Yalla Group Limited

Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for YALA Group Limited second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. Now, I would like to turn the call over to your speaker host today, Mr. Logan Yee, IR Manager of the company. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to YALA's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. We released our earnings press release earlier today, and the release is now available on our IR website as well as on Newswire outlets. Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, our future results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties is included in our earnings release and our annual report filed with the SEC. YALA does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Please also note that YALA's earnings release and this conference call include a discussion of unaudited gap financial information as well as the unaudited non-gap financial measures. YALA's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-gap measures to the unaudited most directly comparable gap measures. Today, You will hear from Mr. Tao Yang, our chairman and chief executive officer, who will provide an overview of our latest achievements and growth strategy. He will be followed by Mr. Saif Ismail, the company's president, who will briefly review our recent business developments, Mrs. Karen Hu, our chief financial officer, We'll then provide additional detail on the company's financial results and discuss our financial outlook. Following management's prepared remarks, we'll open the call to questions. Mr. Jeff Shue, our Chief Operating Officer, will join the Q&A session. With that said, I would now like to turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tao Yang. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, everyone, for joining our second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. We are pleased to report strong second quarter results, even with the impact of lockdown, which lasted from March 11th to April 9th this year. Our second quarter revenues reached 81.2 million USD, beating the upper end of our guidance. This outstanding performance and discuss the remarkable clarity of our flagship applications, Yella and Yella Ludo, as well as our effective strategy for high quality growth. Our operating efficiency improvements are also yielding positive results, elevating our net margin to 38.6% in the second quarter. Throughout the second quarter, we remained dedicated to enhancing our operational procedures, boosting user engagement, optimizing technology utilization to improve efficiency, and refining our user acquisition strategies. This effort has empowered us to build a more engaged community of users who exhibit high willingness to spend on our content and services. Supported by our solid business fundamentals and dedicated team, we remain primed to capture new business opportunities and fulfill media users evolving online social networking needs. The ongoing digital transformation in the Middle East continues to attract attention globally in this year. with international tech companies keen to explore opportunities in the region. 2024 marks Yella's eighth year in the Middle East and the eighth anniversary of our flagship product, Yella. Over those years, Yella has grown from our group's first WhatsApp product into the world's most downloaded WhatsApp app. for 2023 based on Bethead.ai's research with a highly engaged and loyal user community. Keeping our user-first philosophy in mind, we have consistently created memorable experiences and forged deep connections with our users by iterating iterating and upgrading our products to meet their evolving needs. Meanwhile, as an industry pioneer, we have helped propel the evolution and development of internet products and the broader internet sector in the MENA region. We will remain committed to driving the MENA East digital transformation seizing emerging opportunities and growing with our users and the industry as we lead the region's development trends. Turning to Yala Games' development and future strategy, the gaming sector continues to demonstrate immense growth potential that needs leanest, thriving digital transformation. Yala is capturing that potential with consistent investment in Mina's mid-core and hardcore game market, attracting Mina users with a wider range of game options tailored to their unique preferences. This year, we have focused on the exploration and development of mid-core and hardcore games, where we can leverage the extensive expertise, talent, workforce and abundant resources we have accumulated in the casual gaming sector. Our product team are currently developing and refining a strong pipeline of self-developed games set to be back throughout 2025. On the related note, we are proactively exploring AI technology applications to optimize our team's productivity, particularly UI design, which has high requirements for detailed, time-consuming artistic work by harnessing the power of UI. Our UI team has notably enhanced efficiency, leading to substantial improvement in the team's capacity and facilitating faster innovation in product feature and gameplay. We're excited about AI's transformative potential and we'll continue to seek creative applications to craft our business to drive product iteration and operational upgrades. As we mentioned on every call, our vision is for Yela to become the largest online social networking and entertainment company in MENA. This quarter, represented another solid stretch toward our vision. I'm proud of the many efforts we have achieved in this region and its internet industry, creating a better digital life for our loyal users in the Yala community. Our commitment to MENA, its people, and its rich culture is unwavering is borrowing our team's ongoing generation of new ideas and new products to meet maintenance users' evolving needs and facilitate digitalization throughout the region. Now I will turn this call over to our president, Mr. Saifi Ismail, for a closer look at our recent developments.