Image source：Visual China

BEIJING, June 2 (TMTPost) -- Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili reported its flat first-quarter revenue of 5.07 billion yuan on Thursday, a year-on year increase of just 0.32%, but a decrease of 17.47% quarter-on-quarter. However, it significantly narrowed its net loss by 38% to 1 billion yuan compared to the same period last year.

The first quarter was a quarter with lowest revenue growth in a year for Bilibili. The company’s share price fell more than 6% on Thursday after the open of the U.S. stock market.

　　The company attributed this improvement to a reduction in costs and operating expenses. In the first quarter, Bilibili's operating costs went down by 6.62% YoY to 3.966 billion yuan, of which the largest share of revenue-sharing costs was 2 billion yuan, down 8% compared to the same period of the previous year.

In response to a widely-shared article in April that suggested a creator exodus from the platform, CEO Chen Rui dismissed the notions as “clickbait”

on an earnings call. He stated that two out of the three creators mentioned in the article have uploaded new contents since then.

　　The company's total operating expenses decreased by 11.44% YoY to $2.478 billion in the first quarter. Among them, sales and marketing expenses, which account for the largest share before, fell by 30% YoY and 30.49% QoQ. Bilibili CFO Fanxin stated that the company will focus on improving gross profits and reducing net loss this year.

The company had 315.2 million monthly active users (MAU) in the first quarter, a YoY growth rate of 7.36% and a QoQ reduction of 10.8 million. The number of daily active users (DAU) is 93.7 million, up 18% YoY and up 0.9 million QoQ.

"We are now caring more about the quality of user growth, and quality here refers to DAU," Chen said, adding that DAU is a better indicator of user activity and their commercialization potential than MAU.　　

Revenue from value-added services rose 5.07% YoY to 2.156 billion yuan, the average number of monthly active anchors in the live-streaming activities jumped 34% YoY and the number of paying users in live streaming grew 15% YoY.

　　Revenue from advertising rebounded in the first quarter, increasing 22% YoY to 1.3 billion yuan, which the company attributed to optimized advertising products and improved advertising efficiency.

The lack of new games in the first quarter resulted in a slump of 17% YoY in the company’s revenue from mobile games to 1.1 billion yuan.

Chen revealed that the new game "Honkai: Star Rail" released by MihoYo in April generated 2.8 million downloads on the first day in Bilibili, creating a download record in the history of Bilibili game co-operation.　　

Revenue from IP derivatives and others was 510 million yuan, down 15% YoY, as a result of the decrease in sales of animation, comic and game IP derivatives on e-commerce platforms.

As for the concern about live-streaming marketing on Bilibili, Li said that it is a new way to increase the advertising revenue and creators’ income from transactions on the platform, with an average of more than 10 million users browsing livestreaming-related content on Bilibili in the first quarter.

Bilibili’s share price closed at $15.66/ADS, down by 5.49% on Wednesday. And it closed at 124 HKD/share on Thursday, down 2.67%, with a total market value of 51.557 billion HKD.

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