Earnings Labs

36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 17, 2026

$3.52

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for 36Kr Holdings Inc.'s Second Half and Fiscal Year 2025 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 Wang

Analyst

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to 36Kr Holdings Second Half and Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. The company's financial and operational results were released earlier today and 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 second half and the fiscal year 2025 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 prospectus and 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 and non-GAAP financial measures. 36Kr's earnings press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited GAAP measures. Please note that all amount numbers are in RMB. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Dagang Feng. [ Tao ], please go ahead.

Dagang Feng

Analyst

[Interpreted] Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our second half and fiscal year 2025 earnings conference. Over the past 2 years, 36Kr has consistently focused on improving operating efficiency and optimizing financial structure. We have continuously upgraded our organizational structure, optimized expenses and strengthened our core capabilities. In 2025, while maintaining solid revenue performance, we achieved a major operational breakthrough by turning profitable. At the same time, our cash reserves remain stable, paving the way for the company's long-term financial health and sustainable innovation-driven growth. For the full year of 2025, our gross profit margin reached 57.7%, an increase of 9 percentage points year-over-year. Operating expenses decreased by almost RMB 70 million from the same period last year. Our total operating expenses as a percentage of total revenues decreased to 53%. Notably, the company recorded a net profit of RMB 11 million for the year. These achievements were driven by our continued integration of content innovation, commercialization breakthroughs and technological applications into the company's business operations, which together optimized our organizational structure and improved workforce efficiency. We consistently fortified our content ecosystem in 2025, leveraging our [ PLS ] content creation promise to steadily extend our influence. In terms of our content dissemination network, we expanded our footprint across diverse channels, crafting a comprehensive circulation metrics, encompassing major new medium platforms like Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Zhihu, Bilibili, Toutiao and Kuaishou, among others. Broad channel exposure has brought us wider overall dissemination and higher visibility for our premium content. Our consistent production of high-quality content also diversified our user demographics, elevating user engagement and stickiness. At the end of 2025, we had over 36.8 million followers, marking 19 consecutive quarters of user growth. We explored a growing area of content formats throughout 2025, including text, graphics, short- and long-form…

Xiang Li

Analyst

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, and thank you for joining today's presentation. We will now review the second half of 2025 and full year financial performance. Please note, all the amounts are in RMB unless otherwise stated. Our total revenue increased by 4.7% to RMB 134.8 million in the second half of 2025 from RMB 128.7 million in the same period of 2024. Total revenues for the full year of 2024 were RMB 227.9 million compared to RMB 231.1 million in the previous year. Online advertising services revenues increased by 5% to RMB 105.2 million in the second half of 2025 from RMB 100.2 million in the same period of 2024. The increase was primarily attributable to strong advertising demand from AI and high-tech companies, which 36Kr captured through its focus on the tech vertical. For the full year of 2025, our online advertising services revenue were RMB 179.7 million compared to RMB 180.6 million in the previous year, relatively flat year-over-year. Enterprise value-added services revenue increased by 7.7% to RMB 20.9 million in the second half of 2025 from RMB 19.4 million in the same period of 2024. For the full year of 2025, our enterprise value-added services revenue increased by 1.2% to RMB 33.2 million from RMB 32.8 million in the previous year. The increase was primarily attributable to more innovative marketing solutions we provide to our customers as well as proactive sales strategies we adopted to navigate the challenging environment. Subscription services revenue were RMB 8.7 million in the second half of 2025 compared to RMB 9 million in the same period of 2024. For the full year of 2025, decreased by 14.2% to RMB 15.1 million from RMB 17.6 million in the previous year. The decrease was mainly attributable to a strategy shift in training services…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Lingyi Zhao with SWS Research.

Lingyi Zhao

Analyst

[Interpreted] Management team, this is Lingyi Zhao with SWS. And my question is, first, congratulations about the very good results. And my question is, first, how do we see the advertising sections, the trend of advertising sections? And the second question is, could you explain and analyze the margin, the growth of margin?

Dagang Feng

Analyst

[Interpreted] Well, Lingyi, outstanding thanks for your support for the past several years, and we are very happy with the good results we have. Well, for your question, we are cautiously optimistic about our advertising growth trajectory for 2026, and advertising revenue was largely influenced by macroeconomic headwinds and the clients' advertising budgets. Well, despite the macro challenges, our overall advertising revenue remained stable as we maintained solid partnerships with our Internet sector key accounts and leading brand customers, leveraging the audience reach and influence of our subvertical [ medium ] channels for younger audiences such as Oh! Youth and Tide as well as new live streaming and video formats like AI Insider. We continued to develop tailored promotion solutions and products that gained strong client approval. In 2025, we added over 50% new clients in our live streaming and video businesses. AI-related demand steadily increased. Live streaming revenue increased by 40%, outpacing market trends and our sub vertical media channels for younger audiences amplified by old use grew by more than 50%. In 2026, we will continue to advance video live streaming development, step up our investment in content creation, explore a wider area of programs and formats in live streaming and continue to build depth in key content verticals that matter most to our clients, such as AI and global expansion, further enriching our content ecosystem. Meanwhile, as we empower clients across diverse industries with premium content to meet their evolving communication needs, we are confident in strengthening the resilience of our advertising business. Well, for your second question, last year, our gross profit margin improved substantially, mainly because we focused on high-margin businesses, streamlined low-margin operations and implemented an area of cost control initiative for the past 1 year. Together, this endeavor to significantly increased our gross profit margin.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Rui Yin with Sealand Securities.

Rui Yin

Analyst · Sealand Securities.

[Interpreted] Well, this Rui Yin with Sealand, and the question is what are the drivers behind the growth in value-added services?

Dagang Feng

Analyst · Sealand Securities.

[Interpreted] Well, the growth was mainly driven by the first factor. The first one is many of our legacy IP events continued to perform well in 2025. Over the second half of the year, we successfully hosted multiple events, including WISE, W-I-S-E and AI Partner Conference for All Industries, the Industrial Future conference and more. Beyond this IP submits, we had by ourselves, we also cooperated with AWE, WAIC, those national submits. Well, besides I've already mentioned in 2025, we also restructured our content strategy, business road map and organizational structure for the industry services businesses. 36Kr -- in 2025, 36Kr agreed to a 3-year strategic partnership with Hangzhou Qiantan New Area Construction and Investment Group Company for the Chinese Enterprise International Services Center Operations project and the AI Community Operations projects. But this collaboration will leverage our expertise in organizational operations and online content distribution as well as our vast network of industry resources to support Qiantan New Area in building a unique service ecosystem in the operational framework for corporate empowerment, amplifying its regional influence. Well, the second reason, like, well, we've talked a lot, each time we want to start a new market, we will deploy the new content accounts. For example, our content strategy for industry services began to yield a positive outcome, 36Kr Industry Future. Our all-new content channel, spotlighting, urban innovation, state-of-the-art technologies and our reach across emerging industries has published nearly 90 articles over the past year. Notably a single feature on the innovative pharmaceutical sector in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province garnered over 70,000 page views on our official WeChat accounts and more than 100,000 total exposures. Moreover, building on the growing influence of 36Kr Industry Future OpenTalk in 36Kr industry-built project, we have connected with over 200 upstream and downstream companies in the local government and will continue to develop the industry service offerings to better meet client needs. Thank you for your question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. 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

Well, thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact 36Kr's Investor Relations through the contact information provided on our website.

Operator

Operator

This concludes this conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.