Earnings Call Transcript
Bilibili Inc. (BILI)
Earnings Call Transcript - BILI Q3 2024
Operator, Operator
Good day, and welcome to Bilibili Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
Thank you, operator. During this call, we'll discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially from those mentioned in today's news release and in this discussion due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filing with the SEC and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The non-GAAP financial measures we provide are for comparison purposes only. The definition of these measures and a reconciliation table are available in the news release we issued earlier today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, an investor presentation and a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on the Bilibili IR website at ir.bilibili.com. Joining us today from Bilibili senior management are Mr. Rui Chen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Ms. Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer; and Mr. Sam Fan, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call to Mr. Chen.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
Thank you, Juliet, and thank you, everyone, for participating in our third quarter 2024 conference call to discuss our financial and operating results. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks. The third quarter of 2024 was a landmark quarter for Bilibili. We are excited to share that we achieved our first quarterly adjusted net profit while setting new records across our community metrics. These milestones are a strong testament to our ability to deliver profitable growth and the unique community value that we continue to unlock. Looking at our financials in more detail, total revenues in the third quarter accelerated, rising by 26% year-over-year, reaching RMB7.3 billion, driven by our successful diversification into the strategy game genre. Games revenue led our growth, surging by 84% year-over-year. Meanwhile, our advertising business maintained its strong performance in the third quarter, recording a 28% year-over-year increase. The increasing top line contribution from our high-margin games and advertising business propelled our gross profit, up by 76% year-over-year, driving our gross profit margin up to 34.9% from 25.0% in the same period last year. As a result, we successfully exceeded our commitment to reaching breakeven in the third quarter, achieving an adjusted operating profit of RMB272 million and an adjusted net profit of RMB236 million. While making remarkable financial progress, we continue to grow and cultivate our community. Both DAUs and MAUs reached record highs in the third quarter, hitting 107 million and 348 million, respectively. Meanwhile, the average daily time spent per user rose to a new high of 106 minutes with robust user retention and engagement. Our users have stayed with us and grown with the platform. The average age of Bilibili users is now 25. As these users enter new life stages with increasing spending power, we will continue to curate more diverse content and services that cater to their evolving needs. Moving ahead, we remain committed to building a welcoming and inspiring video community with all the videos you like. Our return to profitability marks a new starting point in our journey. We will continue to invest in key infrastructure that supports content creation and distribution, reinforcing our leading position in the high-quality video content space and creating value for all our stakeholders. With that overview, let's look at our core content, community, and commercialization pillars in more detail. Beginning with content and community. In the third quarter, our average daily video views exceeded 5.7 billion, up 23% year-over-year. The growth reflects the effectiveness of our strategy to broaden content categories and encourage high-quality content creation. While our leading categories maintained their popularity, consumption-related categories continued rising. This is being driven by increasing user demand as the young generation becomes the mainstream of consumer society. Video views in fashion and home appliances and decoration grew by over 25% year-over-year, while views in automotive, baby and maternity, sports and fitness categories surged by more than 40% compared with the same period last year. The diverse commercialization channels we offer continue to empower our content creators to realize their commercial value while pursuing what they love. For the first nine months of 2024, nearly 2.7 million content creators received income through various channels on our platform. Content creators' total income through our various advertising and VAS products grew by 24% during this period. Notably, content creators' total income through our fan charging product saw an over 400% increase year-over-year in the same period. Turning to our community metrics. In the third quarter, our DAUs spent nearly 106 minutes on our platform every day compared with 100 minutes in the same period last year. Our monthly interactions surpassed 19.3 billion, marking a 14% year-over-year increase. By the end of Q3, our official member's grew to 251 million with our 12-month retention rate remaining around 80%. Additionally, our sponsored esports team, Bilibili Game, BLG, fought their way to second place in the League of Legends S14 World Championship, marking a new record in the team's history. We are proud of their achievement and look forward to their continued success in the upcoming year. Events like these continue to support our leadership in the game community and make Bilibili the top choice for young generations. Last but not least, we are excited to share that our MSCI ESG rating was upgraded to an A this year, a testament to our steady ESG improvements over the past few years. This achievement underscores our dedication to advancing our ESG practices, where we use our influence to impact communities and society positively. Now I'd like to talk about the progress of our commercialization in each of our business lines. First, on our Games business. In the third quarter, our games revenues increased by 84% year-over-year to RMB 1.8 billion, driven by the outstanding performance of our strategy game, San Guo: Mou Ding Tian Xia (San Mou). The game's initial performance reinforces our confidence in the longevity of San Mou. We will continue to roll out new content updates and gameplay to deliver better gaming experiences to users. San Mou's success shows the vast potential that lies within our game community. We plan to leverage our unique game industry advantage to further explore other game opportunities in different genres. Meanwhile, we remain committed to bringing the best ACG titles to our users. Our legacy titles, FGO and Azur Lane, maintained their popularity as they celebrated their eighth and seventh-year anniversaries, respectively. In addition, we launched the Japanese RPG game, Jujutsu Kaisen Phantom Parade, Zhou Shu Hui Zhan, Ye Xingyun in overseas markets in November, which was well received. Turning to our advertising business. Our advertising business continued to outperform the industry in the third quarter. Advertising revenues increased by 28% year-over-year to RMB 2.1 billion. Robust revenue growth in our performance-based ads was the largest contributor, increasing nearly 50% year-over-year in the third quarter. We also achieved decent year-on-year growth in brand and native ad revenues, reinforcing our strength in integrated marketing capabilities. Our top 5 advertising industry verticals in the third quarter were games, e-commerce, digital products, home appliances, Internet services, and automotive. As more e-commerce platforms recognize the commercial value of our unique young user base, they allocated larger advertising budgets to our platform. We saw a particular uptick over the summer vacation and back-to-school season, resulting in an 80% year-over-year surge in e-commerce advertising revenues. Meanwhile, we are also attracting more advertisers from emerging verticals. In the third quarter, ad revenues from education, baby and maternity, and travel and lodging all grew by over 100% year-over-year. In addition, we continue to enhance our ad infrastructure to improve efficiency, and we have seen early benefits from these efforts. For example, as we roll out a more user-friendly and effective ad placement system, the number of performance-based advertisers increased by over 40% year-over-year in the third quarter. We plan to further incorporate AI technologies into our smart ad delivery system and launch a series of tools for ad material creation with higher efficiency and lower costs. These initiatives are expected to attract and retain more advertisers on our platform. Turning to our VAS business. Revenues from our VAS business increased by 9% year-over-year to RMB 2.8 billion in the third quarter. This quarter, we welcomed more users to join and enjoy our live broadcasting universe as we continued expanding our content offerings to meet their diverse interests. Simultaneously, we remain focused on refining our operations to ensure sustainable business growth while improving margins. Our premium membership program grew steadily year-over-year, reaching nearly 22 million members in the third quarter. Over 80% of these members are on annual subscription or auto-renewal packages. Additionally, other VAS products experienced rapid growth. Fan-charging revenues surged by over 500% year-over-year during the quarter, demonstrating our users' strong willingness to pay for good content. As we celebrate our first quarter of profitability, I want to thank our dedicated team, our loyal user community, and our supportive partners and shareholders. Looking back over the past 15 years, we've made significant breakthroughs in our content offerings, expanded our user base, and developed diverse commercialization products. These efforts have helped build a unique video community with a one-of-a-kind user experience in a competitive industry landscape. Turning profitable is just a new beginning. Building on this milestone, we will continue to reinforce our positive growth cycle to drive sustainable profits in the future. With that, I will turn the call over to Sam to share more financial details.
Sam Fan, CFO
Thank you, Mr. Chen. Hello, everyone. This is Sam. I will now provide a brief overview of our financial results for the third quarter of 2024. For a closer look at our financial results, we encourage you to refer to our press release issued earlier today. As a reminder, all amounts are in RMB unless otherwise noted. In the third quarter, we greatly improved our financial profile. We accelerated our year-over-year revenue growth across our core businesses, continued expanding our margins, and turned profitable on a non-GAAP basis. Total revenues for the third quarter were RMB 7.3 billion, up 26% year-over-year. Our total revenue breakdown by revenue stream for Q3 was approximately 38% VAS, 29% advertising, 25% mobile games, and 8% from our IP directives and other businesses. Our cost of revenues increased by 9% year-over-year to RMB 4.8 billion in the third quarter, while gross profit rose 76% year-over-year to RMB 2.5 billion. Our margin reached 34.9% in Q3, up from 25% in the same period last year. The significant improvement in our gross profit and gross profit margin this quarter indicates the elasticity and potential of our business model. Our total operating expenses were up 2% year-over-year to RMB 2.6 billion in the third quarter. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 21% year-over-year to RMB 1.2 billion, mainly due to increased marketing expenses for our exclusively licensed games. G&A expenses were RMB 505 million, which was relatively flat year-over-year. R&D expenses were RMB 906 million, down 15% year-over-year due to a higher base of termination expenses for certain game purchases in Q3 last year. Our adjusted operating profit and adjusted net profit turned positive at RMB 272 million and RMB 236 million, respectively, marking significant gains from year-over-year losses. Our adjusted net profit ratio in the third quarter was 3% compared with an adjusted net loss ratio of 15% in the same period a year ago. Cash flow-wise, we generated RMB 2.2 billion in positive operating cash flow in the third quarter and RMB 4.6 billion positive operating cash flow in the first nine months of the year. As of September 30, 2024, we had cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, and short-term investments of RMB 15.2 billion or $2.2 billion. With a healthy cash balance, we announced a share repurchase program of up to $200 million for our securities in the next 24 months, showcasing our commitment to enhance shareholder returns in the long term. Thank you for your attention. We would now like to open the call to your questions.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. We will take our first question from Lei Zhang from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead, Lei.
Lei Zhang, Analyst
Thank you to the management for addressing my question and congratulations on the impressive results. Since Rui is speaking English for the first time on this call, it's quite commendable. My question is broad: I would like to understand the management's strategic outlook for BILI after we achieved breakeven this quarter. What will be our main focus in terms of user engagement and commercialization going forward? Additionally, how can we enhance our predictions in our industry? Thank you.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
The English prepared remarks were generated by AI, based on just 15 seconds of my speech during an event. I was surprised by how much it sounded like me, highlighting the potential of this application for Bilibili, such as assisting our content creators in crafting narratives to engage better with users in real-time. We are eager to further integrate this into our applications. This quarter marks our first instance of adjusted profitability. I have received numerous congratulations from friends and investors, but we believe this is a natural outcome of our evolving business model and industry expansion, achieved more rapidly. Before discussing the future, I want to reflect on our current position and the logic driving our profitability. The video industry is vast, and China represents the largest market. Within this industry, Bilibili has created a unique PUGV community known for high-quality video content, securing a strong user mindset.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
Well, as the adoption of 4G and 5G networks, our market has evolved from a lack of supply of video content to enough supply of video content. And from a user perspective, they have evolved from wanting to look at any video to wanting to look at high-quality video, unique video. So in some instances, we are experiencing an upgrade in content consumption in terms of the video market. And riding on that trend, Bilibili has a unique advantage because we have that user mindset and brand awareness about those high-quality, unique content.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
Our market has evolved from a shortage of video content to having an adequate supply. Users have shifted from simply wanting to watch any video to seeking high-quality and unique video. As a result, we are witnessing an upgrade in content consumption within the video market. Bilibili benefits from this trend due to our understanding of user preferences and our strong brand recognition for high-quality, unique content.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
As we know that Bilibili has the highest density of Gen Z Plus cohort, the 90s, the 2000 generation, and because we have a very high sticky user cohort and user retention rate, over the past 15 years, our users have stayed and grown with us. The average age of Bilibili now has come to 25 years. So 25 also means their commercial value is increasing every day. That's why we see this is an inevitable trend that our commercialization will accelerate, and it's a natural outcome of reaching profitability. And going forward, we think there's vast potential for our commercialization to be unleashed.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
Our user base has shown strong loyalty and retention over the past 15 years, leading to an average user age of 25. This age signifies an increase in their commercial value. Therefore, we anticipate a rapid acceleration in our commercialization, which is a natural result of achieving profitability. Looking ahead, we see significant potential for unleashing our commercialization.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
In the future, we have stated that our focus will be on community growth and commercial growth. After achieving profitability, our focus will remain the same.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
This is an inevitable trend that our commercialization will accelerate, and it's a natural outcome of reaching profitability. Going forward, we believe there is vast potential for our commercialization to be unleashed. In the past, we have stated our focus will be on community growth and our commercial growth. After reaching profitability, our focus will remain unchanged.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
On commercialization, I'll share one thing: we'll remain even more focused on the core business, such as games and advertising, because for those two business segments, they have higher market TAM and by their nature, they have higher gross margin, and that will result in more efficiency in terms of our commercialization growth.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
On commercialization, I'll share one thing: we'll remain even more focused on the core business, such as games and advertising, because for those two business segments, they have higher market potential and by their nature, they have higher gross margin, and that will result in more efficiency in terms of our commercialization growth.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
And the success of our commercialization will also support the prosperity of our content ecosystem, and we have been pursuing the formation of the positive flywheel effect between our content ecosystem and our commercialization growth. As a matter of fact, in the first nine months of this year, leveraging our various commercial outlets, 2.7 million content creators have received income on Bilibili's platform in those commercialization in one way of helping our content creators to realize their commercial value and hence, motivate their further and more content creation.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
We have been working on creating a positive relationship between our content ecosystem and our commercialization growth. In the first nine months of this year, through our various commercial channels, 2.7 million content creators have earned income on Bilibili's platform, which helps them realize their commercial value and encourages them to create even more content.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
And one thing I wanted to emphasize is that for Bilibili's commercialization outlets, it's more than just advertising because we are a comprehensive platform, and we provide more tools beyond advertising to help them realize their commercial value, establishing connections between their followers. For example, on top of the native ad Sparkle advertising platform, we have our fan-charging program. We also have cross-studio initiatives to encourage content creators to monetize their skills, such as handcrafts and drawing, and also premium courses to help them make money in various ways. The profitability in Q3 is just a beginning, and we look forward to forming a positive flywheel effect formed by our content ecosystem and commercialization growth. And the growth of our commercialization will, in fact, help Bilibili become an even healthier organization and achieve sustainable, profitable growth. Next question, please, operator?
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Chen from JPMorgan. Please ask your question, Daniel.
Daniel Chen, Analyst
So my question is on advertising, which is very strong. We have grown 28% year-over-year in the third quarter. So what's the key driver behind the third-quarter advertising growth? And also for the fourth quarter, do we see a change in the kind of macro environment for the advertising demand? And also lastly, how is our performance in the Double 11 festival for our e-commerce-related business? Thank you.
Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman and COO
Bilibili's Q3 advertising revenue performed well, reaching nearly RMB 2.1 billion with a strong growth rate of 28%. The growth in performance-based ads, which increased by nearly 50%, contributed significantly to our gross margin at the group level. In Q3, we continued to advance our e-Home strategy, focusing on the construction of our platform and infrastructure. We released more ad inventory while ensuring a good user experience. By implementing a multi-screen and multi-scenario strategy, our commercial inventory on the home page feed and story mode grew rapidly, leading to increased ad revenue across recommendations, search, PC, and tablet platforms over the past couple of quarters. Looking forward, there's more potential for additional revenue from live streaming, video within video players, and also hot topic search. And on top of that, through a blend of organic and commercial traffic and native ad integration, more high-quality ads received more distribution, effectively expanding our ad inventory. At the same time, we have achieved content is good commercial, and good commercial is good content effect. The second point is that we further optimized our ad placement system. In the third quarter, the number of clients and mobile smart app placements increased by 700% year-on-year. We will continue to improve our products and tools to make ad placement easier. Another example would be with the integration of Sparkle and our ad system; the proportion of Sparkle ads that engaged in ad promotion reached nearly 60% in Q3, further demonstrating the effectiveness of our Sparkle Plus AKA ads promotion services model.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
The third point would be the launch of the Creative Center, and AIGC also aided content has improved our ad efficiency. We plan to roll out additional AIGC tools to help advertisers automatically create or modify ad materials, further lowering their cost and barriers. In Q4, we'll continue enhancing our ad placement experience, improving algorithm efficiency, and we want to attract more new advertisers to Bilibili to create content to connect with our users.
Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman and COO
The third point would be the launch of the Creative Center, and AIGC aided content has improved our ad efficiency. We plan to roll out additional AIGC tools to help advertisers automatically create or modify ad materials, further lowering their cost and barriers. In Q4, we'll continue enhancing our ad placement experience, improving algorithm efficiency, and we want to attract more new advertisers to Bilibili to create content to connect with our users.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
And the end zone refers to the industry vertical ad solutions, and the top five ad verticals in Q3 coming from, number one games, number two e-commerce digital products, and online services as well as automotive. In these leading verticals that we have clear advantages, we continue to expand our market share. And one example in the game sectors, apart from our experience genre in the sector, daily app placements for mini-game sector increased by 200% quarter-over-quarter. In digital products and home appliances, we attracted top tech brands like Apple, Huawei, and Vivo to launch their new products on Bilibili. In Q3, we captured more advertising brands during non-shopping festival periods, with e-commerce ad revenue up nearly 80% year-over-year. Traditionally, we see e-commerce platforms place more ads during the big shopping festival seasons, but in Q3, you are actually attracting more advertising budget during the summer vacation and the back-to-school seasons, reflecting the high value of our high-quality young audiences. And Bilibili's brand advertisers for those e-commerce platforms saw the value in our platform as well as in our users. And while strengthening our advantageous categories, advertisers from more industries are choosing Bilibili. In Q3, sectors like education, baby and maternity, travel, and lodging have all achieved high growth, and we will continue to expand to more industry verticals.
Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman and COO
During the summer vacation and back-to-school seasons, we recognized the significant appeal of our high-quality young audiences. Bilibili's brand advertisers for e-commerce platforms acknowledged the value of our platform and our user base. As we continue to enhance our key categories, advertisers from various other industries are increasingly selecting Bilibili. In the third quarter, we experienced substantial growth in sectors such as education, baby and maternity, travel, and lodging, and we plan to extend our reach into additional industry verticals.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
For the Double 11, we maintained our open-loop strategy and became a deep trusted partner for e-commerce platforms like Alibaba, Jingdong, Pinduoduo, and VIP shops. GMVs from video and live e-commerce increased over 150% year-on-year, and participating content creators rose by 80%. Among the customers we brought to those merchant shops, new customer rates exceeded on average 50% across all sectors, including 3C and digital products, home decor, beauty, and baby and maternity, etc. We have become the key source for new customers across all e-commerce platforms. And this also helped us to achieve close to a 50% year-on-year increase in ad revenue during the Double 11 period.
Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman and COO
Live e-commerce grew over 150% year-on-year, and the number of participating content creators increased by 80%. For the customers we directed to those merchant shops, the rate of new customers surpassed 50% on average across all sectors, including consumer electronics and digital products, home decor, beauty, and baby and maternity. We have established ourselves as a primary source for new customers across all e-commerce platforms. This also contributed to nearly a 50% year-on-year growth in ad revenue during the Double 11 period.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
You asked about the macro environment and its impact on the advertising industry. From our perspective, there are still uncertainties in advertisers' budgets under the current macro conditions, but this varies across different industries. For instance, sectors supported by national subsidy policies, like digital products and home appliances, are experiencing a strong recovery, while food and beverage, healthcare, and education sectors are gradually regaining market confidence. In contrast, budgets remain tight in sectors such as automotive, beauty and fashion, and real estate. Despite expected short-term fluctuations across various industries, we maintain an optimistic outlook for the domestic economy in the mid to long-term. Regarding Bilibili's advertising revenue, we are confident that we can sustain a growth rate that outpaces the industry average in Q4 and further increase our market share across different industry verticals. That concludes Carly's answers. Thank you, and operator, please proceed to the next question.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Yang Liu from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, Yang.
Yang Liu, Analyst
Let me translate my question. My question is about the game business, which grew more than 80% in the third quarter. I'm interested in the performance of San Mou and what the outlook and operational plans are for this game moving forward. Additionally, I would like to hear management’s insights on user acquisition for this game, the future pipeline in Bilibili's game business, and any potential new genres on the horizon. Thank you.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
The game San Guo: Mou Ding Tian Xia has now entered Season 3, and we are about to move into Season 4. Based on our observations so far, we can confidently say that San Mou is one of the top-performing games in the China gaming market this year. Beyond the short-term performance, my main concern is the longevity and sustainable operation of San Mou. When I refer to longevity and long-term operation, I mean at least five to ten years. To accomplish our goal of long-term operation, we have developed comprehensive plans during the initial R&D phases and preparation regarding game design and operation strategy. Considering the performance across the first three seasons, we can state that the levels of user engagement and retention rates are among the highest in this genre within the industry. The day after tomorrow, November 16, we will be launching the brand new game Season 4 and the new game season will be featuring a new map, characters, and new storyline gameplay. And we are quite confident that the new version content update will provide users with even more engaging and fun gaming experience. And many of you might know that San Mou has done a lot of innovation and differentiation compared to similar genre games. The reason behind that is from day one, we have collected many users' feedback from our closed beta testing to the latest Season 3. We have welcomed feedback and actively engaged with our users to listen to their advice and make adjustments based on their feedback. We have earned a reputation as the best game company that listens to user feedback. Based on this feedback, we have proactively made adjustments in our new brand for Season 4, and moving forward, we will continue to listen to our users and optimize our games to provide the best experience. Therefore, my primary goal for next year is to enhance the user experience and engagement with San Mou. For this particular strategy game genre, we will focus on this single title, and with our large team of developers and operators, we will allocate our best resources to optimize this game. In the second half of this year, we will begin preparations for the international launch of San Guo, starting with the traditional Chinese version, and we look forward to introducing this high-quality strategy game to users worldwide. The success of San Mou demonstrates the effectiveness of our strategy to reinvent new games for younger generations, and we have achieved success in the strategy genre. In addition to strategy and ACG, next year we will explore a new genre and adapt our approach to reinventing games for young audiences, hoping to create a new opportunity for Bilibili Game.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
And regarding the recent developments, many of you have noticed that we successfully launched the Jujutsu Kaisen international version globally, excluding Japan and China, on November 7. So far, we have achieved very good results, as the game reached the number one spot on the Top Downloading Chart in over 70 countries and regions. The user feedback has been very positive, marking a successful attempt at our first global distribution of ACG games. In 2025, this game will also be one of our key titles for sustaining and driving growth. Thank you. What's our next question?
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Felix Liu from UBS. Please ask your question, Felix.
Felix Liu, Analyst
Thank you, management, for taking my question. Congratulations on achieving profitability this quarter. I would like to inquire about your outlook for gross profit margin and profit margin now that you have turned profitable. Additionally, I noticed the announcement of a share repurchase program. How should we view your approach to shareholder rewards moving forward? Thank you.
Sam Fan, CFO
This is Sam. I will answer your question. In Q3, we not only met our previous committed breakeven goal but also exceeded it by achieving an adjusted profit of RMB 270 million. This result demonstrates the potential of our business model. Our revenue in Q3 grew by 26% when gross profit was a significant year-over-year increase of 76%, with the gross profit margin rising nearly 10 points from 25% to close to 35%. This improvement was mainly due to the increase in the share of this high-margin game and advertising revenue, allowing effective control of our fixed costs. We believe that with the continued growth of our gaming and advertising business, there is further potential for long-term improvement in our gross profit margin. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that our operating cash flow reached RMB 2.2 billion in Q3, with the operating cash flow for the first three quarters reaching RMB 4.6 billion. This indicates that our business is heading to a healthy positive cycle. That's also the background for our announcement of a $200 million repurchase plan to be carried out over the next 24 months to increase our return to our shareholders.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
Operator, next question, please.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. We will now take our last question from the line of Lincoln Kong from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Lincoln.
Lincoln Kong, Analyst
So thank you management for taking my question. My question is about more the macro policy. Since the end of September, we have seen quite a big shift in terms of those policy and more stimulus coming. So from the company's business level, have we seen any incremental better trends in terms of advertising, gaming, live streaming, or user paying propensity? Thank you.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
Thank you, management, for taking my question. My question is about macro policy. Since the end of September, we have seen a significant shift in terms of policy and more stimulus coming. From the company's business perspective, have we observed any improvements in advertising, gaming, live streaming, or user spending habits? Thank you.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
From a business perspective, we are very pleased to see a series of positive economic policies being introduced. We view these policies as highly encouraging signals that reflect the government's commitment to economic growth. And recently, we felt the government's attention to private sectors and its determination to improve the business environment for ourselves.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
From a business perspective, we are very pleased to see a series of positive economic policies being introduced. We view these policies as highly encouraging signals that reflect the government's commitment to economic growth. Recently, we also felt the government's attention to private sectors and its determination to improve the business environment for us.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
While some of these policies are still in the pipeline and might take time for their effects to materialize, but we think it's just simply a matter of time as the overall direction has been set and clear.
Rui Chen, Chairman and CEO
We believe the government's attention to private sectors and its determination to enhance the business environment reflects its commitment to economic growth. Although some of these policies are still in development and may take time to show results, we think it’s only a matter of time since the overall direction is established and clear.
Juliet Yang, Executive Director of Investor Relations
Well, Bilibili is part of the platform economy and the platform economy is a key part of the broader economy in China. So when the overall economy improves, Bilibili will undoubtedly benefit from that improvement. Well, of course, as a company, we will be paying more attention to our own development, specifically on the path we achieved community and profitability growth, commercial growth, and we are planning for our next year and the year afterward. We wouldn't factor in the overall economy will improve drastically. We'll be focusing on how we, what we can do to improve our own business model to improve our products to give better content to our visitors. Well, Bilibili has always been known for focusing on the long-term sustainable, healthy development because our users are also from a better generation, so I'm very much looking forward to the landing of those stimulation policies that can bring the company and use this tied to a better future. Thank you. Operator, that concludes today's call. Thank you.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. And that concludes the question-and-answer session. Thank you once again for joining Bilibili's third quarter 2024 financial results and business update conference call today. If you have any further questions, please contact Juliet Yang, Bilibili's Executive IR Director of Piacente Financial Communications. Contact information for IR in both China and the US can be found on today's press release. Thank you, and have a great day.