NYSE:ZH Zhihu Q1 2024 Earnings Report $3.95 -0.03 (-0.75%) Closing price 04/28/2025 03:59 PM EasternExtended Trading$3.94 -0.02 (-0.38%) As of 04/28/2025 06:30 PM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. Earnings HistoryForecast Zhihu EPS ResultsActual EPS-$0.24Consensus EPS N/ABeat/MissN/AOne Year Ago EPSN/AZhihu Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$133.08 millionExpected RevenueN/ABeat/MissN/AYoY Revenue GrowthN/AZhihu Announcement DetailsQuarterQ1 2024Date6/12/2024TimeN/AConference Call DateWednesday, June 12, 2024Conference Call Time7:00AM ETUpcoming EarningsZhihu's Q1 2025 earnings is scheduled for Wednesday, June 11, 2025, with a conference call scheduled at 7:00 AM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Conference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptPress Release (8-K)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfilePowered by Zhihu Q1 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrJune 12, 2024 ShareLink copied to clipboard.There are 6 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Xihu Inc. First Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. Operator00:00:22At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am. Speaker 100:00:32Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Zhuhu's Q1 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me today are Mr. Zhou Yuan, our Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Speaker 100:00:48Wang Han, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include forward looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U. S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Speaker 100:01:11As 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 U. S. SEC 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. Speaker 100:01:37Additionally, the matter we will discuss today will include both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures for a comparison purpose only. For a definition of non GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at ir. Zuhu.com. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Speaker 100:02:10Wang Han, CFO of Zhuhu. Han, please go ahead. Speaker 200:02:14Thank you, Yolanda. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Juhu's Q1 2024 earnings call. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Juhu. Speaker 200:02:26The Q1 of 2004 marked a significant turning point for Zhe Hu. Strategically, we concentrated on our core strengths and the most crucial aspect of our development in the AI area. This involved a series of tactical adjustments, including resource reallocation and organizational From an operating perspective, our top priority is in the short term is to achieve profitability. The advent of AI has disrupted the traditional Internet business model, which relied on expanding user base, enhancing user engagement and boosting user add value to gain market share. In AI era, the focus has shifted to high quality content and user value. Speaker 200:03:09Juho's core value lies not only in presenting Chinese highest quality content library, but also in our unique content creation mechanism and our communities for fashion atmosphere, which foster continued emergence of new high quality content. Wehoo users are not passive recipients of information, but are active participants in content creation and knowledge sharing. Core strengths provide us with a 1st mover advantage in exploring new business models and position us uniquely in the market, increasing our pricing power. Following our proactive reduction in community related user acquisition costs, the size of our user base declined to some degree in line with our expectations. However, engagement among our monthly active users increased, core user retention sustained its growth momentum and daily active user time spent also increased significantly. Speaker 200:04:04Furthermore, our efforts to enhance trustworthiness within the Juho community continue to drive community prosperity. Our strategy for cultivating scenario oriented content ensures a continuous stream of authentic in-depth high quality content based on our users' own experiences. As of the end of the Q1, the cumulative pieces of content on our platform reached 804,200,000 including 611,000,000 Q and As, up 15.4% year over year. Cumulative content creators within the Juho community reached 73,600,000, an increase of 13% year over year. We also observed a notable year over year increase in a proportion of highly active users engaged in creation and a percentage of high level daily active creators. Speaker 200:04:52Utilizing the power of AI driven technology, we continue to equip our content creators with a variety of user friendly creation tools, offering a professional and supportive environment to help them break financial rewards. In Q1, the total number of content creators who earned income on Zhihu grew by more than 25% year over year. Notably, the number of content creators AI era, we have continually upgraded our cybersecurity capabilities to ensure better protection of user data privacy and intellectual property rights. At the same time, we fully leverage AI models capability to enhance efficiency of content identification, review and governance within the Jupyter community. In certain scenarios, AI reviewers can achieve higher accuracy compared to the manual identification and review, allowing us to significantly reduce the number of menu reviewers while maintaining high efficiency. Speaker 200:05:56We continue to refine and upgrade our existing systems, Wabi and Wukong, leveraging our Zhihai 2 LOM. These improvements have further enhanced user engagement and effectively combated fake traffic leading to a continued decline in users' negative feedback and propelling Juhu's community sustainable development. We're progressing steadily towards our goal of achieving quarterly profitability within this year. To that end, we have accelerated our loss reduction through 2 operating tactics. 1st was to continually improve employee efficiency, further reducing labor costs. Speaker 200:06:372nd was to reduce community related user acquisition costs. Meanwhile, we have maintained a high ROI in our pay membership and vocational training businesses, which extended our reach beyond the Juhu community. With these efforts, the cost of revenue and total operating expenses in Q1 decreased by over RMB130 1,000,000 quarter over quarter. Notably, we recorded our 6th consecutive quarter of year over year growth in gross profit margin and 3 consecutive quarters of sequential decline in our sales and marketing expenses in the Q1. Additionally, we have been accelerating the application of Zhihai to LOM to further enhance our operating efficiency across every aspect of our businesses, for example, teaching, learning and research aspects for our vocation training business. Speaker 200:07:25By integrating our own knowledge library, we have driven notable efficiency improvements in AI teaching assistance, self services, homework assessment and more. As a leading content centric community, Zhenhu serves as a lending platform where professionals engage in the most extensive and in-depth discussions on AI related topics. Since the beginning of this year, the amount of AI related content and the number of creators certified by Blue Label has increased by 130% year over year. Moreover, tens of thousands of specialized terms related to AI are being discussed within our community. In 2024, our exploration of investment in AI will shift to focus on application layer. Speaker 200:08:14Our advancement in AI enables us to enhance operating efficiency across our existing businesses as well as to unlock emerging potential beyond the Jiwu community, all built on the foundation of trustworthiness. Since the launch of our AI powered search feature in March, we have observed double digit growth in app active days, user retention rates and user engagement among users who are using our new AI search feature. Now, I'd like to dive into more details of the progress we achieved across our multiple business lines for the Q1. First, our vocational training business continued to grow robustly with the revenue increasing 35.9% year over year to RMB145 million. Its contribution to our total revenue also rose, surpassing 15% for the first time. Speaker 200:09:06As of the end of the Q1, we established more than 30 subcategory courses through both self operated business and acquisitions. Notably, our self operated offerings are closely connected to Qifu community, allowing us to address users' needs swiftly and precisely while yielding higher profits. Our acquired offerings on the other hand meet specific demands and cater to a broader market. Together, these courses complement each other and broaden our offerings and driven the rapid and sustainable growth of our vocational training business. In the Q1, our sub operated offerings grew rapidly, particularly AI, AGN, self aware exam courses, demonstrating excellent profitability and rapid growth. Speaker 200:09:51Currently, our program tutors are also content creators within the JUUL community. With this dual role, tutors are deeply involved in the course development while maintaining ongoing interactions with students in the community about real course experiences, skill improvements and other topics. This approach effectively addresses the ever growing new demand of our new users. Growth from our acquired offerings remained steady during this quarter, further elevating our brand name awareness and service advantages. In April of this year, one of our subsidiaries, Pingzheng Education, hosted a dedicated live broadcast inviting executives from the CFA Institute. Speaker 200:10:35They provided professional insight into CFA exam reforms, offering first hand preparation guidance and expert analysis. This initiative garnered significant attention and sustained feedback from both the industry and examinees. Our paid membership business remained our largest revenue contributor this quarter, reaching RMB449.7 million. As of the end of this Q1, our average monthly subscriber members stood at 14,800,000, showing a slight decrease of 0.8% year over year but an increase of 4.1% quarter over quarter. Average revenue per user remained stable compared to the same period last year. Speaker 200:11:17Leveraging the support of Qifu community and our unique positioning, our premium short stories continue to captivate and resonate with our users. In April, a 123 historically chart topping business, including Zhihu's exclusive story, Sand of Time, Qitianhua and Endless River Sea Wars Flows, were included in the National Library's digital collection. Qiwu's premium content library, including short stories, continued to expand in the Q4. The total volume of premium content increased by 14% year over year, attracting new subscribers while encouraging increased consumption among existing subscribers. On the coming creator side, we are delighted to see our creators building a solid market reputation and achieving financial rewards on our platform. Speaker 200:12:06In the Q1, the number of content creators who earned income increased by 78% year over year. In addition to top creators earning substantial income, many mid tier and long tail content creators within our community also earned significant income through high quality content creation this quarter. As a market leader, Juhu continues to unlock the monetization potential of our vast array of premium short story IPs, spearheading our expansion into the short drama market and consistently setting new industry benchmark for growth. In the Q1, IP monetization revenue increased by 165.7% year over In April, another short drama, Jippi, adapted from a story in Jiwu's content library, achieved a new record high for popularity on its debut day on Tencent's micro drama platform. In the long run, the ongoing expansion of our premium content and diverse content consumption formats will continually drive growth in the lifetime value of subscribing members. Speaker 200:13:11Let's now shift to our marketing services. In Q1, marketing services revenue were RMB330.5 million, representing a decrease of 15.7% year over year. Within this total, revenue from our brand advertising business increased significantly by 40% year over year. While our performance based advertising business returned to a growth on a quarter over quarter basis, our key clients in Cornerstone verticals continue to demonstrate healthy improvements in retention rates, consumption and ARPU. Apart from ID53 Industry, which maintained its year over year growth rate of over 40%, the fast moving consumer goods sector also experienced high double digit year over year growth. Speaker 200:13:54We're currently in the process of upgrading our CCS product including proactively enhancing content governance and reducing the distribution of commercial content that negatively impacts user experience. As we are striving for quality profitability by the Q4 of 2024, we are dipping our efforts to narrow our losses. Meanwhile, we firmly believe the emerging potential of our AI search and the value we continue to unlock across Zhihu's trustworthy community will provide fresh momentum for our sustainable growth and a clear path to profitability for the remaining quarters of this year. This concludes Mr. Zhou Yan's remarks. Speaker 200:14:35Now, I will review the details of our Q1 financials. For a complete overview of our Q1 2024 results, please see our press release issued earlier today. We have continually optimized our cost structure over the past several quarters. As a result, we recorded our 6th consecutive quarter of year over year growth in the gross profit margin. On expense side, we significantly reduced community related user acquisition costs while maintaining a prudent level of events by new cutting edge technology, including AI. Speaker 200:15:05This initiative has effectively automized our fixed costs, enhancing our commercialization efficiency. With this proven strategic adjustment, we are confident of achieving quarterly profitability within 2024. Our marketing services revenue for the Q1 were RMB330.5 million, a decline of 15.7 percent year over year. This decrease was primarily due to the ongoing refinement of our CCS product to strategically focus on margin improvement. However, we have observed the recovery in our brand advertising segment in the Q1. Speaker 200:15:38Performance based advertising also demonstrated a sequential growth, notably Adient 3C as well as fast moving consumer goods led its growth by vertical. Pay membership maintained a stable trend in the quarter, reaching RMB449.7 million. The number of subscribers members grew to 14,800,000, up 4.1% quarter over quarter. Vocational training revenues for the quarter was RMB145.4 million, increasing by 35.9 percent year over year. Our soft operated offerings particularly AI AGM software exam courses delivered robust growth, while our acquired business also retained solid momentum. Speaker 200:16:21Benefiting from enhanced operating efficiency, our gross profit for the Q1 increased by 6.1% year over year to RMB543.5 million, propelling a gross profit margin improvement of 5.1 percentage points year over year to 56.6%. Our total operating expenses for the quarter were RMB768.2 million compared with RMB729.0 million in the same period last year. Selling and marketing expenses increased to RMB478 1,000,000 from RMB445.6 million in the same period of 203. Moving forward, we will maintain our prudent financial policies and rigorously merit ROI across marketing channels. Our research and development expenses for the quarter increased to RMB197.4 million from RMB183 1,000,000 in the same period of 20 23. Speaker 200:17:16The increase was primarily due to our increased spending on technology innovation. G and A expenses decreased by 7 0.5% to RMB92.9 million. The decrease was primarily due to lower share based compensation expenses combined with improved operating efficiency. As a result of all above, our GAAP net loss for the Q1 narrowed by 7.4 percent year over year to RMB165.8 million. Our non GAAP net loss for the Q1 was RMB135.7 million. Speaker 200:17:52As of March 31, 2024, the company had cash and cash equivalents, term deposits and short term investment of RMB5.2 billion compared with RMB5.5 billion as of December 31, 2023. In the Q1, the company repurchased 4,800,000 plus 8 ordinary shares for a total price of US8 million dollars In summary, as we continue to optimize our costs and expense structure, our operating efficiency is steadily improving. Throughout the remainder of 2019, we are confident that our strong strategic execution will provide a solid foundation for achieving our quarterly profitability goals in the near future. This concludes my prepared remarks on our financial performance for this quarter. I'll turn the call over to the operator for the Q and A session. Operator00:19:37Our first question is from the line of Shueching Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:20:10About the breakeven target. Could management update with us on our timetables to achieve a costly breakeven? And what's the latest progress? Thank you. This is from Wang Han, CFO of Jupu. Speaker 100:20:37Our profitability target remains unchanged. We expect to achieve a quarterly non GAAP net profit in the Q4 of this year. At the end of the Q1 and start of the second, we strategically refined and restructured our approaches, driving a notable reduction in losses. Starting from the Q2, you will see more pronounced improvements across our metrics. The core philosophy behind this lease adjustment is what we shared at Lustre earnings. Speaker 100:22:36We will always prioritize user quality over user scale. We are dedicated to protecting and elevating our core users' experience and ensuring continuous flow of high quality content or corpus. We believe that our industry is undergoing a fundamental shift as we move from the Internet era to the AI era. In the Internet era, the dominant logic here is to maximize user engagement through large user spaces and the metrics like AD load and ECPM. But currently in AI era, advancements in LLMs and compute power are amplifying the importance of top tier users and high quality content. Speaker 100:23:29So the most crucial factor for Zhihu going forward are, 1st of all, having sufficient capital to invest in high performance chips 2nd, having the highest quality content and data and third, having the highest quality and productive content creators. So Zhuhu has been a pioneer in these aspects. First, our substantial investments have made us one of only a select few platforms in China with a license to operate to self operate LLMs. And second, we already have natural advantages, thanks to our abundant high quality content and high quality user base. The advent of AI era presents a golden opportunity for Zuhu to return to what we do best, that is high quality Q and A. Speaker 100:24:30This has enabled us to make strategic adjustments with confidence and Next question please. Operator00:24:47Sure. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Steve Chu from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Speaker 300:25:18Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I would like to ask about the user trends post your selling and marketing discipline strategy. And what are the future strategy to further improve your user engagement? Thanks. Speaker 100:25:58Thanks, Steve, for your question. This is Zhou Yuan, Zuhu CEO. Our sales and marketing strategy adjustment is based on a quality of branded approach. Overall, these adjustments are in line with our expectations. While our core user retention rates maintain its growth momentum, our DAU's time spent also increased significantly. Speaker 100:26:41The sales and marketing strategy adjustment is just one part of our broader community strategy. Our efforts to build and enhance the community's content and atmosphere are also crucial to improve the activities of our users. The trustworthiness of Zhihu is primarily from our professional users. Many professionals and industry experts whose professional value is often underestimated have found a platform for discussion and sharing on Zhuhu. We have very high penetration rates among professionals in various industries. Speaker 100:28:03For example, Zhuhu has the highest concentration of AI industry professionals and the senior technical executives from leading LLM Companies who engage in cutting edge discussions on our platform. The number of our Blue Label certified AI participants grew by 130% year over year as of the latest. Thus, one important aspect of community daily operation is to enhance the experience for our core content creators. For example, recently our Juju plan in the community in which by optimizing the revenue distribution ARGO, the revenue in broader range of knowledge related fields such as science and engineering increased by 30% to 50% quarter over quarter. These adjustments have been happening in Q2. Speaker 100:29:54Our approach to support creators focuses on operations driven with enhanced efficiency through product development and research. And accordingly, on the content distribution wise, we will prioritize professional in that and authentic content. Secondly, it comes from professional in-depth and authentic content. Zhihu gathered a diverse range of real user experience and gives insights. For example, the recent incident involving moto packs in the open source field became a hot topic on Zhuhu. Speaker 100:31:15With the Chief Scientist personally responding, AI industry professionals, open source community, operators and lawyers from both domestic and international communities participated in the discussion, generating widespread attention and dimension. The influence generated by this content is not just ordinary traffic from curious outlookers, but rather it empowers more people to gain common knowledge behind the news through professional insights, providing a sense of fulfillment. We will continue to upgrade our operational system in line with our content fulfillment standards. Thirdly, but not the last, the community culture and atmosphere. In the Q2, we began integrating and streamlining our operational system and community governance, including the user service team to enhance our community culture of sincerity, expertise and respect. Speaker 100:33:24For example, the proportion of professional in-depth and the rational content in discussion on training topics is steadily increasing in line with our expectations. Thanks. Thank you for the question. Operator00:33:46Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Daisy Chen from Haitong International. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:34:55I'll translate myself. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my question. I'd like to I have two questions about AI. The first one is, I'd like to ask about the recent development of our AI publication such as the AI powered search feature, which was launched last quarter? Speaker 400:35:16Do we have any new products and can management elaborate more about how these products empower the community? And for example, does management see any positive impact on the user activity or behaviors? Following that, I think I have second question. We noted that Radiant Hand announced the partnership with OpenAI to bring its Q and A content into OpenAI's products. And they also reached our CEO with Google to authorize a data for some AI training that would bring it roughly over roughly US60 $1,000,000 per year to Radius revenue. Speaker 400:36:02So my question is about whether we consider a similar business model to add more revenues to Zhibu. Thank you. Speaker 100:36:42Thanks for your two questions. This is Zhou Yuan, Zuhu's CEO. I will just answer the first question. In the late March, we introduced a beta version of our AI search feature discovery named discovery. The initial results of the test in phase has been very promising. Speaker 100:37:06User utilizing our AI search become notably more active. We regard this as a positive indicator demonstrating a significant expansion in our users' content consumption Speaker 200:37:24scenarios. Speaker 100:37:37So, building on the feedback and usage patterns from the past 2 months, we are excited to announce that we will launch a new version of AI search by the end of June. This version will have a fresh product name. And it will initially be available on our PC platform. We believe that our PC platform is a crucial scenario of productivity and efficiency, perfectly complementing the mobile end. In the AI era, the quality of user and content far overweights the importance of quantity. Speaker 100:38:51Our AI search function relies on the high quality and trustworthy content within our community and it enables us to provide users with high quality search results. We believe that AI search serves as efficient tool based scenario, while the community offers a multi user online interaction environment. These 2 have strong complementary characteristics. Integrating AI search with our community ecosystem will be our central product development focus moving forward. And for the second question, indeed many companies are interested in acquiring Corbus from us, but we haven't made a decision yet. Speaker 100:40:17Thank you. Thanks for the two Operator00:40:22questions. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Cai Cai from CLSA. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:40:49What's the long term growth outlook for vocational training business and how could company differentiate yourself from other educational institutions? Thank you. Speaker 100:41:34Thank you for your question, Sisi. This is Zhou Yuan, Zuhu's CEO. In the Q1, our vocational training business continued to outperform the industry with a year over year growth rate of 35.9%. This is primarily driven by the robust growth of our community enabled self operated offerings. Notably, the AI, AGI and software and other vocational skills and interest courses mentioned in the opening remarks not only received positive feedbacks, but also demonstrated improved profitability. Speaker 100:42:41Unlike other educational institutions, Zhixitang is built on the foundation of high quality content and accumulated knowledge originating from our community, which naturally extends to supervised learning services. This process is primarily driven by the needs of our users who are also potential learners of our vocational training business. As we shared in last quarter, Zhihu's community mechanism continuously identifies and rapidly validates users' demands in vocational sub segments, providing us with a significant customer acquisition advantage. Community user and content creators effectively support our core development, resulting in high labor efficiency across existing offerings. Besides, our community based approach means that when learners' needs are satisfied, they can in turn contribute back to the community, fostering the development of subsequent programs and exempting learners' lifetime value. Speaker 100:44:54This helps mitigate the common challenge of low renewal rates in the vocational training industry. Our future growth strategy targets enhanced profitability. First of all, we will continue to expand into sub segments across 3 main categories: academic improvements, career enhancements and the vocational skills and interest. Our primary focus will remain on vocational SKUs and interest, which are with higher certainty and better profit margins. We aim to enhance our learners' renewal and the repurchase rate by leveraging Zhihu's unique advantages, thereby increasing our average GMV. Speaker 100:46:412nd of all, we will further improve the ROI of our resources investments and leverage AI to enhance internal operational efficiency. Our goal is to achieve operational breakeven as soon as possible. This is in line with Zhihu's overall top priority. Thanks. Next question please. Operator00:47:09Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vicki Wei from Citi. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:47:37Thanks management for taking my question. My question is related to the membership business. How should we think of membership business, competition landscape and business strategy? Would you please share some color about Yinyin's story's paying user behaviors and also other business such as IP operations business update? Thank you. Speaker 100:48:24Thank you, Vicky, for your question. This is Han, Jufu, CFO. In terms of the competitive landscape, we remain the leader in this segment. While we have experienced competition from other big Internet companies as well as some fluctuations in content creator numbers and submissions. A significant number of content creator have returned to Zhuhu, notably, confirming that Zhuhu provides the best environment for short story creators to thrive. Speaker 100:49:07And I would like to share 2 points on our strategic plan. Zhuhu's excellence in short form story segment has been widely recognized. However, some view this negatively as if the presence of stories on our platform dilutes the quality of our content library. So on this, we would like to share some insights. We believe that literature itself is undeniable valuable content. Speaker 100:50:48After all, the Nobel Prize has a literature price and New York Times has a bestseller list of novels. But we have concluded by separating the display and distribution of story content from non story content, we can provide better experience for users with different preferences. The best library and bookstores globally also categorize fiction and nonfiction separately to enhance users' experience. Therefore, we launched the standalone Yanyan story app. Yanyan story achieved a nearly 40% quarter over quarter increase in MAU for Q1 2024, reaching millions of users. Speaker 100:51:41This segmentation allows us to optimize each domain for specific user preferences without affecting the experience of the other group of users? And second of all, Zhihu's short story, Zhihu Bi has become the most popular premium revenue sharing drama on the market. The premium short drama Jubi adapted from Zhihu's short story has achieved excellent market results becoming the highest revenue sharing show drama to date. Its success has raised the major video platform awarenesses of the value of Zhihu's short story copyright. Premium channels are approaching us for collaboration, further allocating the value of our IPs. Speaker 100:53:33How should we understand short story IPs value? So in our recent discussion with the academic community, we shared that short story may represent the most advanced format of content evolution as we precisely and quickly showcase the latest authentic and value trends. Short story may be as much as 5 years ahead of novels, which in turn are 5 years ahead of film and television production. We look forward to sharing more Juhu IP content success story with all of you in the future. Thank you for your question. Operator00:54:22Thank you. The next question is from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:54:44Thanks, management for taking my question. And my question is about our marketing services. So I want to ask about the online marketing revenue outlook and our long term strategy. Thanks. Speaker 100:55:26Thank you for your question. This is Wang Han, Zuhu's CFO. As we mentioned in last quarter, Zuhu is committed to enhancing the community's trustworthiness even at the cost of satisfying some short term low quality revenue. As such, we proactively refined our commercial content and distribution mechanism resulting in an expected CCS decrease. However, our brand advertising increased by 40% year over year during the non peak season and performance advertising delivered a quarter over quarter growth compared to Q4 'twenty three. Speaker 100:56:09For the rest of 'twenty four, we will focus on improving performance advertising through enhancing AI and data infrastructure. In long term, we believe that Zhuhu's commercial potential should be assessed with Zhuhu's brand premium instead of only focusing on in platform traffic. Let's take an example. Many emerging domestic 3C tag brands showcase their R and D technologies and the principles on Zhihu. They believe that only on Zhihu can be popularized their tech in a sufficiently professional and in-depth approach and establish market awareness for new product categories. Speaker 100:57:30They even integrate and upgrade their product based on Zhuhu's data and user feedback. In the consumer industry, most of the products on the market are actually quite similar. The main difference is the level of investment in advertising and promotion. However, products that can earn a solid reputation among professional users within Zhuhu community likely have a genuine competitive edge. You might have seen phrases like Zhihu high phrase followed by the rest of the title or Juhu KLL plus rest of the title in many articles. Speaker 100:58:59These validate the trust premium and endorsement value of Zhuhu's content compared to that of content from other Internet platforms. We are quite confident that in commercial area, Juhu has great potential to further enhance brand credibility. Thank you for questions. Operator00:59:25Thank you. That concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I will turn the conference back to Yolanda for any additional or closing remarks. Speaker 100:59:41Thank you, operator. Thank you all once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or PSN Financial Communications. Thank you. Operator00:59:57Thank you. This conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallZhihu Q1 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2x Earnings DocumentsPress Release(8-K) Zhihu Earnings HeadlinesZhihu Full Year 2024 Earnings: Beats ExpectationsApril 17, 2025 | finance.yahoo.comZhihu Inc. Files Its 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-FApril 15, 2025 | globenewswire.comReal Americans Don’t Wait on Wall Street’s Next MoveWhat's happening in the markets right now should concern every freedom-loving American who's worked hard and saved smart. Your 401(k) doesn't deserve to be dragged through the mud by tariffs, trade wars, reckless spending, and political standoffs. And you don't have to stand by while Wall Street plays roulette with your future.April 29, 2025 | Premier Gold Co (Ad)Zhihu Reports Stable Share Structure for March 2025April 14, 2025 | tipranks.comZhihu Inc. Grants RSUs to Boost Employee Engagement and Shareholder ValueApril 11, 2025 | tipranks.comZhihu, a Quora-like Q&A platform, bets on AI search to become China’s X and LinkedInApril 4, 2025 | msn.comSee More Zhihu Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Zhihu? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Zhihu and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About ZhihuZhihu (NYSE:ZH) operates an online content community in the People's Republic of China. Its community allows people to seek inspiration, find solutions, make decisions, and have fun. The company offers technology, business support, and consulting services; information transmission, software, and information technology services. It also offers information and marketing services; vocational training; and internet services, as well as holds audio-visual permit. 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There are 6 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Xihu Inc. First Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. Operator00:00:22At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am. Speaker 100:00:32Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Zhuhu's Q1 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me today are Mr. Zhou Yuan, our Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Speaker 100:00:48Wang Han, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include forward looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U. S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Speaker 100:01:11As 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 U. S. SEC 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. Speaker 100:01:37Additionally, the matter we will discuss today will include both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures for a comparison purpose only. For a definition of non GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at ir. Zuhu.com. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Speaker 100:02:10Wang Han, CFO of Zhuhu. Han, please go ahead. Speaker 200:02:14Thank you, Yolanda. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Juhu's Q1 2024 earnings call. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Juhu. Speaker 200:02:26The Q1 of 2004 marked a significant turning point for Zhe Hu. Strategically, we concentrated on our core strengths and the most crucial aspect of our development in the AI area. This involved a series of tactical adjustments, including resource reallocation and organizational From an operating perspective, our top priority is in the short term is to achieve profitability. The advent of AI has disrupted the traditional Internet business model, which relied on expanding user base, enhancing user engagement and boosting user add value to gain market share. In AI era, the focus has shifted to high quality content and user value. Speaker 200:03:09Juho's core value lies not only in presenting Chinese highest quality content library, but also in our unique content creation mechanism and our communities for fashion atmosphere, which foster continued emergence of new high quality content. Wehoo users are not passive recipients of information, but are active participants in content creation and knowledge sharing. Core strengths provide us with a 1st mover advantage in exploring new business models and position us uniquely in the market, increasing our pricing power. Following our proactive reduction in community related user acquisition costs, the size of our user base declined to some degree in line with our expectations. However, engagement among our monthly active users increased, core user retention sustained its growth momentum and daily active user time spent also increased significantly. Speaker 200:04:04Furthermore, our efforts to enhance trustworthiness within the Juho community continue to drive community prosperity. Our strategy for cultivating scenario oriented content ensures a continuous stream of authentic in-depth high quality content based on our users' own experiences. As of the end of the Q1, the cumulative pieces of content on our platform reached 804,200,000 including 611,000,000 Q and As, up 15.4% year over year. Cumulative content creators within the Juho community reached 73,600,000, an increase of 13% year over year. We also observed a notable year over year increase in a proportion of highly active users engaged in creation and a percentage of high level daily active creators. Speaker 200:04:52Utilizing the power of AI driven technology, we continue to equip our content creators with a variety of user friendly creation tools, offering a professional and supportive environment to help them break financial rewards. In Q1, the total number of content creators who earned income on Zhihu grew by more than 25% year over year. Notably, the number of content creators AI era, we have continually upgraded our cybersecurity capabilities to ensure better protection of user data privacy and intellectual property rights. At the same time, we fully leverage AI models capability to enhance efficiency of content identification, review and governance within the Jupyter community. In certain scenarios, AI reviewers can achieve higher accuracy compared to the manual identification and review, allowing us to significantly reduce the number of menu reviewers while maintaining high efficiency. Speaker 200:05:56We continue to refine and upgrade our existing systems, Wabi and Wukong, leveraging our Zhihai 2 LOM. These improvements have further enhanced user engagement and effectively combated fake traffic leading to a continued decline in users' negative feedback and propelling Juhu's community sustainable development. We're progressing steadily towards our goal of achieving quarterly profitability within this year. To that end, we have accelerated our loss reduction through 2 operating tactics. 1st was to continually improve employee efficiency, further reducing labor costs. Speaker 200:06:372nd was to reduce community related user acquisition costs. Meanwhile, we have maintained a high ROI in our pay membership and vocational training businesses, which extended our reach beyond the Juhu community. With these efforts, the cost of revenue and total operating expenses in Q1 decreased by over RMB130 1,000,000 quarter over quarter. Notably, we recorded our 6th consecutive quarter of year over year growth in gross profit margin and 3 consecutive quarters of sequential decline in our sales and marketing expenses in the Q1. Additionally, we have been accelerating the application of Zhihai to LOM to further enhance our operating efficiency across every aspect of our businesses, for example, teaching, learning and research aspects for our vocation training business. Speaker 200:07:25By integrating our own knowledge library, we have driven notable efficiency improvements in AI teaching assistance, self services, homework assessment and more. As a leading content centric community, Zhenhu serves as a lending platform where professionals engage in the most extensive and in-depth discussions on AI related topics. Since the beginning of this year, the amount of AI related content and the number of creators certified by Blue Label has increased by 130% year over year. Moreover, tens of thousands of specialized terms related to AI are being discussed within our community. In 2024, our exploration of investment in AI will shift to focus on application layer. Speaker 200:08:14Our advancement in AI enables us to enhance operating efficiency across our existing businesses as well as to unlock emerging potential beyond the Jiwu community, all built on the foundation of trustworthiness. Since the launch of our AI powered search feature in March, we have observed double digit growth in app active days, user retention rates and user engagement among users who are using our new AI search feature. Now, I'd like to dive into more details of the progress we achieved across our multiple business lines for the Q1. First, our vocational training business continued to grow robustly with the revenue increasing 35.9% year over year to RMB145 million. Its contribution to our total revenue also rose, surpassing 15% for the first time. Speaker 200:09:06As of the end of the Q1, we established more than 30 subcategory courses through both self operated business and acquisitions. Notably, our self operated offerings are closely connected to Qifu community, allowing us to address users' needs swiftly and precisely while yielding higher profits. Our acquired offerings on the other hand meet specific demands and cater to a broader market. Together, these courses complement each other and broaden our offerings and driven the rapid and sustainable growth of our vocational training business. In the Q1, our sub operated offerings grew rapidly, particularly AI, AGN, self aware exam courses, demonstrating excellent profitability and rapid growth. Speaker 200:09:51Currently, our program tutors are also content creators within the JUUL community. With this dual role, tutors are deeply involved in the course development while maintaining ongoing interactions with students in the community about real course experiences, skill improvements and other topics. This approach effectively addresses the ever growing new demand of our new users. Growth from our acquired offerings remained steady during this quarter, further elevating our brand name awareness and service advantages. In April of this year, one of our subsidiaries, Pingzheng Education, hosted a dedicated live broadcast inviting executives from the CFA Institute. Speaker 200:10:35They provided professional insight into CFA exam reforms, offering first hand preparation guidance and expert analysis. This initiative garnered significant attention and sustained feedback from both the industry and examinees. Our paid membership business remained our largest revenue contributor this quarter, reaching RMB449.7 million. As of the end of this Q1, our average monthly subscriber members stood at 14,800,000, showing a slight decrease of 0.8% year over year but an increase of 4.1% quarter over quarter. Average revenue per user remained stable compared to the same period last year. Speaker 200:11:17Leveraging the support of Qifu community and our unique positioning, our premium short stories continue to captivate and resonate with our users. In April, a 123 historically chart topping business, including Zhihu's exclusive story, Sand of Time, Qitianhua and Endless River Sea Wars Flows, were included in the National Library's digital collection. Qiwu's premium content library, including short stories, continued to expand in the Q4. The total volume of premium content increased by 14% year over year, attracting new subscribers while encouraging increased consumption among existing subscribers. On the coming creator side, we are delighted to see our creators building a solid market reputation and achieving financial rewards on our platform. Speaker 200:12:06In the Q1, the number of content creators who earned income increased by 78% year over year. In addition to top creators earning substantial income, many mid tier and long tail content creators within our community also earned significant income through high quality content creation this quarter. As a market leader, Juhu continues to unlock the monetization potential of our vast array of premium short story IPs, spearheading our expansion into the short drama market and consistently setting new industry benchmark for growth. In the Q1, IP monetization revenue increased by 165.7% year over In April, another short drama, Jippi, adapted from a story in Jiwu's content library, achieved a new record high for popularity on its debut day on Tencent's micro drama platform. In the long run, the ongoing expansion of our premium content and diverse content consumption formats will continually drive growth in the lifetime value of subscribing members. Speaker 200:13:11Let's now shift to our marketing services. In Q1, marketing services revenue were RMB330.5 million, representing a decrease of 15.7% year over year. Within this total, revenue from our brand advertising business increased significantly by 40% year over year. While our performance based advertising business returned to a growth on a quarter over quarter basis, our key clients in Cornerstone verticals continue to demonstrate healthy improvements in retention rates, consumption and ARPU. Apart from ID53 Industry, which maintained its year over year growth rate of over 40%, the fast moving consumer goods sector also experienced high double digit year over year growth. Speaker 200:13:54We're currently in the process of upgrading our CCS product including proactively enhancing content governance and reducing the distribution of commercial content that negatively impacts user experience. As we are striving for quality profitability by the Q4 of 2024, we are dipping our efforts to narrow our losses. Meanwhile, we firmly believe the emerging potential of our AI search and the value we continue to unlock across Zhihu's trustworthy community will provide fresh momentum for our sustainable growth and a clear path to profitability for the remaining quarters of this year. This concludes Mr. Zhou Yan's remarks. Speaker 200:14:35Now, I will review the details of our Q1 financials. For a complete overview of our Q1 2024 results, please see our press release issued earlier today. We have continually optimized our cost structure over the past several quarters. As a result, we recorded our 6th consecutive quarter of year over year growth in the gross profit margin. On expense side, we significantly reduced community related user acquisition costs while maintaining a prudent level of events by new cutting edge technology, including AI. Speaker 200:15:05This initiative has effectively automized our fixed costs, enhancing our commercialization efficiency. With this proven strategic adjustment, we are confident of achieving quarterly profitability within 2024. Our marketing services revenue for the Q1 were RMB330.5 million, a decline of 15.7 percent year over year. This decrease was primarily due to the ongoing refinement of our CCS product to strategically focus on margin improvement. However, we have observed the recovery in our brand advertising segment in the Q1. Speaker 200:15:38Performance based advertising also demonstrated a sequential growth, notably Adient 3C as well as fast moving consumer goods led its growth by vertical. Pay membership maintained a stable trend in the quarter, reaching RMB449.7 million. The number of subscribers members grew to 14,800,000, up 4.1% quarter over quarter. Vocational training revenues for the quarter was RMB145.4 million, increasing by 35.9 percent year over year. Our soft operated offerings particularly AI AGM software exam courses delivered robust growth, while our acquired business also retained solid momentum. Speaker 200:16:21Benefiting from enhanced operating efficiency, our gross profit for the Q1 increased by 6.1% year over year to RMB543.5 million, propelling a gross profit margin improvement of 5.1 percentage points year over year to 56.6%. Our total operating expenses for the quarter were RMB768.2 million compared with RMB729.0 million in the same period last year. Selling and marketing expenses increased to RMB478 1,000,000 from RMB445.6 million in the same period of 203. Moving forward, we will maintain our prudent financial policies and rigorously merit ROI across marketing channels. Our research and development expenses for the quarter increased to RMB197.4 million from RMB183 1,000,000 in the same period of 20 23. Speaker 200:17:16The increase was primarily due to our increased spending on technology innovation. G and A expenses decreased by 7 0.5% to RMB92.9 million. The decrease was primarily due to lower share based compensation expenses combined with improved operating efficiency. As a result of all above, our GAAP net loss for the Q1 narrowed by 7.4 percent year over year to RMB165.8 million. Our non GAAP net loss for the Q1 was RMB135.7 million. Speaker 200:17:52As of March 31, 2024, the company had cash and cash equivalents, term deposits and short term investment of RMB5.2 billion compared with RMB5.5 billion as of December 31, 2023. In the Q1, the company repurchased 4,800,000 plus 8 ordinary shares for a total price of US8 million dollars In summary, as we continue to optimize our costs and expense structure, our operating efficiency is steadily improving. Throughout the remainder of 2019, we are confident that our strong strategic execution will provide a solid foundation for achieving our quarterly profitability goals in the near future. This concludes my prepared remarks on our financial performance for this quarter. I'll turn the call over to the operator for the Q and A session. Operator00:19:37Our first question is from the line of Shueching Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:20:10About the breakeven target. Could management update with us on our timetables to achieve a costly breakeven? And what's the latest progress? Thank you. This is from Wang Han, CFO of Jupu. Speaker 100:20:37Our profitability target remains unchanged. We expect to achieve a quarterly non GAAP net profit in the Q4 of this year. At the end of the Q1 and start of the second, we strategically refined and restructured our approaches, driving a notable reduction in losses. Starting from the Q2, you will see more pronounced improvements across our metrics. The core philosophy behind this lease adjustment is what we shared at Lustre earnings. Speaker 100:22:36We will always prioritize user quality over user scale. We are dedicated to protecting and elevating our core users' experience and ensuring continuous flow of high quality content or corpus. We believe that our industry is undergoing a fundamental shift as we move from the Internet era to the AI era. In the Internet era, the dominant logic here is to maximize user engagement through large user spaces and the metrics like AD load and ECPM. But currently in AI era, advancements in LLMs and compute power are amplifying the importance of top tier users and high quality content. Speaker 100:23:29So the most crucial factor for Zhihu going forward are, 1st of all, having sufficient capital to invest in high performance chips 2nd, having the highest quality content and data and third, having the highest quality and productive content creators. So Zhuhu has been a pioneer in these aspects. First, our substantial investments have made us one of only a select few platforms in China with a license to operate to self operate LLMs. And second, we already have natural advantages, thanks to our abundant high quality content and high quality user base. The advent of AI era presents a golden opportunity for Zuhu to return to what we do best, that is high quality Q and A. Speaker 100:24:30This has enabled us to make strategic adjustments with confidence and Next question please. Operator00:24:47Sure. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Steve Chu from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Speaker 300:25:18Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I would like to ask about the user trends post your selling and marketing discipline strategy. And what are the future strategy to further improve your user engagement? Thanks. Speaker 100:25:58Thanks, Steve, for your question. This is Zhou Yuan, Zuhu CEO. Our sales and marketing strategy adjustment is based on a quality of branded approach. Overall, these adjustments are in line with our expectations. While our core user retention rates maintain its growth momentum, our DAU's time spent also increased significantly. Speaker 100:26:41The sales and marketing strategy adjustment is just one part of our broader community strategy. Our efforts to build and enhance the community's content and atmosphere are also crucial to improve the activities of our users. The trustworthiness of Zhihu is primarily from our professional users. Many professionals and industry experts whose professional value is often underestimated have found a platform for discussion and sharing on Zhuhu. We have very high penetration rates among professionals in various industries. Speaker 100:28:03For example, Zhuhu has the highest concentration of AI industry professionals and the senior technical executives from leading LLM Companies who engage in cutting edge discussions on our platform. The number of our Blue Label certified AI participants grew by 130% year over year as of the latest. Thus, one important aspect of community daily operation is to enhance the experience for our core content creators. For example, recently our Juju plan in the community in which by optimizing the revenue distribution ARGO, the revenue in broader range of knowledge related fields such as science and engineering increased by 30% to 50% quarter over quarter. These adjustments have been happening in Q2. Speaker 100:29:54Our approach to support creators focuses on operations driven with enhanced efficiency through product development and research. And accordingly, on the content distribution wise, we will prioritize professional in that and authentic content. Secondly, it comes from professional in-depth and authentic content. Zhihu gathered a diverse range of real user experience and gives insights. For example, the recent incident involving moto packs in the open source field became a hot topic on Zhuhu. Speaker 100:31:15With the Chief Scientist personally responding, AI industry professionals, open source community, operators and lawyers from both domestic and international communities participated in the discussion, generating widespread attention and dimension. The influence generated by this content is not just ordinary traffic from curious outlookers, but rather it empowers more people to gain common knowledge behind the news through professional insights, providing a sense of fulfillment. We will continue to upgrade our operational system in line with our content fulfillment standards. Thirdly, but not the last, the community culture and atmosphere. In the Q2, we began integrating and streamlining our operational system and community governance, including the user service team to enhance our community culture of sincerity, expertise and respect. Speaker 100:33:24For example, the proportion of professional in-depth and the rational content in discussion on training topics is steadily increasing in line with our expectations. Thanks. Thank you for the question. Operator00:33:46Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Daisy Chen from Haitong International. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:34:55I'll translate myself. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my question. I'd like to I have two questions about AI. The first one is, I'd like to ask about the recent development of our AI publication such as the AI powered search feature, which was launched last quarter? Speaker 400:35:16Do we have any new products and can management elaborate more about how these products empower the community? And for example, does management see any positive impact on the user activity or behaviors? Following that, I think I have second question. We noted that Radiant Hand announced the partnership with OpenAI to bring its Q and A content into OpenAI's products. And they also reached our CEO with Google to authorize a data for some AI training that would bring it roughly over roughly US60 $1,000,000 per year to Radius revenue. Speaker 400:36:02So my question is about whether we consider a similar business model to add more revenues to Zhibu. Thank you. Speaker 100:36:42Thanks for your two questions. This is Zhou Yuan, Zuhu's CEO. I will just answer the first question. In the late March, we introduced a beta version of our AI search feature discovery named discovery. The initial results of the test in phase has been very promising. Speaker 100:37:06User utilizing our AI search become notably more active. We regard this as a positive indicator demonstrating a significant expansion in our users' content consumption Speaker 200:37:24scenarios. Speaker 100:37:37So, building on the feedback and usage patterns from the past 2 months, we are excited to announce that we will launch a new version of AI search by the end of June. This version will have a fresh product name. And it will initially be available on our PC platform. We believe that our PC platform is a crucial scenario of productivity and efficiency, perfectly complementing the mobile end. In the AI era, the quality of user and content far overweights the importance of quantity. Speaker 100:38:51Our AI search function relies on the high quality and trustworthy content within our community and it enables us to provide users with high quality search results. We believe that AI search serves as efficient tool based scenario, while the community offers a multi user online interaction environment. These 2 have strong complementary characteristics. Integrating AI search with our community ecosystem will be our central product development focus moving forward. And for the second question, indeed many companies are interested in acquiring Corbus from us, but we haven't made a decision yet. Speaker 100:40:17Thank you. Thanks for the two Operator00:40:22questions. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Cai Cai from CLSA. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:40:49What's the long term growth outlook for vocational training business and how could company differentiate yourself from other educational institutions? Thank you. Speaker 100:41:34Thank you for your question, Sisi. This is Zhou Yuan, Zuhu's CEO. In the Q1, our vocational training business continued to outperform the industry with a year over year growth rate of 35.9%. This is primarily driven by the robust growth of our community enabled self operated offerings. Notably, the AI, AGI and software and other vocational skills and interest courses mentioned in the opening remarks not only received positive feedbacks, but also demonstrated improved profitability. Speaker 100:42:41Unlike other educational institutions, Zhixitang is built on the foundation of high quality content and accumulated knowledge originating from our community, which naturally extends to supervised learning services. This process is primarily driven by the needs of our users who are also potential learners of our vocational training business. As we shared in last quarter, Zhihu's community mechanism continuously identifies and rapidly validates users' demands in vocational sub segments, providing us with a significant customer acquisition advantage. Community user and content creators effectively support our core development, resulting in high labor efficiency across existing offerings. Besides, our community based approach means that when learners' needs are satisfied, they can in turn contribute back to the community, fostering the development of subsequent programs and exempting learners' lifetime value. Speaker 100:44:54This helps mitigate the common challenge of low renewal rates in the vocational training industry. Our future growth strategy targets enhanced profitability. First of all, we will continue to expand into sub segments across 3 main categories: academic improvements, career enhancements and the vocational skills and interest. Our primary focus will remain on vocational SKUs and interest, which are with higher certainty and better profit margins. We aim to enhance our learners' renewal and the repurchase rate by leveraging Zhihu's unique advantages, thereby increasing our average GMV. Speaker 100:46:412nd of all, we will further improve the ROI of our resources investments and leverage AI to enhance internal operational efficiency. Our goal is to achieve operational breakeven as soon as possible. This is in line with Zhihu's overall top priority. Thanks. Next question please. Operator00:47:09Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vicki Wei from Citi. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:47:37Thanks management for taking my question. My question is related to the membership business. How should we think of membership business, competition landscape and business strategy? Would you please share some color about Yinyin's story's paying user behaviors and also other business such as IP operations business update? Thank you. Speaker 100:48:24Thank you, Vicky, for your question. This is Han, Jufu, CFO. In terms of the competitive landscape, we remain the leader in this segment. While we have experienced competition from other big Internet companies as well as some fluctuations in content creator numbers and submissions. A significant number of content creator have returned to Zhuhu, notably, confirming that Zhuhu provides the best environment for short story creators to thrive. Speaker 100:49:07And I would like to share 2 points on our strategic plan. Zhuhu's excellence in short form story segment has been widely recognized. However, some view this negatively as if the presence of stories on our platform dilutes the quality of our content library. So on this, we would like to share some insights. We believe that literature itself is undeniable valuable content. Speaker 100:50:48After all, the Nobel Prize has a literature price and New York Times has a bestseller list of novels. But we have concluded by separating the display and distribution of story content from non story content, we can provide better experience for users with different preferences. The best library and bookstores globally also categorize fiction and nonfiction separately to enhance users' experience. Therefore, we launched the standalone Yanyan story app. Yanyan story achieved a nearly 40% quarter over quarter increase in MAU for Q1 2024, reaching millions of users. Speaker 100:51:41This segmentation allows us to optimize each domain for specific user preferences without affecting the experience of the other group of users? And second of all, Zhihu's short story, Zhihu Bi has become the most popular premium revenue sharing drama on the market. The premium short drama Jubi adapted from Zhihu's short story has achieved excellent market results becoming the highest revenue sharing show drama to date. Its success has raised the major video platform awarenesses of the value of Zhihu's short story copyright. Premium channels are approaching us for collaboration, further allocating the value of our IPs. Speaker 100:53:33How should we understand short story IPs value? So in our recent discussion with the academic community, we shared that short story may represent the most advanced format of content evolution as we precisely and quickly showcase the latest authentic and value trends. Short story may be as much as 5 years ahead of novels, which in turn are 5 years ahead of film and television production. We look forward to sharing more Juhu IP content success story with all of you in the future. Thank you for your question. Operator00:54:22Thank you. The next question is from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:54:44Thanks, management for taking my question. And my question is about our marketing services. So I want to ask about the online marketing revenue outlook and our long term strategy. Thanks. Speaker 100:55:26Thank you for your question. This is Wang Han, Zuhu's CFO. As we mentioned in last quarter, Zuhu is committed to enhancing the community's trustworthiness even at the cost of satisfying some short term low quality revenue. As such, we proactively refined our commercial content and distribution mechanism resulting in an expected CCS decrease. However, our brand advertising increased by 40% year over year during the non peak season and performance advertising delivered a quarter over quarter growth compared to Q4 'twenty three. Speaker 100:56:09For the rest of 'twenty four, we will focus on improving performance advertising through enhancing AI and data infrastructure. In long term, we believe that Zhuhu's commercial potential should be assessed with Zhuhu's brand premium instead of only focusing on in platform traffic. Let's take an example. Many emerging domestic 3C tag brands showcase their R and D technologies and the principles on Zhihu. They believe that only on Zhihu can be popularized their tech in a sufficiently professional and in-depth approach and establish market awareness for new product categories. Speaker 100:57:30They even integrate and upgrade their product based on Zhuhu's data and user feedback. In the consumer industry, most of the products on the market are actually quite similar. The main difference is the level of investment in advertising and promotion. However, products that can earn a solid reputation among professional users within Zhuhu community likely have a genuine competitive edge. You might have seen phrases like Zhihu high phrase followed by the rest of the title or Juhu KLL plus rest of the title in many articles. Speaker 100:58:59These validate the trust premium and endorsement value of Zhuhu's content compared to that of content from other Internet platforms. We are quite confident that in commercial area, Juhu has great potential to further enhance brand credibility. Thank you for questions. Operator00:59:25Thank you. That concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I will turn the conference back to Yolanda for any additional or closing remarks. Speaker 100:59:41Thank you, operator. Thank you all once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or PSN Financial Communications. Thank you. Operator00:59:57Thank you. This conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by