Hello Group Inc. (MOMO) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Hello Group's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Ashley Jing. Thank you. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Hello Group's fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 earnings conference call. The company's results were released earlier today and available on the company's IR website. On the call today are Ms. Zhang Sichuan, CEO of the company, and Ms. Peng Hui, CEO of the company. They will discuss the company's business operations and highlights, as well as the financials and guidance. They will be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the company's control, which may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding this and other risks, uncertainties, and factors is included in the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required under law. I will now pass the call over to our COO, Ms. Jiang Zitran.

Thank you Ashley. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. In the second half of 2025, our domestic business faced fresh external cap wins. That said, through the team's air draw response and strong execution, we kept our cash cow business stable while sustaining a healthy ecosystem. To better show you our ongoing structural transition towards overseas growth, we began providing a geographic revenue breakdown in 205 to improve transparency for investors. Our overseas business delivered exceptional results last year, filled by organic product incubation and targeted M&A. This allowed us to diversify our portfolio and rapidly expand our global presence, leading to accelerated revenue momentum. The overseas business is now a solidified revenue contributor and a key engine for our future growth. Next, I'll work you through the major highlights from Q4 and the full year of 2025 across our business line. Followed by our strategic priorities for 2026. Starting with the financials, for Q4 25, total good revenue was $2.58 billion RMB, down 2% year-over-year. Domestic revenue reached $1.97 billion RMB, down 14% year-over-year. Overseas revenue was $608 million RMB, up 70% year-over-year. Overseas revenue accounted for 24% compared to 14% in the same period last year. Adjusted operating income was $354 million RMB, up 26% year-over-year, with a margin of 13.7%. For fiscal 2025, total group revenue was $10.37 billion RMB, a slight decrease of less than 2% year-over-year. Domestic revenue reached 8.37 billion RMB, down 11% year-over-year. Overseas revenue reached 2 billion RMB, up 71% year-over-year. Overseas revenue now accounts for 19% of our total, up for 11% in 2024. for. Adjusted operating income was 1.55 billion RMB, down 10% year-over-year, with a margin of 15%. Next, I'll review the execution of the strategic priorities for Momo-Tan-Tan and our new endeavors in 2025. Let's start with Momo. Our goal is to maintain the productivity of this cash cow while keeping the social ecosystem healthy. Over the past year, all products and channel efforts are centered on this core objective. On the product side, we focus on two major upgrades. First, we upgraded the AI Greetings and AI Chat Assist models to help users break the ice with personalized messages and keep conversation going. Our tech team is consistently iterating these models to make them more humanized and diverse. These upgrades, combined with tailored exposure strategies, significantly boosted the adoption rate of our AI features. Second, we optimized our product strategy for real-time chat scenario. By using historical data to target users with high chat intent, we make matching more accurate and interactions smoother. This led to an increase in key metrics such as number of two-way chats and the rate of in-depth chats. For user acquisition, we proactively cut negative ROI marketing spends, refined channel and and material by LI, and we balance the spend between new acquisitions and dormant user re-acturations. This helps us to reduce average acquisition costs despite intensifying channel competition. We also boost this conversation in high app pool paying scenarios, sustaining app pool growth, and delivering profitable LI all year. We are highly satisfied with 2025's China's results. Early marketing cuts led to some trunks among ultra-low spenders, but with very limited revenue drag. In fact, reducing the inefficient spending helped stabilize our profits. While paying users declined sharply in the first half of the year, the impact bottomed out in the second half. Our new features in audio and video scenarios draw gains in pay-in ratio, resulting in 3.9 million pay-in users on MoMo in Q4. That's up $200,000 quarter over quarter. With some substantial growth in two straight quarters, we see clear evidence of healthy recovery. This validates our strategy to broaden low-ticket payment scenario. In the current economic environment, by focusing on non-wild users and a profit-centric channel approach, we have strengthened MoMA's position as a resilient 15-year-old cash cow. This geology has enabled the platform to preserve strong operational health, exhibit solid resilience against external pressures, and consistently deliver stable results. Turning to Momo's commercial performance, in Q4, Momo's last revenue was RMB 1.68 billion, a year-over-year decrease of 14% and a sequential decrease of 6%. As mentioned last quarter, the decline was mainly due to the new tax regulations in October and stricter enforcement, which significantly dampened the motivation of high-grossing streamers and agencies. For the full year 2025, MoMo's vast revenue totaled RMB 7.09 billion, down to 11% year over year. Beyond tech factors, macro softness also affected sentiment among high-value users. Product and operation-wise, we continue to focus on our top cohort users in live streaming through specialized events and gameplay innovation. Meanwhile, we pivoted our emphasis towards audio and video scenarios that better align with mid-tier and long-tail users. This shift helps offset some of the external headwinds on revenue. Furthermore, the growing proportion of the revenue from higher margin audio and video scenarios contributed our overall growth margin stable. Now let's turn to Tan Tan. Our 2025 goal was to build a dating experience and an efficient business model tailored for Asian users. As of Q4, Tantan has 600,000 paying users, a decrease from 700,000 from last quarter. Marketing costs have driven user declines in recent years, but our return to brand building and experience optimization has kept organic traffic stable. Currently, the vast majority of new users on Tantan come from organic flows, and the platform is no longer reliant on channel acquisition. At the same time, retention has improved slightly. On the financial side in Q4, Tantan's domestic business generated $136 million RMB in revenue, down $41 million year-over-year and $16 million quarter-over-quarter. For the full year 2025, domestic revenue totaled $613 million RMB compared to $733 million in 2024. The decline was a deliberate result of reducing channel investment. Through study, api food growth provided a partial offset. On the product side, we roll out our new version in the first half of 2025, focusing on real-person verification and a clear interface. We further advanced AI tools for profile enrichment and chat assistance, while improving the female user's recommendation. This reduced noise from poor metrics and irrelevant chats, boosted female users' retention and likes per user. To balance the revenue impact of declining paying users, we also restructured membership tiers to improve low-end coverage and increase paywall exposure for users with high payment potential. This product and algorithmic optimization drove increases in both pay conversion rates and output. Regarding channels, we focused on achieving 100% return on acquisition costs. By cutting high-cost negative ROI channels, we significantly narrowed acquisition costs compared to last year. Combined with Apple improvements driven by product upgrades, Tantan achieved full payback on channel investment in Q1, with ROI reaching new highs throughout the year. Based on this trajectory, we expect Tantan to generate around 100 million RMB in annual operating profit for the foreseeable future. This gives the team a comfortable window to focus on what matters most, the long-term retention of the time-time users. This can be achieved only through providing a better dating experience and building a brand image as a dating platform uniquely for Asian daters. We will continue to pluck this land until we get the reward we deserve. Lastly, our new businesses. In 2025, our goal was to deepen our overseas presence, enrich our brand portfolio, and build a long-term growth engine. In Q4, overseas revenue reached 608 million RMB, up 70% year over year and 14% quarter over quarter. For the full year 2025, overseas revenue totaled 2 billion RMB, a 71% year-over-year growth. This growth has largely offset the revenue dip in the domestic market. This rapid growth was driven by audio and video social products in the mainland region, especially Yaha Land and Amar. These two new apps that began monetization at the end of 2024, leveraging the successful experience of SoChill, which has driven continued revenue growth while never in the net loss. Meanwhile, SoChill would remain our largest contributor, although its growth fell slightly short of our initial expectation due to slower localization, which slow our plans to expand into live streaming and the wealthier Gulf countries. For 236, strengthening our regional operation would remain a top priority. Beyond MENA, we have seen great progress with Miyai-Mai in Japan. As mentioned before, Miyai-Mai is an AI-powered anime-style companion and romance act. Its AI-driven character creation and natural language model has been very well received, and we see a clear expansion of opportunities there. In our dating segment, Then, Tantan International officially separated its domestic and overseas version in the second half of 2025, allowing for a more tailored international experience. This separation removes historical, technical, and operational constraints, lying on a solid foundation for Tantan's long-term international growth. We also make a major breakthrough by acquiring Hapen, a well-known European dating product, which was an important driver of the accelerated year-over-year overseas revenue growth in Q4. This, along with other recent acquisitions, has allowed us to rapidly penetrate key untapped markets, including Europe, Turkey, and South America. Moving forward, we plan to bring these premium global brands into Asian markets to create even more synergies across our ecosystem. Overall, in 2025, our overseas business delivered robust gains in both scale and quality. Driven by a multi-product strategy, deep-linked penetration in core regions, leveraging our proven expertise, and complementing organic growth with strategy acquisition. Moving forward, we remain committed to solidifying our market position in Milan region, rather quickly enter high potential new markets and maximizing synergies across our core business assignments, thereby establishing overseas operations as a key driver of the group's sustained long-term growth. That concludes our business review for 2025. For 2026, we will continue our strategy, our strategic priorities, MOMO for productivity, Tantan for the Asian dating experience, and new businesses for the growth engine. Lastly, I'm pleased to announce that our board has approved a special cash dividend in the amount of 0.28 USD per ADS for a total cash payment of approximately 42.6 million USD or about 30% of the adjusted net income contributed to Hello Group Inc. in 2025. And this is the eighth consecutive year of dividends reflecting our stable operation and commitment to creating long-term value for shareholders. This concludes my remarks. Now, let me pass the call over to Kathy for financial review. Kathy, please. Thanks, Sig.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call today. Okay, now let me take you through the financial review. Total revenues for the fourth quarter 2025 was 2.58 billion RMB, down 2% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter. Non-GAAP net income attributable to the company was $281.3Mb compared to $230.5Mb in the same period of 2024 and $404.5Mb in the previous quarter. Looking into key revenue items for Q4, total revenue for value added services for the fourth quarter of 2025 was 2.53 billion RMB, down 2% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter. On a geographic basis, PRC mainland vast revenue was 1.93 billion RMB, down 14% year-on-year and 3% quarter-over-quarter. The decrease was primarily due to three factors, number one, heightened tax scrutiny on the supply side, which diverted their operational focus, softened consumer sentiment amid broad macro pressures, and a decline in paying users on Tantan. BAS overseas revenue reached 604.4 million RMB, up 70% year-over-year and 13% quarter-over-quarter. This robust growth was primarily fueled by the rapid expansion from multiple social entertainment and dating brands across our diverse portfolio. Turning to cost and expenses, non-GAAP cost of revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was 1.6 billion RMB compared to 1.72 billion RMB for the same period last year. Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 37.8% compared to 34.7% from a year-ago period. In Q4-24, our non-GAAP cost of revenue included certain one-off items. Excluding these special items, gross profit margin in Q4-25 was slightly down 0.4 percentage points year-over-year. The decrease was the net impact from several factors due to the same structural shift of revenue toward membership subscription revenue in the overseas market, especially in developed markets. These factors are, number one, payment channel costs accounted for a higher proportion of total revenues. Two, personnel costs increased as a percentage of revenue. And number three, revenue share to the content providers and agencies decreased as a percentage of revenues. The first two are headwinds to gross margin, and the third one is a tailwind. Non-GAAP R&D expenses for the fourth quarter was 203.9 million RMB compared to 212.4 million RMB for the same period last year, representing a 4% decrease year-over-year. The decrease was attributed to optimization of engineering personnel. Non-GAAP R&D expenses as a percentage of revenue was 8%, same as Q4 last year. We ended the quarter with 1,400 total employees compared to 1,390 from a year ago. The R&D personnel as a percentage of total employee for the group was 56% compared to 61% from Q4 last year. Non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses for the fourth quarter was 339.9 million RMB compared to 311.7 million RMB for the same period last year, representing 13% and 12% of total revenue, respectively. The year-over-year increase in sales and marketing expenses was primarily driven by marketing investment in our overseas apps. This increase was partially offset by our ongoing cost control measures in the PRC mainland businesses, where both Momoa and Tantan reduced their marketing span. Non-GAAP GNA expenses was 85.7 million RMB for the fourth quarter, compared to 117.6 million RMB for the same quarter last year, representing 3% and 4% of total revenue, respectively. The decrease in GNA expenses was due to a combination of factors that resulted in a high base in Q424, including provisions for some pending legal matters, as well as due diligence costs in connection with potential investments. Non-GAAP operating income was $354.1 million RMB, representing a margin of 13.7%, compared with $279.9 million RMB and a margin of 10.6% from Q424. Excluding certain one-off costs and expenses items, operating margin for Q424 would have been 14.2%. Non-GAAP operating expenses as a percentage of total revenue stood at 24% unchanged from the year-ago period. Now briefly on income tax expenses. Total non-GAAP income tax expenses was $72.0 million RMB for the quarter with an effective tax rate of 17%. In Q4, the company accrued withholding income tax of 18.4 million RMB, which is 10% of undistributed profit generated by our role fee. Without withholding tax, our estimated non-GAAP effective tax rate was around 13% in the fourth quarter. Now turning to balance sheet and cash flow items. As of December 31, 2025, hollow groups cash, cash equivalents, short-term deposits, long-term deposits, short-term investments, and restricted cash totaled 8.68 billion RMB compared to 14.73 billion RMB as of December 31, 2024. The decrease in cash reserves was attributable to bank loan repayment, distribution of a special cash dividend, settlement withholding tax accrued for prior periods, together with certain acquisitions and investments, and ongoing repurchases of the company's own shares throughout 2025. Net cash provided by operating activities in the fourth quarter of 2025 was 549.7 million RMB. Lastly, on business outlook, we estimated our first quarter revenue to come in the range from 2.3 billion RMB to 2.4 billion RMB, representing a decrease of 8.8% to 4.8% year on year. This is based on the assumption that at midpoint, on a year-over-year basis, revenue from our mainland China business will decline by mid to high teens percentage-wise, while overseas revenue is expected to grow by high forties percentage-wise. Please be mindful that this forecast represents the company's current and preliminary view on the market and operational conditions, which are subject to change. That concluded our prepared portion of today's discussion. With that, let me turn the call back to Ashley to start Q&A. Ashley, please. Thank you.

Before we take the questions, for those who can speak Chinese, please ask the questions in Chinese first, followed by English translations by yourself, and also please limit the number of questions to maximum two. Thank you. Operator, we're ready for questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question, it comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Good evening, thanks, Management for taking my questions. Based on the guidance, just give a note. Q1 domestic business is expected to decline more than what we saw in Q4 last year and full-year 2025. Can management provide some comment about the trend for domestic revenue this year? What are the measures undertaken on this cash card business? When should we expect domestic revenue to stop declining year-on-year and stabilize? Thank you.

Thank you. So, looking back, our 2025 revenue hit the overall target, but this past, there was a little bit of surprise. We actually started the year very strong by tapping into our mid-tier and regular uses, which helped us beat expectations in the first half. However, things got tougher in the second half. New tax policies really hits our supply side and momentum slows. That said, the mobile team did an incredible job staying steady, a really challenging environment, and we are very happy with how they handle it. So while the top tier users started to tighten their belts, we pivoted and we did it fast. We moved our focus for our two small ticket spenders. Think social games and direct chat features that don't need as expensive agencies. We kept moving our AI tools to make the social experience smoother. This strategy worked. We added 400,000 new paying users in the second half of the year. For a mature platform like Momo, growing that much in this economy is not easy. This shows our business is becoming more resilient and less dependent on top-tier users. Protective profits, I think I want to highlight that we have been very proactive with cost-cutting. Because we streamlined our teams and reduced channel spending, our profits didn't drop nearly as much as our revenue did. We are keeping the cash cow healthy. Looking into 2026, we are not expecting the macro environment to fix itself overnight, so we are sticking to the game plan that worked in 2025. On the product side, more AI, better chat features, and more social games to keep users glued to the platform. On the money side, we'll keep focusing on audio and video scenarios that regular users love. We also expect revenue pressures to continue this year, similar to what we saw in 2025. But our commitment to efficiency is ironclad. Even if the top line numbers fluctuate, we are fully confident that we can keep our profit stable. Let me hand it to Kathy to get into the numbers.

Okay, I would like to frame the 2026 revenue outlook around my good old three key drivers. Number one is regulatory environment. Number two, macro conditions. And number three, platform fundamentals. Firstly, on regulation, the tax scrutiny on agencies and broadcasters in the second half of 25 25, maturely impacted our value added services revenues. We believe most of the negative impact from that scrutiny has been absorbed by the end of Q1 26. So assuming no incremental regulatory tightening from here, Q1 should provide a cleaner base to assess underlying trends. Second factor, macro. Consumer sentiment remains soft, perhaps even a little bit softer compared to a year ago. That said, macro conditions have been challenging for the past several years, and we have been adapting our monetization and product strategies accordingly. Encouragingly, our revenue mix is, as Sig said, becoming less top-heavy, reflecting improved contribution from mid and long-tail users. We have additional initiatives rolling out in the coming quarters that aim at improving monetization efficiency under weak demand conditions. And a third factor, platform fundamentals. Since Q3 2025, we have seen a meaningful shift, After multiple years of decline, paying users have returned to net growth, roughly, I think we've been adding roughly 200,000 net ads per quarter. Retention metrics for both users and paying customers have also improved modestly. We see this as evidence that product optimization and user experience upgrades are working, particularly in expanding monetization beyond heavy spenders. So if you put these three factors together and assuming no increment or regulatory tightening and broadly stable macro conditions, our baseline view for 2026 is, first of all, four-year revenue decline should be around low to meet teens year over year. If you break the timeline down, first half of 26 should decline in the mid-teens, and perhaps the second half, 26, would moderate meaningfully due to easier comps and improving fundamentals. So that's the outlook for 26. I think there is another question, which is when does the domestic business bottom? It's difficult to precisely call the bottom at this stage. However, based on the trajectory that we're seeing, like I said, we expect the year-over-year decline to moderate in the second half of 26. If the external conditions are stable by Q4 this year, we may narrow the year-over-year decline rate to below 10% if we are lucky. That said, the timing of a full bottom will depend significantly on, of course, macro recovery. Our current focus is on strengthening controllable fundamentals so that when macro stabilizes, we are positioned to return to growth. Back to Ashley for more questions.

Alpreeta, next question, please.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Zwei King Zhang with CICC. Please go ahead.

Minna地区的英式产品新Apps和Future 对于海外收入贡献分别在什么量级 我们该如何判断2026年海外收入的一个增长趋势 然后也想请教一下 近期中东战事是否会对我们在 Mina地区的一个业务有所影响 最后想问一下就是考虑到 当前海外整体还处于投入期 那2026年对于利润的影响 大概会是怎么样的 什么时候我能看到海外业务在利润层面是有所贡献的。 谢谢。 Thanks, management for taking my question. My question about overseas business. As you mentioned in your prepared remarks, overseas business accelerated in 2025, being driven by the commercialization of new products in MENA regions as well as contributions from M&A consolidation. Could management share more kind on the revenue contribution from specifically for audio and video products new apps and social what kind of style are we look looking at for each of these and how should we think about the growth chain of overseas revenue in 2026 also has a recent political situation in the news to have any impact on the operations in the region. Lastly, considering the overseas business is still in the investment phase, what's the margin impact in 2006? And when do you expect overseas operations to start contributing meaningful profit? Thank you.

Thank you for the question. First, let's look at the big picture. Back in 2024, our overseas revenue was almost entirely driven by Xochiu and Tantan International, but in 2025 was a total breakout year for us. Our overseas revenue dropped more than 70%, hitting the 2 billion RMB mark. In terms of mix, Xochiu is still the heavy hitter. It brings in over half of our international revenue, but the real growth engine right now is our new MENA products, YahaLand and Amar. They are scaling incredibly fast, and they will be the main drivers for us as we head into 2026. But it's not only just about the Middle East, though. Our other markets are also picking up serious speed. We have got Tantan International in Asia, Miyai-Mai in Japan, and Happen, which started in Europe and is now moving into Turkey and South America. In 2026, we are focusing on going deeper into this market. We expect this dating segment to become our first largest revenue pillar, right behind Xochitl and our new MENA app. Long term receive massive potential there. This developed markets are more mature and stable, so we are staying fully committed to them for the long haul. As for the webinar trends and the final details for 2026, I will let Kathy walk you through the numbers.

Okay, let me break this down into two parts, growth trajectory of overseas business and profitability. With regards to the revenue growth outlook, unfortunately, it's a bit hard to give you a precise quantitative outlook for 2026 because as Sig said in her remarks, if you look at the overseas part of the business, it's a piece that spans across different markets including both developing markets and developed markets. In addition, it also spans across different business sectors including social entertainment and dating. Each of these markets and sectors presents different growth dynamics and associated risks slash uncertainties. All of those make it hard to pin down a very precise outlook at the beginning of the year, specifically at the time when a lot of these businesses are still developing so fast. But what I can do is to try to sort of unpack the growth dynamics in each of the different sectors along the lines that are just outlined by SIC. In the MENA area, what we are doing mostly involves social entertainment. Sochill, which is our flagship brand, has already surpassed R&B $1 billion revenue. As the base scales, growth rates will naturally moderate. Additionally, we also have to admit that some of our product and geographical expansion plans didn't progress as fast as we planned in 2025. So there's going to be a further slowdown in its growth in 2026, especially in first half. But in absolute terms, it will remain a meaningful contributor this year. At the same time, newer products such as Yahao and Amar are still in rapid expansion phase. their continued scaling should be able to offset the moderation at Sochil. With regards to the impact from the war, the Iran war, so far the negative impact on our business is quite limited. However, if it becomes a prolonged conflict or keeps escalating, it certainly would have adverse effects on our business, especially our expansion plan into the Gulf countries and existing business in regions such as Saudi and perhaps Iraq as well. Outside MENA, our dating and AI-driven products in developed markets are gaining very strong traction. the AI powered application is scaling quickly in Japan and we are beginning to replicate that model in other markets the various dating brands that we have are also growing stronger are also growing stronger in their established markets in 2026 we are also investing to expand our dating footprint in new markets as well So overall, we expect the non-MENA piece to grow rapidly and reach a pretty sizable level in 2026. So if you take all of these together based on current run rate and expansion plans, we believe something like 3 billion RMB in overseas revenue for 2026 is a pretty achievable target. And that compares to around 2 billion in 2025. So I would take that $3 billion number as the baseline scenario, perhaps add in a couple of hundred millions as potential upside or downside, depending on execution and the pace of geographical rollout. Now, moving on to the second question, which is on profitability, specifically when the overseas business is going to turn profitable. Again, I don't want to sound too prescriptive on that because we are still early stage in our overseas development and facing so many different growth opportunities as well as associated uncertainties. But you're generally right in thinking that overseas remains in an investment phase. And I can perhaps talk more about where we are right now in terms of bottom line for our overseas business and hopefully by explaining how we manage the growth with financial discipline, we can help you form your own view about when we can expect overseas business to reach a break-even point. At an operational level, overseas was loss-making in 2025, primarily due to continued investment in the two new MENA apps and AI-driven products. While we do not disclose segment-level operating profits, directionally the overseas operating laws should be roughly in the 200 million RMB range for 2025. That's my best estimate at this point. If you break things down among different applications, the picture is actually quite mixed. More mature apps such as Socio has long been profitable. Established dating brands are also profitable, but instead of trying to grow the profit, we are going to invest part of the profit into growing into new markets because we do believe these acquired brands have a lot of potential to be unleashed outside of their existing strongholds. YAHALAN and AMAR are scaling rapidly and narrowing losses with clear payback visibility. We expect YAHALAN to turn profitable within this year, and AMAR should be behind it by half a year or so. The AI-driven product remains in investment mode as we prioritize user growth and product capability. We don't want to focus too much on reaching profitability for that product, but of course for each of the regions we are in, we also have a payback period that's required. On timing, overall timing to profitability for the overseas piece, while I don't have a clearer answer, here is the principle how we exercise financial discipline when talking about growing into various markets. Structurally, our internal requirement is that new products should achieve payback within either one to three years, depending on the maturity of the market and the business That means if we were to moderate top-line expansion, then we should see profits coming in sooner. However, as long as we see attractive new investment opportunities, be it new markets or new products, we are willing to reinvest to maximize long-term value creation. The key point is this. We are not pursuing growth at any cost. We are pursuing scalable, only scalable growth with defined payback periods and disciplined capital allocation. I guess that's what I can say at this point about overseas profitability. Now back to Ashley for more questions.

Next question, please, Abhuda.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Leo Chiang with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you. 业务收入占比提升会到四季度及毛利率还比进一步下滑 但实际上四季度的毛利率保持相对稳定 甚至略好于管理层此前给的36到37%的指引 是否可以理解为集团在2026年的毛利率有望维持在2025年Q4的这个水平 我的第二个问题是管理层提到2026年国内业务收入预计同比下降在低到中十几个百分点区间 而海外收入者有望从人民币20亿提升至30亿 这是否意味着2026年整体收入有望大致持平 考虑到海外业务人处于投入期管理程是否可以在利润层面给我们一个方向性的指引 I'll translate myself Thank you, management, for taking my question We had initially expect that the adjustment in revenue ratio in the second half Again, with the rise in contribution to low margin overseas, audio and video business would drive a sequential decline in gross margin in Q4. However, Q4 gross margin held relatively stable and even came slightly above management previous guidance of 36 to 37%. Should we interpret this as an indication that group gross margin in 2026 could remain broadly at the Q4 2025 level? My second question is, management indicates that domestic revenue in 2026 is expected to decline year-over-year and low to mid-team, while overseas revenue is projected to increase from revenue to $2 billion to $3 billion. Does this suggest that overall revenue for 2026 could be roughly slated? And given that overseas operations are still in the investment phase, could you provide us with some directional guidance on probability for the 2026?

Okay, I'll take this question. I'm hearing many questions, firstly on gross profit. And the second question is revenue at the group level. The third question is perhaps asking for guidance on the group level profit. So let me sort of flip the sequence of the question a little bit. Let me talk about group level revenue. Before that, I would like to throw out a disclaimer here that we do not really have, you know, visibility to give annual guidance on either top or bottom line at this point. So my comments below should be taken as a sort of a working assumption rather than firm targets, especially given uncertainties in both domestic macro environment and the pace of overseas expansion. With that in mind, here are how we think about 2026. On revenue, your math is broadly in line with how we are thinking about it. If we take the baseline assumption we previously discussed, domestic business declining roughly low-to-meetings year-over-year and overseas revenue increasing from around 2 billion RMB in 2025 to roughly 3 billion RMB in 2026, then at the group level, either a fattish or slightly downtick top line versus 2025 would be a reasonable baseline assumption. And then the question on gross margin, you're right that Q4 came in better than we had guided in Q3. And the outperformance mainly came from two areas. Number one is on the domestic side. We had expected to further compress margins by raising payout ratios to support agencies under tax scrutiny. In practice, we faced a payout increase in several rounds. And after the first two rounds, we saw motivation among agencies and broadcasters recover pretty strongly, more strongly than expected. As a result, we didn't need to deploy as many promotional incentives as originally planned. That helped domestic margin came in better than we had assumed. And second, on the overseas side, particularly in MENA region, we are starting to see operating leverage as revenue scales. Gross margin there improved faster than we initially modeled as well. So given those dynamics, I think it's reasonable to use Q for gross margin as a reference point when thinking about 26. If overseas continues to scale as expected, there could be some upside at the group level. However, I want to be careful not to over-extrapolate one quarter, one specific quarter. There is still macro uncertainty domestically, and if we feel additional investment is needed to support the content partners and sustained revenue quality, we would be willing to do that. So at this stage, stability around the 2025 level feels like a prudent base case with potential variability on either side. And on the last question on profitability, if you look at operating expenses, is personnel and marketing remain the two largest components. And here is my thinking along those lines. Because overseas markets are still in an investment phase, we do expect absolute engineering and personnel costs to increase slightly. But at the same time, we're going to continue to optimize some of the non-performing businesses. So for R&D currently, you know, I'm thinking low single digits year over year. Marketing could grow in the, you know, somewhere around high teens range or 20-something percent. A lot of it, I mean, how much we end up spending on marketing will depend on ROI in new markets If certain regions are delivering strong returns, we may lean in more aggressively in that region. If returns are below expectations, we can dial back relatively quickly. So there is a building flexibility in our cost structure and how we manage revenue against marketing investments. Putting this together, if revenue is broadly flat and operating expenses grows at low teens, then on a reported basis, the bottom line will likely come in lower, come in below 2025 levels. If we were to frame it in margin terms in 2025, we delivered somewhere around 15% adjusted operating margin for 26. At this point of time, our internal objective is to keep the operating margin above 10% likely in the low teens range. Overall, I would describe this year as a year where we are balancing profitability with disciplined investment. We see opportunities overseas, but we also want to maintain flexibility. So these assumptions reflect what we can see today with the understanding that we will adjust as conditions evolve. With that, I would like to turn back to Ashley for closing remarks.

In the interest of time, I think we're going to call it a day. Thank you for joining us and see you next quarter.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.