Charles Zhang
感谢各位今天参加我们的电话会议。首先,我想强调我们公司历史上最重要的事件之一。我们搜狐全体员工都非常激动,成为2008年奥运会的首个官方互联网内容赞助商。这将为搜狐提供独家访问2008年奥运会官方网站内容的权利,同时也为公司提供与其他财富1000强企业合作伙伴和赞助商(如可口可乐、通用电气、麦当劳、阿迪达斯、联想、中国移动和中国国航)进行独家交叉营销和交叉销售的机会。这对搜狐在线广告业务未来发展的意义是巨大的。这是中国备受追捧的项目,我们获胜的环境竞争非常激烈,我们认为这证明了搜狐品牌的实力。
我们进行这项投资的原因很简单。随着我们越来越接近2008年奥运会,我们相信将看到利用赞助计划加速增长的机会,并通过希望利用2008年奥运会活动的客户推动更多广告收入。我们相信这将作为一个平台,展示我们卓越的技术和品牌影响力。
今天我想在电话会议上强调两个核心信息。首先,我们坚信被选为奥运会网站的官方互联网内容赞助商,使我们处于同行中的领先地位。这一认可可能是中国互联网市场中最具排他性的事件之一。在北京奥组委和中国政府的全力支持下,我们现在已经做好了充分准备,通过奥运会网站的无缝上线执行,带领公司走向强劲成功的道路。
其次,我们将继续通过持续开发和推出我们自己的创新产品和服务来推动业务发展,以增加我们网站的流量和使用率。我们相信这两件事的结合不仅将塑造搜狐向客户销售的方式,而且将对整个中国互联网市场产生重大影响。
现在我想讨论本季度的其他亮点。首先,我们报告的收入为2830万美元,环比增长9%,再次达到公司指引的高端。现在让我讨论我们各业务线的进展。广告收入为1880万美元,超过了我们之前的公司指引。品牌广告收入为1560万美元,赞助搜索收入为320万美元,分别增长13%和2%。总体而言,我们在广告业务方面看到了强劲的季度表现。
2005年前九个月,我们同比增长27%,与我们最接近的竞争对手相似。品牌广告13%的环比收入增长主要由房地产、信息技术和汽车等重支出行业推动。本季度广告客户数量从420家增加到450家。我们增长最快的行业是在线游戏、金融服务和快速消费品公司。在线游戏业务反弹强于预期,主要是由于《魔兽世界》对其他游戏发布的影响低于预期,从而增强了我们的业务。
在产品方面,我们将继续推出新产品,以吸引新用户访问我们的网站。例如,我们已经成功建立了中国互联网领域最大的用户社区,如PBS(中国排名第一的留言板)、中国校友俱乐部和中国留言板。我们还推出了几款新产品,包括我们的图片吧,允许用户通过我们网站上的各种内容和搜狐博客下载图片。所有这些新产品都有助于增加流量。目标是通过这个平台继续提供更有针对性的营销,并将我们的产品和服务销售给该用户群。
总体而言,我们仍然有信心,我们的广告业务在未来几年将保持强劲增长。奥运会赞助带来的品牌效应将对推动我们的广告业务能力产生重大影响。我们的覆盖范围将更加广泛,特别是在体育、新闻和许多其他渠道领域。我们也坚信,我们的领导地位使我们能够继续为客户提供独特的品牌广告机会,通过我们众多的行业特定在线渠道覆盖大众人口和目标社区。
现在谈谈今年剩余时间的广告展望。截至今日,我们的广告收入较2004年同期九个月增长27%。我们看到品牌广告持续健康增长,正如我们的指引所示,我们预计将实现2005年全年广告收入增长25%的目标。
在赞助搜索方面,我们看到了适度的环比增长,这主要是由于几个原因:第一,竞争日益激烈的搜索环境;第二,调整我们的分销商结构,因为我们努力通过使用多个分销商而不是依赖独家分销商来使搜狗更具竞争力。令我们满意的是,我们内部的测试数据显示,搜狗流量从第二季度到第三季度增长了50%。发展成功的搜索业务基于获得正确的技术和产品以提高渗透率。我们加强搜索业务的努力主要集中在这些领域。一个很好的例子是我们最近将搜狗2.0版本升级到搜狗2.5版本,该版本计划在本月晚些时候推出。这一增强将随着时间的推移带来流量的增加。我们相信,我们在开发正确技术和获得必要产品方面的投资,使搜狗成为中文领先搜索引擎的方向是正确的。
最后,谈到我们最大的业务,我们的重点仍然放在核心广告业务上,我们很高兴看到无线业务持续谨慎复苏,环比增长6%至680万美元。我们特别高兴的是,在实现6%增长的过程中,我们不需要在广告或其他营销努力上大量投入。我们很高兴我们的无线业务虽然规模较小,但已经变得非常稳定。此外,我们的奥运会赞助也应对我们的无线业务产生积极影响。中国移动也是奥运会赞助计划的成员,我们认为这是未来加强合作的潜在催化剂,特别是在2008年北京奥运会的报道和相关节目服务方面。
现在,我想请我们的首席财务官余女士进行财务回顾。余女士?
Charles Zhang
Thank you all for joining our conference call today. First, I'd like to highlight one of the most significant events in our Company's history. We at SOHU are all very excited in the first official Internet content sponsor for the 2008 Olympics. This will provide SOHU exclusive access to the 2008 Olympics official Web site content and also give the Company exclusive cross marketing and cross selling opportunities with the other Fortune 1000 corporate partners and sponsors such as Coca Cola, GE, McDonalds, Adidas, Lenovo, China Mobile and Air China. The magnitude of what this means for SOHU is enormous for the future of our on-line advertising business. This was a heavily sought after project in China and the environment in which we won was highly competitive and the one that we view as a testament to the strength of SOHU brand. Our reasons for this investment are simple. As we move closer to the 2008 Olympics we believe we will see accelerated growth opportunities in leveraging the sponsorship program and drive more advertising revenue through customers looking to capitalize on the 2008 Olympic event. We believe it will serve as a platform to showcase our superior technology and a brand presence. There are two core messages that I want to emphasize on our call today. First, we firmly believe that having been chosen as official Internet content sponsor for the Olympics Web sites puts us at the head of the pack amongst our peers. This endorsement is one of the most exclusive events that can happen in the Chinese Internet market. With the full support of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic games and the Chinese government we are now well positioned to lead our Company down the path of strong success through seamless execution of the Olympic Web site launch. Second, we will continue to drive our business through continued development and the roll out of our own innovative products and services to drive increased traffic and the usage of our sites. We believe the combination of these two events will not only shape the way SOHU sells to its customers, but that it will have a large impact on the Chinese Internet market as a whole. Now I would like to discuss the other highlights for the quarter. First, we reported revenue of $28.3 million growing 9% sequentially and coming in again at the high end of the Company guidance. Now let me discuss the progress of each of our business lines. Advertising revenue was $18.8 million and exceeded our prior Company guidance. Brand advertising revenue was $15.6 million and sponsored search accounted for $3.2 million, an increase of 13% and 2% respectively. Overall we have seen a strong quarter in advertising business. For the first nine months of 2005 we have grown 27% year-over-year similar to our closest competitor. In brand advertising the 13% sequential revenue growth was mainly driven by heavy spending sectors such as real estate, information technology and automobiles. Number of advertisers in the quarter grew from 420 to 450. Our fastest growing sectors were on-line games, financial services and FMCG, fast moving consumer goods companies. On-line games came back stronger than expected mainly due to World of Warcraft having a lesser than expected impact on the launch of other games enhanced our business. On the product side we will continue to launch new products that will drive new users to our sites. For example, we have successfully built the largest community of users in the Chinese Internet space such as PBS (ph), the number one message boards in china and the China Alumni Club and the China message boards. We also launched several new products including our Picture Bar, which allows users to download pictures through various content on our Web site and SOHU's blog. All of these new products are contributing to increased traffic. The goal is to continue to provide more targeted marketing through this platform and to sell our products and services into that user base. Overall, we remain confident that we will be strong, there will be strong growth for our advertising business over the next few years. Branding effect from the Olympic sponsorship will have a significant impact on our ability to drive our advertising business. Our reach will be much broader, especially in areas such as sports, news and in many other channels. We also strongly believe our leadership position allows us to continue to provide clients with unique branding advertising opportunity reaching both the mass population and the targeting communities via our numerous sector specific on-line channels. Turning now to the outlook for advertising for the remainder of the year. Year-to-date our advertising revenue are up 27% growth over the same nine months of 2004. We see continued healthy growth in brand advertising and, as you can see from our guidance, we expect to meet our overall advertising revenue growth target for the full year of 2005, which is 25%. In sponsored search we saw modest sequential growth, which was largely due to several reasons, first, an increasingly competitive search environment, 2) an adjustment to our distributor structure as we strive to position sogou more competitively by using multi-distributors rather than relying on sole distributors. To our satisfaction our own internal beta shows the sogou traffic has grown 50% from Q2 to Q3. Developing a successful search business is based on getting the right technology and the products to increase penetration. Our efforts toward strengthening our search business are heavily focused on these areas. A good example is our recent upgrade of the sogou version 2.0 to sogou version 2.5, which is targeted to be launched later this month. This enhancement will lead to increased traffic over time. We are confident that our investment in developing the right technology and getting the necessary products, the right and necessary products to make sogou a leading search engine for the Chinese language are focused in the right direction. Finally, turning to our largest business where our focus remains on our core advertising business we are very happy to see a continuing cautious recovery in our wireless business with a 6% sequential growth to $6.8 million. We are particularly pleased that the exchange on our 6% growth we did not have to spend heavily on advertisements or other marketing efforts to achieve that growth. We are pleased that our wireless business, although small, has become very stable. Additionally, our Olympic sponsorship should also have a positive impact on our wireless business. China Mobile is also a member of the Olympics Sponsorship program and we view this as a potential catalyst for enhanced cooperation in the future, particularly around the coverage and the related program services of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now, I would like to give the floor to our CFO, Carol Yu, for our financial review. Carol?