HUYA Inc (HUYA) 2018 Q3 法說會逐字稿

完整原文

使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主

  • Operator

  • Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for the third-quarter 2018 earnings conference call for Huya. (Operator Instructions) Today's conference call is being recorded.

  • I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. [Hanye Lu] of investor relations. Please go ahead.

  • Hanye Lu - IR Manager

  • Hello, everyone, and welcome to the third-quarter 2018 earnings conference call of Huya Inc. The Company's financial and operational results were issued earlier today and are posted online. You can also view the earnings press release by visiting the IR website at ir.huya.com. A replay of the call will be available on the IR website in a few hours.

  • Participants on today's call will be Mr. Rongjie Dong, Chief Executive Officer of Huya, and Mr. Henry Sha, Chief Financial Officer. Management will begin with prepared remarks and the call will conclude in a Q&A session.

  • Before we continue, please know that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the Company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today.

  • Further information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties is included in the Company's prospectus and other public filings as filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable laws.

  • Please also know that Huya's earnings press release and this conference call include discussion of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Huya's press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures.

  • I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Rongjie Dong. Please go ahead.

  • Rongjie Dong - CEO

  • Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are happy to continue to build on our momentum from the first half of the year and deliver strong financial and operational results for the quarter.

  • Revenue in the quarter grew 118.8% year over year to RMB1.28 billion, exceeding our expectations. We also experienced meaningful growth in MAUs, highlighted by continued strength in mobile MAUs.

  • Driven by our growth, we generated positive net income on both GAAP and non-GAAP basis and achieved our fourth consecutive quarter of positive non-GAAP net income of RMB121 million.

  • We focused heavily on further differentiating our content operations through our intense collaboration with gaming companies, increasing library of e-sports content, and high-quality professionally generated content, which will add to our strong MAU growth in the quarter.

  • In addition, our effective mobile strategy demonstrated a higher growth in mobile MAUs and in all makes up 50% of our total MAUs. Those mobile users also contributed more than [80%] of our live streaming revenue in the quarter.

  • We have seen solid user growth and also experienced increased user engagement on our platform. The average daily time spent on our mobile app grew to over 110 minutes a day in the third quarter of 2018 from 99 minutes in the fourth quarter of 2017.

  • Through our partnership with broadcasters and talent agencies, we are committed to continuously offering our content ecosystem and facilitating user interaction with the more professional e-sports players. Through these efforts, we are creating a more vibrant community-driven culture on our platform.

  • With the growing trend of hard-core gamers and casual gamers becoming e-sports dealers, we have leveraged our exceptional resources and expertise in the live streaming [trade] to make e-sports content an important part of our growth strategy. We broadcasted more than 110 e-sports tournaments and events, including some of the major world-class tournaments, and attracted over 510 million viewers on Huya's platform during the quarter.

  • Notably, we introduced a highly innovative and exclusive first-person camera view of our China championship team [4M] during the [PDI] broadcaster, allowing viewers to enjoy the exact same view as the team. While OL season eight concluded, we experienced significant growth in viewer metrics compared to the previous year's season seven.

  • We continue to enhance our leadership position as a dynamic and growing platform providing the highest-quality e-sports content. We also recognize our capabilities and know-how for organizing large-scale e-sports tournaments as a key competitive strength. In the third quarter, we organized over 20 e-sports tournaments covering major game titles in China.

  • Additionally, we successfully partnered with international gaming companies and identified numerous opportunities to organize e-sports tournaments. One example: through our strong collaboration with [Bluehole], we successfully organized the Huya Destiny Cup PUBG tournament in October, which was officially recognized by PUBG -- China PUBG invitational season two as a qualifying event.

  • The number of viewers grew significantly compared to the previous season. In addition, the user interaction also increased, which was demonstrated by our record number of [viewership] hosted during the tournament.

  • With the globalization trend in e-sports, we found that more and more Chinese gaming enthusiasts watching international e-sports tournaments and interacting with international e-sports professionals. To address this trend, we partnered with global e-sports players and also actively participated in e-sports team operations.

  • In September, we announced plans to operate a newly established team and join the Overwatch league, the global professional e-sports league created by Activision Blizzard. We expect to leverage this partnership to strengthen our presence in the global e-sports sector. Overall, we are pleased with the results of our strategic focus on e-sports and are excited about the potential for continued growth in the business.

  • In addition to our e-sports efforts, we made significant progress in directing professionally generated content. For example, the [peak] by doing [that number] for our self-produced [quota line] season 2 was 10 times higher than the previous season and far better than similar content on other platforms.

  • Regarding the evolving regulation, we continue to closely monitor the environment. We are in full compliance with all required licenses for our live streaming business. We also take our content policy really seriously and during the quarter, took actions against several broadcasters who violated our content policy by shutting down their channels and removing their content.

  • We continue to drive improvements and enhancements to our content audit system and technologies and add expertise to our monitoring team. We believe regulation help us foster a healthy environment for the live streaming industry to flourish. And we will continue to support the evolving regulatory framework in every way we can.

  • In summary, we remain focused on generating dynamic and relevant content for our users. As a leading game live streaming platform in China, we continue to see tremendous opportunity for us and we are excited about our future prospects.

  • With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO Henry to share the financial details from the quarter.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Thank you, Mr. Dong. Hello, everyone. This is Henry. We delivered strong MAU growth as well as revenue growth, which exceeded our guidance for the quarter. This further solidifies our leadership position in China's game live streaming industry.

  • Our focus on delivering first-class e-sports content and depreciated (technical difficulty) continue to drive user engagement and improve user retention. In the third quarter, paying users grew by 37.8% year over year, outpacing overall MAU growth. Also, more than 70% of paying users paid for gaming-related content, which accounted for over 50% of total live streaming revenue.

  • As we continue to grow our revenue while minimizing our bandwidth cost by utilizing new technologies, we have generated a 260-basis-point year-over-year improvement in gross margin. In addition, our continuous improvement in operating efficiency helped us achieve net income compared to net loss in the year-ago period.

  • We made considerable investment in e-sports and the overseas market in the quarter. But despite this upfront investment, we are pleased to deliver healthy financial results, which demonstrate the potential of scalable growth driven by e-sports-related business and the game live streaming content globalization.

  • In addition, our results support the users' strong preference and demand for new online entertainment genres, particularly for e-sports content. As we complete 2018 and position ourselves for the future, we believe our robust platform, differentiated content, and the encouraging operational results position us well to deliver solid returns for our stakeholders.

  • Now let me briefly go over the financial results for the third quarter, but in the interest of time, I will not walk through line by line on this call. Please refer to more details in our earnings release.

  • Total revenues for third quarter of 2018 increased by 118.8% to RMB1,276.6 million from RMB583.5 million in the same period of 2017. Live streaming revenues increased by 120.2% to RMB1,216.5 million in the third quarter of 2018 from RMB562.4 million in the same period of 2017, primarily due to the increase in spending per paying user and the increase in the number of paying users on Huya's platform.

  • The increase in the number of paying users was primarily driven by the Company's mobile strategy. That was application of content offerings and the continued efforts in converting active users into paying users.

  • Advertising and other revenues increased by 92.9% to RMB60.1 million in the third quarter of 2018 from RMB31.2 million in the same period of 2017. This increase reflected the Company's continued efforts to expand the advertising services and monetizing the traffic and streaming content with its business partners. We've streamlined other product lines to concentrate more resources on the advertising business to achieve a higher growth rate.

  • Cost of revenues increased by 112.2% to RMB1,082.9 million in the third quarter of 2018 from RMB510.3 million in the same period of 2017, primarily attributable to the increase in revenue sharing fees, content costs, and bandwidth costs in addition to higher salaries and welfare cost.

  • Revenue sharing fees and contents costs increased by 125% to RMB844 million in the third quarter of 2018 from RMB375.1 million in the same period of 2017, primarily due to the increase in virtual item revenue sharing, which was in line with our live streaming revenue growth, and the continued spending in e-sports content and content creators in both domestic and overseas markets.

  • Bandwidth costs increased by 66.8% to RMB174 million in the third quarter of 2018 from RMB104.3 million in the same period of 2017, primarily due to an increase in bandwidth usage as a result of a larger user base on Huya's platform and an improvement in live streaming video quality, partially offset by improved efficiency in bandwidth utilization by deploying new technologies in content distribution.

  • Gross profit increased by 164.5% to RMB193.7 million for the third quarter of 2018 from RMB73.2 million in the same period of 2017. Gross margin increased to 15.2% in the third quarter of 2018 from 12.6% in the same period of 2017, primarily due to our enhanced monetization efforts, continued leverage on economies of scale, and technology innovation.

  • Research and development expenses increased by 52.6% to RMB74.6 million for the third quarter of 2018 from RMB48.9 million for the third quarter of 2017, mainly attributable to the increase in salaries and welfare of research and development personnel and share-based compensation expenses related to the share awards newly granted in the third quarter of 2018. This increase also demonstrated our continuous investment in new technologies and new products for future growth.

  • Sales and marketing expenses increased by 191.6% to RMB61.7 million from the third quarter of 2018 from RMB21.2 million for the third quarter of 2017, mainly attributable to the increase of marketing and promotion expenses due to enhanced efforts in promoting Huya's brand awareness and e-sports content as well as cooperating with various marketing channels during the summer holidays.

  • Excluding share-based compensation expenses, our non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues was 4.8% in the quarter. We will continue to grow our user base organically by creating more value in our content ecosystem for our user community.

  • General and administrative expenses increased by 90.7% to RMB71.2 million for the third quarter of 2018 from RMB37.3 million for the same period of 2017, mainly due to the increase in share-based compensation expenses related to share awards newly granted in the first quarter of 2018 and salaries and welfare of management and personnel.

  • Non-GAAP operating income was RMB61.5 million for the third quarter of 2018 compared with non-GAAP operating loss of RMB30.1 million in the same period of 2017. Net income attributable to Huya was RMB56.8 million for the third quarter of 2018 compared with a net loss of RMB29.3 million in the same period of 2017.

  • Non-GAAP net income attributable to Huya in the third quarter of 2018 was RMB121 million compared to a non-GAAP net loss of RMB25.4 million in the same period of 2017. Non-GAAP diluted net income per ADS was RMB0.55 for the third quarter of 2018 compared with non-GAAP diluted net loss per ADS of RMB0.35 for the same period of 2017.

  • As of September 30, 2018, the Company had cash, cash equivalents, short-term deposits, and short-term investments of RMB5,873.6 million. Net cash provided by operating activities was RMB237.7 million for the third quarter of 2018 compared with net cash provided by operating activities of RMB87.2 million in the same period of 2017.

  • Now to our business outlook. For the fourth quarter of 2018, Huya currently expects total revenue to be between RMB1,400 million and RMB1,440 million, representing a year-over-year growth between 88.9% and 94.3%. This forecast reflects our current and preliminary views on the market and operational conditions, which are subject to change.

  • This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the floor to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) Thomas Chong, Credit Suisse.

  • Thomas Chong - Analyst

  • I have two questions. My first question is about our 2019 outlook. Given that we see macro headwinds, just want to get a sense about how we should think about our outlook next year and also our e-sports strategy as well.

  • And my second question is about our MAU growth. We have seen the growth momentum for our users is very solid. Just want to get a sense about how we should think about the trend in the coming few years. Thank you. (spoken in Chinese)

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Thank you. The management team will internally discuss and revert back very shortly. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Hillman Chan, Citigroup.

  • Brandi Piacente - IR, The Piacente Group, Inc.

  • Sorry. If you could put Thomas Chong back in, we haven't answered the question yet.

  • Operator

  • Thomas Chong is back.

  • Thomas Chong - Analyst

  • Yes, hi. I am on the line.

  • Brandi Piacente - IR, The Piacente Group, Inc.

  • Yes, great, Thomas. Thank you. It's Brandi. Just one second; they are just going to chat for a quick second. Everybody just please hold.

  • Rongjie Dong - CEO

  • (spoken in Chinese)

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Thank you. I will help translate the first part of Mr. Dong's answer. So as we are speaking at a high level for 2019, despite the Chinese or the global macro headwinds, we feel pretty confident on the growth for games and game live streaming. And so we do have the confidence for our future growth in terms of MAUs and other business metrics for 2019.

  • And now for the second part about e-sports strategy. So we see game live streaming platform as an important part of e-sports value chain. Game live streaming platform in particular, not just due to e-sports content, but also help the e-sports players view and grow their fan community and provide monetization opportunity.

  • For e-sports content, we cover major e-sports tournaments across China and the globe and also organize tournaments ourselves covering those mainstream games. So high-quality e-sports content is very valuable to who we are as a help to attract new series and increase user lifetime value.

  • We aim to be more influential in both China's and global e-sports industry and support the growth of the e-sports ecosystem. We are open to more cooperation and investment opportunities in the e-sports SKUs. And we will invest in companies and content creators around the e-sports value chain, both domestically and internationally, to increase our influence in the e-sports eco.

  • Lastly, e-sports professional players can stream on our platform and we share the virtual guest team revenue with them. In the future, we are actually planning to generate more revenue streams from advertising, sponsorship, and media rights, and so on.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Hi, this is Henry I also am trying to provide some more details to complement Mr. Dong's answers. First, in 2019 for our e-sports strategy, we will try to cover all the major [motor] club e-sports tournaments and events. And we will try to full stream our resources for the self-organized e-sports tournaments and events and trying to cover more the longtailed gaming titles in China market.

  • Thank you. Let's continue for the second question.

  • Operator

  • Hillman Chan, Citigroup.

  • Hillman Chan - Analyst

  • (spoken in Chinese) Thank you, management, for taking my questions. Regarding the third-quarter profitability appears to improve faster than expected. Could management give more color on this in the context of revenue sharing with streaming talent agencies, sign-on costs, and IP as well as the Southeast Asia expansion through [limber TV]?

  • And my other question is about the MAU and paying user growth trend in third quarter. Just to clarify, that is driven more by the gaming rather than not-gaming part. And regarding the user metrics in October and November, could you share more on the trend following [LLSH] Road championship? And whether we have any users coming from [those users] following the temporary suspension recently? Thank you very much.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Thank you, Hillman. Management will prepare their answers very shortly. I will try to answer your questions about the margin and the CEO will answer the question about -- your second question.

  • So first, actually, we are beating our guidance in terms of the total revenues in this quarter. I think that is one of the reasons why the margin looks better. Another factor is that those marketing expenses doesn't increase it a lot because we have the success for the (inaudible) [strategy] in the summer holidays and in the third quarter.

  • We broadcasted all the major world-class e-sports tournaments. And all these tournaments has achieved very impressive results in terms of the user by attracting -- by improving the user engagement and extended the user time spent on our platform. So that's helped, I mean, that helped a lot on organic user growth in this quarter. And we also have the leverage on the gross margin in terms of the bandwidth cost savings. We deployed a new technology in the content distribution.

  • The other two factors is about the R&D and the G&A. Because our revenue growth is faster than our salary growth than our headcount growth, so we have leverage on the expenses. So I think that's the reason behind why our margin may be better than the market's expectation.

  • Rongjie Dong - CEO

  • (spoken in Chinese)

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Thank you. I will help translate the answers from Mr. Dong. So based on two of the [extenders] we know, the reason that Douyu, (inaudible), our competitors, got removed from the Apple Store and several other Android app stores is unlikely to do with the industry-wide policy reasons.

  • So as a publicly listed company, we are pretty confident on our [product] structure. At the same time, we actually hope all companies in the live streaming industry will strengthen their corporate governance and work together for the healthy development and growth of the live streaming industry in general.

  • And then back to your kind of question on MAU growth, specifically in October and November, because from our perspective, a lot of the user growth is actually based on a lot of the opportunities we have now and the capabilities we are demonstrating in operating those tournaments -- broadcasting those tournaments. For example, the season 8 that you mentioned.

  • And we believe this will actually demonstrate our confidence in our capability in game live streaming in particular. And this will be the key reason that kind of generated the user growth to Huya for October and November.

  • Hillman Chan - Analyst

  • Thank you very much [Dong-san], Henry, and Hanye for the color. Congrats again on the quarter.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Okay, thank you, Hillman. We are ready for the next one.

  • Operator

  • Lei Zhang, Merrill Lynch.

  • Lei Zhang - Analyst

  • (spoken in Chinese) Thanks, management, for taking my question. My first question is regarding your annual gala. Any updates on your plans for this year's annual gala?

  • And my second question is regarding your content base. What is the percentage of content of Xbox? And besides Xbox, can you share with us the other top content categories? Thank you.

  • Rongjie Dong - CEO

  • (spoken in Chinese)

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Thanks. I will help translate Mr. Dong's answer. Same as last year, we will have the annual gala in January. The main purpose of this event is actually to increase Huya's brand awareness and influence in the game and e-sports industry. And also to deepen our partnership with the talent agencies and broadcasters.

  • So our internal budget for this event will be lower than other well-known gala events in China. The management team does not view this event as a key driver for bringing in users or revenue growth.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Hi, Lei. This is Henry. I will try to help to answer your second question about the top content categories. So actually, the streaming hours of the gaming-related content on our platform accounted for around 80% of total streaming hours generated every day. And the top three of the gaming titles, including the League of Legends, PUBG, and Honor of the King, accounted for 50% of the total gaming-related streaming hours on Huya's platform.

  • To give some more details about our content strategy in gaming titles, so now we are very focused on broadcasting those longtailed gaming titles to keep a very large portfolio of the gaming titles on our platform, more than 2,000 gaming titles. So for like top longtail gaming title, including like the PUBG mobile version, Crossfire, or Minecraft DNF, and Hearthstone, as you can see from our mobile app.

  • Thank you. That is our answers for Lei Zhang's questions.

  • Lei Zhang - Analyst

  • Thank you. Very helpful.

  • Operator

  • Eileen Deng, Deutsche Bank.

  • Eileen Deng - Analyst

  • Thank you, management, for taking my questions. I have two questions. The first one is I remember management used to compare our business to the US competitor Twitch. Could management give us an update on how our business has evolved right now if we compare to them? Is there anything new that we could expect beyond?

  • And the second question is could management comment on the -- how the overall competitive dynamics right now? And how it will reflect into the margin trajectory into next year? Thank you.

  • Rongjie Dong - CEO

  • (spoken in Chinese)

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Thank you. I will help translate the answers. So as we compare with Twitch, I think there are several perspectives we can do. Firstly, on the business revenue model, the majority of Twitch's revenue actually comes from advertising and subscriptions, which are at a pretty mature stage for Twitch.

  • We believe those are still at an early stage for China and we see great potential in those monetization models. We will increase our investment to develop the advertising and subscription models and create more monetization opportunities going forward.

  • And we also noted on Twitch's platform, they also had the virtual gifting features added on. So users can actually give virtual gifts and donations to the broadcasters. This can encourage users to have a better interaction with the broadcasters community.

  • Twitch's management recently advertised the value that viewers' donations to the streamers in public. So this means our virtual gifting model is being well recognized by our international peers.

  • Then on the content perspective, we observed some Western broadcasters on Twitch also own their fans in Tier 1 cities of China. We'll introduce more international e-sports teams and professional players to our platform and bring more compelling content to our domestic users.

  • This concludes the end for the first question. And for your second question.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Hi, this is Henry. I will help to answer the second question about the competition environment. We believe that the live streaming industry will continue the consolidation trends, especially after our IPO.

  • Actually, it will be difficult for the new live streaming platform to scale up and effectively tackle the technical and operational issues which may hinder them from establishing an efficient ecosystem with enriched live stream content. And apparently, we are the leader in our market. We have seen we have the leading position being further enhanced by our growing user time span and user engagement since our IPO. So that's who we are.

  • We're also trying to like do more about like our self-organized e-sports tournaments to increase our influence on the upstream in the e-sports industry in the future. Huya is trying to provide a more like value-added services to content creators and e-sports players to provide our users more access, more easy and convenient to touch base with their [free rated] contents.

  • This can help to leverage to have the economies of scale and to help us do some leverage on the content costs. This can also help to stabilize our margin.

  • That's our answers to your questions. Operator, we are ready for the next one.

  • Operator

  • Jerry Liu, UBS.

  • Jerry Liu - Analyst

  • Thank you, management. Yes, just a couple questions from me. I want to ask about game approvals. If the regulators start approving new game monetization late this year, early next year, what kind of incremental growth can we see in our businesses?

  • I know we are not directly impacted, but could we see potential some improvement in the live streaming business with higher tipping, potentially more e-sports tournaments we can host?

  • And also, in the advertising business, could we just discuss a bit more about what helped drive the strong growth this quarter? And if game approvals are restarted then, would we expect further growth, as publishers are more likely to advertise new games that they can monetize? Thank you. I will translate myself. (spoken in Chinese)

  • Rongjie Dong - CEO

  • (spoken in Chinese)

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Thank you. I will help translate Mr. Dong's answer. So at a high level, in terms of the games approval, suspension, or the future development, we actually do not have a lot of intel on that.

  • But then from our internal perspective, if we talk about the user growth, we think overall our user growth is not directly impacted by the game license approval process. Because from a revenue perspective, Huya is not directly involved in game developing and publishing and does not generate revenue from there either.

  • So we generate most revenue through virtual guest sales, in live streaming services, and advertising services. But obviously, we have been exploring new monetization streams by working with the game developers, publishers. And the management team is confident about the Company's revenue perspective going forward.

  • Huya's current revenue model does not require a game license. So as we disclosed in our prospectus, Huya has obtained all the relevant licenses and permits required to operate this live streaming business. So far, there is no material fundamental changes to that. So from a compliance perspective, we improve compliance. Thank you.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Hi, Jerry. I will help to answer the second questions about the advertising business. So actually, in the third quarter of 2018, this quarter, our advertising revenue actually grew faster by excluding those like streamlined business in the line items.

  • So actually, this reflects the Company's like trying to continuous efforts to expand our advertising services to merchants and our corporate clients to help them to do more marketing on our platform.

  • Actually, we benefited from improving the awareness of our brand name, especially after our IPO. Not only like our investor Tencent as well as like many other gaming companies that they are trying to purchase our analog Huya platform. So we are expecting to enlarge our advertiser space and to grow faster our advertising business in the future.

  • Another is about e-sports. Actually, we believe that the Chinese government, the regulators, especially the sports bureaus, has full support for the e-sports business in China. So we keep the very confidence and optimized on the e-sports potential in China market. And we believe that the regulators also help the gaming industry and the e-sports industry have a healthy growth by doing more involved in the regulations.

  • Thank you. That is our answers to your question, Jerry.

  • Jerry Liu - Analyst

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Piyush Mubayi, Goldman Sachs.

  • Piyush Mubayi - Analyst

  • Thank you for taking my question. I have two sets of questions. And one, from a near-term perspective, when we look at ARPU, it appears that ARPU in the third quarter tends to flatten versus the second quarter on a sequential basis. I wondered if you could talk through that trend that we have observed two years in a row and what it implies for 2019.

  • Second, with the MAU improvement in the quarter, in the third quarter, that was I guess better than some of us may have expected, could you address the question of how you are thinking of your TAM for MAU? That would be great. Thank you.

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Thank you. I will help translate your answers to Chinese for the management team. Please wait momentarily.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Hi, Piyush. This is Henry. I will help to answer your first question. So actually, about the ARPU. Our priority now is to grow our user base to gain more market share, trying to provide a more differentiated live streaming content and service to create more value to our users. And we are trying to enhance our user experience to improve their paying ratio instead of potentially focusing on increasing our ARPU at this point.

  • Actually, compared to the other platforms, our ARPU still have much room to improve. And as mentioned earlier, in this quarter, more than like 70% of our paying users did pay for the gaming-related content. We believe that we have a large potential for them. The ARPU of those like users paying for gaming content is still relatively low compared to the rest of the content.

  • And on a quarterly basis, we believe that if paying user base still grow faster, there may be some fluctuation in ARPU's growth due to a mix of lower spending by new users and higher by the repeat paying users. In the long run, we believe that Huya's ARPU on the platform will continue to increase.

  • I will try to answer the second question about the total addressable market. So we believe that in the midterm, we are trying to convert more gamers into the game live streaming users on Huya's platform. But in the long run, we are trying to attract the more casual gamers or even the non-gamers by doing by providing -- operating more like e-sports-related content on our platform.

  • So now, maybe you can refer to lots of like the third-party public sources about the gaming market. The gamers, total gamers market in China maybe around 400 million or 500 million total gamers in China's market. So we still think we have a large potential by converting more gamers and from household gamers and as well as the casual gamers by the top-tier popular -- very popular the world-class e-sports tournaments on our platform by attracting them, to converting them into our users.

  • Rongjie Dong - CEO

  • (spoken in Chinese)

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • I will just help translate the last bit. Given the recent tournament, for example, season 8, we see like a lot of the viewers on platform, it's kind of being transformed from hard-core users, hard-core gamers, to general casual gamers or game enthusiasts. So because of the trend, we are very confident about the future user growth and our total addressable market in the future. Thank you.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • That is the end of the answer to your question.

  • Operator

  • Alex Liu, China Renaissance.

  • Alex Liu - Analyst

  • (spoken in Chinese) I will translate myself. So first, how does the recent very popular season 8 benefiting our 4Q guidance quantitatively? And second, how should we think about the margin outlook for 2019 and 2020? Thank you.

  • Unidentified Company Representative

  • Our management team will discuss momentarily and revert.

  • Henry Sha - CFO

  • Hi, Alex. Actually, we cannot disclose, I mean, for the Q4-related numbers for now. So we believe that League of Legends S8 really help us a lot in the user growth and user stickiness on our platform. And unfortunately, actually, we cannot provide the margin guidance for the next two years for now.

  • Brandi Piacente - IR, The Piacente Group, Inc.

  • Operator, please go ahead.

  • Operator

  • As there are no further questions, now I would like to turn the call back over to the Company for closing remarks.

  • Hanye Lu - IR Manager

  • Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact Huya's investor relations through the contact information provided on our website or the CPG investor relations. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.