Company Participants
Juliet Yang - Executive Director-Investor Relations
杨朱丽 - 执行董事-投资者关系
Xin Fan - Chief Financial Officer
首席财务官
Rui Chen - Chairman of the Board & CEO
陈瑞 - 董事长兼首席执行官
Carly Lee - Vice Chairwoman and Chief Operating Officer
Carly Lee - 副主席兼首席运营官
Conference Call Participants
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Bilibili's 2023 Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
您好，并欢迎参加哔哩哔哩2023年第四季度和财年财务业绩及业务更新电话会议。今天的会议正在录音。现在，我想将会议交给投资者关系执行董事杨朱丽，请开始。
Juliet Yang
Juliet Yang
Thank you, operator. During this call, we'll discuss business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially from those mentioned in today's news release and in this discussion due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The non-GAAP financial measures we provide are for comparison purpose only. Definition of these measures and a reconciliation table are available in the news release we issued earlier today.
谢谢，操作员。在这通话中，我们将讨论业务前景并发表前瞻性声明。这些评论基于我们今天的预测和期望。实际事件或结果可能会与今天的新闻发布以及本次讨论中提到的有所不同，原因是存在许多风险和不确定因素，包括在我们最近提交给美国证券交易委员会和香港证券交易所的文件中提到的那些。我们提供的非依据通用会计准则的财务指标仅用于比较目的。关于这些指标的定义以及对照表可以在我们今天早些时候发布的新闻稿中找到。
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 the Bilibili IR website at ir.bilibili.com.
作为提醒，此次会议正在录音。此外，投资者演示和此次电话会议的网络重播将在哔哩哔哩IR网站ir.bilibili.com上提供。
Joining us today from Bilibili's senior management are Mr. Rui Chen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Ms. Carly Lee, Vice Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer; and Mr. Xin Fan, Chief Financial Officer.
今天加入我们的是哔哩哔哩的高级管理人员，包括董事长兼首席执行官陈瑞先生、副董事长兼首席运营官Carly Lee女士以及首席财务官范鑫先生。
And I will now turn the call over to Mr. Fan, who will read the prepared remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen.
现在我将把电话交给范先生，他将代表陈先生阅读准备好的发言稿。
Xin Fan
Xin Fan
Thank you, Juliet, and thank you, everyone, for participating in our 2023 year-end conference call to discuss our financial and operating results. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen.
感谢你们参加我们2023年年底电话会议，讨论我们的财务和运营成果。我很高兴代表陈先生发表今天的开场词。
In 2023, we navigated a landscape of challenges and opportunities and achieved a number of important milestones on community growth, commercialization efficiency improvement, margin expansion and loss cutting. Let's review these achievements in more detail.
在2023年，我们在挑战与机遇的大环境中航行，取得了在社区增长、商业化效率改进、利润扩张和减损方面的一系列重要里程碑。让我们更详细地回顾这些成就。
To begin with, we exited the year with over 100 million BAUs, 336 million MAUs and other healthy community metrics across the board. Daily user time spend remained robust at over 95 minutes on average in the fourth quarter. We continue to emphasize and dedicate resources to reinforce our content ecosystem, support our creators and foster an inspiring community.
首先，我们在年末拥有超过1亿BAU、3.36亿MAU和其他健康的社区指标。第四季度用户日均使用时间仍然坚挺，平均超过95分钟。我们继续强调并投入资源来加强我们的内容生态系统，支持我们的创作者，并营造一个激励人心的社区。
In 2023, over 3 million content creators earned income on our platform, up 30% year-over-year. Further enabling talented content creators to expand their fan base and make money will be one of our most important tasks for 2024. Another highlight for the year was our progress in improving our commercialization efficiency. We stepped up our efforts to incorporate advertising and VAS business in a way that native to our content ecosystem.
在2023年，有超过3百万内容创作者在我们的平台上赚取了收入，同比增长30%。进一步帮助有才华的内容创作者扩大粉丝群并赚钱将是我们2024年最重要的任务之一。年度亮点之一是我们在提高商业化效率方面取得的进展。我们加大了力度，通过一种符合我们内容生态系统的方式，将广告和增值服务业务纳入其中。
Driven by strong performance-based ads, our ad revenue grew by 28% in the fourth quarter and 27% for the full year. VAS revenues grew by 22% in the fourth quarter and 14% for the full year or on year-over-year basis. With this growth, our total revenues for the full year came in at RMB 22.5 billion, among which as revenue made a higher contribution, rising from 23% in 2022 to 28% in 2023.
由于业绩强劲的广告推动，我们的广告收入在第四季度增长了28％，全年增长了27％。第四季度增长了22％的增值服务收入，全年增长了14％或按年计算。随着这种增长，我们全年总收入达到了225亿元人民币，其中广告收入作出了更高的贡献，从2022年的23％增长到2023年的28％。
Increased revenue contribution from our high-margin advertising business and effective cost control drove our gross profit up by 33% year-over-year, and our gross profit margin reached 26.1% in the fourth quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of margin improvement.
我们高毛利广告业务贡献的收入增加以及有效的成本控制推动我们的毛利润同比增长了33％，第四季度我们的毛利率达到了26.1％，标志着连续第六个季度的毛利率改善。
For the full year, our gross profit grew by 41%, and our gross profit margin increased to 24.2% from 17.6% in 2022. Consequently, we significantly narrowed our adjusted net loss by 58% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and by 49% for the full year. Notably, we generated RMB 640 million in positive operating cash flow in the fourth quarter, and our full year operating cash flow also turned positive in 2023. This cash place us a solid footing to reach our profitability growth.
在整个年度，我们的毛利润增长了41％，毛利率从2022年的17.6％上升到24.2％。因此，我们调整后的净亏损在第四季度同比减少了58％，整个年度减少了49％。值得注意的是，我们第四季度产生了6.4亿人民币的正向经营现金流，我们的整个年度经营现金流也在2023年实现了正值。这些现金让我们有了坚实的基础来实现盈利增长。
2023 has shown the effectiveness of our strategy and provided a solid foundation for our success in 2024. As we approach profitability, we are keeping our fundamental goal in mind to create value for our users. We do this by expanding our content offerings, supporting our creator and fostering a vibrant and growing community that people love. Our industry is still benefiting from the wave of visualization with the fast-evolving generative AI and a tailwind. This leaves us with a long runway for growth.
2023年展示了我们战略的有效性，并为我们在2024年取得成功奠定了坚实基础。在我们接近盈利的同时，我们牢记我们的基本目标是为用户创造价值。我们通过扩大我们的内容提供，支持我们的创作者，并培育一个充满活力且不断壮大的社区来实现这一目标，令人喜爱。我们的行业仍然受益于可视化浪潮，随着快速发展的生成式人工智能和顺风势，使我们有着长期增长的机会。
We remain confident that our virtuous growth cycle of user expansion and the commercial capabilities will create increasing value for our users, creators and shareholders. With that overview, I'd like to discuss our core pillars of content, community and commercialization in more detail, beginning with content and community.
我们仍然对我们的用户扩张及商业能力的良性增长周期保持信心，相信这将为我们的用户、创作者和股东创造更多价值。在这一概述的基础上，我想更详细地讨论我们在内容、社区和商业化方面的核心支柱，首先从内容和社区开始。
An ever-growing content ecosystem is vital for our community's health and vibrancy. For the fourth quarter, daily active content creators grew by 16% and the monthly new content submission rose by 31%, both year-over-year, as we continue to facilitate connections between high-quality content and creators with VAS. Content creators with over 10,000 followers were up 30% year-over-year in the fourth quarter.
一个不断增长的内容生态系统对我们社区的健康和活力至关重要。我们在第四季度，每日活跃内容创作者增长了16％，每月新内容提交量同比增长了31％。在促进高质量内容创作者与VAS之间的连接的过程中，第四季度拥有超过10,000名粉丝的内容创作者同比增长了30％。
In January 2024, we honored top 100 content creators, our sixth and new Bilibili Power Up 2023 Award ceremony to recognize their creations and contributions to our community, among which 39 content creators received the award for the first time. These top 100 content creators excelled on our platform, successfully accumulating a total of over 400 million followers.
在2024年1月，我们举办了第六届全新的哔哩哔哩2023B站之星年度盛典，表彰了前100名内容创作者，以认可他们为社区做出的创作和贡献。其中39名内容创作者首次获奖。这些顶尖100名内容创作者在我们的平台上表现突出，成功积累了超过4亿的关注者。
With the thriving content ecosystem, Bilibili has become a favorite platform across different age groups and genders. In the fourth quarter, the average age of our active user base was 24. As our existing users gradually mature, their interest involved and consumption increases. In 2023, baby and maternity, automotive, traveling, fashion and clothing categories demonstrated the highest growth in the video views. Each of these categories carry significant commercial value.
随着蓬勃发展的内容生态系统，B站已经成为不同年龄群体和性别喜爱的平台。在第四季度，我们的活跃用户基数的平均年龄为24岁。随着我们现有用户逐渐成熟，他们的兴趣和消费也在增加。在2023年，婴儿和孕妇、汽车、旅行、时尚和服装类别在视频观看量方面表现出最高的增长。这些每个类别都具有巨大的商业价值。
The boundary between interest base and commercial content has also blurred. In 2023, the number of commercial-related content with over 1 million video views more than doubled year-over-year. Meanwhile, over 3 million content creators made money through our various channels in 2023, among which the number of content creators who earned income via video and live commerce was up 133% year-over-year.
兴趣和商业内容之间的界限也变得模糊起来。2023年，在拥有超过100万视频观看次数的商业相关内容数量同比增长了一倍以上。同时，2023年有超过300万内容创作者通过我们的各种渠道赚到了钱，其中通过视频和直播商业赚取收入的内容创作者数量同比增长了133%。
With more content creators and a better content ecosystem, our users remain highly engaged and the community continues to survive. For the full-year 2023, our average daily video views increased by 25% year-over-year to 4.3 billion. Our users spent 97 minutes daily on the platform during the same period. Monthly average interactions also grew by 14% year-over-year to over 15 billion in 2023. By the end of 2023, we had 230 million official members, 18% more than in the prior year, and the 12-month retention rate remains strong at around 80%.
随着越来越多的内容创作者和更好的内容生态系统，我们的用户保持高度参与，社区持续发展壮大。在2023年全年，我们的平均每日视频浏览量同比增长25％，达到43亿次。在同一时期，我们的用户每日在平台上花费97分钟。月均互动次数也同比增长14％，在2023年超过150亿次。到2023年年底，我们有2.3亿官方会员，比前一年增加18％，而12个月的留存率保持在80％左右。
Additionally, we closed the year with our fifth New Year's Eve Gala, the most beautiful night of 2023, emerging as a youth's must watch online New Year celebration. The event garnered 100 million playbacks within 24 hours and received the most industry sponsored participation ever in its history.
此外，我们以第五届新年晚会闭幕，这是2023年最美好的一夜，被视为年轻人必看的在线新年庆祝活动。这场活动在24小时内获得了1亿次的回放，并收到了有史以来参与行业赞助最多的关注。
Lastly, I'd like to talk about commercialization and dive into each of our business lines. Our surviving interactive community is the cornerstone of our commercialization model. In the fourth quarter, our VAS revenue were up 22% year-over-year to RMB 2.9 billion and up 14% to RMB 9.9 billion for the full year. These increases were primarily driven by robust growth in our live broadcasting revenues.
最后，我想谈一下商业化，并深入了解我们每个业务线。我们的互动社区是我们商业化模型的基石。在第四季度，我们的增值服务收入同比增长22％，达到29亿元人民币，全年增长14％，达到99亿元人民币。这些增长主要是由我们直播收入的强劲增长推动的。
Our live broadcasting universe continue to be more diverse as we convert more host talents from our video content creator pool. In 2024, we will continue to integrate live broadcasting into our video ecosystem. By introducing more high quality hosts and enhancing various tools and recommendation algorithms, we aim to convert more paying users on our platform. At the same time, our featured live broadcasting content and products, like VTuber, a celebration system, will continue to elevate payment activities and offer more monetization opportunity for us.
我们的直播广播宇宙将继续变得更加多样化，因为我们从视频内容创作者库中转化更多主持人才能。到2024年，我们将继续将直播广播整合到我们的视频生态系统中。通过引入更多高质量的主持人，并增强各种工具和推荐算法，我们的目标是在我们的平台上转化更多付费用户。与此同时，我们的特色直播广播内容和产品，如VTuber、庆祝系统，将继续提升付款活动，并为我们提供更多的变现机会。
In terms of memberships. By the end of 2023, we had 21.9 million premium members. Our members continue to demonstrate high brand loyalty and trust with over 80% subscribing annual or auto renew packages. Additionally, users continue to exert increasing spending power on other featured products and experiences.
在会员方面。 到2023年底，我们拥有2190万付费会员。 我们的会员继续展现高度的品牌忠诚度和信任，超过80%的人订阅了年度或自动续订套餐。 另外，用户继续在其他推荐产品和体验上展现出越来越强大的消费力。
Turning to our advertising business. We made some exciting progress. In 2023, our total advertising revenues increased by 28% to RMB 1.9 billion for the fourth quarter and were up by 27% to RMB 6.4 billion for the full year, both on a year-over-year basis. Robust revenue growth in our performance-based ads was the most significant contributor, increasing over 60% year-over-year for the quarter and over 50% for the full year.
我们谈一下我们的广告业务。我们取得了一些令人兴奋的进展。2023年，我们的广告总收入同比增长28%，第四季度达到19亿元人民币，并同比增长27%，全年达到64亿元人民币。我们的表现广告收入实现了强劲增长，成为最主要的贡献者，第四季度同比增长超过60%，全年增长超过50%。
We also achieved positive year-on-year growth in brand and in native ad revenues throughout the year. We credit our solid ad revenue growth to our unique position at the most densely populated community of the young generation and our ability to connect with them in their own language. In the meantime, we continue to enhance our ad infrastructure including product optimization and algorithm improvement. This enables advertisers not only to improve their brand equity and influence user purchasing decisions, but also direct convert sales on Bilibili.
我们还在全年的品牌和原生广告收入方面实现了正增长。我们将坚实的广告收入增长归因于我们在年轻一代最密集的社区中的独特地位，以及我们与他们用他们自己的语言建立联系的能力。与此同时，我们继续增强我们的广告基础设施，包括产品优化和算法改进。这使广告客户不仅可以提高其品牌资产和影响用户购买决策，还可以直接在哔哩哔哩上转化销售。
In the fourth quarter, our top five advertising verticals were game, e-commerce, digital products and home appliance, automotive and skin care and cosmetics. Among these verticals, the e-commerce and game sectors stood out with impressive results.
在第四季度，我们的前五大广告垂直领域分别是游戏、电子商务、数字产品和家用电器、汽车以及护肤和化妆品。在这些垂直领域中，电子商务和游戏行业表现突出，取得了令人印象深刻的成绩。
Over the course of 2023, we deepened our collaboration with e-commerce advertisers. We further integrated direct sales conversion tools into our video and live commerce ad products. This enabled our users to seamlessly transition from viewing content to making relevant purchase, enhancing our ad conversion efficiency and the user experience. Meanwhile, our deeper data collaboration with key e-commerce platforms further improved accuracy and efficiency of our ad recommendation algorithms.
在2023年，我们加深了与电子商务广告客户的合作。我们将直接销售转化工具进一步整合到我们的视频和直播商业广告产品中。这使我们的用户可以从查看内容顺利过渡到进行相关购买，提升了我们的广告转化效率和用户体验。与此同时，我们与关键电子商务平台的更深层数据合作进一步改善了我们的广告推荐算法的准确性和效率。
In 2023, the number of users engaging in consumption-related behaviors increased by over 200% year-over-year. Meanwhile, we successfully gained more marketing budgets from key game developers during the fourth quarter as they launch new games and promoted the existing game updates.
在2023年，参与消费相关行为的用户数量同比增长超过200%。同时，我们在第四季度成功从重要的游戏开发商那里获得了更多的营销预算，因为他们发布了新游戏并推广了现有的游戏更新。
We maintained our position as an effective channel to convert gamers and must invest in community to view games IP, thanks to our integrated advertising strategy and extensive resources within our gaming ecosystem. While we are encouraged by the progress we made in our advertising business in 2023, we believe there is still great potential and ample room for growth.
我们保持了作为转化玩家有效渠道的地位，必须投资于社区以查看游戏知识产权，这要归功于我们的整合广告策略和我们在游戏生态系统内的丰富资源。虽然我们对我们在2023年取得的广告业务进展感到鼓舞，但我们相信仍然存在巨大的潜力和有充足的增长空间。
In 2024, we will further integrate ads with our content ecosystem in a more native, natural and seamless way. We will prioritize our resources to improve ads infrastructure, including upgrading and refining our ad products, further optimizing the accuracy and efficiency of ad algorithms. We will also actively explore generative AI for ad material creation supporting productivity for advertisers.
到2024年，我们将进一步将广告与我们的内容生态系统更加融合，使其更加本地化、自然和无缝。我们将优先配置资源来改善广告基础设施，包括升级和完善广告产品，进一步优化广告算法的准确性和效率。我们还将积极探索生成式人工智能用于广告内容的创作，支持广告商的生产效率。
Industry-wise, we'll continue to expand our shares in our leading games and e-commerce sectors and gain more presence in digital products and home appliance, skin care and cosmetics and automotive verticals.
在产业方面，我们将继续扩大在主导的游戏和电子商务领域的市场份额，并在数字产品、家用电器、护肤和化妆品以及汽车垂直领域获得更多影响力。
Turning to our game business. Total game revenues increased 2% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 1 billion in the fourth quarter, coming in at RMB 4 billion for the full year. Currently, three titles in our top line have been approved for release in the domestic market in the coming quarters. One Japanese card game have brand [indiscernible], one domestic SLG game [indiscernible], and other domestic card game, Artifactory [indiscernible]. In addition, we are able to create value for our broader game partners by increasing integrating our advertising products with our game distribution capabilities.
我们转向了游戏业务。游戏总收入在第四季度环比增长2%，达到人民币10亿，全年总计达到人民币40亿。目前，我们前三款游戏已获准在未来季度在国内市场发布。其中一款日本卡牌游戏品牌[不可辨识]，一款国内战略游戏[不可辨识]，另一款国内卡牌游戏《Artifactory》[不可辨识]。此外，我们通过将广告产品与游戏发布能力更好地整合，为更广泛的游戏合作伙伴创造价值。
As for our self-developed game, we stimulize our resources and adapt a more selective game development strategy in 2023. The refined strategy will enable us to reduce our R&D expenses in 2024 while keeping us lean and focused on top-quality projects.
至于我们自主开发的游戏，我们在2023年整合资源，采用更加选择性的游戏开发策略。这一优化策略将使我们能够在2024年降低研发成本，同时保持我们专注于高质量项目的精干状态。
Looking forward, our priorities in 2024 are consistent with 2023. We will further improve our commercialization capabilities by strengthening our technology infrastructure and improving our product offerings, particularly for our advertising and live broadcasting business. Company-wide, we aim to further improve our operation efficiency with a tight and targeted expense structure.
展望未来，我们在2024年的重点与2023年保持一致。我们将通过加强技术基础设施和改进产品提供，特别是针对我们的广告和直播业务，进一步提升我们的商业化能力。在公司范围内，我们旨在通过紧密而有针对性的费用结构进一步提高我们的运营效率。
Overall, we are dedicated to developing content ecosystem, enabling our content creators to earn more money and further expanding our user base. We believe these endeavors will lead us to reach our goal of profitability and set the stage for sustainable growth for many years ahead.
总的来说，我们致力于打造内容生态系统，让我们的内容创作者赚取更多的收入，并进一步扩大我们的用户群。我们相信这些努力将使我们达到盈利的目标，并为未来多年的可持续增长奠定基础。
This concludes Mr. Chen's remarks. I will now provide a brief overview of our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2023. In the interest of time, on today's call, I will be reviewing our fourth quarter highlights as Mr. Chen's remarks has touched on our full year results at a high level. We encourage you to refer to our press release issued earlier today for a closer look at our full year results.
陈先生的讲话到此结束。我将简要介绍我们2023年第四季度的财务业绩。出于时间考虑，在今天的电话会议上，我将回顾我们第四季度的亮点，因为陈先生的讲话已经触及了我们全年业绩的主要方面。我们鼓励您参考今天早些时候发布的新闻稿，以更仔细地了解我们的全年业绩。
Throughout 2023, our financial profile improved significantly alongside our community growth and ecosystem expansion. Of particular importance are the gains we made in our revenues, gross profit and the reduction in adjusted net loss, which we narrowed for the sixth consecutive quarter.
在2023年，随着我们社区的增长和生态系统的拓展，我们的财务状况显著改善。特别重要的是我们在收入、毛利润方面取得的增长，以及我们调整后的净亏损的缩减，这是我们连续第六个季度缩小。
Total net revenues for the fourth quarter was RMB 6.3 billion, up 3% year-over-year. Our total net revenues break down by the revenue stream for the fourth quarter was approximately 45% VAS, 30% advertising, 16% mobile games and 9% from our IP directives and other businesses. Our cost of revenues decreased by 4% year-over-year to RMB 4.7 billion in the fourth quarter, driving our gross profit to RMB 1.7 billion, up 33% year-over-year.
第四季度总净收入为 63 亿元人民币，同比增长 3%。我们第四季度的总净收入按收入来源的分布大约是：45% 的来自增值服务（VAS），30% 的来自广告，16% 的来自手机游戏，9% 的来自知识产权方向和其他业务。我们的成本减少了 4%，同比降至第四季度的 47 亿元人民币，推动我们的毛利润达到 17 亿元人民币，同比增长 33%。
Our gross profit margin exceed 26% in the fourth quarter, up from 20% in the same period last year. We expect our gross profit margin to continue to improve in 2024. Our total operating expenses were down 17% year-over-year to RMB 3 billion in the fourth quarter. We cut our sales and marketing expenses by 11% year-over-year to RMB 1.1 billion.
我们第四季度的毛利率超过26％，较去年同期的20％有所提高。预计我们的毛利率在2024年将继续改善。我们第四季度的总营运费用同比下降17％，为30亿元人民币。我们将销售和市场营销费用同比削减11％，降至11亿元人民币。