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DATE

May 20, 2026 at 8 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Executive Officer — Peng Zhao
• Deputy Chief Financial Officer — Wenbei Wang

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- RMB 2.1 billion, up 8% year-on-year, despite a shortened peak season due to a later Chinese New Year.
• Paid Enterprise Customers -- 7.1 million in the trailing 12 months ended March 31, representing 10.9% year-on-year and 4.4% quarter-on-quarter growth.
• Monthly Active Users (MAU) -- Average MAU on the main app reached 16.9 million, up 5.7% year-on-year, with March MAU exceeding 72 million, up 4.6% year-on-year.
• Adjusted Operating Income -- RMB 815 million, increasing 18% year-on-year, with adjusted operating margin reaching 39.4%, up 3.4 percentage points year-on-year.
• Net Income -- RMB 1.1 billion; adjusted net income excluding share-based compensation and investment gains was RMB 856 million, up 12%, with adjusted net margin of 41.4% (up 1.7 percentage points).
• Cash Flow -- Net cash provided by operating activities reached RMB 1.2 billion, up 19% year-on-year; cash and equivalents totaled RMB 19.8 billion as of March 31.
• Shareholder Returns -- Over $200 million in share repurchases year-to-date, or about 3% of total shares; total buybacks since 2022 are close to 10% of shares outstanding.
• AI-Focused Revenue -- Revenue from AI-related roles rose over 100% year-on-year; AI-powered closed-loop service recorded RMB 50 million in revenue during the quarter.
• Active Software Engineer Job Postings -- Increased 10.9% from January to April compared to 2025.
• Cost Management -- Total operating costs and expenses decreased 3% year-on-year to RMB 1.4 billion; share-based compensation dropped 24% year-on-year and 11% quarter-on-quarter.
• Gross Margin -- Improved by 1.8 percentage points to 85.6%, aided by a reduction in employee-related expenses and the introduction of store commission fees.
• Guidance -- Second quarter revenue expected between RMB 2.38 billion and RMB 2.42 billion, indicating 13.2%-15.1% year-on-year growth.

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RISKS

• Deputy CFO Wenbei Wang noted, "considering our continued investment in AI, remarkable spending for long-term brand commissions and investment in new businesses along with the corresponding margin dilution for those new businesses, we can still expect a modest margin expansion for the coming years," indicating planned spending may pressure future margin gains.
• Income tax expenses increased sharply to RMB 299 million, up 293% year-on-year, primarily due to taxation related to investment gains and new tax provisions.

SUMMARY

Kanzhun Limited (BZ 1.21%)’s management emphasized accelerated growth following the post-holiday recruitment season and highlighted sustained user and enterprise engagement on its platform. The company attributes a notable expansion in AI-related services to both user efficiency improvements and incremental revenue, particularly in closed-loop services and software engineer job postings. Executives reiterated a capital return policy, confirming that year-to-date buybacks already exceed 3% of shares outstanding, and reaffirmed full-year commitments for using at least 50% of prior-year adjusted net income for dividends and repurchases. Looking ahead, management projects a strengthened revenue trajectory for the second quarter and full year relative to first quarter performance, reflecting confidence in active user base trends and further uptake of AI-powered offerings.

• Peng Zhao said, "we are confident that our revenue growth in the second quarter and for the full year will be stronger than what we delivered in the first quarter."
• Management stated the application of AI agents improved mutual consent conversion rates by 50% and raised user retention to the highest level since 2020.
• The average achievement per enterprise user increased by a double-digit percentage through AI-enabled enhancements.
• Over 15 million newly verified users were acquired between January and April.
• Interest and investment income contributed RMB 781 million, driven by a fair value gain from an investee IPO, which also drove the surge in income tax expense.
• Hong Kong market daily active user penetration was cited at about "1 out of 50" local workers, indicating early platform traction without immediate focus on monetization.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Double-sided platform: An online matchmaking system facilitating interactions and transactions between two distinct user groups—typically job seekers and employers in recruitment services.
• Closed-loop service: An end-to-end recruitment solution where the platform manages candidate sourcing, selection, and placement for clients, often supported by AI.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Peng Zhao: [Interpreted] Hello, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. On behalf of the company's employees, management team and Board of Directors, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our users and our investors for their continued support. [Interpreted] Today's presentation will cover 4 main parts. First, our growth in the first quarter second, key trends among job seekers and enterprise users on our platform. Third, the company's perspective on AI and strategic approach; and finally, the shareholder return. Let me start with our first quarter growth. As a double-sided platform, we continue to see strong growth from both job seekers and enterprise user sites.

Looking back to January to April this year, we acquired over 15 million newly verified users. Looking ahead, we believe that achieving over 14 million early verified users for the full year should be achievable. . Looking at paid enterprise customers' condition, number of paid enterprise customers reached 7.1 million for the 12 months ended March 31, up 10.9% year-on-year and 4.4% quarter-on-quarter. In the first quarter, the average monthly active users or MAU on the [indiscernible] app reached 16.9 million up 5.7% year-on-year. In March, MAU exceeded 72 million, up 4.6% year-on-year.

The raise in our MAU in March was more than 10 million higher than the first quarter average is that the Chinese New Year occurred later this year, resulting in a later peak improvement season. The 2026 Chinese New Year fell on February 17, while the 2025 New Year was on January 29. Hence, this year, the peak recruitment season only fell within March, whereas the peak recruitment season fell within both February and March in 2025. Let me discuss our revenues. In the first quarter, the company achieved revenue of RMB 2.07 billion, up 7.6% year-on-year.

Please kindly note that this figure also reflects the comparison between 1 month of peak season in 2026 versus 2 months of peak season in 2025. Looking ahead, we are confident that our revenue growth in the second quarter and for the full year will be stronger than what we delivered in the first quarter. On the profit perspective, in the first quarter, the adjusted operating income, excluding share-based compensation expenses, which is over RMB 810 million, up 17.8% year-on-year. The adjusted operating margin was 39.4%, up 3.4 percentage points year-on-year. . Second, key trends among enterprise users and job seekers on our platform.

As discussed multiple times earlier, our platform is different for -- in different tier cities and different types of industries. Overall, our continued rapid user growth has driven sustained rapid growth among all coworkers lower-tier cities and small and medium size enterprises on our platform. At the same time, equipment demand from white collar workers and large enterprises have continued to improve. From the user growth perspective, as of April 13 among the newly acquired users in this year, excluding flash graduates, nearly Q3 were white collar workers. From a revenue perspective, in the first quarter, all color revenue exceeded 40% of our total revenue for the first half.

White collar recruitment demand has also accelerated at Chinese New Year compared to the same period last year. Looking into the specific subsectors, active job postings for software engineers increased by 10.9% from January to April compared to 2025. This is consistent with the recent observations from our U.S. peers. Referring to the public data, their active software development job postings in the United States grew by 9.1% year-on-year from January to April 2026, we are 2 percentage points higher than their numbers. On our platform, we have not seen the kind of alarming large-scale reduction in program positions that some have feared. At the same time, revenue from AI-related roles on our platform has grown by over 100%.

Simply put, development of AI has brought us more revenue or we have not yet seen a large decline in job portals. Among other industries, manufacturing, electronics, telecommunications, semiconductors, transportation and logistics, urban services and various professional services led in year-on-year growth on our platform. For large enterprises, their recruitment demand, we saw a notably recovering trend during this year's spring recruitment season. In the first quarter, companies with 1,000 to less than 10,000 employees recorded the fastest growing year-on-year revenue growth, followed by those with 500 to less than 1,000 employees. This average number of job postings users also increased modestly.

If we compare it to the last quarter, back then, we shared that the strongest growth in hiring demand was coming from small micro enterprises. This quarter, however, if we compare it to last quarter, Back then, we shared that the strongest growth in hiring demand was coming from small and micro enterprises. In this quarter, however, large enterprises are delivering our sites revenue growth year-on-year. That concludes the recent trend on enterprise users and job seekers on our platform. And this, we will discuss 2 views and 4 strategic pillars on AI that we all are concerned. Since the ChatGPT 4.0 launched in March 2023, this AI paradigm has given us 38 transformative monthers.

Meanwhile, recent government disclosure of unidentified aerial phenomenon have put our generation in unprecedented territory. Our perspectives are broadening. Our convictions are being reshaped. Civilization is facing new challenges, which is unavoidable. Many things that once were familiar are now becoming invest, including how we think about our companies and how you think about the investment and competition. . As one of the leaders in the worldwide and Chinese recruitment industry and as an entrepreneur myself, I have spent the past 3 years navigating between 2 main sites, honing that new technologies could solve major problems while at the same time, worrying about technology potential disruptive impact.

As informed, yet hopeful in continuously exploring all within the fall of my responsibilities. Our shareholders and employees have also gone through ups and downs concerned at all times excited as others, sometimes they have been with us on sometimes together, we have all been on quite a roller coaster ride. Looking back on the past 3 years, we believe it is time for the company to provide a progress report to our shareholders, the public and our employees. This will be organized around 2 key observations and 4 main strategies. Our first observation is that to date for the company's business model and industry position, the opportunities brought by AI technology have outweighed.

First, based on reliable public data, credible data released by listed companies and our own channel data would have concluded that over the past 3 years, the company's market-leading position has been further strengthened. [indiscernible] have continued to increase, and we have maintained steady growth strong by a challenging environment. Second, as we know, lower token costs have accelerated the proliferation of AI application in both our internal operations and user services. In the past quarter, stability for our platform -- the ability for over 10 million of users on our platform to be able to access to AI services has been made possible by this reduction in cost.

Third, extensive exploration in large model pretraining and application has accelerated growth of our young employees, including their sense of pride and standing with the company. the more widely AI technology are used, the more convincingly they solve real problems the faster young talent will rise and smoother the process of rejuvenation of our leadership team will become. In the long term, this helps slow down the corporate entropy. The growth of leaders within our organization is a core, a result of individual aspirations and progress aligning with the company's shared vision. As young talent essentially meet young people can more quickly gain recognition from the organization's shared systems and standards.

This also explains why in every wave of technological and cognitive revolution, young people tend to emerge as leaders. . Add to that, those technological oriented companies were enjoying the rise of young people and the reduce of corporate entropes. Our second observation is that to date, either enterprise type or job seekers stand-alone agents have been capable of challenging the company's business current model. On the contrary, once agents are embedded with our double-sided network ecosystem, the company's accumulated user base and data to play a positive and constructive role. Recruitment and job seeking is always a multiple people to multiple people game.

Weather a labor or contractor should be signed or not or whether every day the [indiscernible] ultimately comes down to a management game between 2 large groups of people. The double-sided network that has been built for over the past 12 years and our understanding on users for the past 12 years, has always been designed to reflect the real dynamics of job seeking and recruitment in [indiscernible]. In essence, [indiscernible] agent, AI agents into our double-sided network serves as a driving force that enhanced information collection, processing and dissemination. Looking at our first quarter data. First, the application of AI agents has improved the time and efficiency from an initial that successful mutual consent conversion rate by 50%.

Second, the large-scale application of AI may enable the user retention, which is its highest level since the pandemic in 2020. Third, the average per enterprise user achievement increased by a double-digit percentage. Overall study in data and series told us that AI is our friend instead of the enemy. Now let me walk you through our 4 strategic considerations of AI. First, investing in AI to advance the cross business model. We firmly believe that in the recruitment industry, the important thing is that we could deliver the onboarding and replacement of -- placement of candidates for enterprise users.

No matter we do survey or not to do the survey, every enterprise user is willing to pay for the delivering of candidates instead of the traffic exploration or the click on candidates. We firmly believe that within the sort of the AI technology and result oriented business model is achievable on our platform. It is a very important part of our company, and we will continue to allocate resources to this effort. And while we're protecting the experience of the high-end job seekers, we are also open to leverage new technologies and new operating systems to collaborate with the external companies that specialize in the closed loop recruiters. I will share 3 data view.

First, within the company's in-house accounting team for consultants who recently used AI, 20% of the candidate recommendations they deliver already come from AI-drive operations. Second, our another post-pilot project, the combined productivity of human plus agents increased by 4 times in the first quarter, already exceeding the average productivity level of accountants in the industry. Third, for the [indiscernible] agent campus recruitment service, the company offers externally revenue grew by more than 50% year-on-year in the first quarter. Therefore, the AI-powered closed loop service is one of our core strategy. Second, we are also maintaining a proportion of our resources in AI science, currently focused primarily on the training and development of small models.

There are 5 reasons for this. First, small models are less expensive for us to use internally. Second, continuous in-house R&D helps us enhance the business accountability and enable the development of long-term technical capabilities tailored to vertical recruitment narrows. Third, small models are increasingly gaining attention across the industry. which helps ensure a sense of pride and recognition for our science team. Fourth, our in-house model has also been actively applied to our search and recommendation functions demonstrating advantages in both efficiency and [indiscernible] compared to large models. Last. under the paradigm, the large models are too costly for us to see. Our third strategy on AI stack, we will continue to invest heavily in AI applications.

Our primary evaluation criteria is that how AI helps our double-sided job seeking and the recruitment network ecosystem. According to the investigation for the past 12 months, we have formed some -- we have formed some logical and common sense for these. And we believe that we will treat AI technology as value-added tool for identifying and solving problems. Regarding the reward and bonus -- regarding the rewarding bonus on the related areas, we -- the teams that use AI to discover and resolve issues will be generally rewarded by us. So far, we believe that our exploration and investigation -- investments in AI will be based on our double-sided ecosystem, theoretical framework. .

Our fourth strategy is that we believe that AI driven revenue growth is a natural process and the natural results. As AI technology improves platform efficiency, it will lead to a higher user achievement better satisfaction and stronger brand reputation among users. This in turn will drive sustained revenue growth. We see this as a smoother, lower risk and more sustainable cost. Investors who are familiar with us understand that we are very original self-developed model, which we don't sell advertisement. We don't sell click. Our business model is based on production of our double-sided network ecosystem. So we believe that essentially to undergoing this current AI model is already fully verified this model and very functional [indiscernible].

So whether to grow by 50% for this year or 15% for the next 5 years, we chose the latter, and we believe the combination of our technology and our organization [indiscernible]. So after 3 years of exploration, those 2 points and 4 strategies we just talked about it actually has been fully verified. It's not that our product as we have been doing that for a long time.

So for the investors who care about us, for the [indiscernible] to us and our internal employees, I want to say that the strategies we just discussed is based on our real exploration and our employees who work on the front line of our AI development and all the team leaders of our core AI teams have all contributed to the points I just discussed. Finally, on shareholder returns, we have remained fully committed to delivering on our shareholder return promises. Since the start of this year, we have repurchased over $200 million in shares or around 3% of our total outstanding shares. In aggregate, since 2022, we have bought about close to 10% of our total shares.

As a reminder, last quarter, we announced that a shareholder return plan committing that over the next 3 years, the annual amount we allocate to buybacks and dividends will be no less than 50% of the prior year's adjusted net income, and we are holding through on that commitment as we all see. . With that, I will now turn to our Deputy CFO, Wenbei Wang to review our financials. Thank you.

Wenbei Wang: Thanks, Jonathan. Now let me conclude through the details of our financial results for the first quarter. So we are delighted to report a solid start to this year characterized by continued expansion in our user base and engagement alongside sustained revenue growth. Despite a later Chinese New Year, which meant a shorter window of the peak recruitment season within this quarter, our revenue reached RMB 2.1 billion, up 8% year-on-year. We are witnessing accelerated revenue as well as cash traction growth post Chinese New Year supported by robust [indiscernible].

Our paid enterprise customers grew by 11% year-on-year to RMB 7.1 million in the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2026, primarily driven by the growth of enterprise users paying ratio among active enterprises increased on a sequential basis. Growth from key accounts and large size continues showed better trends compared to the same period last year, a more balanced structure. As a result, ARPU in the first quarter increased 2% year-on-year. Moving to the cost side. Our total operating cost and expenses decreased by 3% year-on-year to RMB 1.4 billion this quarter. Total share-based compensation expenses dropped by 24% year-on-year and 11% quarter-on-quarter to RMB 181 million.

As percentage of revenue-wise, share-based compensation accounted for 9.2% of total revenue for this quarter went down by 3.9 percentage points year-on-year and 1.1 percentage points usually. We expect SC expenses as a percentage of revenue to stay around 9% in. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, our adjusted operating costs and expenses were RMB 1.3 billion, remaining relatively stable year-on-year. Our adjusted operating income increased RMB 815 million, up 18% year-on-year, representing an adjusted operating margin of 39.4%. up by 3.4 percentage points year-on-year. Despite first quarter normally having the lowest margin in the full year in seasonality.

We believe there remains substantial room for further margin improvement in our core business segment. due to the robust operating leverage of our business model. But considering our continued investment in AI, remarkable spending for long-term brand commissions and investment in new businesses along with the corresponding margin dilution for those new businesses, we can still expect a modest margin expansion for the coming years. Looking into each segment, cost of revenue decreased by 4% to RMB 298 million this quarter. This decrease was primarily due to lower employee-related expenses resulting from enhanced operating efficiency and partially offset by higher [indiscernible] bandwidth cost. As a result, our gross margin went up by 1.8 percentage points to 85.6 percentage.

Additionally, the induction of store commission fees starting in March also contributed to gross margin improvement. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 2% year-on-year to RMB 502 million this quarter. primarily due to increase in advertising and marketing expenses, which partially offset by decrease in sales employee-related compensations as a result of our continued endeavor to improve sales efficiency. R&D expenses were RMB 424 million this quarter, remaining relatively stable year-on-year. Excluding SBC expenses, our adjusted R&D expenses increased by 5% year-on-year to RMB 351 million, primarily due to higher cost service fees and seller depreciation expenses relating to AI infrastructure.

Our G&A expenses decreased by 15% year-on-year to RMB 282 million this quarter, primarily driven by lower share-based compensation expenses. Our interest and investment income was RMB 781 million in the quarter, up 422% year-on-year. This increase was primarily driven by investment income of RMB 640 million arising from fair value changes of one of our invested companies, which went public in January 2026. Income tax expenses were RMB 299 million this quarter, up 293% year-on-year.

This increase was also primarily due to the tax impact from the aforementioned investment income of RMB 154 million as well as the provision of RMB 60 million top-up tax under the Pillar 2 tax release and the recording tax of RMB 8 million as well as higher income from operations. Our net income reached RMB 1.1 billion this quarter. Excluding share-based compensations, net gains from the aforementioned investment, our adjusted net income increased by 12% to RMB 856 million. Net margin improved to 54.4%, while adjusted net margin increased to 41.4%, up 1.7 percentage points year-on-year. Net cash provided by operating activities reached RMB 1.2 billion this quarter, up 19% year-on-year.

Our cash position, including cash, cash equivalent, short-term deposits and short-term investment by excluding investment in securities, stood at RMB 19.8 billion as of March 31, 2026. Our strong cash position and cash generating capability will support us to continue to deliver our commitment in shareholder returns. As Jonathan just mentioned, we have purchased a total of over USD 200 million worth of shares, representing approximately 3% of our total outstanding shares. We will continue to maintain substantial shareholder efforts. including share buyback and dividends based on specific market and operating conditions. And now for our business outlook.

For the second quarter of 2026, we expect our total revenues to be between RMB 2.38 billion and RMB 2.42 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13.2% to 15.1%. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we would like to take the questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will now proceed to take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Wei Xiong of UBS.

Wei Xiong: [Interpreted] I have 2 questions. So first, you mentioned about the business impact from a delayed Chinese New Year this year. May I ask if we only consider the days in the first quarter post CNY as well as the second quarter based on our expectation, do we see an improvement in the year growth rate and which industries or job posting have seen more notable improvement. And second, regarding the AI disruption, have we seen any impact on the job posting on our platform considering we already have a very mature white collar business, but the AI disruption to blue collar is theoretically smaller, will we accelerate blue-collar business going forward.

And also regarding the AI-powered closed-loop services could management give an update on the latest progress as well as the feedback from industry participants such as agencies and [indiscernible]?

Peng Zhao: Second question first about the closed loop service. Actually, we talked a lot about opinions and will give you several numbers. The first number is among all of our different business in the first quarter, actually, the AI-supported closed loop service is the fastest among different experimental groups. Some have been -- have a growth rate over 100%, some have 50%. But yes, the overall revenue scale is relatively small. So for the first quarter, our AI facilitated closed loop service have total revenue line of around RMB 50 million. And about your first question regarding the poor recruitment season. also can support this data. So our average month actives for the first quarter is around 60 million.

However, the MAU for March is over 70 million and MAU for April also close to the number of March. So I think that's a very representative number that the overall industry have been rapidly robust after premium season. And on promise is that the ratio between supply and demand, which is enterprise users and recruiters is healthy. So it's quite easy to understand is a very good recruitment season. The overall newly added reporting number increased by 10% year-on-year. And even to be more practical. So for the first half and overall this year, I think the growth rate of our cash correction will be accelerating compared to last year.

So for the full year, we are looking at, at least a double-digit number of year-on-year growth. And about another question -- or most people have been quite concerned about, which is what kind of jobs will be impacted by the AI or even replaced by AI, so to be honest, our dear investors and shareholders, I have been doing improved serious resources into this matter and want to make our own conclusion a very serious and scientific conclusion. And once we have our report, we will open to the public. But till today, our observation is that the software development engineer hasn't experienced any decline to positive on the contrary the active number of job postings increased by 10.9%.

So I will continue to welcome this topic and our team want to publish some papers but I want to take more time. So just [indiscernible], 2 quarters of time, and I'll maybe give you a more clear answer to this question. . That's some of our views.

Operator: We would now take our next question from the line of Eddy Wang of Morgan Stanley.

Eddy Wang: [Interpreted] My question is also related to AI. We have noticed that recruit our offering peer company mentioned in its latest earnings that AI has greatly contributed to the increase of the revenue, especially the average revenue per job. Can [indiscernible] enhance the revenue for job listing with the help of AI as well? And how much can be enhanced and how can this be achieved? And a follow-up question is that in the Chinese recruitment market, could there be recruitment platform with lower matching efficiency than ours that might benefit more from AI. How this company [indiscernible] change in the future industry competition patterns.

Peng Zhao: [Interpreted] And thank you for your question. We also noticed that our predecessor who established in 1962 have been making some statements like you said, and we are quite happy for the progress that they have got. From our perspective, so the Chinese domestic market is on current main focus area and how it can help us to achieve higher revenue growth, I think I will divide it by throughput. So in the order of considering this, I think the first thing, we receive still to first provide better value and then we higher price so that the first part.

And second is, in China domestic market, there are over 40 million enterprises, which more than half of them have never used online services before. So I think there is a process that from a rural area, enrollment to a fully cultivated markets. So the third thing is that I have actually talked a lot in our industry that are very basic contradictory or controversies that whether you are selling exposure to the culture or onboarding. So from the exposure to onboarding, they are very, very long term, and there are many, many different steps. So we are all experiencing from selling 1 drug exposure to selling 1 [indiscernible].

And even after the testing period is becoming a very good employees or even get promotions. So what are we providing to our customers. I think everybody is going through the exploration process. So in model 3 points I just discussed, with all help where currently are we standing. I think without a doubt, that let us to help with all those people who haven't used the online common service in China to use their digitalized and network data to better help us to serve our clients, and that's the first thing we need to do. And now we are using to support our cost services.

So from the earliest online recruitment service in 1997 from selling advertisement exposure to some in the future with help of technology, we can tell you I can help you to deliver ongoing and you can pay me based on that. That's what we have been insisting. And I also want to remind you with a number that our paid enterprise -- number of paid enterprise customers is over 7.1 million by end of this quarter. So grew by 10.9% year-on-year and 4.4% quarter-on-quarter.

Why I want to talk about this number is because this 10% increase not only representing a progress of our commercialization but also means for us we are helping more and more users in China who have not used online services for to go step by step to a more civilized way for hiring and job seeking. So now we are talking about price hike because for all the 7.1 million people, how many they are paying us by each user. Our revenue is around RMB 8 billion per year. So on average, every paying customer is paying us around [indiscernible]. So I think everybody can see the huge potential in here for hire price.

But between more paying customers, for example, we have 7.1 million today. In the future, we can have 9.1 -- or 19 million paying customers. So I choose to grow our number of paying customers first. And by that time, I think we still have huge potential to further increase our price. And my idea about growing paying users or the price might change for one day, and I will communicate with people for concerned as timely about changes. And then about whether there are potential for the AI [indiscernible] our peers who have maybe weaker technology than us to maybe exceeding us. I think their ability exactly indexed.

But based on my experience, when I have experiencing from maybe a little bit concerned about AI and more curious and less concerned, and now we have our own views and strategies and we are actually more practical people and solving questions kind. So today, I'm not worried that in -- our peers in China's recruitment industry who have really weaker matching efficiency maybe one day to exceeding us or disrupt as I'm more than worried and it won't be quite said. And that's our answer to the question. Operator, please proceed to our last question.

Operator: Our final question today comes from Timothy Zhao of Goldman Sachs.

Timothy Zhao: My first question is regarding your operating expense interest regarding the work on marketing expenses and R&D expenses [indiscernible] AI. Just wondering if you can share some more detailed color on what is your outlook for this year's overall profit margin. And also, I note that you have been increasing your buyback from the public market. Just wondering if there's any updates on your shareholder return plans for this year and in the midterm? . And secondly is regarding your overseas expansion. We note that after there has been growing very rapidly in the Hong Kong market.

Just wondering if you can share us some color on the latest user base and monetization update in Hong Kong and any investments that you have made in Hong Kong in the first quarter? And do you have any other plan to further expand into new overseas markets?

Peng Zhao: [Interpreted] Thank you for your question. So the World Cup is always a very good thing which we can communicate with a lot of viewers during very short time, whether how much we will [indiscernible]. So the advantage for this year is that there are more games and a longer period of the World Cup events but the disadvantage is also quite clear because the time difference. So we are still under communication and looking at the final RI, I will communicate once we have our results. Secondly, about the AI, we will continue to met.

But this year, the one major change you have all witnessed that for some comps and some very critical jobs the companies can offer very high selling for top tenants. So we should pay and find appropriate person to maintain our AI-related development capabilities. And another one is on the computing power, including rental service and referring cost. So we are also investing on that maybe further expanding our expenses. So for our margin perspective, I will call this is not quite high at 50%, but considering all those investments and broadcast sponsorship and the new business.

So I think it's just a similar expectation for us from the beginning of this year, we are expecting a smaller increase in our adjusted operating margin. And about shareholder returns and buyback, I want to reemphasize that year-to-date, we have spent more than USD 200 million to bought over 3% of the total shares. If you're looking at the quarterly payout ratio is already exceeding what we spent in the first. And there are 2 reasons we are doing this. First is actually our valuation is quite good. So it's very efficient to spend money. And also, we want to provide more confidence.

We have confidence in our company, and we want to spread that -- share that view with all those employees and investors who have been starting with us, and we will continue to do that. Thank you for asking about offer today. And actually, we did develop quite well in Hong Kong. Looking at the model side, which we have more advantages. So we have -- now currently, our daily active numbers is approximately 60,000 daily active users. So you can't understand that this way. So for the 3 million Hong Kong workers the 1 out of 50 are using it every day.

So actually, we are providing our enterprise customers a large amount of active effective suppliers who can communicate today. So that's why the recruiters are using very efficient and new model to communicate with job seekers. So where people can get over today. So that's our kind of situation. And there are 2 reasons we are developing our Hong Kong business First is the -- whether our business model based on double-side ecosystems can get verified in the market quite clear close to the mainline and another more reason, when we are developing internationally, we want to cultivate a very important core team for us to go further.

So that's -- our priority revenue is not our current priority, and we are investing in a reasonable amount. I have been communicating with our employees and our investors that before and we still have done today. And we have confidence that we can turn over today to Hong Kong local most satisfied job seeking recruitment platform for both job seekers and recruiters that however has not changed for May, and we will continue to invest and continue to make more efforts and hope you can keep following on us. And that's all of our answers to the questions today.

Operator: Due to time constraints, that concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I'll turn the conference back to Laura for any additional or closing remarks.

Unknown Executive: Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.