Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Zhihu Inc. First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded and webcasted. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma’am.

Thank you, Heidi. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Zhihu's first quarter financial results conference call. Join me today on the call from the senior management team are Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Wang Han, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the US Private Security Legation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our public filings with the US Security and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Additionally, the discussion today will include both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures for comparation purpose only. For reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our IR website at ir.zhihu.com. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Wang Han, CFO of Zhihu. Han, please go ahead.

Thank you, Yolanda. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Zhihu's first quarter 2025 earnings call. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zhihu. In the first quarter, we carried our momentum of improving profitability forward, delivering another quarter of positive bottom-line results in terms of non-GAAP net income that significantly exceeded market expectations. This marks the first time we have achieved a non-GAAP net profit in the first quarter of the year since our IPO. Adjusted net income for quarter was RMB6.9 million, compared with an adjusted net loss of RMB135.7 million during the same period last year. This milestone reflects the continued execution and enhancement of our operating strategy, as well as the increased operating leverage enabled by AI integration. Deep and engaging discussions across various professional fields continue to take place on the Zhihu platform, expanding the influence of our trustworthy content and contributors within and beyond our community. Our time spent per DAU, core user retention rate, and creator activities all showed improvement in the first quarter. We're active in a healthy community [Technical Difficulty] experts passionate about sharing knowledge, experience, and insights forms a foundation and core advantage for our transition into the AI era. Investment in and exploration of AI applications remains a top priority for us. In the first quarter, we launched the contributor attribution feature, a key step for the broader integration of AI with our community. By building high-quality content to contributors, this feature further amplifies the influence of our expert network, built over years of professional accumulation. This innovative feature helps reduce AI hallucination in specialized domains and has been well received by users. We believe AI will catalyze our rapid growth and through deep integration with our community,…

Your first question comes from the line of Xueqing Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

[Foreign Language] Thanks, management, for answering my question. The management mentioned about Zhihu’s strategic AI plans in the prepared remarks and also shared some metrics and user feedback on Zhida. It sounds like Zhida is not only an AI product of Zhihu. So what other AI initiatives can we expect next, both within the Zhihu community and beyond? Thanks.

[Foreign Language] Thank you for your question, Xueqing. This is from Zhihu CEO, Zhou Yuan. So, on macro level, we expect over next two years, the intelligence selling of AI models will continue rising. So our strategic focus in AI centers around trustworthy content and our expert network. In fact, we believe this can be summarized as a simple formula. Trustworthy content times community expert network times AI capabilities equals to a scalable growth path. [Foreign Language] As you just mentioned, Zhida, truly Zhida serves as an AI interface of an entire community of us. Or you could say a new entry point to our community. What you are seeing today is only a partial realization of our vision. In fact, how our users are engaging and be active with it is providing us with invaluable feedback. We didn't choose to roll out a series of cookie cutter or repetitive features. On one hand, we believe many of these common functions will soon be overtaken by the rising intelligence selling of foundation models. On the other, we don't see value in customizing features just to showcase model capabilities if they don't provide lasting value to our users. [Foreign Language] So, fundamentally, I believe there are two more fundamental tasks in the context of what I mentioned, of these rapid model evolution. [Foreign Language] First of all, we are integrating more experts. It's what we refer to as a expert network, Zhihu expert network. Our initial milestone here was to enable contributor attribution, [indiscernible] or traceability, which is now fully rolled out and has been positively received by our users. We will definitely continue integrating on this front. [Foreign Language] Second, we aim to aggregate more high quality content. So, our next step is to launch public knowledge basis, which will help us scale our library of trustworthy content. We plan to introduce expert knowledge basis in different diversified sectors during the upcoming college entrance examination season in China, providing reliable support for students in making informed decisions. [Foreign Language] Looking ahead, both of these two pillars will continue to involve themselves. Today, the expert network primarily manifests through content. But with the development of agent-based technology, the value of the expert network may increasingly extend beyond content itself and enter a new stage of the evolution. Thank you for your question again.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Lincoln Kong from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

[Foreign Language] Thank you, management, for taking my questions. My question is about the user and the community.

[Foreign Language] Thank you for your question, Lincoln. As you may know, our current priority is the quality of our entire ecosystem. Since last year, we've executed this strategy with strong conviction. Well, overall community user scale has remained quite stable. What's more important here is that all key user health metrics have continued to improve. And we're seeing a stronger and a more engaged community atmosphere. This is very much in line with our expectations. [Foreign Language] Just last week, we wrapped up the 11th Zhihu Youth Knowledge Conference [Foreign Language] and on site we heard a lot of positive feedbacks from long time and the new creators, like including many who have been contributing to Zhihu for over a decade. This kind of early positive momentum is encouraging. I believe that incremental changes will compound into meaningful breakthroughs and over time we will see greater returns. [Foreign Language] In the first quarter, the number of our professional creators honored under our key programs such as Outstanding Contributors, Rising Contributors, Blue Label Professionals, and the Navigators grew significantly year--ver year. These creators are expanding their influence both within community and beyond with evidence that by interactions per creator and per post, serving more than 45% and 95% year-over-year respectively. [Foreign Language] We also upgraded our column and idea features to better support both long and short form content, professional content creation, and offered improved channels for interaction and monetization. Since the roll out of new column feature in March, we've achieved two consecutive months of rapid growth in both content creation and user conception. Likewise, the volume of ideas generated by professional creators surged in the first quarter, showing exceptionally user engagement. Thank you.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead, your line is open.

[Foreign Language] So I’ll translate myself. Thanks, management, for taking my question. So, my question is, I could mention and share some color on the revenue trends for each of these segments, in 2025 and the profitability outlook. Thanks.

[Foreign Language] Thank you for your question. This is from Zhihu CFO, Wang Han. So, 2025 is another very important year of business model optimization for us. Our key focus is to further align our community ecosystem with our commercial operations while enhancing the Zhihu’s brand commercial value and the pricing power to build a more sustainable long-term business flywheel. [Foreign Language] Although our Q1 revenue declined year-over-year, but each of our business streams is entering a new phase of growth with evolving monetization models. [Foreign Language] For our marketing services, it has been evidenced that relatively low quality marketing content conception has dropped to a very low level. And we are now seeing an accelerated momentum in both client mix optimization and commercial product updates. On top of that, AI is unlocking new marketing product opportunities. [Foreign Language] In terms of our paid membership, we are broadening our content offering to include a mix of a premium short form and made to long form content. This strategy strengthens our competitive edge in this sector. [Foreign Language] For our vocational training business, we are transitioning from a traditional model to a more socially engaging knowledge sharing model that better leverages our community's strength. [Foreign Language] On the innovation front, we remain disciplined with our investments, particularly in AI-driven initiatives that align Zhihu's core strengths in content and community. [Foreign Language] Our ongoing ecosystem upgrades and AI initiatives come with both opportunities and challenges. [Foreign Language] With continued operational refinements and more granular management execution, we are confident our financial performance will exceed our initial expectations for the year. [Foreign Language] Thank you. Thank you for your question.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Vicky Wei from Citi. Please go ahead, your line is open.

[Foreign Language] Thanks, management, for taking my question and congrats on a strong quarter. Would management share some color in your thoughts about the shareholder return program this year? Thank you.

[Foreign Language] Thank you for your question, Vicky. This year, we remain committed to enhancing shareholder returns through our share repurchase plan. [Foreign Language] Earlier today, our Board approved the 2025 buyback plan, authorizing a repurchase of up to 10% of our issued and outstanding shares. [Foreign Language] So we will execute the buyback in the open market on the back to effort basis. We believe the current share price does not fully reflect the value of our company and this well underscores measurement’s confidence in our long-term success. Thank you. Thank you again.

Thank you. That concludes today's Q&A session. At this time, I will turn the conference back to Yolanda for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or Christensen Advisory. Thank you. Thank you so much.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.