Earnings Labs

36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR)

Q2 2025 Earnings Call· Fri, Sep 26, 2025

$3.52

+9.16%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for 36Kr Holdings Inc.'s 2025 First Half Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Xin Wang, IR Manager of the company. Please go ahead, Xin.

Xin Wang

Analyst

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to 36Kr Holdings First Half 2025 Earnings Conference Call. The company's financial and operational results were released earlier today and they have been made available online. You can also view the earnings press release by visiting the IR section of our website at ir.36kr.com. Participants on today's call will include our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Dagang Feng; and our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Xiang Li. Mr. Feng will start the call by providing an overview of the company and the performance highlights of the first half in Chinese, followed by an English interpretation. Mr. Li will then provide details on the company's financial results before opening the call for your questions. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's perspective in other public filings as filed with the U.S. SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Please note that 36Kr's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial measures as well as unaudited GAAP financial measures. 36Kr's earnings press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited GAAP measures. And please note that all amount numbers are in RMB. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Dagang Feng. Please go ahead.

Dagang Feng

Analyst

[Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our first half 2025 earnings conference call. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Over the past 2 years, we have consistently upgraded our organizational structure, optimize expenses and improved operating efficiency. In the first half of 2025, our gross profit increased by 10% year-over-year. Operating expenses decreased by more than CNY 60 million from the same period last year, down 52% year-over-year. We narrowed our net loss by more than CNY 90 million, an impressive 95% improvement year-over-year, while our cash results remained stable following the company's solid business operations. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] These operational achievements were largely driven by our ongoing efforts in content innovation, commercialization breakthroughs in technological applications which together optimize our organizational structure and improve the workforce efficiency. Let me walk you through our business progress in those three areas. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] First, content. We consistently fortified on our content ecosystem in 2025, leveraging our peerless content creation promise to steadily expand our influence. In terms of a content dissemination network, we expanded our footprint across diverse channels, crossing a comprehensive circulation metrics encompassing major new media platforms like Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Toutiao, Zhihu, Bilibili, Douyin, and Kuaishou among others. Broad channel exposure brings us wider overall dissemination and higher visibility for our premium content. Our consistent production of high-quality content also broadened in the diversified user demographics, further elevating user engagement and the stickiness. As of the first half of 2025, we had over 36.57 million followers marking 17 consecutive quarters of growth. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] We explored a growing area of content format throughout the first half of 2025 including text with graphics, short- and long-form video, audio and a live streaming, enriching our content offering with a greater diversity of styles. For text and graphics,…

Xiang Li

Analyst

Thank you. Thank you for joining today's presentation. We will now review the first half of 2025 financial performance. Please note that all amounts are in RMB unless otherwise stated. Total revenue were CNY 93.2 million in the first half of 2025 compared to CNY 102.4 million in the same period last year. Online advertising services revenue was CNY 74.5 million in the first half of 2025 compared to CNY 80.4 million in the same period last year. The decrease was primarily due to the advertisers adjusting their advertising and promotion strategies in response to macro pressures and to a lesser extent for ongoing optimization of our customer structure to control credit risk, which lead to decreased revenue scope. Enterprise value-added services revenue were CNY 12.2 million in the first half of 2025 compared to CNY 13.4 million in the same period last year. The decrease was primarily due to our proactive and ongoing refinement of service offering to strategically focus on margin improvement. Subscription services revenue were CNY 6.4 million in the first half of 2025 compared to CNY 8.6 million in the same period last year. The decrease was primarily due to the change in our training services business model. Cost of revenue decreased by 25% to CNY 42.5 million from CNY 56.9 million in the same period of 2024 as a result of the company's strict cost control measures. Gross margin increased by 11% to CNY 50.7 million from CNY 45.5 million in the same period of 2024. Gross profit margin was 54.4% in the first half of 2025, representing an increase of 10% from 44.4% in the same period of 2024. The increase in gross margin were primarily driven by savings in payroll-related costs following the strategic workforce optimization. Operating expenses decreased by 52.3% to CNY…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Yong Zhang from SWS Research.

Lingyi Zhao

Analyst

[Foreign Language] [Interpreted] I will translate the question in English. We noted that the company's financial performance has achieved a significant improvement in the first half of 2025. And I would like to ask, firstly, how did the company achieve this financial turnaround? And secondly, what's the company's full year financial outlook for 2025?

Dagang Feng

Analyst

[Foreign Language] [Interpreted] First of all -- first off, through sustained operational efforts over the past 2 years, we have implemented a series of cost reduction and efficiency boosting measures. This include relocating to an office building with lower rent cost, streamlined our tech and R&D teams, adjusting unprofitable businesses, improving workforce efficiency in core operations and upgrading our organizational structure. As a result, operating expenses decreased by more than CNY 60 million year-over-year, and net loss was narrowed by more than CNY 90 million. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] While second, our gross profit margin rebounded to over 50% in the first half of this year. This was primarily driven by adjustments to our customers and businesses, coupled with stricter cost controls. Over the past 6 months, we optimized our product portfolio and client structure. Additionally, we implemented more rigorous project approval standards internally to enhance cost management. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Well, for the first half of this year, the company will continue to improve its content creation capabilities and optimize our product metrics, focusing on achieving profitability, and we predict that we will have profits at the end of 2025. That all answer for this question.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Rui Yin from Sealand Securities.

Rui Yin

Analyst

[Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Well, thank you for your question, and I will interpret it for you. Well, there are two questions. The first question is, could management share the future plan for your new initiative of industrial service business?

Dagang Feng

Analyst

[Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Well, first off, we have already hosted and will continue to host many of our IP events in 2025. We have a series of events scheduled for the second half of the year, including [indiscernible], the AI Partner Conference for all industries, the industrial future conference and more. Beyond this IP summit in 2025, we also restructured our content layout business strategy and organizational structure for the industrial service business. While these adjustments are beginning to yield positive outcomes, 36Kr industry future, our new -- all new content channels spotlighting urban innovation, our state-of-the-art technologies and our reach across emerging industries have published over 60 articles within the past 6 months. While a lot of the articles of 36Kr industry future garnered and unmatched a lot of page views on our official WeChat accounts. While leveraging our content influence, we have connected with over 200 upstream and downstream companies in the local government. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Moreover, we will continue to expand our overseas ventures, sustaining our strong globalization momentum from 2024. In addition to Southeast Asia, Japan, the Middle East and Europe, we will further strengthen our global network and collaborate with the China Council for the promotion of International Trade Beijing Subcouncil to tap into additional resources from Beijing-based service providers specializing in global expansion-related solutions and identify enterprises seeking global expansion. At the beginning of this year, we made our first foray into operating a local government's global expansion service center in our capacity as a media entity, partnering with Hangzhou Tiantang New Era Construction and Investment Group company on the Chinese Enterprise International Service Center Operations project. In the first half of 2025, we hosted a total of 11 events on global expansion. [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] As our business adjustments are implemented in…

Operator

Operator

As there are no further questions, I'd now like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.

Xin Wang

Analyst

Yes, please say the closing remarks.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]