Operator
各位好,欢迎参加网易2018年第四季度及全年财报电话会议。今天的会议正在录音中。现在,我将会议转交给投资者关系总监石美玲女士。请开始。
Operator
Good day, everyone, and welcome to NetEase Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2018 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to IR Director, Margaret Shi. Please go ahead.
Margaret Shi
谢谢主持人。请注意,今天的讨论将包含有关公司未来业绩的前瞻性陈述,这些陈述旨在符合美国《私人证券诉讼改革法案》确立的安全港条款。这些陈述并非对未来业绩的保证,并受到某些风险、不确定性、假设和其他因素的影响。其中一些风险超出公司控制范围,可能导致实际结果与今天新闻稿和本次讨论中提及的内容存在重大差异。有关可能影响网易业务和财务业绩的风险因素的一般性讨论,包含在公司向美国证券交易委员会提交的某些文件中,包括其20-F表格年度报告。除非法律要求,公司不承担更新前瞻性信息的义务。在今天的电话会议中,管理层还将讨论某些非公认会计准则财务指标,仅用于比较目的。有关非公认会计准则财务指标的定义以及公认会计准则与非公认会计准则财务结果的调节表,请参阅今天早些时候发布的2018年第四季度及全年财务业绩新闻稿。提醒一下,本次会议正在录音中。此外,本次电话会议的投资演示文稿和网络直播回放将在网易公司网站ir.netease.com上提供。今天参加电话会议的网易高级管理层包括首席执行官丁磊先生、首席财务官杨昭烜先生以及网易游戏联席总裁黄卓先生。现在我将电话转交给杨先生,他将代表丁先生宣读准备好的讲话。
Margaret Shi
Thank you, operator. Please note, the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements relating to future performance of the Company and are intended to qualify for the Safe Harbor from liability, as established by the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions and other factors. Some of these risks are beyond the Company's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today's press release and this discussion. A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect NetEase's business and financial results is included in certain filings of the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 20-F. The Company does not undertake any obligation to updated forward-looking information, except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only. For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the 2018 fourth quarter and full-year financial results news release 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 NetEase corporate website at ir.netease.com. Joining us today on the call from NetEase's Senior Management is Mr. William Ding, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Charles Yang, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Hilton Huang, Co-President of NetEase Games. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Yang, who will read the prepared remarks on behalf of Mr. Ding.
Charles Yang
翻译中...
Charles Yang
Thank you, Margaret. Happy Chinese New Year, and thank you, everyone, for participating in today's call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that all percentages are based on renminbi. With that said, I will deliver opening remarks on William's behalf. 2018 was an exciting year for us. We ended the year with record total annual net revenues of RMB67 billion, a 24% increase from 2017. Our strong performance was driven by a diverse portfolio of online games as well as healthy growth in our e-commerce, advertising services and other Internet product and service offerings. Our online games business remains the core of our strategy. The fourth quarter marked our third consecutive quarter exceeding RMB10 billion in online games net revenues. In the fourth quarter, our online games revenue reached RMB11 billion, a 38% increase compared with the same period last year. Our continued success in online games is underpinned by our commitment and vision to having a positive impact on the online games industry. Our ability to deliver best-in-class quality games with an emphasis on in-house R&D and NetEase IP empowered by unique corporate culture and the right training mechanisms and infrastructure to nurture talent. All of which we have spent over two decades investing in. 2018 was a fruitful year for us in terms of our online games' genre diversification initiatives. In addition to our legacy titles that's been that case the popularity. We are continuously adding new titles and creating new IP that we hope will going to the same longevity. Throughout 2018 we launched a number of highly successful games covering a wide spectrum of categories with chart-topping titles such as Chu Liu Xiang, Identity V, QwQ, Justice, Butterfly Sword, Ancient Nocturne and in the fourth quarter Night Falls: Survival. Night Falls: Survival has been the top performer on China's iOS downloads chart things it's released in November. This is a cooperative survival role playing game. Game set against the doomsday background. We have players rebuilds their living habitat and restore civilization with other survivors after the apocalypse. It has attracted a large fan base with a high degree of innovation that combined the MMORPG, Sandbox and shooting game play features all-in-one game. Night Falls: Survival has stayed consistently at the top of China's iOS grossing charts ranking number three in terms of total grossing games for the month of November and December according to App Annie. This game is now also available in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. While we continue to dominate the MMO genre, many of our new titles are in brand-new categories that we have either recently entered or pioneered. Our ability to break into new territories has helped us capture users that reach beyond our traditional MMO game players. As a result, our user base has grown rapidly spending across different emergent demographics including younger, more casual and more female users. Turning to our legacy titles. The market is doing all of the longevity of our flagship franchises. After over full 15 years of operation on PC and more than three years on mobile, our attic Fantasy Westward Journey and Westward Journey Online sagas are still growing. We continue to supply this large and sustainable user base with interesting content. During the fourth quarter, we launched content updates for our Fantasy Westward Journey and New Westward Journey Online series on both PC-client and mobile platforms. Tianxia III also celebrated its 10th year anniversary with a new expansion pack at the end of November delivering encouraging sequential quarterly revenue growth in the fourth quarter. Some of the titles we launched in more recent years such as Onmyoji have also entered a steady stage of operation. Through the introduction of new content, Onmyoji climbed back to the number one spot on the iOS grossing charts twice in the fourth quarter, two years after it first became a market sensation in 2016. Invincible, an SLG game we launched over three years ago has been growing steadily year-over-year, both in terms of revenue and user numbers since its launch. Other titles such as Onmyoji Arena, a multiplayer online battle arena game which we released in early 2018 has also begun to show similar healthy trends. 2018 was also a milestone year for our international expansion. Net revenues from our international games accounted for more than 10% of our total game net revenues for two consecutive quarters now. In Japan Knives Out has become a household name among young gamers. It has remained one of Japan's leading grossing games since March, 2018. It has also been ranked as China's top grossing mobile game in overseas market for five consecutive months from August to December, 2018 according to Sensor Tower. During 2018 as well as in recent months, we brought a number of other distinctive new titles to Asian markets, including Rules of Survival, Identity V and QwQ, each of which opened doors for us in their respective market. Going global offers an excellent opportunity for us to promote Chinese culture as well as our original IP and best-in-class production quality markets worldwide. We see huge potential to further build our brand and bring our games to players outside of China, particularly in mainstream western market. For example, we plan to bring our popular hit Night Falls: Survival to Japan and U.S. in the first half of 2019. We are now working with other world renowned game developers, not only to bring their flagship titles to China, but also how it transformed some of their most important titles into mobile games. Most significantly, we renewed our 11-year partnership with Blizzard Entertainment in mainland China, extending our publishing agreement until January 2023. And as we previously announced, we are co-developing the highly anticipated new mobile game Diablo Immortal, with Blizzard. Our world-class R&D capabilities, particularly in the mobile arena offered us an excellent opportunity to appeal to a global audience. We plan to continue to invest in global talent and IP to further this momentum. For example, we recently closed a deal with Codemasters, a UK game studio and made minority investment in Quantic Dream, a French game studio, as well as Second Dinner, the U.S. studio founded by ex-Blizzard veterans. We have a number of strong titles in our pipeline, including Fantasy Westward Journey 3D, Xuanyuan Sword, Ages of Isle and Pokémon Quest. Just to name a few. We will continue to introduce thrilling new games that maintain the high level of integrity, innovation, and excellence, upon which our users rely. Our ability to create unique content has been a driving force in NetEase success over the last 20 years. This is historically prevalent across our offerings, including our line games NetEase News and NetEase e-mail services for our next phase of investment. We again look for areas where our content creation abilities can stand out, succeed, and have strong profit growth potential, e-commerce, online education and music are three sectors that fit these criteria and will be the focus of our next phase of strategic growth. For Kaola, we are increasingly encouraged by the government favorable policies toward cross-border e-commerce, raising the cross-border duty free quota per transaction and raising the duty free annual quota per individual, incentivize customers to buy more products across a wider range of categories. We are continuously collaborating with more international brands to raise these companies brand profiles in China. For example, Abbott, a global maternity and baby products manufacturer is one of our more recent partners. Through our strategic agreement, Kaola will be one of the first to sell Abbott's high-end baby formula in China. In the fourth quarter, we also held a NetEase Kaola Super Brands Day event whereby participating brands were allotted targeted promotional resources on our platform. Many of the internationally renowned brands experienced rapid sales growth based on Kaola's support, including British high-street brand [Cattle], American sports equipment brand, Under Armour, well known European organic baby food brand, Little Freddie and U.S. baby food brand, Mead Johnson. For Yanxuan, we continue to enhance the efficiency of our supply chain, establishing new workflow progresses in order to work more closely with quality designers and train our premier suppliers to ensure a high caliber product design and craftsmanship. In December 2018 and January 2019, we opened our very first brick-and-mortar Yanxuan store and our flagship Kaola's store respectively. These pilot stores offer customers an integrated online to offline shopping experience where our customers can see and try our product feed person in joining greater convenience located in located in Hangzhou's busiest business district, the stores generated strong interest and demand from tourists and visitors to Hangzhou proving to be an effective marketing tool as we work to further scale our e-commerce offerings. In addition, education is a large and important area of focus for us. Our influence and ridge in the online education arena grew substantially in 2018. We have great confidence in the continued growth of the space and we believe our strong background in internet and AI technology provides us with an advantage in delivering a superb user experience in online education. In 2018, gross billing from Youdao online courses more than doubled from the prior year, making this vertical the largest contributor for Youdao. We introduced a dual teacher mode to provide a better studying experience in which students are equipped with one lecturer and one assistant counselor for each online session course. This teaching mode proved to be popular with users, yielding higher renewal rates for some of our K12 courses. While our online education offerings currently cover both K12 education and higher education, we expect our K12 offerings to be a bigger gross driver going forward. In 2018 and early 2019, we launched several educational apps supported by AI technology, all tailored toward K-12 users making studying more personalized and targeted. These apps include Youdao Mathematics, Youdao Verbal English, Youdao Homework, which contained after school tutorials for children Youdao Reading, which helps children develop positive reading habits and Youdao Children's dictionary. We believe like this all our businesses, our dedication to ensuring a positive user experience and creating differentiated and unique content is what will set us apart and allow us to succeed in the online education space in the longer run. For Music, we are receiving more recognition for NetEase Cloud Music, especially among the critical younger generation demographic. With over 600 million users our NetEase Cloud Music was China's most downloaded free music app on iOS in the fourth quarter according to App Annie. China's digital music market is thriving and we continue to provide our growing community with a differentiated and personalized user experience into 2018. The number of paying subscribers more than doubled from the prior year and the sales of digital albums on our NetEase Cloud Music platforms experienced robust growth year-over-year. We completed around the financing for NetEase Cloud Music in November, 2018 and rocking complimentary business resources and stakeholders to help ensure a healthy growth outlook for our online music platform as we move through the year online games where remained a backbone of our operations both domestically and overseas. We are proud of our in-house production capabilities and we are excited to take our products abroad and wing over global players with our innovative and proprietary content. At the same time, we will take an even more focused and concentrated approach with our investments in non-games segments, namely e-commerce, online education, and music. Our relentless drive to create premium content has paved the way for our success and our investments in carefully chosen new areas will allow us to stand the test of time in China's rapidly evolving internet industry. These will continue to be the foundation for our next exciting stage of growth. This concludes William's remarks. I will now provide a brief review of our fourth quarter and full-year 2018 financial results. Given the limited time on today's call, I will be presenting some abbreviated financial highlights. We encourage you to read through our press release issued earlier today for further details. We finished the year with a new revenue record both on an annual basis and on a quarterly basis. Net revenues for the year with RMB67.2 billion or US$9.8 billion representing a 24% increase year-over-year. Net revenue was for the fourth quarter of 2018 gaming at RMB19.8 billion or US$ 2.9 billion representing a 36% increase year-over-year and an 18% increase quarter-over-quarter. Net revenues from online games grew for the fourth consecutive quarter reaching RMB11 billion representing a 6% increase quarter-over-quarter and 38% year-over-year. The sequential increase was driven by the launch of Night Falls: Survival and Ancient Nocturne and yearly increase was primarily driven by the launch of Knives Out, Chu Liu Xiang and Identity V. Mobile games accounted for approximately 70% of net revenues from our online games in the fourth quarter and for the 2018 full-year. Our e-commerce business continues to demonstrate robust growth in 2018 with total net revenues increased by 65% year-over-year to RMB19.2 billion. For the fourth quarter net revenues from e-commerce were up 50% quarter-over-quarter and 44% year-over-year to RMB6.7 billion. Net revenues from our advertising services business we're also up by 4% year-over-year in 2018 yielding RMB2.5 billion for the full-year. For the fourth quarter net revenues from advertising services were RMB761 million representing a gross of 18% quarter-over-quarter and 3% year-over-year. The top performing verticals were auto mobile, real estate and Internet services sectors. Total net revenues from our innovative businesses and other segments were RMB5.2 billion for the year, increase of 40% year-over-year. Net revenues from innovative businesses and others were RMB1.4 billion for the fourth quarter of 2018 which was relatively flat quarter-over-quarter, and up 14% year-over-year. As you may have noticed, we renamed our email and other segments to innovative businesses and others with our heightened focus on developing key incubated businesses, we believe this name were to reflect the nature of this segment's revenue compensation. The main components within this segment has not dramatically changed, and as a reminder include live video streaming, cloud music, online education and certain other cloud application services among others. Gross margin was 38.6% in the fourth quarter compared with 44.8% in the preceding quarter and 39.3% a year ago. Gross margin for our online games services for the fourth quarter of 2018 was 62.8%, which is largely stable. As a reminder, our gross margin for games typically fluctuates quarter-to-quarter within a narrowband based on the revenue mix of mobile PC self-developed and licensed games. Gross margin for our ecommerce segment was 4.5% in the fourth quarter of 2018. The quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year decreases were due to larger scale ecommerce promotion and discounts during the promotional season. On a full-year basis, gross margin for the segment was 8.0% compared to 10.3% last year. During the fourth quarter, we incurred RMB5.4 billion in operating expenses. The year-over-year increase was mainly due to increased R&D mostly related to online games as well as increased shipping and handling costs related to the growing scale of our ecommerce business. The increasing R&D is a testament to our commitment to investing in best-in-class R&D infrastructure, talent and product. While we continue to grow, we take a disciplined view of our spending staying within a well-controlled range. Selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of net revenue consistently came down from the first quarter 2018 coming in as 12.1% in the fourth quarter compared with 14% in the previous quarter and 16.4% in the fourth quarter of 2017. Ecommerce related shipping and handling costs as a percentage of ecommerce net revenues was 8.6% in the fourth quarter. On the full-year basis, shipping and handling costs as a percentage of revenue, ecommerce revenue was 8.7% in 2018 compared to 10.1% last year. Operating income for the fourth quarter of 2018 increased by 57% year-over-year to RMB2.0 billion. The effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of 2018 was 34% compared to 34% and 18% for the preceding quarter and the fourth quarter of 2017 respectively. Our effective tax rate was 28% for the full-year 2018 compared to 17% for 2017. The year-over-year increase in the effective tax rate for the fourth quarter and for the full-year were due to higher operating losses incurred by some of our non-game businesses. As we have discussed on our prior calls due to the increase in the scale of some of our loss making business units, we expect the effective tax rates to increase further in 2019. Non-GAAP net income attributable to our shareholders for the fourth quarter of 2018 totaled RMB2.4 billion, or US$343 million representing an increase of 4% quarter-over-quarter and 26% year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income attributable to our shareholders for the full-year 2018 totaled RMB8.7 billion, or US$1.3 billion compared to RMB12.8 billion in 2017. Our non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS were RMB18.33, or US$2.66. For the fourth quarter of 2018, non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS were RMB66.68, or US$9.70 for the full-year 2018. Our cash position remains strong. As of December 31, 2018 our total cash and cash equivalents, current and non-current time deposits and short-term investment balance totaled RMB50.1 billion compared with RMB43.2 billion as of December 31, 2017. For the fourth quarter of 2018, we plan to pay a dividend of $0.48 per ADS representing 25% of the net income attributable to our shareholders. As of November 15, 2018 our share purchase program for up to US$2 billion. We had repurchased approximately 4.6 million ADS for approximately US$1.2 billion. On November 14, 2018 our Board announced the approval of a new share repurchase program for up to US$1 billion of our outstanding ADS for the next 12 months beginning on November 16, 2018. No shares were repurchased under this new plan as of December 31, 2018. Thank you for your attention. We would like now to open the call to your questions. Operator, please go ahead to Q&A.
Operator
谢谢。[操作员说明] 我们首先请瑞士信贷的Thomas Chong提问。
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll go first to Thomas Chong with Credit Suisse.
Thomas Chong
大家好,早上好。感谢管理层回答我的问题。我的第一个问题是关于我们在电商、教育和音乐业务上的投资策略。我想了解一下为什么我们选择2019年作为在这些领域加大投资的年份。我们是否看到了新的趋势或行业趋势,认为这些领域有很大潜力?考虑到亏损可能面临更高的税率,我们应该如何看待预期的盈利增长或利润率趋势?我的第二个问题是关于游戏监管,特别是新游戏版号申请的暂停。想了解一下这方面的情况。我的最后一个问题是关于我们的电商业务,管理层能否谈谈与战略合作伙伴预期的协同效应?谢谢。
Thomas Chong
Hi, good morning. Thanks management for taking my questions. My first question is about our investment approach on ecommerce, education, and music business. I just want to get a sense of why we choose 2019 to be the year to step up the investments across these areas. Are we seeing any new trend or industry trend that we see there is a lot of potential, and given the fact that the tax rate maybe higher on the losses, how should we think about the earnings growth or the margin trend that we should expect? And my second question is about the gaming regulations, in particular, the suspension for the new license applications. Just want to see if any color on that. And my final question is about our ecommerce business, can management talk about any view on our synergies to be expected with our strategic partner, if there's any? Thank you.
Charles Yang
谢谢Thomas。我将逐一翻译您的问题。[外语] Thomas,第一个问题,William想首先提醒,网易在电商、在线教育、音乐领域的探索已有多年。例如,我们的在线教育特别是网易有道,在这个垂直领域已经有近十年的培育经验。现在我们看到AI技术的日益成熟,以及用户对在线教育形式接受度的显著提高。这就是为什么我们认为这个市场潜力巨大,并且市场已经具备了准备度和成熟度。现在是我们集中精力,在在线教育领域产生更大影响的时候了。音乐和游戏本质上是内容驱动的业务,我们对内容创作和差异化能力充满信心,电商方面,无论是考拉还是严选,我们都已经投资多年,这绝对是网易将继续投资的领域。[外语] 关于您的第二个问题,游戏监管方面有什么更新吗?我们也注意到市场上有新闻和传言,昨天谈到游戏版号暂停。我们想说的是,我们没有看到这种情况,一些省级和地方监管机构修改了材料提交的格式。但我们不认为这意味着新游戏审批的关闭。[外语] 关于电商,首先,我们不对任何没有根据的市场传言发表评论或回应。但作为一种心态,网易始终非常开放,欢迎能够为我们的电商业务以及许多其他业务带来协同效应和双赢的利益相关者、战略合作伙伴和业务合作伙伴。
Charles Yang
Thanks Thomas. I will translate your question one-by-one. [Foreign Language] Thomas, the first question, William would like to first remind that it has been years for NetEase to be exploring into ecommerce, online education, music. For instance, for our online education in particular for Youdao, we have almost a decade of experience nurturing into this vertical. Now we are seeing the increased sophistication of AI technology as well as a much higher level of user acceptance to education format online. That's why we think we have a huge potential market as well as the readiness and maturity of this market. It is time for us to be very focused, a making a bigger impact in online education. Music and games are in essence a content driven business and we are confident of our content creation, differentiation capability for e-commerce, again for both Kaola and Yanxuan. We've been investing for years and this is definitely an area that NetEase is going to continue to invest. [Foreign Language] For your second question, any update on gaming regulation? We also notice there are market news and rumors, yesterday talking about, latched game suspensions. We would like to say that, we do not see that, some provincial and local regulators have modified the format of material submissions. But we do not interpret that as a shutdown of new game approvals. [Foreign Language] For e-commerce, first of all, we do not make comment or response to any ungrounded market rumors. But as a mentality, NetEase is always very open minded to embrace stakeholders, strategic partners, business partners that can bring synergy, and wing-wing to our e-commerce segment as well as many of our other segments.
Operator
[操作员说明] 接下来请美林证券的Eddie Leung提问。
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We'll go next to Eddie Leung with Merrill Lynch.
Edward Leung
大家好,早上好。其实我只有一个关于你们电商业务毛利率的快速问题。记得你们,特别是比如Charles提到过,希望电商业务的毛利率能够稳定下来。考虑到第四季度毛利率的波动,我想知道你们能否在这方面提供一些展望?谢谢。
Edward Leung
Hey, good morning, guys. Just actually a very quick question on the gross margin of your e-commerce business, remember you guys, especially for example, like Charles mentioned that there would be a - hopefully a target on stabilizing the gross margin of the e-commerce business. So just wondering if you could provide some outlook on that front, given the fourth quarter fluctuation in a gross margin? Thank you.
Charles Yang
谢谢Eddie。我来直接回答你的问题。关于我们的电商业务,正如你注意到的,第四季度毛利率低于之前几个季度以及去年第四季度。但同时,我希望你也能注意到我们在降低库存方面取得的显著改善,这意味着在第四季度,我们参与了更大规模的促销活动来优化库存结构。展望2019年及未来,平衡GMV收入增长和利润率始终是网易非常审慎的策略。目前,我们预计2019年及未来整个电商板块仍能保持非常强劲的收入增长,同时全年毛利率相对稳定。当然,季度之间可能会有波动,这通常是电商季节性特征。
Charles Yang
Thank you, Eddie. I will take your question directly. For our e-commerce, as you have notice that for Q4 gross margin was lower than prior quarters as well as Q4 of last year. But at the same time, I hope that you can also notice that, a substantial improvement in us, lowering our inventory, which means in Q4, we have engaged in larger-scale promotional events to optimize our inventory structure. Going forward in 2019 and forward, it is always a very prudent strategy for NetEase to balance topline GMV revenue growth, as well as a margin profile. For now, we expect that overall e-commerce segment in 2019 and forward can still have a very robust topline growth, at the same time with a relatively stable GP margin over the full-year. But of course quarter-over-quarter, there might be fluctuation that is just typical to e-commerce seasonality.
Operator
下一位提问者是花旗集团的Alicia Yap
Operator
We'll go next to Alicia Yap with Citigroup
Alicia Yap
大家好,早上好,William、Charles、Margaret和Brandi。谢谢回答我的问题。我想问管理层能否评论一下网易有多少款游戏已经提交审批但仍在等待批准。如果中国版号审批继续延迟更长时间,如果新游戏已经准备就绪,网易是否会决定先在这些新游戏在海外市场推出,即使中国市场尚未准备好发布。接着Charles关于电商毛利率的问题,你说全年会稳定。你的意思是2018年8%左右的水平会成为2019年及未来的趋势吗?谢谢。
Alicia Yap
Hi, good morning, William, Charles, Margaret and Brandi. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask could management comment how many titles that NetEase have submitted to while still waiting for approval. And if let's say China license continues to hold up longer, if the new games is ready with NetEase actually decided to launch those new schemes to overseas market first, even though China market are not yet ready to launch. Follow-up on these Charles, your questions on the, I mean, your answer on to the gross margin for e-commerce, you say stable for the full-year. Do you mean these 8% on 2018 will be the trend for 2019 and going forward? Thank you.
Charles Yang
好的。Alicia,我来翻译你的第一个问题,然后直接回答你的第二个问题。[外语] Alicia,你问题的第一部分,我们有超过10款游戏已经提交到审批流程中。关于你问题的第二部分游戏相关的问题,是的,海外市场不受国内审批限制。所以有些游戏,例如我们已经开始在海外市场进行测试和试运行,我们认为这是2019年进一步增长游戏业务的两个支柱。关于你的第二个问题我们的电商利润率,是的,我们始终努力在收入增长和利润率之间寻求审慎的平衡。我们也打算将电商毛利率维持在接近2018年全年水平的区间,也就是高个位数区域。当然,这不是一场轻松的战斗,需要我们的业务部门付出大量努力和辛勤工作。
Charles Yang
Okay. Alicia, I'll translate your first question and I'll take your second question directly. [Foreign Language] So Alicia, first part of your question, we have over 10 titles that has already been submitted in the approval pipeline. And as your second part of the game relation question, yes, for overseas market it is not restricted by the approval, by the domestic approval. So there are games for instance that we have already started testing and trial in overseas market for us we see that as two pillars of further growing our game segment in 2019. And for your second question our e-commerce margin, yes for us we always strive to seek a discipline balance between topline growth and margin profile. It is also our intention to maintain e-commerce gross profit margin in the neighborhoods similar to 2018 full year that is in the high single-digit area. But of course, this is not an easy battle and it requires a lot of effort and hard work from our business unit.
Operator
再次提醒,请每位分析师只提一个问题。接下来有请中金公司的Natalie Wu。
Operator
Again, please limit yourself to one question. We'll go next to Natalie Wu with CICC.
Natalie Wu
大家好,早上好,William、Charles和Margaret。感谢回答我的问题。首先,能否简要介绍一下海外游戏收入的地区分布情况?因为过去几个季度都有所体现。另外,海外市场的利润率情况如何,与国内市场相比有何差异?其次,您提到了在线教育业务。有道去年的收入翻了一番。我想了解一下,K-12业务和高等教育业务分别贡献了多少?这些收入在哪个科目中确认?另外,未来有道是否会成为公司在线教育业务的主要平台?还是说会与其他业务线产生协同效应?或者有道将独立运营?谢谢。
Natalie Wu
Hi, good morning, William, Charles, and Margaret. Thanks for taking my question. Firstly, very quickly, can you give us some color on the region breakdown for your overseas game revenue? Because it's been there shown in the couple of last quarters. And also the margin profiles there, any difference versus the domestic market. And secondary you mentioned about the online education endeavor. Also, the Youdao's revenue has been double last year. I just wondering, can you share with us any color of the contribution from the K-12 business versus the higher education? And under which line to you recognize that revenue. And also in the future, just wondering, will Youdao be the major business unit for your online education endeavor or if there will be any synergy with other business lines should we anticipate or it is just the to operate independently for Youdao. Thank you.
Charles Yang
好的,谢谢Natalie。我来翻译一下问题。[外语] 好的。那么Natalie,我将简要总结一下回答。首先,目前海外游戏收入主要来自日本,由《荒野行动》的表现贡献。正如我在财报电话会议上提到的,我们下一步的重点是进一步开拓主流西方市场,希望通过更多游戏实现这一目标。在利润率方面,国内游戏和海外游戏大致相同。当然,由于国内游戏规模较大,我们确实享有更好的规模经济,因此利润率略高一些,但游戏之间并没有显著差异,无论是海外还是国内市场。关于在线教育,William刚才已经用中文做了详细解释。总结一下,首先,有道已经运营了十多年,积累了庞大的用户基础。我们最初是从学习工具——有道词典开始的,与当前重点关注的K-12在线课程在用户方面有很高的重叠度。此外,由于网易是有道的控股股东,我们的电子邮件服务、音乐等产品的用户与在线课程用户(无论是学生本人还是家长)也有显著重叠。我们确实看到了利用产品矩阵资源推广在线教育的协同效应。最近,在人工智能技术的推动下,有道还推出了AI赋能硬件,市场反响也很好。总而言之,我们的在线教育业务将主要专注于在线教育,这将缓解和避免市场对线下教育的诸多担忧。
Charles Yang
Okay. Thanks Natalie. I'll translate the questions. [Foreign Language] Okay. So Natalie, I'll provide a brief and summarize translation for the answers. Firstly, for the overseas games contribution for now it is mainly coming from Japan, contributed by Knives Out's performance. And as I just mentioned in the earnings call, our next focus is to further tap into mainstream Western market, hopefully, by more and more titles. In terms of margin profile, it's largely the same between domestic games and offshore games. But of course, in domestic games given the scale, we do enjoy better economy of scale, so margins are slightly higher, but there is really no significant differences between games, whether it's overseas or in domestic market. For online education, William has provided a detailed explanation just now in Mandarin. So to summarize, first of all, Youdao has now over a decade of operation, accumulating a sizeable user base. We first started as a study tool, Youdao Dictionary, and there is a high degree of overlap with the current focused K-12 online courses in terms of users. In addition, given that NetEase is a controlling shareholder of Youdao, there's also significant overlaps between the users of our email services, music, for instance, with online courses, whether being student themselves or parents of those students. And we do see kind of a coordinated asset in promoting online education by utilizing resources from our matrix of products. And more recently, driven by the AI technology, Youdao has also been introducing AI-empowered hardwares, which is also being very well received in the market. So all in all for our online education endeavor, we will be mainly focused on online education, which will mitigate and avoid many concerns around offline education that the market is being concerned about.
Operator
接下来有请摩根士丹利的Alex Poon。
Operator
And we'll go next to Alex Poon with Morgan Stanley.
Alex Poon
你好,William。你好,Charles。你好,Margaret。祝贺你们取得出色的业绩。我有几个关于游戏业务的问题。在过去两个季度你们提到,在线游戏收入运行率是100亿元人民币。而这个季度你们已经超过了110亿元人民币。那么,我们是否可以说110亿元是你们新的基准、新的参考标准,特别是考虑到你们在未来一年有非常强大的游戏储备?第二个关于游戏的问题是,在用户获取方面,我们看到短视频平台上有大量游戏业务的推广活动。你们是否认为这个渠道在结构上降低了游戏业务的用户获取成本,从而能够改善未来游戏业务的整体回报?最后,能否谈谈《暗黑破坏神:不朽》的现状?另外,在你们新闻稿的游戏储备中缺少了《Eclipse Isle》。我想知道为什么它没有出现在你们的新闻稿中?非常感谢。
Alex Poon
Hi, William. Hi, Charles. Hi, Margaret. Congratulations on the great results. I have questions regarding game business. In the last two quarters you mentioned, RMB10 billion is the online game revenue run rates. And this quarter you have surpassed RMB11 billion. So can we say RMB11 billion is your new base, new benchmark, we can reference to, especially you have a very strong pipeline of in the coming year? And the second question regarding games is, on the user acquisition side, we're seeing a lot of promotion in short video platforms to get for game business. Did you see this channel as lower user acquisition costs for game business structurally that this can improve your overall game return in future? And lastly, can you talk a little bit about, Diablo Immortal's status? And also Eclipse Isle is missing in the pipeline in your press release. I'm wondering why is that not in your press release? Thank you very much.
Charles Yang
抱歉Alex,你指的是哪款游戏缺失了?
Charles Yang
Sorry Alex, which game that you are referring to that's missing?
Alex Poon
[外语]
Alex Poon
[Foreign Language]
Charles Yang
好的。谢谢,Alex。我会把你的问题翻译给William。[外语] Alex,我来回答你的问题。首先,如你所知,我们不提供收入或利润指引。但作为一般趋势,正如我在上个季度评论的那样,我们对游戏收入的坚实基础非常有信心。展望未来,看到我们已经连续三个季度超过100亿元人民币,这是令人鼓舞的。我们非常高兴看到这个数字已经超过了110亿元。但正如我所说,这是一个坚实的基础,未来的增量增长将得到我们持续推出新游戏和成功游戏储备的支持。关于用户获取的问题,网易凭借我们的规模和在线游戏升级方面的良好记录,拥有多元化的新用户获取来源,其中短视频直播正成为越来越重要的新用户来源。成本是否更低,这取决于具体情况,但平均来看,短视频确实是我们获取新用户的一种成本竞争力强且效率高的方式。《暗黑破坏神:不朽》是我们与暴雪共同开发的游戏。关于具体的发布时间表,我建议市场直接向动视暴雪提问。从共同开发者的角度来看,游戏开发已经基本就绪。当然,我们总有优化和增强的空间。但游戏开发方面不会导致任何潜在的延迟,这一点无需担心。关于你最后提到的游戏储备问题,我们在财报中确实宣布了几款令人兴奋的新游戏储备。如你所知,我们在网易游戏平台上有超过50个工作室,有大量处于不同研发阶段和潜在发布阶段的新游戏。我们对2019年强大的游戏储备非常有信心。
Charles Yang
Okay. Thanks, Alex. I'll translate to your questions to William. [Foreign Language] So Alex, I will answer your question. Firstly, as you know, we do not provide guidance revenue or profit. But as a general trend, like I have commented in last quarters that we are very confident about a solid foundation of our game revenues. Going forward, I think it is encouraging to see that we have delivered three quarters that extending above RMB10 billion. We are extremely happy to see that number has surpassed RMB11 billion. But like I said, it is a solid foundation or the future incremental increase will be supported by our continuous effort of launching new and successful games in the pipeline. For your question on user acquisition, NetEase given our scale and track record in upgrading online games. We have a diversified source of new user acquisitions among which short video live streaming is becoming an increasingly important source of new. Whether the cost is lower, it all depends, but on the average blended basis, it does seem short video is a very cost competitive and cost efficient manner for us to acquire new users. Diablo Immortal, we are a codeveloper on that game together with Blizzard. As to the exact launch timetable I would encourage the markets to direct the question directly to Activision blizzard. From a codevelopers perspective, the game development is pretty much ready. Of course there is always space for us to optimize and enhance. But it is not any concern that game development side will call us any potential delay. As your last bit of questions specific about our pipelines we did announce several exciting new games that in our earnings release in the pipeline. As you know, that we have over 50 studios on our NetEase games platform and there are numerous new games of different stages in our R&D and potential launch pipeline. And we are very, very confident about the robust game pipeline for 2019.
Operator
下一位是摩根大通的Alex Yao。
Operator
We'll go next to Alex Yao with JP Morgan.
Alex Yao
[外语] 感谢管理层回答我的问题。我有几个关于音乐业务的问题。首先,您如何看待在线音乐行业的竞争格局?其次,关于货币化方面,我们有哪些策略来提升音乐业务的货币化能力,包括纯音乐流媒体运营,以及是否考虑在音乐流媒体服务中添加直播功能来增强货币化?谢谢。
Alex Yao
[Foreign Language] Thank you, management for taking my question? I have a couple of pressures on music. First of all how do you think about the competition in trying to online music industry? And then secondly, regarding monetization, what are our strategies to improve the music monetization including both the pure music streaming operation and the potentially would you be considering adding the - my broadcasting feature to music streaming service to include the monetization? Thank you.
Charles Yang
[外语] Alex,为了电话会议中所有人的理解,我将提供William回答的总结翻译。首先关于我们的定位和竞争格局,我们认识到我们相对来说是进入在线音乐领域的后来者。然而,我们坚信中国的在线音乐市场具有巨大潜力,经过多年的竞争,现在TME和网易云音乐显然是两个领先者。作为后来者,我们在版权等方面确实处于一定劣势。但是,作为后来者,特别是凭借对用户需求的深刻洞察和理解,我们相比竞争对手确实拥有差异化的优势,尤其是在用户体验和提供代表创新的趋势方面,这也与如何思考潜在货币化密切相关。实际上,对整个行业来说,无论是通过付费用户、广告、直播还是其他潜在的新颖创新形式,都处于试验阶段。一些创新的货币化形式已经被我们或竞争对手证明可行。但我们从根本上相信,还会有其他非常有趣的音乐用户货币化形式可以探索,毕竟我们认为这个巨大市场潜力是由音乐内容支撑的,并且经过这些年的发展,在线音乐这种形式已经成为中国互联网用户高度接受的新习惯。独特的是——作为与其他许多形式的重要差异化,音乐内容是一种可以反复享受的内容,无论是不同版本、不同歌手演唱,还是不同场景下,而且没有语言障碍。总而言之,我们认为网易云音乐将继续作为向用户提供差异化音乐内容的先驱和创新领导者。
Charles Yang
[Foreign Language] Alex, for the benefits of everyone in the call, I'll provide summarized translations for William's answer. So first of all about your positioning and competitive landscape, we recognized the fact that we are a relatively speaking a latecomer into online music segment. However, we are highly convinced that China's online music markets have huge potential, and after years of competition it appears now that TME and NetEase Cloud Music are the two clear leaders. And as a latecomer, we are a little bit a disadvantages in terms of copyright, et cetera. However, as a latecomer, especially with a deep insight and trying to understand the users need. We do have differentiated advantages as well comparing to competitive, especially in terms of user experience and providing trends that represents innovation, which links also very relevantly to how to think about potential monetization. It is actually for the whole industry, it is in a trial mode whether it is by paying users, advertising, livestreaming or even potentially some other new and innovative format. It is all possible. Some of the formats of innovation, a monetization has already been proven either by us or by our competitors. But we fundamentally believe there will also be other very interesting format that we can potentially think about music, music user monetization, because after all we think this huge market potential is underpinned by music content and we believe after these many years of development online music, this whole format is becoming now a new habit that is highly receptive by Chinese internet users. And uniquely - as a unique differentiation to many other type of format music content is a content that can be enjoyed repeatedly, either in different variations, by different singers, in different settings, and also there's no language boundary. So all-in-all, we think NetEase Cloud Music will remain as a pioneer and the innovative leader in terms of providing differentiated music content to our users.
Operator
现在,我将把电话交还给Margaret Shi进行任何补充或结束发言。
Operator
At this time, I will hand the call back over to Margaret Shi for any additional or closing remarks.
Margaret Shi
再次感谢大家今天参加我们的电话会议。如果您有任何进一步问题,请随时联系我们或TPG投资者关系部。祝您有美好的一天。谢谢。
Margaret Shi
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us or TPG Investor Relations. Have a great day. Thank you.
Charles Yang
谢谢大家。
Charles Yang
Thank you, everyone.
Operator
今天的电话会议到此结束。感谢各位的参与。
Operator
That does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.