Phoenix New Media Ltd (FENG) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to Phoenix New Media Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

I would now like to hand the call over to your first speaker today, Ms. Muzi Guo from IR team. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator.

Welcome to Phoenix New Media's Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. I'm joined here by our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Shuang Liu; and our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Edward Lu.

On today's call, management will first provide a review of the quarterly results and then conduct a Q&A session.

The fourth quarter 2021 financial results and webcast of this conference call are available on our website at ir.ifeng.com. A replay of this call will be available on the website in a few hours.

Before we continue, I'd like to refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements.

Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in RMB.

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Shuang Liu, our CEO.

Thank you, Muzi.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. In the face of growing competition and macro uncertainties, we stayed at the forefront of the media space, thanks to our strong media DNA and our mission to provide high-quality and professional news content.

During the past few weeks, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has captured the public's attention. Starting in mid-February, we were the first online media platform to launch full coverage of the conflict. Since then, our multi-dimensional coverage of the crisis, consisting of frontline updates from our network of Phoenix TV journalists, discussion and analysis from experts in international relations, video clips from content creators in Ukraine, on-going livestreaming, live screening and more has attracted an average of 50 million daily views across the internet.

Besides breaking news coverage, we continued to emphasize the uniqueness of our content and enhance our user experience. We remained committed to cultivating new business initiatives and expanding our revenue streams. We successfully held a number of high-profile signature events in the fourth quarter to expand our brand influence despite restrictions and challenges related to recent COVID outbreaks.

Our ability to execute given the difficult situation is a result of our effective team work, dedication and creativity. Several of these events include our iFeng Food Festival held together with the Golden Buttonwood Chinese Restaurant Guide Launch press conference (foreign language), our iFeng Fashion Award Gala (foreign language), and the Finance and Economics Summit (foreign language). We upheld our high standards for event scale, attendee experience and publicity reach.

These events were big successes in meeting our demanding clients' offline marketing needs and set a new historical record in commercialization of our events and brand exposure.

In addition to these signature events, we launched an innovative program called Inside Business Schools, (foreign language). We invited scholars, business leaders and nearly 1,000 students from leading MBA programs to visit the corporate campuses of our clients.

The program addressed topics such as corporate development, industry transformation and tech advances through a series of presentations and round-table discussions. The MBA students gained access to business case studies, and we successfully provided our clients with precision marketing solutions to help them attract high-net-worth customers and assist them in generating product sales. This event is just one of many ways we are able to monetize our media brand value and our broad business network and resources.

While maintaining our offline event presence, we continued to evolve our original content matrix. During the fourth quarter, we rapidly advanced our editorial segments. Our international news column, "Trend", (foreign language); publishes in-depth commentary and daily headlines regarding international relations, issues and events. Having optimized the content production process, we saw substantial improvements in both the quality and quantity of articles published for the column as the performance indicators of the column, including views and click-through rates, ranked among the top-tier news media outlets. The column is receiving widespread affirmation from journalists, influencers and the academic community from leading Chinese universities. Also, through a joint efforts with other media outlets, we distributed global hot topic news to international markets, greatly raising our brand recognition, both at home and abroad.

Meanwhile, our in-depth commentary column called "The Message", (foreign language), is positioned to provide our audience with a deeper insight and understanding of today's complex world by covering modern issues and current events with vivid imagery, intellectual reasoning, and emotional empathy. During the fourth quarter, the column reported on a wide range of social concerns, including celebrity social ethics, public administration issues, women's rights issues and the evolution of taxation laws. Since its launch, the column's page views, user comments and new follower counts have all been on a steady climb with an increasing portion of its articles exceeding the 100,000 page view benchmark for viral popularity and exposure on WeChat.

On the IP content front, we successfully validated the monetization capability of "Your Achievements", an innovative short video series, that combines large-scale field production with TED-talk style presentations. The series featured several super construction projects and revealed behind-the-scenes challenges faced by the construction team and the creativity and skills that made these projects possible. The production seamlessly aligned its themed presentation of transforming challenges into opportunities with our advertisers' brand image, maximizing its content distribution and reach. During the fourth quarter, Your Achievements reached 22 million views through social media platforms across the Internet.

Besides video series, our IP production also developed a livestreamed show focusing on interviews and discussions of trending cultural topics. For example, we invited guests, such as best-selling authors and the production teams of popular drama and movies into our studios to talk about their work. The show acquired a highly engaged user base as fans of these artistic works are keen to interact with our guests through the medium of livestreaming. The show is livestreamed on our iFeng app as well as on other social media platforms, spreading virally and generating online discussion.

Through a combination of our offline events and online content, we have formed a positive feedback loop which allows both parts of our business to jointly create value and lets us offer a high-quality multi-channel experience to all our customers.

On the product side, our iFeng app continues to power distribution of our online content and offline events. During the quarter, we made several updates to further improve the app's user experience. For example, we improved our algorithm to enhance distribution efficiency for our short video content, which saw measured increases in user reach, penetration rate and click-through rate. Compared to the last quarter, our short video content's average viewing time increased by 14%, and penetration rate grew by over 10% during the fourth quarter of 2021.

Meanwhile, we are further enhancing the interactive features of our app, including forums and live chats, which are directly integrated with trending topics. By encouraging our users to participate in text or audio discussions after viewing their topics of interest, they will spend more time on our app and continue to explore it. This creates a sense of community and thus increases our user engagement and boosts user stickiness.

All of our hard work in content creation and improving our technology has laid a foundation for us to make solid progress in diversifying our revenue.

In the online reading segment, we continued to monetize our original content IP. We completed the sale of the movie rights for "Wheel of Time", (foreign language), one of our original reality-themed works of online fiction. In addition, at the end of December 2021, we started laying the groundwork to export our online literature content to overseas markets. As of today, we have built a library of English titles in the hundreds, ready to be monetized.

As for e-commerce, we continued to develop products for our private label brand in the health and wellness segment. In the fourth quarter of 2021, we launched a nutritious low-calorie meal replacement series featuring popular superfood ingredients. Making the most of the traffic from third-party livestreaming platforms and our own vertical channels, we drove this product into the top-selling list of its category upon launch.

For culture and creativity, we partnered with IP licensing firms to bring carefully crafted art and cultural objects from some of the world's leading museums and galleries to our e-commerce platform. Going forward, we plan to utilize the natural synergies between e-commerce and our content, such as health, fashion and our newly developed cultural livestreaming to integrate content themes with merchandise selection and capitalize on our user traffic.

Finally, we deftly adapted our real estate vertical to the challenging macro environment despite the market downturn. On one hand, we continued to exercise our media influence in the real estate sector to deliver original content and launch special events. We launched a new column focusing on the industry's movers and shakers, and we held our industry summit in the fourth quarter, featuring hot topics such as urban renewal, land supply, sector debt levels, and the government's "Three Red Lines" policy for real estate developers. In conjunction with events, we also published industry white papers, specifically regarding ESG development and industry dynamics in the real estate sector.

On the other hand, our real estate team remained active in exploring new business opportunities during the fourth quarter by addressing customer pain points and marketing needs while applying new monetization models beyond traditional advertising. As a result, we achieved new breakthroughs in customer acquisition and improved our revenue mix.

To summarize, we demonstrated vitality and resilience during challenging times in the fourth quarter as we continued to host high-profile signature events, create original and exclusive content, enhance our content distribution technologies, and explore new business initiatives during the fourth quarter. We continue to monitor and plan for external challenges as we execute our strategy of revenue diversification and business growth. We started 2022 with renewed commitment to overcome near-term challenges and build a thriving business in a rapidly changing macro environment.

With that, I will now turn the call to our CFO, Mr. Edward Lu, to provide a closer look into our quarterly financials.

Thank you, Shuang, and thank you all for joining our conference call today.

Our total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2021 were RMB 302.9 million as compared to RMB 362.2 million in the same period of last year, beating the high end of our previously announced guidance range.

To provide some additional color on our revenues, net advertising revenues in the fourth quarter of 2021 were RMB 279.2 million compared to RMB 336.7 million in the same period of last year. The decrease was mainly due to the reduction in advertising spending of advertisers in certain industries, the intensified industry-wide competition and the negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak in certain regions in China in the fourth quarter.

Paid services revenues in the fourth quarter of 2021 were RMB 23.7 million compared to RMB 25.5 million in the same period of last year. Revenues from paid content in the fourth quarter of 2021 were RMB 7.9 million compared to RMB 11.2 million in the same period of last year, mainly due to the reduction in content spending of certain customers. Revenues from E-commerce and others in the fourth quarter of 2021 increased by 10.5% to RMB 15.8 million from RMB 14.3 million in the same period of 2020.

Loss from operations in the fourth quarter of 2021 was RMB 53 million compared to loss from operations of RMB 28.8 million in the same period of last year.

Operating margin in the fourth quarter of 2021 was negative 17.5% compared to negative 8% in the same period of last year.

Non-GAAP loss from operations in the fourth quarter of 2021 was RMB 51 million compared to non-GAAP loss from operations of RMB 3.3 million in the same period of last year. Non-GAAP operating margin in the fourth quarter of 2021 was negative 16.8% compared to negative 0.9% in the same period of last year.

Net loss from continuing operations attributable to iFeng in the fourth quarter of 2021 was RMB 35.4 million compared to a net income of RMB 454.8 million in the same period of last year. Non-GAAP net loss from continuing operations attributable to iFeng in the fourth quarter of 2021 was RMB 33.2 million compared to RMB 8.2 million in the same period of last year.

Moving on to our balance sheet. As of December 31, 2021, the Company's cash and cash equivalents, term deposits, short-term investments and restricted cash were RMB 1.51 billion or approximately USD 237.5 million.

Finally, I'd like to provide our business outlook for the first quarter of 2022. We are forecasting total revenues to be between RMB 172 million and RMB 197 million. For net advertising revenues, we are forecasting between RMB 158.5 million and RMB 178.5 million. For paid service revenues, we are forecasting between RMB 13.5 million and RMB 18.5 million.

In summary, while the uncertainty from the present macro conditions and changing industry landscape persists, we remain optimistic that green shoots will emerge. We are confident in our content-creation and distribution capabilities and believe that these competitive differentiators will sharpen our market position in the face of ongoing industry-wide competition as we go forward. Looking ahead, while remaining prudent in our investments, we will investigate new monetization strategies and improve our revenue stream mix. We are convinced that we are on the path to deliver shareholder returns in the long run.

This concludes the prepared portion of our call. We are now ready for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

(Operator Instructions) First question comes from the line of Xueru Zhang from 86Research.

I have one question regarding ad business. We know that 2022 is a tough year for the market. I'm wondering, do you also observe the challenges from macro regulation on your ad business growth? And is there anything we can do to offset impact?

Xueru, this is Edward. I will answer this question.

Actually, our brand advertising business revenue did face challenges due to the market downturn in the fourth quarter of 2021. In some industries, such as autos and real estate, clients are very cautious with their advertising spending. Also, we usually hold more offline activities and events in the fourth quarter, which were affected by the nationwide COVID-19 outbreaks. Even though we overcame many challenges and successfully held our signature events such as the Finance and Economic Summit and Food Festival, we still had some projects being delayed or even cancelled, unfortunately.

In 2022, I think the macro environment is still uncertain. However, if we take a look at the trends of marketing demand, advertisers pay more attention to precision marketing. This is because mobile Internet traffic growth has peaked. Now advertisers focus more on comprehensive and IP content than fragmented content and short-term attention. So we will continue to strengthen our differentiation, I think, in the following ways:

First, we will continue to enhance our media brand value through news coverage on signature events, original content and large-scale events planning. We will integrate and distribute this content through livestreaming, video and other forms of media, creating unique marketing resources for our clients.

Also, we have unique strengths in providing international marketing solutions. We have a variety of resources - the creators of our MCN series Phoenix Global Observer Group are either professional journalists located around the world or overseas influencers. They have successfully created video content to help domestic advertisers promote their brands globally. Our international-themed IP, such as the high-end forum, "Dialogue with the World" (foreign language) is widely endorsed by our advertisers. We are also building our influence and distribution capability abroad by growing our presence on the overseas social media platforms.

Also, our collaboration with Phoenix TV will also allow us to integrate both sides, marketing and advertiser resources, and complement each other. This will enable us to create a total marketing solution that covers Internet and TV audiences. Together, we can further reach and attract new clients such as central and state-owned enterprises.

We hope to create greater value for our clients and boost our monetization efficiency through these efforts. Thank you, Xueru.

Next question comes from the line of Alice Tang of First Shanghai.

Got 2 questions from my end. So the first one is, our company has mentioned diverse revenue streams over the past few quarters many times. So could you please talk about the company's progress in the paid services segment?

I will take this one. Actually, our online reading and e-commerce revenues both grew in 2021. For online reading, we have reorganized our team and recruited more experienced talents. We also improved the core competency of our IP content and created various monetization channels, including recording and selling audiobooks, producing and distributing short-form video series and selling film rights. We expect revenues from this segment to continue to grow in the future.

In terms of our reading app, we attract new users by offering free high-quality e-books and earn revenues through advertising. We expect its revenue to scale up in the next few years.

For our e-commerce business, we focused on positioning ourselves as the go-to platform for cultural and health products. Leveraging third-party platforms such as TikTok and Kuaishou, our private label brand has achieved meaningful growth in GMV on these third party platforms.

I think as we continued to create more original content, our followers and influence on third-party social platforms also grew. We are still working on how to turn our increasing number of followers into our e-commerce users. We hope this growing traffic can boost our e-commerce business growth in the future. I hope I have answered your question.

Yes. So my next question is, by the end of the year 2021, the company still had about RMB 1.5 billion in cash reserves. So does the company have any investment plans for this cash in the future?

This is Shuang. Let me take your question. We are very fortunate to have a huge amount of cash on hand. It's about RMB 1.5 billion. You are right. I think we are lucky to have this amount of cash, especially given the current market condition. It's a very volatile market. We experienced panic selling last night. This amount of cash will make us more ready, independent and stronger for future challenge and to enable us to navigate the turbulent water.

Simply because we have this amount of cash does not necessarily mean that we could -- we should be more aggressive in investment. I think at the current stage, we need to be more prudent, more conservative in spending it before we figure out what's happening, before we clearly analyze the concrete impact of these uncertainties will have on our business, our financial perspective. So in the near future, I think we will be more cautious in making investments.

That's it. I think I answered your question.

We have no more questions from the line. I would like to hand the call back to the management for closing.

Thank you, operator.

We have come to the end of our Q&A session and our conference call. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you for joining us today on this call. Have a good day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.