Operator
女士们、先生们,感谢各位的耐心等待,欢迎参加Hello Group Inc. 2022年第二季度业绩电话会议。[接线员提示]请注意,本次活动今天正在录音。现在我将会议交给今天的第一位发言人,景女士。谢谢。请开始,女士。
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Second Quarter 2022 Hello Group Inc. Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Ashley Jing. Thank you. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Ashley Jing
谢谢接线员。大家早上好,晚上好。感谢各位今天参加Hello Group 2022年第二季度业绩电话会议。公司业绩已于早些时候发布,可在公司投资者关系网站上查阅。今天参加电话会议的有公司首席执行官王力先生;以及公司首席财务官彭慧女士,他们将讨论公司的业务运营和亮点,以及财务数据和指引。在随后的问答环节中,两位都将回答各位的问题。在开始之前,我想提醒各位,本次电话会议可能包含根据1995年《私人证券诉讼改革法案》安全港条款所作的前瞻性陈述。这些陈述基于管理层当前的预期、当前市场和运营条件以及相关事件,涉及已知或未知的风险、不确定性和其他因素,所有这些都难以预测,且许多因素超出公司控制范围,可能导致公司的实际结果、业绩或成就与前瞻性陈述中的内容存在重大差异。有关此风险及其他风险、不确定性或因素的进一步信息包含在公司向美国证券交易委员会提交的文件中。除非法律要求,公司不承担因新信息、未来事件或其他原因而更新任何前瞻性陈述的义务。现在我将电话交给王先生,我将为他翻译。王先生。
Ashley Jing
Thank you, operator. Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Hello Group's Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. The company's results were released earlier and are available on the company's IR website. On the call today are Mr. Wang Li, CEO of the company; and Ms. Peng Hui, CFO of the company, who will discuss the company's business operations and highlights as well as the financials and guidance. They will both be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and related events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are the company's control, which may cause the company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding this and other risks, uncertainties or factors is included in the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under law. I'll now pass the call to Mr. Wang, I'll translate for him. Mr. Wang.
Wang Li
翻译中...
Wang Li
[Foreign Language] Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call today. At the beginning of the year, I outlined the group's strategic priorities and our execution plan for the year. The COVID resurgence in the first half has brought many challenges and uncertainties to the overall market environment and our execution of these goals. However, I'm pleased to see that our team still managed to deliver good results by adjusting our product and operational initiatives in a timely manner to cope with external headwinds. At the same time, we have adopted our execution plan to suit the evolving external environment. Now I'll walk you through the details. [Foreign Language] I will start with a brief overview of our financial performance. For the second quarter of 2022, total revenue at the group level was RMB 3.11 billion, down 15% year-over-year and a slight 1% decrease quarter-over-quarter. Adjusted operating income was RMB 464 million with a profit margin of 15%. Adjusted operating income was up 1% from the previous quarter, the first sequential growth since the pandemic and the market environment started to deteriorate in the second half of 2021. On an ex-Tantan basis, total revenue was RMB 2.78 billion, down 12% year-over-year or a slight 1% decrease quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year decrease was mainly due to pressure on the live streaming business caused by the pandemic and regulatory factors. Incremental revenue brought to the VAS business by the rapidly growing new apps partially offset the decline in live streaming. Adjusted operating income on an ex-Tantan basis was RMB 583 million with a 21% margin. Tantan's total revenue for the quarter came in at RMB 331 million, down 36% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year decrease was due to the demonetization process to improve user experience and retention in the second half of 2021 as well as the negative impact of the COVID resurgence on Tantan's user growth and paying conversion. Tantan's adjusted net loss was RMB 119 million for the quarter compared with RMB 44.5 million a year ago. [Foreign Language] Now I will discuss the execution of our strategic priorities in the second quarter. At the beginning of the year, I set strategic growth for Momo, Tantan and the new endeavours. For the Momo app, our goal is to maintain a stable user base with a limited marketing budget and seek growth on top of that, while ensuring the cash cow business remained stable. Although the consumer and regulatory environment was full of uncertainties in the first half, we still did a very good job in reaching Momo's strategic goals. This demonstrates our team's strong adaptability and execution skills. Tantan's strategic goal was to deliver solid user growth by improving marketing efficiency and the core dating experience. However, we encountered quite serious external challenges in meeting Tantan's growth scope. In the first half of the year, the COVID situation continued to deteriorate, which largely affected users’ dating sentiment and the propensity to pay for VAS, resulting in a significant decline in channel ROI. We therefore decided to temporarily scale back channel investments in late Q2 to narrow Tantan's net loss. This strategy, in fact, works pretty well, as I will explain in more details later. Considering that there are still many uncertainties surrounding the pandemic situation and the macro environment in the foreseeable future, management has decided to adjust Tantan's strategic goals to focus on narrowing the net loss by reducing low-efficiency China marketing spend. At the same time, we are accelerating the effort on developing products and monetization models that are suitable for the Asian dating culture in order to improve retention and ARPU. With retention and ARPU improvement, we can pursue growth on the back of a positive business cycle. Or in other words, we are now prioritizing growth with profit instead of growth with costs. I will elaborate the strategy and our implementation plans in greater detail later. With respect to new products and businesses, we aim to continue to enrich our product portfolio and push the boundaries beyond Momo and Tantan. We made encouraging progress on that front in the second quarter. Next, I will discuss the progress we made with the aforementioned strategic priorities and areas for improvement. [Foreign Language] Firstly, regarding Momo user growth and key operating metrics, Momo had 111.2 million monthly actives for the second quarter of 2022. MAUs remained stable from the previous quarter. The number of paying users was 8.6 million, flat from the previous quarter. In general, although Momo's MAUs declined 4% from Q2 last year due to pandemic resurgence in the first half, excluding the impact of external factors beyond company's control, the fundamentals of Momo as a social platform remains stable and healthy due to the improvement of channel efficiency and enhancement of overall retention driven by product efforts. This a solid foundation for our cash cow business. [Foreign Language] Now I will discuss made regarding the priorities of ensuring the cash cow business remains stable. In the second quarter, although multiple external factors brought challenges to our live streaming business at the beginning of the year, mass revenue growth primarily generated by new apps largely offset the overall pressure on the Momo's top line caused by the decline in live streaming. On an ex-Tantan basis, revenue was RMB 2.78 billion, slightly down 1% quarter-over-quarter. The revenue ratio of VAS and live streaming further increased to 94%. VAS revenue is very much close to the size of live streaming. [Foreign Language] Momo's live streaming revenue totaled RMB 1.4 billion for the second quarter, down 26% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year decrease was mainly due to 3 factors: First, regulators imposed restrictions on the design of the ranking system and PK competition in May, which had a negative impact on cost spending. Second, the negative impact of tax compliance scrutiny on the engagement of talent agencies. And third, content softness due to the COVID resurgence. In response to the changes in the external environment, on the operational side, we focused on optimizing our live streaming ecosystem and driving user engagement by organizing small-scale events. In terms of event-related incentives, we continued to maintain a conservative operation strategy with a minimum budget on bonuses to better control revenue sharing costs. Although revenue decreased sequentially due to regulatory-related product adjustments, Momo's gross profit margin in Q2 held steady quarter-over-quarter and the overall ecosystem maintained healthy and stable. [Foreign Language] With regards to VAS, revenues from value-added services, excluding Tantan, totaled RMB 1.32 billion for the second quarter, up 9% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter. VAS revenue from the main Momo app totaled RMB 1.14 billion, flat from Q2 last year and up 1% quarter-over-quarter. Revenue from the new apps maintained its rapid growth momentum and achieved full quarter profitability for the first time. Collectively, revenue from the new apps grew at an accelerating rate, up 159% year-on-year to RMB 182 million and up 34% quarter-over-quarter, making it the main incremental revenue contributor for VAS. I'd like an overall update for our new endeavours later. For now, our focus is on Momo app VAS business. [Foreign Language] Since Q4 last year the COVID resurgence continued to suppress users’ social segment and established VAS use cases are getting increasingly fully monetized, resulting in a continued slowdown in year-over-year growth in core Momo mass revenue. In Q2, we differentiated various users groups and catered to their specific social preference. Our product team brought a series of innovative features that effectively enhanced interactions among [long payer] and [indiscernible] users and their propensity to pay for VAS driving a slight increase in mass revenue from the previous quarter despite pandemic and consumption softness. [Foreign Language] With respect to Tantan, our [promotes] with users trend and overall financials, in the early part of Q2, COVID control measures in numerous regions of China continued to escalate which largely surprised users' dating sentiment and put pressure on organic traffic. New user retention dropped significantly and paying conversion was much lower than under normal circumstances, resulting in a substantial decrease in LTV and a longer payback period for channel investments. For ROI considerations, we temporarily adopted a conservative marketing approach to reduce Tantan's net loss during the pandemic period by lowering channel investments. The negative impact of the pandemic, coupled with the reduction of channel investment put pressure on Tantan's domestic MAUs. However, due to the growth in overseas market and the rebound in domestic users since COVID restrictions started to ease in June, Tantan's overall MAUs in June arched down only 3% from March to 24.8 million. The number of paying users for the quarter was 2.2 million, down 200,000 sequentially, mainly due to the decrease in MAUs and the decline in the paying conversion as the pandemic suppressed the users’ propensity to pay in the domestic market. [Foreign Language] Now I'll briefly review Tantan's financial performance. Total revenue was RMB 331 million, down 36% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year decrease was mainly due to our demonetization strategy to improve user experience since the second half of last year. The sequential decrease was mainly due to the decline in paying user for the aforementioned reasons. The slight sequential increase in ARPPU partially offsets the pressure on revenue caused by the decline in paying user count. For the second quarter, VAS revenue was RMB 214 million, down 4% sequentially. FlashChat drove membership subscription to shift toward high-end SVIP services, which in turn, lifted Tantan's overall ARPPU on a sequential basis. Live streaming revenue for the second quarter was RMB 116 million down 7% quarter-over-quarter. Live streaming ARPPU continued to face pressure during product transition period. [Foreign Language] Now let's discuss Tantan’s strategic priorities for the second half of the year and how this effort will help us unleash Tantan's long-term product and commercial value. [Foreign Language] After the management changes last year, we determined that the key to achieve Tantan's long-term strategic goal of user growth is to enhance user retention by improving marketing efficiency and core dating experience. Through a year of channel optimization and product experiment, our team has had some preliminary results in achieving this strategic growth. However, in order to cope with the COVID headwind in the second quarter, we decided to temporarily adopt a cost control strategy to scale back channel investment and Tantan’s net loss. This initiative delivered good results in Q2. In the meantime, user experience was not negatively affected by the decrease in new users. We believe that Tantan is the most committed and the most effective product in connecting people for romantic purposes and converting the online relationship to real-life connections. Tantan's current user base is far from the size it should be. In addition, as far as dating and offline conversion are concerned, we are not seeing any meaningful competitors in the China market. Therefore, we are fully confident in our long-term goal of growing Tantan's user base. However, given that there are many uncertainties in the macro environment and given where the smartphone penetration is, we believe that the growth model of consumer Internet in China should be adjusted accordingly. As far as Tantan is concerned, it makes better sense to pursue profitable growth through a more ROI efficient marketing approaches than simply putting money into channels regardless of unit acquisition costs. Therefore, management has decided to adjust the Tantan's strategic priorities for the second half of the year, specifically reducing spending in low-efficiency channels in order to narrow Tantan's net loss. At the same time, we are working hard to improve user retention and drive ARPU growth through algorithm and new non-membership VAS products. Once ROI turns positive, we will reinvest the profits into marketing to form a self-sustaining positive cycle and pursue growth on top of that. With the reduction of the channel budget, we expect Tantan's net loss in the third quarter to significantly narrow on a sequential basis from approximately RMB 120 million in Q2 to somewhere around RMB 15 million in Q3. In Q4, we will further scale back investment in channels with low ROI, as we do so and with the increase in ARPU, driven by non-membership VAS excluding year-end specific expenses such as annual bonuses, Tantan's net monthly net loss should continue to narrow in Q4, which would lay a solid foundation for reaching breakeven and a positive business cycle next year. We expect the reduction in channel investments to cause a short-term decrease in user scale in the coming 2 to 3 quarters. Nonetheless, we expect that with the increase in retention ratio driven by improving channel efficiency and new product experience, the user base will stabilize at around 80% of the current level before it enters into a growth phase that is based on a positive business cycles. [Foreign Language] I'd like to answer these two points in terms of how we're going to execute the strategy to achieve the profitable growth. First, how exactly we're going to cut cost and at the same time, ensure the improvement of user application efficiency. Second, how we're going to improve user retention and ARPU, while cutting down the channel spending. This is the key to achieving a positive business cycle. [Foreign Language] Firstly, let's talk about how to reduce and control marketing costs and improve efficiency. Our attempt to reduce channel investment in late Q2 was mainly focused on channels with low efficiency. Our team improved the marketing efficiency of premium channels through algorithms and other technical means. In Q2, despite the seasonal increase in channel costs, Tantan’s unit acquisition costs decreased by nearly 20% compared with the previous quarter. At the same time, new user retention showed a slight uptick and the average age of new users tended to be younger. The investment reduction experiment in Q2 not only effectively lowered marketing costs and narrowed the net loss but also had no adverse impact on the overall dating experience. We will continue to practice our Q2 marketing approach in the second half, starting from channels and methods with the lowest ROI and retention. We will closely monitor the impact of budget adjustments on our ecosystem and user retention to ensure that decline in new user registration does not cause any negative user experience on our platform and at the same time, control the user age and revenue ratio within a reasonable scope. [Foreign Language] Now I will explain how to improve retention and ARPU with new product experience. In this regards, we have clarified our direction through exploration in the past few quarters, namely continue to optimize the product experience of female users and those without qualified photos to improve retention, and at the same time, explore an effective non-membership VAS paying model to drive ARPU growth, while improving user experience. On that front, we made chat room available to users who feel reluctant to show the real photos so they can get some initial connection with others via the real-time audio experience. We then encouraged these users to upload photos to reveal their appearances in order to enhance the probability of getting offline conversions. As a commercial product, chat room allows users to send photos with decorations or other traditional virtual gifts to the designated members to show their friendly gesture and enliven the atmosphere. We will take virtual gifts as a basic monetization tool and to continue to introduce interesting interactive features to chat room making it a breakthrough in optimizing the events of users without qualified photos and improving retention and paying conversion. Based on the data seen so far, we expect chat room to have a positive impact on driving ARPU and monetization efficiency once we make it available to a wider range of Tantan users. [Foreign Language] We believe the key to achieving a positive business cycle is to improve ARPU and user retention. Although the previous excessive payroll model was effective in driving up ARPU, on the downside, it not only had a low ceiling, but also early affected users' experience, making it challenging to improve ARPU and retention at the same time. The right thing to do is to drive organic user growth of -- organic growth of ARPU and retention by introducing new product experiences. Our research in the past year taught us that attaining such new experiences depends on 2 key factors: first, the continuous improvement of algorithm; second, building a product model that is more suitable for Asian culture than the swipe and match mechanism through product innovation. In the past 6 months, the improvement of algorithm and the initial success of the chat room experience have given us opportunities to tackle these issues. This will be the direction we continue to focus on going forward. [Foreign Language] Next, I will review the progress we made with our new endeavours. As I mentioned on our previous calls, we undertake different approaches to managing ROI-oriented and DAU-oriented new products. In the second quarter, the total revenue of the profit-driven ROI-oriented standalone app was RMB 199 million, up 184% year-over-year and 24% quarter-over-quarter. As the product experience of these apps gradually stabilized, we started adopting an operational strategy to reduce costs and improve efficiency in the second half of last year, and stepped up monetization efforts to improve paying conversion and ARPU. With the continued expansion of revenue scale and branding influence, we have had enough leverage to lower the payout ratio, thereby improving profitability. Our overseas social app expanded into new regions on top of deepened operation in established markets. We continue to improve user acquisition efficiency and user base expanded rapidly with a flattish budget. Revenue growth of the overseas app accelerated from the previous quarter, while achieving full quarter profitability. In Q2, ROI-oriented standalone apps as a whole have started to contribute positively to the group's bottom line. We expect these products that target vertical user groups in each markets to simultaneously pursue steady growth and ensure profitability this year. On the product front, we will continue to explore innovative features suitable for new markets to pave the way for long-term growth. [Foreign Language] In addition to ROI-oriented products, I introduced our new DAU-oriented product Tietie, on our last conference call. is a picture and video-based social app for users to interact with intimate friends and family members through documenting the daily lives in photo and video format. This company is automatically pushed to the mobile phone homepage of the predefined intimate friends on Tietie so that users can think with authentic life status of their Tietie friends without loading up the app. This product accurately captures the demand of Gen Z and Gen Alpha like to express their in a fun way with amusing selfies. Such needs cannot be well satisfied on the existing large and ubiquity social media platform, where everybody is watching, and therefore, you need to worry about your perceived image. Therefore, Tietie’s organic user base grew rapidly since its launch of the Chinese New Year. Following that, our team stepped up marketing efforts in the second quarter and user scale increased rapidly, while unit costs remained within a controllable range and retention maintained a high level. Meanwhile, user scale has reached a very considerable point. The growth rate and overall user scale that Tietie has delivered is an achievement well-received in today’s consumer Internet market. This was also the first time that we have made a breakthrough in DAU-oriented social app after our exploration over the past few years. We believe this is a reward for accurately capturing the new social preferences of younger generations. In the third quarter, our team will accelerate product iteration to enrich features and functionalities. We will introduce more [and more brand] and Chinese pop features and interactive mechanism to enhance product experience and retention and encourage users to share the Tietie content by other social media apps, thereby expanding our branding influence. The initial success of Tietie shows that, while in the long run, new opportunities for social model and experience mainly depend on technological breakthroughs. Generational transition can still bring new opportunities to the social industry for large DAU products before user’s screen time shifts from mobile to elsewhere. Our strength and long-standing leadership in the social space is the advantage we can leverage to discover new markets and tap the new opportunities. Going forward, will move in a bolder and more determined way to expand our territory and explore deeper in our vertical markets. [Foreign Language] This is what I would like to cover today. Now I'll pass the call over to Cathy for financial review. Cathy, please.
Peng Hui
谢谢王总和Ashley。大家好,感谢各位参加我们今天的电话会议。现在让我简要带大家回顾一下财务情况。2022年第二季度总收入为31.1亿元人民币,同比下降15%,环比下降1%。非美国通用会计准则下归属于公司的净利润为4.635亿元人民币,而2021年同期为5.510亿元人民币,同比下降16%。 接下来看看本季度关键收入项目。首先是直播业务。2022年第二季度直播业务总收入为15.2亿元人民币,同比下降28%,环比下降6%。核心陌陌直播收入在第二季度总计14.0亿元人民币,同比下降26%,环比下降5%。下降主要是由于消费疲软和监管变化带来的压力。探探直播收入为1.164亿元人民币,较去年第二季度下降46%,较上一季度下降7%。下降是由于我们战略性地决定弱化直播作为约会补充体验的地位。 几个月前,我们决定改革探探的直播业务,更倾向于促进社交互动而非传统的演艺模式。根据我们目前看到的数据,这一策略正在取得成效。因此,我们预计内容直播将走出下滑期,并在下半年稳定在当前水平。增值服务收入达到15.4亿元人民币,同比增长2%,环比增长4%。剔除探探后的增值服务收入在2022年第二季度达到13.2亿元人民币,同比增长9%,环比增长5%。剔除探探后的增值服务增长主要得益于快速增长的新应用带来的增量收入。探探增值服务收入为2.144亿元人民币,较去年第二季度下降28%,较上一季度下降4%。同比下降是由于2021年下半年为改善用户体验和留存而进行的去货币化进程,以及新冠疫情反复对探探月活跃用户和付费转化造成的压力。探探增值服务的环比下降主要归因于后一因素。 2022年第二季度非美国通用会计准则下营收成本为17.9亿元人民币,去年同期为20.5亿元人民币。本季度非美国通用会计准则下毛利率为42.5%,较去年同期下降1.7个百分点。下降主要归因于向内容提供商支付的分成比例提高,因为我们向系统中投入更多资金以帮助机构和主播度过困难时期。环比来看,非美国通用会计准则下毛利率保持稳定,略有上升。 2022年第二季度非美国通用会计准则下研发费用为2.143亿元人民币,去年同期为2.329亿元人民币,同比下降8%,这是由于自年初以来持续优化人员成本。本季度末员工总数为1,825人,其中516人来自探探,而去年同期员工总数为2,092人,其中617人来自探探。集团研发人员占总员工比例为61%,而去年第二季度为57%。 2022年第二季度非美国通用会计准则下销售和营销费用为6.001亿元人民币,去年同期为6.195亿元人民币。正如王力提到的,提高营销效率一直是公司的首要运营重点之一。自年初以来,我们一直在削减不同业务线中低效的营销计划,这些计划产生了负投资回报率。第二季度,陌陌和探探的营销支出较去年同期减少了7,400万元人民币,降幅为15%。我们将部分节省下来的资金用于推广新应用贴贴,该应用在第一季度取得了初步成功。将资源从低投资回报率项目重新分配到高投资回报率项目,将继续是我们在未来几个季度的重要策略。环比来看,非美国通用会计准则下销售和营销费用较今年第一季度的5.780亿元人民币增长4%。增长主要归因于贴贴的营销支出,部分被其他低效营销渠道的削减所抵消。 2022年第二季度非美国通用会计准则下一般及行政费用为8,260万元人民币,去年同期为7,880万元人民币。非美国通用会计准则下运营收入为4.641亿元人民币,较2021年第二季度下降41%,但较上一季度增长1%。本季度非美国通用会计准则下运营利润率为15%,较去年同期下降6个百分点。非美国通用会计准则下运营费用占总收入比例为29%,高于2021年第二季度的25%。增长主要是由于收入下降导致的负运营杠杆效应。非美国通用会计准则下运营费用同比下降4%,这是由于自年初以来我们一直在实施成本控制。我们预计将在今年剩余时间继续实行成本纪律,以提高成本效率,应对不确定的宏观环境。 现在简要谈谈线下项目。在第二季度,公司以约1.616亿美元的总回购价格从某些债券持有人处回购了1.618亿美元本金总额的可转换优先票据。[CB利率] 00:48:50的购买产生了6,630万元人民币的收益。现在简要谈谈所得税费用。本季度所得税费用总额为1.460亿元人民币,有效税率为24.5%。第二季度,公司计提了3,770万元人民币的预提所得税,这是我们外商独资企业未分配利润的10%。不考虑预提税,我们估计的第二季度非美国通用会计准则下有效税率约为18%。 现在转向资产负债表和现金流项目。截至2022年6月30日,Hello Group的现金、现金等价物、短期存款、长期存款和限制性现金总计139.5亿元人民币,而截至2021年12月31日为157.1亿元人民币。第二季度,我们向股东支付了相当于8.41亿元人民币的现金股息,并回购了相当于10亿元人民币的公司可转换票据。扣除向中国税务机关支付的1亿元人民币现金以从我们在中国的外商独资企业汇回10亿元人民币,2022年第二季度经营活动提供的净现金为3亿元人民币。 最后是业务展望。我们预计第三季度收入将在31亿元人民币至32亿元人民币之间,同比下降17.5%至14.9%,或环比下降0.3%至增长2.9%。对于2022年第三季度环比来看,我们预计——我们预计核心陌陌的总收入将实现低个位数增长,这得益于团队的产品和运营努力带来的直播业务复苏。在探探方面,我们预计收入将环比持平至略有下降。探探的会员收入环比下降,因为我们削减了低效营销渠道导致用户基数暂时下降。下降将被直播业务的环比增长所抵消,直播增长得益于我前面提到的战略转变的初步成功。请注意,此预测代表了公司当前对市场和运营状况的初步看法,可能会发生变化。 这结束了我们今天讨论的准备部分。接下来,让我把电话交还给Ashley开始问答环节。Ashley,请?
Peng Hui
Thanks, Wang and Ashley. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call today. Now let me briefly take you through the financial review. Total revenue for the second quarter of 2022 was RMB 3.11 billion, down 15% year-on-year and 1% quarter-on-quarter. Non-GAAP net income attributable to the company was RMB 463.5 million compared to RMB 551.0 million from the same period of 2021 or a 16% decrease year-over-year. Looking into the key revenue line items for the quarter. Firstly, on live broadcasting. Total revenue from live broadcasting business for the second quarter 2022 was RMB 1.52 billion, down 28% year-over-year and 6% quarter-on-quarter. Core Momo's live broadcasting revenue totaled RMB 1.40 billion for the second quarter, down 26% year-on-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter. The decrease was mainly due to pressure caused by the consumption softness and regulatory changes. Tantan’s live broadcasting revenue amounted to RMB 116.4 million, down 46% from Q2 last year and 7% from the previous quarter. The decrease was due to our strategic decision to deemphasize live streaming as a supplementary experience to dating. A few months ago, we made a decision to reform Tantan’s live streaming business to lean more towards facilitating social interactions rather than the traditional show biz. Based on the data that we've seen so far, such strategy is bearing fruit. Therefore, we expect content live streaming to exit the period of decline and stabilize at the current level as we head into the second half. Revenue from value-added service reached RMB 1.54 billion, up 2% year-on-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter. Revenue from value-added service on an ex-Tantan basis reached RMB 1.32 billion in the second quarter of 2022, a 9% increase year-over-year and 5% increase sequentially. The growth in value-added service on an ex-Tantan basis was primarily driven by incremental revenue contributed by the fast-growing new applications. Tantan's value-added service revenue amounted to RMB 214.4 million, down 28% from Q2 last year and 4% from the previous quarter. The year-on-year decrease was due to the demonetization process to improve user experience and retention in the latter half of 2021 as well as the pressure on Tantan's MAUs and paying conversion caused by the COVID resurgence. The sequential decrease in Tantan's value-added service was largely attributable to the latter factor. Non-GAAP cost of revenue for the second quarter of 2022 was RMB 1.79 billion, compared to RMB 2.05 billion for the same period last year. Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 42.5%, down 1.7 percentage points from a year ago. The decrease was mainly attributable to the higher payout ratio to the content providers as we put more money back to the system for helping agencies as well as broadcasters navigate through the tough time. On a sequential basis, non-GAAP gross margin remained stable with a slight uptick. Non-GAAP R&D expenses for the second quarter was RMB 214.3 million compared to RMB 232.9 million for the same period last year or an 8% decrease year-over-year, which was due to continuous optimization in personnel costs since the beginning of the year. We ended the quarter with 1,825 total employees, of which 516 are from Tantan, compared to 2,092 total employees, of which 617 from Tantan a year ago. The R&D personnel as a percentage of total employees for the group was 61% compared with 57% Q2 last year. Non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses for the second quarter was RMB 600.1 million compared to RMB 619.5 million for the same period last year. As Wang Li mentioned, improving marketing efficiency has been one of the top operational priorities of the company. Since the beginning of the year, we've been cutting down on low efficiency in marketing plans across different business lines, which grows negative ROI. For the second quarter, marketing spend for Momo and Tantan decreased RMB 74 million or 15% from the same period last year. We shifted part of the savings to promote the new application Tietie following its initial success in Q1. Reallocating resources from low ROI to higher ROI ones will continue to be an important strategy for us for the coming few quarters. On a sequential basis, non-GAAP sales and marketing increased 4% from RMB 578.0 million in Q1 this year. The increase was primarily due to Tietie’s marketing, partially offset by the reduction in other low efficiency marketing channels. Non-GAAP G&A expenses was RMB 82.6 million for the second quarter of 2022 compared to RMB 78.8 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating income was RMB 464.1 million, a decrease of 41% from Q2 2021, but up 1% from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP operating margin for the quarter was 15%, down 6 percentage points from the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating expenses as a percentage of total revenue was 29%, an increase from 25% from Q2 2021. The increase was mainly due to the negative operating leverage resulted from the decrease in revenues. Non-GAAP operating expenses decreased 4% year-over-year due to the cost control we've been exercising since the beginning of the year. We expect to continue to exercise cost discipline for the rest of the year in order to improve cost efficiency to navigate through the uncertain macro environment. Now, briefly on below the line items. During the second quarter, the company repurchased $161.8 million aggregate principal amount of our convertible senior notes from certain bondholders for an aggregate repurchase price of approximately $161.6 million. [CB rate] 00:48:50 purchase resulted in a gain of RMB 66.3 million. Now briefly on income tax expenses. Total income tax expense was RMB 146.0 million for the quarter with an effective tax rate of 24.5%. In Q2, the company accrued withholding income tax of RMB 37.7 million, which is 10% of undistributed profits generated by our WFOE. Without withholding tax, our estimated non-GAAP effective tax rate was around 18% in the second quarter. Now turning to balance sheet and cash flow items. As of June 30, 2022, Hello Group's cash, cash equivalents, short-term deposits, long-term deposits and restricted cash totaled RMB 13.95 billion compared to RMB 15.71 billion as of December 31, 2021. In Q2, we paid an equivalent of RMB 841 million cash dividend to our shareholders and repurchased an equivalent of RMB 1 billion of the company's convertible notes. Excluding the RMB 100 million cash payment to Chinese tax authorities to repatriate RMB 1 billion from our WFOE in China, our offshore entity, net cash provided by operating activities in the second quarter of 2022 was RMB 300 million. Lastly, on business outlook. We estimated our third quarter revenue to come in the range from RMB 3.1 billion to RMB 3.2 billion, representing a decrease of 17.5% to 14.9% year-on-year, or a decrease of 0.3% to an increase of 2.9% quarter-over-quarter. For Q3 2022 on a sequential basis, we expect -- we expect the total revenue from the core Momo to increase low single digits driven by the recovery of live streaming business, thanks to the product and operational efforts of the team. On the Tantan side, we expect revenue to be flattish towards a slight decrease on a sequential basis. Tantan's membership revenue decreased quarter-over-quarter due to the temporary decline in user base as we cut down on the low efficiency marketing channels. The decrease will be offset by the sequential growth of live streaming driven by the initial success in the shift of strategy as mentioned in the earlier part of my remarks. Please be mindful that this forecast represents the company's current and preliminary view on the market and operational conditions, which are subject to changes. That concluded our prepared portion of today's discussion. With that, let me turn the call back to Ashley to start Q&A. Ashley, please?
Ashley Jing
在开始提问前先做个简短提醒。能说中文的参会者,请先用中文提问,然后自行提供英文翻译。谢谢。接线员,我们准备好接受提问了。
Ashley Jing
Just a quick reminder before we take the questions. For those who can speak Chinese, please ask your questions in Chinese first, followed by English translation by yourself. Thank you. Operator, we're ready for questions, please.
Operator
[接线员指示] 我们的第一个问题来自Jefferies的Thomas Chong。
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Thomas Chong from Jefferies.
Thomas Chong
[外语] 我的第一个问题是关于探探。管理层能否评论下半年的用户趋势以及相关收入和利润情况?我的第二个问题是关于我们新应用的开发以及海外战略?
Thomas Chong
[Foreign Language] My first question is on Tantan. Can management comment about the user trend in second half as well as related revenue as well as bottom line? And my second question is about the development of our new apps as well as our overseas strategies?
Wang Li
[外语] 在上次电话会议上,我提到探探的用户增长取决于两个因素。一个是内部因素,即产品努力驱动的用户体验提升和渠道效率改善。第二个因素是外部原因,即疫情管控政策及相关用户线下约会意愿的程度。[外语] 关于内部因素,去年管理层变动后我们取得的最大进展是,我们确定了提升用户体验和改善渠道效率的关键在于提高女性用户和没有合格照片用户的留存率。我们已通过算法和新产品功能找到了初步解决方案。我们将在这方面继续稳步推进,我对此充满信心。[外语] 在外部因素方面,中国各地疫情的持续反复及相关管控措施带来了相当大的挑战。此外,整体宏观环境仍存在许多不确定性。因此,我们决定采取减少营销投入、控制成本和提高效率的策略。我们的计划是减少低效渠道的支出,同时通过新的聊天室体验提高女性用户和没有合格照片用户的留存率,并推动ARPU增长,以便尽快使探探渠道投资回报率转正,从而在正向业务循环基础上追求利润增长。基于当前关于渠道投资减少和聊天室体验的测试数据,我们相信明年很有可能实现这一目标。[外语] 财务展望方面,我将请Cathy来回答。
Wang Li
[Foreign Language] On the last conference call, I mentioned that Tantan's user growth depends on 2 factors. One is an internal factor, which is the enhancement of user experience and the improvement of channel efficiency driven by product efforts. And the second factor is about external reasons, namely the extent of COVID control policy and related users’ offline dating sentiment. [Foreign Language] As for internal factors, our biggest progress made after the management changes last year, was that we determined that the key in enhancing user experience and improving channel efficiency is to improve retention of female users and those without qualified photos. And we have found an initial solutions through algorithm and new product features. We will continue to make steady progress in this regard, and I have full confidence in this aspect. [Foreign Language] In terms of external factors, the continuous resurgence of COVID in various regions in China and its related control measures has brought about quite a bit of challenges. In addition, there are still many uncertainties in the overall macro environment. Consequently, we've decided to adopt a strategy to reduce marketing investment control cost and improve efficiency. Our plan is to reduce spending in low efficiency channels, while improving retention of female users and those without qualified photos as well as driving ARPU growth with the new chat room experience in order to turn Tantan channel ROI positive as soon as possible, so that we can pursue profit book growth based on a positive business cycle. And based on the current test data on the reduction of channel investment and the chat room experience, we believe we are very much likely to achieve this goal next year. [Foreign Language] I will leave it to Cathy for the financial outlook.
Peng Hui
好的,没问题。让我为大家详细说明探探的营收和利润情况。首先,关于收入方面,看起来清零政策还会持续一段时间。实际上,最近几天由于确诊病例反弹,一些大城市出现了新一轮的封锁收紧。正如大家所知,探探的用户主要集中在中国的较大、较富裕的城市。这显然会对约会情绪和付费转化产生负面影响,从而继续对营销投资回报率造成压力。正如王力在之前的讲话中提到的,在'优先考虑有利润的增长而非不计成本的增长'原则下,我们准备削减营销成本以照顾投资回报率和利润底线。随着我们在下半年削减低效渠道营销,我们应该预期用户数量会呈下降趋势。正如王力所说,我认为大约比6月份水平下降20%,上下浮动5%,然后可能在那里达到一个反弹点。这上下5%的浮动实际上取决于下半年疫情因素如何发展。订阅收入应该会随着用户数量的下降而减少,可能由于递延收入而存在时间滞后,但最终会与用户下降幅度相匹配。然而,我们确实看到探探这里有一个抵消因素,那就是随着时间推移,我们预计非订阅收入的增长将实现,并抵消部分因成本削减导致的订阅收入下降。所以,如果你把这些相当动态的不同因素拼凑在一起,我会说对于探探而言,收入在下半年相对于上半年会略有下降,但在再次回升之前只会是轻微的下滑趋势。我想在这里稍微重申的另一件事是,尽管我们在下半年削减低效营销渠道时会在营收上做出一些小的牺牲,但探探的利润底线从第二季度开始应该会有相当显著的改善。我想在王力之前的准备发言中,我们提到我们预计第三季度探探的非GAAP净亏损将收窄至5000万元人民币以内。我认为对于第四季度,排除一些第四季度特有的支出,如年底的双薪和奖金,我们应该继续看到探探的净亏损在月度基础上继续收窄。这就是探探在下半年的整体财务情况。考虑到我们目前所处的清零政策环境和宏观不确定性,我们认为对于探探来说,短期内牺牲一些营收增长,以便进入积极的商业周期并在未来实现有利润的增长,这绝对是一个明智的选择。希望这回答了你的问题。
Peng Hui
Okay, sure. Let me give you guys more color on the top line and also the bottom line of Tantan. Firstly, on the revenues, it seems like the zero COVID policy is going to sustain for a while. Actually, the recent few days are seeing a new round of tightening lockdowns in some of the big cities due to the resurgence in confirmed cases. And as you guys know, Tantan's users are pretty concentrated in bigger, wealthier cities in China. This is obviously going to have a negative impact on the dating sentiment and paying conversion, which would continue to pressure the marketing ROI. As Wang Li mentioned in -- earlier in his speech, under the principle to prioritize growth with profit over growth at cost, we are prepared to cut down the marketing cost in order to take care of the ROI and bottom line. As we cut low efficiency channel marketing in the second half, we should expect user count to trend down. As Wang Li said, I think around 20% from the June level, plus/minus 5% and then perhaps hit a bounce point around there. The plus/minus 5% really depends on how the COVID factor spins in the second half of the year. Subscription revenue should decrease as the user count does, probably with a time lag because of the deferrals, but it should ultimately catch up through the same magnitude of user decline. However, we do see a countering factor here for Tantan and that is that as the year progresses, we expect the ramp-up of non-subscription revenues to materialize and offset part of the decrease in subscription as a result of the cost cutting. So if you piece all these different, pretty dynamic factors together, I would say that for Tantan, revenue would trend down a little bit in the second half versus the first, but it would be a slight trend down before it picks up again. The other thing I would like to sort of reiterate here a little bit is that despite the small sacrifice on the top line as we cut down the low efficiency marketing channels in the back half of the year, bottom line should see pretty significant improvement from Q2 onwards for Tantan. I think in earlier part of Wang Li's prepared remarks, we mentioned that we expect Q3, the non-GAAP net loss for Tantan to narrow to within RMB 50 million. I think for Q4, excluding some of the Q4 specific expenses such as double pay and bonus at the end of the year, we should continue to see -- we should continue to see a narrow now in Tantan's net loss on a monthly basis. So that's the overall sort of financial picture of Tantan in the back half of the year. Given where we are in terms of zero COVID policy and given the macro uncertainties, we believe it's definitely a wise choice for Tantan to perhaps sacrifice some top line growth short term wise, so we can get into a positive business cycle and grow with profit down the path. I hope that answers your question.
Wang Li
[外语] 我在准备好的发言中已经相当全面地介绍了新业务。这里,我可以简要谈谈探探的海外发展。自从我们大约一年前进入海外市场以来,我们一直采用以投资回报率为导向的管理方法,努力实现盈利性增长,从而克服了以往增长不盈利或盈利不增长的困境。[外语] 我们的执行计划包括三个部分。首先,原有的直播和非会员增值服务变现模式,旨在显著提高印尼市场的ARPU和ROI。目前,我们的团队正在努力将这种商业模式复制到其他市场。其次,采取降本增效的策略,我们正在减少在日本和韩国等ROI较低市场的渠道投入,并将有限的预算重新部署到具有更高盈利潜力的地区;第三,在收入规模较大的市场降低分成比例以提高盈利水平。我们相信,在下半年,投资者将看到探探海外业务在积极业务周期推动下的清晰增长轨迹。希望这回答了你的问题,Thomas。
Wang Li
[Foreign Language] I've been pretty comprehensive about the new business in my prepared remarks. Here, I can briefly discuss Tantan's overseas development. And since we made our way into the overseas market about a year ago, we have been adopting an ROI oriented management approach and striving to achieve profitable growth, thereby overcoming the previous predicament of growth without profit or profit without growth. [Foreign Language] Our execution plan consists of 3 parts. First, the original live streaming and non-membership VAS monetization model to significantly increase ARPU and ROI in the Indonesian market. Currently, our team is working on replicating this business model in other markets. Second, adopting a strategy that focuses on reducing costs and improving efficiency, we are reducing channel investments in markets such as Japan and South Korea with a low ROI and redeploying our limited budget to regions with higher profit potentials; and third, lowering the payout ratio to increase profit level in markets with larger scale revenue. We believe that in the second half of the year, investors will see a clear growth trajectory in Tantan's overseas business on the back of a positive business cycle. I hope that answers your question, Thomas.
Ashley Jing
接线员,我们准备好回答下一个问题了。
Ashley Jing
Operator, we're ready for the next question.
Operator
下一个问题来自摩根大通的Daniel Chen。
Operator
Our next question comes from Daniel Chen from JPMorgan.
Henry Wibowo
[外语] 我是Henry,代表Daniel提问。我的问题是关于核心陌陌业务,管理层能否分享更多关于下半年直播或增值服务收入预期的细节?
Henry Wibowo
[Foreign Language] This is Henry speaking on behalf of Daniel. My question is about core Momo, can management share more color on the second half revenue expectation for live streaming or VAS?
Peng Hui
好的。让我分别分析这两条不同的业务线,因为我认为它们背后的动态非常不同。对于陌陌的直播业务,6月和8月的表现比我们3个月前预期的要好,这显然已经反映在我们第三季度的指引中。最初,我们认为第三季度会较第二季度有所下滑。但现在看来,陌陌直播业务有望实现环比增长。 我想说的是,目前断言直播业务已经走出不确定期还为时过早。但基于我们在宏观和监管层面看到的情况,我们有理由对今年剩余时间直播业务的稳定性保持谨慎乐观。以上就是关于直播业务的情况。 对于增值服务(不包括探探,因为之前已经解释过探探的情况)。对于除探探外的增值服务,我们也在尝试优化营销成本,以便新应用能够实现更高质量的增长——所谓更高质量的增长,我实际上指的是利润率更高的增长。这意味着如果某些渠道的投资回报率不够好,我们也可能会削减新应用的营销支出。 此外,持续的零疫情政策和不同地区反复出现的疫情继续影响社交情绪,这也可能限制主应用增值服务的增长速度。 之前,我想我们与投资者沟通过,对于除探探外的增值服务,我们预期其同比增长将达到两位数。现在由于上述因素——一是新应用营销成本的优化,二是疫情可能持续到第四季度——我们允许之前的两位数增长目标放缓几个百分点,可能降至较高的个位数区间。但总体而言,我认为增值服务仍然是陌陌下半年相当健康的增长引擎。 以上就是分别关于陌陌直播和增值服务的情况。 考虑到时间关系,也许我们再回答一个问题就结束今天的会议。准备好下一个问题了吗,主持人?
Peng Hui
Sure. Let me take these 2 different lines 1 by 1 because they have -- I think they have very different dynamics behind them. For Momo's live streaming business, June and August have been tracking better than what we thought 3 months ago, and obviously, that has been reflected in our Q3 guidance. Originally, we thought Q3 would see a down tick from Q2. But now it looks like we can expect an upward quarter on a sequential basis for Momo live streaming. I would say that at this point, it's still too early to call that we've exited the period of uncertainties for live streaming. But based on what we're seeing on the macro and regulatory front, we have some reasons to remain cautiously optimistic about the stability of the live streaming business for the rest of the year. So that's for live streaming. For value added service on an ex-Tantan basis because we've already explained Tantan earlier. For VAS ex-Tantan, we are also trying to optimize the marketing costs so that the new applications can achieve higher quality growth, which means -- by higher quality growth I actually mean growth with higher profit margins. That means that we may also cut down marketing spend for new applications if the ROI of certain channels isn't good enough. In addition, the continuing zero COVID policy and the lingering outbreaks in different geo regions continue to weigh on the social sentiment, which could limit the growth pace of value-added services on the main application as well. Previously, I think we communicated with investors that for VAS on an ex-Tantan basis, we expect it to grow double digits on a year-over-year basis. Now due to the aforementioned factors, one being the optimization of marketing cost for the new applications and the other one being COVID lingering into Q4, we would allow that previous double-digit growth target to slow a couple of percentage points to maybe high single-digit range. But overall, I would say that value-added service continue to be a pretty healthy growth engine for Momo for the back half of the year. So that's separately for Momo live streaming and value added service. I think in the interest of time, maybe let's just take 1 more question before we call it a day. Ready for the next question, operator?
Operator
下一个问题来自德意志银行的Leo Chiang。
Operator
The next question comes from Leo Chiang from Deutsche Bank.
Leo Chiang
[外语] 我的问题是关于陌陌核心业务下半年的利润率趋势。考虑到正在进行的成本控制措施,我们应该如何预期陌陌核心业务的毛利率和营业利润率?
Leo Chiang
[Foreign Language] My question is regarding to core Momo margin trend in the second half. What should we expect for core Momo's gross margin and OP margin, given the ongoing cost control initiative.
Peng Hui
好的。我想,如果要回顾陌陌核心业务的话,我会从公司层面的成本和费用入手,并针对陌陌业务提供更多细节。从毛利率来看,正如大家今天早些时候看到的数字,上半年我们的毛利率——非美国通用会计准则毛利率线一直保持着相当稳定的趋势。目前看来,对于核心陌陌业务,第三季度应该会继续保持相对稳定,因为内容供应体系依然相当稳固。第四季度可能会——我对第四季度还没有完全的可见性,但我认为第四季度可能会因为年终促销活动而略有下降。但这应该是年终的一次性影响,我们每年第四季度都会这样做。探探的毛利率在下半年将较上半年水平有所下降,因为订阅收入趋势下滑,而非订阅服务收入开始增长。 关于运营费用,我们一直在优化关键项目,包括营销、人员和基础设施,并且我们将在展望第四季度和明年时继续这样做。我想,下半年运营费用中最大的成本节约将来自探探,因为我们正在逐步削减所有低效渠道。运营费用中另一个值得提及的是,削减营销成本并不一定意味着我们为了在艰难的宏观环境中采取防御性策略而牺牲未来的增长机会,我们真正在做的是削减低投资回报率的营销计划,并将部分节省下来的资金重新分配到营销资金能够产生更高收益的地方。 例如,我们在第二季度大幅增加了对贴贴的营销支出,如果这个快速增长的新应用的留存率继续保持令人满意的水平,我们将继续投入。但这样的支出将通过削减其他效率较低的营销计划来吸收。因此,总体而言,下半年营销费用仍将出现相当显著的下降。 总而言之,虽然目前还很难对下半年的净利润做出非常明确的预测,但我认为在剔除探探的基础上,2022年仍有望实现超过20%的非美国通用会计准则运营利润率。而对于探探,由于专注于盈利增长,我们预计下半年净亏损将缩减至不到1亿元人民币。希望这能回答您的问题。
Peng Hui
Yes. I guess, if there is reviewing core Momo maybe what I'll do is just go through the cost and expenses at the company level with some more color on Momo. I think gross margin wise, as you guys can see in the numbers that we put out earlier today, we've been able to maintain a pretty stable trend during the first half of the year for the gross margin -- non-GAAP gross margin line. Now it looks like for the core Momo business Q3 should continue to be relatively stable as the content supply system remains pretty solid. Q4 could -- I don't have full visibility into Q4, but I think Q4 could dip a little bit due to the year-end promotional events. But that should be rather a one-off for the year end [indiscernible] and we do it every year in Q4. Tantan's gross margin in the second half will see some decrease from first half level as the subscription revenue trends down and revenue from non-subscription service starts ramping up. With regards to operating expenses, we've been optimizing the key line items, including marketing, personnel and infrastructures, and we'll continue to do so as we look out into Q4 and next year. I guess, the biggest cost saving in OpEx in the second half will come from Tantan as we gradually cut all of the low efficiency channels. And the other thing worth calling out here for operating expenses is that cutting marketing cost doesn't necessarily mean that we're sacrificing future growth opportunities as a -- sort of a defensive play in a tough macro environment, what we are really doing here is cutting down on the low ROI marketing plans and reallocating part of the savings to where marketing dollars could generate much higher yields. For example, we increased marketing spend quite substantially on Tietie in Q2, and we'll keep spending if retention continues to be satisfactory for this new fast-growing application. But such spending will be absorbed by cost cutting other -- by cutting down other less efficient marketing plans. So overall marketing will still see pretty significant decrease in the back half of the year. So to sum up, although at this point, it's sort of impossible to be very prescriptive about the bottom line for the second half of the year, but I think on an ex-Tantan basis, 2022 is still on track to deliver a non-GAAP operating margin north of 20%. And for Tantan due to the focus on growth with profits, we expect net loss to shrink down to less than RMB 100 million for the second half of the year. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Ashley Jing
好的。我想问答环节到此结束。感谢大家今天的参与,我们下个季度再见。准备结束。谢谢主持人。
Ashley Jing
Okay. I think this is going to be the end of the Q&A session. Thank you for joining us today, and we will see you next quarter. Ready to close. Thank you, operator.
Operator
今天的电话会议到此结束。感谢各位的参与。您现在可以断开连接。
Operator
This concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.