5/22/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Country Unlimited First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Wenpei Wang, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Peter. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me today are our founder, chairman, and CEO, Mr. Jonathan Peng Zhao, and our director and CFO, Mr. Felix Zhang. Before we start, we would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations and observations. that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors not under the company's control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different. The company caution you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and do not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information, except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-gap financial measures for comparison purpose only. For definition of non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at ir.jpin.com. Now I will turn the call to Jonathan, our founder, chairman, and the CEO.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Hello everyone. Hello everyone, thank you for joining our company's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

On behalf of the company's employees, management team, and board of directors, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our users, investors, and friends who have continuously believed in and supported us.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our users, investors, and friends who have continuously believed in and supported us.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

In response to key investor concerns, I would like to report on a few main topics. First, we have remained focused on driving profitability with encouraging results. Second, regarding the ongoing tariff war, which is a concern for many, my observation is that its impact on our business has not intensified. Third, we have continued to make solid progress on the AI front.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Let me start with an overview of our financial performance.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

In the first quarter, The company achieved a gap revenue of RMB 1.92 billion, up 13% year-on-year. Our net income reached RMB 510 million, reflecting a 112% year-on-year growth.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

这几年的不确定性促使公司制定了一个战略。 这就是公司要聚焦在少数的正确的事情上,从而增加经营的确定性。

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

The various uncertainties of recent years have promoted the company to formulate a strategy, which is to focus intensely on very few high-impact priorities to enhance operational certainty. Based on this, at the end of last year, we clearly proposed to guarantee profits.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Excluding other incomes such as wealth management income,

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Our adjusted operating income was RMB 690 million for the first quarter. Adjusted operating margin was 36%, up 13 percentage points year-on-year, compared to 23% the same period last year. Overall, this achievement demonstrated the company's capability to implement strategic goals and exceptional operational averages.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Increasing profitability involves both cost control and revenue growth.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

With respect to cost, there are two things worth mentioning.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

The first is the drop in SBC. In this quarter, the absolute value of the stock price has dropped by 10% compared to the drop. The proportion of net income has decreased by nearly 4%. Previously, we predicted that with the longer IPO period and the increase in net income, the SBC's impact on profits will have a drop in absolute value and net profit. This trend will continue.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

First is the decrease of SBC expenses. Our share-based compensation expenses this quarter were down by 10% quarter-on-quarter. As a proportion of revenue, this represents a narrowing of nearly 4 percentage points during the year. We have previously predicted that the longer time passes since the IPO, as well as the growth of our revenue, the impact of SBC expenses on profits will decline in both absolute value and percentage. This trend will continue.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

第二是市场投放效率的提高。 今年一到四月,公司累计新增完善用户超过1500万人。 一季度,Boss直屏APP端平均完善MAU是5756万人,同比增长24%。 其中,春节过后的三月,APP端月活用户规模接近6500万人。 Second is the improvement of marketing efficiency.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

From January to April this year, the company added over 15 million verified new users. In the first quarter, the average verified monthly active users on the Boss shipping app reached 57.56 million, up 24% year-on-year. Post-Chinese New Year, monthly active users in March approached 65 million.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

The average number of achievements per user continuing to increase both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

We maintain robust user growth despite the decrease in market expenses, benefiting from the two-sided network effects of our model, and our continued focus on improving user satisfaction.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Our revenue growth, the core driving factor, is still the growth of users and the increase in penetration rate. Therefore, revenue growth and user growth show highly related structural changes.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Our core revenue growth drivers are still the growth of users and the increase in penetration rate. Therefore, revenue growth and user growth showed a highly correlated structural change. First, Blue-collar new users accounted for over 45% of our total new users in the first quarter, driving their shares of revenue up to more than 39%.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

第二,随着新增用户在三线及以下城市的扩大, 我们看到三线及以下城市的收入贡献同比已提升了三个百分点至超过了23%。

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Second, alongside with the higher growth rate of new users among tier 3 and lower tier cities, the revenue contribution from tier 3 and below goes up by 3 percentage points to over 23%.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Third, revenue from enterprises with fewer than 100 employees hit a record high contribution for the period. due to the higher growth rate of the smaller size companies.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Many people are concerned about the impact of the tariff war We also take it seriously. So far, our overall conclusion is, with regard to the job seeking and recruitment supply and demand relationship, no severe impact of the war has been observed so far.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

总体上我们观察到,春节以来, 平台在企业端的招聘需求仍然保持着恢复的态势。 1到4月,平均新增发布职位数同比涨了17%, In general, we observed that hiring demand from enterprises has continued to show recovery trend since Chinese New Year.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

From January to April, Average new-door postings grew 19.17% year-on-year, while the paying ratio improved sequentially. Posting total paid enterprise customers in the 12 months ended March 31st to 6.38 million, up 22% year-on-year.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

From the perspective of the industry, we can see that since April, the demand for new-door postings has continued to rise.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

From industry perspective, recruitment demand for blue-collar workers represented by urban service sectors such as catering and retail has been continuously and steadily rebounding since April. Manufacturing recruitment has demonstrated resilience despite the impact of tariffs. with a number of new job postings maintaining young year growth in April. Meanwhile, recruitment demand for white collar has also stabilized and begun to recover, with industries such as advertising professional services, internet, finance, and automotive leading in year-on-year growth rate.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Since the last quarter, more people have started to pay attention to AI. We have also paid great attention to AI in our own business for the past two years. In the first quarter, in terms of products and services, we continue to surround AI technology evolution applications and expand the testing scale and penetration rate of AI users. Since last quarter, market has been very concerned about AI.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

We also attach great importance to AI in our own daily operations in the recent two years. In this quarter, in terms of products and services, We continue to deepen application of AI technology and expand the scale and penetration rate of AI testing users. Now allow me to expand on our AI developments. We'll break it down into three key aspects, AI to see to job seekers, AI to be to recruiters, and AI to management.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

AI to see. First, AI2C.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

The first item is the grayscale testing, also known as phased rollout, we mentioned in our last earnings call, which is after a user contacts a search, we do not only need to give the result, but also provide an explanation by AI why the result is what it is. Initial outcomes showed promising results, and we have now rolled out to all users.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

The second thing about AI2C, as we mentioned in the last conference, is that we have an AI interviewer who practices how to face an interview with the user. The experiment shows that this thing is very helpful in increasing the user's understanding of the recommendation system. This help is visible. Therefore, we have now opened the AI to all students and young people with three years of work experience.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

The second thing of AI2C, which we also mentioned during our last call, is our AI-powered interview robot designed to help users practice interview skills. Our experiments have shown that it can meaningfully enhance the recommendation system's understanding of individual user behaviors, and the outcome is quite significant. Now we have officially launched it for all students and young people with up to three years of work experience.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Moving on to AI to Recruiters.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

One is the application of AI technology, which has, to some extent, supported our exploration in closed-loop services. The result is, in the first quarter, the number of enterprises we provide placement-alike services grew by about 30% quarter-over-quarter.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

We are now starting to see some cash-ins. This agent can interact with the user to understand his or her personality. After that, he or she can search the entire platform to find the right candidate. The other one is an agent which can interact with the users.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

The agent can guide the enterprise users to convey their personalized recruitment demand. and proactively search for suitable candidates across the platform. The agent is still evolving, but we have witnessed that this agent can effectively improve the matching accuracy. Enterprise users who have used the agent are seeing a 25% increase in achieving their recruitment results.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Although this is the case, we are still very cautious when it comes to helping all the recruiters. Our strategy consists of two parts. First, we don't have a limit on the ability of recruiters. Second, we are still very cautious when it comes to promoting recruiters.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

That said, we remain extremely cautious about broadly expanding the robot's role of allowing it to somehow, even somehow partially replace human creatures. Our current strategy is as follows. First, we place no limits on building the recruitment boss capabilities. Second, we are extremely prudent about when and how widely we will deploy the robot.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Thirdly, I'd like to talk about AI to management. There are two things I'd like to talk about. The first thing is some of the changes we've made to weekly reports. Now, after a person has written a weekly report, we have a self-created AI that will help you write it down, summarize it, and then you can modify it. Third is AI tool management.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

First thing, two things to talk about. First thing, the reformation of weekly report. Now, after one finished their weekly report, we have our proprietary AI system to help create a concise summary version, which can still be revised by you. That way, you have two reports sent to your higher up. One is a summative AI plus modified. The other one is your original version. Until now, the supervisor's behavior is trying to check the concept for them first, then move on to the longer one.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

This is actually a foundation. So the real direction of achieving value is like this. Now, our AI will connect a person's research that has been written many times in history to look at it together. At the same time, it will connect the research So that's just some basic applications today.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

The value, how to realize the value is the AI will study your historical weekly reports and also read across the weekly reports from related departments. If there are too many projects that have not closed the loop, or the content is empty, or there are too many big words, the AI will remind you. This is a supplement to human capabilities.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

The second thing on AI tool management is the use case.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

for talent evaluation. When we merely rely on humans for performance appraisal, even so-called 360 degrees, there might be interference from two noisy sources.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

第一个就是人是健忘的。 比如一个人他以前的劳动, 以前的功劳会逐步被淡化, 越是最近的performance, 那么在管理者那里就印象越深。 The first thing is forgetfulness.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

For example, a person's previous contributions will be downplayed and recent performance will be more important. It's quite a human nature, but this might not be appropriate as a long-term evaluation.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

The second thing is also quite according to human nature.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

So a homo sapiens will see what others want you to see. While superior may consciously or unconsciously filter and change their subordinate information before presenting it upward.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

But AI is objective. Under the premise of protecting the privacy and dignity of an employee, AI can see more objectively for a longer time. However, AI is objective.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Under the premises of protecting employees' privacy and dignity, AI can see the objective changes in past performance data. AI will not like an employee because it likes his character or will not evaluate him badly because it dislikes the employee. So AI is neutral and impartial in terms of human resource application.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Zhongshang, for AI's attempts on 2C, 2B, and 2Management,

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

To sum up, for the AI to job seekers, to enterprise users, and to management, these three aspects, our exploration and research are equally important. To sum up, the first quarter of 2025 was solid. On the whole, we are positive for the year ahead, and we will continue to work hard. That concludes my part of the call. I will now turn it over to our CFO Phil for the review of our financials. Thank you.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

thanks Jonathan hello everyone now let me walk through the details of our financial results of the first quarter of 2025. we are delighted to record a solid start to the year characterized by continuous expansion in our user base and engagement and sustainable revenue growth in this quarter our revenues reached rmb 1.9 billion representing a 13% year-on-year growth. We experienced a decent screen recruitment season with continuous improvement in enterprise hiring demand, evidenced by the growth of our cash collections, which has bottomed out from the last quarter. Revenues from key accounts and small-sized accounts both contributed higher growth rates in the quarter. Our paid enterprise customers grew by 12% year-on-year to 6.4 million in the trailing 12 months ended March 31st, primarily driven by the growth of enterprise users. Paying ratio among active enterprise users increased on a sequential basis as the supply-to-demand situation of the labor market improved from previous quarter. ar ppu increased by five percent year on year mainly due to the expansion of paying amount from key accounts moving to the cost side total operating costs and expenses decreased by eight percent year on year to rmb 1.5 billion in the first quarter share based compensation expenses dropped by 13% year-on-year and 10% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 252 million, shrinking for the third consecutive quarters. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, adjusted operating costs and expenses decreased by 6% year-on-year to RMB 1.2 billion. And our adjusted operating margins reached 36%, up by 13 percentage points year-on-year, a showcase of our disciplined cost control and a high operating leverage, despite Q1 normally having the lowest margin within the full year due to seasonality. Cost of revenues increased by 5% year-on-year to RMB 311 million this quarter. Gross margin went up by 1.1 percentage points to 83.8% compared to the same period of last year. As a testimony of our AI application to improve our operating efficiency, Sales and marketing expenses decreased by 15% year-on-year to RMB $491 million during this quarter, primarily due to decreases in advertising and marketing expenses and employee-related expenses. However, our strong brand recognition enhanced the marketing efficiency and superior user engagement guaranteed that we can still maintain robust user growth momentum. Our R&D expenses decreased by 9% year-on-year to R&D $424 million in this quarter and was relatively stable sequentially. This decrease was primarily driven by lower employee-related expenses and reduced public cloud expenses related to AI. Our GNA expenses were RMB 266 million in this quarter, remaining relatively stable both year-on-year and quarter-over-quarter. Our net income reached RMB 512 million in this quarter, up 112 percent year on year, while adjusted net income increased by 44 percent to RMB 764 million. Net margin improved to 26.6 percent, up 12 percentage points year on year, while our adjusted net margin increased to 39.7 percent, up 8.6 percentage points year-on-year. Net cash provided by operating activities reached RMB 1.0 billion in this quarter, up 11% year-on-year. Our cash position totaled RMB 14.8 billion as of March 31, 2025. Our strong cash generation and robust cash position provide financial flexibility to execute growth initiatives and enhance shareholder returns. And now for our business outlook. For the second quarter of 2025, we expect our total revenues to be between RMB 2.05 billion and RMB 2.08 billion. with a year-on-year increase of 7.0% to 8.5%. Please note, this growth rate will also bottom out this quarter, driven by continued improvement of cash collection growth in the year. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we would like to answer questions. Operator, please go ahead.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. We will now take our first question from the line of Eddie Wang from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, Eddie.

speaker
Eddie Wang
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thank you, Ms. Zhao, for answering my question. I have two questions. The first one is, can you please share with us, from the start of the tariffs to the slowdown in the past month, have we seen any changes in the recruitment needs of enterprises from a micro-level point of view? And how has this change evolved? In addition, have we seen any stronger recovery in the recruitment needs of enterprises in recent years? This is the first question. Then the second question is, in fact, if I remember correctly, last year, maybe after May, the red light became weaker, and the relationship between graduation and recruitment needs began to weaken. Compared to the same period last year, what is the current trend of recruitment needs in April and May this year? What are the changes between different industries and different scale enterprises? Thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions. The first one is that would you please give us a debrief of how the hiring demand evolved over the past month from the start of the tariff war till it eases. And have we seen any signs of the recovery in hiring demand recently? And the second question is that, if I remember correctly, after May last year, macro weakness coincided with a graduation season has led to a deterioration of recruitment demand. How does the current recruitment demand trend in April and May compare with the same period last year? And have we seen different trends among different industries and different sides of the enterprises? Will such trend continue into the graduate season in June and July?

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Thank you. Everyone is concerned about this issue. I will answer your first question. We mainly look at recruiters. Thank you for your question.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

About the first one, which is terrible everybody is concerning, are still looking from the supply and demand perspective of job seekers posting job expectations and recruiters post job postings. So this is the most important, has the most high importance to our platform. In general speaking, the improvement, the recovery or recruitment trend, continued recruitment trend is still the case, that is undoubtedly. The view we talked during our preparing remarks, which is quite serious, that in general speaking, the turf war impact on our overall supply and demand relationship is still quite limited.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Objectively speaking, we have a quite diversified industry and location distribution.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

So the export related industries both in terms of revenue and the numbers of job posting contribution are quite low.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

If we look at the detail numbers,

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

For example, in April and May, the total number of new job postings and active job postings have kept a good growth rate.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

We haven't seen any significant fallback compared to March.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

for industries which affected bigger by the tariffs such as export-related jobs. So we saw some slower in terms of growth rate in the beginning of April, but it has recovered after mid-May.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Your second question The big picture we see is, as I said earlier, this year's recruitment and supply relations continue to improve. You asked a more specific question. The ratio of May versus the change after the Spring Festival. This year and last year. After the Spring Festival in May last year, the trend this year is better than last year.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

The second question regarding the overall recruitment market. So the overall supply and demand relationship has continued to improve in this year. Let's take a detailed look of after the days after May compared to the same days after the spring festival. So this year we saw better growth trend compared to last year.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

between after May, especially after Labor Day holiday and after Spring Festival. Let's look at some detailed numbers.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

So in April till today, since April till today, the number of newly posted jobs and the number of recruiters who posted jobs, the sequential trend are better compared to last year. Among which the blue collar sector, especially urban service blue collar sector, the young year growth rate continued to enlarge from March to May.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

And about our prediction for June and July, the graduation season,

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

It's hard to say we can predict precisely, but according to my personal feelings, it could be okay. This is coming. And that's my answer to your question, Eddie. And operator, let's move on to the next one. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Timothy Zhao from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, Timothy.

speaker
Timothy Zhao
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you for accepting my question. I have two questions to ask. The first one is about the progress of our AI. We know that BOSS is testing some AI functions for B and C internally. I would like to ask about the feedback of the current test. When do we expect to officially launch some monetary tools for our AI and how do we measure its increase in our income? Secondly, I would like to ask about our profits, especially considering the latest impact of Hong Kong and some changes in user growth and currency exchange rate. Will there be any changes in the expectation of the non-GAAP operating profit of the previous company of 3 billion? Thank you, Benjamin, for taking my questions. Two questions here from my side. First, we understand that the company has been internally testing the AI features for both enterprises and job seekers. Could Benjamin share what is the feedback so far and what is the plan for the company to launch the AI monetization features? Secondly is considering the latest macro environment as well as the market decision rate as well as user growth. Just wondering how does management see the 3 billion RMB non-GAAP operating profit target for this year? And into the second half, um what are our leverage to make sure this uh three billion target is achievable and what is the longer term market expansion um i think wrong for the company and additionally could imagine share about our plan for capital allocation thank you uh

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

target, and related questions, I'd like to ask CFO to answer them. I'll start with the first one. In fact, when I was reporting, I talked about a lot of AI issues. We can conclude that the overall feedback of a series of dust experiments we conducted was positive. This also depends on the fact that we were more cautious before conducting dust experiments. Thank you for your question.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

I will take the first one regarding AI and our CFO will answer the second question regarding the margin. So about AI, it's good to summarize that our series of phased out AI product testing has quite positive feedbacks, we have just mentioned. And this is based on that we have been continued to be very cautious in terms of using AI.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

And I think analysts and the investors who are familiar with us knows our views.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

And we just mentioned that some of our testing products have already opened to all of our users. It's a gradual process.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

And regarding the monetization, I would like to share two data with you. For the recruiters who have gray-scaled used our AI incremental function, his efficiency of achievement increased by 25%.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

under the same amount of conversations.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

The AI communication assistant have accumulatively served over

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

nine million conversations during our massive grayscale test. So the job seekers who have been responded by the AI communication assistant, his achievement rate increased by 15%.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

I think from the principle, it has improved efficiency, improved feelings, and reduced time and labor. You can smell the money in it. But I would still say that we will be more cautious when it comes to making money in AI.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

So in principle, the AI products can improve the efficiency, increase your user experience, and saving some time. But in reality, we are still quite cautious. So my view is we might be relatively gradually and slowly on the AI adoption of monetization, but it must be some real money.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

So I'd like to answer the profitability and margin question. So as Jonathan mentioned in the prepared remarks earlier, even under current conditions with many external uncertainties, The company's overarching goal for this year is to secure a solid online growth first, then try our best to grow faster with our business. In first quarter, we had a good start, and we managed to reduce cost to improve overall efficiency for most cost and expensive items. Our marketing fees dropped in absolute amount versus last year, but we still achieved satisfactory new user growth. We had higher revenue, but our sales guide, number of our sales dropped. Headcounts for R&D, administrative cost, and operation functions kept stable. Our internal AI tools kicked in for the platform's operation and verification jobs, which leads to improvement of our gross margin. You should know that our margin in the first quarter is the lowest due to the seasonality. With all the measures mentioned above, there's still room to improve in second quarter, second half of the year. So we are confident with our 3 billion RMB non-GAAP operating profit target for the full year. This is a comment for the profitability and margin. And regarding the shareholder return topic, the company currently has more than 2 billion US dollar cash and equivalents on hand. we consider shareholder returns a very important topic, and we like to do whatever fits us. Currently, our share repurchase program is still ongoing, and we definitely will continue. At the same time, we are studying and doing some assessments for other means, other measures to increase our shareholder return. So please stay tuned. We would like to you know, do it step by step.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Okay, that's our answer to those two questions, and operator, let's move on to the next one. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Next question comes from Wei Xiong from UBS. Please ask your question, Wei.

speaker
Wei Xiong
Analyst, UBS

Good evening, Mr. Zhao, Yu Ge, Wenbei. Thank you for accepting my question. I have two questions for you. First, I'd like to ask about AI. The human resources industry has started to use AI widely. Have we seen any changes in the competition pattern? Can we use AI to expand our service content further? Thank you management for taking my question. First, with the wider adoption of AI in human resources industry, Are we seeing any changes or expecting any potential changes in the competitive landscape? And can we leverage AI to actually further expand our service offerings? And secondly, could management share more updates regarding our blue-collar recruiting business? What are the key KPIs for this year? And how is our progress in the new businesses, such as placement services? Thank you.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

As for whether AI has changed the competitive pattern of our industry, I think it's conservative. I have a prediction. This generation of AI is the mainstream AI model we see today. And as of now, the applications that we can see on the market put these two together. And about your first question of how AI will impact the competitive landscape, my view is relatively conservative.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

So my assessment is for this generation of AI technology, and all the AI application we can observe from the market, we haven't seen any revolutionary or disruptive changes. So the competitive landscape is relatively stable.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

But I also have a prediction. If the global human resources recruitment industry But I also have some predictions that

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

If globally, among the human resource industries, there is a new generation of AI products can change the overall landscape, then there must be pushed by the new generation of AI technology, which might be like the 1.5 or 2.0 generation.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Therefore, although we haven't seen any changes in the financial structure of the industry, we will still put a lot of resources into AI. For example, last year, we bought a chip worth more than 1 billion yuan, so that we can create some resources and small-scale test-based push services.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Even though we haven't observed any revolutionary changes of the industry, we still place very high importance of AI and AI-related investment. For example, last year, actually since 2023, we have bought more than 1 billion RMB of chips, which is enough for us to conduct self-developed research and small-scale inference.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

In terms of AI science, we still maintain a small scale lab for us to be able to conduct pre-training of our own model and replicate all those open source models. Actually, we are also confident that in terms of AI applications and AI agents, we are actually a bit... I can't say a bit of an advantage, but we are able to use AI to play a role in reality.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

In fact, we are actually quite confident that in terms of using AI science for AI application, our business scenario is actually quite suitable to applicate the power of AI for AI to have some effects on our business.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Compared to the first emergence of ChatGPT, when we felt a little bit panic or curious at that time,

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Now we have more certainty on the AI technology can actually help with our business and with more real feelings.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

So the first topic I mentioned earlier, I can say one more thing, is that a lot of Internet marketing companies want to pursue a closed loop, And a more topic of view to share that a lot of online recruitment platforms have long been pursuing the closed loop or placement service.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Now, with the help of AI technology, we have more certainty to confirm that whether we can achieve closed-loop service in a big scale or not.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Currently, we have 45% of new users in the blue-collar field. And with blue color,

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

sector of new user contribution more than 45%, revenue contribution more than 39%, and increase the revenue contribution from third tier and below cities. So this aspect actually are becoming more and more important for our daily operations.

speaker
Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman & CEO

更愿意用一个词来形容我们在服务蓝领和服务低线城市的时候的感受,这个词就是 And if we want one word to summarize our future efforts to serve the book caller and the lower-tier city users, our service and products will be more simple and clear. And in terms of placement business, especially on the book collar placement, we have been spending a lot of resources and time.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

The key point is to guarantee the efficiency and the reliability of your results. So if AI application can really help with those two aspects, then we do feel some confidence in this perspective. And that's why we want to further invest in this area. And that's my answer to your question. Operator, I think that's the last one due to the time constraint.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Yes, due to time constraint, that concludes today's question and answer session. So at this time, I'll turn the conference back to Wenbei for any additional or closing remarks.

speaker
Wenpei Wang
Head of Investor Relations

Thank you all for your time. Thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. And if you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or TPG. Congratulations. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.

Disclaimer

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Q1BZ 2025

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