong

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

So for the live show host on Huya to broadcast games, we actually don’t need patent or license fee. Only when we broadcast the official kind of competition or games that we need a copyright or patent fee. But I think the general pattern is it will increase gradually, so it wouldn’t impose a lot of impact on Huya’s financials.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Tian Hou from T.H. Capital. Please ask your question.

Tian Hou

Analyst

Hi, David and team, congratulation on the good question. [Foreign Language] So I translate. So it’s really about the live broadcasting market landscape. In the last period -- in the last 1.5 years period of time, there are many players doing the live broadcasting in similar way of YY. However, some of them we haven’t really heard them in the last several months. So I wonder how David is foreseeing the future changes of this live broadcasting market. And is YY a market consolidator? If it is, what is YY’s key competitive advantage? So that’s my question. Thank you.

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

Okay. So I’ll do the translation. So by nature, live show industry is all about social community, which is different from social network and different from stranger-driven community or social network. It is somewhere in the middle. So if we look at history of the evolution of social community, starting from BBS all the way to live show these days, it has several features as follows. The first feature is that every social community needs to have its own unique culture or behavior and also common understanding or a mission among the users within that community. And that’s why a single user cannot change a community so easily. That’s the first feature. Second feature, social community cannot grow so fast because if, all a sudden, there’s a massive traffic into the ecosystem, that will dilute the value and culture of that community and it actually start losing people. So that’s why last year, we see a lot of people, a lot companies, a lot of player putting a lot of money, driving a lot of traffic into this live show social community, but suddenly they collapsed due to the reason I mentioned. So that’s the fact. If we look forward, I think the companies with good amount of traffic and also have the patience to operate a community will finally win the game. And that’s where YY is positioned at. As I mentioned at the very beginning, we are focusing on 2 key tasks: one is to continuously increase the participant behavior from the users into that social community; secondly, trying to get new user traffic across different demographics and really operate the community to the maximum efficiency.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Daniel Chen from JP Morgan.

Daniel Chen

Analyst

My question is related to Huya. Actually, recently, our competitor, DouYu, has launched a fan festival focusing on the online music host, and they received very good results in the monetization. So I was wondering, what is our strategy on this? And then secondly, on our Huya platform, could management provide the revenue breakdown between the pure gaming host and also the online music kind of host? And what is the monetization profile of each? [Foreign Language]

Rong jie Dong

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

So the first question is regarding the offline activities. We will definitely try some method to enter into that offline activities. Secondly, regarding the revenue breakdown, I would say the revenue from game live showroom and music and dance live showroom is similar. And we do think music live showroom is, a part of this, is that Huya can further develop and cultivate.

Operator

Operator

Our last question is coming from the line of Shawn Yang from Blue Lotus. Please ask your question.

Shawn Yang

Analyst

Thank you, management. Thank you for taking my question. I think management mentioned a couple of times about the importance of young generation. I just want to know that -- how do you define young generation? What’s the percentage of young generation in your total user base? And more importantly, what are the key differences between existing user and -- in terms of exposure on the video? And is the current live streaming a very good monetization for young-generation user? [Foreign Language]

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

So the first point is our definition for younger generation is people born after 1995 or even 2000, so really millennial generation. And the characteristics of this younger generation are they are born with Internet so they have higher propensity to try new things and participate. So that’s why we do think even if short-form video might be difficult for older generation but they are a perfect product to cater for the demand of this younger generation. That’s why we are trying a lot of video-based and audio or social-based activities or features to cater for the younger generation. Secondly, in terms of the product nature, product feature and our promotion channels, the difference of this younger generation demographic, we are using different ways of targeting them. For example, within YY Live and also within Happy Werewolf Kill, we might use different channels to touch this younger generation and make sure that our content marketing match their characteristics.

Operator

Operator

We are at the end of today’s conference. I would now like to hand the conference back to management for closing remarks.

Bing Jin

Management

[Foreign Language]

David Xueling Li

Analyst

[Foreign Language]

Bing Jin

Management

So, I don’t have much things to add, I’m translating for David, but I want to reiterate that we, our strategy, as I laid out in the conference call, and I’m very pleased to be back and talk to old and new friends. If you have any questions for live streaming industry or YY, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m more than glad to communicate with you. So I would also like to add, from my CFO perspective, that we had a solid quarter, second quarter, and we are looking forward to even stronger quarter next, for the third quarter. And I look forward to talk to all of you continuously down the road. Thank you so much for your time.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.