Sohu.com Limited

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and good evening. Thank you for joining SOHU's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference call, Huang Pu, Investor Relations Director of SOHU. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Peter. Thank you for joining us to discuss SOHO's fourth quarter 2023 results. On the call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Charles Zhang, CF Adrenaline, and Vice President of Finance, James Dunn. Also with us are China's CEO, Dylan Chen, and CF Yao Bin Wang. Before measurement begins their prepared remarks, I would like to remind you of the Commerce Safe Harbor Statement in connection with today's conference call. Except for the historical information contained herein, The matters discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current plans, estimates, and projections, and therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause actual results different naturally from those contained in any forward-looking statements. For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the Compute with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recent annual report on Form 20F. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dr. Charles Zhang. Charles, please proceed.

Thanks, Wanpu, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call. In the first quarter of 2023, we hit the high end of our prior guidance for brand advertising revenue, while our bottom line performance came in well above expectations despite the impact of seasonality. At Soku Media, we further improved operational efficiency and focused on enhancing user experience through product and algorithm refinements. We closely monitored market trends and provided innovative marketing solutions to our advertisers. At Soho Video, we continue to develop both long-form and short-form original content under our Twin Engine strategy. Leveraging the advantages of our product mix metrics, we were able to consolidate our resources and proactively explore a diverse range of monetization opportunities. Online games remain stable during the quarter with revenues in line with the prior guidance. Now, let me go into detail about each of our businesses. I'll go into each of our business in a moment, but first, a quick overview of the overall financial performance. For the first quarter of 2023, total revenue, $162 million, down 16% year over year, up 1% quarter over quarter. Brand advertising revenue, $23 million, down 5% year-over-year and 22% quarter-over-quarter. Online game revenues, $129 million, down 18% year-over-year and up 7% quarter-over-quarter. Gap net loss attributable to Suhu.com Limited was $18 million. compared with a net income of $3 million in the first quarter of 2022, and net loss of $7 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Seoul.com Limited was $13 million, compared with net income of $9 million in the first quarter of last year, and a net loss of $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. Now, we'll go through our key businesses in more detail. First, Media Portal and Soho Video. At Soho Media Portal, we harnessed the cutting edge technology to steadily optimize our products and algorithms. As a mainstream media platform, we not only deliver reliable and real-time news and information to our users, but also stimulate high-quality self-media content generation among users and expand our social network distribution. Through this effort, we have continuously improved user experiences and further strengthened our brand influence. At Soho Video, we focus on developing high-quality long-form and short-form content For the long-form content in the first quarter, we have rolled out Ye Cheng Fu and Sour Plum, Sweet Love, Qing Mei, Qing Mei, Sun Sun, Ni Wei Tian, both of which won acclaim from audiences. In April, we released a crime-themed idol romance, Love of Replica, Wei Ni, Ni Guang Er Lai. the upgraded sequel to 2021's Mysterious Love. So the Love of Replica became a hit show again at the time of its release, actually last week, and further boosted our audience base. For reality shows, we saw the successful release of On Her Way Home special edition for the Spring Festival and The On Her Way Home series has gained widespread attention and generated in-depth discussion of various social issues, helping it reach and penetrate to larger audiences. In terms of short-form content, we continue to focus on the science-related live streaming, supported by our advanced live streaming broadcasting technology. With abundant and professional reserve of broadcasters across numerous verticals and the rich offering of high quality content, Soho Video continues to consolidate its reputation as a leading science technology-based live broadcasting platform. On the monetization front, the overall market recovered moderately during the quarter, As advertising demand bounced back, we proactively explored various monetization opportunities in differentiated scenarios. For example, during the quarter, we successfully hosted the annual SOHU Fashion Awards, SOHU 25th Anniversary, SOHU Fashion Day, an offline event which has become a distinctive IP for SOHU and demonstrates our position as a mainstream media platform. the Soho Fashion Award together with the Charles physics class, my teaching physics. And also the talk under the starry sky and the talk on the shore of Stone Mountain, the interview program generated significant attention and created various hot topics and discussions on our product metrics as well as across various social media platforms. platforms. These unique campaigns leveraging by our dual platform of Soho Video and Soho News reinforced our strong brand influence and our good content and at the same time provided our advertisers with ample market exposures. So next, turning to online game business. During the first quarter of 23, Online game revenues were in line with the company's prior guidance. Within our PC games business, we launched some Chinese New Year themed holiday events and promotions for the regular TLBB PC. We continue to improve the functionality of TLBB Vintage based on players' needs and also introduced a new cross-server PVP event that matches players randomly. In our mobile game businesses, we launched updates for Lexi TLVB Mobile to celebrate the Chinese New Year, introducing not only a series of holiday events, but also optimization of clan skills. In the second quarter of 2023, we will launch expansion packs and content updates for TLBB PC, Legacy, TLBB Mobile, and other games to keep players engaged. As technology in the game business industry keeps advancing and market demand becomes deeper and more diversified, we intend to stick with our top game strategy, allocating more resources to professional talent development as well as content and technology innovation in order to roll out more high-quality mobile games. In terms of the game pipeline, while maintaining our core competitiveness in MMORPGs, we also produce games in various types, including car-based RPGs, strategy, sports, and idle games. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Joanna, who will walk you through our financial results. Joanna.