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Operator
are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Renee Reganston. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
Renee Reganston
Thank you, Amber. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Aurora Mobile's earnings release was distributed earlier today and is available on the IR website at ir.gguang.cn. On the call today are Mr. Shannon Bong, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Guan Yang Chen, General Manager. Following their prepared remarks, they will be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions, which are difficult to predict and may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties, and or factors are included in the company's findings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable law. With that, I will turn the conference over to Mr. Bong. Please go ahead.
Bong
Thanks, René. Greetings to all. Welcome to Aurora's mobile 2024 first quarter earnings call. And for our callers and listeners today, I would like to note that our CEO, Chris, is on business trip. Thus, he is not able to attend the call today. And today, in Chris' absence, I shall have the privilege to share with you all on the great quarter we have. Before I comment on our Q1 results, I would like to remind everyone that the quarterly earnings deck is available on our website. You may refer to the deck as you proceed with the
Chris
what Chris has done based on the Q1 numbers I shall give an appropriate description for the performance of this quarter.
Bong
And it would be a great start to 2024. And the reasons are as follows. Firstly, as far as managing the business went, I think we have done a great job. In this quarter, we have recorded the third consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. Secondly, Developer subscription revenue recorded a 13% revenue growth year over year, showing great growth momentum over the years. Thirdly, our gross margin grew both year over year and quarter over quarter. Fourthly, we are continuing to operate at a low level of OPEX. Leveraging on our operational efficiency improvement over the past few years, our OPEX in this quarter is at historic low since our IPO. Last but not least, our star overseas product, EngageLab, recorded excellent customer number and contract value growth this quarter again. I believe all of you would agree that we have a great Q1 for 2024. We are truly looking forward to building up the momentum for the next few quarters with even more exciting numbers. Next, let me explain share with you more. For our total group revenue, it remained consistent at RM65 million. In particular, developer service revenue recorded a 2% year-over-year slide and vertical application revenue decreased by 1% year-over-year. Developer service revenue which consisted of subscription service and value added service decreased by 2% year-over-year. And with this developer service, subscription revenue increased 13% year-over-year, but was offset by a 70% decrease in value-added service.
Chris
Next, I shall dive deeper into each business line. And for some business,
Bong
Revenue was at $42.4 million, up 13% year-over-year, but declined 13% quarter-over-quarter, as Q4 is the usually high year-end quarter for each year. The 13% year-over-year growth was mainly driven by a 12% increase in ARPU. For year-over-year comparison, the higher ARPU was mainly contributed by completion of more private cloud projects in 2024. Another key factor for this 13% revenue year-over-year growth was due to the revenue originated from EngageLab. The EngageLab recognized revenue has increased 10 times year-over-year. And I shall elaborate more on EngageLab business later. Some of the notable new and renewal customers in this quarter include, but not limited to, Volkswagen China, SunFong Express, Huawei, Coffee, and Mihayu, just to name a few. And value-added service revenue were at $2.4 million, decreased 70% year-over-year, and decreased 64% quarter-over-quarter, which was due to lack of the major online shopping event in Q1.
Chris
And this low However, we do foresee this business to bounce back in Q2 in anticipation of the 6-18 online shopping event.
Bong
Let me share with you on the great numbers we have recorded in our EngageLab business in first quarter of 2024. Firstly, by March 31st, 2024, our EngageLab customer number has grown again from 170 to more than 220. We continue to make great progress in new customer acquisition in the overseas market. More and more new customers have signed up with us as they are seeking reliable push and email service provider who can help them to improve message delivery rate and user engagement. Secondly, the cumulative signed contract value of EngageLab has another 60% quarter-over-quarter growth, bringing the total cumulative contract value to more than 24 million RMB by Q1 of 2024, representing a 9 million growth quarter over quarter. Our EngageLab overseas customer bought both our public and private cloud version of our push service. And thirdly, our EngageLab products are sold to customers in more than 20 countries around the world.
Chris
It has proven that our EngageLab products are truly global.
Bong
Next, I shall go over the revenue for vertical application where it is made up of financial risk management and market intelligence. Vertical application had a stable quarter where revenue remained relatively consistent year-over-year but declined 9% quarter-over-quarter from the usual high Q4 quarter. For financial risk management, we saw a revenue growth 14% year-over-year and 2% quarter-over-quarter. The 14% year-over-year revenue growth was positively impacted by a 14% 21% customer number growth. And this is hot on the heels of a 26% year-over-year growth in Q4 of 2023. We did see pickup in demands for our financial risk management products year-over-year, as lending activities in China has been on the rise. And looking back, The quarterly revenue has been growing consecutively in each quarter since Q1 of 2023 to the current quarter. And the Q1 customers that we have signed up or renewed include Badaw Limited to Kunlun Bank, Suzhou Bank, Maidai Jinrong, and many licensed credit and financial institutions throughout China. As for market intelligence, the revenue decreased by 21% year-over-year and decreased 9% quarter-over-quarter due to the continued weak market demand for Chinese APP data. In Q1 of 2024, we signed up some of the well-known and large customers such as by DENSE, Huya, Qingbaobao, and many top-tier global hedge fund and investment funds. And next, I'll go over some of the key expenses and balance sheet items. On to operating expenses. The Q1 operating expenses was at $53 million, representing an 18% decrease year over year, and 13% decrease quarter over quarter. And this 53 million OPEX was the lowest quarterly OPEX we have recorded since IPO in July 2018.
Chris
As shown on the financial statement,
Bong
We are and have been making all the necessary steps and initiatives to maintain optimal level of operating expenses. And we are very pleased with the current OPEX level. And next, I'll go to the individual OPEX category. In particular, R&D expenses decreased by 28% year-over-year to revenue feed, $22.7 million. mainly due to the lower headcount that reduced salary costs and associated share-based compensation, and a decrease in service participation expenses due to the growing cloud initiative we have undertaken. The selling and marketing expenses decreased by 8% year-over-year to $17.4 million, mainly due to the decrease in salary costs resulted from the headcount reduction as we made appropriate adjustments to operate at the optimal level. And G&A expenses decreased by 9% year-over-year to RMB 12.9 million, mainly due to the lower headcount that reduced salary costs and associated share-based compensation. And for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, we recorded yet another positive adjusted EBITDA. And this is an historical event where we have three consecutive quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA.
Chris
As mentioned above, we have tightly managed and controlled our overall products over the years.
Bong
We believe so long as we continue to grow our top line in the future, you will see more good quarterly results sooner rather than later. Onto the balance sheet. I again will share two very important KPIs that we closely monitor. We continue to maintain a healthy AR turnover days level at 47 days. And this is still a low number and is peer-leading in this market space. We are working hard to ensure that we actively collect cash from customers and ensure we have low turnover days. At the same time, mitigating the risk of bad and doubtful debts. Secondly, one of the key financial KPIs for tracking the performance of SaaS companies is the total deferred revenue, which represents cash collected in advance from customers for future contracts.
Chris
contract performance, which continue to be at a high balance of $135.2 million.
Bong
And this is the nine consecutive quarters that we have deferred revenue balance above $130 million.
Chris
Next, the assets were remain to be $300
Bong
$334 million as of March 31, 2004, which includes cash equivalent of $99 million, accounts receivable of $33 million, prepayments and other current assets at $23 million, fixed assets at $1.4 million, long-term investment of $113 million, goodwill at $37.8 million, tangible assets at $16.9 million resulted from the SandCloud acquisition in March 2022.
Chris
And total liabilities were at $227 million as of March 2021.
Bong
This includes accounts payable of $22 million, current operating liabilities of $3 million, deferred revenue of $125 million, and accrued liabilities of $64 million. At this juncture, let me recap on the grid start to 2024.
Chris
for the description that I have mentioned at the start of this call.
Bong
In this quarter, our developer service revenue grew by 13% year over year. Number two, our gross margin at the highest level since Q4 of 2021. 3. For the first time in history, we have 3 consecutive quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA. Quarterly OPEX at $53 million, which is at the lowest level since IPO. Our EngageLab product recorded customer number growth of more than 30% quarter-over-quarter and accumulated value grew more than 60% between the quarters. And with the above, I believe the management team has done a great job delivering yet another quarter of good financial results. And this set of numbers do not come easy. And we have done a lot of work since two years ago during the pandemic. And let me spend a few minutes here to recap on the work we have done to get to where we are now. One, we have refocused our strategy during which we gather all the heads of products. We challenged them on the needs to maintain and sell each product in the view of market potential. The end result was we streamlined the number of product offerings. We cut down the products that are not bringing positive contributions to the books and putting all our resources to a handful of key products, which are profitable in high demand domestically and overseas and with great potential. Number two, we have restructured our teams and seriously looked at the headcount. With fewer products to be maintained and to improve operational efficiency, our headcount has decreased close to 40% from the peak, thereby helping us to cut down the fixed cost component of our OPEX. And apart from the headcount, we have also reviewed all the service contracts with external vendors. And during the process, we have also managed to lower fixed operating expenses year to year to an optimal level. Number four, more importantly, we have chosen the right direction by going overseas through our EngageLab suite of products. And with this combination of right steps that we have taken, we are now seeing the positive impact. Most notably is the three consecutive positive adjusted EBITDA that we have managed to deliver. As we continue to scale our business, I believe more good results will come. And I would like to thank the shareholders and the Aurora Group employees for the support and patience throughout these past few years. And lastly, before I conclude, I'll give a quick update on the share repurchase plan. In the quarter ended March 31st, 2024, we have repurchased 17,000 ADS. Cumulatively, we have repurchased a total of 205,000 ADS during the start of our, since the start of our repurchase program. And with this, it concludes the management prepare rebuttal. And we will be happy to take your calls now. Operator, please proceed.
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Kelvin Wong from Spica Capital. Please ask your question, Kelvin.
Kelvin
Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations again for another quarter of great results. I would like to have two, if I may. Firstly, as we understand, Q1 is a relatively quiet quarter, but you still managed to deliver another quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. So I would like to hear from the members.
Chris
management how this was possible?
Kelvin
And are we now expecting another positive adjusted EBITDA in Q2? That's my first question. And second question is, I would like to circle back on the engaged lab business again. Based on the Q1 year that you have uploaded and the earlier management call, EngageLab had another great growth quarter. I would appreciate if management could shed more light on this business segment. So again, two questions, one on the adjusted EBITDA outlook, and two, about the outlook of the EngageLab business.
Bong
Sure, Kelvin, let me recap. One is the question of the EBITDA number, and second is the EngageLab. Yeah, I think Honestly, we are truly happy that we have done a great job to deliver another quarter of adjusted EBITDA positive numbers in Q1. As you rightly mentioned, the Q1 is typically a slow quarter because of the Chinese New Year along with the February shorter month. Of course, this Q1 positive adjusted EBITDA number did not come easy. As I just mentioned earlier, we have made a lot of adjustments. We made tweaks. large or small, try to be nimble, try to be agile, try to be fast enough to react to the market over the past two years. And I believe right now we are in a very good position with the right product and with Dusha with great potential and especially our overseas expansion being executed according to what we are set up to do and with the low level of operating expenses. And I guess let me just recap what we have done. With the things that we have done, we have recorded the subscription revenue that grew 13%. And our business has grown. The revenue has grown 10 times year over year. And we recorded the highest gross margin that grew year and quarter over quarter. And our operating expenses were record low since IPO. And most importantly, a lot of investors and shareholders are looking for this three consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. I guess one may conclude that things are falling into the right places where they belong. And as a question on whether we are expecting another quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA number, I think we shall not get ahead of ourselves. I think what we need to do is the management team will continue to focus on what we have done right, namely to scale our business domestically and overseas. And at the same time, we just need to closely monitor our operating expense. And if we do this right, I think the results will reflect itself. So this is my response to your first question. And on the Engage Lab, if I may use one word to describe Engage Lab, it would be growth. Probably you have seen, since we started sharing the quarterly EngageLab business numbers in Q3 of 2023, the number has been growing ever since. Every single quarter, we recorded good numbers growth. And customer number has grown impressively, and the cumulative contract value has grown significantly every quarter. Therefore, I would say we are very pleased with how the business has tracked so far. And also I can give you an insight in terms of what we have seen recently. Just last week, we had a booth in Singapore for the Asia Tech Expo. And both Chris and myself attended the event in person. So we went there in Singapore. And during the three-day course, during the course of three days, and we received more than, I would say more than 100 leads, more than 100 sales leads. And Chris and myself spoke to many potential customer, be it from Singapore, from Malaysia, my hometown, in Indonesia, Philippines, even from as far as Romania. So personally, I think I'm truly impressed with the interest we have received from our customers on our EngageLab product in Asia during the visit. I guess from the technical standpoint, I think I just give a brief on what we have done. And what we have done is we have incorporated our notification channel for all different phone operating system. Whether you use iOS or you use Android or others, we are making this very easy for our customers to send their notification to their customer regardless of what phone they are using. So that is the business update on the Engage Lab. Hope this answers your question, Kelvin.
Kelvin
Very clear, thanks.
Operator
Thank you, Kelvin. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.
Chris
Once again, that's star 11 for questions.
Operator
I'm showing no further questions, and I'll turn the conference back to Renee for closing comments.
Chris
René, you may wish to do the closing comments.
Renee Reganston
Thank you, everyone, for joining our call tonight. If you have any further questions and comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to the AIA team. This concludes the call.
Chris
Have a good night. Thank you all.
spk04
That concludes today's conference. Nicole, thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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