Kanzhun 1Q 2026 Earnings Conference Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Country Unlimited First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Laura Chen, Senior Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am. Thank you, operator.

Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Joining me today are our founder, chairman, and CEO, Mr. Jonathan Peng Zhao, and our WCFO, Ms. Wenbei Wang. Before we start, we would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations and observations that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors not under the company's control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different. The company cautioned you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and did not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information, except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only. For definition of non-gap financial measures and the reconciliation of gap to non-gap financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today.

In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at ir.chipin.com. 大家好,欢迎参加公司2026年一季度业绩发布会。 付近代表公司全体员工管理层的董事会, 想长期信赖我们的用户, I thank our investors and thank our investors for this honor.

Hello everyone, welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. On behalf of the company's employees, management team and board of directors, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our users and our investors for their continuous support. Today's presentation will cover four main parts. First, our growth in the first quarter. Second, key trends among job seekers and enterprise users on our platform. Third, the company's perspective on AI and its strategic approach. And finally, the shareholder return. Let me start with our first quarter growth. As a double-sided platform, we continue to see strong growth from both job seekers and enterprise user sides. Looking back to January to April this year, we acquired over 15 million newly verified users. Looking ahead, we believe that achieving over 14 million newly verified users for the full year should be achievable. Looking at paid enterprise customers' condition, the number of paid enterprise customers reached 7.1 million for the 12 months ended March 31, up 10.9% year-on-year, and 4.4% quarter-on-quarter. In the first quarter, the average monthly active users, or MAU, on the bus shipping app reached 16.9 million, up 5.7% year-on-year. In March, MAU exceeded 72 million, up 4.6% year-on-year. The reason our MAU in March was more than 10 million higher than the first quarter average is that the Chinese New Year occurred later this year, resulting in a later peak recruitment season. 2025年的春节后的旺季 roughly覆盖2月和3月 The 2026 Chinese New Year fell on February 17th while the 2025 New Year was on January 29th Hence, this year the peak recruitment season only fell within March whereas the peak recruitment season fell within both February and March in 2025 说一下收入 Let me discuss our revenue. In the first quarter, the company achieved revenue of RMB, $2.07 billion, up 7.6% year-on-year. Please kindly note that this figure also reflects the comparison between one month of peak season in 2026 versus two months of peak season in 2025. Looking ahead, we are confident that our revenue growth in the second quarter and for the full year will be stronger than what we delivered in the first quarter. On the profit perspective, in the first quarter, the adjusted operating income excluding share-based compensation expenses reached over RMB 810 million, up 17.8% year-on-year. The adjusted operating margin was 39.4%, up 3.4% year-on-year. Second, key trends among enterprise users and job seekers on our platform. As discussed multiple times earlier, our platform is suitable for in different tier cities and different types of industries. Overall, our continued rapid user growth has driven sustained rapid growth among blue-collar workers, lower-tier cities, and small and medium-sized enterprises on our platform. At the same time, recommend demand from white-collar workers and large enterprises has continued to improve. From the user growth perspective, I saw of April 13th among the newly acquired users in this year, including fresh graduates, nearly 2-3 were blue-collar workers. From a revenue perspective, in the first quarter, all-color revenue exceeded 40% of our total revenue for the first time. The demand has also accelerated up the 20th new year compared to the same period last year. Looking into the specific sub-sectors, active job postings for software engineers increased by 10.9% from January to April compared to 2025. This is consistent with the recent observations from our U.S. peers. Referring to their public data, their active software development job postings in the United States grew by 9.1% year-on-year, from January to April 2026, where are two percentage points higher than their number. On our platform, we have not seen the kind of alarming large-scale reduction in programmer positions that some have feared. At the same time, revenue from AI-related roles on our platform has grown by over 100 percent. Simply put, the development of AI has brought us more revenue, but we have not yet seen a large decline in job coaching. Among other industries, manufacturing, electronics, telecommunications, semiconductors, transportation and logistics, urban services, and various professional services led in year-on-year growth on our platform. For large enterprises, their recruitment demand, we saw a notably recovering trend during this year's spring recruitment season. In the first quarter, companies with 1,000 to less than 10,000 employees recorded the growing young year revenue growth, followed by those with 500 to less than 1,000 employees. This average number of job posting per enterprise users also increased modestly. If we compare it to the last quarter, back then we shared that the strongest growth in hiring demands was coming from small and micro enterprises. This quarter, however, if we compare it to last quarter, back then we shared that the strongest growth in hiring demands was coming from small and micro enterprises. In this quarter, however, it is large enterprises that are delivering our fastest revenue growth beyond the year. That concludes the recent trend on enterprise users and job seekers on our platform. And then we will discuss a few views and four strategic pillars on AI that we all confirmed. 内心的震荡日益强烈 实际上整个文明的挑战也是无法回避的话题 曾经很多熟悉的事情变得陌生 其中也包括我们如何看待公司 你们如何看待投资以及竞争 Since the chat GPT 4.0 launched in March 2023, this AI paradigm has given us 38 transformative monsters. Meanwhile, recent government disclosure of unidentified aerial phenomenon has put our generation in a unprecedented territory. Our perspectives are broadening. Our convictions are being reshaped. Civilization is facing new challenges, which is unavoidable. Many things that once felt familiar are now becoming less so, including how we think about our companies and how you think about the investment and competition. As one of the leaders in the worldwide and Chinese recruitment industry, and as an entrepreneur myself, I've spent the past three years navigating between two mine sites, hoping that new technologies could solve major problems, while at the same time worrying about technology's potential disruptive impact. I have been torn yet hopeful and continuously exploring all within the scope of my responsibilities. Our shareholders and employees have also gone through ups and downs, concerned at all times, excited as others, sometimes they have been with us, sometimes left us. Together, we have all been on quite a rollercoaster ride. Looking back on the past three years, we believe it is time for the company to provide a progress report to our shareholders, the public, and our employees. This will be organized around two key observations and four main strategies. Our first observation is that, to date, for the company's business model and industry position, the opportunities brought by AI technology have outweighed the business. First, based on reliable public data, credible data released by listed companies, and our all internal data, we have concluded that over the past three years, the communist market leading position has been further strengthened, user achievements have continued to increase, and we have maintained steady growth surrounded by challenging environments. Second, as we know, lower token costs have accelerated the proliferation of AI applications in both our internal operations and user services. In the past quarter, the ability for over 10 million of users on our platform to be able to access to AI services has been made possible by this reduction in cost. Third, extensive exploration in large models for training and application has accelerated growth of our young employees, including their sense of pride, cohesion, and standing with the company. The more widely AI technology are used, the more convincingly they solve real problems, the faster young talent will rise, and the smoother the process of rejuvenation of our leadership team will become. In the long term, this helps slow down the corporate entropy. The growth of leaders within an organization is, as core, a result of individual aspirations and progress aligning with the company's shared vision. AI plus young talent essentially means that young people can more quickly gain recognition from the organization's shared system and stand out. This also explains why, in every wave of technological and cognitive revolution, young people tend to emerge as leaders. Add to that, those technological-oriented companies will enjoy the rise of young people and the reduce of corporate entropy. Our second observation is that to date, either enterprise-side or job-secret-side stand-alone agents, have been capable of challenging the company's business current model. On the contrary, once agents are embedded with our double-sided network ecosystem, they leverage companies' accumulated user base and data to play a positive and constructive role. Recruitment and job seeking is always a multiple-people-to-multiple game. Whether a labor contract should be signed or not, or whether every day the after will go smoothly, ultimately comes down to a many-to-many game between two large groups of people. The double-sided network that BuzzChain has been built for over the past 12 years, and our understanding on users for the past 12 years has always been designed for a long time. to reflect the real dynamics of job-seeking and recruitment in human society. In essence, embedding various AI agents into our double-sided network serves as a driving force that enhances information collection, processing, and dissemination. Looking at our first quarter data, first, the application of AI agents has improved the time efficiency from an initial chat to a successful mutual consent conversion rate by 50%. Second, the large-scale application of AI enabled the user retention which is highest level since the pandemic in 2020. Third, the average per enterprise user achievements increased by a double-digit percentage. Overall, our study in data and theories told us that AI is our friend, instead of the enemy. Now let me walk you through our four strategic considerations of AI. First, investing in AI to advance the closed-loop business model, we firmly believe that in the recruitment industry, the important thing is that we could deliver the onboarding and replacement of candidates for enterprise users. No matter we do a survey or not to do the survey, every enterprise user is willing to pay for the delivery of candidates instead of the traffic exploration or the click on the candidate. We firmly believe that within the support of the AI technology, a result-oriented business model is achievable on our platform. It is a very important part of our company, and we will continue to allocate resources to this effort. And while we are protecting the experience of the high-end job seekers, we are also open to leveraging new technologies and new operating systems to collaborate with the external companies that specialize in the closed-loop services. I will share three data with you. First, within the company's in-house hunting team, for consultants who frequently use AI, 20% of the candidate recommendations they deliver already confront AI-driven operations. Second, our another closed-loop pilot project, the combined productivity of human plus agents, increased by four times in the first quarter, already exceeding the average productivity level of headhunters in the industry. Third, for the human-plus agent campus recruitment service that company offers externally, revenue grew by more than 50% year-on-year in the first quarter. Therefore, the AI-powered closed-loop service is one of our core strategy. Second, we are also maintaining a proportion of our resources in AI science, currently focused primarily on the training and development of small models. There are five reasons for this. First, small models are less expensive for us to use internally. Second, continuous in-house R&D helps us enhance the business controllability and enables the development of long-term technical capabilities tailored to vertical recruitment scenarios. Third, small models are increasingly gaining attention across the industry, which helps ensure a sense of pride and recognition for our science team. Fourth, our in-house small model has also been effectively applied to our search and recommendation functions, demonstrating advantages in both efficiency and effectiveness compared to large models. The last, under the current paradigm, the large models are too costly for us to proceed. Our third strategy on AI is that we will continue to invest heavily in AI applications. Our primary evaluation criteria is that how AI helps our double-sided job seeking and recruitment network ecosystem. and to solve the problems of the current problem. According to the investigation for the past 12 months, we have formed some logical and common sense on this, and we believe that we will treat AI technology as a value-added tool for identifying and solving problems. Regarding the reward and bonus, regarding the reward and bonus on the related areas, the teams that use AI to discover and resolve issues will be generally rewarded by us. So far, we believe that our exploration, investigation and investment in AI will be based on our double-sided ecosystem, theoretical frameworks. Our fourth strategy is that we believe that AI-driven revenue growth is a natural process and a natural result. As AI technology improves platform efficiency, it will lead to a higher user achievement, better satisfaction, and stronger user achievement. and the stronger brand reputation among users. This, in turn, will drive sustained revenue growth. We see this as a smoother, lower risk, and a more sustainable path.

Investors who are familiar with that understand that we are a very original self-developed monetization model, which we don't sell advertisement, we don't sell click. Our business model is based on protection of our double-side network ecosystem. That essentially to undergoing this current AI-driven model is already fully verified this model and a very functional method. So whether to go by 50% for this year or 15% for the next five years, we choose the latter and we believe the combination of our technology and our organization will support the second path very smoothly.

Thank you very much.

So after three years of exploration, those two points and the four strategies we just talked about actually have been fully verified. It's not that our pride, but we have been doing that for a long time. So for the investors who care about us, for the public who listen to us and our internal employees, I want to say that the strategies we just discussed is based on our real exploration and our employees. who work at the front line of our AI development. And all the team leaders of our core AI teams have all contributed to the points I just discussed.

On shareholder returns, we have remained fully committed to delivering on our shareholder return promises. Since the start of this year, we have repurchased over $200 million in shares, or around 3% of our total outstanding shares. In every date, since 2022, we have bought by close to 10% of our total shares. As a reminder, last quarter, we announced that a shareholder return plan committing that Over the next three years, the annual amount we allocate to buybacks and dividends will be no less than 50% of the prior year's adjusting net income, and we are following through on that commitment, as we all think. With that, I will now turn to our deputy CFO, Wenbei, to review our financials. Thank you.

Thanks, Jonathan. Now let me quickly work through the details of our financial results for the first quarter. So we are delighted to report a solid start to this year, characterized by continuous expansion in our user base and engagement, alongside sustained revenue growth. Despite a later Chinese New Year, which meant a shorter window of the peak recruitment season, further within this quarter, our revenue reached RMB 2.1 billion, up 8% young year. We are witnessing accelerated revenue as well as cash correction growth post-Chinese New Year, supported by a robust spring improvement season. Our paid enterprise customers grew by 11% year-on-a-year to $7.1 million in the 2012 months ending March 31, 2026, primarily driven by the growth of enterprise users. Paying ratio among active enterprise users increased on a sequential basis. Growth from key accounts and large-sized companies showed better trend compared to the same period last year, a more balanced structure. As a result, our pool in the first quarter increased 2% year-on-year. Moving to the cost side, our total operating costs and expenses decreased by 3% year-on-year to earn me $1.4 billion this quarter. Total share-based compensation expenses dropped by 24% year-on-year and 11% quarter-on-quarter to around the $191 million. As percentage of revenue-wise, share-based compensation accounted for 9.2% of total revenue for this quarter, went down by 3.9 percentage points year-on-year and 1.1 percentage points sequentially. We expect SBC expenses as a percentage of revenue to stay around 9% in 2006. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, over-adjusted operating costs and expenses were on the 1.3 billion, remaining relatively stable year-on-year. Over-adjusted operating income increased on the 8.815 million, up 18% year-on-year, representing an adjusted operating margin of 39.4%, up by 3.4 percentage points year-on-year, despite first quarter normally having the lowest margin within the full year due to seasonality. We believe there remains substantial room for further margin improvement in our core business segment due to the robust operating leverage of our business model. But considering our continued investment in AI, necessary marketing spending for long-term brand recognition, and investment in new businesses, along with the corresponding margin dilution brought by those new businesses, we can still expect a modest margin expansion for the coming years. Looking into each segment, cost of revenue decreased by 4% to R&B $298 million this quarter. This decrease was primarily due to lower employee rate expenses, resulting from enhanced operating efficiency and partially upset by higher server bandwidth costs. As a result, our gross margin went up by 1.8 percentage points to 85.6 percentage. Additionally, the reduction in upstore commission fees starting in March also contributed to gross margin improvement. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 2% year-on-year to RMB $502 million this quarter, primarily due to increase in advertising and marketing expenses, which partially offset by decrease in sales employee-related compensations as a result of our continued endeavor to improve sales efficiency. R&D expenses were R&B $424 million this quarter, remaining relatively stable year-on-year. Excluding SBC expenses, our adjusted R&D expenses increased by 5% year-on-year to R&B $351 million. primarily due to higher cloud service fees and server depreciation expenses relating to AI infrastructure. Our G&A expenses decreased by 16% year-on-year to R&B $222 million this quarter, primarily driven by lower share-based compensation expenses. Our interest and investment income was R&B $781 million this quarter, up 422% year-on-year. This increase was primarily driven by investment income of R&B $614 million, arising from fair value changes of one of our invested companies, which went public in January 26. Income tax expenses were R&B $299 million this quarter, up 293% each year. This increase was also primarily due to the tax impact from the aforementioned investment income of RMB $154 million, as well as the provision of RMB $16 million top-up tax under the Pillar 2 tax rule and the withholding tax of RMB $8 million, as well as higher income from operations. Our net income reached RMB $1.1 billion this quarter. Including share-based compensation net gains from the aforementioned investment, our adjusted net income increased by 12% to R&B 856 million. Net margin improved to 54.4%, while the adjusted net margin increased to 41.4%, up 1.7 percentage points year-on-year. Net cash provided by operating activities reached R&B 1.2 billion this quarter. up 19% year-on-year. Our cash position, including cash, cash equivalent, short-term time deposits and short-term investment by excluding investment in securities, stood at R&B 19.8 billion as of March 31, 2006. Our strong cash position and cash generative capability will support us to continue to deliver our commitment in shareholder returns. As Jonathan just mentioned, we have purchased a total of over US$200 million worth of shares, representing approximately 3% of our total outstanding shares. We will continue to maintain substantial shareholder return efforts, including share buyback and dividend, based on specific market and operating conditions. And now for our business outlook. For the second quarter of 2026, we set our total revenues to be between RMB 2.38 billion and RMB 2.42 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13.2% to 15.1%. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we would like to take answer questions. Operator, please go ahead. Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To answer question now, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will now proceed to take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Wei Xiong of UBS.

Please ask your question, Wei, your line is open. 这个季节性影响,那能不能请管理层介绍一下,就如果我们只是考虑春节之后的这个一季度,然后也包括咱们二季度目前看到的这个情况,那我们同比的这个增速是不是有进一步的改善?如果有的话,那么哪些行业和岗位类型的改善是最明显的? 第二个呢是还想再请教一下这个还是关于我们刚才已经介绍了很多的AI disruption 那目前咱们公司看到这个岗位发布的情况有没有受到潜在的影响 然后另外呢如果考虑到咱们的白领业务已经比较成熟 那么蓝领其实潜在的这个AI disruption受影响是更小的 未来咱们是不是会加速拓展蓝领业务 那还有就是咱们其实也之前谈到 想进一步的利用AI来拓展 闭环服务的这个机会 那这方面最新的进展是什么样的 那如果像是中介啊猎头啊 这些传统的行业参与者的反馈是怎么样的 我也自己翻译一下 Thank you, Management, for taking my question. I have two questions. So first, you mentioned about the business impact from a delayed Chinese New Year this year. May I ask if we only consider the days in the first quarter post-CNY as well as the second quarter based on our expectation do we see an improvement in the young year growth rate? And which industries or job postings have seen more notable improvement? And second, regarding the AI disruption, have we seen any impact on the job postings on our platform? Considering we already have a very mature white-collar business, that the AI disruption to blue-collar is theoretically smaller, will we accelerate blue-collar business going forward? And also regarding the AI-powered closed-loop services, could management give an update on the latest progress, as well as the feedback from industry participants, such as agencies and head helpers?

Thank you. 关于这件事我们在一季度的所有业务当中的增速 实际上在AI支持下的闭环业务的探索 各个实验组的增速都是最快 那么有的就超过百分之百 刚才有的其实在百分之五十 我跟你们说了 这个收入的规模还比较小

今年一季度我们在AI辅助闭环的探索上的收入规模 So I will take your second question first about the closed-loop service. Actually, we talk a lot about opinions. I will give you several numbers. The first number is among all of our different business in the first quarter, Actually, the AI-supported close-up service is the fastest among different experimental groups. Some have a growth rate over 100%, some have 50%. But yes, the overall revenue scale is relatively small. So for the first quarter, our AI-facilitated close-up service has a total revenue size of around R&B 50 million.

I can also use the data to say a few. We have one year of MU in 6,000,000. In the 3rd, it is 7,000,000. In the 4th, it is also close to one year of the average. It is closer to the 3rd. So I think this data is more clear to say that after this year, the industry is more keen.

The main point is that And about your first question regarding the spring recruitment season, I also can support you with data. So our average monthly active users for the first quarter is around 60 million. However, the MAU for March is over 70 million. And MAU for April is also close to the number of March. So I think that's a very representative number, that the overall industry has been ready to last after spring season. And on the premises, that the ratio between supply and demand, which is enterprise users and recruiters, is healthy. So it's quite easy to understand it's a very good spring recruitment season. The overall newly added job posting number increased by 10% in the year. And even to be more practical, so for the first half, and overall this year, I think the growth rate of our cash capture will be accelerating compared to last year. So for the full year, we are looking at at least a double-digit number of young-year growth.

Let me tell you about what AI will make the level of the level and what level of the level of the level. To say, the investors, the very good of the students, we have to really quickly invest in funding for our own解説 about a serious and serious解説. We will also say to the public and the investors, I think that the AI is the case of the AI, what is the case of the role? We want to make it to ourselves. But until today, the data we were looking for, I didn't realize that the software development was going to have any new growth increase and increase. It has a 90% increase. I think I will continue to try and and then I will say this question. There are some articles that they want to publish, and I will say, I will say, because this is very serious. I don't want to say what I want to say. I want to say what I want to say. After all, I have the resources and data. I also want to do this research.

I think, if you give me two weeks, if you give me two weeks, I will say And about another question you or most people have been quite concerned about, which is what kind of jobs will be impacted by the AI or even replaced it by AI. So, to be honest, our dear investors and Xiong Wei, I have been doing input serious resources into this matter and want to make our own conclusion a very serious and scientific conclusion. And once we have our report, we will open to the public. But till today, our observation is that the software development engineer hasn't experienced any declining in job posting. On the contrary, the active number of job posting increased by 10.9%. So I will continue to work on this topic. And our team wants to publish some papers, but I want to take more time. So just give me like two quarters of time and I'll maybe give you more clear answer to this question.

Yes, that's some of our views. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Eddie Wang of Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question. Eddie, your line is open.

Thank you very much. 单位职位的价值吧,能提升多少,以及如何才能做到这样的提升,然后可能要跟着这个问题再问下去就是说,关于reput这个AI提升的这个假设当中,那在中国招聘市场会不会出现那些比如说匹配效率没有我们高的这个招聘平台,反而会受到就是AI,反而是就是大受,更大的受益于AI, 然后我们是怎么看待未来行业竞争格局的变化 那我自己可能翻译一下 Thank you, management, for taking my question. My question is also related to AI. We have noticed that Recruit, our foreign peer company, mentioned in its latest earnings that AI has greatly contributed to the increase of their revenue, especially the average revenue per job. can BossJupin enhance the revenue per job listing with the help of AI as well? And how much can be enhanced and how can this be achieved? And a follow-up question is that in the Chinese recruitment market, could there be a recruitment platform with lower matching efficiency than hours that might benefit more from AI. How does company feel the change in the future industry competition patterns? Thank you.

It's our main market. We think we can get a higher income from AI. I'm going to divide it into this three things. I think in the first step, we should be first to provide a higher value, and then charge a higher value. That's the first path. The second step, there are 4,000 million companies. 以上的企业 还有一多半呢 从未使用过互联网招聘 所以我觉得还有一个 从一片生地 慢慢变成一片 就是充分耕耘过的熟地 这样一个过程 那么第三个 第三个顺序呢 我觉得实际上是 我们这个行业 今天也说过好多次了 那么它的一个根本矛盾就是 你卖给招令者的到底是一个曝光还是一个入职 那么从曝光到入职 It's a long way, it's a long journey 中间其实有一段又一段的事 大家都在从卖了一个职位曝光 到卖了一个求职者 过了试用期 甚至于变成了一个DU的员工 甚至于得到了提把 我们到底在给客户提供什么 I think it's true that everyone has experienced this process. So, in this three process, what are we doing with AI? Where are we now? I don't think AI can help us Let the Chinese people who haven't used the internet service can be used to 3 and 1. So they can better help Chinese customers. I think this is what we need to do. Then we need to do the internet service for AI. From the early 1997, And thank you for your question.

We also noted that our predecessor who established in 1962 have been making some statements like you said, and we are quite happy for the progress they have they have got. From our perspective, so the Chinese domestic market is our current main focused area, and how it can help us to achieve higher revenue growth, I think I will divide it by three points. So in the order of considering this, I think the first thing we insist is to first provide better value, and then we charge higher price. So that's the first part. And second is, in China's domestic market, there are over 40 million enterprises, which more than half of them have never used online commercial before. So I think there is a process that from a raw area, a raw land to a fully cultivated market. So the third thing is that I have actually talked a lot in our industry that a very basic contradictory or controversy is that whether you are selling exposure to the recruiter or onboarding. So from the exposure to onboarding, there are very, very long journeys and there are many, many different steps. So we are all experiencing from selling one job exposure to selling one job candidate. And even after the testing period, you're becoming a very good employee or even get promotion. So what are we providing to our customers? I think everybody is going through the exploration process. So in all those three points I just discussed, with our help, where currently are we standing? I think without a doubt, that can let us to help with all those people who haven't used the online equipment service in China to use their digitalized and network data to better help us to serve our clients. And that's the first thing we need to do. And now we are using it to support our close-up services. So from the earliest online recruitment service in 1997, from selling advertisement exposure to someday in the future with help of our technology, we can tell you I can help you to deliver onboarding and you can pay me based on that. That's what we have been insisting.

The basis of 710,000,000, compared to 10%, compared to 4.4%. Why do I say this? Because this basis of 10% increased, the last time it was 600,000 to 710,000. This does not only mean my progress in the business, but also means that I use the first technology and the training and the training It helps China have not been using the software software, not just AI, which has over 2,000 million enterprises will gradually move towards a more powerful way of working with the workers. At this time, I want to talk about this term. Because 710 million people have paid me how much money? I have 80 more years of revenue. That's right.

And I also want to remind you with a number of, that our paid enterprise, number of paid enterprise customers is over 7.1 million by end of this quarter. so grew by 10.9% young year and 4.4% cultural culture. Why I want to talk about this number is because this 10% increase not only representing a progress of our commercialization but also means for us we are helping more and more users in China who have not used online service before to go in step by step to a more civilized way for hiring and job seeking. So now we are talking about price hiking because for all those 7.1 million people, how many are they paying us by each individual? Our revenue is around $8 billion per year. So on average, every paying customer is paying us around $1,000. So I think everybody can see there are huge potential in here for higher price. But between more paying customers, for example, For example, we have 7.1 million today, in the future we can have 9.1 or even 19 million paying customers. So I choose to grow our number of paying customers first. And by that time, I think we still have huge potential to further increase our price. That's without doubt.

In my opinion, one day it will change, and I will take a long time to talk to our people about these changes. But from now on, I think we will be willing to do what we think is the right thing. And if there is a person who will use AI to get the advantage of the competition, I would like to answer this question. 肯定是存在的 但是基于我们 基于我自己在 从非常害怕 有一点好奇 到有一点了解 没那么害怕 到今天有了一点自己的看法 和计划 我觉得我们其实是 更加务实的那种人 然后跟AI在一起 解决问题 所以我现在不担心

And my idea about growing paying users or the price might change for one day and I will communicate with people who are concerned about us timely about changes. And then about whether there are potential for the AI empowering our peers who have maybe weaker technology than us should maybe exceeding us. I think their possibility definitely exists. But based on my experience, when I have experiencing from maybe a little bit concerned about AI and more curious and less concerned, and now we have our own views and strategies. And we are actually more practical people and solving questions together. So today, I'm not that worried that in our peers in China's recommendation, who have maybe weaker matching efficiency, that maybe one day to exceeding us, disrupt us, I'm not that worried and it won't be quite saddened. Yeah, and that's our answer to the question. Operator, let's proceed to our last question.

Thank you.

Our final question today comes from Timothy Chow of Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Timothy.

Your line is open. 全年的利润率的展望有哪些更新 同时我们也看到在今年以来公司在市场上面加大了回购的力度 那先请教一下我们对于今年和中期的股东回报的政策有没有更新 这个是第一条问题 那第二条问题是关于我们的海外业务 那看到off today在香港市场的发展其实很快 那可否分享一下我们现在off today的用户量和商业化的最新进展 以及我们在一季度投入的金额有多少 那我们在其他的海外市场 有没有更新一步的计划或者是打算 那我很快翻一下 Thank you management for taking my question My first question is regarding your operating expenses It's regarding the world card market expenses And the R&D expenses It's really on AI Just wondering if you can share some more detailed color And what is your outlook for this year's overall profit margin And also I note that you have been increase your buyback from the public market just wondering if you're any if there's any updates on your shareholder return plans for this year and in the midterm and secondly is regarding your overseas expansion we note that of the day has been growing very rapidly in the Hong Kong market just wondering if you can share some color on the latest user base and the motivation updates in Hong Kong and any investments that you have made in Hong Kong in the first quarter and do you have any other plan to further expand into new overseas Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So we need to find the right person to find the right person, and to raise the right person. So this is one of the money we spend on people's lives. There is also one of the money we spend on in the moon, including in the use of the use of the trade, which is also worth spending. So this year will continue to expand.

And thank you for your question. So the World Cup is always a very good thing, which we can communicate with a lot of users during a very short period of time. Whether or how much we invest on World Cup, it depends on the ROI. So the advantage for this year is that there are more gains and a longer period of the But it's also quite clear because of the time difference. So we are still under communication, looking at the final RIs, our communicate once we have our results. Certainly it's about the AI who will continue to be met. But this year, the one major change you have always is that for some companies and some very critical jobs, the companies can offer a very high salary for top talents. So we should pay and find appropriate person to maintain our AI related development capabilities. And another one is on the computing power, including rental salaries and referring costs. So we are also invested on that and maybe for expanding our expenses. So for our margin perspective, I would call this margin is quite high, over 50%. But considering all those investment on the WorkCard sponsorship and the new business, I think it's just a similar expectation for us from the beginning of this year. We are expecting a smaller increase in our adjusted operating margin.

And then from the annual report, we will say that actually from the year to now, not half a year, the return rate is about 2 million dollars, the total return rate is about 30%. If you look at every year, the return rate is more than a year, It's over the last two reasons. The first reason is that the price is that we want to go back a little more. The cost of the cost is higher. The other reason is that the company has to express their trust in the company.

And about shareholder returns and buybacks, I want to re-emphasize that year today we have spent more than 200 million U.S. dollars to bought over 3% of total shares. If you're looking at the quarterly payout ratio, it's already exceeding what we planned in the first. And there are two reasons we are doing this. First, it's actually our valuation is quite good, so it's very efficient to spend money. And also, we want to provide more confidence. We have confidence in our company, and we want to express that, to share that view with all those employees and investors who have been standing with us. So we will continue to do that.

So, if you look at the app, we have DAO about 6 million, that's not what you can say. Actually, you can understand this, there are 300 million of香港 staff, every 50 people, there are only 1 people who use this off-today. 这样的话我们给招聘者端提供了大量的活跃的有效的今天就能沟通的攻击 反向呢那么这些招聘者也是很高效的用这个新的模式跟求职者沟通 从而逐步趋近于越来越多的人可以获得offer today 这是我们的一个情况 然后发展香港这边的业务呢有两个核心原因 One is the understanding of the world's health model is if we can get a test in a relatively近 place, although there are no different ways, and we can get a test. And one is that in the future, when we want to grow global development, I think its core is the core, The main goal is that we also hope that in Hong Kong, we can further strengthen and strengthen the international level of trade. So this is our priority. From the income point of view, it's not our priority. If you invest, I think it's a reasonable investment. This is one of our business in Hong Kong. This is the first time we have talked about. We have talked about it before, and we have talked about it before, and we have talked about it before, but we still have this way. We have the ability, and we have the dream, to make the offer today become a customer and customer service and customer service This OKR we will continue to invest and continue to invest.

Thank you for asking about offer today and actually we did developing quite well in Hong Looking at the mobile side which we have more advantages. So we have now currently our daily active users is approximately 60,000 daily active So if you can understand it this way, for the three million Hong Kong workers, one out of 50 are using us every day. So actually we are providing our enterprise customers with a large amount of active, effective suppliers who can communicate today. So that's why the recruiters are using a very efficient and new model to communicate with job seekers. So more and more people can get over today. So that's our current situation. And there are two reasons we are developing our home business. First is whether our business model based on double-side ecosystem can get verified in the market quite close to the main line. And another more important reason is when we are developing internationally, we want to cultivate a very important core team for us to go further so that's so that's our purpose our priority revenue is not our current priority and we are investing a reasonable amount I have been communicating with our employees and our investors that before and we are still have that move today and we have confidence that we can turn over today to a Hong Kong local most satisfied job seeking and recruitment platform for both job seekers and recruiters. That OKR has not changed for a day and we will continue to invest and continue to make more efforts and hope you can keep following on us. And that's all of our answers to the questions today. Operator.

Thank you. Due to time constraint that concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I'll turn the conference back to Laura for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation. In today's conference, this does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.