Michael Tong
谢谢Brandy。大家好,感谢各位参加我们的电话会议。总体而言,我们对在线游戏和广告业务的进展感到满意。第三季度代表了我们在现有市场的稳健增长期,以及对下一代产品开发的集中投资。总收入同比增长83%,环比增长11%。正如许多人所知,我们领先的MMORPG游戏《梦幻西游》继续成为中国最受欢迎的游戏。而《大话西游Online II》在玩家数量方面保持了前三名的位置。我们将这一成功归因于我们在第二和第三季度推出的成功扩展包和增强的服务能力。
尽管我们对游戏的持续成功感到满意,这推动了第三季度的收入增长,但我们略微失望的是夏季季节比预期缓慢,我们认为这部分是由于市场竞争加剧所致。我们不认为这对在线游戏业务的长期健康或我们继续引领市场、保持创新前沿在线游戏开发商的能力构成长期问题,因为我们将在2006年推出下一代MMORPG产品。
我们的广告业务表现非常出色,进一步证明了网易品牌的实力。第三季度的表现部分归因于第三季度在线广告的季节性增长以及我们产品用户中加速增长的受欢迎程度。在第三季度,我们见证了约44%的强劲同比增长和37%的环比增长。就广告收入而言,增长主要来自现有广告客户支出的增加,因为他们在夏季月份增加了营销活动。以及本季度获得的新广告客户。
网易继续通过网站内容增强和积极拓展市场渠道网络及销售努力相结合来推动广告收入。我们继续淡化无线增值服务业务,直到我们认为该市场能够为投资者带来增加的股东价值。
现在我将更详细地概述本季度的在线游戏业务。该业务总收入同比增长119.4%,这得益于《梦幻西游》和《大话西游Online II》的持续成功,环比增长8.4%。正如2005年第三季度提到的,《梦幻西游》在夏末增长到827,000名最高同时在线用户,并保持了其作为中国最受欢迎MMORPG之一的领导地位。
我们为这一成功感到非常自豪,并将其归因于多个因素,包括第三季度发布的持续内容增强,继续努力扩大公司分销网络以接受点卡收益和分销,以及增强的销售和营销努力,还有在线活动进一步渗透市场。
我们自主研发的2D游戏的成功不仅证明了中国MMORPG市场的持续支持,更是我们团队技能的真实证明,能够推出赢得用户忠诚度的游戏。我们相信我们在结合中国传统文化和先进游戏技术方面有很强的见解,这始终被证明是我们的制胜组合。这使网易相对于竞争对手具有明显优势。
现在转向我们的新游戏管线。目前我们的2.5D游戏和3D游戏都处于不同的测试阶段。我们的2.5D游戏《大唐》正在进行外部封闭测试,而我们的3D游戏《天下》正在进行内部封闭测试。我们预计这些游戏的商业发布将在2006年上半年。
正如我们在财报发布中提到的,网易在在线游戏社区拥有强大的品牌认知度,并以不牺牲质量换取数量而闻名。我们正在将游戏组合提升到新的水平,并继续专注于推动现有在线游戏的性能,这使我们能够继续投资于网易的下一代游戏。
在我将电话转交给Denny之前,让我先就我们因代理CEO Ted Sun在9月下旬离职而经历的ProForma亏损说几句话。代表William、Denny和我本人以及我们公司,我们都对他的离职深感悲痛。Ted自1999年起就参与网易,是使我们公司成为今天样子的极具影响力的贡献者。在Ted的承诺下,我们公司能够逐步执行我们的战略,成为中国互联网市场的领导者。
那些认识Ted的人都知道,他是一个道德承诺高、对工作尽职尽责、并将生命的大部分投入到我们公司的人。他的遗产是我们所有人都引以为豪的,我们的管理团队致力于继承他的愿景,并进一步推动公司达到新的成功水平。关于Ted继任者的公告,一旦董事会做出决定,我们将更新我们选择的CEO职位人选。
现在我想将电话转交给Denny,他将更详细地介绍第三季度的财务情况。
Michael Tong
Thank you Brandy. Hi everyone and thank you for joining us. Overall we were pleased with our progress in our Online Game and advertising businesses. The third quarter represented a period of solid growth in our current markets and concentrated investment in the development of our next generation of products. Total revenues increased 83% year-over-year and were up 11% quarter-over-quarter. As many of you are aware, our leading MMORPG game, Fantasy Westward Journey, continued to be the most popular game in China. And Westward Journey Online II was able to hold on to top 3 positions in terms of number of players. We attribute this success to our successful expansion packs and increase service capabilities we rolled out in the second and third quarters. Although we were pleased with the continued success of our games, that generated revenue growth in the third quarter, we were slightly disappointed that the summer season was slower than we expected, which we believe resulted in part from increased competition in the markets. We do not view this as a long-term issue for the health of Online Game business or the ability for us to continue to lead this market and remain a developer of innovative and cutting edge Online Games as we roll out our 2006 next generation of MMORPG products. Our Advertising business performed extremely well, which further demonstrated the strength of the NetEase brand. Our performance in the third quarter was partially due to the third quarter’s seasonal increase in online advertising and our accelerating popularity among our product users. In the third quarter, we witnessed strong year-over-year growth of approximately 44% and an increase of 37% quarter-over quarter. In terms of advertising revenue the increase was mainly due to increased spending from our existing advertisers, as they increased their marketing activities during the summer months. And also new advertisers gained during the quarter. NetEase continues to drive its advertising revenue through a combination of website content enhancement, and an aggressive focus of broadening its network of market channels and sales efforts. We continue to deemphasize our wireless value-added services business, until we view the market as one that’s we could bring increased shareholder value to our investors. I would now provide a more detailed overview of our Online Games business for the quarter. Total revenues for this business grew 119.4% year-over-year, driven by the continued success of Fantasy Westward Journey and Westward Journey Online II, and grew 8.4% sequentially. As mentioned in the third quarter of 2005, Fantasy Westward Journey grew to 827,000 peak concurrent users in late summer and maintained its leadership position as one of the most popular MMORPG in China. We are very proud of this success and attributed to a number of factors, including continued content enhancement released during the third quarter, and continued efforts to expand the company’s distribution network to accept gains and distribution of point cards and enhanced sales and marketing efforts, and also online driven event which resulted in further penetration into the markets. The success of our in-house developed 2D games is not only evidence by the continued help of Chinese MMORPG market, but a true testament of the skills of our team to bring to markets in producing games that drive loyalty from our users. We believe we have strong views in combining traditional Chinese culture and advanced gaming technology, which has always proven to be a winning combination for us. This gives NetEase a distinct advantage over our competitors. Now turning, to our new game pipeline. Currently both our 2.5D game and 3D game are in various stages of beta testing. Datang, our 2.5D game is under external closed beta and Tianxia, our 3D game is under internal closed beta. We expect the commercial launch of these games to be in the first half of 2006. As we mentioned in our earnings release, NetEase has strong brand recognition in the online game community and is known for not compromising quality for quantity. We are taking our game portfolio to new levels and continue to focus our efforts on driving performance of our existing Online Games, which allows us to continue to invest in NetEase next generation of games. Before I turn the call over to Denny, let me first say a few words about our ProForma loss we experienced with departing of our acting CEO, Ted Sun in late September. On behalf of William, Denny and myself in our company, we are all deeply saddened by his departure. Ted was involved with NetEase since 1999 and was an extremely influential contributor to making our company what it is today. With Ted’s commitment, our company was able to step-by-step executes on our strategy to become a leader in the internet market in China. Those of you that knew Ted understand he was a man of high moral commitment, dedication to the job at hand, and invested a large part of his life to our Company. His legacy is one that we are all proud of and our management team is dedicated to carrying on his vision and further driving the Company to reach new levels of success. Regarding the announcement of Ted’s successor, we will update you on who we choose for the role of our CEO position once the Board of Directors has reached a decision. Now I would like to turn the call over to Denny, who will go into more detail on the financials for the third quarter.