On March 3, BiliBili (NASDAQ: Bili, HK: 9626; referred to as "station B") released its unaudited financial reports for the fourth quarter and the whole year ended December 31, 2021.
● according to the financial report, the total revenue of station B in 2021 was 19.38 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62%. Among them, the revenue in the fourth quarter increased by 51% year-on-year to 5.78 billion yuan. At the same time of business expansion, the loss range of station B has expanded: the company's net loss in the fourth quarter of 2021 was 2.096 billion yuan, compared with 840 million yuan in the same period of last year; For the whole year, the net loss of the company was RMB 6.809 billion in 2021 and RMB 3.054 billion in 2020.
The main reason for the expansion of losses is the rise of operating costs. The operating costs of station B increased by 62% year-on-year to 4.68 billion yuan in the fourth quarter; The annual operating cost increased by 67% to 15.3 billion yuan compared with 9.2 billion yuan in 2020, of which the cost of revenue sharing was 7.7 billion yuan, an increase of 77% compared with 2020; The increase in operating costs was mainly due to the increase in revenue share paid to live broadcast hosts and content creators, as well as the increase in payments to distribution channels when expanding mobile games and value-added services.
In the previous night's earnings conference call, for the profit issues concerned by the outside world, fan Xin, chief financial officer of station B, gave the breakeven schedule: station B is confident that by improving the realization rate of a single Mau and controlling operating expenses, the annual non GAAP (non GAAP) operating loss rate will be narrowed year-on-year from 2022, and the medium-term goal is to achieve non GAAP breakeven in 2024.
At the same time, station B also announced that the board of directors had approved the share repurchase plan. Station B will repurchase up to $500 million of American Depositary Shares (ads) in the next 24 months. In addition, Chen Rui, chairman and CEO of the company, announced that he plans to use his personal funds to purchase American Depositary Shares (ads) with a total amount of no more than US $10 million in the open market in the next 24 months.
However, the above measures have not stopped the decline of b-stop stocks. On March 4, b-stop Hong Kong stocks fell lower and closed down 12.86%.
It is disclosed that the revenue of station B consists of value-added services, games, advertising, e-commerce and other four businesses. In the fourth quarter, the average monthly active users of station B reached 272 million and the average monthly active users of mobile terminal reached 252 million, both achieving a year-on-year increase of 35%; In the same period, the average monthly paying users of station B increased to 24.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 37%, and the payment rate increased to 9.0%.
In terms of specific business, relying on the development momentum of live broadcast and large member business, the value-added service revenue of station B in the fourth quarter reached 1.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 52%. The annual value-added service revenue reached 6.93 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 80%. By 2021, more than 70% of the millions of fans of station B are also live anchors. In the whole year, more than Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co.Ltd(600000) content creators earned income through live broadcasting.
In terms of game business, the revenue of station B game business in the fourth quarter increased by 15% year-on-year to 1.3 billion yuan; The annual revenue was 5.1 billion yuan, an increase of 6% year-on-year; At present, station B has obtained the version numbers of five new games and will be launched in China in the future. In the overseas market, 13 games will be released this year as planned.
In terms of advertising business, with the strong momentum of rapid growth of users and expansion of brand influence, the advertising business revenue of station B increased by 120% to 1.59 billion yuan in the fourth quarter. The annual advertising revenue reached 4.52 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 145%. In the fourth quarter, games, e-commerce, 3C products, food and beverage and automobile became the top five advertisers.
In addition, with the rapid increase of e-commerce platform sales, the revenue of e-commerce and other businesses of station B was 2.8 billion yuan last year, an increase of 88% year-on-year.
When reviewing and looking forward to the performance, Chen Rui, chairman and CEO of station B, said: in the past three years, the user scale of station B has more than doubled and the revenue scale has nearly tripled. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the monthly live users of station B increased by 35% year-on-year to 272 million. The community continued to maintain the characteristics of high activity and high stickiness, with an average daily use time of 82 minutes.
Entering 2022, achieving healthy and high-quality growth remains our top priority. In the wave of "video", we will continue to build a multi category and multi scene content ecosystem to meet the increasingly diverse content consumption needs of users and provide users with useful and valuable video content for daily life. We always believe that growth is a means, not an end. While expanding the user base and improving the commercialization ability, we will also focus on improving business efficiency, narrowing losses, and long-term commitment to exploring things of value to the community and positive significance to the society.
For further plans for this year, Chen Rui responded in a teleconference that in the past, the balance between user growth and income growth of station B was 73%, that is, user growth accounted for 70% and income growth accounted for 30%. In the work plan for 2022, the distribution proportion will be adjusted to 50-50, that is, 50% of the energy will be spent on user growth and 50% of the energy will be spent on income growth; Income growth will become a more important job this year than in the past; Among them, in terms of advertising revenue, although the growth of the overall digital advertising market is expected to slow down, the company is confident to achieve growth higher than the industry average.
In this financial report, station B also forecasts the revenue in the first quarter of 2022, which is expected to reach 5.3 billion yuan to 5.5 billion yuan.
