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Bilibili Inc. (BILI -1.46%)
Q3 2018 Earnings Conference Call
November 20, 2018, 8:00 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Bilibili 2018 third quarter earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Juliet Yang, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Juliet Yang -- Senior Director of Investor Relations
Thank you, Operator. Please know the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements relating to the company's future performances and are intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability as established by the US Private Security Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors.
Some of these risks are beyond the company's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today's press release and in this discussion. A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect Bilibili's business and financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law.
During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only. For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and our reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the 2018 third quarter financial results news release issued earlier today.
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, an investor presentation and a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on Bilibili's investor website at ir.bilibili.com.
Joining us today on the call from Bilibili senior management are Mr. Rui Chen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Miss Ni Li, Vice Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Xin Fan, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Fan, who will read the prepared remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen.
Xin Fan -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Juliet. Thank you, everyone for participating in today's third quarter call. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen. The third quarter represents another period of healthy growth of our business. We continue to execute our strategy centered around content, community, and commercialization.
Leveraging our high-quality content, we are attracting a number of users to our platform. The user interaction, which members help to create and solidify a community, supporting a high-level of user engagement and the commercialization comes naturally through our understanding of each user's entertainment leads.
In the third quarter, our total net revenues were ¥1.6 billion, exceeding the high end of our previous guidance and representing 4.9% year over year growth. Meanwhile, our monthly average paying users continue to rise, reaching 3.5 million, demonstrating over 200% growth year over year.
Over the quarter and in recent months, we have enhanced and expanded our content through a number of collaborations, as announced in early October following Tencent's increased equity investment, totaling approximately $380 million. We deepened our partnership by entering a strategic collaboration that will enable us to leverage Tencent's primary content, particularly in licensing, co-producing and the investment in anime as well as publish Tencent's large portfolio of high-quality mobile games.
Going forward, we are open to forging relationships with more industry leaders to improve our content offering and the monetization capabilities, cultivating new content, continuing to incorporate our global standard growing community in the third quarter. Our average monthly active users grew by 25% year over year, grew to 93 million.
The number of mobile monthly active users grew even faster, by 33 % year over year to 18 million. Our co-user group of members who took a 100-question exam once again outgrew our MAU at 45% year over year to 42 million.
We continued to see deeper penetration in lower-tier cities, with a very balanced gender mix and both general and ACG content are driving user growth. While our users are growing at a healthy pace, the amount of time spent and the level of user engagement continued to rise. Excluding time spent on mobile games, our users spent an average of 85 minutes daily on our platform in the third quarter, up from 75 minutes in the previous quarter.
Users can enjoy hours of entertaining content covering a wide area of categories on Bilibili. During the third quarter, the top five most content verticals were entertainment, lifestyle, games, anime, and technology. Professional user-generated videos, our PUGVs, remain the prime means for our video content creation. During the third quarter, 89% of our viewed videos came from PUGVs. Our incentive program we initiated at the beginning of the year to support our growing pool of content creators are progressing well.
New product function such as mobile content submission enable content creators to create content anywhere and anytime. During the third quarter, we had on average 0.6 million active content creators uploading 1.7 million videos monthly, representing 130% and 136% year over year growth, respectively.
Besides PUGVs, our high-quality licensed content further reinforced our leading content categories such as anime and documentary. Our primary licensed content not only provides users hours of high-quality entertainment, but also helps drive the remarkable growth for our primary membership program.
For partnering with leading content creators like BBC and Discovery producing titles like Tron and self-produced documentary, "What History Books Said," Bilibili is now one of the largest producers in broadcasters of documentary releases in China. Additional content, such as our first self-produced variety show "Story Man 2" is also resonating well with many users. Being a vibrant community for young generations enables us to learn and identify what's trending for young minds, including which IP carries high potential and which entertainment forms will be the new frontier.
With our investment in [inaudible], we added considerable new content in virtual idol, including China's most popular virtual idol, [inaudible] and we started to explore virtual YouTuber or VTuber business. We believe this initiative will further enhance our extensive portfolio of industry-leading license and the PUGV material.
E-sports is another area that's getting more popular with young generations. With our foresight into industry trends, we began investing in e-sports years ago. In addition to the previously announced Bilibili Gaming E-Sports Club and the participation in Tencent's League of Legends Pro League or LPL, we have added a permanent sport presence in prestigious Overwatch League. Bilibili's [inaudible] will represent the city of Guangzhou during the 2019 Overwatch championship.
In addition, we are delighted to announce the launch of our second mobile application, Bilibili Comics earlier this month. We believe this initiative will further complement our user's growing appetite for premium-licensed ACG content and solidify our leading position in China's ACG industry.
Technology remains the center of our business. We continue to increase our investment in research and development to drive product efficiency and improve our users' experience. Our AI and big data power [inaudible] as well as product design helps connect our users to content, over 75% of video views are now generated by our smart recommendation system and over 40% of MAU visited our Bilibili Moments, a social function similar to Instagram allowing users to interact and engage with like-minded friends in the community.
Turning to the second pillar of our business, our dynamic community is more active and engaged than ever. During the third quarter, we saw remarkable participation levels with over 440 million daily views and more than 1.1 billion monthly interactions through chat, comments, likes, Bilibili Moments, which demonstrate an increase of 120% and over 300% year over year respectively.
The high level of interaction is one of Bilibili's most distinguished features setting us apart from other video platforms and generating new content and forging strong bonds among community members.
With that overview, I'd like to take a few moments to review operations within each of our core businesses. Revenue from our mobile games grew 24% year over year to ¥744 million, led primarily by the contribution of Fate/Grand Order or FGO. FGO's performance continues to be stable and we were delighted to celebrated the game's second anniversary in September, followed by a service content update that we're introducing in October.
We are also looking forward to reviewing a brand new chapter two for FGO with major content in Q1 next year. Additionally, we released a few new titles exclusively, including Ark Order, an ACG-themed RPG in September and some time in November, an exciting ACG-themed RPG with a well-known IP, which is starting to gain early momentum.
On the jointly opened operated game front, we published several high-quality titles in the third quarter. They are produced by leading game developers, including [inaudible] all have been well-received by our users. In the fourth quarter, we are happy to bring a number of highly anticipated games to market, including Naruto Online from Tencent and [inaudible].
In terms of new games, we have a number of additions on that in our pipeline. As we have previously discussed, some of the highly rated ACGs that we are looking to bring to our users, including RPGs Princess Connect Re:Drive and Magia Record as well as BanG Dream, A3!, all from well-known Japanese game developers, such as Cygames and Aniplex.
We also have exclusive publishing rights to the [inaudible] The Legend of Heroes: Trail of Stars. Based on these games' successful IP or previous performance in Japan, we are optimistic that our community will receive them actively. In addition, we are actively exploring international opportunities. Now, a recent collaboration with [inaudible] and our newly formed JV, we will not only be jointly developing mobile games, but also begin to tap our international aspirations by bringing our content to Japan market.
Turning to our advertising business, supported by our attractive platform of immersive content, user interactions, and our user base from tier one and tier two cities, advertising revenue increased by 179% year over year to ¥137 million or $20 million. We are happy to see continued growth in brand advertising as well as our performance-based advertising business.
Performance-based advertising has grown rapidly to more than 40 % of our advertising revenue in the third quarter. As we wrap up the number of clients as well as improved algorithms, we believe there is a great growth potential for this business. Our live broadcasting and the VAS revenue was increased by 292% year over year to ¥159 million or $25 million. Continuing earlier this year, we started a number of initiatives to expand our life broadcasting content and improve project design and user experience.
We also lumped the premium membership program, allowing paying members to enjoy exclusively our advanced and licensed content. This initiative was immediately well-received by our own community and it helped to drive content growth for our paying users.
In the third quarter, live broadcasting paying users grow 175% compared to the same period last year, valid premium members grew to over $2.5 million by the end of September. This dynamic involving industry offers exceptional opportunity. We are soon to be at the forefront of the online entertainment movement, such as being driven by the lead generation that continues to populate our growing community.
This concludes Mr. Chen's comments. I will now provide a brief overview for our third quarter financial results.
During the third quarter, we continued to see growth in all three of our primary business lines. Our total net revenues increased by 48% to ¥1.1 billion or $157 million year over year. As we ramp up our monetization efforts, we are delighted to see more diversified revenue contribution from advertising, life broadcasting, and [inaudible] services, which account for about 28% of total revenues in the third quarter compared with 30% from the same period in 2017.
Cost of revenues increased by 60% to ¥884 million or $129 million from the same period of 2017. Revenues driving costs or a primary component of cost of revenues was ¥445 million or $65 million, represented a 68 % increase year over year. Gross profit increased by 11% to ¥195 million or $23 million from the same period of 2017. Our gross profit margin declined to 18 %, primarily due to increased brand cost, content costs related to our user growth trend, and the lower revenue contribution from our higher margin game business.
Total operating game expenses increased by 120% to ¥454 million or $66 million from the same period of 2017, which is important to know that third quarter is our peak user acquisition time. This seasonality increased spending on sales and marketing and offline expenditures as we continue to grow our business and further optimize our monetization structure, we expect to see better operation leverage.
With that in mind, sales and marketing was ¥197 million or $29 million represents a 153% increase year over year. The increase was primarily attributed to the increased channel and marketing expenses associated with our platform and the APP as well as our offline events, promotional expenses for our mobile games during the summer holidays, and the increased headcount in selling and marketing personnel.
General and administrative expenses were ¥111 million or $60 million, representing a 93% increase year over year. The increase was primarily due to increased headcount in general and administrative personnel and increase the share-based compensation. Research and development expenses were ¥146 million or $21 million, representing a 96% increase year over year. The increase was primarily due to increased headcount in R&D and increase in share-based compensation.
Loss from operations was ¥249 million or $37 million compared with the loss of ¥33 million in the same period of 2017. Income tax expenses were ¥11.4 million or $1.7 million compared to ¥2.3 million in the same period of 2017. Net loss totaled ¥246 million or $36 million for the third quarter of 2018 compared with ¥15 million in the same period of 2017.
Adjusted net loss, which mainly excludes share-based compensation expenses and amortization expense related to [inaudible] were ¥203 million or $30 million for ¥2.9 million in the previous year period. Basic and diluted loss per share were ¥0.88 -- basic diluted loss per share was ¥0.72.
As of September 30th, 2018, we have cash and cash equivalent as well as [inaudible] ¥2.9 billion or $480 million compared with ¥765 million as of December 31, 2017. As we look ahead, our financial goals to further grow our business to our operation efficiency. With that in mind, we are currently projecting that revenue for the fourth quarter to be between ¥1.04 billion and ¥1.08 billion.
Thank you for your attention. We would like now to open the call to your questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, you will need to press * and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the # key. You may ask a question in English and then translate it in Mandarin. Please limit your question to one question at a time. Again, it's * and 1 if you wish to ask a question.
Our first question comes from the line of Alex Yao from J.P. Morgan. Alex, your line is now open.
Alex Yao -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst
Thank you, management for taking the question. [Speaking Chinese] So, I have two questions. One is about the partnership with Tencent. Now that Tencent increases your holding in Bilibili in the quarter, what are the areas you guys will further collaborate? Can you guys elaborate on the partnership of the next couple of quarters?
Then secondly is on advertising. Can you guys give us an update in terms of the advertising progress, any metrics such as [inaudible] to CPM will be helpful. Then also, on the back-half, a slowing consumption and potentially budget cut, how do you guys think about the advertising growth outlook in the coming quarters? Thank you.
Rui Chen -- Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
[Through translator] Alex, thanks a lot for your question, I'll take your question. So, in October, we are happy to announce we have further established a strategic collaboration with Tencent, specifically on the animation industry as well as jointly gain operation.
On the animation collaboration front, we are going to exchange and purchase existing animation copyrights, jointly procure, produce investing in animation projects as well as the investment opportunities in the comic and animation industry.
So, Tencent and Bilibili are two of the major players in the animation industry. So, by working with Tencent, this will intensively expand our content offering and effectively decrease our content investment in the animation copyright procurement.
So, on the games front, we have achieved agreement on jointly operating more of Tencent's games and we think that's very positive for our pipeline that we'll be able to offer more diverse, more content to our game lovers on our platform. So, both of the animation and game collaboration in some extent, it will extend our content offering on our platform, further diversify our monetization capabilities.
So, as for your second question on the advertising business progress, we think we have delivered a solid quarter of advertising business in Q3, specifically on the performance-based advertising now contributing more than 40% of our total revenue that demonstrates our progress and potential of this business line.
So, as for the brand advertising, we also delivered a solid growth. We continued to expand the different forms of advertising based on our content ecosystem, specifically on some of the original advertising content as well as some of the brand advertising on our self-produced variety shows.
The number of advertisers in the third quarter were over 660, which grew over 1,500% year on year. We think we still have a lot of room to grow on the advertising business front. That comes from the increased number of advertisers to improve the algorithm and to improve the advertising efficiencies.
So, as for the outload of our performance-based ads in Q3 was only 5%. So, we think on that front, there's still a lot of room to increase. So, the outload ratio, number of advertisers as well as the algorithm efficiencies are the three main factors that will affect our performance-based advertising revenue. We think all three factors have a lot of room to grow, leading a large potential in our performance-based advertising business.
Xin Fan -- Chief Financial Officer
Okay. I will add more color on our advertising business. Our top five industries for advertising business in Q3 for brand advertising that we leveraged, again, communication, digital, and beauty products, and for the [inaudible], education, e-commerce, information, and software.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Eddie Leung from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Eddie, your line is now open.
Eddie Leung -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Hey, good morning. Two questions -- the first one is about your paying memberships. Could you talk a little bit about your strategy to grow the membership program not just in the near-term but perhaps into 2019? Then the second question is about your internal revenue. It's quite interesting to see a different revenue actually coming down in the third quarter. On the other hand, the revenue guidance is actually quite stable from the second quarter. So, I'm just wondering why there is a discrepancy. [Speaking Chinese].
Rui Chen -- Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
[Through translator] So, from earlier this year in Q1, we started to monetize through our premium membership a subscription model of our business. We see the progress for the last three quarters is very strong and very healthy.
So, for example, a majority of our premium memberships are from our yearly subscribers or monthly automatically renew members. So, the progress is in line with our estimation. That is because first of all, we have very deep user insights regarding their interest and behavior. Our users stickiness and loyalty to the Bilibili is much higher than their two other platforms.
So, as long as we provide the content they like, they will continue to spend our platform. This trend is likely to last a very long time. So, from the first three quarters of this year, we noticed the majority of the users who pay for our membership is paying for our copyright animation and documentary content. As for this animation and documentary content aspect, we'll continue to invest and increase our content offering. So, we're confident this increase will continue.
So, the monetization strategy and the content offering will be tightly linked to the nature of our users and linked to the areas that we have most advantage, such as animation and documentary. We won't be splurging too crazily to other content categories. So, we are confident to say that our -- the number of premium memberships will grow like the past three quarters very healthily and sustainably.
Xin Fan -- Chief Financial Officer
Okay. I will take the second question about the balance of the revenue. As you know, the major components for our revenue balance, we amortized our mobile game revenue, the grossing revenue over the user lifecycle. For example, for FGO, for amortized the FGO's closing revenue in six to seven months this period. So, in Q3, we recognized the [inaudible] accounting-wise, the closing revenue for Q2 and Q3 for FGO.
So, you will see in our guidance, we indicated that there will be some quarter over quarter decrease for our game revenues that a single digital decrease and that will be offset by the increase of our advertising and the live broadcasting and vendor-added services. Based on our current projection for our grossing revenue of our games business in Q4, we estimate that the balance of our different revenue will resume in increased trend in the end of this year.
Eddie Leung -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, it's * and 1. Alex, your line is now open.
Alex Poon -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
[Speaking Chinese]. I'll ask my questions in English. I have one question. My question is regarding the MAU target. Could you give us a reassessment of your current MAU target for 2019 and 2020, given your content offering is much more diversified, you have partnerships with Tencent and other parties inside and outside of China and user behavior data is very strong and a step up in marketing efforts, etc.? Is there any further upside to the previous MAU target for 2020? Thank you.
Rui Chen -- Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
[Through translator] As for the user growth trend for the next two years, we'll be still consistent with what we have communicated. So, by year of 2020, we're looking in on average MAU of ¥140 million to ¥150 million and by 2019, an average year over year MAU will be ¥110 million to ¥120 million.
So, Mr. Chen's estimate is as the platform grows bigger and bigger, the demographic of that platform will be closer to the demographic of the country. So, take this year's user profile, for example, we're seeing an average age of 21 years old for our platform and our new users' average age is 19.8 years old. So, that is already one year older than the previous profile and that's closer to China's internet demographic profile.
So, our new users that we registered this year, we see further penetration to the third and fourth-tier city and that percentage has increased by 2% year on year. As for the content preferences, we also see an increase in the consumption of more general entertainment content and that's also in line with what the general public or the generations' interests and behavior.
So, as for the whole problem because we are a very decentralized community, people with different interests can find their own specific content. So, even though we see a more older demographic coming in and more general content consumption behavior as well as lower-tier penetration, but as for the old users, they're the absolute perception of the content quality and content diversification for them. It's only getting better and better. So, we are quite confident to keep the stickiness of the community.
So, that's why you see under in Q3, even though our users grow drastically, the number of time spent in engagement level of our community and the retention level of our community continued to stay stable and even grow even stronger. So, we're not just growing our user base, but also increase the stickiness and experience a quality growth. So, we're confident going forward even we're going to expand our user base to 110 million to 120 million next year, 140 million to 150 million in 2020. We're still quite confident to say that if we will be able to maintain a very sticky and engaged community behavior.
More importantly, I would like to highlight that in Q3, out of the 93 million MAU, 80 million were from our mobile devices. That's also evidence of our high-quality user component. So, as everybody knows, mobile devices is becoming an inseparable part of [inaudible] generation's life. The high percentage of our mobile devices is evidence that the quality of our users' matrix.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Marcus Yang from Macquarie. Marcus, you may now ask your question.
Marcus Yang -- Macquarie Group -- Analyst
[Speaking Chinese]. I just have two questions here. First of all, can you give us a brief update on your view in terms of the regulatory issues in China? We understand that [inaudible] streaming platforms have been banned for a while. So, I'd like to know if you have any incremental thoughts since it's in quarter earnings call on the regulation issues.
Also, we heard some game companies have been starting like restrictions on minors. I'd like to know any potential impact on Bilibili and also your thoughts on this. That's the, I think, the SGOs mentioned there have been updates in the first quarter next year. So, I'd just like to know the progress of the approval license. Thank you so much.
Rui Chen -- Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
[Through translator] The question, I think, is a question about content security. So, this year, we have done a lot of work in terms of reinforcing our content security infrastructure that includes to do a full comprehensive review of our existing content library on our platform as well as increase the headcount in the content auditor team.
I think over half of our initially increased headcount were allocated in the content auditor team. We have set up two additional locations for content auditing centers other than Shanghai. We are investing a lot of manpower to enhance our content security infrastructure.
So, we are quite confident about our current structure of placing a content environment and we are very determined to protect the integrity of our platform. That includes continuously reviewing the existing content and execute even tighter new content approval process.
So, as for your minor questions, actually, we have always been placing what the government required for all games, which is a real name registration system as well as a parent monitoring system to avoid over time spent for minors.
So, we have further reinforced our parent monitoring system to help the parents and society to control and avoid minors spending too much time on mobile games. So, in the past, we have been fully compliant with all the government requirements. So, we don't see a lot of risk at that front.
On the user profile front, our average age of our platform is 21 years old. The minors we define as 14 and below is far less than 10% and the paying user is even less than that. Even if there were to be more stringent minor control, that wouldn't have much of an impact on our revenue scale.
So, as for the game approval status, we don't have new updates, but we have been actively preparing and exploring different alternatives to game development. So, as for the games in our pipeline, four of them have completed all the prerequisite process for approval and seven of them are nearly in completion. So, as soon as the approval process reopens, we should be able to have a number of games that are ready to launch.
So, as for the approval suspension, because it's an industrywide phenomenon, we are just dealing with it with a [inaudible] and exploring other alternatives. So, we think it's just a matter of time for the game approval to be reopened. It won't be a permanent issue.
Okay. So, Mr. Chen feels like it's only a short-term impact, not a long-term impact. If the business is still intact, there is still a lot of demand for mobile game content. So, it's just a matter of time.
Operator
Thank you so much. Our last question comes from the line of Chen Hao from the T.H. Capital. Chen, your line is now open.
Chen Hao -- T.H. Capital -- Managing Director
Yeah, management. The question is related to the margin trends -- so, if I look at the margin, it's slightly down. I wonder what's the reason. Is that because live broadcasting was increased and taking more portion? The second one is what's the trend going forward? That's the number one question. Number two is about the two games. I wonder two things -- what's the percentage of total revenue those two games are taking and going forward, what proportion of the total revenue is likely to come from these two games? That's the question. Thank you.
Xin Fan -- Chief Financial Officer
I will take this question. For profit margin, [inaudible] margin is 18%, mainly because we have some incremental costs for bandwidth costs and content costs as well as the contribution for our [inaudible] revenues that are decreasing, mainly because the revenue for games in Q2 and Q3, they are a bit lower than Q1 and we also talk about we saw very nice trends for the game [inaudible] revenue in Q4. In Q1 next year, we'll see the resume of a quarter increase of game revenues. So, margin will be improved in Q1 next year.
Two new games currently we just launched, we sought early momentum -- for FGO and [inaudible], I think they have both been quite stable and FGO's performance in Q4, the [inaudible] a number of them.
Chen Hao -- T.H. Capital -- Managing Director
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Operator
Thank you so much. That concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to the management for any additional and closing comments. Please go ahead.
Juliet Yang -- Senior Director of Investor Relations
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact myself, Juliet Yang, Bilibili's Senior IR Director or TPG investor relations. Our content information for IR in both China and the US can be found in today's press release. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye, bye.
Duration: 65 minutes
Call participants:
Juliet Yang -- Senior Director of Investor Relations
Rui Chen -- Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
Xin Fan -- Chief Financial Officer
Alex Yao -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst
Eddie Leung -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Alex Poon -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Marcus Yang -- Macquarie Group -- Analyst
Chen Hao -- T.H. Capital -- Managing Director
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