Applovin Corp (APP) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome, everyone, to AppLovin's earnings call for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2022. I'm Ryan Gee, Head of Investor Relations. And joining me today to discuss our results are Adam Foroughi, our Co-Founder, CEO and Chairperson; and Herald Chen, our President and CFO.

歡迎大家參加 AppLovin 截至 2022 年 12 月 31 日的第四季及全年財報電話會議。我是投資者關係主管 Ryan Gee。今天與我一起討論業績的還有我們的共同創辦人、執行長兼董事長 Adam Foroughi，以及我們的總裁兼財務長 Herald Chen。

Please note, our SEC filings as well as our shareholder letter discussing our fourth quarter performance are available at investors applovin.com. During today's call, we may be making forward-looking statements regarding future events, market expectations or future financial performance of the company and the strategic review of our apps portfolio. These statements are based on our current assumptions and beliefs, and we assume no obligation to update them, except as required by law. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted. We encourage you to review the risk factors in our most recently filed Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended December 30, 2022, and in our upcoming Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022. We will also be discussing non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be a substitute for, or superior to, our GAAP results. Please be sure to review the reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures in our shareholder letter.

請注意，我們向美國證券交易委員會 (SEC) 提交的文件以及討論我們第四季度業績的股東信均可在 investors applovin.com 上查閱。在今天的電話會議中，我們可能會就未來事件、市場預期或公司未來財務表現以及我們應用組合的策略評估做出前瞻性陳述。這些陳述是基於我們目前的假設和信念，除法律要求外，我們不承擔更新這些陳述的義務。實際結果可能與預測結果有重大差異。我們建議您查看我們最近提交的截至2022年12月30日財季的10-Q表以及即將發布的截至2022年12月31日年度的10-K表中的風險因素。我們也將討論非公認會計準則 (non-GAAP) 財務指標。這些非公認會計準則 (non-GAAP) 財務指標並非旨在取代或優於我們的公認會計準則 (GAAP) 績效。請務必查看我們致股東信中公認會計準則 (GAAP) 和非公認會計準則 (non-GAAP) 財務指標的對帳表。

This conference call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our IR website shortly. I'd now like to turn it over to Adam for some opening remarks, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. Please go ahead, Adam.

本次電話會議正在錄製中，重播將很快在我們的投資者關係網站上發布。現在，我想請 Adam 致開幕詞，然後我們將進入問答環節。 Adam，請繼續。

Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for joining us today. Recently, I was reflecting on our first 1.5 years as a public company. Some things are certainly much different from when we were private. A lot more people are fixated on quarterly results than our long-term plan. Every day, there's a scoreboard or a stock price, and of course, we hold these earnings calls every quarter. We did not do that when we were private. But the most important things have not changed one bit.

謝謝，Ryan。感謝您今天加入我們。最近，我一直在回顧我們作為一家上市公司的前一年半。有些事情確實與我們私有化時大不相同。現在，人們更關注季度業績，而不是我們的長期計劃。每天都有記分板或股價，當然，我們每季都會舉行財報電話會議。私有化時我們並沒有這樣做。但最重要的事情一點也沒有改變。

First and foremost, the most important thing we've got here is our team and culture. Our key team continues to work very closely together to deliver on our products and our vision, and we continue to add great talent to our team while maintaining our entrepreneurial and lean culture. And second is our motivation. We're all still incredibly hungry today and working harder than ever before because the opportunities we see in front of us are bigger than anything we've ever seen in the past.

首先，也是最重要的，我們擁有的是我們的團隊和文化。我們的核心團隊持續緊密合作，致力於實現我們的產品和願景。我們不斷吸收優秀人才，同時保持我們創業精神和精益的企業文化。其次，是我們的動力。今天，我們依然充滿渴望，比以往任何時候都更加努力，因為我們面前的機會比以往任何時候都更加巨大。

The other thing that hasn't changed is the need for relevant advertising. Relevant advertising funds free digital content. As we talk about the economic slowdown and we talk about the IDFA and privacy headwinds, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that relevant advertising helps consumers discover content, and it helps the publisher monetize the content that they've developed that they're giving away for free. If any part of this equation breaks down, you're going to end up having less usage and consumption and less investment into great content, and it's just going to be a tremendous loss for consumers and businesses. Because of that, we know that our industry is going to be resilient.

另一件始終未改變的事情是對相關廣告的需求。相關廣告為免費數位內容提供資金。當我們談論經濟放緩、IDFA 和隱私方面的阻力時，我們有時會忽略一個事實：相關廣告能夠幫助消費者發現內容，並幫助出版商將他們開發並免費提供的內容變現。如果這其中任何一個環節出現問題，最終都會減少使用量和消費量，並導致對優質內容的投資減少，這對消費者和企業來說都將是巨大的損失。正因為如此，我們相信我們的產業將會保持韌性。

So what are the business opportunities that we hear are most focused on today? Number one, over the last several years since we released AXON, the advancements in AI technologies have been incredible. Well, now we're working on AXON 2. We're going to use some of these new technologies for release some point in 2023. We believe this new platform and upgrade to our core technology will make an immense impact on our business and for our business partners.

那麼，我們目前聽到的、最受關注的商業機會是什麼？首先，自從我們發布 AXON 以來的幾年裡，人工智慧技術已經取得了令人難以置信的進步。現在我們正在開發 AXON 2。我們將在 2023 年的某個時候發布 AXON 2，並運用其中一些新技術。我們相信，這個新平台和核心技術的升級將對我們的業務以及我們的業務合作夥伴產生巨大的影響。

Second, we're really excited about the Connected TV space. We're actively extending our marketing solutions today to the Connected TV device. This category of advertising is bigger than the one we operate in today, and it's much faster growing. We believe this is going to become a big part of our Software Platform in the coming years and a very fast-growing one.

其次，我們對連網電視領域充滿期待。我們目前正在積極將我們的行銷解決方案擴展到連網電視設備。這一廣告類別比我們目前經營的廣告類別規模更大，而且成長速度更快。我們相信，未來幾年，它將成為我們軟體平台的重要組成部分，並且成長非常迅速。

And third, we continue to invest in innovative products to help carriers and OEMs better monetize their users. We all know that handset device sales have slowed down as mobile market is saturated, and these constituents need better products to be able to monetize their audience with. And we're going to deliver those products.

第三，我們將繼續投資創新產品，幫助營運商和原始設備製造商更好地從用戶身上獲利。我們都知道，隨著行動市場飽和，手機設備銷售已經放緩，這些用戶需要更好的產品來獲利。而我們將提供這些產品。

As we've gone public a little over 1.5 years ago, we continue to operate the same way we did private because we know that works. We were incredibly successful for a decade before we went public, focusing on building long-term products and technologies that are innovative, that when we release them into the market and have success with, we can create immense value gains for our business, our shareholders and our customers.

我們上市已經一年半多了，但我們仍將沿用私有化時的運作方式，因為我們知道這種方式行之有效。在上市之前的十年裡，我們取得了巨大的成功，專注於打造具有長期發展前景的創新產品和技術。當我們將這些產品和創新技術推向市場並取得成功時，就能為我們的業務、股東和客戶創造巨大的價值效益。

With that, I'm going to hand it off to Herald.

有了這些，我將把它交給《先驅報》。

Thanks, Adam. In our last two shareholder letters, we talked about a theme of stability, which is a very nice thing to have in this current market environment. In particular, we have stability with a fantastic team, and we have stability with our business model and financial profile. That affords us the resources and time to invest wisely in our existing and leading products, new initiatives as well as invest for the future.

謝謝，亞當。在我們最近的兩封給股東信中，我們談到了「穩定」這個主題，在當前的市場環境下，擁有穩定是一件非常值得慶幸的事情。具體來說，我們擁有一支優秀的團隊，業務模式和財務狀況也保持穩定。這讓我們有充足的資源和時間，可以明智地投資現有和領先的產品、新項目以及未來發展。

There's a couple of other themes that we wanted to touch on today as well, two of them being simplification and focus, both internally and externally. Internally, we are focused on what we can control and spend a lot of time ensuring that our best resources are allocated to our best returning projects. An example of that has been our effort to optimize our apps portfolio, which is nearing completion. We spent the last 6 months working on headcount reductions, reformatting, earn-outs, focused on the sale and spin and closure of underperforming assets. And that's really allowed us now to get to a position where we've increased the cash flow, and management time is now focused on delivering value with our remaining portfolio.

今天我們還想談幾個其他主題，其中兩個是精簡和專注，既要精簡內部，也要精簡外部。在內部，我們專注於可控的領域，並投入大量時間確保將最佳資源分配給回報最佳的專案。例如，我們一直在努力優化應用程式組合，目前該專案已接近尾聲。過去六個月，我們致力於裁員、重組、獲利能力評估，並專注於出售、分拆和關閉表現不佳的資產。這確實讓我們現在能夠增加現金流，管理層現在將精力集中在利用剩餘產品組合創造價值上。

We're pleased to say we have 11 remaining studios and publishing partners that we're excited to invest to grow and ultimately maximize the value of that portfolio going forward. One note you'll see in the shareholder letter in our financials that we did is that we did take a $128 million net loss charge for the divestiture and closure of these assets, including $100 million in the fourth quarter. Another area where we're simplifying and focusing is on the initiatives we have in hand. As Adam mentioned, we've got some amazing projects underway that we're super optimistic about. And that means the bar for our M&A program has gone up. We're certainly still in the market for assets that are attractive to us, but they would need to be highly synergistic, strategic and a great valuation. So the bar is high for M&A.

我們很高興地宣布，我們目前仍有11家工作室和發行合作夥伴，我們非常樂意投資這些工作室和發行合作夥伴，以促進其發展，並最終實現投資組合價值的最大化。您將在我們財務報表的致股東信中看到，我們確實為這些資產的剝離和關閉計入了1.28億美元的淨虧損，其中包括第四季度的1億美元。我們正在簡化和關注的另一個領域是我們手頭上的項目。正如亞當所提到的，我們正在進行一些非常棒的項目，我們對這些項目非常樂觀。這意味著我們的併購專案門檻提高了。我們當然仍在尋找對我們有吸引力的資產，但它們需要具有高度的協同效應、策略性和良好的估值。因此，併購的門檻很高。

And lastly, we remain focused on what we've always been focused on when we were private or public, and that's making decisions for the long term. So that while we will still -- we will give the first quarterly guidance 1 quarter out, we're very much focused on the long term and won't manage to near-term targets.

最後，我們仍然專注於我們在私有化或上市時始終關注的事情，那就是製定長期決策。因此，雖然我們仍會在第一季發布第一個季度業績指引，但我們非常注重長期發展，不會著眼於短期目標。

Turning to the financials quickly, and I won't reiterate all the facts and data that's in the shareholder letter, but I will highlight a few key things. First of all, the fourth quarter came in at the high end, both on the top line and bottom line for where we guided to in the third quarter for the fourth quarter. Included in that was Software Platform performance, which grew 24% year-over-year. For the entire year '22, we came in at $2.8 billion of revenue and generated over $1 billion of EBITDA, and that equates to a 38% margin. Then for the first quarter of this coming year, we're guiding to essentially the quarter being flat to the fourth quarter in total revenue as well as total EBITDA.

快速回顧一下財務數據，我不會重複致股東信中的所有事實和數據，但我會強調幾個關鍵點。首先，第四季的營收和淨利潤均高於我們第三季的預期，達到了最高水準。其中包括軟體平台的業績，年增了24%。 2022年全年，我們的營收為28億美元，EBITDA超過10億美元，利潤率為38%。對於明年第一季，我們預計總營收和EBITDA將與第四季基本持平。

One note for the next quarter is we are going to change and simplify some of our KPIs that we're reporting, in particular with regard to the Software Platform side of the equation. We believe several of the metrics that we have been offering are a bit confusing and really are not indicative or helpful to understanding our business. That's because the Software Platform apps, applications and solutions have become much broader, the size of the customers are different as well. So having a singular metric like SPEC and revenue per SPEC aren't terribly helpful. So we'll be taking away those 2 metrics as well as the TSTV metric going forward.

下個季度要注意的是，我們將修改並簡化一些報告的KPI，特別是軟體平台方面。我們認為，我們之前提供的一些指標有些令人困惑，實際上對理解我們的業務並無幫助。這是因為軟體平台的應用、應用程式和解決方案的範圍已經變得非常廣泛，客戶規模也各不相同。因此，像SPEC和每SPEC收入這樣的單一指標並沒有太大幫助。因此，我們將在未來取消這兩個指標以及TSTV指標。

What we do want to focus you though are on the metrics that are meaningful. And our biggest business in Software Platform is the AppDiscovery business plus ALX. And there's a metric that we've been reporting historically, and we'll report going forward that we do think is important. And that's around our revenue per install and the number of installs. And we will continue to report those metrics going forward.

我們真正想讓大家關注的是那些有意義的指標。我們在軟體平台最大的業務是AppDiscovery業務和ALX。我們過去一直在報告一個我們認為非常重要的指標，未來也會繼續報告。這個指標與我們的單次安裝收入和安裝數量有關。我們未來將繼續報告這些指標。

In '22 over '21, that metric increased 46% in terms of revenue per install for ALX and AppDiscovery and increase in terms of the number of installs by 24%. So we would guide you to make sure you're focused on those metrics going forward. And of course, we will continue to evaluate one of the best metrics to describe our business going forward as other components of our software business grow over time.

與21年相比，2022年，ALX和AppDiscovery的單次安裝收入成長了46%，安裝數量增加了24%。因此，我們希望您能夠在未來繼續關注這些指標。當然，隨著我們軟體業務其他組成部分的不斷發展，我們將繼續評估這項最能體現我們業務發展的指標之一。

In terms of the overall financial performance of our business, we are glad that we had $1 billion of EBITDA, and we have now over $1 billion of cash. We are very focused on free cash flow as well. And you'll see in our shareholder letter, we've added a new table where we've given you the $8 trillion quarters of free cash flow performance. We had $260 million of EBITDA in the fourth quarter and $132 million of free cash flow. Our definition of free cash flow is the free cash flow from operations, less CapEx and less finance leases. So we think that's a great indicator of not just EBITDA, but actual free cash flow to the bottom line which we're proud of.

就我們業務的整體財務表現而言，我們很高興EBITDA達到了10億美元，現在我們的現金流也超過了10億美元。我們也非常關注自由現金流。在我們的股東信中，您會看到我們新增了一個表格，其中列出了8兆美元季度自由現金流的表現。第四季我們的EBITDA為2.6億美元，自由現金流為1.32億美元。我們對自由現金流的定義是營運產生的自由現金流減去資本支出和融資租賃。因此，我們認為這不僅是EBITDA的一個很好的指標，也是我們引以為傲的實際自由現金流。

Our financial position allows us to have this resiliency in our business where we can invest in what we wanted to grow as well as find new investments going forward, and that can range from M&A where there's a high bar, but also share buybacks. In terms of share buybacks, as you can see, in '22, we invested over $340 million against our $750 million authorized buyback. But in the fourth quarter, we did not buy back any shares as we are continuing to assess our capital allocation policy as well as increase the amount of cash in the quarter so that we ended the year with over $1 billion of cash. We think we're well positioned today and going forward, given the financial wherewithal for our business to invest in our -- in the initiatives we are excited about as well as consider other investments, including share repurchases going forward.

我們的財務狀況使我們的業務擁有韌性，既可以投資於我們想要成長的領域，也可以在未來尋找新的投資機會，這些投資既包括門檻較高的併購，也包括股票回購。就股票回購而言，如您所見，2022年，我們投資了超過3.4億美元，而我們授權的回購金額為7.5億美元。但在第四季度，我們沒有回購任何股票，因為我們正在繼續評估我們的資本配置政策，並增加本季的現金流，因此我們在年底擁有超過10億美元的現金。鑑於我們業務所需的財務資源，我們認為，無論是現在還是未來，我們都處於有利地位——投資於我們預期的計劃，並考慮其他投資，包括未來的股票回購。

So in summary, we're very glad to have the stability that we have in our business as well as the financial wherewithal that we have. We think we've got an amazing team focused on the right things, and we're optimistic about the future ahead.

總而言之，我們很高興看到業務的穩定性以及雄厚的財務實力。我們認為我們擁有一支專注於正確事情的優秀團隊，我們對未來充滿樂觀。

And with that, I'll turn it over to Ryan for Q&A.

接下來，我將把時間交給 Ryan 進行問答。

Yes. Thank you, Herald. So we'll now begin the question-and-answer portion of the call. (Operator Instructions). Our first question will come from Vasily Karasyov from Cannonball Research.

是的。謝謝《先驅報》。現在我們將開始問答環節。 （接線生指示）。第一個問題來自 Cannonball Research 的 Vasily Karasyov。

Adam, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that Connected TV is one of the growth areas. So I think investors and analysts at this point understand Connected TV pretty well, they understand what you do. Can you help us connect how exactly you're going to address that market and what function you're hoping to perform there and what kind of revenue opportunities you see maybe in simple terms? I would appreciate it.

亞當，您在準備好的發言中提到，連網電視是成長領域之一。所以我認為投資人和分析師目前對連網電視非常了解，他們了解你們的業務。您能否用簡單的語言，幫我們解釋一下，你們將如何應對這個市場，你們希望在這個市場發揮什麼作用，以及你們看到了哪些收入機會？我將不勝感激。

Yes, for sure. I'll speak to just the product side. We're a performance marketing business at its core. And what we've done really well in mobile over the last decade is enable advertisers to buy advertising, full-screen video ad, high definition and measure all the performance of everything that happens after the fact and be able to buy effectively as arbitrage marketers. The Connected TV device is really exciting for us because it's a television device, full screen, living room, tons of consumption per day. It's Connected to the Internet. But today, we're not seeing that much performance advertising happening at large scale on that platform, especially when it comes to mobile app developers.

是的，當然。我只談產品方面。我們的核心業務是效果行銷。過去十年，我們在行動領域做得非常出色，讓廣告主能夠購買廣告、全螢幕影片廣告、高清廣告，並衡量所有後續活動的效果，從而能夠像套利行銷人員一樣有效地購買。連網電視設備對我們來說非常令人興奮，因為它是一款電視設備，全螢幕，在客廳裡，每天的消費量龐大。它連接到互聯網。但目前，我們在該平台上還沒有看到太多大規模的效果廣告，尤其是在行動應用程式開發者方面。

In the last couple of years, we invested in an attribution company that's one of the leaders in trying to bring attribution to Connected TV device. We invested in Wurl, which has -- effectively, we've talked about a CDN for streamers for very high-profile media companies to bring their content to fast channels. Then we've also got our core performance platform that, we think, is the leader in mobile marketing. And we're going to take that and use Wurl to bring it to market in Connected TV, and we think it can become a big opportunity. As far as revenue and numbers, this is still really early days here. We believe it will become a substantial and growing part of our Software Platform over years, but we're not ready to talk numbers at this point.

過去幾年，我們投資了一家歸因公司，它是將歸因技術引入連網電視設備的領導者之一。我們投資了Wurl，實際上，我們一直在探討為知名媒體公司提供串流內容分發網路（CDN），以便將其內容快速推送到各個頻道。此外，我們也擁有核心績效平台，我們認為它是行動行銷領域的領導者。我們將利用Wurl將其推向連網電視市場，我們認為這將是一個巨大的機會。就收入和數據而言，現在還處於起步階段。我們相信，未來幾年，它將成為我們軟體平台中一個重要且不斷增長的組成部分，但目前我們還不準備透露具體數字。

So essentially, will you be acting as a DSP in programmatic CTV (inaudible) but with performance advertising. Is that the right way to think about it?

那麼，本質上，你們會不會在程式化CTV（聽不清楚）中扮演DSP的角色，但會使用效果廣告？這樣想對嗎？

I'd think about it as full stack. So the same way in mobile, we're an SSP and a DSP. Wurl, today, has a very well-performing SSP business. We, AppLovin, our biggest business is our DSP. We'll couple those pieces and have a full stack offering for Connected TV partners.

我認為這是一個全端解決方案。就像在行動領域一樣，我們既是 SSP，也是 DSP。 Wurl 目前擁有表現非常出色的 SSP 業務。而我們 AppLovin 最大的業務就是 DSP。我們將把這兩個部分結合起來，為連網電視合作夥伴提供全端解決方案。

Next, we'll go to Ralph Schackart with William Blair.

接下來，我們將與威廉布萊爾一起拜訪拉爾夫沙卡特。

Adam, in the prepared remarks, you talked about the upgrade that's coming in sometime in 2023 for AXON 2. And I think you said it could have a significant or immense impact. Maybe just a little bit more color about that? Will that be something that will phase in over time? Will it be more sort of abrupt in nature, meaning you potentially have a bigger impact in the near term? Would just love a little bit more color on that, please?

亞當，在準備好的發言中，您提到了 AXON 2 將於 2023 年左右推出的升級。我記得您說過這可能會產生重大甚至巨大的影響。能不能再詳細一點？升級會隨著時間的推移逐步實施嗎？升級會不會是突然性的，也就是說短期內可能會產生更大的影響？請您再詳細一點，好嗎？

Yes. I mean, look, we released AXON 1, I guess, is a little over -- it was around 3 years ago. We started working on it 4 years ago. Business grew a ton since we did that. I think we 10x-ed over the period of time from AXON 1 to today. It did build over time. I mean, that's how these technologies work. In the period of time since we built that first technology, obviously, we all know there's been huge advancements in AI technologies. And we're working on bringing those to our core platform. The rollout and potential growth from it is just building more efficiency into our system, which will benefit our advertisers. They should be able to hit their goals at larger scale, creating more growth for them and in the category and obviously will benefit us. We don't yet know if it's going to be a step function and continue to build over time, but we do believe that will be how it will look.

是的。我的意思是，我們發布 AXON 1 的時間應該有點晚了——大概是三年前。我們四年前開始研發它。從那以後，業務成長了很多。我想從 AXON 1 到現在，我們的業務成長了 10 倍。它確實是隨著時間的推移而發展的。我的意思是，這些技術就是這樣運作的。自從我們開發出第一項技術以來，我們都知道人工智慧技術已經取得了巨大的進步。我們正在努力將這些技術引入我們的核心平台。它的推出和潛在的成長只會提高我們系統的效率，這將使我們的廣告客戶受益。他們應該能夠更大規模地實現他們的目標，為自己和整個產業創造更多的成長，這顯然也會讓我們受益。我們還不知道這是否會是一個逐步推進的過程，並隨著時間的推移而持續發展，但我們相信它會是這樣的。

Great. And just one more on the macro, if I could, please. In the letter, you talked about Q4 being soft but stable with Q3, and then Q1 being relatively stable. Maybe just kind of talk about the linearity there. Has it been, I guess, sort of stable over that period? Is it improving? Just any more color you could add on the macro, that would be great.

太好了。如果可以的話，請再補充一點關於宏觀經濟的情況。在信中，您提到第四季表現疲軟但與第三季相比保持穩定，而第一季也相對穩定。或許可以談談這方面的線性。我想，這段時間經濟表現比較穩定嗎？情況有改善嗎？您能否補充一些關於宏觀經濟的細節，那就太好了。

So in our business, what is directly tied to our revenue, the biggest part of our revenue, is performance marketing. And in particular, the largest part of our segment is game advertisers. Game advertisers or performance marketers, they're buying on some sort of return curve. They have an LTV to CAC model that works in today's market. That's a lot more conservative than it was 1.5 years ago when interest rates were near 0.

因此，在我們的業務中，與我們的收入直接相關的，也就是我們收入的最大組成部分，就是效果行銷。尤其是，我們業務中最大的組成部分是遊戲廣告商。遊戲廣告商或效果行銷人員，他們根據某種回報曲線進行購買。他們有一個適用於當今市場的LTV到CAC模型。這比一年半前利率接近零時保守得多。

As cost of capital went up last year, advertisers got conservative in performance because you just can't afford as long a payback as before. But those values were reset with an expectation of interest rates getting to sort of today's levels. And that was done a couple of quarters ago. So what we've seen in our business might be disconnected from what we talk about in the macro economy as a whole. But in the performance marketing sector, the advertisers got conservative, but they're not getting any more conservative because we're not seeing material changes in the economy today versus a couple of quarters ago. And so we've seen a lot of stability in our business and continue to do so.

隨著去年資本成本的上升，廣告商在績效行銷方面變得保守，因為他們無法像以前那樣承受如此長的回報期。但這些價值在利率預期達到目前的水平後被重新設定。而這在幾個季度前就已經發生了。因此，我們在自身業務中看到的情況可能與我們談論的整體宏觀經濟狀況並不一致。但在績效行銷領域，廣告商變得保守了，但他們並沒有變得更加保守，因為我們沒有看到今天的經濟與幾個季度前相比發生重大變化。因此，我們的業務保持了很大的穩定性，並且這種穩定性將繼續保持下去。

Well, next go to David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

好的，接下來請看摩根大通的 David Karnovsky。

Adam, I guess the logical question after that last comment would be kind of what breaks developers out of that conservative mentality? Is that kind of macro based? And then a separate question, Herald, just regarding your apps portfolio, any update on what you think is the right margin for that to run at going forward? And as you listed the sale of assets in the future as a possibility, I'm curious to know if you had any expressions of interest from strategic or financial buyers at any point?

亞當，我想，在最後一條評論之後，一個合乎邏輯的問題是，是什麼讓開發者擺脫了保守的心態？這種心態是基於宏觀因素的嗎？然後，《先驅報》還有一個問題，關於你們的應用程式組合，你認為未來的合理利潤率是多少？既然你提到了未來出售資產的可能性，我很好奇，你們是否有策略或金融買家表示有意向？

Yes. So on the first question, the reality is performance marketing advertisers have an approach. They have an LTV to CAC, and they have their own products. So if their products improve, they can spend more. If interest rates go down, they can spend more. But what's more in our control and what's going to drive this for our business and our partners are our efficiency gains in our core technologies. And that's what I'm talking about with AXON 2.

是的。關於第一個問題，現實情況是，效果行銷廣告主有自己的方法。他們有生命週期價值 (LTV) 和獲取成本 (CAC) 的比率，也有自己的產品。所以，如果產品改進，他們就可以增加支出。如果利率下降，他們也可以增加支出。但我們更能掌控的，並且能夠推動我們業務和合作夥伴實現這一目標的，是我們核心技術的效率提升。這就是我所說的 AXON 2。

We all know that these core technologies, these AI-based implementations of technology are continuing to evolve. As they get more efficient, what ends up happening is advertisers have the same goal, but you can drive them more scale. They start growing their business. They're reinvesting more and more into it. It's all arbitrage marketing on the front end. And on the back end, the algorithm continues to perform better as the technologies evolve over time. That's a trend we've seen over the last decade. It's accelerating now, and it's something that we're very excited about as we look out into our business into the future.

我們都知道，這些核心技術，這些基於人工智慧的技術實現正在不斷發展。隨著它們變得越來越高效，最終的結果是，廣告商的目標與廣告主相同，但你可以推動他們實現更大的規模。他們開始拓展業務，並不斷加大投入。前端完全是套利行銷。而在後端，隨著技術的不斷發展，演算法的效能也會不斷提升。這是我們在過去十年中看到的趨勢。現在，這種趨勢正在加速，展望未來，我們對此感到非常興奮。

David, thanks for the question. So on the apps side, as we mentioned, we've been in the process of optimizing that portfolio. We do think in the first half of this coming year or this year, that we'll start to (inaudible) in terms of the trough of revenue. And the margin has gone up, as you've noted.

David，謝謝你的提問。在應用程式方面，正如我們所提到的，我們一直在優化產品組合。我們確實認為，在明年上半年或今年，我們的收入將開始觸底。利潤率已經上升，正如你所提到的。

I'd say from there then, it really depends on our opportunity to grow the assets. So we're excited that of the 11 studios, I think all of them have opportunities for growth. Many of them have some new games that they're thinking about launching this year. And so if we have a hit, we'll invest in dollars there, and we'll bring down the margin. Right now, we're obviously in the very high teens. And that could back to the low teens, something in that range if we're investing in new games. It really depends on how robust that return is on those dollars. So I'd say expect the revenue side to still come down a bit in the near term, but eventually, we'll reach a steady state and then think about how to grow the business from there. But I would say longer run rate is probably a mid-teens type of margin for that business.

我想說，從那時起，一切都取決於我們是否有機會發展資產。所以，我們很高興看到這11家工作室都擁有成長機會。他們中的許多人都計劃在今年推出一些新遊戲。所以，如果我們有一款熱門遊戲，我們就會在那裡投入資金，並降低利潤率。目前，我們的利潤率顯然處於15%左右。如果我們投資新遊戲，利潤率可能會回到15%左右，也就是這個區間。這真的取決於這些資金的回報率有多強勁。所以我預計短期內收入仍會略有下降，但最終我們會達到穩定狀態，然後再考慮如何在此基礎上發展業務。但我認為，長期來看，這項業務的利潤率可能會達到15%左右。

And just on the M&A side, look, we would take an offer if it was the right price for these assets. But as we said, we've now winded it down to these 11 studios that we really like. We're excited to work with them. The market is obviously difficult given cost of capital out there. And so we're going to manage these things as if we own them forever. And if people do show up at the right price, we'll look to optimize the portfolio, as we said we would along the way.

就併購方面而言，如果這些資產的價格合適，我們會接受報價。但正如我們所說，我們現在已經將收購範圍縮小到我們真正看好的11家工作室。我們很高興能與他們合作。考慮到目前的資本成本，市場顯然很艱難。因此，我們會像永遠擁有它們一樣管理這些資產。如果有人以合適的價格出現，我們會努力優化投資組合，就像我們一直以來所說的。

Yes. The only thing I have to add, too, is we've removed the distraction of weaker-performing studios. We're now really proud of the studios that we have. The leaders of these studios are exceptional talent. They've got great teams underneath them. The pipelines are really strong at these studios. We do look at this business unit now is something that we're excited about going forward.

是的。我唯一要補充的是，我們已經消除了業績較弱工作室的干擾。我們現在對現有的工作室感到非常自豪。這些工作室的領導者才華橫溢，擁有優秀的團隊。這些工作室的人才儲備非常強大。我們確實非常看好這個業務部門，並對未來充滿期待。

We'll next go to Clark Lampen with BTIG.

接下來我們將和 BTIG 一起拜訪 Clark Lampen。

I had a question maybe first on competitive dynamics across maybe both the sort of gaming but also broader ad market in light of, I guess, more recently sort of peer mergers, but also some of your peers talking about making progress closing the targeting gap relative to sort of pre-IDFA levels. Has that had an impact? Or has that showed up in sort of developer conversations. And then maybe a follow-up on the AXON update. Are you in a beta stage right now where there are clients actually sort of testing this product for you? Or could we use the baseball analogy to maybe think about how close we are or what sort of progress you maybe have made, I guess, against the formal launch versus last quarter?

我首先想問一個問題，關於遊戲市場以及更廣泛的廣告市場的競爭動態。最近出現了一些同儕合併，你們的一些同行也談到了在縮小定位差距方面取得的進展，這與IDFA之前的水平相比如何。這樣有影響嗎？或在與開發者的對話中有所體現。然後我想問AXON更新的後續狀況。你們現在是否處於測試階段，是否有客戶正在為你們測試這款產品？或者我們能否用棒球來打個比方，想想我們目前距離正式發布還有多遠，或者說你們取得了哪些進展？與上個季度相比，你們的正式發布版本相比如何？

Thanks, Clark. I'll start with the second one first. We're not ready to talk about timing. We do expect it to go full scale in '23. And obviously, we always have love products to come to market at large scale faster. This product is super complex. We're really excited about the prospects. It does take time to develop, and we first started talking about it a few quarters ago. What we -- all we can tell you today is, we think, it's going to make an impact in '23. And it's also not a rollout to customers. It's effectively taking the old engine and upgrading it. So it will impact the whole business at once when it does go to full scale.

謝謝，克拉克。我先從第二個問題開始。我們還沒準備好討論時間安排。我們預計它將在2023年全面上市。顯然，我們一直希望產品能更快大規模上市。這款產品非常複雜。我們對它的前景感到非常興奮。它的開發確實需要時間，我們在幾個季度前就開始討論它了。我們今天能告訴你的是，我們認為它會在2023年產生影響。而且它也不是面向客戶的首次公開亮相。它實際上是在對舊引擎進行升級。因此，當它全面上市時，它會立即影響整個業務。

On the first question, competition in the ecosystem with M&A or ad algorithms improving. We've been in an advertising sector for 12 years now. I've been doing this for nearly 20 years. Advertising is immensely competitive. There's a lot of players that are trying to get ad dollars from advertisers and trying to build algorithms to help those advertisers market themselves. There's never been a shortage of competition. Now what we do know about our sector is that if algorithms improve, if targeting can get back to pre-IDFA levels, the category was growing almost double digits every single year consistently for a decade. The IDFA change impaired that growth prospect. So all of us marketing companies are really in the business of improving our algorithms.

關於第一個問題，生態系統中的競爭隨著併購或廣告演算法的改進而加劇。我們從事廣告業已有12年，而我本人從事這一行業已有近20年。廣告業競爭異常激烈。許多參與者試圖從廣告商那裡獲得廣告收入，並試圖建立演算法來幫助這些廣告商進行行銷。競爭從未間斷。現在，我們對廣告業的了解是，如果演算法得到改進，如果定位能夠恢復到IDFA之前的水平，那麼該類別在過去十年中每年都會保持近兩位數的成長。 IDFA的變化削弱了這一成長前景。因此，我們所有行銷公司都在努力改進我們的演算法。

And when together, the category gets to a point where it was before, the category itself will get back to growth. We sit at a leadership point in the category with a market-leading monetization solution and a market-leading growth platform with AppDiscovery. So we'll stand to benefit greatly if that does happen in the marketplace.

當這些因素共同作用，該類別恢復到先前的水平時，本身也會恢復成長。我們在該領域處於領先地位，擁有市場領先的獲利解決方案和AppDiscovery市場領先的成長平台。因此，如果市場真的出現這種情況，我們將受益匪淺。

We'll next go to Bernie McTernan with Needham.

接下來我們將和 Needham 一起拜訪 Bernie McTernan。

Great. Just 2 for me. First, just the broad question Adam had. Any thoughts on DOJ suing Google what that means for AppLovin? And then for Herald, anything special about the $1 billion in cash? Just wanted to follow up on the comments and no buyback in the quarter, if that kind of $1 billion cash balance is what a minimum you want to maintain on the balance sheet?

太好了。我只想問兩個問題。首先，亞當問的是一個比較廣泛的問題。你對司法部起訴谷歌有什麼看法？這對 AppLovin 來說意味著什麼？然後，對於 Herald 來說，這 10 億美元現金有什麼特別之處嗎？我只是想跟進一下評論，以及本季度沒有回購，如果 10 億美元的現金餘額是你希望在資產負債表上維持的最低限額的話？

Well, look, all we can do is speak about our experience with Google. We're a large cloud customer. They launched their bidding solution onto our platform. I think it was our first large-scale external implementation of bidding. They obviously help monetize -- publish our inventory with better advertisements than any company we've ever seen before. So with us, we're great partners, and we look forward to expanding that partnership into the future.

嗯，我們能做的就是談談與Google合作的經驗。我們是雲端服務領域的大客戶。他們在我們的平台上推出了競價解決方案。我認為這是我們首次大規模的外部競價實施。他們顯然幫助我們實現了盈利——用比我們見過的任何公司都更好的廣告來發布我們的庫存。所以，我們是很好的合作夥伴，我們期待未來進一步拓展這種合作關係。

Yes. Thanks for the question. With regard to the $1 billion and the buyback, there's nothing magical about $1 billion. This is just a lot of money, and we're glad to have it on our balance sheet. But the reality is we're bullish on our business, as we talked about. We need to be patient. We think we're going to be stable for the short term here. And so we want to be careful with the cash balance and think about our capital allocation.

是的，謝謝你的提問。關於10億美元和回購，10億美元並沒有什麼神奇之處。這只是一大筆錢，我們很高興這筆錢出現在我們的資產負債表上。但事實上，正如我們之前所說，我們對自己的業務充滿信心。我們需要耐心等待。我們認為短期內我們的業務會比較穩定。因此，我們需要謹慎處理現金餘額，並仔細考慮我們的資本配置。

And then the fourth quarter as well as the third quarter, we had different projects going on. The market was changing, the financial market was also, the cost of capital was changing. But we feel really good where we are today. We think having over $1 billion of capital on the balance sheet does help. We are generating a lot of free cash flow as we highlighted. We think that will continue in the first quarter. And we are investing in all the projects internally as we can. So we will, again, as we always do with our Board, think carefully about capital allocation, and we still think our stock is a great place to put money to work.

第四季和第三季度，我們都有不同的項目在進行。市場在變化，金融市場也在變化，資本成本也在變化。但我們對目前的狀況感覺非常好。我們認為資產負債表上超過10億美元的資本確實有幫助。正如我們所強調的那樣，我們正在產生大量的自由現金流。我們認為這種情況將在第一季持續下去。我們正在盡可能地在內部投資所有項目。因此，我們將再次像我們董事會一貫的做法一樣，仔細考慮資本配置，我們仍然認為我們的股票是投資資金的絕佳選擇。

I'll next go to Matt Cost with Morgan Stanley.

接下來我要去找摩根士丹利的馬特‧科斯特。

There's a perception based on some of those third-party data out there about in-app purchase behavior at the level of the mobile games market that maybe things are bottoming out exiting '22 into '23. I guess you're pretty well positioned to assess, both from your view into the market and from your own games whether or not that might be true. But maybe more importantly, whether or not the rate of change of consumer spending is bottoming out, when that does ultimately turn, like we've been through a year to really weak spending? When it turns around, is that something you expect to flow through to the in-app advertising market pretty quickly? Or is there likely to be more of a lag there? And then I have a follow-up.

根據一些第三方關於行動遊戲市場應用程式內購買行為的數據，人們認為2022年到2023年，市場可能正在觸底。我想，無論是從您對市場的觀察，還是從您自己開發的遊戲來看，您都完全有能力評估這種說法是否屬實。但或許更重要的是，消費者支出的變動率是否正在觸底？何時最終出現轉機？就像我們經歷了一年非常疲軟的支出成長一樣。當支出出現好轉時，您是否預期這會很快波及應用程式內廣告市場？還是說，應用程式內廣告市場可能會出現更大的延遲？然後我還有一個後續問題。

So we think what drove the growth in in-app purchasing over the last decade had a lot more to do with the marketing technologies and targeting than it did with the economy. Consumers need to discover content that they love to be able to go spend in it. And the IDFA change really handicapped the category, and it happened abruptly. Now it's been 1.5 years, technologies are starting to adapt. We just saw this in some other earnings reports. You've seen the stability in our earnings reports. All of us marketing companies are working on improving our algorithms to be built around what today's era of privacy allows you to do.

因此，我們認為，過去十年推動應用程式內購買成長的因素與行銷技術和目標定位有關，而非經濟因素。消費者需要發現自己喜歡的內容，才能在其中消費。 IDFA 的變更確實阻礙了這個類別的發展，而且發生得非常突然。如今已經過去一年半了，科技開始適應。我們剛剛在其他一些財報中看到了這一點。各位已經看到了我們財報的穩定性。我們所有的行銷公司都在努力改進我們的演算法，以適應當今隱私時代允許的操作。

It takes time to do that. The game developers themselves also are working to create content that's different than what they would have built 1.5 years ago. Whale hunting, which is an industry term, but marketing to go buy whales for games they can monetize consumers at immense levels is just not something that's possible anymore in today's identity-free universe. And so game developers have had to go figure out how to make more casual games. That's also a cycle.

這需要時間。遊戲開發者本身也在努力創作與一年半前不同的內容。 「獵鯨」是一個行業術語，但在如今這個沒有身份認同的世界裡，透過行銷手段購買「鯨魚」玩家，從而從消費者身上賺取巨額收益，這已經不再可能了。因此，遊戲開發者不得不思考如何製作更休閒的遊戲。這也是一個循環。

The other thing that isn't widely known is that a lot of the number -- the top grossing games in the in-app purchasing category come from developed in China. When these Chinese development teams have been highly inefficient in a zero-COVID state, and that's just reversed out. So you're going to get back to more efficiency.

另一件鮮為人知的事情是，許多應用程式內購類別中收入最高的遊戲都來自中國。這些中國開發團隊在零疫情狀態下效率極低，而這種情況正在逆轉。所以你們會恢復更高的效率。

So we think there's a lot of reasons why we're seeing stability. And we think there's also growth that will come in the future. We don't know exactly when, as the marketing platforms improve and as the game developers adapt to this new era.

所以我們認為，我們看到穩定的原因有很多。我們也認為未來還會有成長。我們不知道具體什麼時候，但隨著行銷平台的改進和遊戲開發者逐漸適應這個新時代，情況會有所改善。

Great. And then using the new disclosure, if I read it correctly, I think that pricing grew at almost double the rate of volume in the quarter. So I'm just wondering, is that sort of a recovery off of a period of lower auction and bid density? Is that the way you should think of what happened in the quarter? And then are you expecting pricing to be a stronger driver than volume over the course of the coming quarter and year as things hopefully recover?

太好了。如果我沒理解錯的話，根據新的披露信息，我認為本季定價的增長速度幾乎是交易量的兩倍。所以我想知道，這是否是拍賣和投標密度較低時期的復甦？您是否應該這樣看待本季發生的情況？然後，隨著市場有望復甦，您是否預計在未來一個季度甚至一年中，定價將成為比交易量更強勁的驅動力？

Yes. Thanks, Matt. Just one correction for you. It wasn't the quarterly metrics there. It's actually the annual metrics from '22 over '21, was the -- I guess, the revenue per install was twice the rate of the actual installs. And that really has to do a lot with the efficacy of AXON and then the increase in the volume, both from our network side as well as our ability to bring on more publishers. So it was really the combination of the two of them. And those are metrics that we did report in our public financials historically, and we'll continue to talk about those going forward.

是的，謝謝，馬特。我只想糾正一下。這裡指的不是季度指標，而是2022年和2021年的年度指標——我猜，每次安裝的收入是實際安裝量的兩倍。這很大程度上得益於AXON的效率，以及流量的成長，包括我們網路方面的成長，以及我們吸引更多發行商的能力。所以，這其實是兩者的結合。這些指標我們過去在公開財務報告中都有報告，未來也會繼續討論這些指標。

We'll take the next question from Franco Granda with D.A. Davidson.

我們將回答 D.A. Davidson 的 Franco Granda 提出的下一個問題。

Two for me today. So entering last year, you had talked about the expectation to have $10 billion transacted through your platform. Last quarter, you obviously stopped talking about it due to macro, but what was the actual number for '22? And then what was the number exiting -- the run rate number exiting the fourth quarter? And then for the second question, what is the magnitude of investments for the AXON 2 upgrade?

今天有兩個問題。去年年初，您曾談到預計透過您的平台交易金額將達到100億美元。上個季度，由於宏觀因素，您顯然停止了談論這個話題，但2022年的實際數字是多少？第四季的運行率是多少？第二個問題，AXON 2升級的投資規模是多少？

So I think the first question, you're talking about our MAX monetization platform, how many dollars are flowing through it. We're not disclosing exact. The MAX platform, though, has a ton of reach in the industry. We actually recently asked our team to pull top apps in both app stores to see how much usage of our platform there was versus the rest of the market. And about 2/3 of those apps, top downloaded apps, are monetizing using your MAX solution. So in terms of usage, there's been exactly what we expected with that platform, market-leading.

所以我想第一個問題，您說的是我們的MAX獲利平台，有多少資金透過它流轉。我們不會透露具體數字。不過，MAX平台在業界擁有巨大的影響力。實際上，我們最近要求我們的團隊從兩個應用程式商店中提取一些熱門應用，看看我們平台的使用情況與市場其他應用程式的使用情況相比如何。結果顯示，大約有三分之二的下載量最高的應用程式都使用了你們的MAX解決方案來獲利。所以，就使用情況而言，該平台的表現正如我們預期的那樣，處於市場領先地位。

What's changed versus the beginning of last year and today -- or end of the year are CPMs, in particular from brands. As the economy became more difficult throughout the year, the dollars and the density in the ad auction, which is monetized by many companies more than us, has decayed. So that would be what threw us off of our projection. But the daily active users and the trends to MAX usage are exactly where we thought they'd be. They're performing very well.

與去年年初和今年年底相比，變化的是每千次展示費用（CPM），尤其是來自品牌的每千次展示費用。隨著全年經濟情勢愈發嚴峻，廣告競價（許多公司比我們更能從中獲利）的收益和密度都在下降。所以，這才是我們偏離預期的原因。但每日活躍用戶和最大使用量趨勢與我們預期的完全一致。它們的表現非常好。

On the magnitude of the AXON investment, that's all built into our P&L. Our R&D investments, in line with what I mentioned on my talk track around our culture, are always going to be lean. We've got a core group of talent on our engineering team, and we're adding really exceptional people to that team. But we're adding them in the tens, not hundreds or thousands, so you don't see a dramatic R&D expense line in our business. Yet we do invest heavily into new products that can make a big impact.

關於AXON的投資規模，這都已計入我們的損益表。我們的研發投入，正如我在關於公司文化的演講中提到的那樣，始終保持精實。我們的工程團隊擁有一批核心人才，並且不斷吸收真正優秀的人才加入。但我們吸收的人數是幾十人，而不是幾百人或幾千人，因此你不會看到我們業務中大幅的研發支出。然而，我們確實在那些能夠帶來巨大影響力的新產品上投入了大量資金。

We'll next go to Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

接下來我們請到高盛的 Eric Sheridan。

Maybe 2, if I can. One sort of bigger picture question that maybe is a little bit outside the box. Obviously, you talked earlier in the call about Connected TV. How do you think about taking the data engine you've built? And I know, obviously, the central dynamic is still around mobile gaming. But how do you think about taking the data engine and the platform and thinking about a wider array of canvases and possibly a wider array of SKU and industry verticals from the advertiser side, either through your own organic efforts and maybe through partnership around the broader advertising landscape, that would be number one.

如果可以的話，可能是第二個。這是一個更大層次的問題，可能有點超出常規。顯然，您之前在電話會議中談到了聯網電視。您如何看待利用您建立的數據引擎？我知道，核心動力顯然仍然圍繞著行動遊戲。但是，您如何看待利用數據引擎和平台，並從廣告商的角度考慮更廣泛的畫布，以及更廣泛的SKU和行業垂直領域？無論是透過您自己的有機努力，還是透過圍繞更廣泛的廣告領域的合作，這都是首要問題。

And you talked a lot on the call about how we've gotten sort of back to a level of stability, but probably not full return from a demand perspective on the advertising side. Is the way to frame up the element of how much of your margin structure is somewhat held back or depressed by a lack of return to sort of pre-IDFA or pre-pandemic normalization levels? And in which case, a full recovery could possibly be an extra layer of tailwind to the incremental margin structure?

您在電話會議上多次談到我們已經恢復到某種程度的穩定水平，但從廣告需求的角度來看，可能還沒有完全恢復。您能否解釋一下，由於收益未能達到IDFA或疫情前的正常化水平，您的利潤結構在多大程度上受到了抑製或壓低？在這種情況下，全面復甦可能會為增量利潤結構帶來額外的助力？

Thanks, Eric. I'll answer the first one. Herald will take the second. On the first one, to answer the question simply, we're super excited about the potential to extend our marketing engine and the algorithms to other platforms. So CTV, obviously, being the first. And there's nothing that restricts us to the games category. Games is obviously the largest part of our AppDiscovery solution. But really the limitation, so far, has been that our advertisements almost always show up in the games. And if you're doing a contextual and behavioral advertisement, that signal is very strong to match up a game advertiser and a game publisher.

謝謝，Eric。我來回答第一個問題。 Herald 會回答第二個問題。關於第一個問題，簡單來說，我們對將我們的行銷引擎和演算法擴展到其他平台的潛力感到非常興奮。 CTV 顯然是第一個。而且沒有什麼能限制我們只專注於遊戲類別。遊戲顯然是我們 AppDiscovery 解決方案中最重要的部分。但到目前為止，真正的限制在於我們的廣告幾乎總是出現在遊戲中。如果你做的是情境廣告和行為廣告，那麼這個訊號就非常強，可以與遊戲廣告商和遊戲發行商配對。

While Connected TV offers a completely different landscape for us, we believe what's missing from that platform is performance marketing, and we can do that well. But our engine, our data is not limited to just gaming. So we think the Connected TV screen is going to allow us not only to extend game advertising to that television device, but also to bring other advertising for other companies.

雖然連網電視為我們提供了一個完全不同的格局，但我們認為該平台缺少的是效果行銷，而我們可以做得很好。我們的引擎和數據並不局限於遊戲。因此，我們認為連網電視螢幕不僅能讓我們把遊戲廣告擴展到電視設備上，還能為其他公司帶來其他廣告。

Wurl, for instance, works very closely with a lot of high-profile streaming businesses. And advertising on a performance basis for those is a huge initiative and big opportunity. And we think as we talk about our Connected TV business in a couple of years, we're going to be talking about a wide breadth of advertiser types.

例如，Wurl 與許多知名串流媒體公司密切合作。對這些公司來說，基於效果的廣告是一項巨大的舉措，也是一個巨大的機會。我們認為，幾年後當我們談論連網電視業務時，我們將會討論各種各樣的廣告客戶類型。

The margin side for our business, we're at a steady state and stable as we talked about. But we are excited by the fact that if we can lift, for example, our biggest business, in particular, on the AppDiscovery side with an AXON 2.0 implementation at some point, those are very high-margin dollars to flow through the bottom line, and that would be a pretty meaningful increase in EBITDA for the segment and EBITDA for the overall business.

正如我們之前所說，我們業務的利潤率目前處於穩定狀態。但我們也很高興，如果我們能夠透過 AXON 2.0 的實施，提升我們最大的業務，尤其是 AppDiscovery 業務，那麼這些利潤率非常高的業務將流入我們的底線，這將對該部門的 EBITDA 以及整個業務的 EBITDA 帶來相當顯著的成長。

What does offset that is there is infrastructure costs that do increase, but obviously at a much slower rate potentially. And then we do have an incremental headcount that we're hiring. As Adam said, more in the 10s and 20s, not hundreds, to go after some of these new initiatives that are pretty big, whether it be CTV or endeavor into a business called Array, which is focused on the OEM carrier space. So that could bring down margins to some degree. But we're comfortable with the margins we run out today, and we think it's more incremental on the upside, in particular, for our biggest business to the extent we can get that to grow.

抵消這一影響的是基礎設施成本確實在增加，但顯然成長速度會慢得多。此外，我們確實在招募增量員工。正如亞當所說，我們招募的員工數量更多，大概在十幾二十人之間，而不是幾百人，用於推進一些規模相當大的新項目，無論是CTV，還是進軍名為Array的業務，後者專注於OEM運營商領域。因此，這可能會在一定程度上拉低利潤率。但我們對目前的利潤率感到滿意，我們認為，只要我們能夠推動其成長，利潤率的成長將更具增量性，尤其對我們最大的業務而言。

We'll next go to Omar Dessouky with Bank of America.

接下來我們將拜訪美國銀行的 Omar Dessouky。

One of the large hyper-casual publishers that reported earlier this week appeared to be implying that they would be reducing advertising spend. And I was wondering, number one, how consequential is the hyper-casual market to your ad platform? And number two, are you seeing that as a kind of trend in the fourth quarter and potentially going forward? And then I have a follow-up on hyper-casual.

本週早些時候，一家大型超休閒遊戲發行商發布財報，似乎暗示將削減廣告支出。我想知道，第一，超休閒遊戲市場對你們的廣告平台有多大的影響？第二，您是否認為這是第四季以及未來可能出現的趨勢？然後，我還有一個關於超休閒遊戲的後續問題。

Yes. So we've got a lot of density of advertisers. No single category makes up a huge part of our business. And as you saw in our numbers in Q4, our numbers were really stable. And in Q1, we're guiding to similar numbers to Q4, both for top line and bottom line, implying that our software business is really healthy right now. So yes, certain categories, especially those that are dependent on ads, might perform worse. On the flip side, when you have a super-dense auction and you work with tons of advertisers across a lot of different genres and you've got a good targeting engine that doesn't create exposure for you in your business.

是的。所以我們的廣告客戶密度很高。沒有哪個單一類別能佔據我們業務的很大一部分。正如你從我們第四季的數據中看到的，我們的數據非常穩定。第一季度，我們的營收和利潤預期與第四季度持平，這意味著我們的軟體業務目前非常健康。所以，某些類別，尤其是那些依賴廣告的類別，表現可能會更差。另一方面，當你進行超密集的競價，與大量不同類型的廣告客戶合作，即使你擁有一個優秀的定位引擎，也無法為你的業務帶來曝光。

Great. And then the follow-up question is that, according to industry experts, Google has begun sending rejection notices for ad exposures and formats that are not compliant with its new Better Ads Experiences policy. This policy disallows interruptive interstitial ads among other practices. And I was wondering whether this is something the industry is over already? Or is it something that -- is the solution to this problem within AppLovin's technology stack? Or is it at the kind of studio level? And again, is it affecting -- have you seen any of the effects of this policy on hyper-casual?

太好了。接下來的問題是，據業內專家稱，谷歌已經開始對不符合其新版「更佳廣告體驗」政策的廣告曝光和廣告格式發出拒絕通知。這項政策禁止插頁式廣告等其他廣告形式。我想知道，這個行業是否已經結束了？或者這個問題的解決方案是在AppLovin的技術堆疊內部嗎？還是在工作室層面？再說一次，它是否影響了——您是否看到過這項政策對超休閒遊戲的影響？

Yes. We actually don't expect any effects from the policy. We didn't see any early on. We don't expect any going forward because the best apps, the ones with a lot of users, they don't tend to show ads out of place. The policy itself was explicitly written to prevent a publisher from showing an ad when a user expected something else.

是的。我們實際上並不認為這項政策會產生任何影響。我們一開始並沒有看到任何效果。我們也不認為未來會產生任何影響，因為最好的應用，那些擁有大量用戶的應用程式，通常不會在不合適的位置展示廣告。這項政策本身的明確目的是防止發布商在使用者預期其他內容時顯示廣告。

So for example, you go click a Play the Game button and you get a pop up ad. That's disruptive, and Google doesn't want that. Well, the highest quality publishers and the ones that are at scale that we work with or know personally, our bigger customers, they can never run ads like that because users usually churn out of those games. So it's certainly a policy to clean up the app store. But the Google Play app store has millions of apps in it. The ones that are large-scale apps never engage in those types of practices.

例如，你點擊「玩遊戲」按鈕，就會彈出一個廣告。這會造成乾擾，Google不希望出現這種情況。好吧，那些最優質的發行商，以及那些與我們合作或私下認識的大型發行商，也就是我們的大客戶，永遠不能投放這樣的廣告，因為這些遊戲的用戶通常會流失。所以，這當然是一項清理應用程式商店的政策。但 Google Play 應用程式商店裡有數百萬個應用程式。那些規模較大的應用從不參與此類行為。

We'll next go to Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse.

接下來我們請瑞士信貸的 Stephen Ju 來發言。

So I guess you spent a lot of time talking about potentially expanded opportunities. And I think in the past, we've talked about the advertising opportunity outside the games vertical. I get that this is probably a tough market to go after new business. But I was wondering if you can comment on where you may be seeing greater traction because I would love to see the games as a percentage of ad revenue deindex over time and other performance-oriented budgets starting to flow into AppLovin.

所以我想你花了很多時間談論潛在的擴展機會。我想我們過去也討論過遊戲垂直領域以外的廣告機會。我知道這個市場可能很難拓展新業務。但我想你能否談談哪些領域可能會帶來更大的吸引力，因為我希望看到遊戲在廣告收入中所佔的比重隨著時間的推移而下降，而其他以效果為導向的預算開始流入AppLovin。

Yes. Thanks, Stephen. We're looking at expansion there on the Connected TV screen and also with the carrier OEM product. Both of these are advertisements into placement without context. But when you're showing an advertisement in a game app, it's really hard to suggest that you could go, especially as the world goes to more contextual with some data in order to drive relevant advertisement but with more of a contextual signal, it's really hard to suggest that it's a good strategy to go outside the gaming sector in that publisher set. We do believe that these other categories of advertising will become very big businesses for us over time. And we also have a gateway into that category with that Adjust team and all of the nongaming advertisers they work with. If you recall, when we first did that transaction, we talked about the majority of their 4,000-plus customers are nongaming customers. And these are the types of customers that are really excited about our Connected TV offering.

是的，謝謝，Stephen。我們正在考慮在連網電視螢幕以及電信商OEM產品上進行擴充。這兩種方式都是將廣告投放到沒有情境的場所。但是，當你在遊戲應用程式中展示廣告時，很難說可以這樣做，尤其是在世界越來越注重情境化，利用一些數據來驅動相關廣告的情況下，但隨著越來越多的情境訊號出現，很難說在遊戲發行商領域之外開拓廣告是一個好策略。我們確實相信，隨著時間的推移，這些其他類別的廣告將成為我們非常大的業務。我們也透過Adjust團隊以及他們合作的所有非遊戲廣告商進入了這個領域。如果你還記得的話，我們第一次進行那筆交易時，我們談到了他們4000多家客戶中的大多數都是非遊戲客戶。而這些客戶對我們的連網電視產品非常感興趣。

We'll take our next question from Martin Yang with Oppenheimer.

我們將回答奧本海默公司的馬丁楊的下一個問題。

So my first question is on new games release environment. You talked about potential growth opportunity from the 11 studios where there are new games. Can you maybe comment on how does new game release environment change over time versus pre-pandemic or pre-IDFA? And is there any signals that give you confidence that those new games can test well and then release on the market as you expected?

我的第一個問題是關於新遊戲發行環境的。您談到了11家新遊戲工作室的潛在成長機會。您能否評論一下，與疫情前或IDFA之前相比，新遊戲發行環境隨著時間的推移發生了哪些變化？是否有任何跡象讓您有信心，這些新遊戲能夠順利測試，並如您所願在市場上發行？

Well, look, with the changes in marketing, the bar has gone way up for new games. Traditionally, you can create iterations of working concepts in the market. Now developers have to be a lot more innovative to get a new game to grow. And our studios have made the same shift. The ones that we've retained have really strong development teams and are working on games. The ones that are in soft launch will get tested longer now. We'll make sure that the data looks strong before we release it to market, that it will be something that we're confident in. And the ones that are developing are no longer developing the way they would have 1.5 years ago. They're developing in a new format.

嗯，隨著行銷的變化，新遊戲的門檻也大幅提高。傳統上，你可以在市場上不斷迭代可行概念。現在，開發者必須更具創新性才能推動新遊戲發展。我們的工作室也做出了同樣的轉變。我們保留的工作室擁有非常強大的開發團隊，並且正在開發遊戲。處於測試發行階段的遊戲現在將接受更長的測試。我們會確保在將遊戲推向市場之前，數據看起來強勁，確保它是我們值得信賴的。而正在開發的遊戲不再像一年半前那樣開發。他們正在採用一種新的開發模式。

And we think this is where the whole market is going to go is you're going to take longer-term bets that are more innovative. There might be less likelihood of success to new games, so you don't expect 1 out of every 2 games to hit, maybe it's 1 out of every 4 or 5. But by creating innovative new concepts, it can expand the market over time. And so that's where we're investing, and we think we have the teams to do that well.

我們認為，整個市場的未來發展方向是，你需要進行更長期、更具創新性的投資。新遊戲的成功幾率可能更低，所以你不會期待每兩款遊戲就有一款能成功，也許是每四款或五款遊戲中就有一款。但透過創造創新的新概念，它可以隨著時間的推移擴大市場。這就是我們投資的方向，我們相信我們擁有優秀的團隊。

Got it. A follow-up question on games is, can you maybe comment broadly on what genres do you see a higher success rate in this market? And what type of business model within the games? Is it hybrid in-game purchase plus advertising? Advertising only? or in-game purchase?

明白了。關於遊戲的後續問題是，您能否大致評論一下，您認為哪些類型的遊戲在這個市場上成功率更高？遊戲的商業模式是什麼？是遊戲內購買加廣告的混合模式？還是純廣告？還是遊戲內購？

Yes, we think it's those...

是的，我們認為是那些…

All those vectors.

所有這些向量。

We think it's a requirement now for developers to make hybrid, just as you said. If you can't go and market to the whales, well, you've got to monetize the whole audience. And traditionally, the IAP category, 95% of the users were unmonetized, 5% were whales. They funded this $100 billion and growing space. Now you can't go find those users as successfully as before. So you've got to monetize the 95% to subsidize the cost of acquiring the 5%. And that's actually really good for us in our MAX business and our AppDiscovery business because it brings more inventory online, and we're starting to see some of those trends.

正如您所說，我們認為現在開發者必須開發混合應用。如果你不能瞄準「鯨魚」用戶，那麼你就必須讓所有用戶都獲利。傳統上，在應用程式內購買 (IAP) 領域，95% 的用戶沒有實現盈利，只有 5% 是「鯨魚」用戶。他們為這個價值 1000 億美元且不斷成長的市場提供了資金。現在你無法像以前那樣成功地找到這些用戶。所以你必須讓這 95% 的用戶獲利，以補貼取得這 5% 用戶的成本。這實際上對我們的 MAX 業務和 AppDiscovery 業務非常有利，因為它帶來了更多線上庫存，我們也開始看到一些這樣的趨勢。

We'll take our last question from Mark Zgutowicz with Benchmark.

我們將回答 Benchmark 的 Mark Zgutowicz 提出的最後一個問題。

If we look at your Software Platform clients and the revenue for that client over the last 4 quarters, it's consistently been down sequentially. And I'm just wondering what is the sort of the driver of that trend line? And sort of why that is not, I guess, consequential to your results going forward anymore?

如果我們看一下你們的軟體平台客戶以及過去四個季度該客戶的收入，就會發現它們一直在環比下降。我想知道，這種趨勢的驅動因素是什麼？為什麼這種趨勢對你們未來的業績不再有影響？

Sorry, Mark, I'm not sure which metrics you're referring to. Our SPEC metric went up from Q3 to Q4 from 532 accounts to 566 accounts. So the trend...

抱歉，馬克，我不確定你指的是哪些指標。我們的SPEC指標從第三季到第四季從532個帳戶上升到了566個帳戶。所以趨勢是…

I'm looking at just quarter-over-quarter growth, just declining sequentially over the last quarters for both of those...

我只專注於季度環比增長，這兩個數字在過去幾個季度都呈環比下降…

You're talking about pricing, right? It's just the composition is hugely different than it was before because we've added on Wurl, we've added on Adjust, we added on ALX, MoPub. So the composition has changed so much that those metrics aren't very comparable anymore to the past, and they're not very predictive of the business going forward, and that's why we decided this quarter to remove them.

您說的是定價，對吧？只是現在的組成與以前有很大不同，因為我們增加了 Wurl、Adjust、ALX 和 MoPub。所以構成發生了很大變化，這些指標與過去不再具有可比性，而且對未來的業務也失去了預測性，這就是為什麼我們決定在本季度移除它們。

Okay. What about just the Software Platform Enterprise Client itself, that number? How important is growth in that number going forward in terms of your Software Platform revenue?

好的。那麼軟體平台企業客戶本身的數據呢？就軟體平台收入而言，這個數字的成長有多重要？

Yes. Again, Mark, that number has gone up, and the actual average revenue per software client has remained steady around $1.9 million. And also the net dollar retention went up over 160%. But this is exactly the reason why we're going to remove these metrics from our reporting because they're not indicative nor give you a better sense for how the software business is performing, which is obviously flat, essentially flat from Q3 to Q4. But as Adam said, we're excited and optimistic about the platform. We think the market is reasonably stable. We're investing a lot to improve our market-leading tools in the category. So as we're able to launch new capabilities and hopefully, the market returns to growth, we should be in a good spot for both top line and bottom line growth in that segment.

是的。馬克，這個數字確實上升了，而且每個軟體客戶的實際平均收入穩定在190萬美元左右。淨美元留存率也成長了160%以上。但這正是我們將從報告中刪除這些指標的原因，因為它們既不具有指示性，也無法讓您更了解軟體業務的表現。軟體業務的業績顯然持平，從第三季到第四季基本持平。但正如亞當所說，我們對這個平台感到興奮和樂觀。我們認為市場相當穩定。我們正在投入大量資金來改進我們在該領域領先的工具。因此，隨著我們能夠推出新功能，並希望市場恢復成長，我們應該能夠在該領域實現良好的收入和利潤成長。

And that does conclude the question-and-answer session for this quarter. We thank you all for joining us today. Have a good afternoon.

本季的問答環節到此結束。感謝各位今天的參與。祝大家下午愉快。