Kuaishou Achieves Adjusted Profit of 42 Million Yuan in Q1 2023 with Record User Scale

On the evening of May 22, Kuaishou (1024.HK) released its results for the first quarter of 2023. The company achieved revenue of 25.22 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.7%; realized an adjusted net profit of 42 million yuan, which is the first time since Kuaishou’s listing at the group level. overall profit.

The user scale of Kuaishou also hit a new high. The average daily active users of Kuaishou apps in the first quarter was 374 million, an increase of 8.3% year-on-year; the average monthly active users increased by 9.4% to 654 million, compared with 598 million in the same period last year.

Adjusted profit of 42 million yuan

In the first quarter, Kuaishou’s revenue increased by 19.7% year-on-year to 25.22 billion yuan, and its operating loss was 698 million yuan. Compared with the loss of 5.64 billion yuan in the same period in 2022, the operating loss narrowed significantly. Kuaishou’s adjusted profit in the first quarter reached 42 million yuan, a year-on-year turnaround.

Kuaishou said that in the first quarter, the company recorded the adjusted net profit at the group level for the first time since its listing, showing a major breakthrough in the company’s profitability. This is mainly due to the company’s new high user indicators, revenue growth and operational efficiency improvements.

Specifically, at the level of user indicators, the average monthly active users of Kuaishou in the first quarter reached 654 million, an increase of more than 50 million over the same period in 2022.

In terms of income, Kuaishou’s main income currently includes online marketing services, live streaming and other services including e-commerce. In the first quarter, Kuaishou’s online marketing service revenue increased by 15.1% year-on-year to 13.1 billion yuan, accounting for 51.8% of the company’s total revenue, and remains the largest source of revenue.

In the first quarter, Kuaishou’s revenue from live broadcasting was 9.3 billion yuan, an increase of 18.8% year-on-year, which was mainly due to the increase in the average monthly paying user and the average income of monthly paying users. Among them, the average monthly paying users increased by 6.4% year-on-year to 60.1 million, and the average income of monthly paying users also increased by double digits year-on-year.

Kuaishou said that these achievements are the result of continuously improving the quality of live broadcast content and optimizing the matching efficiency between users and content through algorithm iteration.

Benefiting from the growth of e-commerce business, Kuaishou’s other service revenue in the first quarter also increased from 1.9 billion yuan in the same period in 2022 to 2.8 billion yuan, an increase of 51.3%.

From the perspective of cost, Kuaishou’s strategy of cost reduction and efficiency increase is still in effect. In the first quarter, the most obvious decline in Kuaishou was research and development expenses, which fell from 3.5 billion yuan to 2.9 billion yuan, a drop of 17.1%. Sales and marketing expenses will decrease from 9.5 billion yuan in the same period in 2022 to 8.7 billion yuan, a drop of 8.1%.

The total amount of e-commerce transactions is 224.8 billion yuan

The total amount of e-commerce transactions is one of the data that the outside world is most concerned about. The financial report shows that in the first quarter, Kuaishou’s e-commerce gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached 224.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.4%.

Kuaishou said that in the first quarter, the company enriched the supply of goods, improved the matching accuracy between buyers and sellers, and made use of its superior anchor resources and e-commerce content to further meet the needs of users and promote the growth of total e-commerce merchandise transactions.

In the financial report, Kuaishou also disclosed many trends and changes in the e-commerce business. For example, the cooperation between Kuaishou and platform experts has been further strengthened.

Kuaishou said that the platform provides more accurate product matching for talents who need to bring goods through a refined talent classification operation strategy. In the first quarter, the total volume of merchandise transactions through the talent distribution channel increased by more than 50% year-on-year. At the same time, Kuaishou also began to receive commission income from the talent distribution in the first quarter.

Kuaishou believes that this move will help the company’s future e-commerce revenue growth.

Users are the other end of e-commerce transactions. Kuaishou said that in the first quarter, the monthly purchase frequency of new e-commerce paying users continued to increase year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, and the retention rate increased month by month.

The financial report shows that Kuaishou has strengthened its hierarchical operation strategy for different types of users. For paying users with low activity, the platform strengthens the identification and recall of users with poor experience; for active paying users, the platform launches early warning and targeted anti-loss strategies to provide better services for high-value users .

Kuaishou said that in the first quarter, the number of monthly active buyers and the unit price of e-commerce on the platform continued to grow year-on-year, and the frequency of monthly orders also increased year-on-year.

Kuaishou launches e-commerce services in Brazil

After the domestic market is gradually becoming profitable, Kuaishou is also continuing to improve its liquidity in overseas markets. The financial report shows that in the first quarter, the overall operating loss of Kuaishou’s overseas market narrowed by 45.1% from the previous quarter.

In terms of e-commerce, in addition to the domestic market, Kuaishou has also begun to extend its services overseas. According to Kuaishou, in the first quarter, the company launched e-commerce services in Brazil to test the water and run through the process.

Kuaishou also released key data on overseas operations. In the first quarter, Kuaishou’s overseas business revenue reached 338 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 6 times. Especially in core regional markets such as Brazil and Indonesia, Kuaishou’s daily active users and user usage time continued to grow.

According to the ranking list of Chinese non-game manufacturers’ overseas revenue in March 2023 released by the market research organization data.ai not long ago, Kuaishou’s ranking rose by 2 places to 19th. In terms of applications, Kuaishou’s overseas version of Kwai ranked 21st in China’s non-game application overseas revenue rankings in March, and its ranking increased by 6 places.

Kuaishou said that the company will further deepen the strategy of focusing on key countries, optimize the allocation of resources, and improve the ability to monetize.