Duolingo Inc (DUOL) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Duolingo's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings webcast. Today after market close, we released this quarter's shareholder letter, a copy of which you can find on our IR website at investors.duolingo.com.

各位晚上好。歡迎收看 Duolingo 第四季和 2023 年全年收益網路廣播。今天收盤後，我們發布了本季度的股東信函，您可以在我們的投資者關係網站 Investors.duolingo.com 上找到該信函的副本。

On today's call, we will have Luis von Ahn, our Co-Founder and CEO, and Matt Skaruppa, our CFO. They'll begin with some brief remarks before opening the call to questions. Analysts will be able to ask a question by using the raise hand feature. And please note this event is being recorded (Operator Instructions).

在今天的電話會議上，我們的聯合創始人兼首席執行官路易斯·馮·安 (Luis von Ahn) 和首席財務官馬特·斯卡魯帕 (Matt Skaruppa) 將出席。在開始提問之前，他們將首先進行一些簡短的評論。分析師將能夠使用舉手功能提問。請注意，正在記錄此事件（操作員說明）。

Just a reminder that we'll make forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance, which are subject to material risks and uncertainties. Some of these risks have been set forth in the risk factors of our filings with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions we believe to be reasonable as of today, and we have no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.

請注意，我們將對未來事件和財務表現做出前瞻性陳述，這些陳述將受到重大風險和不確定性的影響。其中一些風險已在我們向 SEC 提交的文件的風險因素中列出。這些前瞻性陳述是基於我們認為截至目前合理的假設，我們沒有義務因新資訊或未來事件而更新這些陳述。

Additionally, we'll present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be considered in isolation from, a substitute for, or superior to our GAAP results, and we encourage you to consider all measures when analyzing our performance. And with that, I'll turn it over to Luis.

此外，我們將在今天的電話會議上介紹公認會計原則和非公認會計原則財務指標。這些非 GAAP 衡量標準不應孤立、替代或優於我們的 GAAP 結果，我們鼓勵您在分析我們的業績時考慮所有衡量標準。有了這個，我會把它交給路易斯。

Thank you, Debbie, and welcome, everyone, and we deliver stellar 2023 surpassing the ambitious expectations we set out for ourselves at the beginning of the year. This was capped off by our record user growth bookings and revenue profitability and free cash flow in the fourth quarter.

謝謝黛比，歡迎大家，我們將在 2023 年實現輝煌，超越我們在年初為自己設定的雄心勃勃的期望。我們第四季創紀錄的用戶預訂成長、收入獲利能力和自由現金流終結了這一成長。

Stepping back, I'd like to put our 2023 performance in context by talking about how we how far we've come in the last few years when we went public in July 2021, we laid out a plan showing rapid growth with increasing profitability over in 2021 and 2022, we delivered 55% and 45% year-over-year revenue growth, respectively. And had about breakeven adjusted EBITDA margins in 2023, we reached an inflection point demonstrating our ability to get operating leverage and added over 13 points of adjusted EBITDA margin that took our margin to over 17%. In short, we've been able to demonstrate that we can turn our incredible product into a profitable business.

退一步來說，我想透過談論過去幾年我們在 2021 年 7 月上市時取得的進展，來結合我們 2023 年的業績，我們制定了一項計劃，顯示出快速增長，盈利能力不斷提高2021年和2022年，我們的營收年增55%和45%。到2023 年，我們的調整後EBITDA 利潤率約為損益平衡，我們達到了一個拐點，證明了我們獲得營運槓桿的能力，並將調整後EBITDA 利潤率增加了超過13 個百分點，使我們的利潤率達到了17% 以上。簡而言之，我們已經能夠證明我們可以將我們令人難以置信的產品變成一項有利可圖的業務。

Now how did we do this we did this by making our app more fun, engaging and effective, which encourages learners to tell their friends and family about it, the more learners we attract to our platform, the more learners we convert to subscribers and the more subscribers we have, the more money we have to invest in our courses to make them even more fun, engaging and effective and so on since our IPO, we've added about 18 million daily active users and over 50 million monthly active users. Most of them have come to our platform through word-of-mouth. We've supplemented that organic growth with a cost effective social first marketing strategy, which earned us 3 billion social media impressions last year. Now we accelerated DAU growth for 10 straight quarter from Q3 2021 through Q4 2023, and I'm proud of that. But as we said before, we can't accelerate user growth for this Q1. We expect the growth to be closer to the mid 50s, which is still impressive given how large our user base has become for the full year 2024, we expect strong top line performance from rapid user growth and continued improvements in free-to-paid conversion. As an example of the work we're doing around conversion and monetization. This year, we're experimenting with ways to help free users select the best subscription plan for them. We will test different names, appearances and packages to help users choose between our Free Super and Mac subscription tiers. We're also putting more resources behind our family plan, which has higher retention and increases our platform LTD. Today, our family plan has grown to about 18% of our subscriber base. And this year we started a dedicated family plan team will look to capitalize on its organic momentum. We will also make additional strategic and based investments to drive long-term growth. We will continue developing advanced content for English learners who make up the largest part of our addressable market. We will also continue to develop our math and music courses by expanding the content and making them even more fun engaging and effective for learners for age. Last year, we reached an incredible milestone. Our learners completed the 100 billion lesson. Perhaps even more impressive is that we have about 90% share of global online language learning MAUs. And yet we still see so much more potential and opportunity ahead of us. There are hundreds of millions of language mass and music learners out there who have yet to sign up for dueling, and we're working on winning them over. So while we're proud of how far we've come, I speak for everyone who works at dual Lingo when I say we want to have more impact and we want to move faster. And that's what you'll see from us in 2024 and beyond.

現在我們是如何做到這一點的，我們透過使我們的應用程式變得更有趣、更有吸引力和更有效來做到這一點，這鼓勵學習者告訴他們的朋友和家人，我們吸引到我們平台的學習者越多，我們轉化為訂閱者的學習者就越多，我們擁有的訂閱者越多，我們就必須在課程上投入更多的資金，以使課程變得更有趣、更有吸引力、更有效。自IPO 以來，我們增加了約1800 萬的每日活躍用戶和超過5000 萬的每月活躍用戶。他們中的大多數是透過口碑來到我們的平台的。我們透過具有成本效益的社交優先行銷策略來補充自然成長，去年為我們贏得了 30 億次社群媒體印象。現在，從 2021 年第三季到 2023 年第四季度，我們連續 10 個季度加速了 DAU 的成長，我對此感到自豪。但正如我們之前所說，我們無法在第一季加速用戶成長。我們預計成長將接近50 年代中期，考慮到2024 年全年我們的用戶基數已經如此龐大，這仍然令人印象深刻，我們預計用戶的快速增長和免費到付費轉換的持續改善將帶來強勁的營收業績。作為我們圍繞轉化和貨幣化所做的工作的一個例子。今年，我們正在嘗試幫助免費用戶選擇最適合他們的訂閱方案的方法。我們將測試不同的名稱、外觀和套餐，以幫助用戶在免費超級和 Mac 訂閱等級之間進行選擇。我們還為家庭計劃投入了更多資源，該計劃具有更高的保留率並增加了我們的平台LTD。如今，我們的家庭計畫已擴大到約 18% 的訂戶群。今年，我們成立了一個專門的家庭計劃團隊，將尋求利用其有機動力。我們還將進行額外的策略和基礎投資，以推動長期成長。我們將繼續為英語學習者開發高級內容，他們構成了我們目標市場的最大部分。我們也將繼續開發我們的數學和音樂課程，擴大內容，使它們對不同年齡層的學習者更加有趣、有吸引力和有效。去年，我們達到了一個令人難以置信的里程碑。我們的學習者完成了千億課。也許更令人印象深刻的是，我們擁有全球線上語言學習月活躍用戶數約 90% 的份額。然而，我們仍然看到更多的潛力和機會擺在我們面前。有數億語言大眾和音樂學習者尚未報名參加決鬥，我們正在努力贏得他們的支持。因此，雖然我們對我們所取得的進步感到自豪，但當我說我們希望產生更大的影響並且我們希望更快採取行動時，我代表所有在 Dual Lingo 工作的人。這就是 2024 年及以後您將從我們身上看到的。

As we continue to build a 100-year company, we're just getting started. And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.

當我們繼續打造一家擁有 100 年歷史的公司時，我們才剛開始。有了這個，我會把它交給馬特。

Thanks, Luis. I'll provide some additional color on what drove our outperformance this quarter, and then I'll discuss our guidance for the year. As we shared, we had a fantastic year capped off with record bookings and profitability. In Q4. We exceeded our bookings forecast in part because of the continued acceleration in user growth in the fourth quarter because we saw strength in our family plan throughout the quarter because we saw better than expected performance in our new year's promotion. Our continued strength in user and subscriber growth drove bookings and revenue growth of 51% and 45% year over year respectively, or 49% and 43% on a constant currency basis.

謝謝，路易斯。我將提供一些關於推動我們本季度表現優異的因素的額外信息，然後我將討論我們今年的指導。正如我們所分享的，我們以創紀錄的預訂量和盈利能力結束了美好的一年。在第四季。我們超越了預訂預測，部分原因是第四季度用戶成長持續加速，因為我們在整個季度看到了家庭計畫的優勢，因為我們看到新年促銷的表現優於預期。我們的用戶和訂戶成長持續強勁，推動預訂量和營收年比分別成長 51% 和 45%，以固定匯率計算分別成長 49% 和 43%。

Now turning to 2024. As we said, we want to continue doing this year will work. So well in 2023. And we have strong momentum, which is why we feel good about our 2024 bookings outlook, which has bookings growth of 28% year over year at the midpoint, this growth comes even as we lap the really extraordinary growth we had in 2023.

現在轉向 2024 年。正如我們所說，我們希望今年繼續做下去。 2023 年進展順利。而且我們勢頭強勁，這就是為什麼我們對 2024 年預訂量前景感到樂觀，其中期預訂量同比增長 28%，即使我們已經實現了真正非凡的增長，但這種增長還是出現了2023年。

To give a bit more detail on our outlook. We are guiding to a Q1 bookings growth of about 35% year over year. We expect our bookings growth rate to gradually step down throughout the year from Q1 to Q4 and as usual, we expect that Q4 will be our biggest quarter in terms of dollar bookings, more specifically from Q1 to Q2, we expect bookings growth to step down by about five points as we lap our exceptional results from last year. At current prevailing exchange rates, we expect foreign currency to have no material impact on Q1 or on full year 2020 for bookings growth rates, and we'll continue to make progress towards our long-term profit target. We expect to add an additional 500 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin this year to reach 22.5% at the midpoint. Our adjusted EBITDA margin will vary a bit quarter to quarter, given our bookings and hiring seasonality. Specifically, we expect adjusted EBITDA margin for Q2 to be lower than Q1 Q3 to be about the same as Q1 and Q4 to be the highest for the full year. We are targeting an incremental margin at or slightly above our long-term adjusted EBITDA margin target of 35% this year, we expect to achieve our adjusted EBITDA margin expansion by getting operating leverage across all three cost categories of non-GAAP OpEx.

更詳細地介紹我們的前景。我們預計第一季預訂量將年增約 35%。我們預計我們的預訂成長率將在全年中從第一季度到第四季度逐漸下降，與往常一樣，我們預計第四季度將是我們以美元預訂計算最大的季度，更具體地說，從第從第一季到第二季度，我們預計預訂成長將下降與去年相比，我們取得了優異的成績，提高了約五個百分點。按照目前的現行匯率，我們預期外幣不會對第一季或 2020 年全年的預訂成長率產生重大影響，我們將繼續朝著我們的長期利潤目標取得進展。我們預計今年調整後 EBITDA 利潤率將再增加 500 個基點，達到 22.5% 的中位數。考慮到我們的預訂和招聘季節性，我們調整後的 EBITDA 利潤率每個季度都會有所不同。具體來說，我們預計第二季度調整後的 EBITDA 利潤率將低於第一季度，第三季度與第一季度大致相同，第四季度將成為全年最高水準。我們的目標是今年增量利潤率達到或略高於35% 的長期調整後EBITDA 利潤率目標，我們預計透過在非GAAP 營運支出的所有三個成本類別中獲得營運槓桿來實現調整後EBITDA 利潤率的擴張。

As to those categories of spend, R&D will remain our largest category because we have several areas in which to invest this year because R&D is effectively a gross low growth lever that drives word of mouth user acquisition for us. And it's how we make our app more fun, engaging and effective over time for sales and marketing we plan to continue improving efficiency by being creative and scrappy evidence evidence of what you saw at the opening of this call with our second Super Bowl, and we spent $700,000 on that in total and yet earned over 60 million social media impressions for G&A. We expect to continue to get operating leverage as we scale as to how our operating leverage will spread throughout the year. Sequentially, starting in Q1, we expect to see slight leverage in total non-GAAP OpEx as a percentage of revenue compared to Q4 2023. In Q2, we'll delever by a couple of points, mostly in R&D, given the timing of our hiring and the seasonality of our bookings. And then we plan to see leverage again in both Q3 and Q4. And finally, we ended the year with approximately 49 million fully diluted shares outstanding using the year end closing price in 2024 we expect to end the year with about 1% net dilution from equity issued to employees, which is similar to the dilution we had in 2023. And with that, I'll turn it back to Luis.

至於這些支出類別，研發仍將是我們最大的類別，因為今年我們有幾個投資領域，因為研發實際上是一個整體低成長槓桿，可以推動我們獲得口碑用戶。這就是我們如何讓我們的應用程式隨著時間的推移變得更有趣、更具吸引力和更有效的銷售和行銷，我們計劃透過創造性和零散的證據來繼續提高效率，這些證據就是您在第二次超級盃電話會議開始時所看到的，我們G&A 總共花費了 70 萬美元，但在社群媒體上獲得了超過 6000 萬次展示。隨著我們的經營槓桿在全年的分佈擴大，我們預計將繼續獲得營運槓桿。因此，從第一季開始，與2023 年第四季相比，我們預計非GAAP 營運支出總額佔收入的比例將略有上升。考慮到我們的時間安排，我們將在第二季降低槓桿率，主要是在研發方面。招募和預訂的季節性。然後我們計劃在第三季和第四季再次看到槓桿。最後，以2024 年年末收盤價計算，我們在年底時擁有約4900 萬股完全稀釋後的已發行股票，我們預計年底時向員工發行的股權將產生約1% 的淨稀釋，這與我們在2024年的稀釋情況類似。2023 年。接下來，我將把它轉迴路易斯。

Thank you, Matt. I wanted to close by congratulating our marketing team and our design department for them for their ingenuity, particularly in service into the most watched program in US television history with our Super Bowl, which generated a lot of social buzz and brand love. And now we would be happy to take your questions. I'll turn it back to Debbie to manage the queue.

謝謝你，馬特。最後，我想祝賀我們的行銷團隊和設計部門的聰明才智，特別是在我們的超級盃節目中為美國電視歷史上收視率最高的節目提供服務，這引起了廣泛的社會關注和品牌喜愛。現在我們很樂意回答您的問題。我會將其交還給黛比來管理隊列。

(Operator Instructions) Ralph Schackart, William Blair.

（操作說明）Ralph Schackart、William Blair。

Lewis from Apple's gone scope question, what could quote from a letter? And on the call, we talked about the film which are secured by 18% now and you talked about having higher retention rates, maybe German, Brian, the retention here versus the rest of the business. And then more broadly, how should we think about retention rates going forward versus how we trended in 2023 than I thought?

來自蘋果公司的 Lewis 的「消失的範圍」問題，可以從一封信中引用什麼內容？在電話會議上，我們談到了這部電影，現在已獲得 18% 的擔保，您談到了更高的保留率，也許是德國人，布萊恩，這裡的保留率與其他業務相比。然後更廣泛地說，我們應該如何考慮未來的保留率以及 2023 年的趨勢（超出我的想像）？

Sure.

當然。

Yes.

是的。

Happy to talk about the family and retention rate. So Ralph, as you know, we manage the business to LTVs. That's why retention is important. The family plan does have a materially higher retention rate on an annual basis compared to the other to the annual plan and so and it also has a higher price point. So it's just all around a higher LTV product. So as we shift more towards family plan, we're just really trying to optimize the LTV of the platform over time, and we think there's a lot of opportunity to do that this year.

很高興談論家庭和保留率。拉爾夫，如您所知，我們透過 LTV 來管理業務。這就是為什麼保留很重要。與其他年度計劃相比，家庭計劃確實具有更高的年度保留率，因此它的價格也更高。因此，一切都圍繞著更高 LTV 的產品。因此，當我們更多地轉向家庭計劃時，我們只是在努力隨著時間的推移優化平台的生命週期價值，我們認為今年有很多機會做到這一點。

Great.

偉大的。

And then historically about that, you've talked about adjusting our original pricing. Maybe sort of give us a reminder of your strategy for the roll-up of the share, you know, will be phased approach will be sort of country by country. Just any color you could add on that would be great.

然後從歷史上看，您談到了調整我們的原始定價。也許可以提醒我們你們的份額總結策略，你們知道，將分階段採取逐個國家的方法。只要添加任何顏色就可以了。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Yes. Yes.

是的。是的。

So again, pricing is another lever that we use from time to time we experiment with. And this year, I think the pricing story will be less around regional pricing. So if you remember, we rolled out a pretty broad based on around the world regional pricing change in 2022. And we've basically lapped that's through a rental revenue perspective throughout the course of 2023 on what if we change prices this year, we will from time to time with experiments. But the bigger overall price change for the for this year will be as we experiment with the three tiers. So we saw a lot of demand, a higher prices for our max offering, and we're going to experiment with that this year and see what happens. And that's where I would expect to see more impact on pricing throughout the year as we roll out, I think.

再說一次，定價是我們不時嘗試的另一個槓桿。今年，我認為定價故事將不再圍繞區域定價。因此，如果您還記得的話，我們根據2022 年全球區域價格變化推出了相當廣泛的價格變化。我們基本上透過2023 年整個過程中的租金收入角度來了解這一點，如果我們今年改變價格，我們會做什麼？時不時進行實驗。但今年更大的整體價格變動將是我們對三層的試驗。因此，我們看到了很大的需求，我們的最大產品價格更高，我們將在今年進行試驗，看看會發生什麼。我認為，隨著我們的推出，我預計全年的定價會受到更大的影響。

And our next question comes from Aaron Kessler of Seaport Research for fixed.

我們的下一個問題來自海港研究中心的亞倫·凱斯勒（Aaron Kessler）。

Goes a couple of questions. Maybe just So first, maybe on the in-app purchases. If you could give us your thoughts on growth there, how we should be thinking about that for 2024 as well, based on the other revenue lines within that including them during her English tests and advertising. And then just some anything we should be the ways we should be thinking about pace of conversion as well for 2020 for sure. I'm happy to start and Louise can jump in. So again, parent, as you know, the biggest line item of our business is subscriptions. That's going to continue to be the focus, both of revenue growth, bookings growth this year, but then also resourcing. And so when we look at ads, ads grew a lot slower than subscriptions in 2023 I expect that kind of ad growth delta to be relatively similar in 2024?

問幾個問題。也許首先是這樣，也許是在應用程式內購買方面。如果您能給我們您對那裡成長的想法，我們應該如何考慮 2024 年的成長，基於其中的其他收入線，包括她在英語測驗和廣告期間的收入線。然後，我們應該以某種方式考慮 2020 年的轉換速度。我很高興開始，路易絲可以加入。所以，家長，正如您所知，我們業務中最大的項目是訂閱。這將繼續成為焦點，包括今年的收入成長、預訂量成長，以及資源分配。因此，當我們觀察廣告時，會發現 2023 年廣告成長速度比訂閱成長慢很多，我預期這種廣告成長增量在 2024 年會相對相似？

I don't I don't see ads picking up some speed compared to our subscription product DT. is still early in this journey has had enormous growth over the past several years. It's 30 X it's a little bit harder to forecast, but it's typically grow slower than our subscriptions as well on an NIAP. is the last remaining piece in 2023, it grew really impressively. And in 2024, I would expect it to grow nicely as well. But it grew so rapidly in 2020, really hundreds of percent. I don't think it can grow as fast as that. So I'd expect it to grow probably more in line with all the other revenue lines. Fred just said pace of conversion. Any way to think about that for 2024?

與我們的訂閱產品 DT 相比，我沒有看到廣告的速度有所加快。仍處於這趟旅程的早期階段，在過去幾年中取得了巨大的成長。它是 30 倍，預測起來有點困難，但它的成長速度通常比我們的訂閱量以及 NIAP 上的成長慢。是 2023 年剩下的最後一塊，它的成長確實令人印象深刻。到 2024 年，我預計它也會有很好的成長。但2020年成長如此之快，真的是百分之幾百。我認為它不可能成長得那麼快。因此，我預計它的成長可能會與所有其他收入線更加一致。弗雷德剛才說了轉換的速度。有什麼辦法可以考慮一下 2024 年的情況嗎？

Yes, Tom, the way we think about pace of conversion internally is on a cohort basis and come throughout 2023. Essentially, every cohort have the new users had higher free to pay conversion. So we've we felt that that was evidence of really adding high-quality users to the platform come. We don't see any reason that that's likely to change in 2024 as of now what that means at that the aggregate level come on a if you do the subs. So the last 12 months MAU ratio that we publish, I wouldn't expect that to move all that much this year, just given how rapidly our MAU base is scale.

是的，湯姆，我們在內部考慮轉換速度的方式是在整個 2023 年以同類群組為基礎。本質上，每個同類群組的新用戶都有更高的免費付費轉換率。因此，我們認為這是真正在平台上添加高品質用戶的證據。到目前為止，我們認為這種情況不會在 2024 年發生改變，這意味著如果你做替補的話，總體水平會出現變化。因此，我們發布的過去 12 個月的每月活躍用戶比率，考慮到我們的每月活躍用戶基礎規模的擴張速度，我預計今年的變化不會那麼大。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Your next question comes from Beth Morrissey of.

你的下一個問題來自貝絲‧莫里西 (Beth Morrissey)。

Well, thank you. I guess first, just on the 2024 outlook on the user side of things, just only kind of expecting a slight deceleration. Historically, we've seen you called out kind of these one-off events like Barbie your has a dragon that's kind of been a nice tailwind for users. I'm just curious kind of what you're seeing today or kind of have line-of-sight to throughout the course of the year, that kind of gives you comfort on the user growth kind of sustaining these really strong growth rates going forward?

嗯，謝謝。我想首先，就 2024 年用戶方面的前景而言，只是預計會略有減速。從歷史上看，我們已經看到您發起過類似「芭比娃娃」這樣的一次性事件，您有一條龍，這對用戶來說是一種很好的推動力。我只是好奇你今天看到的是什麼，或者你在這一年中的視線，這會讓你對用戶成長感到安慰，從而維持未來這些真正強勁的成長率？

Yes. Thanks for the question. So some where the majority of our growth comes from just making our product better. I mean, it's mainly word of mouth. And because of that, it's it's actually quite predictable. I mean, it's not perfectly predictable is quite predictable because we just know that our product just keeps getting better and better. So we expect that to be the case in this throughout this year.

是的。謝謝你的提問。因此，我們的大部分成長來自於讓我們的產品變得更好。我的意思是，主要是口耳相傳。正因為如此，它實際上是可以預測的。我的意思是，這不是完全可預測的，但卻是可以預測的，因為我們只知道我們的產品會變得越來越好。因此，我們預計今年全年都會出現這種情況。

On top, it we're, of course, very proud of the fact that for 10 quarters in a row, we accelerated user growth. And that's what I'm kind of surprising that we just we always kept on thinking?

最重要的是，我們當然非常自豪，我們連續 10 個季度加速了用戶成長。這就是讓我感到驚訝的是我們一直在思考？

Well, maybe this is, you know, we're going to kind of not accelerate user growth anymore, but we did that for 10 quarters in a row. And this time around we expect kind of mid 50s going forward. And part of the thing that also helps us feel comfortable about this is we just have so much more of a TAM. I mean, we're there's about 2 billion people in the world, learning a foreign language on we have, you know, close to, but slightly under 100 million MAU. So there's just a lot more room to grow. So we feel pretty good about that.

好吧，也許我們不會再加速用戶成長，但我們已經連續 10 個季度這樣做了。這次我們預計會在 50 年代中期到來。讓我們對此感到放心的部分原因是我們擁有更多的 TAM。我的意思是，世界上大約有 20 億人在學習外語，我們的月活躍用戶數接近但略低於 1 億。所以還有更大的成長空間。所以我們對此感覺很好。

Great. Thanks.

偉大的。謝謝。

And then just wondering on the I think you're leaning into AI to kind of help generate kind of content creation and personalization of some of these courses. Just curious like a progress update there and kind of I think there were press reports earlier this year in terms of that kind of helping also drive kind of cost efficiencies in the business as well. Just curious how you're thinking about the kind of opportunities to see kind of further kind of leverage from a from a I guess.

然後只是想知道我認為您正在傾向於人工智慧來幫助產生其中一些課程的內容創建和個性化。只是好奇，就像那裡的進展更新一樣，我認為今年早些時候有媒體報告說這也有助於提高業務的成本效率。我只是好奇你是如何考慮從我猜中看到進一步的槓桿作用的機會。

Yes. Well, first of all, the press reports, but you know, they're kind of a trigger point for me. The press reported that we did layoffs based on AI. That is actually not what happened on. We've always had a contractor force that these are some of hourly workers doing some stuff like translation and stuff like that for some of our content, we did reduce our contractor force, but this was not like full-time employee layoffs or anything like that on. And yes, probably the biggest reason for the reduction of the contractor force was the use of a I mean, we are wherever we can in the company. We if something can be done by AI, we're going to want to take the opportunity on the places where we're using AI. There's kind of two big places. One is just in our content creation, and we're just not only are we are reducing costs there, but probably even more importantly, we're able to do things a lot faster. And what's good about that is it also allows us to experiment faster, see used to be the case. For example, we have this feature that we're rolling out that's called dual radio. That requires the generation of a bunch of data. If somebody had asked me to do dual radio five years ago, I would have told them you're crazy. It's going to take us 10 years to generate that data up. Now. We know that it it'll take us a few months to generate that data. So now we're actually willing to create a feature based on it. So it's the fact that we've accelerated this just opens the doors for a lot of stuff. That's what I'm most excited about. That's one place Ray and the other places just generating features or putting up features that are interactive based on AI. So we have role-play. We have explained my answer. We're starting to experiment with actually having a spoken conversation with one of our characters, and it's a really cool feature. So that's the type of stuff that you'll see us do. I mean, we're leaning very hard on this, and it's a great technology.

是的。嗯，首先，媒體報道，但你知道，它們對我來說是一個觸發點。媒體報道說我們基於AI進行了裁員。事實上事實並非如此。我們一直有一支承包商隊伍，這些是一些小時工，為我們的一些內容做一些類似翻譯之類的事情，我們確實減少了承包商隊伍，但這不像全職員工裁員或類似的事情那個。是的，減少承包商力量的最大原因可能是使用「我的意思是，我們在公司的任何地方都可以」。如果人工智慧可以做某件事，我們就會在使用人工智慧的地方抓住這個機會。有兩個大地方。其中之一就是我們的內容創作，我們不僅降低了成本，而且可能更重要的是，我們能夠更快地完成工作。這樣做的好處是它還可以讓我們更快地進行實驗，就像過去的情況一樣。例如，我們正在推出一項稱為雙無線電的功能。這需要產生一堆數據。如果五年前有人要我做雙無線電，我會告訴他們你瘋了。我們需要 10 年的時間才能產生這些數據。現在。我們知道我們需要幾個月的時間才能產生這些數據。所以現在我們實際上願意基於它來創建一個功能。事實上，我們加速了這一切，這為很多事情打開了大門。這就是我最興奮的事。 Ray 和其他地方只是產生特徵或提供基於人工智慧的互動特徵。所以我們進行角色扮演。我們已經解釋了我的答案。我們開始嘗試與我們的一個角色進行實際的口頭對話，這是一個非常酷的功能。這就是我們所做的事情。我的意思是，我們非常依賴這一點，這是一項偉大的技術。

Great.

偉大的。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Your next question comes from Andrew Boone of JMP Securities.

您的下一個問題來自 JMP 證券的安德魯·布恩 (Andrew Boone)。

Craig, thanks, much for taking my questions on. I wanted to ask about top of funnel trends as it relates to the mid 50s percent and close to guidance that you guys gave. I understood last year had a bunch of iconic moments in terms of Barbie and everything else for clipped you guys at the beginning. And can you just talk about top of funnel and maybe download growth as it relates to 23 versus 22 and then extrapolate that into 24, whatever top of funnel metric you want.

克雷格，非常感謝您回答我的問題。我想問漏斗頂部的趨勢，因為它與 50% 的中期相關，並且接近你們給出的指導。我知道去年有很多關於芭比娃娃和其他一切的標誌性時刻，一開始就剪掉了你們這些傢伙。您能否談談漏斗頂部以及下載成長，因為它與 23 與 22 相關，然後將其推斷為 24，無論您想要什麼漏斗頂部指標。

But yes, I mean, I can let Matt talk about some of the stuff, but we feel pretty good about top of funnel. Like I said, the vast majority of our growth comes from just word of mouth. And these are there's some nice events like the Barbie and stuff like that, and they're good. But still it is the case that most of it just comes from people telling their friends or family member to download dueling one that just remains pretty constant. So we see from what we see just looks very strong on, I don't know, Matt, if you have anything else to say.

但是，是的，我的意思是，我可以讓馬特談論一些事情，但我們對漏斗頂部感覺很好。就像我說的，我們的成長絕大多數來自口碑。還有一些不錯的活動，像是芭比之類的，而且都很好。但情況仍然是，其中大部分只是來自人們告訴他們的朋友或家人下載決鬥遊戲，而遊戲一直保持相當穩定。所以我們從我們所看到的來看，看起來非常強大，我不知道，馬特，你是否還有什麼要說的。

No, I think that's why I think we're getting some visibility obviously into Q1, and that's the mid 50s. And being in the 50% to 60% range and seeing that go up or down from the point we are trying to make is just that it's not always going to accelerate from here in terms of top of funnel, I think I'd just remind everyone that like there's brand new to the platform users and then there's resurrected users, which we call folks we call folks who haven't been using the platform for the past 30 days, but come back, com resurrect and those are about an equal proportion on any given day. And so it's word of mouth that Luis talked about. But then it's also just making sure that and folks are reminded that they like dual and go and they'll come back even if they haven't been using it for a while and that's a big portion of this. So like Louis said, like we feel pretty good about it. And I don't I don't we don't see anything right now that says it's going to be all that different than then what we're talking about.

不，我認為這就是為什麼我認為我們在第一季（即 50 年代中期）明顯獲得了一些可見度。在 50% 到 60% 的範圍內，看到從我們試圖做出的點上升或下降，就漏斗頂部而言，它並不總是會從這裡加速，我想我只是提醒一下每個喜歡的人都有平台的全新用戶，然後還有復活的用戶，我們稱之為過去30 天沒有使用該平台的人，但回來後，com 復活了，這些人的比例大約相等在任何一天。所以路易斯談到的是口碑。但它也只是確保這一點，並提醒人們他們喜歡雙重並去，即使他們有一段時間沒有使用它，他們也會回來，這是其中的很大一部分。正如路易斯所說，我們對此感覺很好。我不知道，我們現在沒有看到任何事情表明它會與我們正在談論的情況有很大不同。

And then I wanted to ask about the tiers that you guys are testing on understood that you guys are going to have a premium kind of standard and a pretty model. But what about the opportunity to just take price within the U.S. right. Understood. You guys were regionally. How do you guys think about pricing more broadly for kind of U.S. where you guys are seeing that strong demand?

然後我想問你們正在測試的級別，我知道你們將擁有高級標準和漂亮的模型。但在美國境內定價的機會又如何呢？明白了。你們是地區性的。你們如何看待在美國看到如此強勁需求的更廣泛定價？

Thanks to you.

謝謝你。

Yes, generally with pricing. I mean, we're going to experiment. I mean where it works, we're pretty open to price experimentation, and we do that.

是的，一般都有定價。我的意思是，我們要進行實驗。我的意思是，在可行的情況下，我們對價格實驗持開放態度，我們也這麼做了。

And just to remind you, in terms of our our improvements in monetization. We just have a lot of levers we can pull and we tried to order them by kind of return on investment. Pricing is one lever we have the multi-tier strategy is another lever. We have the family plan as another lever. We have all these. And so the teams that are working on this have a long list of things on this order by return on investment pricing, we will probably see us experiment pricing, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. And I just can't tell you what the results of those experiments are going to be because I just don't know myself, but you'll see us Pamine for sure.

只是想提醒您，我們在貨幣化方面的改進。我們有很多可以利用的槓桿，我們試著根據投資報酬率來排序。定價是我們的一個槓桿，多層策略是另一個槓桿。我們將家庭計劃作為另一個槓桿。這些我們都有。因此，致力於此的團隊在投資定價回報率方面列出了一長串清單，我們可能會看到我們不僅在美國而且在全世界進行實驗定價。我只是無法告訴你這些實驗的結果會是什麼，因為我不了解自己，但你肯定會看到我們帕明。

Thanks.

謝謝。

Your next question comes from Alex Sklar of Raymond James.

您的下一個問題來自 Raymond James 的 Alex Sklar。

Great Thank you, Luis. I know it's a bit early to talk about the results from having some of the English content in the advanced English content that you had talked about in the shareholder letter, but 17 courses now with advanced English available, how do you plan to kind of grow the awareness of the any formal marketing plans behind? And then thinking about broader monetization that now that you have that in there?

非常感謝你，路易斯。我知道現在談論您在股東信中談到的高級英語內容中包含一些英語內容的結果還為時過早，但是現在有 17 門課程提供高級英語，您打算如何發展背後有什麼正式的營銷計劃嗎？然後考慮更廣泛的貨幣化，現在你已經有它了？

It's an excellent question because it's something that we are not that we are really talking about. So just to but just to put things in context. If you look at the larger language learning market like the market as a whole, by far the largest number of learners and also the largest amount of spend comes from English learners. It's like 80%, give or take. That is not quite true in our platform. So this is why we see this as a major opportunity now the reason that hasn't been quite true in our platform is because our our English courses have not had very advanced content and we actually have a different English course based on your native language. So we have an English course for Spanish speakers and English course for Chinese speakers, et cetera. And they went to varying degrees of proficiency.

這是一個很好的問題，因為我們並不是真正討論這個問題。所以只是為了把事情放在上下文中。如果你看一下更大的語言學習市場，例如整個市場，到目前為止，最大的學習者和最大的支出來自英語學習者。大概是80%，要嘛給予，要嘛索取。在我們的平台上並非如此。因此，這就是為什麼我們現在認為這是一個重大機會，但在我們的平台上並非如此，因為我們的英語課程沒有非常先進的內容，而且我們實際上有一個基於您的母語的不同英語課程。所以我們有針對西班牙語使用者的英語課程和針對中文使用者的英語課程等等。他們的熟練程度各不相同。

The first thing we needed to do if we really wanted to increase our business among English learners, take all of these courses to a more advanced level of at least have the content there I'm very happy to say that we have now put the content there. That's good. And we in fact, see that the number of users is one of the nicest graphs that we have in the Company is the number of users that are interacting with our advanced English learners basically up and to the right. And so we see that users are starting to interact with it, and we think there's a lot more room there.

如果我們真的想增加英語學習者中的業務，我們需要做的第一件事就是將所有這些課程提升到更高級的水平，至少在那裡有內容我很高興地說我們現在已經把這些內容在那裡。那挺好的。事實上，我們看到用戶數量是我們公司最好的圖表之一，是與我們的高級英語學習者互動的用戶數量，基本上是在右邊。因此，我們看到用戶開始與它進行交互，我們認為那裡還有更多的空間。

Now I think the content was just the first step in a multistep strategy because first, you have to add the content.

現在我認為內容只是多步驟策略的第一步，因為首先，您必須添加內容。

The second thing, the second problem we needed to solve and that is one we are currently solving. It has not yet been solved since our English learners are a little different than learners of most other languages for most other languages with learners of French learning for Spanish, we have a pretty good idea of what they know before they come to tooling when usually, by the way they know very little. And they just we have a pretty good idea what InnoSwitch, it's relatively easy to place them in the course English learners because because English is such a cultural language can have for the world. People know this, we are patchwork of knowledge where they most of them took some amount of English and like middle school or high school, but also they watch the movies, but also they've listened to some tailors with songs broadly. So they have we just have this weird patchwork of knowledge. And we have not done a great job when they come in and placing them at the right spot. So that's one thing that we're working on.

第二件事，我們需要解決的第二個問題，也是我們目前正在解決的問題。這個問題還沒有解決，因為我們的英語學習者與大多數其他語言的學習者略有不同，對於大多數其他語言，法語學習者學習西班牙語，我們對他們在使用工具之前通常了解的內容有一個很好的了解，順便說一句，他們知之甚少。我們對 InnoSwitch 非常了解，因此將它們放入英語學習者的課程中相對容易，因為英語是一種可以為世界所擁有的文化語言。人們知道這一點，我們是知識的拼湊體，他們中的大多數人都學過一些英語，例如初中或高中，但他們也看電影，但他們也廣泛聽過一些裁縫的歌曲。所以他們擁有我們這些奇怪的知識拼湊而成的東西。當他們進來並將他們放置在正確的位置時，我們並沒有做得很好。這就是我們正在努力的一件事。

And wondering when we're able to do that, I think that we're going to be a much better product for people who come into learn English because the vast majority of English learners have some prior proficiency in this kind of weird patchwork way. So that's step number two, and that's what we're working on. Step number three is what you mentioned. We do have to get the word out that were good for advanced English learners that is not currently as well known as for either beginner English learners or other languages. So we're probably going to you're probably going to see us do some amount of marketing for that. And then, of course, the last step is being able to capitalize in terms of getting them to describe what we need to do the first of the first few steps before we do that. So my sense is that it's going to be 2020 or 2025 where you see us kind of really grow this user base and somewhere in 2025, we'll start really capitalizing on this. You may see some amount this year, but my sense is more will come in about a year.

我想知道我們什麼時候能夠做到這一點，我認為對於那些開始學習英語的人來說，我們將成為一個更好的產品，因為絕大多數英語學習者對這種奇怪的拼湊方式都有一定的熟練程度。這是第二步，也是我們正在努力的方向。第三步就是你提到的。我們確實必須宣傳對高級英語學習者有利的信息，但目前對於初學者英語學習者或其他語言來說，這些信息並不那麼出名。所以我們可能會看到我們為此做一些行銷。然後，當然，最後一步是能夠利用讓他們描述我們在開始之前幾個步驟中需要做什麼。所以我的感覺是，到 2020 年或 2025 年，你會看到我們的用戶群真正成長，到 2025 年的某個時候，我們將開始真正利用這一點。今年你可能會看到一些數量，但我的感覺大約一年後會出現更多。

That's great context. Tom, just as a follow-up, Matt, just given what you've talked about tonight in terms of the family plan booking success you're going to lean into that a little bit more. It sounds like in the coming year on continued international growth, how should we think about the shape of kind of the blended RPM heading into 2024?

這是很好的背景。湯姆，作為後續行動，馬特，鑑於您今晚所談論的家庭計劃預訂成功的情況，您將進一步關注這一點。聽起來，在國際持續成長的來年，我們該如何思考進入 2024 年的混合 RPM 的形狀？

So yes, it's a great question, Tom. So I'll just give you my normal disclaimer, which is we don't run the business on RPU. We run the business on platform, LTV and experiments to drive bookings that are hard to obviously comes out of that and we pay attention to it from 2023. The RPU because as I mentioned, we are lapping the price change we did in 2020 to RPU about every quarter went down between 7% and 8%, more or less in 2023, except for Q4, which went down by about 4%. And then we expect Q1 to be a little closer to zero and then you lap that throughout the rest of the year. So that's roughly our trend now that will change depending on the experiments, right? So if we have a successful set of experiments on a three-tier strategy that could raise RPU, Luis and I know Luis already mentioned pricing experiments as well. So but that's the current current course and speed.

所以，是的，這是一個很好的問題，湯姆。因此，我將向您提供我通常的免責聲明，即我們不在 RPU 上運行業務。我們在平台、LTV 和實驗上經營業務，以推動預訂，而這顯然是很難產生的，我們從2023 年開始關注它。RPU，因為正如我所提到的，我們正在將2020 年的價格變化納入RPU 2023 年，大約每季的下降幅度都在 7% 到 8% 之間，或多或少，但第四季除外，下降了約 4%。然後我們預計第一季會稍微接近零，然後你會在今年剩餘的時間裡完成這一點。這大致上就是我們現在的趨勢，它會根據實驗而改變，對嗎？因此，如果我們在三層策略上進行了一系列成功的實驗，可以提高 RPU，路易斯和我知道路易斯也已經提到了定價實驗。但這就是當前的進程和速度。

So thank you both.

所以謝謝你們兩個。

Thank you for right. Next question comes from Ryan MacDonald of Needham.

謝謝你的對。下一個問題來自尼達姆的瑞安·麥克唐納。

Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on yet another great year on police. I'm curious now that you've obviously launched Madden music into the core app late in 23. I'm curious as you're sort of monitoring the progress there, I think learners have the capability to sort of complete their their their dual Lingo each day. Not just from language, but in mass and music. And just curious what you're seeing in sort of the early days on the progress there. And if we're getting to a stage especially with mass where you can start to then see enough usage where you kind of turn the screw on on monetization there?

感謝您回答我的問題，並祝賀警察又度過了美好的一年。我現在很好奇，你顯然已經在 23 年底將《Madden》音樂引入了核心應用程式。我很好奇，因為你正在監控那裡的進度，我認為學習者有能力完成他們的雙重任務每天都有行話。不僅來自語言，也來自彌撒和音樂。只是好奇你在早期所看到的進展。如果我們進入了一個特別是大眾化的階段，你可以開始看到足夠的使用情況，你可以在那裡擰緊貨幣化螺絲？

Yes.

是的。

It's a great question. So just to put things in context, we did we added mass and music as courses into the main line, which happened our main after doing lap it really up about a quarter ago. And what that means is that it's just, as you said, basically all of our growth mechanics work from Apple Music. So you can complete your streak by doing a math lesson with McAfee users compete in the leaderboards, et cetera, and music, etc. So basically, all the growth mechanics come for free by having added method music to the to the main app. This is why we did that. We're very happy with the results so far. And they are obviously, you know, these courses obviously are much smaller than our language courses because world we're not well known worldwide as a language learning app were not yet as well known as a mass app or some or a music app. So they're much smaller than our language courses but even even if that's the case and even if it's only been for like three months, our belief is that we're either already the largest or among the top largest in terms of DAUs of apps where you can learn more for music. So and that's just shows you the power of our of our platform. Now, even though that's through these are so much smaller than language learning that for for us, my sense is for this whole year, you're probably not just not going to see a lot of impact. I mean these are growing quite a bit. It took us 12 years to get there for language learning. The hope is it won't take us 12 years to get there from Apple Music, but probably take us a few years. I mean these things are still in the oven, but the results that we have so far, we're very happy with and they are much better than the results we had, but we launched language learning. So if you rewind 10 years ago and you look at language learning, these courses are just way ahead. So we're very happy with that. But again, these things are still in the building.

這是一個很好的問題。因此，為了將事情放在上下文中，我們將品質和音樂作為課程添加到主線中，這是在大約四分之一前真正完成一圈之後發生的。這意味著，正如您所說，基本上我們所有的成長機制都來自 Apple Music。因此，您可以透過與 McAfee 用戶一起上數學課、參加排行榜等以及音樂等來完成您的連勝。因此，基本上，透過在主應用程式中添加方法音樂，所有成長機制都是免費的。這就是我們這樣做的原因。我們對迄今為止的結果非常滿意。顯然，你知道，這些課程顯然比我們的語言課程小得多，因為我們在世界範圍內並不廣為人知，因為語言學習應用程式尚未像大眾應用程式或某些音樂應用程式那樣廣為人知。因此，它們比我們的語言課程要小得多，但即使是這樣，即使只有三個月左右的時間，我們也相信，就應用程式的DAU 而言，我們要么已經是最大的，要么是名列前茅的。在這裡您可以了解更多音樂知識。這只是向您展示了我們平台的力量。現在，儘管這些比語言學習小得多，但對我們來說，我的感覺是，在這一整年裡，你可能不會看到很大的影響。我的意思是這些成長了不少。我們花了12年才達到語言學習的目標。我們希望 Apple Music 不會花 12 年才能實現這一目標，但可能需要幾年時間。我的意思是這些東西仍在烤箱中，但我們到目前為止所得到的結果，我們非常滿意，它們比我們的結果要好得多，但我們啟動了語言學習。因此，如果你回顧 10 年前，看看語言學習，這些課程就遙遙領先。所以我們對此非常滿意。但同樣，這些東西仍然在大樓裡。

I'll couple up maybe this one's a bit more qualitative, I guess, you know, obviously you talked about and the success you had with sort of some large of viral moments or cultural moments over the past year and maybe some of that came by chance some of that being strategic. But are you taking any learnings from this in 23 and applying that into 2014, maybe be more proactive in how you're creating that marketing strategy around?

我會加上也許這個有點更定性，我想，你知道，顯然你談到了過去一年中一些大型病毒時刻或文化時刻所取得的成功，也許其中一些是通過可能其中一些是戰略性的。但是，您是否從 23 年的經驗中吸取了教訓，並將其應用到 2014 年，也許會更加積極主動地制定行銷策略？

Let's say, you've got a large doing release scale coming up this weekend that seem to be a highly anticipated trying to position yourself better for some of those moments moving forward?

比方說，本週末您將進行大規模的發布，這似乎是一個備受期待的嘗試，以便為未來的某些時刻做好更好的定位？

Yes. I mean, it's an excellent question. I think it's true that some of these things we just can't control. I mean there is just simply comes it comes from us. We get a lot of inbound. We are we are not in a very nice position where brands or movies or TV shows think of us, and they come to us. We can't control that much, but it's awesome that that happens. That said, our marketing team has just gotten so good at knowing what the what where to get involved, what to comment on and that even though some of the things we can control, many others we can. And many of the other things that may just seem like they were just out of the blue where things that were fully planned by our marketing team. So we're just going to continue doing that. I mean, they're there. I mean, I've seen the plants. I don't want to spoil the surprise but we have a robust plan for the rest of the year in terms of viral moments. Now, not all of them will work will drive some stuff that will probably flop but some of it will work and we feel very good about that. So I think I think just the team has just gotten really good at being in the zeitgeist And so yes, I'm very happy with that from my meetings with our CMO are usually awesome because he always has really funny videos to show me of things that they're preparing.

是的。我的意思是，這是一個很好的問題。我認為確實有些事情我們無法控制。我的意思是，它只是來自我們。我們收到很多入境的資訊。我們所處的位置不太好，品牌、電影或電視節目會想到我們，然後它們就會來找我們。我們無法控制那麼多，但發生這種情況真是太棒了。也就是說，我們的行銷團隊非常擅長知道在哪裡參與什麼、評論什麼，儘管有些事情我們可以控制，但還有很多事情我們可以控制。許多其他事情可能看起來只是出乎意料，而這些事情是由我們的行銷團隊充分規劃的。所以我們將繼續這樣做。我的意思是，他們就在那裡。我的意思是，我看過這些植物。我不想破壞這個驚喜，但我們在今年剩餘時間裡就病毒式傳播時刻製定了強有力的計劃。現在，並非所有這些都會起作用，也會驅動一些可能會失敗的東西，但其中一些會起作用，我們對此感覺非常好。所以我認為我認為團隊已經非常擅長融入時代精神所以是的，我很高興與我們的首席營銷官的會議通常很棒，因為他總是有非常有趣的視頻向我展示一些東西他們正在準備。

I can only imagine.

我只能想像。

Well, congrats again and thanks for taking my questions.

好吧，再次恭喜並感謝您提出我的問題。

Thank you, Fran.

謝謝你，弗蘭。

And next question comes from Mark Mahaney of Evercore.

下一個問題來自 Evercore 的 Mark Mahaney。

Always two questions, please. First on the incremental margins that you're guiding to for this upcoming for this year, very intrinsically robust EBITDA margins. They are lower than what you did in 2020 threes. So read into that is there any sort of structural change in the business in terms of environments have new growth areas or something like that? And then secondly, you interesting disclosures in the past on how growth in terms of bookings or revenue in your as comparison with that on your global average, any update you could provide there? Like how does the US bookings growth of North American bookings growth compare with that of the business as a whole?

請始終提出兩個問題。首先，關於今年即將到來的增量利潤率，本質上非常強勁的 EBITDA 利潤率。它們比 2020 年三分球的成績要低。因此，請仔細研究一下，在有新的成長領域或類似情況的環境方面，業務是否有任何結構性變化？其次，您過去有趣地揭露了與全球平均水平相比，您的預訂或收入成長情況，您可以提供任何更新嗎？例如北美預訂量的成長與整個業務的成長相比如何？

Yes.

是的。

Thanks, Mark. Pat, for the adjusted incremental adjusted EBITDA, a comment in the guide, look, our own belief is that we want to make every year progress towards our long-term margin.

謝謝，馬克。帕特，對於調整後的增量調整後 EBITDA，指南中的評論，看，我們自己的信念是，我們希望每年在長期利潤方面取得進展。

To do that, you have to be at or above your long-term margin in terms of incremental margin. And so and that's what we're doing this year. As we talked about on some calls last year, companies that we respect in our industry that go from being kind of not profitable to then materially profitable usually make a big jump in their 1st year where the incremental margins are a lot higher and then that usually comes back down towards their long-term margins. I don't think we're paving new ground there. I think that's normal course. In terms of why that is, though, I just want to remind you like the reason is because we have a ton of runway ahead of us in our core markets. And we're adding math and music, and we're just excited about that investment in our R&D function. And so there's really nothing else to read into it other than we're excited about the opportunity ahead of us. And we're going to continue to invest in kind of our core R&D and business in that regard and still make progress, though every every year towards our long-term margin.

為此，您的增量利潤率必須等於或高於長期利潤率。這就是我們今年要做的事。正如我們去年在一些電話會議上談到的那樣，我們在行業中所尊敬的公司從不盈利到後來實現了實質性盈利，通常會在第一年實現大幅躍升，增量利潤率要高得多，然後通常會增加利潤。回到長期利潤率。我不認為我們正在那裡開闢新天地。我認為這是正常的過程。不過，就其原因而言，我只是想提醒您，原因是因為我們在核心市場上還有大量的跑道。我們正在添加數學和音樂，我們對研發職能的投資感到興奮。因此，除了我們對擺在我們面前的機會感到興奮之外，沒有什麼其他值得解讀的了。我們將繼續在這方面投資於我們的核心研發和業務，並且仍然取得進展，儘管每年都在實現我們的長期利潤。

And then can you remind me the second question was the disclosure around geography. So historically, what we've talked about time usually is the DAU growth. And so what we're looking at is when we grow so rapidly, is that what we call consider high quality and broad-based broad-based meeting countries that are big for us like the US or some European countries, are those growth rates close to the average growth rate or not, and they can they still are close and then we look at the conversion from free to paid to see how high quality they use are and are those cohorts globally trending the right way over time, and they happen. And so our growth in Q4, it was still broad-based and high-quality.

然後你能提醒我第二個問題是有關地理的揭露嗎？所以從歷史上看，我們談論的時間通常是 DAU 成長。因此，我們關注的是，當我們成長如此迅速時，我們所說的高品質和廣泛基礎的會議國家對我們來說很重要，例如美國或一些歐洲國家，這些成長率是否接近無論是否達到平均成長率，他們仍然可以接近，然後我們查看從免費到付費的轉換，看看他們使用的質量有多高，以及這些群體隨著時間的推移在全球範圍內的趨勢是否正確，並且它們發生了。因此，我們在第四季度的成長仍然是基礎廣泛且高品質的。

And then would you one last question, would you call out?

然後你會問最後一個問題嗎？

Yes.

是的。

And English language, is that against such it could have such a material impact on us or earnings generation?

而英語，是否會對我們或創造收入產生如此重大的影響？

No, for people in multiple countries outside of US and somebody English, I do, but are there any particular international markets you'd want in particular?

不，對於美國以外多個國家的人和英國人來說，我願意，但是您有特別想要的特定國際市場嗎？

Yes.

是的。

And yes, the we bucket the the world into kind of four big segments and one of our segments is on it, Southeast Asia and Japan. And then including China as well. And then Europe, both of those have shown really robust growth in Japan in particular, has grown really nicely. We've seen a lot of countries in Europe grow nicely. So it's hard to single out one particular country just given how broad-based has been. But those are a couple of I'd say, have grown really nicely over the past year.

是的，我們將世界分為四大部分，東南亞和日本就是其中之一。然後也包括中國。然後歐洲，這兩個國家都表現出了非常強勁的成長，尤其是日本，成長得非常好。我們看到歐洲很多國家都取得了良好的發展。因此，鑑於基礎廣泛，很難單獨挑出某個特定國家。但我想說的是，這些在過去的一年裡成長得非常好。

Thank you from.

謝謝你從.

So our next question comes from Justin Patterson at KeyBanc.

我們的下一個問題來自 KeyBanc 的 Justin Patterson。

Who I understand is driving and not going to be on video, be careful, just CFO. Thank you very much. And I'd also like to echo what Luis is, thanks to the marketing team for allowing me to cheaply insert myself on the call with us. Avatar Well, nice in transit. So thank you for the numbers. And you know, I tried I tried. So just a big picture, one for you and Luis that you've had the new user interface out for over a year now, how much So how much more the ceiling do you think you have to go here with the product and growth teams as you just look at the opportunity to improve KPI.'s. It just feels like you have a much broader canvas to A/B test against and you also have a much larger DAU base that's grown over the past year?

據我所知，他正在開車，不會出現在影片中，小心點，只是財務長。非常感謝。我也想回應路易斯，感謝行銷團隊讓我以低廉的價格加入我們的通話中。阿凡達 嗯，在運輸途中很好。謝謝你提供的數字。你知道，我試過了。所以，這只是一張大圖，供您和路易斯使用，新的用戶介面已經推出一年多了，您認為產品和成長團隊的上限還有多少？你只要看看提高KPI的機會就可以了。是不是感覺您有更廣泛的畫布可供 A/B 測試，並且您也有在過去一年中增長的更大的 DAU 基礎？

That's an excellent question. I mean, where the teams that are dedicated to trying to figure out how to grow faster are just they're firing on all cylinders and they know what you'll see. You'll see us we have a portfolio approach where you'll see us trying a lot of kind of these really small A/B test or end up compounding a lot. So we're definitely going to do that. But we also see us drive bigger things. I mean, one of the things that you'll probably see more of in the coming months or years is just our app becoming more and more social. So you you'll see that we're spending effort on that. And you're also going to see us experimenting with placing people better. This is what I was talking about with the English learners. And you're also going to see us experimenting with just teaching conversation a lot better. And so these are kind of the big things that we're doing. But really, there's a lot of stuff that they're working on with literally hundreds of A/B tests per month. That pace has not decreased at all since now since the last few years, and in fact, the pace is increasing.

這是一個很好的問題。我的意思是，那些致力於找出如何更快成長的團隊只是全力以赴，他們知道你會看到什麼。你會看到我們有一個投資組合方法，你會看到我們嘗試很多類型的非常小的 A/B 測試，或者最終會進行大量的複利。所以我們肯定會這麼做。但我們也看到我們推動更大的事情。我的意思是，在接下來的幾個月或幾年裡，您可能會看到更多的事情之一就是我們的應用程式變得越來越社交化。所以你會看到我們正在這方面付出努力。您還將看到我們嘗試為員工提供更好的安置。這就是我和英語學習者談論的內容。您還將看到我們嘗試更好地教授對話。這些都是我們正在做的重大事情。但實際上，他們正在處理很多事情，每月進行數百次 A/B 測試。過去幾年以來，這一速度沒有絲毫下降，事實上，這一速度還在加快。

Got it.

知道了。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Great.

偉大的。

Our next question comes from Chris contractor, Kantarovich of UBS.

我們的下一個問題來自瑞銀集團的承包商克里斯·坎塔羅維奇。

Great.

偉大的。

Thanks for taking the question.

感謝您提出問題。

Can we just unpack some of the strengths of the yes, a little bit more color on the strength in the family plan that you saw in 4Q? And maybe can you just talk about how we should think about what you all are seeing as far as family plan adoption from Englishman non-English learners?

我們能否解開您在第四季度看到的家庭計劃的一些優點，是的，稍微多一點色彩？也許你能談談我們應該如何思考你們所看到的關於英國非英語學習者採用家庭計劃的情況嗎？

And yes, I'm happy to start. And then Louis, you can jump in on the last one. So when we talk about the strength in the family plan and what's been surprising is that we haven't actually had a ton of resources devoted to taking that product and adding and doing our normal A/B testing on that as a tier or as a subscription bucket.

是的，我很高興開始。然後路易斯，你可以加入最後一個。因此，當我們談論家庭計劃的優勢時，令人驚訝的是，我們實際上並沒有投入大量資源來使用該產品，並添加和進行正常的 A/B 測試。訂閱桶。

What we did was we released it. We were excited about it, and it's grown really naturally organic. And so when we talk about strength in Q4, it grew over 100% year over year. So just an enormous amount of organic demand for that product because it's a fun product you want to do and we are doing it with friends and family you want to do math and music with friends and family just kind of a natural fit. And that's why this year, I can't lay out the specific roadmaps other than what Luis already talked about generally like making it more social, just making it a more engaging experience, but we're going to have a more devoted resources to it this year, which gives us confidence that they could really grow nicely even above and beyond kind of that organic demand that we're seeing in the platform?

我們所做的就是釋放它。我們對此感到很興奮，它是真正自然有機生長的。因此，當我們談論第四季度的實力時，它同比增長超過 100%。因此，對該產品有大量的有機需求，因為這是一個你想做的有趣產品，而且我們正在與朋友和家人一起做，你想與朋友和家人一起做數學和音樂，這是一種自然的契合。這就是為什麼今年，除了路易斯已經談到的一般路線圖之外，我無法制定具體的路線圖，例如使其更具社交性，只是使其成為更具吸引力的體驗，但我們將為此投入更多的資源今年，這讓我們相信他們真的可以很好地成長，甚至超越我們在平台上看到的有機需求？

Yes.

是的。

I'm generally very excited by the by the road map of, but it will just be a much better. I mean, right now, it's we just put a plan out there and there were all kinds of things. For example, we just solve the really dumb bug that was used in the family plan, your children were there. We actually couldn't see the name. It has just that was done. And so we know this is the and we're just starting with that. But we are going to see us just making it a much more robust product. And you asked about the difference between English learners or not in terms of of adoption of the family plan. I don't think there's anything different in terms of family plan versus the rest of our subscriptions and generally, we see higher penetration of subscription and wealthier countries. Certainly the US has higher penetration and usually English learners come from less wealthy countries. So that's probably, you know, basically family plan is no different than the other subscriptions.

一般來說，我對路線圖感到非常興奮，但它會更好。我的意思是，現在我們只是製定了一個計劃，有各種各樣的事情。例如，我們剛剛解決了家庭計劃中使用的非常愚蠢的錯誤，你的孩子就在那裡。我們實際上看不到這個名字。它已經完成了。所以我們知道這就是我們的目標，我們才剛開始。但我們將會看到我們只是讓它成為一個更強大的產品。您詢問了英語學習者與非英語學習者在採用家庭計畫方面的差異。我不認為家庭計劃與我們的其他訂閱有什麼不同，一般來說，我們看到訂閱的滲透率更高，而且國家更富裕。當然，美國的普及率更高，而且英語學習者通常來自不太富裕的國家。所以，你知道，基本上家庭計劃可能與其他訂閱沒有什麼不同。

Got it. Very helpful. Maybe just one follow-up. Any way to think about kind of the shape of marketing spend there, sales and marketing expense throughout the year. And yes, for sure. So I mean, in general, you should continue to expect two things from our sales and marketing spend. The first one is that it should increase on absolute dollars, but it should grow obviously slower than bookings. And so historically, I don't think there's going to be anything from a seasonality perspective this year that would be all that different than last year. So you typically see us spend a bit more in like the Q3 timeframe. For example, that's usually our summer campaign back-to-school period. But I think the seasonality for sales and marketing should grow should go roughly as it has in the past couple of years.

知道了。很有幫助。也許只是一個後續行動。想想那裡的行銷支出、全年銷售和行銷支出的情況。是的，當然。所以我的意思是，總的來說，你應該繼續從我們的銷售和行銷支出中期待兩件事。第一個是它的絕對美元數應該會增加，但它的成長速度應該明顯慢於預訂量。因此，從歷史上看，我認為從季節性角度來看，今年不會有任何與去年不同的情況。因此，您通常會看到我們在第三季的時間範圍內花費更多。例如，這通常是我們夏季活動返校期間。但我認為銷售和行銷的季節性應該會大致像過去幾年一樣成長。

Thank you.

謝謝。

And our next question comes from Curtis Nagle of DNA who is also not able to be on camera, do we lose Curtis? Okay. I don't see Curtis in the queue anymore. And so that looks like our last question and I think I'll turn it back to Luis to wrap up.

我們的下一個問題來自 DNA 的柯蒂斯·內格爾（Curtis Nagle），他也無法出現在鏡頭前，我們會失去柯蒂斯嗎？好的。我在隊列中再也沒有看到柯蒂斯了。這看起來像是我們的最後一個問題，我想我會把它轉回給路易斯來總結。

Well, thank you, Debbie, and just thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter. Please do your dueling lessons. We expect you to have a perfect street next quarter. Have a great evening, everyone.

好吧，謝謝你，黛比，也感謝大家加入我們，我們期待下個季度與你們交談。請完成你的決鬥課程。我們希望您下個季度擁有一條完美的街道。祝大家有個愉快的夜晚。