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spk04: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Kuaishou Technology Third Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. Please note that English simultaneous interpretation will be provided for management's prepared remarks. This English line will be in listen-only mode. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Matthew Zhao, VP of Capital Market Investor Relations at Kuaishou Technology. Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning to everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2023 financial results conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Chen Yixiao, co-founder, executive director and CEO, as well as Mr. Jin Bin, chief financial officer. Before we start, we would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from those mentioned in today's announcement and this discussion. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking information except as recorded by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-IFRS financial measures for comparison purposes only. For definition of a non-IFRS financial measures and a reconciliation of the IFRS to non-IFRS financial results, please refer to our results announcements for the three and nine months ended September 30th, 2023 issued earlier today. So for today's call, management will use Chinese as the main language. The third-party interpreter will provide a simultaneous English interpretation in the prepared remark session and consecutive interpreting during the Q&A session. Please note that English interpretation is for convenience purposes only. In the case of any discrepancy, management statements in their original language will prevail. I will now hand the call over to Yixiao. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Q&A's third quarter 2023 earnings call. In the third quarter of 2023, we continued to foster the growth of our healthy and sustainable operations, expanding our base of users, content creators, marketing customers, and merchants. We continued our growth momentum with steady revenue increases across our various business lines. Accordingly, we achieved a group-level net profit of 2.18 billion RMB and adjusted a net profit of 3.17 billion RMB. Our profitability was bolstered by our robust revenue growth across each of our core online marketing, e-commerce, live streaming business segments, as well as our ongoing optimization efforts that improved our operating efficiency. For example, we consistently increased our server and bandwidth utilization efficiency by leveraging advanced technologies. Our server and bandwidth cost as a percentage of our revenue has consistently decreased over the last few quarters. To further optimize our cost efficiency, our own in-house data center, the Kuaishou Smart Cloud Data Center in Wulanchabu, Inner Mongolia, was officially launched in July 2023. It's now one of the largest data centers in China, serving high-performance computing power for big data and AI technology investments. Our proprietary hyperscale data center is designed to house 300,000 servers, making it well-equipped to support the rapid growth of our business, as well as our ongoing development goals. Before I go into depth about our third quarter business development, I'd like to update you on a recent senior level appointment. As you may have noticed, last week I've stepped down as the head of e-commerce business. Thomas Jenway is now leading both the e-commerce business and at the commercialization business, reporting directly to me. Having led the e-commerce business for over a year, I gained valuable insights into the synergies between our traffic and a commercial ecosystem. Together with the team, we've built a robust foundation for e-commerce sustainable long-term growth. I believe Thomas' appointment will help maximize the synergies between the upstream and downstream business. My role will now pivot to focus wholly on the CEO position. Here, I will concentrate on questions overarching long-term goals, including corporate strategy, organization development, and exploring new industry opportunities. I will also focus on optimizing the synergy between the traffic ecosystem and the monetization system from a holistic perspective. During the past two years that Thomas oversaw the commercialization business, he demonstrated exceptional insight into the dynamics of products, our content ecosystem, traffic operations, and monetization. Under his leadership, the company's online marketing revenue has grown rapidly in high double digits. Looking ahead, we expect Thomas' dual role to strengthen cooperation and synergy between the two business units, fortifying the organization and improving monetization efficiency, thereby contributing to the long-term prosperity of Kuaishou's commercialization ecosystem. Next, I'll discuss our key business developments in Q3. First, user growth and ecosystem construction. In Q3, we maintain high-quality growth across both our user base and traffic, owning to our efficient user growth strategy, extensive high-quality content offerings, and continuous algorithm optimization. Average DAUs and MAUs on the Kuaishou app continued their record-breaking growth momentum during the third quarter, reaching 387 million and 685 million, respectively, representing year-over-year increases of 6.4% and 9.4%, respectively. Average daily time spent per DAU on the Kuaishou app was 129.9 minutes in Q3, and our total user time spent grossed 6.9% year-over-year. Moreover, the average daily total video views of our short videos and live streaming content reached nearly 100 billion. We have prioritized the efficiency and quality of our user growth, achieving consistent ROI improvement. This resulted in further decrease in our average user acquisition cost in Q3, both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. Specifically, we intensified our efforts to promote and distribute high-quality original content, including short plays, which led to robust user retention, Meanwhile, by offering high quality vertical content such as the summer star wish party we acquired new users, while also increasing engagement of our existing users. We're also actively exploring new innovative acquisition channels. For instance, we extended our reach to younger demographic through live streaming courses provided by top university to the public. We have been committed to fostering a differentiated social media platform that inspires users to develop social connections and relations. As of the end of Q3, pairs of mutual followers on the Kuaishou app reached $32.2 billion, representing a year-over-year increase of around 40%. In addition, in Q3, average daily interactions, including likes, comments, reposts, and et cetera, on the Kuaishou app exceeded $9 billion. We are dedicated to encouraging high-quality original content creation, supporting the development of diverse content genres, promoting high-quality content featuring distinctive Kuaishou characteristics. In sports content, as the official broadcaster of the short video sharing platform of the 19th Asian Games Hangzhou, Kuaishou provided users with a panoramic view of the game's rich content and innovative interactive experience with cutting-edge live streaming technology. During the Asian Games, daily views peaked at around 230 million with 63.1 billion video views of the Asian Games-related content. In terms of short plays, we launched a total of 85 Project Astro short plays During the summer vacation period of these 21 short plays surpassed 100 million views, covering various genres, including Asian style, urban, youth, and family. While solidifying our ability to produce blockbuster short plays, we have steadily upgraded our monetization capabilities. In Q3, marketing sponsorship revenue from Project Astro short plays surged by more than 10 times compared with the previous quarter. In September, we launched a 2023 back-to-school season campaign. In the Penn Knowledge vertical, collaborating with 61 skilled professors and 149 renowned experts, we introduced high-quality educational resources to users through short videos plus live streaming contributing to inclusive education. With respect to our search business, we introduced the Kuaishou AI Dialogue function. This is the first intelligent Q&A product based on the large language model in the short video and live streaming industries. This innovation brings an intelligent Q&A and attacks creation functions to users within search scenarios, improving users' intelligent search experience. In Q3, Search's average monthly users exceeded 470 million. The number of average daily researches on our platform reached over 600 million. The number of daily search inquiries peaked at more than 700 million. We're also accelerating the commercialization of our search service. search marketing revenue growth by over 120% year-over-year. Moving to our monetization progress, first look at our online marketing services. In Q3, despite the ongoing challenges stemming from the macroeconomic conditions and the slow recovery of marketing customers' confidence, we achieved exceptional online marketing revenue growth, outperforming the industry. This was mainly driven by praise to our commercial products, technology development in our algorithms, and deeper operation in various vertical industries. Specifically in Q3, our revenue from online marketing services reached $14.7 billion, growing by 26.8% year-over-year and accounting for 52.6% of our total revenue. The number of active marketing customers in Q3 increased by more than 140% year-over-year. In Q3, our external marketing services continued to recover, and the year-over-year growth rate accelerated compared with Q2. Notably, we made substantial progress in industries such as meeting information, education, and training, and healthcare. We've been focused on refining industry-specific operations. For example, in the education and training industry, we identified the needs of specific high-quality users on our platform, prompting marketing customers to allocate more budgets on our platform. By extending the score of negative, of native marketing materials, we aim to enhance users' content consumption experience and boost the conversion rates for marketing customers. In Q3, the consumption of external native marketing materials increased by more than 30% quarter-to-quarter. In addition, we introduced an AIGC tool to produce marketing material, boosting the efficiency of marketing customers' productivity, which has substantially reduced production costs. In terms of brand marketing, we leveraged our sponsorship of Hangzhou Asian Games to explore customized brand marketing strategies that align with marketing customers' individual needs. To that end, we created custom IPs tailored to diverse scenarios We also utilized our advantages in traffic content and our KOL ecosystem, creating additional marketing opportunities for marketing customers. For instance, inspired by the concept of Asian Games plus technology, we invented a marketing campaign for China Mobile with the theme of National Champion Dream Asian Games Mobile Journey. This campaign, which integrated online and offline activities, which showcased in six cities, achieving more than 960 million exposures. Marketing services revenue from native e-commerce merchants maintained robust growth in Q3, benefiting from the increase in the sale of our e-commerce business. Specifically, we focused on the customer composition, traffic alignment, and efficiency improvement. In terms of the customer composition, we emphasized the growth of small and medium-sized merchants within our ecosystem. Our priority is to incrementally improve how we cultivate these merchant customers, build attraction for their business, and provide an increased policy support for their traffic and operations Our Omni business platform marketing solution effectively enhanced the synergy between the marketing and e-commerce traffic, amplifying the long-term value of merchants' investment in Omni domain traffic in Q3. Marketing customers' spending from Omni platform marketing solution increased by nearly 5% compared with Q2. In terms of efficiency improvement, we increased the stability of ad placement for small and medium-sized merchants with our upgraded smart hosting products. Live streaming hosting and merchandise hosting were particularly effective in amplifying merchants' ROI by increasing the opportunities for small and medium-sized business to make sizable revenue leaps on a platform. This, in turn, has strengthened the business' willingness to allocate funds to ad placements on Kuaishou. In Q3, our marketing customer spending through smart hosting increased by nearly 9.25%. Second, our e-commerce business. Despite Q3 traditionally being the low season for e-commerce, and our customer confidence are still in the process of recovery. We continue to demonstrate a unique resilience advantage in our e-commerce business. This was attributable to short videos being a more efficient form of content delivery and also to our clear and distinctive e-commerce strategy, which centers on trusted-based e-commerce relationships and enabling consumers to discover cost-effective goods through reliable streamers and content. In Q3, we further enriched our merchandise and enhanced buyer conversion efficiency through our refined operations. As a result, our GMV growth has significantly outpaced the industry, increasing by around 30% a year over year. In terms of supply, more merchants are seeking growth opportunities and embracing the benefits our traffic brings to increase their mass market penetration given the current macroeconomic environment. The number of newly onboarded merchants remain at a high level during the third quarter. Meanwhile, we optimized our tiered operations for merchants. We also enhanced the policy support to improve the live streaming penetration rate and the number of monthly active merchants on our platform, increased by a promising 50% year-over-year. Specifically, in Q3, we introduced targeted high-potential merchants in major industry zones in 14 cities, offering practical courses to help them rapidly increase their business scale. We also intensified our efforts to promote our case studies and enhance our influence in these industry zones. Additionally, we've implemented a tiered and categorized approach to operate and support new merchants. Based on their content and merchandise capabilities, we provide a differentiated empowerment system, access to co-starter resources, as well as traffic support. This reduces the operational challenges for merchants. In Q3, the percentage of merchants with GMV leaping to all tiers ranging from 50,000 to over 2 million increased significantly quarter over quarter. Regarding brand merchants, we're placing greater focus on supply diversity and the brand merchants environment. We have enriched our brand offerings through various channels such as outlet stores and exclusive shops, resulting in continuous and rapid growth in the number of new brands on our platform. We are consistently improving the merchant environment by providing full support to merchants throughout the process, including attracting brands, co-stars, self-operation, as well as distribution. We fully utilize the stream initiative and the brand traffic project to enhance the brand's traffic acquisition app capabilities Meanwhile, we are continuously improving our traffic matching efficiency by creating marketing IP, such as the brand flash sales. We further fortify our user mindset while improving conversion efficiency. In the third quarter, GMV proportion from brands, including quiet brands, continue to increase year over year. Among these, well-known brands self-operated live streaming achieved impressive results, with the GMV growing by 100% year over year, furthering their increased growth rate on the consecutive quarter basis. In terms of KOLs, we place a greater emphasis on the overall health of the ecosystem. We expanded to shorter views and shelf-based e-commerce realms, lowering the operational barriers for KOLs. We have consistently strengthened our distribution channels, improved the merchandise collection efficiency, refined our operations for the growth and development path of mid-tier and long-tail KOLs. The proportion of mid-tier and long-tail KOLs in the overall KOL-related GMV has gradually increased by over 20% at the beginning of 2021 to nearly 50% in Q3. In terms of monetization, KOLs are showing higher acceptance of a receiving commission from distribution. This is not only due to the unique community atmosphere of Kuaishou, but also in the increasing variety of distributable merchandise. The platform provides more process-matching services, and the pairs of KOL-matching merchants on our platform continue to rise quarter over quarter. Overall, merchants at KOLs are collaborating more effectively through the stream initiatives, mutually benefiting coexisting, collectively building on the Kuaishou e-commerce system. The ecosystem's health also depends on the platform infrastructure development. In Q3, scoring system for merchandise, merchants' experience and KOA reputation played crucial roles in differentiating quality merchants by helping them gain more traffic and reducing exposure for underperforming merchants. We continuously optimized the scoring system by introducing more positive indicators to add value when users are making shopping decisions, reinforcing user trust in platform, enhancing conversion efficiency, and promoting repeat purchases. With regard to algorithm optimization, we have adopted a hypermodal approach to improve the scale and efficiency of e-commerce traffic as you grow across the board. At the same time, we'll continue to promote the content and services ranking mechanism by increasing the algorithm weight of both store and kiosk scores. With respect to the expansion of e-commerce service scenarios, we'll further strengthen our short video and the shelf-based realms. Short videos have a consistently proven Effective in recommendations, cultivating fans, funneling traffic to live streaming, as well as fostering real-time transactions. We are continually improving the quality of a short video e-commerce content and a conversion efficiency by combining the highlights from live streaming and precise recommendations. Short video GMV score by more than two-fold year-over-year in Q3, making the fifth quarter of consecutive growth. Within shelf-based e-commerce, our search skill has continually expanded it. and the peak DA used using Kuaishou Search for e-commerce purposes increased by 25% of quarter-over-quarter to over 100 million. Meanwhile, we'll continue to optimize user search experience and improve our capabilities to capitalize on user demands in Q3. Search GMB grew by nearly 70% year-over-year. In terms of the shopping mall, we increased the traffic on playing users' homepage and the shopping tab on the homepage. We also improved the paying ratio and the user experience by leveraging our differentiation strategy, such as making merchandise information vivid and detailed, This further enhanced the user retention and reduced product returns and negative reviews by more deeply integrating the shopping mall with content and refining our inventory operations. We were able to take a deeper dive into the exploration and aggregation of paying users' demands, which enabled us to carry out more targeted measures to attract merchants. We also continuously explored new marketing and operating scenarios to provide merchants with more predictable business opportunities. In Q3, shopping mall GMV continued to grow a quarter, and shop-based e-commerce GMV accounted for nearly 20% of total GMV. The continuous prosperity of supply and ecosystem further drives the users' demands. In Q3, our average monthly paying users reached nearly 120 million, with both absolute number and penetration rate increasing from Q2's peak season. These increases benefited from our refiner subsidiary and inventory strategy and diverse activities on the platform, including the deep penetration of the money-saving monthly cart, Improving conversion efficiency of paying users and repeated purchase intention. Leveraging the optimized efficiency of the smart subsidy, channel management, user empowerment projects. The quality of users on our platform, especially the quality of new users, improved significantly. And the frequency of monthly orders continued to grow steadily. Third, regarding our live streaming business, in Q3 2023, our live streaming revenue grew by 8.6% year-over-year to $9.7 billion. The increase was attributed to consistently improved high-quality live streaming offerings, better user consumption experience, and continued optimization of the live streaming ecosystem. On the supply side, we established a regional talent agency operating platform to enhance talent agencies' operating capabilities, as well as drive new user acquisition for streamers and high-quality content supply for small and medium-sized streamers. In Q3, the number of streamers managed by talent agencies grew by over 40%. While streamers average daily live streaming time increased by 30% year-over-year, meanwhile, continually expanded our diversified supply by developing innovative tools based on the entertainment live streaming scenarios and attract high-quality developers through our live streaming open platform while lowering the entry barriers for streamers. Across both internal and external industry ecosystem, we have successfully increased the supply of multi-host live streaming, bringing users to more high-quality content. We are firmly committed to building a long-term, healthy, and sustainable live streaming ecosystem while continuously Advancing our popular content verticals and nurturing streamers in September of 2023, we initiated the National Art and Heritage Program to create additional culture IP by providing substantial traffic support and professional training to streamers on our platform who cover traditional Chinese opera, folk music, and folk art. Meanwhile, we continue to facilitate AIG-C scenarios, including virtual human live streaming, and empowered by underlying technological technologies. capabilities like real-time capturing, visual effects, and etc. These capabilities boost the efficiency of our business innovation by reducing labor and time costs. Furthermore, as a benchmark case of our live streaming cloud services empowering traditional industries, the average daily resume submissions during Q3 are quite high, grew by over 200% year-over-year, driven by summer vacation and campus recruitment in autumn this year. We also lowered the entry barrier for merchants leveraging AIGC in our smart customer service. Additionally, ideal housing covered more than 120 cities nationwide with cumulative gross transactions values surpassing $14 billion in Q3. Finally, in terms of our overseas business progress, in Q3, we continue to advance our strategy focused on key Overseas market, DAUs, and the user time spent in key overseas markets steadily increased year-over-year. We further diversified our content vertical offerings in the entertainment and sports industries, providing traffic support to meet tier creators. Simultaneously, we deepened our local operations, catering to local users' specific consumption needs. Building on this foundation, we intensified our monetization efforts, continued to improve operating efficiency, which significantly reduced our use growth costs year-over-year. In Q3, total revenue of our overseas business reached a 652 million RMB, more than doubling year-over-year. By continuously optimizing our operating efficiency, we achieved a 60.2% year-over-year decrease in overall operating losses overseas in Q3, which also further narrowed the quarter-over-quarter. On the online marketing services front, we focus on key industries, optimizing marketing efficiency to unlock the commercial potential of various users across different demographics. In Q3, we increased the number of marketing customers of our overseas business by over 200% quarter-over-quarter. ensuring ongoing customer quality improvement while expanding our customer base. In addition, we optimize our brand and marketing conversion and increase the advertising inventory. In Brazil, for example, we have extended marketing resources to more well-known brands, such as Amazon and McDonald's. In terms of live streaming services, we continue to promote local operations in overseas markets and focus on tapping into high-value paying users, leading to continuous increases in paying users penetration rate for live streaming services in Q3. This... In conclusion, despite facing numerous challenges in the third quarter of 2023, we have made significant progress across our core business lines through a deepened focus on refined operations. This concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you. Next, our CFO, Mr. Jinbin, will discuss the company's financial performance for Q3. Thank you, Yixiao. Hello, everyone. In Q3, 2023, we delivered a robust financial performance. Our group level net profit increased quarter over quarter, reaching 2.18 billion RMB, marking our second consecutive quarter of delivering an IFRS net profit since our IPO. This remarkable achievement can be attributed to our consistent growth across our core business, coupled with our persistent efforts in financial management and refined operational efficiency. This display and management of our costs and expenses continues to unlock operating leverage that enhances our sustainable profitability. At the same time, while fostering high-quality user growth in Q3, our average CEUs and MAUs continue to climb, reaching historical highs. This underscores our ability to improve user retention through an array of high-quality content and algorithm optimization. By combining effective traffic monitoring strategies with improved user experience, we're recognizing the increasing value of our user ecosystem moving towards an era of profitability. Now, let's take a closer look at our financial performance for Q3 2013. In Q3, our gross revenue grew by 20.8% year-over-year to 27.9 billion RMB. The increase was driven by growth across each of our core business, including online marketing services, e-commerce, and live streaming. Revenue from our online marketing services increased by 26.7% to 14.7 billion RMB for Q3 from 11.6 billion RMB for the same period of 2022. This growth came from an increasing number of marketing customers, especially from our e-commerce merchants driven by the increased traffic on our platform and our diversified marketing product portfolio, as well as our industry-specific and refined operations. We continue to deepen our refund operations for vertical industries, focusing on marketing customers' needs and improving the content production efficiency. In terms of marketing services for native e-commerce merchants, we focus on nurturing the growth of small and medium-sized merchants by improving effectiveness as introducing Omni platform marketing solution and upgrading products of smart hosting services to reach more demands of them. Our other services revenue increased by 36.6% to 3.5 billion RMB for Q3 from 2.6 billion in the same period of 2022, led by our growing e-commerce business and its increasing GMB. During the quarter, e-commerce GMB grew by 30% year-over-year due to an increased number of active merchants and inactive e-commerce paying users, as well as our refund operation strategies. We maintain a high number of newly onboarding the merchants, we also expanded the range of brands, improving the user's shopping experience and further increased the conversion rates. Revenue from our live streaming business increased by 8.6% to 9.7 billion RMB for Q3 from 8.9 billion RMB in the same period of 2022. The increase was driven by our continuous efforts to enrich our content supply, enriching our users' access to diverse live streaming content. For Q3, our cost of revenues increased by 8.6% year-over-year to 13.5 billion RMB, representing 48.3% of our total revenues. This increase was mainly due to increased revenue sharing costs and related taxes, which is in line with our revenue growth, as well as depreciation of property and equipment and right-of-use assets and amortization of intangible assets. This increase in cost of the revenues was partially offset by decreases in bandwidth expenses and server custody costs. Gross profit for Q3 grew by 35% year-over-year and 3.7% quarter-over-quarter to 14.5 billion RMB. Gross profit margin reached 51.7% in Q3. expending by 5.4 and 1.5 percentage points year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, respectively, benefiting from our top-line strength and effective cost control measures. Moving to expenses, selling and marketing expenses for Q3 decreased by 2.1% year-over-year to 8.9 billion RMB, accounting for 32% of our total revenues, down from 39.5% in the same period of 2020 to largely due to our more disciplined and efficient spending on user acquisition and retention. Research and development expenses were 3 billion RMB for Q3, decreasing by 16% year-over-year, accounting for 10% of total revenues in the quarter, dropping from 15.3% in the same period of 2022. The decline in RMB expenses was mainly the result of decreased employee benefit expenses, including related share-based compensation expenses. Administrative expenses decreased by 15.3% year-over-year to 945 million RMB for Q3, accounting for 3.2% of total revenue, down from 4.6% in the same period of 2023, primarily due to decrease in employee benefit expenses, including related share-based compensation expenses. Group level net profit for Q3 rose to 2.2 billion RMB compared to a net profit of 1.5 billion RMB in Q2 and a net loss of 2.7 billion RMB in Q3 2022. Group level adjusted net profit rose to 3.2 billion RMB compared with adjusted net profit of 2.7 billion RMB in Q2 and adjusted net loss of 672 million RMB in Q3 2020-2022, demonstrating our substantially improved profitability. We maintain a strong balance sheet with cash equivalents, time deposits restricted to cash, and a wealthy management product of 55.4 billion RMB as of September 30, 2023. Owing to our enhanced monetization capabilities and working capital management efficiency, We generated a positive operating net cash flow of 7.7 billion RMB for Q3 2023. As we look ahead, our primary focus remains anchored in the development of our content and ecosystem. With an emphasis on user growth strategies, we'll continue to strengthen our business capabilities through a system of e-commerce and marketing services. Creating a powerful flywheel effect to that propels our growth forward, leveraging the foundation of our enriched content supply and community vitality. We aim to foster deeper connections with our users. making our experience even more engaging. We believe that by staying true to our core strategies, we can enhance and deepen our positive competitive mode. We can see the growth opportunity and sustain rapid growth. That concludes my prepared remarks. Now we're open for questions.
spk03: If you have any questions, please press the question button. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 1 and wait for a name to be announced. If you'd like to cancel, please press the hash key.
spk02: One moment for the first question.
spk03: The first question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
spk07: Thanks, management, for taking my questions and congratulations on a strong set of results. We have seen very good results for W11. Can management comment about the overall performance for the event, progress for shopping mall, and the sustainability and driver for our e-commerce GMV to continue outpace industry growth? Thank you.
spk06: To answer your question, this year's Double 11 is still ahead of its time. In the current market and social environment, we are very satisfied with Double 11's performance. In this year's Double 11, we have upgraded our product capability, simplified the business registration process, and provided official product services. Through better reporting, traffic mechanism, and data-based tools, we have built a product-based sales between the business and the platform. At the same time, through a rich flow plan and a smart supplement strategy, we can help the business to hatch new products, run large-scale activities, and realize the January 1st. In addition, our activity operation and marketing capabilities are also constantly improving. This year, Double C's pre-sale scale is larger, and the business range of participants is wider, and the product category and SKU are more complete. Through the pre-locked customer demand, pre-sale J&V has increased by 84%, and in the large-scale big-store area of the mall, Thank you for your question.
spk04: Looking at this year's Step 11 sales promotion, the overall performance beat our expectations, and we are very pleased with the results considering the current market and consumer environment. This year, we upgraded our product capabilities, simplified the merchant registration process, and provided official merchandise selection services. Through a more complete traffic mechanism for Blockbuster merchandise and data-driven operational tools, we have successfully built a productization bridge between merchants and our platform. Additionally, with a variety of traffic plans and smart subsidy strategies, we helped merchants incubate Blockbuster merchandise and operate big promotions, fostering a scale-up in GMV. Furthermore, our event operations and capabilities are continuously improving, we had a larger pre-sale scale with a broader range of participating merchants and more comprehensive categories and SKUs this year. By locking in users' demanded events, our pre-sale GMB increased by 84% year-over-year. We also launched a big brand, big subsidy section in shopping mall, capitalizing on users' shopping mentality for getting the most value for money through the operations of benchmark blockbuster merchandise.
spk06: In terms of malls, we have opened a new entry flow for Double C this year. Rich goods, enhanced product infrastructure, and created a special marketing scene. During the activity, the mall's GDP increased rapidly, accounting for about 10%. In the future, malls, as an additional area for e-commerce, will mainly face users with new e-commerce purchases, only to strengthen their resale, satisfy users' definite shopping needs, and further improve the shopping frequency. In terms of shopping mall, we opened homepage traffic access during Dev11 and capped in reaching the product offerings, strengthening merchandise infrastructure, and creating unique marketing scenarios.
spk04: During the promotion, the shopping mall's GMV grew at a rapid speed, accounting for around 10% of the event's total GMV. Moving forward, the shopping mall, as a complement to our content e-commerce, will primarily target users with a shopping mentality to strengthen repeat purchases and meet users' certainty shopping demand, further increasing purchasing frequency. On the supply side, we'll continue to enhance the integration of content and shop-based realms, Utilizing Kuaishou's content advantages and differentiation to strengthen content of merchandise cards will also continuously enrich marketing scenarios to strengthen user mentality.
spk06: This is mainly due to our differentiated user attributes, which are more popular and more down-to-earth. Although the channels of information of the general public may be relatively limited, they have always existed for the pursuit of quality life and low-end goods. At the same time, the level of consumption is higher, which is more in line with the new e-commerce and design atmosphere of QS. We hope that the needs of the general public will be continuously created and satisfied with QS's attention.
spk04: Regarding the high growth rate, sustainability, and the driving force of Kuaishou's e-commerce business, let me share some of my personal thoughts on the underlying logic. First, the Chinese e-commerce market hasn't reached a zero-sum stage yet, and its market size will continue to rise. Kuaishou plays an important role in raising the ceiling, primarily thanks to our differentiated user attributes that are more mass market-oriented and go deeper into lower-tier markets. Although the mass market demographic has relatively limited channels for accessing information, the pursuit of quality lifestyle and affordable quality goods is always there. These demographics also have higher consumer loyalty, which aligns well with Kuaishou's trust-based e-commerce and community atmosphere. We hope that with the help of Kuaishou, the needs of the mass market demographic can be continuously created and satisfied.
spk06: In addition, the supply chain still has a greater room for growth. Many brands and retail businesses have mature online operating capabilities and the will to invest resources. But the development of QS is still in the early stages. With more reasonable and clear platform rules, the continuous improvement of infrastructure and business business environment, the willingness to work closely with QS is also continuously strengthened, such as the sale of home appliances, We are confident to become one of the important online growth channels for businesses.
spk04: Secondly, there is still significant room for growth on the supply side. Many brands and industry zone merchants have mature online operational capabilities and are willing to invest in resources, but their development on Kuaishou is still in the early stage. As our platform rules become more reasonable and clear, and the infrastructure and the business environment for merchants continue to improve, their willingness to work deeply with Kuaishou is increasing. For example, for our consumer electronics and home appliances category, the number of motions increased by over 80% year-over-year in the third quarter, driving its GMV improvement higher than the platform. In the future, whether it's out-top categories like apparel, consumer electronics, and home appliances, or outdoor and groceries with strong growth momentum, as users demand to become more diverse and refined, our supply side will continue to innovate We are confident we can become one of the vital online growth channels for merchants. Additionally, we see room for continuous growth across different realms. The synergy of content e-commerce integrated with content consumption scenarios enhanced our insights into user preferences and needs. It has also further facilitated more accurate matching of products to users, thereby improving conversion efficiency. Moreover, the planned expansion and development of the shelf-based e-commerce are expected to boost repeat purchases.
spk06: In the future, we are confident that the growth of fast e-commerce business will continue to improve the customer purchase frequency, and at the same time, it will transform more and more buyers. The current high double-digit MPU penetration rate also has greater room for improvement. At the same time, the abundance of brands and products will continue to drive the growth of retail prices.
spk04: For the drivers of acquired e-commerce growth, we are confident in continuously increasing user purchase frequency and convert more users to paying users. At our current stage, there remains substantial potential for enhancing our high double-digit penetration rate of MPU. Meanwhile, enriched brands and categories will further propel average order price growth.
spk02: Thank you, operator. Next question, please.
spk03: The next question comes from the line of Lincoln Kong from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thank you very much for taking my question. I congratulate you on the strong set of results. In the press release, a company mentioned in the third quarter their external advertising revenue growth on a year-on-year basis accelerated from the second quarter. So could management elaborate what are the industries that perform well and what are the industries that are having some pressure? So when we're looking forward, what would be the growth strategy for the external advertising business?
spk02: Thank you.
spk06: Thank you for your question. In the third quarter of 2023, we deepened the operationalization of the industry and achieved solid progress in many industries, especially in the media information, education, training and health industries. Specifically, in the media information industry, paid short-term growth is the best. This year, the paid short-term industry is rapidly investing, consuming and increasing. In the third quarter of 2023, the consumption of paid short-term living has increased by more than 300% and the rate of return has increased by nearly 50%. This is due to the long-term optimization of our paid short-term living programs and paid training. It is also due to the rapid improvement of the paid short-term supply of platform policies. The education and training industry is mainly due to the contribution of adult education. We have deepened our operations on some key customers and established a fast-growing community channel, such as middle-aged education, and obtained an increased investment budget for marketing customers. For the gaming industry that you are more concerned about, the investment and consumption of 3G games has increased by 40%. This is mainly because we have improved the conversion rate of each chain of small programs through chain optimization. Thank you for your question.
spk04: In the third quarter of 2023, we deepened and refined our operations. We made solid progress in many industries, especially in media information, education, and training, as well as healthcare. Specifically in the media information industry, paid short plays saw the highest growth with ad placements and spending on Kuaishou increasing month over month this year. In the third quarter of 2023, the ad expenditure of paid short plays grew by over 300% year over year and nearly 50% quarter over quarter. This is attributable to our continuous optimization of the mini programs and payment channels for paid short plays, as well as the rapid increase in the supply of paid short plays under our support policies. In the education and training industry, growth mainly comes from adult education. we executed targeted operations among several key marketing customers, capitalizing on Kuaishou's demographic strengths, particularly in educational offerings for middle-aged and elderly populations. This strategic approach results in augmented budget placement from these marketing customers. With respect to the gaming industry, the marketing expenditure from mini-program games increased by nearly 40% year-over-year in the third quarter, This was mainly due to our traffic funnel optimization, which improves the end-to-end conversion for mini-program games, as well as our enhanced incentives and support policies for ad agents.
spk06: In contrast, e-commerce platforms and the transportation industry are mainly affected by the pressure of some of the key customers' investment budget in the media and the decline in consumption. However, in the fourth quarter, there was an increase in the sales of the double C-type large-scale marketing node, the external circulation of the e-commerce platform, and the increase in the daily consumption ratio by 30%. For the transportation industry, although some platform-type customers' investment budget has been reduced, the investment of car manufacturers has been increased. The health of the business structure and the abundance of customers have been significantly improved.
spk04: The e-commerce platform and transportation industry saw a year-over-year decline in marketing placement due to budget cuts across all media outlets from some of the key customers. However, entering the fourth quarter with the 111 sales promotion, the daily average ad expenditure for external marketing services by the e-commerce platform increased by over 30% quarter-over-quarter so far. For the transportation industry, despite budget contraction in certain platform-type clients, there was a marked increase in marketing by automobile manufacturers. This shift significantly enhanced both the overall business' health and client portfolio.
spk06: For the industry with higher net profit, we need to use data infrastructure, algorithmic and product optimization to continuously improve the efficiency of transformation. For the industry with high net profit, we need to use marketing materials to build, strengthen the three-dimensional traffic flow and natural traffic flow, and at the same time, through institutional policies, to improve the ROI of marketing customers. For the industry with lower net profit, we need to explore industrialization to dig into more users with fast hands. We will also actively use AI technology to reduce the cost of marketing and material production, and improve the feedback loop through multiple conversations to transform the effect and increase the negative energy for external circulation marketing.
spk04: As we look towards future strategies for enhancing our external marketing services, it's necessary to implement industry-specific and refined operations. For sectors with substantial online presence, our focus is on refining conversion efficiency through advanced data infrastructure, algorithmic improvements, and product enhancements. In industries with a moderate online presence, our strategy focuses on creating native marketing content, fostering a cohesive synergy between commercial traffic and organic traffic, and improving the ROI for our marketing customers through support policies. For sectors with less online presence, our approach involves industrialized operations, tapping into user demands that align with Kuaishou's attributes, and effectively promoting customers' budget placement Additionally, we'll leverage AI technology to not only reduce the costs associated with creating marketing materials, but also to improve post-click conversion rates, thereby driving growth of our external marketing services.
spk02: Thank you all for your time. Next question, please.
spk03: Next question is from Lei Zhang from Bank of America. The next question comes from the line of Li Zhang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk00: 謝謝,我自己翻一下。 Thanks management for taking my question and congrats on a strong profit beat. My question is mainly regarding your new initiative. Can you give us more color on the new business, including local services and quiet hair business? Thank you.
spk06: 谢谢你的问题啊。 那经过一年的探索和运营, 我们的本地生活业务有了更清晰的策略达法和目标, 也取得了不错的进展。 三季度日均GNV较一季度有约五倍的增长。 Thank you for your question. After a year of exploration and operation, we have developed a clear strategy approach and goals for our local services business.
spk04: And we have made good progress. In Q3, average daily GMVs of local services increased by approximately five-fold compared to Q1. We continue to stimulate user exploration of dining and entertainment through content recommendations, offering users the best band for their buck and reliable platform services. Leveraging our diverse user base, we support various merchants in achieving rapid growth on our platform.
spk06: To be more specific, in the third quarter, local life, the community's ecosystem has become more prosperous, and the number of retail businesses has remained at more than 150. We have expanded the focus operation system to 16 levels, such as the new city of Shiyang, which not only has the advantage of users, but also has opened up a large number of business resources with strong growth demands, and successfully created platform phenomena and repayment travel cases. In terms of products, we continue to consolidate the food delivery service. Through high-end consumer training, users in the fast-growing local life mindset have also actively expanded the more detailed categories of food and drink in Daozhong. Currently, non-food-based GNV accounts for nearly 40%.
spk04: Specifically, our local services supply ecosystem thrived in Q3 with the number of active merchants maintaining quote-over-quote growth of over 150%. We strategically expanded our focus to 16 key cities, including newly opened cities like Shenyang, in which we not only have user advantages, but also have reached out to and engaged with many merchants who are eager to expand and grow. successfully creating phenomenal blockbuster travel cases across the entire platform. In terms of the categories, we continue to strengthen our foothold in dining, restaurants, cultivating users' local services mindset through high-frequency consumption. Additionally, we actively expand it into more specific categories, such as general in-store hotels and travel. Currently, non-dining-related GMV accounts for nearly 40% of our total local services GMV. The rapid expansion into cities and categories wouldn't be possible without the support of KOLs. In Q3, we focus on KOL operations and policy incentives, increasing the scale of KOLs and continuing to support them in building fan bases and generating high-quality content, further facilitating the full lifecycle growth for KOLs, resulting in a more than two-fold quarter-over-quarter increase in DAUs on the KLL distribution platform. Through initiatives like the Flying Bird project, we also established several benchmark cases. For example, we supported the fast food brand Wallets, helping them convert nearly 3 million new customers in Q3, with the GMV growing over 200% compared to Q1.
spk02: Zeng Tai's Fanzhou,
spk06: and we can't leave the platform for a more sophisticated operation and flow strategy. In this quarter, we will cover product privacy, cost-performance ratio, and increase efficiency and application size. We will use GPM as a guide to optimize live broadcasts, short-term products, and search chains. Through a more sophisticated flow and supplement strategy, we will be efficient in planting, plowing, and digging users' consumer needs. We will improve the management capabilities of the platform, and establish a 2B system and a 2C user protection system. The thriving ecosystem also relies on more refined operations and traffic strategies. So this quarter, we iterated our merchandise engine, enhancing cost efficiency and scale with a focus on the quality to price ratio.
spk04: We optimized the closed-loop conversion of live streaming, short videos, and search based on GPM, and efficiently recommended converted and uncovered users' consumption needs through more refined traffic and subsidy strategies. Meanwhile, We improved the platform's management capabilities, establishing a 2B governance system and a 2C user preservation system, bolstering consumer trust. We are continuously discovering and fulfilling user needs, achieving nearly 260% growth in daily paying users in Q3 compared to the first half of 2023.
spk06: In the fourth quarter, we will turn more local users into our main target. In Q4, our primary focus is to convert more local users, further enhance operations in our existing key cities. We find the operations of merchants and KOL,
spk04: or merchandise to amplify our reach. Also, we will strengthen users getting the most value for your money mentality through more efficient subsidies and traffic strategies to consistently expand our business scale.
spk06: We actively expand the platform's shortage of positions in the supply side, and build a dedicated recommendation model to improve the accuracy of the recommendation model. In addition, we continue to carry out three-dimensional exploration by enriching the product line, optimizing the matching efficiency, improving customer experience, and establishing a sales system and other measures to help businesses with a large number of recruitment needs break through the bottleneck.
spk04: In Q3, QI Hire continued its robust growth momentum. The number of active merchants increased over 120% year-over-year, and the average daily resume submissions grew by more than 200% year-over-year. On the job supply side, we proactively expanded the platform's offerings in scarce job categories, iterated our exclusive recommendation model, and enhanced its matching accuracy capabilities. Furthermore, we sustain efforts in commercial exploration by enriching our product line, optimizing matching efficiency, improving client experience, and establishing a sales system. These initiatives aim to assist merchants with substantial hiring needs in overcoming resume bottlenecks.
spk02: Thank you, operator. Next question, please.
spk03: The next question is from Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley. The next question comes from the line of Alex Poon of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk05: My question is related to our capital return policy. Given we have reached breakeven and very strong margin improvement and cash flow, can management discuss our cash flow policy and is there room for increasing our capital returns in future? Thank you very much.
spk03: If we consider other funds that can be used in real time, such as savings and financial assets, etc., we can conclude that the total amount of funds that can be used in the end of the third quarter is 554 billion yuan, which is about 5 billion yuan more than the end of the second quarter. Since the end of the second quarter of 2022, the total amount of funds that can be used in the end of the second quarter has always been in the trend of growth, and the cash reserve of the company has increased significantly.
spk04: Thank you for your question. Thanks to the company's sustained profitability and refined capital management, our operating cash flow in Q3 experienced a significant inflow of 7.7 billion RMB, showing growth both year-over-year and quarter-of-quarter. As of the end of Q3, our cash and cash equivalent totaled 11.3 billion RMB. When considering other available funds, such as time deposits and financial assets, our total available funds amounted to $55 billion. 0.4 billion RMB as of the end of Q3, representing a quarter-over-quarter increase of a promising 5 billion RMB compared to the end of Q2. Since Q2 2020-2022, the total available funds have consistently shown an upward trend in our group's robust cash reserves.
spk03: Regarding the company's credit management policy, we have always maintained the sacred principle of financial management, safety is the first consideration, and at the same time, we must adhere to the liquidity and profitability of funds. In order to restore confidence in the company's business situation and credit flow, we announced a $4 billion share return plan in May this year. As of now, our share return plan has a total return amount of about $9.07 billion, and a total return amount of about 15,888,000 shares. Regarding our cash management policy, we consistently maintain a prudent approach to capital management, prioritizing safety while balancing liquidity and profitability.
spk04: To show our confidence in the company's operating performance and cash flow and to reward shareholders, we announced a HK$4 billion share repurchase plan in May of this year. As of now, the cumulative repurchase amount under this plan is approximately HK$907 million, and the total repurchase shares amount to approximately HK$15.88 million. Moving forward, we will continue to assess market conditions and prudently manage the pace of share repurchase. Regarding the dividend plan, it depends on various factors.
spk02: If there are any new developments, we will update the market properly. Thank you, operator. The last question, please.
spk03: The last question comes from CICC's Zhang Xueqing. The next question comes from the line of Xueqing Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead.
spk01: 谢谢管理层,恭喜这季度强劲的业绩表现。 我的问题是关于AI的。 想请管理层详细介绍一下公司在AI方面的最新进展, 以及我们目前有哪些大模型的应用。 谢谢。 And thanks management for taking my question, and congratulations on the strong quarter. My question is about AI. Can you share with us the latest progress in AI and what kind of language model application we can have? Thank you.
spk06: 谢谢你的问题。 我们在今年年初启动了新的AI战略并制定了战略目标, 确保在可能到来的新技术突破中保持国内第一梯队, 结合并赋能现有业务场景, At the same time, we strive to bring business priority advantages and change the market pattern through self-reinforced technical innovation. From the current actual progress, it is still in line with our expectations.
spk04: Earlier this year, we initiated a new AI strategy, setting strategic goals to ensure that we remain at the top tier of domestic technology breakthroughs. We aim to integrate and empower existing business scenarios while striving for a leading advantage through disruptive technological innovation, ultimately reshaping the market landscape.
spk02: Our progress is moving forward as expected. 具体展开来说呢,
spk06: Our language model speed of 1.3 billion and 6.6 billion models have reached the leading level of the same scale in the industry. At the same time, we have also begun to develop more than 1000 billion-scale language models and multi-modal models. In addition, we have also launched a printable model with a strong text-to-text understanding, rich detail characterization, and diverse style transformation capabilities.
spk04: To give you a little more detail, our LLMs, KUAI, 13 billion and 66 billion models, have achieved the leading positions in the industry at a comparable scale. Meanwhile, we have embarked on the development of LLMs exceeding 100 billion in scale and multi-model model, We have also introduced an AI text-to-image LLM code tool, equipped with robust text comprehension, rich detailed depiction, and diverse style transformation capabilities. This model can generate a variety of artworks based on open-ended text input, featuring diverse styles, excellent quality, and abundant creativity. 目前,我們也在加速推進大模型場景化落地。
spk06: In terms of content consumption, we have introduced the AI play function in the short video comment area. Users can create a large number of分割图片 with the help of various creative text inputs, which makes it more convenient to do query activities in the comment area. Recently, we have also started to internalize the AI small file account. In the short video comment area, users are provided with interactive questions, picture production, strategy unlocking, and many other AI-based services based on short-film applications. In the content supply side, the video editing products of QIYING and the functional photography products of YiTian camera already have many AI-based creative capabilities, allowing creators to easily convert photos or videos into different styles and effects, and automatically generate text that fits the content. 在商業化場景下,我們的大模型在營銷素材、創意短信品素材生成、快聘和房產直播的數字人播報和互動 對話等場景的應用也越來越廣泛。 We are currently accelerating the application of LLNs in various scenarios. On the content consumption side, leveraging the K2 LLN,
spk04: We have introduced the AI image for comments function in the short videos comments section. Users can put creative text to instantly generate vast images of different styles, enabling more convenient and entertaining interactions within the comments section. Recently, we have also initiated beta testing of the AI QI account that offers users interactive Q&A, image generation, searching of guidance and walkthroughs, and text editing services, all tailored to the use case of short video scenarios. On the content supply side, Kuaishou's new editing app, Kuaieying, and the photography app, ETN Camera, have both been upgraded with multiple AIGC capabilities. This allows content creators to conveniently transform photos or videos into content with multiple styles and effects, and to automatically generate captions that match the content. On the monetization scenario side, the breadth of our LILM's application continues to expand, including generating creative materials for marketing, digital human reporting, and interactive medications in quite high-end real estate live streaming. 总的来说,快手目前各个技术团队和业务部门都在积极拥抱大模型的技术浪潮。 我们期待且相信未来还有更多大规模应用呈现给大家。 In essence, every technical and business department within Kuaishou is enthusiastically adopting the new wave of LLM technology. We look forward to and believe that there will be even more LLM applications in our future endeavors.
spk02: Thank you, operators. That's the end of the Q&A session. Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our Capital Market and Investor Relations team at any time.
spk03: Thank you.
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