Sohu.com Limited

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and good evening. Thank you for joining SOHU's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I'd 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.

Thanks, operator. Thank you for joining us to discuss Sohu's second quarter 2025 results. On the call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Charles Zhang, CFO Joanna Liu, and the Vice President of Finance, James Stone. Also with us are Chang-Yu, CEO Duowen Chen, and CFO Yao-Bing Wang. Before management begins their prepared remarks, I would like to remind you of the Compute Safe Hub statement in connection with today's conference call. Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed on this call may contain forelooking statements. These statements are based on current plans, estimates, and projections, and therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them. Forelooking statements involve interior risks and uncertainties. We caution you that, A number of important factors could cause X results different from those contained in any following statements. For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the committee's findings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recent annual report on Form 29. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dr. Charles Zhang. Charles, please proceed.

Thanks, Huangpu, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call. In the second quarter of 2025, our marketing services revenues were in line with our expectations, while our online game revenues and the bottom line performance hit the high end of our guidance. For Soho Media Platform, we continue to focus on refining products, enhancing the operation of our social networks, and improving synergies across our product matrix. During the quarter, we hosted differentiated events that not only attracted numerous participants with shared interests, but also encourage them to build social connections and interact vibrantly with each other on our platform. With these efforts, we were able to increase our user engagement, further consolidate our brand influence, and capture more monetization opportunities. Our online games delivered solid results. underpinned by our dedication to serving users' needs through compelling new content and continued optimization of our games. Before going through each business unit in more detail, let me first give you a quick overview of our financial performance. For the second quarter of 2025, total revenues were $126 million, down 27% year-over-year, and 7% quarter-over-quarter. Marketing services revenues were $16 million, down 21% year-over-year, and up 14% quarter-over-quarter. Online game revenues were $106 million, down 28% year-over-year, and 10% quarter-over-quarter. Gap net loss attributable to SOFO.com Limited was $20 million, compared with a net loss of $38 million in the second quarter of 2024, and a net income of $182 million in the first quarter of 2025. Non-gap net loss attributable to SOFO.com Limited was $20 million compared with the net loss of $34 million in the second quarter of last year and the net loss of $16 million in the first quarter of 2025. Now I'll go through our key businesses in more detail. First, Soho Media Platform. We kept optimizing our products and refining operations while continuing to enhance its social features. We actively hosted diverse and distinctive events and activities, generated plenty of premium content, and stimulated social distributions, and improved the interactive experience inherent in our product matrix. These robustly supported the thriving development of our online communities. This quarter, building on last year's success, we continue to expand our influence in the area of K-pop and the Chinese custom hanfu by hosting a series of attractive events and competitions. For example, in June, in K-pop, we launched the 2025 Sohu K-pop Dancing Festival, the Wudang Fengtiao Dazheng, we do it every year, which attracted the participation of numerous K-pop enthusiasts and quickly become became a blockbuster event in the field of K-pop dancing. For the July, we held a special K-pop random dancing event with K-pop superstars VV, which the NCT, the South Korean NCT SM, which also gained a significant attraction. During the quarter, we also hosted the 2025 Chinese custom model competition. which has completed almost 80 contacts in nearly 30 regions in China so far this year. In addition, we continue to explore new verticals. In June, we held the first salute to the ultimate explorer attracting lots of outdoor ultimate explorer broadcasters, you know, self-media. hosts and celebrities who share their insights through speeches and panel discussions. These events not only provided opportunities for participants to connect and communicate, but also stimulated them to actively interact with each other on our platform in the longer term. With these, we were able to successfully enhance user metrics and foster a vibrant social atmosphere. In terms of leading IP, the physics class, my physics class, is continuing to deliver cutting-edge physics knowledge to a wide range of audiences under various scenarios. During the quarter, July, and myself conducted several high-end dialogues with Nobel laureates and well-known physicists. highly-achieved physicists and entrepreneurs in topics ranging from physics knowledge to the latest industry trends and social interests, promoting a multidimensional dissemination of SOHO's brand influence and attracting greater traffic to our platform. These competitions and live broadcasting events not only brought vitality and premium content to our platform, but also brought us more exposure and recognition from advertisers, providing us with additional monetization opportunities. Leveraging the advantages of our product matrix and our brand influence, we were able to satisfy the needs of advertisers by delivering differentiated marketing solutions through targeted campaigns. next turning our turning to our online game business during the quarter our online game business performed well with revenues reaching the high end of our guidance in our pc game businesses we launched an expansion pack regular tlbb pc to celebrate its 18th anniversary as well as various events for the dragon boat festival which received an enthusiastic response from the community we fully upgraded the skill enhancement system of TLBB Vintage to refresh the combat experience of players of each clan. And we celebrated eighth anniversary of Legacy TLBB Mobile with an expansion pack filled with diverse gameplay and generous rewards, effectively increasing player engagement. Next quarter, we will continue to launch expansion packs and the content updates for the TLBB series and other titles for further to further keep players engaged. Amid intensifying market competition and growing user demand for the quality and innovation, we will advance our top games strategy anchored in user-centric principles. By continuously optimizing our research and development system, we aim to enhance efficiency and product success rates, specifically in product offerings we are actively exploring opportunities to unlock the potential of our TLBB IP. Meanwhile, building upon our core strengths in MMORPGs, we are diversifying into multiple types of games, including card-based RPGs, sports games, and casual games, as well as expanding our offerings for global markets. Now I'd like to give an update on the ongoing share repurchase program. As of July 31st this year, 2025, Soho had repurchased 6.6 million ADS for an aggregated cost of approximately 83 million US dollars. So about one and a half of the total commitment, yeah. With that, I will now turn to the call over to Joanna. Joanna, I'll see you at home.