Bilibili Releases Its Q1 Financial Report after Debut in Hong Kong
Bilibili, a leading video community for younger generations, on Thursday released its unaudited financial results for the first quarter of this year.
The first financial report after its second listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange shows that the company’s net revenue in the first quarter reached 3.9 billion yuan ($605 million), up 68% year-on-year, exceeding the markets’ expectations.
“We kicked off this quarter with strong user growth. With a booming content ecosystem and fervent community bonds, our monthly active users reached 223 million in the first quarter, spending a daily average of 82 minutes on our platform,” said Chen Rui, Chairman and CEO of Bilibili. “Riding the massive wave of videoization, we aim to further expand our influence in the Gen Z+ demographic (people born between 1985 and 2009) and seize the tremendous growth opportunities.”
Professional User-Generated Video (PUGV) is the cornerstone of a video community. Bilibili launched a video named “I don’t want to be this kind of person” on Youth Day this year, leading to a heated discussion among its nearly 100 million-strong audience. In the first quarter, the number of monthly active uploaders on the platform reached 2.2 million, a year-on-year increase of 22%.
Life, games, entertainment, animation, and technology became the top five most popular categories, which shows the preferences of the Gen Z+ demographic, according to the report. The newly released portrait mode aims to meet their needs.
As a supplement to PUGV, Occupationally Generated Video (OGV) continues to cover more fields. Heaven Official’s Blessing, an animation jointly produced by Bilibili and Haoliners, has got 370 million viewers by now. In the second half of this year, Bilibili will launch two homemade shows with the theme of music and love.
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Bilibili‘s profit channels consist of mobile games, value-added services, advertising, e-commerce and others.
In the first quarter, revenues from advertising and e-commerce business grew by 234% and 230% year-on-year respectively. Li Ni, vice chairman and COO of Bilibili, disclosed that at present, more than 10,000 uploaders have joined their advertising cooperation platform Huahuo.
With the rapid development of live broadcast, the revenue of value-added services increased by 89% year-on-year in this quarter, reaching 1.5 billion yuan.
However, the revenue from games is about 1.17 billion yuan, up just 2% year-on-year. It is worth noting that in April, Bilibili purchased 4.72% of Xindong Group’s shares for $124 million.
After the financial report was released, Chen said in a telephone conference that the company has invested in the games field, one of its main businesses, in order to produce high-quality products rather than making a profit, Jiemian reported. Bilibili also purchased the copyright of several global esports events.
