Duolingo Inc (DUOL) 2025 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Duolingo's third quarter 2025 earnings webcast. Today after market closed, we released our Q3 shareholder letter, which you can also find on our website at investors.duolingo.com. Today, we have Luis von Ahn, our Co-Founder and CEO; and Matt Skaruppa, our CFO. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this event is being recorded.

各位晚上好。歡迎參加 Duolingo 2025 年第三季財報網路直播。今天收盤後，我們發布了第三季股東信，您也可以造訪我們的網站 investors.duolingo.com 查看。今天，我們邀請了共同創辦人兼執行長 Luis von Ahn 和財務長 Matt Skaruppa。（操作說明）請注意，本次活動正在錄影。

(Operator Instructions) As a reminder, we'll make forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance, which are subject to material risks and uncertainties, some of which these risks are set forth in our filings with the SEC.

（操作說明）提醒各位，我們將對未來事件和財務表現做出前瞻性陳述，這些陳述受重大風險和不確定性的影響，其中一些風險已在提交給美國證券交易委員會的文件中列出。

These forward-looking statements are based on our assumptions that 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.

這些前瞻性陳述是基於我們目前認為合理的假設，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 now I will turn it over to Luis.

此外，我們將在今天的電話會議上公佈GAAP和非GAAP財務指標。這些非GAAP指標並非旨在脫離GAAP結果單獨考慮，也不是GAAP結果的替代或優於GAAP結果，我們鼓勵您在分析我們的績效時考慮所有指標。現在我把麥克風交給路易斯。

Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We had a strong Q3 with solid performance across all metrics, and we're on track for another exceptional year. More than 50 million people now use Duolingo every day. And we're guiding to nearly 1.2 billion in bookings this year with 33% growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 29%. Putting that all together means that we have rapidly scaled our impact while expanding profitability.

大家好，感謝各位今天收看我們的節目。第三季我們表現強勁，各項指標都表現穩健，我們有望迎來另一個卓越的年份。現在每天有超過5000萬人使用多鄰國。我們預計今年預訂量將接近 12 億美元，成長 33%，調整後 EBITDA 利潤率為 29%。綜合以上所有因素，意味著我們在擴大獲利能力的同時，也迅速擴大了我們的影響力。

And yet, we still feel early in our journey. We believe AI will fundamentally transform education, and we have line of sight to building a product that teaches better than ever before. That's what makes this such an exciting moment for Duolingo.

然而，我們仍然感覺自己還處於旅程的早期階段。我們相信人工智慧將從根本上改變教育，我們有望打造出比以往任何時候都更能有效教學的產品。正因如此，這對多鄰國來說才是一個令人興奮的時刻。

And now we'll take your questions.

現在我們來回答大家的問題。

(Operator Instructions) Bryan Smilek, JPMorgan.

（操作說明）布萊恩‧史邁萊克，摩根大通。

Luis, just to start, can you just help us better understand the underlying drivers of DAU growth in the 4Q and engagement overall? And how close do you think you are to getting back on track in terms of marketing in the US? I know you mentioned growing impression volume. But is that starting to translate to user growth now? Or how should we think about that into the fourth quarter?

路易斯，首先，你能否幫助我們更了解第四季度日活躍用戶成長和整體用戶參與度的根本驅動因素？您認為您距離在美國行銷方面重回正軌還有多遠？我知道您提到要提高曝光量。但現在這是否開始轉化為用戶成長了？或者我們應該如何看待第四季的情況？

Yeah. Great question, Bryan. Thank you. So we just posted 36% year-over-year growth for Q3, and we're happy with that. There's puts and takes of how we got there.

是的。問得好，布萊恩。謝謝。我們剛剛公佈了第三季年增 36% 的業績，對此我們很滿意。我們走到今天這一步，中間經歷了許多波折。

I mean, on the positive side, we have things like the locking partnership that we just -- that we talked about in the shareholder letter, which helped us grow users in Asia quite a bit. We also had a number of product improvements that helped with retention.

我的意思是，從積極的方面來看，我們有像我們在股東信中提到的鎖定合作夥伴關係這樣的事情，這幫助我們在亞洲大幅增加了用戶數量。我們也進行了一些產品改進，有助於提高用戶留存率。

So that was great. On the other side, just like we said last time, we passed all the unhinged posts in our social media for a bit because we were listening to our community and trying to build brand love. And when we don't post unhinged things that basically our posts were much less likely to go viral, and because of that, that did have an impact on DAU growth.

那真是太好了。另一方面，就像我們上次說的那樣，我們暫時停止在社交媒體上發布所有不理智的帖子，因為我們正在傾聽社區的聲音，並努力建立品牌好感度。當我們不發布那些不合時宜的內容時，我們的貼文就不太可能走紅，因此，這確實對日活躍用戶成長產生了影響。

The good news is that over the last few weeks, we have started the unhinged posts again in our social media accounts. And while it hasn't gotten all the way to the peak where it was, we've seen a lot of recovery. So that's really starting to show up. And we do expect that to affect DAUs positively. In terms of Q4 for DAUs, we expect some amount of deceleration from Q3 but we're pretty happy with where it has stabilized.

好消息是，在過去的幾周里，我們已經在社群媒體帳號上重新開始發布一些不拘一格的內容。雖然還沒有完全恢復到之前的峰值，但我們已經看到了很大的復甦跡象。所以這種情況真的開始顯現出來了。我們預計這將對每日活躍用戶數產生正面影響。就第四季日活躍用戶數而言，我們預計成長速度會比第三季有所放緩，但我們對目前的穩定狀態相當滿意。

What I'll say -- we're not guiding to Q4 DAUs, but what I'll say is that September and October were both at around 30% year-over-year growth for DAUs. And that's comping a pretty strong quarter last quarter -- last year.

我想說的是——我們不會對第四季度的每日活躍用戶數 (DAU) 進行預測，但我可以說的是，9 月和 10 月的每日活躍用戶數同比增長率均在 30% 左右。而且這還是在上個季度（去年同期）表現相當強勁的情況下取得的。

Great. That's super helpful. And I guess, Luis, you also mentioned three core areas: monetization, user growth and just teaching efficacy overall. Can you just elaborate on really what's driving the decision to shift investments towards long view? Is it the AI opportunity or how should we just think about this impacting bookings growth? I know you've obviously talked to 25% plus as your North Star years ago. So just curious how do we get back there over time?

偉大的。這太有幫助了。路易斯，我想你也提到了三個核心領域：獲利、使用者成長和整體教學效果。您能否詳細說明促使貴方決定將投資重心轉向長期投資的真正原因？這是人工智慧帶來的機遇，還是我們該如何看待它對預訂量成長的影響？我知道你幾年前肯定已經把 25% 以上的成長當作你的目標了。所以，我很好奇我們最終是如何回到那裡的？

Yeah. I mean, look, we're -- like you said, and like I said in the shareholder letter, there's a huge opportunity right now. We see a huge opportunity -- over the next few years, education and the way people learn, they're going to change fundamentally and it's because of AI. And also because of AI, we see -- we have line of sight now to create an app that can teach really, really well; much better than anything that humanity has seen before. As good as a human tutor, but that is also more engaging.

是的。我的意思是，你看，就像你說的，也就像我在致股東信裡說的那樣，現在有一個巨大的機會。我們看到了一個巨大的機會——在未來幾年裡，教育和人們的學習方式將發生根本性的變化，而這一切都是因為人工智慧。而且由於人工智慧的發展，我們現在看到了希望——我們有望創造出一個教學效果非常好的應用程式；比人類以前見過的任何應用程式都要好得多。效果堪比真人導師，而且更具吸引力。

And if we're able to do that, right now, we have, I don't know, we just posted 135 million monthly active users. If we're able to do an app that teaches just that well, way much better than we have now, we will be talking about billions of users that we have and that's what we want to shoot for here. So this is why we are investing in the long term.

如果我們能夠做到這一點，現在，我不知道，我們剛剛公佈了 1.35 億月活躍用戶。如果我們能夠開發出一款教學效果如此出色，遠勝於我們現在使用的應用程序，那麼我們的用戶數量將達到數十億，而這正是我們努力的目標。所以這就是我們進行長期投資的原因。

And what that looks like is that we are putting relative -- more relative investment in things like teaching better, which -- teaching better -- if we teach better, what that does is that, that helps user growth, but there's a lag. Just whenever you improve your courses, users do grow, but it takes a while for that to happen.

這意味著我們將相對投入更多資金用於諸如提高教學品質之類的事情，提高教學品質——如果我們能提高教學質量，就能幫助用戶成長，但這存在滯後性。只要你改進課程，用戶數量就會成長，但這需要一段時間才能實現。

And then user growth, there's a lag to get to monetization because people take some time to subscribe. So this is kind of a long-term thing, but we're very bullish on this, and this is why we're doing that. And the goal here is because the opportunity is so large, the goal here is to be growing DAUs fast for a very long time.

然後是用戶成長，從成長到獲利會有一個滯後過程，因為人們需要一些時間才能訂閱。所以這算是一個長期項目，但我們對此非常看好，這也是我們這樣做的原因。因為機會如此之大，所以我們的目標是在很長一段時間內保持日活躍用戶數的快速成長。

Nathan Feather, Morgan Stanley.

內森費瑟，摩根士丹利。

Given the scale of the opportunity ahead that you're talking to, is the focus on greater long-term prioritization a durable shift in strategy that we should expect to continue? Or would you plan to return to the current prioritization mix at some point? And then in connection with that focus, should we expect the pressure on bookings that you're seeing in 4Q to continue into next year with the durability of that shift?

鑑於您所說的未來機會規模之大，這種更加重視長期優先事項的做法，是否是一種持久的策略轉變，我們應該期待它繼續下去？或者您是否計劃在某個時候恢復到目前的優先排序組合？那麼，結合這一重點，我們是否應該預期您在第四季度看到的預訂壓力會持續到明年，而這種轉變會持續下去？

Well, okay. So the -- for -- it's going to be years until we get to a point where we have an app that I think is just the best possible way to learn any major subjects. So we will be investing for a while. And that's important to know. I should say, though, we're not really guiding for example, to next year, but we're very excited about a lot of the initiatives that we're going to put out in the product for next year.

好吧。所以——對於——我們還需要很多年才能開發出我認為是學習任何主要科目最佳方式的應用程式。所以我們會繼續投資一段時間。這一點很重要。不過，我應該說明的是，我們並沒有真正預測明年的情況，但我們對明年將在產品中推出的許多舉措感到非常興奮。

We're going to have much better video calls that are for beginners. It's something we're calling guided video calls. The app is going to be a lot more social. We're going to have all the -- right now, the math course only has a little bit of content. In the next few months, we're going to have all of the common core K-12 content in the math.

我們將推出更適合初學者使用的視訊通話軟體。我們稱之為引導式視訊通話。這款應用程式將會更加重視社交功能。我們將擁有所有——目前，數學課程的內容還很少。在接下來的幾個月裡，我們將推出所有符合K-12年級通用核心標準的數學內容。

Our chess course is going to have player versus player and it's doing super well and growing really fast. We're going to have a full revamp of our music course. And for the top 9 languages that we teach, we're going to be able to teach from 0 to Duolingo score 130, which is where you can get a job in that language. So there's just a lot of things that we're very excited about. And I don't know, Matt, if you have something to add to that.

我們的西洋棋課程將採用玩家對戰的形式，目前進展非常順利，發展速度也很快。我們將對音樂課程進行全面改革。對於我們教授的前 9 種語言，我們將能夠教授從 0 分到 Duolingo 130 分的水平，達到這個分數就可以用該語言找到工作。所以有很多事情都讓我們感到非常興奮。馬特，我不知道你是否還有什麼要補充的。

Yeah. I think, Nathan, I want to put it back in the context of kind of what we've said before. So we've talked to you all and our investors for a long time about wanting to maximize platform LTV. And what Luis is describing is a change of small proportion right now that is going to help us grow users for a long time, get users to do more lessons, learn or spend more time on the app and, in general, be more engaged Duolingo users.

是的。內森，我想把它放回我們之前討論過的脈絡中。所以，我們已經和大家以及我們的投資者討論了很長一段時間，希望能最大限度地提高平台 LTV。路易斯所描述的，目前只是比例很小的變化，但它將幫助我們長期發展用戶，讓用戶完成更多課程，學習或在應用程式上花費更多時間，總的來說，讓 Duolingo 用戶更加活躍。

And we think that if we do that and we do that effectively, we'll both grow users for a long time and will increase platform LTV for a long time. So I think that will -- we're down to bookings and the financials ultimately as well.

我們認為，如果我們這樣做，並且有效地這樣做，我們既可以長期增加用戶數量，也可以長期提高平台的用戶終身價值。所以我覺得最後還是要看預訂狀況和財務狀況。

I think there's a -- we guided to a really strong 2025. There was a -- so we think that this can exist like it has strong financial performance. And this is just a balancing act that we've always done, and we're telling you all that we want to make sure that at the present moment, we're balancing it so that we can grow really rapidly for a long time in the future.

我認為－我們預計2025年將迎來一個非常強勁的時期。所以我們認為它可以像擁有強勁的財務表現一樣存在。這只是我們一直以來都在做的平衡之舉，我們想告訴大家，我們希望確保目前這種平衡能讓我們在未來很長一段時間內保持快速成長。

Wyatt Swanson, D.A. Davidson & Company.

懷亞特·斯旺森，D.A.戴維森公司。

I'd love to hear a bit more about how the new chess course is progressing. I think at Duocon, you mentioned millions of daily active users. On that front, do you see any differences in engagement or retention for users in the chess course versus your core language forces? And as it relates to that, kind of curious about your new PVP offering? Can you talk about like when you expect that to be fully rolled out?

我很想了解一下新的國際象棋課程的進展。我想在 Duocon 大會上，你提到過數百萬的每日活躍用戶。在這方面，您是否發現國際象棋課程的用戶參與度或用戶留存率與核心語言課程的用戶參與度或留存率有任何差異？關於這一點，我對你們新推出的PVP遊戲很有興趣？您能說說預計何時能全面推出嗎？

Yeah. So needless to say, we're very excited about chess. It is the fastest-growing course that we had. It's growing much faster than math and music and faster than the way originally languages grew. It's true we have millions of users.

是的。所以毋庸置疑，我們對西洋棋非常感興趣。這是我們開設的課程中成長速度最快的。它的發展速度比數學和音樂快得多，也比語言最初的發展速度快得多。我們的確擁有數百萬用戶。

We're not saying exactly how many, but it is -- it's already surpassed math and music. The retention of chess users, it hasn't been around for all that long. Our chess course has been around for three, four months. But so far, from what we can measure over the last three to four months is slightly higher than language learning and so we're very happy with that. We also -- as we mentioned, we started rolling out PVP.

我們不打算透露具體數字，但事實是——它已經超過了數學和音樂。西洋棋用戶留存率很高，因為它出現的時間並不長。我們的西洋棋課程已經開了三、四個月了。但就過去三到四個月的測量結果來看，學習效果略高於語言學習效果，我們對此感到非常滿意。正如我們之前提到的，我們也開始推出PVP模式。

That means player versus player, so people being able to play with other people. At the moment, 50% of users on iPhones, on iOS can see it. It's not yet on Android, but it's going to come out on Android pretty soon.

這意味著玩家對玩家，也就是人們可以和其他玩家一起玩遊戲。目前，50% 的 iPhone 用戶（iOS 系統用戶）可以看到它。目前還沒有安卓版本，但很快就會推出安卓版本。

So we expect that within the next few weeks and small -- few weeks/small number of months, every person that has the Duolingo app will be able to do PVP chess. And over the next year, we just -- we expect quite a bit of growth from chess, and I'm very happy with it.

因此我們預計在接下來的幾週或幾個月內，每個擁有 Duolingo 應用的人都將能夠進行 PVP 國際象棋對戰。在接下來的一年裡，我們預計國際象棋將取得相當大的成長，我對此非常滿意。

Great. And then just one quick follow-up. What does prioritization of user growth instead of monetization look like? And how should I think about the actual changes in the app?

偉大的。然後，還有一個簡短的後續問題。優先考慮用戶成長而不是獲利會是什麼樣子？那麼我應該如何看待應用程式中的實際變化呢？

Yeah. I'll give you an example. That's just -- okay. We've always had to make trade-offs between -- whenever we run an experiment, some experiments improve all metrics. Great.

是的。我給你舉個例子。就——還行吧。我們總是需要在各種因素之間做出權衡——每當我們進行實驗時，有些實驗會改善所有指標。偉大的。

That's an easy call, just launch it because it improves all metrics and that happens. But there are times when experiments improve one metric but hurt another. I'll give you a fictitious example. If right now, a free user -- free users get 25 energy units at the beginning of the day and every exercise that they do spends 1 unit. If we were to do an experiment that decreases that from 25 to, say, 24. That's one fewer unit of energy per day. We know that would make us more money. It just does because more people run out of energy, so more people end up wanting to pay to subscribe.

這很容易決定，直接上線就行了，因為它能提升所有指標，而事實也的確如此。但有時實驗會改善一個指標，卻損害另一個指標。我舉個虛構的例子。如果現在，一個免費用戶——免費用戶在一天開始時獲得 25 個能量單位，並且他們進行的每一次鍛鍊都會消耗 1 個單位。如果我們做一個實驗，將這個值從 25 減少到，比如說 24。這意味著每天少消耗一個單位的能量。我們知道那樣會讓我們賺更多錢。原因很簡單，因為越來越多的人耗盡了能源，所以越來越多的人最終想要付費訂閱。

However, we also know that would decrease daily active users because it would frustrate some of the users. We've always had to make decisions about different judgment calls about this. What we mean is that what we -- the change that we are doing is that we are going to be prioritizing user growth over monetization in this type of judgment call.

但我們也知道，這樣做會降低每日活躍用戶數，因為這會讓一些用戶感到沮喪。我們一直以來都需要就這方面做出各種判斷和決定。我們的意思是，我們正在做出的改變是，在這種類型的判斷中，我們將優先考慮用戶成長而不是獲利。

So in the fictitious experiment that I just gave you, we would not launch that experiment going from 25 to 24 energy units even if it meant quite a bit of bookings gains, if it has a real hit on daily active users. That's the type of stuff that we're doing now. And again, just to remind you, the reason we're doing this is because the opportunity ahead is so big that it's just good for us to grow fast for a long period of time.

所以，在我剛才給你的虛構實驗中，即使將能源單位從 25 降低到 24 會帶來相當大的預訂量增長，但如果對每日活躍用戶造成真正的打擊，我們也不會啟動這項實驗。這就是我們現在正在做的事情。再次提醒大家，我們這樣做的原因是，未來的機會非常巨大，因此在較長一段時間內快速發展對我們有利。

Ralph Schackart, William Blair.

拉爾夫·沙卡特，威廉·布萊爾。

Luis and Matt, kind of going back to the line of questioning here. I guess maybe the question is like why now, what signals are you seeing on the shift or maybe the semi shift focus more on growth over near-term profitability as AI advancements, kind of what's prompting this? And then can you give us a sense of the duration of this pivot or shift? Is this something it's going to take -- I don't know all through 2026? Is it more short term in nature? Anything you can add there would be great.

路易斯和馬特，我們又回到了之前的問題。我想問題可能是，為什麼是現在？你看到了什麼訊號顯示這種轉變，或者說，隨著人工智慧的進步，這種轉變是否更專注於成長而不是短期獲利能力？是什麼促成了這種轉變？那麼，您能否大致描述一下這種轉變或轉型會持續多久？這會持續到2026年嗎？我不知道。它更偏向短期性質嗎？如果您還能補充一些內容，那就太好了。

Great. As to why now is -- I mean, it's a great question. The reality is that over the last couple of years, it has just become progressively clear and clear that we are in a unique point in time, particularly with education in terms of how education is going to happen in the world and also how well we can teach at Duolingo. We just see it in our own metrics in how fast we can put out content with things like video call. We just see how much it is improving every month.

偉大的。至於為什麼是現在——我的意思是，這是一個很好的問題。事實上，在過去的幾年裡，我們越來越清楚地認識到，我們正處於一個獨特的時代，尤其是在教育方面，這關係到世界教育的未來走向，也關係到我們在多鄰國能夠教得有多好。我們從自身的指標就能看出這一點，例如我們可以透過視訊通話等方式快速發佈內容。我們可以看到它每個月都在進步。

And so that just kind of has been coming for a while. And what has happened is that over the last month or two, I've really rallied the company towards this shift. And really, it's like, okay, it's not like it was one day where I woke up and decided let's do that. It's just -- we really rallied the company to say look, opportunity is huge for us, let's prioritize, making sure that we can grow for a long period of time and also making an app that can teach really better than anything that we've seen before.

所以這種情況其實已經醞釀了一段時間了。在過去一兩個月裡，我成功地推動公司朝著這個方向轉變。其實，好吧，這並不是說有一天我醒來就決定要做這件事。我們確實激勵了公司上下，讓他們意識到，對我們來說，機會巨大，讓我們優先考慮的是確保我們能夠長期發展，同時開發一款比我們以前見過的任何應用程式都更能有效教學的應用。

As to how long this is going to take, this is -- it's an interesting question. I mean, I think you're asking something to the effect of like, well, is this going to hurt bookings and is this going to hurt bookings forever? I don't think that's the case. It's just -- it's going to take some time for us to see results -- financial results over these long-term investments that we're doing. But we're going to be acting for a while like there is a humongous opportunity because there is one until we get it. But I think we're going to be seeing good results from this even much sooner than that. So it's not like our -- we're saying, oh, throw away all the bookings or anything like that.

至於這需要多長時間，這——這是一個有趣的問題。我的意思是，我覺得你問的是，這會不會影響預訂量，而且這種影響會是永久性的嗎？我不認為情況是這樣。只是——我們需要一些時間才能看到結果——我們正在進行的這些長期投資的財務結果。但我們會暫時表現得好像存在一個巨大的機會，因為機會確實存在，直到我們抓住它。但我認為我們很快就會看到良好的結果。所以這並不是說——我們不是說，哦，把所有預訂都取消之類的。

Yeah. I think the only thing I'd add to that, Ralph, is that, I mean, you've seen us navigate this trade-off over the past three years as well, users have grown 55% per year on average over the past three years, and bookings has grown about 45%, and all of that while we were making similar trade-offs. And now we're just slightly focusing a little bit different as we navigate those. So it's not that we haven't been making any of them. And you've seen that like in the rest of the year guide and the Q4 guide, there was a small impact to this.

是的。拉爾夫，我想我唯一要補充的是，你也看到了我們在過去三年裡是如何權衡取捨的，過去三年用戶平均每年增長 55%，預訂量增長了約 45%，而所有這些都是在我們做出類似權衡取捨的情況下實現的。現在，我們在應對這些問題時，關注點稍微有所不同。所以並不是說我們沒有製作過這些產品。正如你在今年的其他季度指南和第四季指南中看到的那樣，這方面受到的影響很小。

It's not that big. And so would we expect some of that to persist into 2026? Sure. But again, I think as a general framing of this, it's a relatively small financial impact from this kind of reprioritization. And we think that, that's worth it because, as Luis said, it's a huge opportunity. So the risk reward seems right.

它沒那麼大。那麼，我們是否可以預期其中一些情況會持續到 2026 年？當然。但總的來說，我認為這種重新調整優先事項所帶來的財務影響相對較小。我們認為這是值得的，因為正如路易斯所說，這是一個巨大的機會。所以風險回報看起來是合理的。

[Alex Sklar, Raymond James].

[Alex Sklar，Raymond James]

Just following up on Wyatt's question and maybe, Ralph's, your remarks to Ralph at the end there. Just in terms of framing how meaningful some of these changes might be, is it as simple as maybe focusing a little bit less on paid conversion just to improve the premium experience today? Or are there kind of broader thoughts about maybe moving video call down into some of the lower packages? And then I've got a follow-up.

我只是想接著 Wyatt 的問題，或許還有 Ralph 的問題，以及你最後對 Ralph 說的話。就這些改變的意義而言，是否可以簡單地理解為：減少對付費轉換率的關注，進而改善目前的付費體驗？或者，有沒有更廣泛的想法，例如將視訊通話功能下放到一些價格較低的套餐中？然後我還有一個後續問題。

Okay. So a way to see this is what you said first. It is as simple as in some of the experiments which, by the way, not every experiment, many experiments we run, just improved our metrics. This is good. In some of the experiments where judgment calls are needed, we're going to shift the balance a little bit more towards user growth.

好的。所以，看待這個問題的一種方式就是你一開始所說的。就像某些實驗一樣簡單，順便說一句，並不是每個實驗，我們運行的許多實驗只是改進了我們的指標。這很好。在一些需要做出判斷的實驗中，我們將稍微調整平衡，更著重於使用者成長。

It's not a humongous change, but it is a change. In terms of are we going to move video call to other tiers, et cetera, that is likely to happen, at least we're likely to attempt to do that, but that is unrelated to this. We were anyways -- we're always thinking about moving different features in the different plans and we'll test that. It may be the case that, I don't know, video call, but it may be the case that some of the Max features are better in super or even in the free tier, and we'll test all of that. And while we test that, we are trying to optimize lifetime value of our like platform LTV.

這雖然不是什麼翻天覆地的變化，但確實是一種變化。至於是否會將視訊通話推廣到其他層級等等，這很可能會發生，至少我們可能會嘗試這樣做，但這與此事無關。我們本來就在考慮——我們一直在考慮將不同的功能移到不同的方案中，我們會進行測試。我不知道，例如視訊通話，但Max的某些功能在高級版甚至免費版中可能更好，我們會測試所有這些功能。在進行測試的同時，我們也在努力優化類似平台的生命週期價值 (LTV)。

We're trying to optimize for that. So you may see us test stuff like that.

我們正在努力優化這一點。所以你可能會看到我們測試類似的東西。

Okay. Alex, I'm glad you said the free-to-pay conversion because that's exactly how like it really manifests in the business. And I just want to make sure we're clear on this. So for example, when Luis said over the past couple of months, he mobilized the company. In September, we saw some of this and what it looked like was slightly lower free-to-pay conversion, but that free-to-pay conversion was still growing year-over-year.

好的。Alex，我很高興你提到了免費用戶向付費用戶的轉變，因為這正是它在商業中實際體現的方式。我只是想確保我們對這一點理解清楚。例如，路易斯說，在過去的幾個月裡，他調動了公司的力量。9 月份，我們看到了一些這樣的情況，免費用戶到付費用戶的轉換率似乎略有下降，但免費用戶到付費用戶的轉換率仍然比去年同期成長。

So it's still good free-to-pay conversion. It was just on the margin. It was slightly lower. So I think that's an example as you think about the financial impact. You're right to point out that that's how it would flow through.

所以免費用戶轉付費用戶的轉換率仍然很高。僅僅差一點點。略低一些。所以我認為這可以作為考慮財務影響的一個例子。你說的沒錯，它的確會那麼流動。

All right. That's great color there. And maybe for a follow-up, Luis. Just on the last call, you brought up this idea on video call about average number of words spoken per session. And that was kind of a new metric you were going to start testing towards. What have you learned so far now that you've kind of been optimizing for that metric? And then what's kind of the timeline to get some of the changes into the product as a result?

好的。那顏色真好看。或許還需要後續報道，路易斯。就在上次通話中，你在視訊通話中提出了關於每次會話平均發言字數的想法。而這算是你們要開始測試的一個新指標。在你不斷優化這個指標的過程中，目前學到了什麼？那麼，將這些變更應用到產品中的時間表大概是怎麼樣的呢？

Thank you for asking that question. So yeah, this is actually a great metric and we've managed to move it. This is important to know about our company. Whenever we fixate on a metric, we are very good at moving it. And this particular metric, we have been moving at -- it's more than doubled this year in terms of average number of words spoken per Max subscriber and so we're very happy with that.

謝謝你提出這個問題。所以，這確實是一個很好的指標，我們已經成功地提升了它。了解這一點對我們公司很重要。每當我們專注於某個指標時，我們都非常擅長改變它。而我們一直在努力提升這項指標——今年Max用戶平均說話字數已經翻了一番多，我們對此非常滿意。

In terms of changes to video call that you'll see coming soon, one that I'm very excited about is video call at the moment is a monolingual experience in the language that you're learning. So if you're learning Spanish, it's all in Spanish. That's great for practicing Spanish. But for beginner users, it's too hard. If you only know 20 words, it's very hard for you to have a full conversation just in Spanish.

就即將推出的視訊通話功能而言，我非常興奮的一點是，目前視訊通話只能使用你正在學習的語言進行單語體驗。所以如果你在學習西班牙語，那麼所有內容都是西班牙語的。這對練習西班牙語很有幫助。但對於初學者來說，這太難了。如果你只會20個西班牙語單詞，那麼你很難只用西班牙語進行完整的對話。

So the thing that we're testing now is these things we're calling guided video calls, which are basically bilingual. So it's -- if you're an English speaker learning Spanish, this would be part in English, part in Spanish, and it's a lot easier for beginner users.

所以，我們現在正在測試的是我們稱為引導式視訊通話的功能，它基本上是雙語的。所以——如果你是一名正在學習西班牙語的英語母語者，那麼這本書一部分是英語，一部分是西班牙語，這對初學者來說要容易得多。

We're seeing that when we give that to beginner users, they actually speak more words per call because they're actually able to do something. And so we think that this is going to really help with Max conversion, by the way, I should say two things. Most of our users and certainly most of our Max subscribers are beginner users.

我們發現，當我們把這個功能提供給初級用戶時，他們每次通話的字數實際上會增加，因為他們實際上能夠做一些事情。所以我們認為這將對 Max 的轉換非常有幫助，順便說一句，我應該提兩點。我們的大多數用戶，尤其是我們的大多數 Max 會員，都是新手用戶。

And so we really think this will help with mass conversion. The other thing that I'll say is that these guided vehicles, we are not advertising them yet or we're not using them converting users into Max subscription yet. So we've put them out and the next step is kind of to tell nonsubscribers that these exist so that we can get them to subscribe. So we're pretty excited about what that can do to Max.

因此，我們真的認為這將有助於大規模轉化。我還要補充一點，這些自動導引車，我們目前還沒有進行宣傳，也沒有利用它們將用戶轉化為 Max 會員。所以我們已經發布了這些內容，下一步就是告訴非訂閱用戶這些內容的存在，以便我們可以讓他們訂閱。所以我們對它能為Max帶來的效果感到非常興奮。

Ygal Arounian, Citi.

Ygal Arounian，花旗銀行。

Just on AI and making education sort of better than ever, the way you're talking about things. Can you just -- does that accelerate your road map in terms of adding new language learning modules. I know within the ones that you currently have, but moving into new subjects and -- what is it about what's changing right now around AI that's letting you do that today?

就人工智慧和讓教育變得比以往任何時候都更好這一點而言，聽你這麼說，真是太好了。這樣做是否會加快你們新增語言學習模組的計畫？我知道在你目前擁有的範圍內，但是要進入新的領域——人工智慧領域目前正在發生哪些變化，使你今天能夠做到這一點？

Yes, the types of things you will see. It definitely accelerates our road map in more coverage of languages. That doesn't mean new languages. The reality is languages, it's very love sided what languages people want to learn. We now teach 40 languages.

是的，你會看到各種各樣的事情。這無疑會加快我們擴大語言覆蓋範圍的步伐。但這並不意味著要開發新的語言。現實情況是，語言學習領域，人們想學哪種語言，很大程度取決於個人喜好。我們現在教授40種語言。

The rest that we don't teach is very little demand for them. But the top 9 languages that we teach, these are kind of like the Spanish and English and French and German and Italian like the big languages that people want to learn. The top 9 account for the vast majority of our users. And what you'll see us do is you'll see us go faster in terms of adding content to these top 9 languages. And right now, for most of them, we don't get you to the place where we want to get you, which is the Duolingo score of 130 in which is equivalent to CFR level of B2, which is where you can get a knowledge job in that language.

其餘我們不教的內容，市場需求量很小。但我們教授最多的 9 種語言，就像西班牙語、英語、法語、德語和義大利語這些人們想學習的大語種一樣。排名前 9 名的用戶佔據了我們絕大多數用戶。你會看到我們加快這 9 種主要語言添加內容的速度。而現在，對於大多數人來說，我們無法讓他們達到我們想要達到的目標，那就是 Duolingo 成績達到 130 分，這相當於 CFR B2 級別，也就是可以用該語言找到知識型工作的地方。

You will see that over the next few months, we're going to be adding content that can do that for all the top 9 languages. The other thing that you'll see is you'll see us just at a lot more different modules in the way we teach languages that are just a lot smarter at teaching you. I mean they're going to adapt a lot better to you. And you're also going to see us just use a lot more things that use AI in the background to allow for many more free responses, so that it adapts a lot more to you. In terms of -- we're going to also be using AI for other subjects.

在接下來的幾個月裡，您將會看到我們將添加能夠支援所有 9 種主要語言的內容。你也會看到，我們在語言教學方面會採用更多不同的模組，這些模組會更聰明地教你學習語言。我的意思是，他們會更好地適應你。你還會看到我們使用更多在後台使用人工智慧的技術，以實現更多自由響應，從而更好地適應你。至於人工智慧——我們也將把它應用於其他領域。

We're using it pretty heavily for math for getting a lot more content out there. So we're going to do that. In terms of adding other subjects, at the moment, we're not working on any other subjects. I'm not going to say that we're not going to add other subjects next year. That may be the case. Like you saw with chess, it took us 9 months from idea to actually launching. So it is possible that we'll add other subjects next year, although a little unlikely, but it is possible. But at the moment, we're not working on any other subjects.

我們大量使用它進行數學學習，以便發布更多內容。所以我們要這麼做。至於增加其他科目，目前我們沒有在研究任何其他科目。我不會說我們明年不會增加其他科目。或許真是如此。就像你看到的國際象棋一樣，我們從構思到實際發布花了 9 個月。所以明年我們可能會增加其他科目，雖然可能性不大，但也不是完全不可能。但目前我們沒有研究其他課題。

Okay. And then maybe sort of another broad one on AI. Can you just talk about what you're seeing around compute costs, gross margins coming in a little better than expected. And is that coming in faster than you think? And how is that impacting? One of the big questions we get is just generally on the competitive landscape and how AI is evolving that? What are you seeing there?

好的。然後或許還可以寫一篇關於人工智慧的更廣泛的文章。您能否談談目前在計算成本方面看到的情況，毛利率略優於預期？而且它來得比你想像的還要快嗎？那會產生什麼影響？我們經常被問到的一個問題是，整體而言，競爭格局如何變化，以及人工智慧將如何改變這種格局？你在那裡看到了什麼？

Okay. In terms of cost, look, costs are coming down. They've come down just without us doing anything, costs are coming down. For us, this has not been the top priority of optimizing costs. At the moment, the top priority is just making the best possible experience for our users that teach us the best and that is the most engaging.

好的。從成本角度來看，成本正在下降。成本在沒有我們採取任何行動的情況下就下降了。對我們來說，優化成本並不是首要任務。目前，我們的首要任務是為使用者創造最佳體驗，這能教我們很多東西，也是最能吸引使用者的方式。

Every now and then, if we see low-hanging fruit we will -- in terms of optimizing costs, we will do it. But it's not like we have all of our people trying to optimize cost. And the reason we can do that is because most of our AI features, at least the ones that cost the most money are behind Duolingo Max and because the price of that is high enough that we're -- for us, the usage of AI is anyways profitable.

偶爾，如果我們看到唾手可得的成果——在優化成本方面，我們會去做。但這並不意味著我們所有人都在努力優化成本。我們之所以能夠做到這一點，是因為我們的大部分人工智慧功能，至少是那些成本最高的功能，都整合在 Duolingo Max 中，而且由於其價格足夠高，對我們來說，使用人工智慧無論如何都是有利可圖的。

So that's why we're not going -- not trying to optimize the cost on that. In terms of the competitive landscape, I think people say things like -- the two things that people say about the competitive landscape with AI are: number one, why would anybody want to learn a language with Duolingo when you can just learn it with ChatGPT.

所以這就是我們不去的原因——我們不打算優化那方面的成本。就競爭格局而言，我認為人們會說這樣的話——人們對人工智慧競爭格局的兩點看法是：第一，既然可以用 ChatGPT 學習語言，為什麼還要用 Duolingo 學習語言呢？

Okay. We're not particularly worried about that. We've said it before. The main thing that we do really well not only do we teach well, but the main thing that we do really well is keep people engaged. And in order to learn a language, you need to be engaged for years.

好的。我們對此並不太擔心。我們之前就說過。我們做得非常出色的一點不僅是教學水平高，更重要的是能夠讓學生保持學習熱情。要學會一門語言，你需要投入數年時間。

It really takes years to learn a language coming every day and we need to keep you engaged actually doing it. And not only that, we also need to have curriculum for years for you to do that. So with ChatGPT, you can go there and you can ask it to teach you a few words here and there, but it's not like you can have really curriculum for years that teach that.

學習語言真的需要數年時間，每天都要練習，我們需要讓你保持學習的動機。不僅如此，我們還需要多年的課程才能讓你做到這一點。所以，有了 ChatGPT，你可以去那裡，你可以讓它教你一些單詞，但你不可能擁有真正持續多年的課程來教這些內容。

So we're not particularly worried about that aspect. And then the other thing that people have said that they're worried about is, oh, well, nobody is going to want to learn a language because we're going to have simultaneous language translation and okay.

所以我們並不太擔心這方面的問題。還有人擔心，哦，好吧，因為我們將有同聲傳譯，所以沒有人會想學習語言。

Also not worried about that. I believe in 100% of the Google I/O conferences over the last 10 years, they have showcased simultaneous language translation. They do it every single year, and it's good. It works. But this has been happening for the last 10 years, and we have not seen the desire to learn a language go down at all.

我也不擔心這個。我相信在過去 10 年的每一屆 Google I/O 大會上，他們都展示了同聲傳譯技術。他們每年都這樣做，而且做得很好。有用。但這種情況已經持續了 10 年，我們絲毫沒有看到人們學習語言的意願下降。

In fact, it has come up. And I think the biggest reason for that is because if you look at our users, they fall into two big categories. One big bucket is people who are learning a language as a hobby. It kind of doesn't matter whether our computer can do that because -- they're the same with chess, by the way. Computers are way better than humans at chess, but still we have millions of people wanting to learn chess.

事實上，這個問題已經被提出來了。我認為最大的原因是，如果你觀察我們的用戶，他們大致可以分為兩類。其中一大類人是以學習語言為嗜好的人。我們的電腦能不能做到這一點其實並不重要，因為──順便說一句，它們在下西洋棋時也是如此。電腦下棋比人類厲害許多，但仍有數百萬人想學習下棋。

So it doesn't matter if it's a hobby. The other big group of people that are learning a language with us are people who are learning English and they actually want to learn English. Like that is -- for them, being able to have like a phone that they have to hold out, it's just kind of -- that's not what they want to do. So we just -- we're not particularly worried about that. It just so happens that people like to tweet about that.

所以，是不是嗜好並不重要。另一大批和我們一起學習語言的人是那些學習英語並且真心想學英語的人。對他們來說，擁有一部需要舉著才能使用的手機，感覺——這不是他們想要的。所以我們——我們並不太擔心這個問題。碰巧人們喜歡在推特上談論這件事。

We're not worried about it.

我們並不擔心。

Just a couple of points on that. Since we -- the AI costs and Max, just to make sure everyone's aware, Max is now 9% of our subscribers. It doubled in Q3 year-over-year in terms of bookings. So it's clearly doing well in that regard. It's underperforming our lofty expectations for it, though. We expected a bit more than that. And so that's why Luis is talking about guided calls and all the other things we're going to do to help it achieve what we think it can achieve.

關於這一點，我只想補充幾點。由於我們——人工智慧成本和 Max，為了確保每個人都知道，Max 現在占我們訂閱用戶的 9%。第三季預訂量年增了一倍。所以它在這方面顯然做得很好。不過，它的表現低於我們對它的高期望。我們原本期望更高一些。所以，這就是為什麼路易斯一直在談論引導式通話以及我們將要做的所有其他事情，以幫助它實現我們認為它可以實現的目標。

And then finally, because AI costs have come down, though, I don't want folks to take away that we're not willing to invest as Luis is talking about the seminal moment we're in to go attack a very large opportunity. We're -- we've shown that we can grow to this scale incredibly profitably. We're guiding to a 29% adjusted EBITDA margin for the year, which is very, very close to our long-term adjusted EBITDA margin range. And so as we do that, we are not going to be afraid to invest in innovation. And so we're going to make those investments over time.

最後，雖然人工智慧的成本已經下降，但我不想讓大家誤以為我們不願意投資，因為路易斯正在談論我們正處於一個具有里程碑意義的時刻，可以抓住一個巨大的機會。我們已經證明，我們可以發展到這種規模，而且獲利能力非常強。我們預計今年的調整後 EBITDA 利潤率為 29%，這與我們長期的調整後 EBITDA 利潤率範圍非常非常接近。因此，在這樣做的時候，我們不會害怕投資創新。因此，我們將逐步進行這些投資。

Mark Mahaney, Evercore ISI.

Mark Mahaney，Evercore ISI。

Okay. A couple of things I wanted to go through. One, I know you had some price actions or price increases earlier in the year. Have you -- what kind of reactions have you seen to those? Secondly, I think you were going to hold off on doing any other -- I think it was just on like new people coming in on the standard plan, but your thoughts on rolling out other price increases.

好的。有幾件事我想說明一下。第一，我知道你們今年早些時候有過一些價格調整或漲價行為。你觀察到過哪些反應？其次，我認為你原本打算暫緩進行任何其他調整——我認為這只是針對新加入標準計劃的用戶，但你對推出其他價格上漲方案有什麼想法？

I don't think you're going to do that now given your prioritization of user growth in the fourth quarter and beyond, but just talk about that. And then third, just so we're clear on the deceleration in bookings and revenue growth in Q4 is largely due to the fact that you're going to sort of slow down the conversion rate from free to paid and really just focus on user growth. I just want to make sure that that's the main driver, and it's not like you're seeing a reduction in retention amongst paid subs, higher churn amongst paid subs possibly because of the price increase.

鑑於你目前將第四季度及以後的用戶成長作為優先事項，我認為你現在不會這樣做，但還是談談這個話題吧。第三，為了明確起見，第四季預訂量和收入成長放緩主要是因為你們將放慢從免費用戶到付費用戶的轉換率，並真正專注於用戶成長。我只是想確認這是否是主要原因，而不是付費用戶的留存率下降，或者付費用戶的流失率上升可能是由於價格上漲造成的。

I mean I can take some of those. I'll take the last one. Yeah, the change in Q4 is pretty much because of the shift to go to longer-term initiatives. And that means user growth and also spending some of our -- not only are we prioritizing user growth, we're also spending relatively more effort, shifting some effort to teaching better which we're taking some of that from our monetization efforts. So that's basically what you're seeing.

我的意思是，我可以接受其中一些。我選最後一個。是的，第四季度的變化主要是因為轉向了更長期的計劃。這意味著用戶成長，以及投入我們的一些精力——我們不僅優先考慮用戶成長，而且還投入了相對更多的精力，將一些精力轉移到更好的教學上，而我們正在從盈利努力中抽調一些精力。所以，你看到的基本上就是這樣。

And it's not like a humungous thing, but it is a shift. In terms of price increases, you'll see us -- we'll be testing prices. We'll be testing all kinds of things. And we will see us launch the things that we think are good for the whole platform. I don't know exactly what's going to win, but you'll see us test prices.

雖然不是什麼驚天動地的大事，但確實是一種轉變。至於價格上漲方面，你們會看到──我們會進行價格測試。我們將測試各種各樣的東西。我們將推出我們認為對整個平台有益的功能。我不知道最終結果會如何，但你們會看到我們對價格進行測試。

And by that, I mean up and down. We'll probably test some prices much lower or a package -- and this I'm speaking about things that we may do, but I don't know if we'll end up doing them if we don't like the results. But we'll probably do a package that is like half price, that is like super light. That's the type of stuff that you may see us do.

我的意思是上下移動。我們可能會測試一些更低的價格或套餐——我指的是我們可能會做的事情，但如果結果不理想，我不知道我們最終是否會去做。但我們可能會推出半價的超輕量套餐。你可能會看到我們做這類事情。

Yeah. And Mark, just to round it out, I think 2 points. One is, we've talked a lot about taking price up as a price point every now and again, we do that. Luis just said, we're going to continue to experiment with that, and that will continue to happen. ARPU has gone up this year, every quarter, kind of mid-single digits.

是的。馬克，為了讓結果更完整，我認為需要補充 2 分。第一點是，我們常常談到要時不時地提高價格，我們也確實這麼做了。路易斯剛才說，我們會繼續進行這方面的試驗，而且這種情況還會繼續發生。今年以來，ARPU（每用戶平均收入）每季都有所成長，增幅約為個位數。

That's also reflected in the guide and that's mainly come more from Max than it has from price point changes. I will say that we did take pricing at various times over the past a little bit and that does influence our ability to discount during our one and only discount of the year.

這一點在指南中也有所體現，而這主要源自於 Max 的舉措，而不是價格點的變動。我想說的是，在過去一段時間裡，我們確實在不同時期調整過價格，這確實會影響我們一年中唯一一次折扣活動期間的折扣能力。

So again, if you have a higher price, you can run different experiments with the level of discounting and one of the things that happens every Q4, when we talk about it, as we talk about the ability in our Q4 bookings guide because Q4 is our most variable quarter because we run this New Year's promotion.

所以，如果你的價格較高，你可以嘗試不同的折扣力道。每到第四季度，我們都會談到這一點，就像我們在第四季度預訂指南中提到的那樣，因為第四季度是我們變化最大的季度，因為我們將進行新年促銷活動。

This year, we did energy, which is a core pricing mechanic, and we have never run a New Year's promo with energy. And so we're going to be experimenting with all sorts of things as we get towards the end of the year with the promo on how we run it, how we show it and display it, when we run it, all of these type of things.

今年，我們推出了能源價格促銷活動，這是核心定價機制，而我們之前從未推出過能源價格促銷活動。因此，隨著年底臨近，我們將嘗試各種各樣的促銷活動，包括如何進行、如何展示和宣傳、何時開展等等。

So that is also baked in here in the guide.

所以這一點也已經包含在指南中了。

Ryan MacDonald, Needham & Company.

Ryan MacDonald，Needham & Company。

Luis, maybe stick with me a little bit on this question. I apologize in advance. But how learners -- people learn differs by generation and by demographic. I think we've already seen that with sort of advanced English learners require -- meeting different requirements from Duolingo than maybe the traditional core base. So can you talk about how -- or if you are going to be targeting certain demographics, Gen Z learns or generations, Gen Z seemingly learning different than millennials with some of these product updates?

路易斯，或許你可以稍微聽我解釋一下這個問題。我先在此致歉。但是，不同世代和不同人口統計特徵的人學習方式各不相同。我認為我們已經看到，對於一些高級英語學習者來說，多鄰國的要求與傳統核心課程的要求有所不同。那麼，您能否談談——或者如果您打算針對特定人群，例如 Z 世代或不同世代，Z 世代的學習方式似乎與千禧世代有所不同，並針對這些產品更新進行調整？

And then how should we think about the metrics that you will be looking towards to prove out this works? Because obviously, user growth can be beneficial -- can be benefited by some changes, but that might not always mean that, that sticky user growth where MAUs might not always convert to DAUs. So again, long-winded question, I apologize. But how are you targeting or what are you targeting in terms of these changes? And then how are you measuring success?

那麼，我們該如何考慮用來證明這種方法有效的指標呢？顯然，用戶成長可能是有益的——可以從一些變化中受益，但這並不總是意味著用戶黏性成長，因為每月活躍用戶數 (MAU) 不一定能轉化為每日活躍用戶數 (DAU)。再次抱歉，我的問題又說了這麼多。但是，就這些變化而言，你們的目標群體是什麼？或者說，你們的目標群體是什麼？那麼，你如何衡量成功呢？

Yeah. I mean you asked about -- it's true. Some people learn different than others. That is true. But you would be surprised that there are a lot more similarities than differences.

是的。我的意思是，你問到了——這是真的。每個人的學習方式都不一樣。沒錯。但你會驚訝地發現，它們的相似之處遠多於不同之處。

The reality is, I mean, this is not just generations, also geographically. I mean we always hear these things about like, oh, well, people in that country do that or people in that country do that. What we have found time and again is that not only a lot of people learn pretty similarly, also the things that get people to use the product more are pretty similar across the geographies. I mean like a streak, it works in every country or it's just -- so there's a lot of similarities.

現實情況是，我的意思是，這不僅是世代差異，也是地域差異。我的意思是，我們總是聽到這樣的說法，例如，哦，那個國家的人會做這個，或者那個國家的人會做那個。我們一次又一次地發現，不僅許多人學習的方式非常相似，而且促使人們更多地使用產品的原因在不同地區也非常相似。我的意思是，就像連勝一樣，它在每個國家都有效，或者說——所以有很多相似之處。

So at the moment, you're going to see us just make a better course for the masses that's what we're going to be spending most of our effort on. Of course, the courses do adapt to each individual and probably one of the places where there is most adaptation that is needed is the pace of learning really is different.

所以目前，你們將會看到我們為大眾打造更好的課程，這將是我們投入大部分精力的領域。當然，課程會根據每個人的情況進行調整，而最需要調整的地方之一就是學習進度確實因人而異。

And it just happens that as you get older, you get slower. That is just -- that's not controversial as somebody who's getting older and slower, I can tell you that. So the pace -- but that's very easy to adapt. We're just -- we really do just adapt to the pace pretty easily, and we've been doing that for a while. Now in terms of the metrics that we're going to be looking for, certainly, user growth is an important metric that we're going to be -- that we're really keyed in on right now, probably the most important metric in the company. So we're going to be looking at that a lot.

隨著年齡增長，人的反應速度自然會變慢。這一點——這一點並不具有爭議性，作為一個年紀漸長、反應遲鈍的人，我可以告訴你。所以節奏——但這很容易適應。我們只是——我們真的很容易就能適應這種節奏，而且我們已經這樣做了有一段時間了。至於我們要關注的指標，用戶成長當然是重要的指標，也是我們目前非常關注的指標，可能是公司最重要的指標。所以我們會重點關注這一點。

Now the thing about improvements in teaching, and this is what I was saying before, they don't translate to user growth immediately because if you improve a course and it's much better, over time, maybe people are starting feeling that they're learning a little better, so there's more retention or maybe there's more word of mouth because the people are saying like, it really works for me, let me tell you about it. So it does translate. We know that improvements in teaching do translate to user growth, but it's not immediate.

關於教學改進，正如我之前所說，它們不會立即轉化為用戶增長，因為如果你改進了一門課程，讓它變得更好，隨著時間的推移，也許人們會開始覺得他們學得更好了，所以留存率更高了，或者口碑傳播也更多了，因為人們會說，這真的對我有用，讓我來告訴你。所以它確實可以翻譯。我們知道教學水準的提升確實會轉化為使用者成長，但這並非立竿見影。

And this is kind of what we mean by long term. What we're going to be looking at that, there are things like just improvements in learning outcomes, we can measure how well people are learning. And the good news is that really almost every year -- since we started measuring that every year Duolingo is actually teaching better than the year before.

這就是我們所說的長期發展的意思。我們將要關注的是學習成果的改進，我們可以衡量人們的學習情況。好消息是，自從我們開始衡量以來，幾乎每年 Duolingo 的教學效果都比前一年更好。

We're probably going to see improvements in how well we teach, move faster than in the past because we are taking it -- we're spending more effort on it. So we're probably going to be seeing that and our hypothesis, but it is a hypothesis that I very much believe in, is that, that will translate to user growth. It's just not going to be linear or quick.

我們可能會看到教學品質有所提高，進展速度比過去更快，因為我​​們正在投入更多精力。所以我們可能會看到這種情況，我們的假設也得到了證實，但我非常相信這個假設，那就是這將轉化為用戶成長。這不會是一個線性或快速的過程。

Makes sense. Okay. And I'm also older and slower, Luis. So no problems there.

有道理。好的。而且我也年紀大了，反應也慢了，路易斯。所以這方面沒有問題。

Aren't we all? Aren't we all? But wiser, but wiser.

我們不都是嗎？我們不都是嗎？但更明智了，更明智了。

We hope. We hope. Matt, I know you probably don't want to obviously get into a conversation about 2026 guidance or anything like that. But obviously, a lot of course investments, a lot of content investments. Can you just give us a sense of like the magnitude we should expect here?

我們希望如此。我們希望如此。馬特，我知道你可能不想談論 2026 年的指導方針或類似的事情。但很顯然，這其中有很多投資，很多內容投資。您能大概描述一下我們應該預期的規模嗎？

And like is there an expectation still that you can continue to expand EBITDA margins even through this process as we think over the next couple of years?

那麼，正如我們所預期的，在接下來的幾年裡，你們是否仍然期望能夠繼續擴大 EBITDA 利潤率，即使這個過程仍在進行中？

Yeah. No, I appreciate Ryan. And even though you asked a very (technical difficulty), I'm not going to guide to 2026 on this call, we'll do that in February. But I will -- and I mentioned this on an earlier question, we have made incredible progress towards our long-term margin while we've been growing the platform to a scale that has 135 million monthly actives, and we guided to nearly [1.2] billion of bookings this year. So we've (technical difficulty) everyone that we can scale the business, operate with discipline and expand margins.

是的。不，我很欣賞瑞恩。儘管你問了一個非常（技術性難題），但我不會在這次電話會議上給出 2026 年的指導，我們將在二月進行討論。但我會——我在之前的一個問題中提到過——我們在實現長期利潤率方面取得了令人難以置信的進展，同時我們的平台規模也擴大到了每月活躍用戶 1.35 億，我們預計今年的預訂量將接近 12 億。因此，我們克服了技術困難，能夠擴大業務規模，嚴格運營，並提高利潤率。

And that's great. And we want to continue to do that. And we're going to continue to operate with discipline and grow the business along the lines of what Luis is talking about, hopefully to a whole other order of magnitude. While we do that, though, we're not afraid to invest. We think we can invest and still operate very profitably. But we are not going to prioritize linear margin expansion from here when we should be -- we view the opportunity is so big, so we can prioritize investing. That's how we think about it.

那太好了。我們希望繼續這樣做。我們將繼續秉持嚴謹的作風，按照路易斯所說的方向發展業務，希望能達到一個全新的規模。不過，同時，我們也不害怕投資。我們認為我們可以進行投資，並且仍然能夠獲得非常可觀的利潤。但我們不會像現在這樣優先考慮線性利潤率擴張——我們認為機會如此之大，所以我們可以優先考慮投資。我們是這麼想的。

Andrew Boone, Citizens.

安德魯‧布恩，市民。

I'd love to talk about kind of a topic that we've revisited maybe 2 or 3 years ago, right, in terms of advanced English learners and basically the improvement of efficacy driving those learners to the platform and kind of like whether AI has accelerated that and whether some of that thesis came to fruition and whether any of the slowdown in growth is impacting those types of learners. Or is there anything else you can kind of speak to in terms of that cohort?

我想談談一個我們大概在兩三年前重新探討過的話題，對吧？那就是關於高級英語學習者，以及提高學習效率如何促使這些學習者使用這個平台，人工智慧是否加速了這一進程，以及一些理論是否得到了驗證，成長放緩是否對這些類型的學習者產生了影響。或者，關於這群人，您還有什麼其他想說的嗎？

Yeah. As we mentioned -- I don't know whenever it was, a couple of years ago, we started talking about this. English learning is a major opportunity. I mean this -- 80% of the people who are learning a language in the world are learning English. And so we started investing in teaching better for English learners.

是的。正如我們之前提到的──我不知道具體是什麼時候，大概是幾年前吧，我們開始討論這件事。學習英語是一個絕佳的機會。我的意思是──全世界學習語言的人中，有 80% 都在學習英語。因此，我們開始投資於提高英語學習者的教學品質。

We have done that -- we've done a major launch here throughout this year. Now all of our English courses now cover up until Duolingo score 130, which is the place where you can get a job -- a knowledge job in that language.

我們已經做到了——今年我們在這裡進行了一次重大發布。現在我們所有的英語課程都涵蓋到 Duolingo 130 分，達到這個分數你就可以找到一份工作——一份與該語言相關的知識型工作。

So we have that, and we've been improving how well people learn English and we are seeing that in the metrics, our number of English learners and certainly a number of advanced English learners has been growing steadily.

所以我們有了這些，我們一直在努力提高人們學習英語的水平，而且從各項指標中也可以看出這一點，我們的英語學習者人數，尤其是高級英語學習者的數量，一直在穩步增長。

The other thing that I'll say is that the regions at the moment that are growing fastest are English learning regions. And so we're seeing that Asia is a really good example of that. There's -- we are certainly still posting or have never stopped posting unhinged content in Asia kind of from the social media side, but also we're just getting a lot more users there. So that's the parts that are growing the fastest. So I'm pretty happy with the progress there.

我還要補充一點，目前成長最快的地區是英語學習地區。因此，我們看到亞洲就是一個很好的例子。當然，我們仍然在亞洲的社交媒體上發布一些不尋常的內容，或者說從未停止發布這類內容，而且我們在那裡也獲得了更多的用戶。所以，這些都是成長最快的部分。所以我對那方面的進展相當滿意。

We did mention that it was going to take a while, and it is taking a while for really the word to get out that Duolingo is very, very good at Advanced English and so while I believe that we've made good progress in that, we're still not there yet as this is a thing that even throughout next year, we're going to be seeing an increase in the number of advanced English learners that we're going to have.

我們確實提到這需要一段時間，而且現在也確實需要一段時間才能真正讓大家知道 Duolingo 在高級英語方面非常非常出色。雖然我相信我們在這方面已經取得了不錯的進展，但我們還沒有達到目標，因為即使到了明年，我們仍然會看到高級英語學習者的數量繼續增加。

And then can we just get an update in terms of family plan? I know there were a bunch of features that you guys were adding and then just broader adoption, where are we today? And where can that go?

那麼，能否提供一下家庭套餐的最新資訊？我知道你們添加了很多功能，也推動了更廣泛的應用，那麼我們現在的情況如何？那這一切又會走向何方呢？

Yeah. Yeah. In terms of broad adoption, the Family Plan continues to do well. I think it was about 29% of subscriber (technical difficulty) in the most recent quarter. So it's grown nicely.

是的。是的。就廣泛採用而言，家庭計劃繼續表現良好。我認為最近一個季度大約有 29% 的用戶（技術難題）受到影響。它長得喜人。

And I think there's a bunch of reason to believe that it's going to continue to grow nicely. For example, last year -- in Q4 of last year, really everything basically went right. which is why we grew so fast last year, I think, 42% year-over-year last year. Part of that was that the family plan during New Year's promo did really well. So there's reasons to believe that we still have room to run on Family Plan, Andrew.

我認為有很多理由相信它會繼續穩定成長。例如，去年第四季度，一切都進展順利。我認為，這就是我們去年成長如此迅速的原因，比去年同期成長了42%。部分原因是新年促銷期間的家庭套餐銷售狀況非常好。所以，我們有理由相信，家庭計畫還有繼續前進的空間，安德魯。

Justin Patterson, KeyBanc.

Justin Patterson，KeyBanc。

I'd love to hear a little bit more about just learnings from energy. There was a lot of optimism on this product, roughly 90 days or so ago. So I would love to hear how just that has evolved and might be playing into some of the trends we're talking about on this quarter. And then when we think about just the arc of reacceleration here, how much of this is really dependent on getting the product right versus really tapping into that cultural relevance that Duolingo had earlier this year and then and encounter that speed bump around the social backlash?

我很想多了解一些關於能源的知識。大約90天前，人們對這款產品寄予厚望。所以我很想了解這種情況是如何發展的，以及它可能如何影響我們本季討論的一些趨勢。然後，當我們思考重新加速的弧線時，這其中有多少真正取決於把產品做好，又有多少取決於真正利用 Duolingo 今年早些時候所擁有的文化相關性，然後遇到社會反彈帶來的阻礙？

Okay. So energy, we're very happy with energy. It did exactly what we wanted it to do. It increased bookings and also increased DAUs. So that was good. The kind of the way it went is we launched all of energy for our iOS users first, then for Android. We rolled it out over a span of a couple of months for each one of these platforms. By now, it is done. We have, I don't know if it was a couple of weeks ago, we have every single person who has updated the app in the last, I don't know, six to nine months has energy in there. And we're very happy because it did exactly what we expected it to do, and it's been launched.

好的。所以，我們對能源方面非常滿意。它完全達到了我們的預期效果。它增加了預訂量，也增加了每日活躍用戶數。那很好。事情的發展過程是，我們首先向 iOS 用戶推出了所有 Energy 功能，然後再推出 Android 用戶。我們花了幾個月的時間，在每個平台上逐步推出了這項服務。現在，這件事已經完成了。我不知道是幾週前，但過去六到九個月裡所有更新過應用程式的人，他們的帳戶裡都有能量。我們非常高興，因為它完全達到了我們的預期效果，而且已經發布了。

Now in terms of -- you asked a question about product versus kind of marketing, look, both are important for us to grow, product and marketing. The longer-term thing is if we have a product that is extremely retentive that also teaches really well, that's the best thing you can do, and that's where we spend most of our efforts, and we're going to continue spending most of our efforts on that.

至於你問到的產品與行銷方式的問題，你看，產品和行銷對我們都很重要，才能成長。從長遠來看，如果我們有一款產品既能有效提高記憶力，又能很好地進行教學，那就是最好的事情，這也是我們投入最多精力的地方，我們將繼續把大部分精力投入到這方面。

Yes, the cultural relevance matters. But to me, that's just an accelerant to something that is where the main dish is the product. In terms of kind of being culturally relevant, et cetera. We really are seeing a complete pickup on that. I don't know if you've watched, for example, the things that happened in Halloween. I mean there were throughout the world, certainly, there were thousands of Halloween costumes that were just Duolingo costumes. So we see that -- we're seeing that quite a bit. And so we're not particularly worried about that.

是的，文化相關性很重要。但對我來說，這只是加速某些事物發展的因素，而真正的主角是產品本身。就其文化相關性等方面而言。我們確實看到這方面出現了全面復甦。我不知道你有沒有看過，比如說，萬聖節期間發生的事。我的意思是，在世界各地，肯定有成千上萬的萬聖節服裝其實就是 Duolingo 的服裝。所以我們看到——我們經常看到這種情況。所以我們對此並不太擔心。

Yeah. And the only thing I'd add to that, Justin, is there is -- we talked about it on the last call, which is we've had some success, particularly in the US, spending a little bit more on actual marketing, seeing a nice return in the US in particular.

是的。賈斯汀，我唯一要補充的是——我們在上次通話中也談到了這一點——我們取得了一些成功，尤其是在美國，我們在實際行銷上多花了一些錢，尤其是在美國，看到了不錯的回報。

And so that happened in Q3, and we're going to -- it's relatively small dollars, but we're going to continue that into Q4 because the US growth, as we've talked about before, is slower than the rest of the world, in part because of the rest of the world is growing really rapidly. But that continues. And so that's just the other element we'd add to the marketing mix.

所以第三季度就出現了這種情況，而且——雖然金額相對較小，但我們將繼續把這種情況延續到第四季度，因為正如我們之前討論過的，美國經濟增長速度比世界其他地區慢，部分原因是世界其他地區增長非常迅速。但這種情況仍在持續。所以，這就是我們要加入行銷組合中的另一個要素。

Shweta Khajuria, Wolfe.

Shweta Khajuria，Wolfe。

I actually have two. First one is on China. If you could please talk about how engagement has trended in China through the quarters, through the year and what your expectations are, what you're seeing there? And even if you could comment on likelihood of Max there this year or next. And then second is on renewal rates at Max in particular. Could you please talk about how that trended in Q3 so far and what your expectations are?

我其實有兩個。第一篇是關於中國的。請您談談中國用戶參與度在各個季度和全年的發展趨勢，以及您的預期和實際觀察結果？即使你能評論馬克斯今年或明年在那裡的可能性。其次，我想談談Max的續約費率。請您談談第三季至今的發展趨勢以及您的預期？

Okay. Let me take the China one, and then I'll let Matt take the renewal rates one. Okay. China. We are, of course, doing very well in China.

好的。我來負責中國那部分，然後我讓馬特負責續約率那部分。好的。中國。我們在中國的業務當然非常成功。

I believe it's our fastest-growing country. It is our second largest country in terms of DAUs and growing fast. It's still not that large of a fraction of our business, it's about 5%, 6% of our business at the moment, but it is growing, and it is growing very fast and the engagement is very high, retention is high. Max in China is being tested at the moment. And so we have the permission to test it in China because of this is an LLM, you need to get permission to test this. So it is being tested.

我認為它是我們成長最快的國家。以日活躍用戶數計算，它是我們第二大國家，而且成長迅速。雖然目前它在我們業務中所佔比例還不大，大約只有 5% 到 6%，但它正在成長，而且成長速度非常快，參與度很高，留存率也很高。目前Max正在中國進行測試。因此，我們獲得了在中國進行測試的許可，因為這是一個LLM（法學碩士）項目，需要獲得許可才能進行測試。所以它正在接受測試。

And so this is going to launch in some number of weeks or months, it's hard for me to tell you exactly because it does depend on approvals, but it's moved along pretty well. So what I'll say at the very high level about China is that it's a pretty major opportunity for us. But of course, China comes with a risk. There's geopolitics, et cetera.

所以這個計畫將在幾週或幾個月後啟動，我很難確切地告訴你，因為這取決於審批情況，但目前進展相當順利。所以，關於中國，我最想說的是，它對我們來說是一個非常重要的機會。當然，中國也存在風險。還有地緣政治等等因素。

So the way we're treating it is we're not spending a crazy amount, for example, in marketing in China. We're spending a very modest amount there, but we just happen to be growing quite a bit. So it's nice and it's a really nice opportunity. But if at any point in time something happens, we just didn't end up investing all that much there. That's kind of how we're treating it. And then I'll let Matt talk about Max renewals.

所以我們採取的策略是，例如，我們不會在中國的市場行銷上投入大量資金。我們在那裡的投入非常有限，但我們的業務卻成長得很快。所以這很好，也是一個很好的機會。但如果真有什麼事發生，我們最後也沒在那裡投入太多資金。我們基本上就是這樣處理這件事的。然後我會讓馬特談談Max續約的事情。

Yeah. So just to put it in context, Max renewals are important, but the broader -- I think there was a question earlier on broader platform retention. That remains strong, no real changes in that. And then on Max, in particular, we mentioned in the last call that we were going to start to see in Q3 and then in Q4 larger cohorts come through the Max renewal cycle. And what we saw is that Max right now, again, there's still small as they've been ramping up, but was renewing slightly better than Super.

是的。所以，為了更好地理解，Max 續訂固然重要，但更廣泛的——我想之前有人問過關於更廣泛的平台留存的問題。這一點依然強勁，沒有實質的變化。特別是關於 Max，我們在上次電話會議中提到，我們將在第三季和第四季開始看到更大的群體完成 Max 續約週期。我們看到的是，Max 目前的情況仍然比較小，因為他們一直在努力擴大規模，但續訂情況比 Super 略好一些。

But it's early, and Q4 is relatively a relatively sizable cohort. So we'll talk about this again on the next call.

但現在還為時過早，而且第四季的樣本量相對較大。所以我們下次通話時再討論這個問題。

Hanyi Cai, CITICS.

蔡漢誼，中信證券。

It's so good to have you connected. And it's really excited to hear the last question from like Max is finally rolling out in China. And I'm going to expand that question a little bit further because geographically, you see -- you saw that China was the fast-growing country in the past quarter.

很高興能聯絡你。聽到最後一個問題，例如Max終於要在中國上市了，真的很令人興奮。我還要進一步拓展這個問題，因為從地理角度來看，你可以看到──中國是上個季度成長最快的國家。

And for this -- in this quarter, you talked about like growing more users. So what geographically would you think -- like which country do you think like -- or which region do you think will be most potential to grow in the next quarter?

而對於這一點——在本季度，你們談到如何增加用戶數量。那麼從地理位置來看，你認為哪個國家或地區在下一季最具成長潛力？

And my another question is related to your Duolingo score you published in this year's score count because like that was related to the efficacy. And so I'm wondering like how do you think that this kind of efficacy measurement relate to the core user performance metrics? And how -- will that be like the key motivation for you to grow the users in the next quarter?

我的另一個問題與你今年公佈的 Duolingo 分數有關，因為這似乎與學習效果有關。所以我想知道，您認為這種功效測量與核心使用者績效指標之間有什麼關係？那麼，這會是你們在下一季實現用戶成長的主要動力嗎？

Yeah. Thank you for the question. So region-wise, the fastest-growing region as a region is Asia for us and we expect that to be true for a bit. I would expect that's going to be true. I don't know the future, but I would expect that to be true for a bit.

是的。謝謝你的提問。因此，從區域來看，成長最快的地區是亞洲，我們預計這種情況會持續一段時間。我估計情況確實如此。我無法預知未來，但我預計這種情況還會持續一段時間。

And certainly, China is leading that, but it's not just China. It's basically all of Asia that is growing pretty fast. In terms of the score, we're very excited about the score. Our announcement was that first of all, all of our major language courses now have the Duolingo score.

當然，中國在這方面處於領先地位，但不僅僅是中國。基本上整個亞洲都在快速成長。就得分而言，我們非常滿意。我們宣布的第一件事是，我們所有主要的語言課程現在都加入了多鄰國評分。

And also you can share the Duolingo score on LinkedIn. We're seeing quite a good number of people sharing their score on LinkedIn. And so that really means they're using it kind of for job purposes and we have that -- the score there. The score also is in the same range as our Duolingo English test, at least for English learners. And English learners are the one that would care more about a score like that, particularly English learners in Asia are the ones that would care more about a score. So we're very excited about that.

你也可以在領英上分享你的多鄰國成績。我們看到相當多的人在領英上分享他們的分數。所以這實際上意味著他們將其用於工作目的，而我們已經掌握了這一點——這就是得分。至少對於英語學習者來說，這個分數也和我們的多鄰國英語測驗分數處於同一水平。英語學習者尤其會重視這樣的分數，亞洲的英語學習者尤其如此。我們對此感到非常興奮。

And it is something -- the ultimate goal for it is to become the proficiency standard for at least the major languages and certainly for English, where rather than when people ask you how much French do you know or how much English do you know at the moment where people say it's like, oh, I'm intermediate. We want people to say, I am a Duolingo 60 in French or I'm a Duolingo 80 in English. That is what we want. And we think we're making pretty major progress.

而且它確實有其意義——它的最終目標是成為至少主要語言（當然也包括英語）的熟練程度標準，這樣當人們問你法語或英語水平如何時，人們就不會再說“哦，我中級了”。我們希望人們能說：“我的法語程度是 Duolingo 60 級”，或“我的英語程度是 Duolingo 80 級”。這正是我們想要的。我們認為我們取得了相當大的進展。

In the case of the score, particularly for English, the Duolingo English test is now accepted by over 6,000 educational institutions in the world, including all, Ivy League universities and also the 99 of the top 100 universities in the United States accept the Duolingo English test. So we think the combination of that prestige plus the large scale that we have in the app plus doing things like sharing with -- on LinkedIn will hopefully get us to be the standard for proficiency.

就分數而言，特別是英語分數，多鄰國英語測試現在已被全球 6000 多所教育機構接受，其中包括所有常春藤盟校，以及美國排名前 100 的大學中的 99 所都接受多鄰國英語測試。所以我們認為，憑藉這種聲望，加上我們在應用程式中擁有的巨大規模，再加上在 LinkedIn 上分享等活動，有望使我們成為熟練程度的標竿。

Okay. And one thing is that we are not using LinkedIn that most like in China, so we are really hoping to like connect it to another social media platform (multiple speakers)

好的。還有一點是，我們目前沒有像中國大多數人那樣使用LinkedIn，所以我們非常希望能夠將其與其他社群媒體平台連接起來。（多位發言者）

We are working on that. I can't really give you details on that, but we are working on -- it's not just going to be LinkedIn that we have the score on. We're working on that.

我們正在努力解決這個問題。我無法透露更多細節，但我們正在努力——我們掌握的不僅僅是 LinkedIn 的數據。我們正在努力解決這個問題。

I'm showing no further questions, and this concludes the Q&A section of the call. I would now like to turn the call back to the host for closing remarks.

我沒有其他問題要問了，電話會議的問答環節到此結束。現在我想把電話轉回給主持人，請他作總結發言。

Thanks, operator. I'd just like to thank everyone for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you on the next call.

謝謝接線生。我只想感謝大家的參與，我們期待下次電話會議見到大家。