Earnings Call Transcript - WB Q4 2025

Operator, Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Weibo Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Sandra Zhang, Investor Relations Representative. Please go ahead.

Sandra Zhang, IR Representative

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Weibo's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Chief Executive Officer, Gaofei Wang; and our Chief Financial Officer, Fei Cao. The conference call is also being broadcast on the Internet and is available on Weibo's IR website. Before the management remarks, I would like to read you the safe harbor statement in connection with today's conference call. During today's conference call, we may make forward-looking statements, statements that are not historical facts, including statements of our beliefs and expectations. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Weibo assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements in this conference call and elsewhere. Further information regarding this and other risks is included in Weibo's annual report on Form 20-F and other filings with the SEC. All the information provided in this press release is accurate as of the date hereof. Weibo assumes no obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. Additionally, I'd like to remind you that our discussion today includes certain non-GAAP measures, which exclude stock-based compensation and certain other expenses. We use non-GAAP financial measures to gain a better understanding of Weibo's comparative operating performance and the future prospects. Our non-GAAP financials exclude certain expenses, gains or losses and other items that are not expected to result in future cash payments or are nonrecurring in nature or are not indicative of our core operating results and outlook. Please refer to our press release for more information about our non-GAAP measures. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the lines for a brief Q&A session. With this, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Gaofei Wang.

Gaofei Wang, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. On today's call, I'll share with you highlights on Weibo's product and monetization, review the progress made in 2025, and elaborate our strategies for 2026. Starting from our financial performance in the fourth quarter, our total revenues in the fourth quarter reached USD 473.3 million, an increase of 4% year-over-year. Our advertising revenues reached USD 403.8 million, an increase of 5% year-over-year. Our value-added service revenues reached USD 69.5 million, a decrease of 2% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter reached USD 100.4 million, representing an operating margin of 21%. For full year 2025, our total revenues reached USD 1.76 billion, relatively flat year-over-year. Our total ad revenues reached USD 1.5 billion, relatively flat year-over-year. Our value-added service revenues reached USD 255.6 million, relatively flat year-over-year. For the full year 2025, our non-GAAP operating income reached USD 523.6 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 30%. On the user front, in December 2025, Weibo's MAUs reached 567 million and average DAUs reached 252 million. Throughout 2025, we focused on enhancing user value, solidifying Weibo's leading position in hot topics and entertainment content ecosystem, and strengthening the competitiveness of our social products. At the same time, we leveraged AI to improve our recommendation and search systems, driving both user base and engagement. Next, I will highlight key developments in Weibo's product operation and monetization in the fourth quarter. On user growth and engagement, in late July, we completed a structural upgrade of our core homepage and officially rolled out the new homepage with interest-based feed as a primary interface. Our key objective of this upgrade was to leverage strengths in social products while expanding from only relying on relationship-based mechanisms to distribute content — enabling users to discover high-quality content more efficiently and providing greater visibility for vertical content across the platform. In terms of execution in the third quarter, we focused on ensuring a smooth transition of the product and minimizing the impact on user behaviors. In the fourth quarter, we prioritized two key initiatives. First, we continued to refine our recommendation algorithm to improve recommendation efficiency by leveraging real-time user behavior, including clicks, time spent and engagement. We strengthened our instant recommendation capabilities and facilitated more in-depth content consumption. As a result, in the fourth quarter, both the average information feed viewership and time spent per user increased quarter-over-quarter. Second, we rolled out an algorithm-driven audience segmentation strategy to deliver more granular targeted content recommendations for users to engage on the platform. We maintained a stable distribution of relationship-based content within the interest-based feed, keeping a balance between relationship-based content and interest-based content, satisfying users' demand for social content consumption while improving the precision of content. Among social users, the average viewership and time spent per refresh and engagement per 1,000 viewership all increased quarter-over-quarter in the fourth quarter. We also revamped the new homepage with an easier onboarding experience for new users. With continued recommendation algorithm improvements, new users' average information feed consumption per refresh has exhibited upward trends. In the meantime, we also recognize that compared with the relationship-based feed, the market for the interest-based recommendation feed is highly competitive. In the transitional period, some user metrics remain volatile, which is within our expectation. Nevertheless, the strong content consumption by social users and new users has fully validated our current direction. Going forward, we will continue to leverage Weibo's social product and hot topics, further enhance the distribution of Weibo's unique content. Meanwhile, we will focus on establishing a more stable and predictable content consumption experience and enhancing user trust and stickiness with the homepage information feed, which lays a solid foundation for long-term user growth, engagement and monetization. As the interest-based feed became the core scenario for distribution, this will facilitate the distribution of our video content, which was previously mainly surfaced through the relationship-based feed. For video strategy in the second half of 2025, we focused on two key initiatives: first, enhancing video efficiency by strengthening the synergy between content and scenarios; second, improving the quality of video content. This involves incentivizing top-tier KOLs to produce more competitive content for the platform, while systematically managing low-quality video content to optimize the supply structure. In the second half of 2025, both the average daily video view time and the per-user video view time on the video playback page achieved double-digit growth compared with the first half of 2025. Furthermore, during the spring, the release and widespread adoption of AI video technology and tools significantly lowered the barrier for video creation. During the period, both the number of original videos and the number of original video content creators among our top creators grew over 40% year-over-year. Looking ahead, as AI technologies continue to evolve and advance, video production efficiency and quality are expected to improve further. In response, we will leverage product and content strengths in hot topics and vertical IPs, providing content creators with AI creation tools to support secondary content production and content expansion around vertical IPs. This further strengthens the competitiveness of Weibo's video content ecosystem. For example, among movies released during the spring festival, we partnered with a film to launch a fan creation contest where content creators used AI tools to produce creative adaptations based on the film and characters. Over 100 creators participated through the contest and the main production team interacted actively with the platform. The campaign sparked diverse discussions and engaged audiences from all verticals, providing a replicable marketing model. Subsequently, this AI-powered edition model is also being used for the current hit drama, helping to boost the show's visibility. Turning to search products. In the first quarter, we continued to focus on providing users with a more intelligent and convenient search experience. First, we continued to apply our AI capabilities to improve the accuracy of understanding users' needs and content. In high-frequency search scenarios such as hot topics and public figure search, we leveraged intelligent search to optimize search effectiveness and user experience, strengthening the mind share of search among Weibo users. Second, we upgraded the product form, evolving Weibo intelligent search from a single-round Q&A model to a multi-round conversational assistant, which better meets users' needs for more coherent and in-depth information discovery and exploration. Third, we expanded implementation of intelligence into more key scenarios, including content consumption and social interactions, reaching a broader user base. These initiatives led to continued growth in intelligent search user scale and engagement in the fourth quarter. In December, Weibo's intelligent search MAU surpassed 80 million with average DAUs and search queries booking double-digit growth quarter-over-quarter, driving overall platform search query volume further to improve. Moving on to monetization. In 2025, our ad product and sales teams consistently focused on two strategic priorities. First, continuing to promote Weibo's unique content marketing positioning across all industries; and second, systematically improving ad performance and conversion capabilities by leveraging AI technologies. In the fourth quarter, Weibo's ad revenues grew by 5% year-over-year. By industry, in the fourth quarter, we focused on capturing marketing opportunities in sectors with high budget visibility with e-commerce, automobile and local services serving as the primary drivers of top-line growth. Leveraging Weibo's strength in social products and hot trends, Weibo gained stronger recognition from e-commerce clients in delivering key campaigns and acquiring high-value users. As a result, the e-commerce sector booked notable year-over-year growth. Meanwhile, we successfully replicated this model to local service sectors, helping service-oriented advertisers such as food delivery platforms to achieve effective user acquisition in a highly competitive environment. We are pleased to see solid ad growth from the local service sector. The automobile sector also sustained steady growth, underpinned by Weibo's vertical ecosystem advantages. On the flip side, the handset industry experienced weaker traction factoring in product launch schedules and subsidy policy fluctuations. The online game sector continued to face pressure, mainly due to the lack of blockbuster game releases. Since the fourth quarter, with the tailwind from intensive rollouts of large language models, Weibo has become the go-to platform for companies to launch new products, promote AI technologies and build brand awareness, leveraging Weibo's well-established KOL ecosystem and professional discussion environment in the digital and technology sectors. Recent integration of major AI models such as Qwen by Alibaba and models from other providers drove nearly a 50% increase in related discussion on Weibo compared with discussion around the last major model rollout. This technological upgrade went viral on our platform, which also attracted trend-related ad budget. The AI sector is becoming a clear growth driver for our platform. For the full year, despite temporary fluctuation in ad budgets due to macroeconomics and industry-specific factors, our revenue structure demonstrated stronger resilience with content marketing consistently contributing approximately 50% of total ad revenues. Throughout 2025, we continuously optimized the marketing combo of high-quality native content production by KOLs and precise information feed targeting, thereby enhancing Weibo's overall competitiveness in brand awareness and conversion. Taking the new product launch programs as an example, in 2025, we served brand clients across 22 industries, leveraging synergy between high-quality celebrity and KOL content and feed ad placement. We established a full-funnel campaign model from amplifying brand awareness to driving conversion. This campaign model significantly improved clients' marketing effectiveness on our trends, creating a positive synergy between our monetization and performance-based advertising. In performance-based advertising, our AI application made notable progress. In December, AI-generated ad creatives already accounted for 40% of consumption in promoted feed ad offerings and the real-time bidding systems. AI integration has not only enabled us to greatly reduce advertisers' creative costs, but also improve traffic monetization efficiency through ongoing optimization of bidding models and conversion paths. Overall, Weibo achieved its annual ad revenue target as we beefed up organizational execution and AI-empowered capability in 2025. We are pleased to have further solidified and enhanced the competitiveness of Weibo's monetization ecosystem. Entering 2026, we will continue to create value for users with a focus on optimizing user experience and driving long-term retention. By balancing traffic operation efficiency with quality, we are committed to strengthening Weibo's ecosystem and reinforcing its long-term competitiveness while further growing our user community and engagement. Next, let me share some color on our key strategies for 2026 on three key fronts: user growth and engagement, content ecosystem and monetization. On user growth and engagement, we will prioritize retention of quality users in the hope of building a sustainable growth path featuring high-value and deeply engaged user communities. First, on the channel strategy, we will upgrade our full life cycle operation framework to optimize the entire new user journey from activation and onboarding to stable usage, thus enhancing the conversion of acquired users into core active users. Second, for the information feed products built upon the homepage revamp and capability building in 2025, 2026 will mark a new phase of user experience improvement and refined operation. We will continue to optimize Weibo's algorithm and strengthen engagement with the homepage information feeds so as to drive steady growth in both user engagement and time spent. Third, video will become our key strategic driver of user retention and time spent in 2026. The homepage revamp in 2025 has paved the way for more efficient video distribution across the platform. We have already achieved solid progress in improving content quality and fostering user mindset of video consumption on Weibo. In 2026, we will step up investment and leverage AI technologies to enhance video understanding and recommendation efficiency. Meanwhile, we will work to diversify our video content offerings, including original videos, mindshare-focused videos and short-form content. Through comprehensive upgrades across content, algorithms and product experience, we expect video to play an increasingly important role in driving user time spent and retention, supporting continued growth of our user base. On content, in 2026, we will continue to focus on three core pillars: hot trends, social products and search products to further our content ecosystem and strengthen our core competitiveness. First, on hot trends, we'll explore the synchronization of feed distribution and hot trend charts. On top of reinforcing the credibility of the hot search product, we aim to enhance recommendation efficiency of hot topics within the information feed and expand the scale of users engaging in discussion, which will enable us to reinforce core advantages in hot topic consumption and fandom. Second, on social products, we will continue to increase investment in super topic products. We will focus specifically on the interest-based needs of young users, deepen the operation of interest-based communities and enhance their experience. By cultivating social relationships and interactive mindsets on the platform, we aim to further boost user sense of belonging and engagement on Weibo. Third, on search product, building on the full rollout of Weibo intelligent search capability in 2025, we will focus on cultivating a differentiated search product in 2026. To elaborate, we seek to highlight search features, including searching people, IPs and hot trends. By integrating intelligent Q&A and conversational search experience, we aim to provide users with more accurate, efficient and differentiated search services. Moving on to monetization. In 2026, our key initiative is to capture market share in brand marketing through resource investment, specifically leveraging Weibo's cumulative strength in IP hot trends and celebrity ecosystem. We are pleased to see a broad-based trend with more brands showing recognition and stepping up ad budgets in our celebrity and content marketing. In light of this trend, we will upgrade our full-service IP marketing framework to enhance Weibo's competitive edge in brand marketing, leveraging services and a comprehensive metric of celebrity ad playbook. We will deepen partnerships with clients and participate in their decision-making process, thereby increasing wallet share in brand and content marketing ad budgets. Meanwhile, we will make prudent resource allocation among selected core marketing scenarios to build a portfolio with stronger competitive moats. This resource deployment will largely be structured around our existing marketing ecosystem. While this may cause some fluctuation in profit margin in the short term, overall pacing will be strictly managed based on ROI and kept within a controllable budget cap. As we continue to refine product ecosystem and client service capabilities, we expect this initiative to gradually yield returns from the second half of 2026 onwards. In the mid to long term, this initiative will help further elevate Weibo's position within clients' marketing decision-making chains, driving more sustainable revenue growth. In terms of performance-based advertising, we will maintain steady operations across core industries. Furthermore, empowered by AI technology, we will focus on further enhancing both ad targeting precision and the overall user experience. Finally, on value-added service, we aim for steady growth by refining the privilege system for paid users and expanding the coverage of V-Plus membership among top-tier content creators in the hope of promoting the creation of the V-Plus ecosystem to achieve significant revenue breakthroughs. On organizational efficiency, in 2026, with AI to drive front-end business growth, we will focus on expanding AI adoption across internal operations, enabling teams in product development, operations and monetization to use AI tools to enhance execution efficiency. We believe enhanced technological capabilities and organizational efficiency will be the cornerstone for achieving our strategic goals for 2026. With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for the financial review of the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025.

Fei Cao, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Gaofei, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Let's start with user metrics. In December 2025, Weibo's MAUs and average DAUs reached 567 million and 252 million, respectively. In 2025, thanks to the tailwinds of ever-evolving AI technologies, users were highly focused on exploring AI features to transform the whole user experience. AI is now deeply integrated into Weibo's recommendation engine, content generation and search functions, among others. Notably, user scale and search queries from Weibo intelligent search grew robustly this year with intelligent search MAUs exceeding 80 million. Heading into 2026, we will continue to invest in AI as the cornerstone and growth multiplier for our business, driving a more engaging experience for Weibo's user community. As a reminder, my prepared remarks will focus on non-GAAP results. Monetary amounts are in U.S. dollar terms and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Now let me walk you through our financial highlights for fiscal year 2025. Weibo's fourth quarter 2025 net revenues were USD 473.3 million, an increase of 4% or 1% on a constant currency basis. Operating income was USD 100.4 million, representing an operating margin of 21%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached USD 66.4 million, and diluted EPS was $0.25. For full year 2025, total revenue reached USD 1.76 billion, relatively flat year-over-year. Operating income was USD 523.6 million, representing an operating margin of 30%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached USD 439.8 million and diluted EPS was $1.65. Let me give you more color on fourth quarter and full year 2025 revenue performance. First, our advertising business. Weibo's advertising and marketing revenues for the fourth quarter 2025 were USD 403.8 million, an increase of 5% or 2% on a constant currency basis. Mobile ad revenues were USD 379.2 million, contributing approximately 94% of total ad revenues. We ended 2025 on a solid note. Advertising business for the fourth quarter trended better than our expectations despite weak consumption data in some industries. Our largest three verticals were e-commerce, 3C products and FMCG. In terms of growth contributors, e-commerce, local services, Internet services and automobile were the key contributors. We are pleased to see strong momentum in the e-commerce and local service sectors. Weibo has not only demonstrated its value proposition in driving brand exposure during mega shopping festivals, but also fulfilled platform user acquisition needs amid intensified market share competition. The automobile sector sustained solid growth this quarter, benefiting from Weibo's robust auto-related content ecosystem and ad spend from ICE vehicle brands. On the top-line pullback from the handset sector, we faced a tough comparison with handset manufacturers in the fourth quarter last year when trading subsidies took effect. The online game sector continued to underperform, mainly due to budget contraction from game developers. Full year 2025 advertising and marketing revenues reached USD 1.5 billion, largely flat compared to 2024, reflecting diverging performance across our key verticals. Mobile ad revenues contributed 95% of total ad revenue for the full year. Our largest verticals were FMCG, e-commerce and 3C products, with e-commerce, Internet services and automobile showing growth. Leveraging closer partnerships and stimulus policies, we captured higher wallet share from both the e-commerce and automobile sectors. However, our pillar industries—FMCG, 3C products and online games—were on a descending trend, partially due to tough comparisons resulting from incremental ad budgets tied to the Paris Olympics and blockbuster game releases in 2024. By ad product, promoted feed ad was the largest, followed by social display, topics and search. In 2025, we further amplified the synergy between content and monetization ecosystem, reinforcing Weibo's market differentiation around celebrities, IP and content marketing. On top of these initiatives, we focused on AI-powered ad technology upgrades to revamp Weibo's ad infrastructure. Our real-time bidding feed ad was a clear beneficiary of AI integration, which facilitated smarter ad targeting and generative AI ad creative solutions. Ad revenues from Alibaba for the fourth quarter were USD 50 million, representing approximately 12% of our ad revenues in the quarter, taking the year 2025 with sustained robust growth. We are encouraged to see Weibo's content and celebrity ad playbook regain traction with Alibaba amid the current competition and budget allocation dynamics. Full year ad revenues from Alibaba were USD 173.8 million, an increase of 49%, driven by a deeper collaboration during key e-commerce marketing windows and Alibaba's increased ad spend on its local services initiatives. Moving on to value-added services, or VAS. VAS revenues were USD 69.5 million in the fourth quarter, a modest decrease of 2%. For full year 2025, VAS revenues were relatively flat, reaching USD 255.6 million, which reflected a small increase in membership revenues offset by a decrease in game-related revenues. Turning to costs and expenses. Total cost and expenses for the fourth quarter were USD 372.8 million, an increase of 16%, mainly attributable to higher ad production costs and the step-up in marketing expenses. Full year cost and expenses reached USD 1.23 billion, an increase of 5%. Operating income in the fourth quarter was USD 100.4 million, representing an operating margin of 21% compared to 30% in the same period last year. Operating income for full year 2025 was USD 523.6 million, representing an operating margin of 30% compared to 33% in 2024. Turning to income tax under GAAP measures. Income tax expenses for the fourth quarter were USD 31.3 million compared to USD 20 million last year. The increase in income tax expenses was primarily due to withholding tax accrued related to our wholly foreign-owned entities' earnings to be remitted to Weibo Hong Kong Limited in the foreseeable future to fund its demand for U.S. dollars in business operations and potential investments, among other items. Full year income tax expenses were USD 144.5 million compared to USD 110.6 million in 2024. The increase was primarily due to withholding tax accrued related to our wholly foreign-owned entities' earnings to be remitted to Weibo Hong Kong Limited in the foreseeable future to fund its demand for U.S. dollars in business and potential investments, as well as the recognition of deferred tax liabilities related to equity pickup gains in 2025. Net income attributable to Weibo in the fourth quarter was USD 66.4 million, representing a net margin of 14% compared to 23% last year, primarily due to the above-mentioned impact from operating margin and income tax. Net income for full year 2025 was USD 439.8 million, representing a net margin of 25% compared to 27% in 2024. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow items as of December 31, 2025, Weibo's cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled USD 2.41 billion. Fourth quarter cash provided by operating activities was USD 181.4 million. Capital expenditures totaled USD 10.4 million, and depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to USD 15.3 million on a full year basis. Cash provided by operating activities for the full year was USD 519.5 million. Capital expenditures totaled USD 42.4 million, and depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to USD 59.1 million. In light of Weibo's solid profitability and healthy cash flow, we are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has approved an annual cash dividend of $0.61 per ordinary share or ADS for the fiscal year 2025 under Weibo's annual dividend policy. The total dividend payout will be approximately USD 150 million with payment expected to be made in May 2026. Looking ahead, we are committed to capitalizing on the transformative AI opportunities and unlocking the potential of our social media platform while maintaining robust financial health despite uncertainties with consumption sentiment and competition landscape. Our disciplined capital allocation supports our long-term strategies and ensures financial stability, enabling us to deliver sustainable returns to our shareholders. With that, let me now turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Due to no response, we'll move on to the next question. Our next question comes from the line of Xueqing Zhang from CICC.

Xueqing Zhang, Analyst (CICC)

My question is about AI strategy. As you mentioned in the prepared remarks, since the beginning of 2026, we have seen rapid development across the AI landscape, including significant improvements in AI video generation models as well as the increasing adoption of AI agents on the application side. We think this could fundamentally reshape both content creation and user interaction. Could management share what your strategy is in the AI era and what's our key focus for AI application in 2026? In addition, what's the plan to integrate the latest AI technologies into platform operations, for example, in content distribution, user engagement, video strategy and monetization? And lastly, could management give us an update on partnerships or integrations, including current progress and the role they play in your AI strategy?

Gaofei Wang, Chief Executive Officer

This is a very good question. I'd like to answer from two perspectives: first, the role of AI in Weibo as a product; and second, Weibo as a platform and our competitive positioning. On Weibo as a product: in 2025, the main consumer-facing AI product we launched was intelligent search. Behind that, we ran many experiments and strategic initiatives to expand AI capabilities. Through 2025 Q4 and into Q1 2026, we focused on capability improvements, especially the combination of agents with skills and multimodal capabilities. Historically, LLMs focused on text-only capabilities. Now, combining agentic capabilities and multimodal models enables richer interaction: dialogue generation, multi-turn Q&A and more coherent, in-depth responses. You can test these features on Weibo's website or app. Productization beyond search: our core content historically centered on text and images, and we have worked to transition core creators to become video creators. With improved AI capabilities, creators become more creative and expressive. That's why we've invested heavily in video generation technology and computing power. In Q1 2026, you saw very good growth of video generation and video content on Weibo quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year, and we also see promising monetization potential. AI-enhanced content creation empowers creators to generate more videos directly or to convert text and images into compelling videos. On Weibo as a platform: Weibo is actively disseminating AI knowledge and AI application content. Our large user base, especially creators in science and technology and digital products, are active in generating AI-related content and discussions on Weibo. As a platform, we continue to facilitate this. This activity also drives traffic, such as around the Chinese New Year period previously. We have integrated with an increasing number of AI models and providers, for example Qwen and other popular models, to enable richer interactions on the platform. These integrations have led to increased commenting and interaction volumes. In short, we see Weibo becoming a platform that services AI applications and facilitates dissemination and interaction around AI content. We are connecting with agentic AI providers to support features such as commenting assistance and other user interactions. All of these AI models and agentic AIs are actively leveraging Weibo's large user base to drive interactions and discussions about AI on our platform.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Citigroup.

Alicia Yap, Analyst (Citigroup)

Can management share with us, in light of the current macro situation and also the intensified competition in AI products, how management sees advertiser budget sentiment and their ad spend? What is the growth expectation that management has set for Weibo for 2026? What is the overall advertising strategy and how can Weibo leverage and embrace AI applications to enhance ad growth? And also, how has Weibo been using AI to improve operating efficiency?

Gaofei Wang, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for this question. Regarding advertiser budget sentiment and near-term growth: in Q4 we had ad revenue growth of about 4% to 5% year-over-year. In Q1 2026, we expect to see single-digit growth versus the same period last year. Because of AI-related traffic growth, we have been bringing many new customers onto our platform. Macro events such as sporting events also provide some incremental revenue. In consumption-related verticals, we saw a slowdown in Q4 versus Q3, but national consumption growth expectations remain positive. By verticals: we expect e-commerce and automotive to show very good growth in 2026. For handset and gaming industries, there are uncertainties. Handsets may see periodic growth, and given current component cost pressures, medium-to-high-end handset advertisers who spend on our platform still face some uncertainty. We expect handset advertising to be roughly flat in 2026. On ad formats and strategy: in 2025, we saw advertisers return to original marketing mechanisms such as KOL and celebrity-driven campaigns, which increased volume but did not necessarily raise ARPU. In 2026, we plan to update our service provision system to focus more on high-quality service and embedding into the upstream of advertisers' decision-making chains. We aim to package several products together, provide cost advantages to customers and improve ARPU. Content-based marketing continues to grow and contributed about 50% of our total ad revenue in 2025. We will continue investing in KOLs and content to sustain this momentum. Performance-based ads grew in 2025 and accounted for about 17% of our total ad revenue, up 3 to 4 percentage points year-over-year. Our strategies include optimizing algorithms and improving conversion metrics. On AI adoption for ads and operations: AI is helping us optimize ad targeting, generate creatives, and improve real-time bidding efficiency. AI-generated creatives already accounted for a significant portion of promoted feed consumption in December, and AI has enabled us to reduce advertisers' creative costs and improve traffic monetization. Internally, we are rolling out AI tools to improve operating efficiency across product development, operations and monetization teams. Overall, we are confident in generating ad revenue growth from better service, product packaging, AI-driven performance improvements and deeper client partnerships.

Operator, Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the conference back to Sandra for closing remarks.

Sandra Zhang, IR Representative

Thank you, operator. This wraps up our conference call today. We'll see you next quarter.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.