Operator
各位好,欢迎参加哔哩哔哩2021年第四季度及全年财务业绩与业务更新电话会议。今天的会议正在录音。现在,我将会议转交给投资者关系执行总监Juliet Yang。请开始。
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Bilibili 2021 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results and Business Update 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.
Juliet Yang
谢谢主持人。在本次电话会议中,我们将讨论业务展望并做出前瞻性陈述。这些评论基于我们截至今日的预测和预期。由于多种风险和不确定因素,包括我们在最近向美国证券交易委员会和香港交易所提交的文件中提到的那些,实际事件或结果可能与今天新闻稿和本次讨论中提到的内容存在重大差异。我们提供的非公认会计准则财务指标仅用于比较目的。这些指标的定义和调节表可在我们今天早些时候发布的新闻稿中找到。提醒一下,本次会议正在录音。此外,投资者演示文稿和本次电话会议的网播回放将在哔哩哔哩投资者关系网站ir.bilibili.com上提供。今天参加我们会议的哔哩哔哩高级管理层包括:董事会主席兼首席执行官陈睿先生;董事会副主席兼首席运营官李旎女士;以及首席财务官樊欣先生。现在我将电话转交给樊先生,他将代表陈先生宣读准备好的讲话。
Juliet Yang
Thank you, operator. During this call, we'll discuss our 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 today's news release we 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 the Bilibili IR website at ir.bilibili.com. Joining us today from Bilibili Senior management are Mr. Rui Chen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Ms. Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer; and Mr. Xin Fan, Chief Financial Officer. And I will now turn the call over to Mr. Fan, who will read the prepared remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen.
Xin Fan
翻译中...
Xin Fan
Thank you, Juliet, and thank you, everyone, for participating in our 2020 first quarter results conference call. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen. Growth remained the key word for Bilibili throughout the year of 2021. In the fourth quarter, our MAUs rose to 272 million and mobile MAUs rose to 252 million, representing a 35% increase year-over-year, making us one of the largest growth companies in China's Internet space. At the same time, average daily time spent on our platform rose to 82 million with DAUs reaching 72 million in Q4, 34% more than the same period in 2020. In fact, we have more than doubled our MAUs in the past three years, far outpacing the industry growth rate, and this is no small feat. Importantly, our expanding user scale translated to top line expansion with consistent quarterly growth in 2021. For the fourth quarter, our total revenues reached another record high of RMB 5.8 billion, up 51% year-over-year, and our full year revenues grew by 62% to RMB 19.4 billion. NPUs in Q4 grow to 24.5 million, up 37% year-over-year. And our paying ratio expanded to 9%. Above all, as we gain more users, more advertising dollars are being directed to our platform. And our full year advertising revenue reached to CNY 4.5 billion, up 145% year-over-year, spreading our top line growth. We firmly believe the value of our community is tied closely with the scale of our users and their level of trust in our platform. There is no doubt that our Gen Z plus users are the most valuable group in the market. They are our society backbone and the mainstream consumers in all types of economics. Our engaging community connects and tightly bound those users to our platform, creating an invaluable relationship built on trust, which leads to multiple avenues for commercialization. Looking at our plan for 2022 in more detail. Quality growth will remain our top priority. We will continue to build our multi-category content ecosystem, meeting users' video demand across various consumption scenarios. We remain committed to achieve our user target of 400 million MAUs by the end of 2023. While we grow our user base, we will continue to improve our commercialization capability. Specifically, we plan to increase our revenue per MAU by developing more value-added services to meet our users' involving needs, as well as increasing our ad revenue by optimizing our ad products and improve efficiency. Our revenue per MAU in 2021 increased by 20% year-over-year and we expect this trend to continue. More importantly, we plan to optimize our capital allocation and effectively control our spending across our business. In 2022, we will strengthen our execution and our commercialization capability and aim to narrow our loss margins. Meanwhile, we hold RMB 30 billion in cash reserves as of the end of 2021. This gives our ample liquidity to support our long-term growth strategy and provides a strong cushion in the evolving industry landscape. With that overview, I'd like to go through some details on our fourth quarter operations as they related to our content, community and commercialization. PUGV continued to be our most prevalent feature, accounting for nearly 94% of our video views in the fourth quarter. As the bedrock of our ecosystem, we're actively expanding our PUGV content category and scenarios to grow and attends our committee together. Our top category in the fourth quarter were large DAU, games, entertainment, anime and knowledge. Our active users inspire our creditors and vice versa, creating a respectable community environment that fuels our virtuous cycle. In the fourth quarter, over 3 million monthly active creators submitting nearly 11 million video creation. And that made 58% more greater and 83% more submissions compared with the same period last year, outpacing our user growth. Content creators with more than 10,000 followers increased by 41% in the fourth quarter, showing that our community connection was tightened than ever. We have continued to refine our algorithm and create avenues to allow content creators commercial value, making sure they are seen, recognized and well rewarded. In January, we honored top 100 content creators at the fourth annual Bilibili Power App 2021 Award Ceremony. Notably, in 2021, over 1.3 million content creators received monetary rewards through various channels on Bilibili, covering near 90% of content creators with over 10,000 followers. Primarily payment channels include our cash incentive program, live broadcasting, the Sparkle ad platform and the direct tipping from users. By the end of 2021, over 550,000 content creators have enrolled in our cash incentive program. On top of native ads, our Sparkle platform we plan to launch more accessible and scalable path to and functions within or around video play pay to help better monetize content creators private domain traffic. As part of our user growth strategy, we are upgrading our accounting ecosystem with a few different ways. The first is expanding our category outreach to appeal to different gender, occupation and age groups. Each of these groups bring us more avenues to grow our user base. For example, we are advancing our position in the student community, adding more female oriented content and expanding our pan knowledge libraries appeal to mature users. Secondly, we are broadening our video format to address users' needs in different access scenarios. Specifically, we are optimizing our short-form video story mode to fit into users start to maintain time. The initial feedback from our community is encouraging. It's not only certified content need for users on the go and boost the engagement levels, but also help the users that cover even more PUGV and live broadcasting content across our video universe. Additionally, our smart TV app, the extent to living rooms is meeting our users for immersive video experience on large screen. These initiatives are a played in sync with our brand proposition or the videos you like, anywhere, any time. For our OTT department, expanding our OTT category is helping us attract new users, convert users to premium members and create valuable IP assets. Two main areas of focus will be Chinese anime and the documentary. In November, we announced 51 new Chinese anime titles at our fourth made Bilibili Chinese anime press conference. As an imaginative platform, we believe that Chinese anime can translate priorities of gender, race and light weight. With our increasing global appeal, we also officially upgraded our Chinese anime proposition to made by Bilibili, made for global. We are delighted to see our Chinese anime being highlighted for its originality, long tail IP asset value and our successful commercialization initiatives. Over the past two years, we have established partnership with Netflix and Sony, distributing 24 titles in overseas markets. In 2021, our top-rated anime titles with The Daily Life of the Immortal King Season two and the Link Click, which not only on the heart of Chinese brands, but also reached over hundred countries anime markets. We also host our first documentary press event in December and announced its plan to produce 21 new titles in the coming year. As our flagship content category, documentary represents our use for content. In addition to commercial value, it also bringing great culture value as it represents our commitment to social responsibility. Some of our doc series has already turned into important IP. In January, the return of our reading documentary and the board and police station reality show, The Guardians of the Galaxy will both met with great enthusiasm. Turning to our community, communities surround and ground our ecosystem. Our users and content creators were time bound and interactions create trust, a strong sense of belonging, inspiration and retention value. We actively cultivated our fun, informative, and friendly environment where users can express themselves in a supportive community. For the fourth quarter, we had remarkably high engagement and interaction level, showing that both new and experienced members are finding connection and spend on Bilibili. As mentioned previously, in Q4, the average daily time spend on Bilibili reached 82 minutes, the highest fourth quarter usage time in our operating history and the daily video views soared to 2.2 billion, up 80% year-over-year. Monthly interactions in the first quarter more than doubled from the same period in 2020, jumping into RMB10.1 billion. We exit the year with RMB145 million official members, up 42% year-over-year and a strong 12-month retention rate of 84%. Now let's look at our commercialization progress. In the fourth quarter, our total revenues reached RMB5.8 billion, up 51% year-over-year and our full year revenue grew by 62% to RMB19.4 billion. Revenue per MAU was RMB77.6 in 2021, up 20% year-over-year. Having gathered half of China Gen Z+ population, our platform and understood their needs, we believe we can consistently improve our commercialization capabilities and continue to increase our revenue per MAU. Beginning with our mobile game business, under the current game industry environment, our goal for 2022 is clear we will enhance our current domestic and operations, while we continue to focus on selectively developing game in house and overseas game distribution. As for our game pipeline, we currently have five titles approved for domestic release and 13 titles slated for international release in the coming quarters. For the fourth quarter, our mobile game revenues were RMB1.3 billion, up 15% from the same period last year. We released four new titles domestically and three new titles in overseas markets during the quarter. Meanwhile, many of our older games were still showing long life cycles. Revenues were still on the rise for certain of our exclusive licensed games such as . As a game operator, we continue to protect young player from game addiction and promote healthy game behavior following the anti-addiction measures we launched early on for teenager players. In 2021, our revenue from players and 18 years old account for less than 1% of our game revenues. Looking at our VAS business, our VAS business remained strong with revenues of RMB1.9 billion in the fourth quarter after 52% year-over-year. VAS revenue per MAU, were RMB27.8 in 2021, up 34% year-over-year. As we develop more products and services based on our users' entertainment needs, we believe VAS has great growth potential, beyond live broadcasting and the premium memberships. We will actively explore innovative avenues within our community to increase VAS revenue per MAU. Live broadcasting as an organic component of our video content ecosystem has formed multiple cell reinforcing circulation within our community. For example, we see great synergies between content creators and live broadcasting hosts, as well as their commercialization opportunities. In 2021, over 70% of our content creators with 1 million followers were live broadcasting hosts. Over 600,000 content creators generated income to live broadcasting during the year. In 2022, we will continue to explore innovative ways to incorporate live broadcasting with our video community and enhance user over experience. Turning to our premium membership. By the end of the fourth quarter, the number of premium memberships reached an exciting milestone of 20 million, representing an increase of 39% year-over-year. Notably, 80% of our premium members signed up for an annual or continuous monthly plan, demonstrating their love and trust in our platform. And for advertising. Our advertising business is a great demonstration of how our value comes from our users and strong trust between them and the community. We hit another home run with advertising services in the fourth quarter. And revenue in Q4 reached RMB 1.6 billion, up 120% year-over-year, full year ad revenue coming at RMB 4.5 billion, up 145% year-over-year as revenue per MAU in 2021 was RMB 18.1, up 83% year-over-year. With nearly half of China's Gen Z users on our platform, Bilibili has become a must for advertisers looking to reach this golden consumer group. Video-based integrated marketing campaigns has emerged as a key solution. In 2021, more of our native ads went viral, alerting even more advertisers to poll for content and its influence among users. In 2022, we plan to further integrate our Sparkle ad platform with more scalable ad products. This will enable native apps to gain more exposure by realizing more efficient and smooth sales conversions on Bilibili, achieving the efforts of brand and performance ads in one shot. Additionally, we plan to enrich our display scenarios with story mode and smart TV, greatly increasing our ad inventory and offering more place for advertisers to reach their delight customer. We're glad to see our integrated marketing campaigns have been welcomed by more and more new industries. In 2021, we welcomed a well-known consumer brand and a premium automotive group and our key sponsors of the New Year eve. In the fourth quarter, our top five advertising verticals were mobile games, e-commerce, 3G and digital products, food and privilege and automotive. As we move through 2022, we expect visualization to continue paying the way for massive industry opportunity forward. We will continue expanding our user base as we believe we are still in the initial stages of ramping our money commercialization efforts. In 2022, we will work to generate more revenue per MAU by introducing more value-added services to our users and valuable ad products to our partners. At the same time, we will focus on expense control and overall operating efficiency improvement. This concludes Mr. Chen's remarks. I will now provide a brief overview of our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2021 and the outlook for the first quarter of 2022. Total net revenue for the fourth quarter was RMB 5.8 billion, up 51% from the same period of 2020. We continue to see a more balanced revenue mix driven by our diversified commercialization channel. Our total net revenue breakdown by revenue stream was approximately 22% mobile games; 33%, RAS; 28%, advertising; and the third, 17% e-commerce and other business. Cost of revenues increased by 62% year-over-year to RMB 4.7 billion. Revenue sharing cost, a key component of cost of revenues were RMB 2.4 billion, representing 91% increase from the same period in 2020. Gross profit increased by 16% year-over-year to RMB 1.1 billion, and our gross margin was 19% in the fourth quarter. Total operating expenses was RMB 3.1 billion, up 68% from the same period in 2020. Sales and marketing expenses was RMB 1.8 billion, representing a 73% increase year-over-year. The increase was primarily attributed to increased channel and marketing expenses to promote our app and brand as well as promotional expenses for our mobile game. Moving into 2022, we aim to actively manage and control our marketing spending and improve our overall operating efficiency. G&A expenses was RMB 538.1 million, representing a 57% increase year-over-year. The increase was primarily due to increased headcount in G&A personnel, share-based compensation expenses, allowance for accounts, rental expenses and other G&A expenses. R&D expenses was RMB 797.6 million, representing a 65% increase year-over-year. The increase was primarily due to increased head count in research and development and share-based compensation expenses. Net loss was RMB 2.1 billion for the fourth quarter of 2021 compared with RMB 843.7 million in the same period of 2020. Adjusted net loss, which are non-GAAP measures that exclude share-based compensation expenses, amortization expenses related to intangible assets acquired through business acquisitions, income tax related to the inter-asset acquired through business acquisition and the loss of fair value change in public-traded companies was RMB 1.7 billion, compared with RMB 0.7 billion in the same period of 2020. Basic and diluted net loss per share were each RMB 5.34. Adjusted basic and diluted net loss per share was each RMB 4.22. For the full year of 2021, our total net revenues increased by 62% to RMB 19.4 billion, notably non-GAAP revenue for 2021 grew 99% year-on-year, accounting for 74% of the total revenue. Gross profit for the 2021 full year increased 42% to RMB 4 billion. Net loss for 2021 was RMB 6.8 billion compared with RMB 3.1 billion in 2020. Adjusted net loss for 2021 was RMB 5.5 billion compared with RMB 2.6 billion in 2020. Basic and diluted net loss per share for 2021 was RMB 17.87 as compared with RMB 8.71 in 2020. Adjusted basic diluted net loss per share was RMB 14.42% compared with RMB 7.4 in 2020. And on December 31, 2021, we had cash and cash equivalents, term deposits and short-term investments of RMB 13.2 billion compared with RMB 12.8 billion as of December 31, 2020. Driving long-term value for all of our stakeholders remains our broader objective. We are pleased to announce an up to $500 million share repurchase program in the next 24 months. In addition, our Chairman and CEO, Chen Rui, also expressed his intention to use his personal funds to purchase the company's outstanding ADS for up to $10 million in the next 24 months. With that in mind, we are currently projecting net revenues for the first quarter of 2022 to be between RMB 5.3 billion and RMB 5.5 billion. Thank you for your attention. We will like now to open the call to your questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Operator
我们的第一个问题来自美国银行美林证券的Lei Zhang。您的线路已接通。
Operator
Our first question is from Lei Zhang with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Lei Zhang
今天首先是一个关于2022年战略重点的高层次问题。我认为您这边对我们2022年用户增长的展望以及我们应如何实现用户目标有何看法。与此相关的是,关于第四季度用户及其社区剥离方面有什么信息可以分享吗?谢谢。
Lei Zhang
For today, a first high-level question on your strategic focus in 2022. And I think your side with our outlook in user growth for 2022 and how should we achieve our user target. Related to that, any color on the fourth quarter user and their community divestment? Thank you.
Rui Chen
我们2022年的关键词仍将聚焦于增长。用户侧的增长、收入侧的增长,最重要的是,我们希望保持增长质量。我们希望保持高质量的增长。例如,在第四季度,我们保持了非常高质量的用户增长率。我们的月活跃用户达到2.72亿,同比增长35%。最重要的是,这些月活跃用户的健康状况非常强劲。例如,每个日活跃用户的平均每日使用时长达到82分钟,这是我们在第四季度运营历史上看到的最高日活跃用户使用时长。在社区参与度方面,我们的月度互动量同比增长超过116%,达到100亿。在留存率方面,我们正式会员的12个月留存率进一步提升至84%。在这些参与度数据之上,我们注意到所有进入我们社区的用户都有效转化为付费用户。第四季度,月度付费用户同比增长37%,超过了月活跃用户的增长率,我们的年度付费率达到9%,较2020年的8%有所改善,相比2019年提高了6个百分点以上。在增长期间,我们能够提供这样高质量的数据集,表明我们确实实现了高质量的增长。展望未来,我们仍然非常有信心在2023年底前实现4亿月活跃用户的目标。从我们1月份的数据来看,我们的总月活跃用户已突破3亿里程碑。更重要的是,每个日活跃用户的每日使用时长已超过90分钟。因此,增长势头仍然非常强劲,我们有信心继续提供这种高质量、高增长率的数据集。回顾过去,我们认为B站在全球互联网格局中是一个非常独特的产品。我们在过去13年中保持了快速健康的增长率,我们认为这得益于我们强大的内容生态系统驱动的商业模式。基于这种商业模式,我们仍然非常有信心这种增长势头能够持续。如果我们再看一下过去两年我们在收入方面的增长,我们认为收入增长与用户增长同样重要,特别是在我们的BAT和广告业务板块,它们一直保持着大约100%的同比增长率。回顾我们过去两年的工作重点或资源配置,我们在收入增长与用户增长上投入的精力大约是3:7的比例。今年,我们将调整资源配置,将精力和资源平均分配到收入增长和用户增长上。换句话说,收入增长将在我们的工作重点中扮演更加重要的角色。另一方面,我们注意到资本市场出现波动,股价也有所波动。但从另一个角度来看,这实际上有助于整个行业减少内卷。例如,在销售和营销方面以及人才竞争方面,整个行业一直存在非常激烈的内卷。我们相信这种情况今年会有所缓解,我们将更加注重控制开支、降低成本、提高整体效率,让我们花费的每一美元都能发挥更大作用。以上就是全部回答。
Rui Chen
Our key word for 2022 will still be focused on growth. Growth on the user side, on the revenue side and most importantly, we wanted to remain the growth quality. We want to keep it a high-quality growth. For example, in Q4, we maintained a very high-quality user growth rate. Our MAU reached $272 million, up 35% year-over-year. And most importantly, the healthiness of that MAU is very strong. For example, the average daily time spent per DAU reached 82 minutes, and that is the highest DAU time spend we've seen in the fourth quarter of operating history. And on the community engagement side, our monthly interactions grew over 116% year-over-year, reaching 10 billion. And on the retention side, the 12-month retention rate of our official member have further increased to 84%. And on top of those engagement numbers, we noticed that all the users that come into our community has effectively converted to our paying users. In the fourth quarter, the monthly MPUs increased 37% year-on-year, outpacing the MAU growth rate, and our annual paying ratio reached 9% and which has improved from 8% from last 2020 and 6 -plus percent compared to 2019. And over -- this is very important over the period of growth we are able to deliver this quality set of numbers to show that we really have delivered high-quality growth rate. As we look ahead, we still are very, very confident to achieve our 400 million MAU user target by end of 2023. And looking at our January number, our overall MAU have reached over 300 million milestone. And more importantly, the daily time spent per DAU has reached over 90 minutes. So the momentum -- growth momentum remained very, very strong, and we are confident to continue to deliver this high-quality, high-growth rate set of numbers. As we look in the past, we think the mobility is a very unique product across the global Internet landscape. We have maintained a fast and healthy growth rate for the past 13 years, and we think that contributes to our powerful content ecosystem-driven business model. And based on this business model, we're still very confident as this growth momentum can continue. So if we're taking another look at our growth on the revenue side for the past two years, we see revenue growth as important as our user growth, especially within our BAT and advertising segment, and they have been keeping roughly around 100% year-on-year growth rate. As we look into our house work priority or resource allocation in the past two years. The energy we put in revenue growth versus user growth could split to 3 to 7 ratio. And for this year, we will adjust our resource allocation and split our energy and resource equally into both revenue growth and user growth. In another words, revenue growth will play a much more important role across our work priorities. And on the other hand, we've noticed that there's being a fluctuation in the capital market. There's been a fluctuation on the stock price as well. And from another perspective, this is actually helping the overall industry to reduce the retrace. For example, on the sales and marketing side and compete for talent site. There's been a very, very heavy intense retrace across the sector. And we believe that situation will alleviate this year, and we'll pay more attention to control our expenses and reduce our costs and improve our overall efficiency, putting every dollar we spend into more use. So that's the all the answers.
Operator
我们的下一个问题来自摩根大通的Alex Yao。您的线路已接通。
Operator
Our next question comes from Alex Yao with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Alex Yao
晚上好,管理层。我想就相对较新的产品故事模式问几个问题。您能与我们分享一些关于该产品渗透率的最新想法吗?然后,您希望这个产品在我们的内容生态系统中扮演什么样的角色,特别是在中长期来看?最后,您如何看待该产品的货币化潜力和收入模式?谢谢。
Alex Yao
Good evening management. I'd like to ask a couple of questions on relatively new product story mode. Can you share with us some of the latest thoughts around the product penetration rate? And then what kind of the role you want this product to play in our content ecosystem over the medium to longer-term? Lastly, how do you guys think about the monetization potential and the revenue model for this product? Thank you.
Rui Chen
产品故事模式实际上在去年就已经上线了。然而,我们的用户确实——他们能感觉到——他们不知道产品名称叫做故事模式,因为它已经集成在我们的整体用户界面中。它自然地嵌入在我们的推荐信息流中,以满足用户对这一特定产品的需求。我们启动故事模式的原因,从我个人的角度来看,我认为Bilibili不应该只是一个工具。它应该是一个围绕人们需求的视频社区,这意味着可能涉及多个场景和多个屏幕,无论是中长视频,还是横屏格式。我们相信这些内容可以更短,也可以是竖屏格式。也可以是直播,针对这一趋势或我们对用户需求的理解,我们推出了故事模式来补充我们的使用场景。在上次财报电话会议中,我们提到了在智能电视方面的举措。这些举措都是为了适应我们的多场景战略,我们正在努力将客户端推向人们的客厅。对于故事模式的采用,我们希望满足用户在碎片化时间中的移动娱乐需求。所以,如果你使用故事模式,你会注意到尽管用户界面是竖屏格式,可能看起来像其他产品。然而,实际体验将是完整的Bilibili特色体验。例如,在我们的故事模式中,内容时长从一分钟、两分钟、三分钟不等,质量与PUGV相似,并且会有完整的弹幕在屏幕上飞过。在内容类别方面,我们可以看到故事模式是我们PUGV生态系统的自然延伸。大量的故事模式视频已经由我们的PUGV内容创作者制作。换句话说,这些内容创作者正在利用这个新渠道和新工具来创作内容。在我们的产品理念中,始终以用户为中心,产品进展遵循用户对视频内容的需求。从几个数据点来看,我们注意到故事模式的采用已经得到了用户的初步接受。在日活跃用户层面,渗透率超过20%,如果考虑到新闻和直播总结,渗透率超过30%,这意味着我们的用户正在接受并喜爱这个新产品。总之,我们认为用户选择内容主要基于内容类别和整体社区体验,而不是基于形式。例如,可乐爱好者不会在乎可乐是罐装还是瓶装。汽水爱好者不会在乎可乐是黑色而芬达是白色。归根结底,是类别,是内容类别和社区环境帮助用户决定他们关注哪个产品。在我看来,我认为故事模式作为一个产品可以完全融入并融入我们的内容类别以及我们的社区。在不久的将来,渗透率可能会达到50%甚至更高,因为毕竟吸引用户的是内容类别本身,而不是内容的形式或它是竖屏格式还是横屏格式。最后,关于商业化潜力,因为故事模式是基于移动设备和竖屏格式的产品——实际上在这个行业中,这种产品的商业化已经相当成熟,无论是在广告分发还是直播服务的流量变现方面。这主要取决于我们在商业化战略执行方面的实施。根据我们的初步测试和初始数据,我们注意到它对商业广告和直播服务都有很好的分发效率。
Rui Chen
The product story mode actually has already been in line last year. However, our users really -- they can tell -- they don't know the product name, it's called story mode, because it's been integrated in our overall user interface. It's naturally embedded in our recommendation feeds to satisfy users' need for this certain product. The reason why we started the story mode, because from my personal perspective, I think Bilibili should not be a tool. It should be a video community surround with people's needs, and that means may involve multiple scenarios on multiple screens, whether it's mid to longer form, whether it's in the horizontal format. We believe those content can be shorter, and they can also be a vertical format. It could also be live broadcasting, and addressing this trend or our understanding to users' needs, we launched the story mode to supplement our obligation scenarios. In the last earnings report call, we mentioned our initiatives on the Smart TV side. And those initiatives are adapt to this multi-scenario strategy, which we are putting hard client and into people's living rooms. And for the adoption of a story mode, we hope to satisfy users on the go entertainment needs in their fragmented time. So, if you use to story mode, you would notice even though the user interface is in vertical format might look like doing product. However, the actual experience will be full Bilibili-featured experience. For example, on our story mode, there's content range from one minute, two minutes, three minutes, and the quality is similar to RPU GV and there will be fullage chat flying off the screen. On the Content category, we can see store as a very natural extension to our PUGV ecosystem. Massive number of store remote video has been produced by our PUGV content creators. In another way, just those content creator, are leveraging this new outlet and new tools to create content. On our product philosophy, it always has been surrounded by users and the product progress follows our users' needs towards video content. From several data point, we noticed that the adoption of story mode has been lightly accepted by our users. On the DAU level, the penetration is over 20% and over 30% if those news will be subject to the sum-up the lives, which means our users are accepting and loving this new product. In summary, we think the user chooses content is largely based on the content category and the overall community experience, not by the lens of it. For example, a Coke lover would not care if the Coke in a can or in a bottle. A soda lover wouldn't care if the Coke is black and Fanta is white. And all-in-all, it's the category, it's the content category and the community environment is helping users to decide which product they follow. And in my view, I think Story Mode as a product can be fully integrated and emerged in our content category as well as our community. In the not-so-distant future, the penetration could go -- could potentially reach to 50% or even above because after all, what attract users, it's about the content category itself, it's not the lens of the content or whether it's in the vertical format or in a horizontal format. Lastly, on the commercialization potential because Story Mode is a product based on mobile devices and vertical format so on -- actually on -- in this industry, the commercialization of this product has been pretty mature, whether it's on the distribution of advertisement or its traffic interest for live broadcasting services. It's just about our implementation on the execution of our commercialization strategy. And based on our initial testing and initial data, we've noticed that it has very good efficiency -- distribution efficiency to commercial ads as well as our live broadcasting services.
Alex Yao
我的问题到此结束。
Alex Yao
That would be all.
Operator
下一个问题来自摩根士丹利的Alex Poon。您的线路已接通。
Operator
Our next question comes from Alex Poon with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Alex Poon
感谢管理层回答我的问题。我的问题与我们在2022年控制的亏损有关,包括:假设我们今年没有获得任何游戏版号批准,从第一季度到第四季度我们的毛利率趋势将如何变化?另外,按业务细分(包括广告和直播)的毛利率趋势今年将如何变化?还有我们的员工扩张计划以及实现盈亏平衡和盈利的时间表。非常感谢。
Alex Poon
Thanks management for taking my question. My question is related to our losses controlled in 2022, including how will our gross margin trend from Q1 to Q4 this year, assuming we don't get any game license approval and also by segment gross margin trend for including advertising and live streaming, how would that change this year and our headcount expansion plan and also the timetable for breakeven and profitability. Thank you very much.
Xin Fan
谢谢,Alex。让我来继续讨论。您说得对。我们认同盈利能力是所有公司的关键目标。我们公司相信长期销售。我们努力在实现盈亏平衡点和为长期机会投资之间找到平衡,而不是仅仅追求某些短期财务指标。我们相信这样做将最大化股东利益。正如我们CEO提到的,我们有信心在保持健康的用户和收入增长的同时,非GAAP运营亏损率可以从2022年开始逐年收窄。通过提高货币化效率,包括每MAU收入,并控制运营费用。目标是在2024年实现非GAAP基础上的盈亏平衡点。让我们深入细节。首先,我们旨在主动管理运营费用。例如,销售营销费用是可衡量和可控的。例如,用户获取成本是我们销售和营销费用的重要组成部分,在2021年同比增长了50%,而我们的总收入同比增长了61%。在我们达到4亿MAU目标的同时,仍有进一步优化营销支出的空间。我们预计销售和营销费用占总收入的百分比将从2022年开始下降。在研发费用方面,主要包括与开发新游戏、增强数据能力和优化新产品功能相关的人员成本,这些对于提高我们的生产力和货币化能力至关重要,我们理解吸引人才的重要性。2022年,我们将继续投资研发,但会密切监控所有研发项目的投资回报率。我们预计研发费用占总收入的百分比将从2023年开始显示出显著的杠杆效应。其次,用户货币化效率仍有充足的改进空间。我们仍处于商业化的非常早期阶段。我们的每MAU收入去年增长了20%。这一增长主要由每MAU增值服务收入增长34%和每MAU广告收入增长83%驱动。展望未来,这些趋势将持续,我们预计增值服务和广告的每MAU收入都有潜力在三年内翻倍。最后但同样重要的是,关于您问到的毛利率。虽然我们的游戏业务处于转型期,但我们很高兴看到广告收入贡献从2020年的13%上升到2021年的23%,并预计在2022年进一步增加。此外,我们预计将推出更多增值服务并进一步提高增值服务毛利率。因此,随着我们商业化能力的提升,我认为2022年整体毛利率预计在今年第一季度会略低,但将在今年内逐步改善。在三年内,整体毛利率将提高约30%。以上就是全部内容。
Xin Fan
Thank you, Alex. Let me take the discussion. You are right. We agree that profitability is a key objective for all the companies. Our company, we believe in long-term sale. We strive to find a balance between achieving a breakeven point and investing for long-term opportunities. Rather than just so you know pursuing certain short-term financial metrics. We believe by doing so, it will maximize the interest of our shareholders. As mentioned by our CEO, we are confident that while maintaining a healthy user and revenue growth, the non-GAAP operating loss ratio could be narrowed on a year-over-year basis starting from 2022. By improving the monetization efficiency including the revenue per MAU and control the operating expenses. The target is to achieve the breakeven point on a non-GAAP basis by 2024. Let's look into the details. First of all, we aim to proactively manage our operating expense. Selling marketing expense, for example, is measurable and controllable. For example, the user acquisition cost is a big component of our sales and marketing expenses all increased by 50%, while our total revenue increased by 61% year-over-year in 2021. There are still room to further optimize the marketing spending while we reach $400 million MAU target. We expect the total sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue will decline starting from 2022. In R&D expenses, mainly include the personnel costs associated with developing the new games, enhancing the data capabilities and optimizing the new product features, which are critical to increase our productivity and monetization capability, understood the importance of attracting talent. In 2022, we will continue to invest in R&D, but we will closely monitor the ROI for all of our R&D projects. We expect that R&D expenses as a percentage of total revenue will start to show significant leverage from 2023 onwards. Secondly, there’s still ample room for improvement in user monetization efficiency. We are still in a very early stage of commercialization. Our revenue per MAU increased by 20% last year. The increase was mainly driven by 34% increase in VAS revenue per MAU and 83% increase in ad revenue per MAU. Looking forward, those trend will continue, and we expect both VAS and added revenue per MAU would have potential to double their current levels in three years. Last but not least, as you ask the gross profit margin. While our game business undergoes transaction period, we are happy to see revenue contribution from advertising has risen from 13% in 2020 to 23% in 2021 and expect it to further increase in 2022 in this year. In addition, we expect to introduce more VAS services and further improve the VAS gross margin. As a result, with the improvement of our commercialization capabilities, I think the overall -- the 2022 gross margin is expected to be slightly lower in Q1 this year, but will gradually improve during this year. And in the three years, the overall gross profit margin will be improved around 30% in three years. That will be all.
Juliet Yang
关于员工人数,我将翻译陈先生的发言。
Juliet Yang
And for the headcount, I'll translate for Mr. Chen's remarks.
Rui Chen
实际上,过去几年我们员工人数的增长率已经放缓。至于2022年,员工人数将只有非常有限的增长。今年我对人力资源部门的要求是,要高度聚焦于我们希望实现良好增长的业务领域。对于这些领域,我们可以增加一定的人员编制,而其他业务则要控制人员规模。
Rui Chen
Actually, in the past few years, the growth rates have slowed for the number of our staff. And as for 2022, there's going to be a very limited headcount increase. My request for our HR this year is laser-focused on the business areas that we wanted to have decent growth. And for those areas, we can add certain headcount and the rest of the business is controlled.
Operator
我们的下一个问题来自瑞银的Felix Liu。您的线路已接通。
Operator
Our next question is from Felix Liu with UBS. Your line is open.
Felix Liu
谢谢管理层回答我的问题。祝贺第四季度的业绩,特别是广告业务的强劲表现。我想问一个关于2022年以及第一季度广告前景的问题,尤其是考虑到近期宏观疲软以及新游戏版号暂停发放的情况。另外,能否详细说明2022年广告业务的关键商业化举措?谢谢。
Felix Liu
Thank you, management, for taking my question. And congratulations on the 4Q results, especially on the strong ad performance. I would like to ask a question on the ad outlook for 2022 as well as on the first quarter, especially in the light of recent macro weakness as well as the temporary suspension in new game license. And also, could you elaborate on your key commercialization initiatives for advertisements for 2022? Thank you.
Rui Chen
我想借此机会与大家分享哔哩哔哩广告业务背后的增长驱动力。大家可以看到,在过去几个季度,我们的广告收入一直保持着超过100%的强劲增长,同时我们也听到市场上有一些疑问:哔哩哔哩的用户体验如此出色,你们如何在保持用户体验的同时推动广告收入增长呢?首要原因是我们的用户增长非常强劲。与此同时,我们的单用户广告效率也在稳步提升。第四季度,我们的日活跃用户同比增长34%。从全年来看,2021年单月活跃用户广告收入增长了83%,这两个因素共同作用,带来了超过100%的广告收入增长。 第二个增长驱动力是用户价值的不断提升。同时,我们平台的影响力也得到了市场的广泛认可。从横向来看,过去几年我们的用户增长一直表现良好。从纵向来看,我们实际上在不断突破自身的圈层,让更多用户、更多不同职业、性别群体的用户看到并认识到哔哩哔哩的存在,这吸引了来自不同广告行业的关注。例如,过去几年我们的主导垂直领域是游戏和PC数码产品,现在已逐步扩展到护肤美妆、食品饮料等领域。今年,我们计划进一步拓展到汽车等垂直领域。事实上,去年第四季度,汽车已成为我们前五大广告行业垂直领域之一。 第三个增长驱动力是广告的视频化趋势。越来越多的广告将以视频形式呈现。因此我们顺应这一趋势,推出了如开屏广告等产品,基于我们不同的视频格式开发了多样化的广告形式,包括原生广告、Story模式等。Story模式的推出也将适应当前行业对竖版广告视频的需求,所有这些都将帮助我们在未来几年推动广告业务的增长。 第四个增长驱动力是我们独特的广告形式,即原生广告。哔哩哔哩的原生广告主要由我们的内容创作者制作。他们实际上是将创意与广告内容相结合,在自己的视频中进行定制化广告创作,这就是我们所说的花火原生广告。我们很高兴看到越来越多的广告主正在采用并认可这种创新的广告形式。2021年第四季度,超过4,000家广告主在我们的花火广告平台上进行了投放。复购率达到了75%。另一方面,越来越多的内容创作者也加入了我们的花火平台。2021年,超过22,000名内容创作者在花火平台注册,为自己开启了原生广告的机会。我们认为原生广告对于平台活力来说是非常非常重要的广告形式。它就像一个蓄水池,帮助我们留住广告主。原生广告的内容创作者帮助我们吸引这些广告主,他们留在了我们的平台上,我们接下来需要做的是进一步将原生广告与我们更多标准化、可扩展的广告形式相结合,让原生广告帮助我们推动其他标准广告产品的销售。 最后,第五个增长驱动力是我们的多场景多屏幕战略。我们相信通过进一步整合这些场景和设备,我们可以开拓更多广告库存,提高整体广告效率。从数据角度来看,随着我们的PUGV内容持续快速扩张,新领域——智能设备、智能电视和车载设备——正在帮助我们开拓更多场景、更多设备和更多视频内容,为商业广告机会提供杠杆。 总而言之,我一直相信收入的增长与用户体验并不冲突。实际上,它们共享着相同的目标,因为我们相信广告的效果很大程度上取决于平台在用户心智中的影响力,而一个好的平台能够真正将这种影响力传递给用户。因此,这两个目标是相互关联的。 关于2022年的展望,尽管面临宏观环境逆风和数字广告增速放缓的挑战,但由于我刚才提到的这五个增长驱动力,我们有信心在这样的环境下,我们仍然能够实现健康稳定的广告收入增长,至少高于行业平均水平。以上就是我的分享。
Rui Chen
I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the growth driver behind Bilibili's advertisement business. And you can see in the past few quarters, our advertisement revenue has been growing over 100% has been very strong and we also heard subsections from the market that Bilibili user experience is so good? How can you drive your advertising revenue with our compromising user experience? So the number one reason is that we have experienced a very strong user growth. And at the same time, our ad efficiency per user has also been increasing pretty nicely. In the fourth quarter, our DAU grew 34% year-over-year. And on a full year level in 2021, the ad revenue per MAU has increased 83% and for those two factors combined together, that gives you the over 100% ad revenue growth. And the second growth driver would be the value of the user has been increasing. And at the same time, the influence of our platform has been well recognized by the market. If we look in the past few years on the horizontal perspective, our user has been growing pretty nicely. And in a vertical view, we actually have constantly breaking up our own circle and may -- allowing more users, more different groups of user occupation gender, user being seen and recognize the existence of Bilibili and that leads to more attention from different advertising versions. For example, in the past few years, we are leading verticals would be games and PC digital products. And this slowly expand to skincare and cosmetics, food and beverage. And for this year, we are looking to expand into verticals like automotive. As a matter of fact, in fourth quarter last year, automotive has become our top five advertising industry verticals. And the third growth driver would be the visualization of advertisement. More and more advertisement will be presented in a format of videos. And that's why we are adopting this trend, launching products like top view, different advertising format based on our different video format, including native ads, story mode and the launch of story mode, it will also be adapting to current industries, the advertisement video in vertical format and all of this will help us to drive our advertising growth in the next few years. And the fourth growth driver would be our own unique advertising format aka our native ads. The Bilibili native ads largely were produced by our content creators. They're actually combining their creativity to customize advertisement within its own video. It's known as our Sparkle native apps. We are delighted to see more and more advertisers has been adapting and recognize this innovative format of advertisement. In 2021, in the fourth quarter of 2021, over 4,000 advertisers has been invested in our Sparkle ad platform. The repeated purchase rate has reached 75%. On the other hand, more and more content creator has signed up for our Sparkle platform. In 2021, over 22,000 content creator has signed up on our Sparkle platform to open themselves to this native ads opportunities. We think the native app is a very, very important format of advertisement for viability. It's like a reservoir for us to keep advertisers. The native app is content creator is helping us to attract those advertisers. They are staying with us what we need to do next is to further integrate the native app with more of our standardized scalable advertising formats to allow native apps to help us to drive the sale of our other standard advertisement products. Lastly, with – the last growth driver was the multi-scenario multi-screen strategy we believe by further integrate those scenarios and devices, we can help us to open more ad inventories and improve our overall ad efficiency. From the data perspective, as our PUGV continued to expand rapidly, the new territory, which is the smart devices, smart TV and store remote is helping us open up more scenarios, more devices and more video content in leverage for commercial advertisement opportunities. In summary, I've always believed that the increase of revenue does not conflict with user experience. In other way, actually, it actually shared the same goal because we believe the effect of an advertisement largely depends on the platform's influence among users' mindset and a good platform can really put that influence to its users. Hence, the goal is connected. As for the outlook for 2022, despite the macro environment headwinds and slowdown of digital advertisement, because of those five growth drivers I mentioned earlier, we are confident under this environment, we can still deliver a healthy, stable ad revenue growth at least above industry average. That will be all.
Operator
问答环节到此结束。现在请管理层进行补充或总结发言。
Operator
And that concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the back over to management for any additional or closing comments.
Juliet Yang
再次感谢各位今天参与我们的会议。如有进一步问题,请联系我——哔哩哔哩执行投资者关系总监Julie Yang,或TPG投资者关系部。今天新闻稿中提供了我们在中国和美国的投资者关系联系方式。祝大家有美好的一天。谢谢。再见。
Juliet Yang
Thank you, once again, for joining us today. If you have further questions, please contact me, Julie Yang, Bilibili Executive IR Director or TPG Investor Relations. Our contact information for IR in both China or in the US can be found on today's press release. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Operator
今天的电话会议到此结束。感谢各位的参与。您现在可以挂断电话。
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.