Yalla Group Limited

Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for YALA Group Limited's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the management's repair remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. Now, I will turn the call over to your first speaker host today, Ms. Carrie Gao, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Hello everyone and welcome to YALA's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We issued our earnings press release earlier today and it 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 Securities 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 these 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 press release and this conference call include a discussion of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Yala's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP 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 strategies. He will be followed by Mr. Saifiz Mayu, the company's president, who will briefly review our recent business developments. Mrs. Karen Hu, our chief financial officer, will then provide additional details on the company's financial results and discuss our financial outlook. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. Mr. Jeff Xu, 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 first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We delivered resilient first quarter results with revenues of 79 million USD in line with our expectations giving the shifting geopolitical environment and the impact of Ramadan. We find operations and focused market strategies drove a 7.7% increase in average MAUs, a notable uptick reflecting continued strong user reach and engagement, underscoring the essential role our platforms play in the daily lives of mini users. Our core product ecosystem performed steadily, and our gaming business reinforced its position as a company's key growth engine. We continue to monitor the impact of regional situation on our business with our March survey indicating a moderate effect on user sentiment. Supported by years of accumulated user loyalty and deep community connections, as well as consistent upgrades, we are confident that our Lexi product will continue to serve as resilient foundation and pinning the company's overall stability. What's more, we expect our mid-core and high-core games to contribute to revenues in the second half of this year and beyond, boosting our games segment performance and elevating the group's overall revenue scale. Let's take a closer look at our medical and hardcore games business. First, for our SLG gaming initiatives. We are pleased to announce our partnership with Blaze Area Interactive Entertainment, the international division of our top SLG game studio, whose gross billing in the SLG category has ranked among the top five globally over the past five years. This partnership harnesses our complementary respective strengths. The Blaze area team leads R&D, leveraging its proven game development expertise to craft a game rooted in Mina's heritage and visual taste, while Yala Group leads distribution, using its deep local know-how and accumulated gamer community to deliver the title across Mina. Our SLG title was officially launched on Android in April and has already shown stable performance and solid early user feedback. It also debuted on iOS in early May. According to Sentinel data, it ranked as highest number one on iOS in five GCC countries in terms of downloads under the strategy game category. We are closely monitoring data and managing marketing strategies accordingly, and we will keep you posted on the game's progress and key milestones. Our self-developed Match 3 title, Turbo Match, has also performed well in its early stage, following our recent ramp-up of user acquisition campaigns. It ranked in the top 10 downloads under the puzzle games category across diverse minimarkets, including UAE and Saudi Arabia, according to sensitive data. Our recent co-promotion with Yela Ludo resulted in improved user engagement and retention metrics. We will gradually increase our budget for user acquisition from external channels to steadily reach more users from additional overseas market in the upcoming months. We continue to see significant growth potential for SLG and Match 3 games, and we'll continue to invest in these two games. Both new titles' early performance has been encouraging, laying the groundwork for future growth. We continued to expand our games team over the past year and have been exploring additional gaming verticals, including the casual and hyper casual sectors across more overseas markets, we will share a more detailed overview of this new initiatives in due course additionally. we keep leveraging AI technologies to enhance our product capabilities and overall operational efficiency. We are exploring in-product AI applications to further improve user engagement and drive interaction, including experimenting with new forms of social and interactive experiences. Internally, we are encouraging employees to actively adopt AI tools in their daily work while providing the necessary resources and support. We are also building a dedicated management platform to better monitor and optimize token usage, thereby improving productivity and efficiency. These initiatives, together with our Themis model, not only help, safeguard community safety, but also leverage technology and local insights to continuously drive operational leverage and innovation. We continued to deliver on our shareholder return commitments. As of March 31st, 2026, the company had repurchased $1,460,900 989 ADS or Class A ordinary shares for an aggregate amount of 9.7 million USD in this year, bringing the total number of shares repurchased under the 2021 share repurchase program to 17,143,162 with an aggregate amount of 115.7 million USD. We will continue to execute the 2021 program through May 21st, 2026, and subsequently implement our newly authorized 2026 share repurchase program of up to 150 million USD over the 24 months starting from March the 9th. Once again, I would like to emphasize that we consistently place shareholder interest at the core of our capital allocation decisions, maximizing shareholder value through a continuously optimized return framework. 2026 will be a pivotal year for Yala's evolution as a leader in Lina's digital transformation. We will continue to strengthen our products and maximize synergies between our social and gaming ecosystem, boosting cross-product engagement and user lifetime value. By leveraging our strong in-house R&D, years of accumulated local resources and expertise, and expanding collaboration with leading global partners, we will continue unlocking the MENA market's immense growth potential. supported by a strong balance sheet, solid profitability, and healthy cash flow. We are confident in our resilience and our ability to capture growth opportunities, consistently creating long-term value for global investors. Now, I will turn this call over to our president, Safi Ismail. Safi, please go on.