Opera Ltd (OPRA) 2019 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Opera Limited Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Derrick Nueman, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you, and please go ahead, sir.

Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. With me today, I have Frode Jacobsen, our CFO; and our COO, Song Lin. Before I hand over the call to Frode, I would like to remind everyone that in today's conference call, the company will be making statements about its future results and expectations, which constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are based on current expectations and the current economic environment, and are inherently subject to economic, competitive and other uncertainties and contingencies beyond the control of management. You should be cautioned that these statements are not guarantees of future performance. You may refer to the safe harbor statement in the company's earnings release for details.

Our commentary today will also include non-IFRS financial measures, including EBITDA and adjusted net income, which are different from our consolidated financial statements that are prepared and presented based on IFRS. We believe the use of these non-IFRS financial measures provide an additional tool for investors to use in evaluating ongoing operating results and trends. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations between IFRS and non-IFRS metrics for our reported results can be found in our press release that was issued earlier today, a copy of which can be found on our Investor Relations website.

With that, I will now turn it over to Frode.

Thanks, Derrick, and hello, everyone. Similar to the last several quarters, we are very pleased with our strong fourth quarter results. Our growth rates continue to accelerate, and we're continuing to execute on our strategy to leverage our strong brand and large user base of more than 350 million monthly active users to grow new opportunities well beyond the browser. These efforts, including the significant investments we've made in our business, led to year-over-year revenue growth of 158% in the fourth quarter. With $129.6 million of revenue in that quarter, we significantly exceeded the top end of our guidance range. We also beat the top end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance and achieved an increased adjusted EBITDA margin of 16%.

Before getting into specific details on our initiatives and financials, I want to take a step back and provide some highlights on the meaningful progress we made in 2019: First, our year-over-year revenue growth accelerated materially. 2019 revenues came in 94% higher than 2018 compared to a prior annual growth rate of 34%. Second, our highly profitable browser business continued its steady growth trajectory, and we demonstrated its potential to address even more segments like the GX browser for gamers, which shows record engagement levels. Third, Opera News has become the leading news service in Africa, and we are continuing to drive increases in user engagement with a deepening of our content strategy, like the Opera News Hub for local content creators. Fourth highlight is how we scaled our fintech business from near-nothing to an annualized run rate of $290 million in Q4, with a 30% contribution margin. Fifth highlight is how we launched several new initiatives, including our ad network, Opera Ads, and the OList classifieds platform. We also laid the groundwork for new opportunities within real estate and other high-value verticals and a European fintech business, all of which we believe have the potential to drive multiyear growth. And finally, we maintained solid profitability even while investing aggressively in future growth opportunities.

Before I hand the call over to Song Lin to cover our operational highlights and growth strategy, I would like to say a few words about Opera's corporate governance. At Opera, we are focused on building a business that delivers strong shareholder returns. The best way to accomplish this is to drive long-term, profitable and sustainable growth through successful products that are appreciated by our users. We invest heavily in our products, both current ones and initiatives we are developing for launch. And we feel great about the opportunities ahead of us.

As part of this, we also want to make sure that all our investors are represented in our governance structure and that we always adhere to our governance policies. As many of you are aware, there has been published speculation around our business. As we stated on our IR website, these speculations were false and misleading. We have no desire to feed such discussions or legitimize such reports by entering into detailed public arguments. Instead, we remain focused on what we are building at Opera. We believe the most effective rebuttal is continued execution and growth, which is also what we again achieved this past quarter and what we are guiding for 2020.

At this point, I would like to clarify a few specifics. Our lending apps have been reviewed and approved by Google and are live on Google Play. Both our smartphone and PC user bases have grown substantially over the past years. We have made sound investments that have been validated and year-end revalued by external third parties. We have rational and mutually beneficial relationships with all our partners. And finally, no one at Opera, including our Chairman, has received any payment or direct benefit from our acquisitions or investments. We are a Norwegian-headquartered company, audited by KPMG Norway. There is also a significant review of our every major transaction from our Board, including our Audit Committee, which consists solely of independent directors.

With that, let me turn it over to Song to speak about the operational progress we've made.

Thanks, Frode, and hi, everyone. I will just comment that we had a very good 2019 since this year-end. I would just like to say that we could not have reached this point without the help of many people in Opera. I'm truly excited to work with our strong team across the globe in Norway, Sweden, Poland, China, India, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ireland, U.K. and last but not least, Estonia to drive further execution.

Now getting to the business. We have shown success across multiple areas and the work we've done has built the foundation for strong and sustainable multiyear growth and margin expansion. Our browser business has continued to grow nicely in a very stable market with over 300 million monthly active users, making us one of the biggest global Internet platforms.

It's an attractive and growing business that generates significant cash flow. And I would just also comment that from a strategic point of view, it's a key component of our ability to launch and scale new business. This has been evident with the success we have seen in News and Fintech, the still-early results from OList, and hopefully will again be the cases as we start our European fintech efforts in 2020.

So now I'll just come into a bit more details. Our PC users were up 11% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, driven by product innovation and Opera being selected by many users as an alternative to default browsers. Additionally, our gaming-specific GX browser continues to perform above expectations with very strong engagement and reviews. We have recently also expanded the product to macOS and also, we'll be increasing our efforts to drive awareness so we can scale this product.

On the mobile browsers, we are increasing our emphasis on Africa. Our value proposition on data management has made us one of the most popular browsers on that continent. And now we have expanded this offering by recently launching data plans in Nigeria. Our proprietary AI technology around data has allowed us to partner with leading telcos such as MTN and Airtel to provide Opera-specific targeted developed plans to consumers.

Early results have been very promising, with an increase in browsing activity and users purchasing more data plans from those carriers. So following the strong results, we have now teamed up with more operators in the region, and we'll continue to innovate in browsing and content consumption in the region and build up our strong position there.

I'll also talk about Opera News that we have been -- saw a 21% year-over-year growth to our user base that exceeds 160 million monthly active users and also 97% growth for the dedicated Opera News app over the same period. As we spoke about last quarter and this skilled level, our #1 focus is driving increased engagement, and we are steadily increasing user monetization.

So on engagement, we are making significant progress with the average daily time spent and average daily article clicks, which increased by 24% and 20% respectively, year-over-year. Further, our Opera News Hub launched in September in Nigeria, which allows local creators to create exclusive content for our platform using our suite of tools. This has shown tangible engagement results, which -- with the increases in article clicks by 60%, reading times by 40%, and app times spent by 20% further.

So we are very pleased about the results there, and we will expand Opera News Hub to 4 additional African countries beyond Nigeria this year. And we believe that the combination of Opera News Hub and other efforts will be able to allow us to drive further increases in engagement.

And moving to monetization. We have grown revenue on the Opera News app by almost -- by more than 20% quarter-over-quarter, which is a big increase. So looking forward, we expect the combination of more engagement, improved targeting, new ad format and increased ad loads will continue to drive revenue growth from our news apps in 2020.

Long term, we will also benefit from the online advertising ecosystem growing and broadening in Africa as well as our efforts around OLeads, which will help small and medium enterprises grow their businesses. With that being said, we are also moving ahead aggressively with our classified offerings, OList. Instead of focusing only on advertising, for OList, we are focused on facilitating the underlying transactions, which actually represents significant multiyear revenue opportunities and will provide meaningful benefits for our users in everyday life.

I will use real estate as an example, which in Nigeria is really a rental market. We have created a marketplace where both landlords and renters will benefit from safe, transparent place to transact. We have initially built our operations for Lagos, where 3 million targeted clients reside, making it one of our biggest potential cities in Africa. So we are representing both property owners and helping customers finding rentals. We have concluded our first transactions in late 2019 and are now preparing to scale rapidly. We estimate that in the segment will where we initially focused, the annual renting market opportunity for Opera is approximately $1 billion in size, so this can become a substantial business for us. So having said that, our near-term goal is to be the market leader by the year-end and we will prioritize scale in 2020. On top of it, we will also focus on other verticals that represent large opportunities such as used cars this year.

The other new effort, which I'm very excited about, is our European fintech initiative around payments and open banking. We believe this represents an opportunity to build on our European base of roughly 50 million users to Opera's attractive new products. Interestingly, millennials comprise the biggest segment of our European base, which is really important as this segment is highly dissatisfied with current financial offerings. So we are optimistic that they will be receptive to the compelling products we have planned. Our first step on this end was the acquisition of fintech start-up Pocosys last month, which we also made a public press release. So Pocosys, specialized in providing more than banking technologies and beyond technology, this also provides us with a strong team. We will launch related payments and banking products in one market later this year and then roll out to other target countries in Europe. We will actually look forward to provide updates as we execute these initiatives.

Finally, I also want to talk briefly about our fintech business in South Asia and Africa. This business has been highly successful for us, scaled into an annualized revenue run rate of almost $290 million in revenue by the end of 2019. Just as important, our products are well received by consumers, as evidenced by our Google Play app store ratings and a large number of returning users.

As our apps gain popularity, with millions of active users who logged into the related wallet, we are also evolving this offering to provide marketplace offers; buy now, pay later; and other payment products, also in cooperation with local banks and partners. As you have been seeing, we are moving very fast in this area and have high confidence in our ability to continue to evolve and provide the most popular local fintech and payment products in those emerging markets.

So now just to sum up, it's a very exciting time at Opera. In this past year, we almost doubled the revenue, launched several new businesses and invested heavily in several more, while still achieving good profitability. We think 2020 will bring more excitement, and I look forward to updating you on their progresses.

So with that, let me hand it back to Frode.

Thanks, Song. Let me go into details about the fourth quarter and provide updated guidance before we open up the call for questions. To repeat the overall, Opera delivered record fourth quarter revenue of $129.6 million, up 158% year-over-year. This significantly exceeded our expectations, primarily due to strength in microlending. Search revenue represented 17% of total or $22.6 million. This was up 7% year-over-year and represents a quite normalized growth level. Advertising revenue represented 16% of total or $20.2 million, up 27% year-over-year. The growth was driven by direct ad sales, including Opera Ads and Opera News, where we continue to see strong potential, but was also partially offset by using our inventory to promote our other products.

Fintech revenue represented 55% of total or $71.9 million. This increased 80% from the third quarter and has continued to exceed our internal expectations, driven by both strong loan growth and increased value per loan. India and Kenya remain our two most important live markets. Retail revenue represented 7% of total or $9.3 million. This was slightly higher than typical, listed by us supporting OPay in their launch of a phone retail business. We expect to see similar levels in Q1 before returning to being quite stable at historical levels. The technology licensing and other revenue category represented 4% of the total or $5.5 million, largely driven by temporary support to our investee, OPay, which will phase out during this current first quarter of 2020.

Total operating expenses were $116.9 million in the fourth quarter, and I'll go through the main components. Compensation expenses were $22.6 million, up versus the prior quarter. The increase was driven mainly by the growth in our fintech business, but also from OList and Opera Ads in Nigeria as well as Opera News across Africa.

Marketing and distribution expense was $17.5 million, down slightly compared to the third quarter as we focus browser and use customer acquisition efforts on our most proven ROI areas. Specifically, we focused on Africa and Europe and less on South Asia.

Cost of revenue was $32.7 million. $9.4 million of this related to retail revenue, $18.9 million related to microlending, which includes transaction and communication platform expenses as well as third-party credit scoring, data and risk control costs. In total, amounting to 26% of microlending revenue. Finally, $1 million related to browser and news, and $3.3 million related to tech licensing and other revenue. Credit loss expense was $27.6 million, of which $27.4 million related to provisions in microlending.

It is worth highlighting that as expected, we saw a material decrease in nonperforming loans with losses representing 5.5% of amounts lended, down over 200 basis points from the prior quarter. This was supported by a higher percentage of loans to returning users, which tend to have materially lower default rates. The sum of all other operating expenses, including depreciation and amortization, was $16.5 million, mainly driven by increased costs as a result of the growing fintech operations and establishing our new revenue streams in Africa. As a result, we saw an operating profit of $12.7 million.

Our net income was $22 million. This included noncash gains from OPay and StarMaker, following year-end fair value assessments conducted by a professional third party. Adjusted EBITDA was $20.2 million, representing a 16% margin. Margins increased from last quarter as we continue to see benefits from our revenue scaling despite continued aggressive investments in our long-term growth.

On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $181.6 million in cash and marketable securities as well as $52.9 million deposited in an escrow account which we exclude from reported cash. This adds up to a total of $234.5 million and that figure is comparable to the $216 million we reported after Q3. In other words, we had an effective increase of $18.5 million compared to the third quarter.

Some items worth highlighting there. First, on the restricted cash in escrow, we have placed cash in escrow to guarantee for loan funding within India. As of year-end 2019, $52.9 million of cash was on such accounts and as of this balance sheet date, we have recognized it as an other receivable and not cash. Our Q4 operating cash flow is, thereby, also affected by the same amount. Second, we received $10.8 million in October from our underwriters' exercise of their over-allotment option related to our September share issuance. Third, we benefited from a reduction in working capital, primarily from marketing expenses we had prepaid. And last, I'd like to point out that this quarter, our microlending growth was actually self-funded with net payments from customers exceeding the loan book growth.

Finally, we also announced a $50 million buyback program in January, as we believe that our stocks started trading at levels that did not factor in much past or continued success, and as such, represented a compelling ROI opportunity for our shareholders. We plan to purchase stock in an opportunistic and ROI-oriented manner, to the extent our results aren't being rewarded to the benefit of our investors.

With that, let me turn to our full year 2020 outlook and Q1 guidance. Beginning with revenue, we are expecting $530 million to $560 million in revenue in 2020. This represents 63% revenue growth over 2019 at the midpoint.

A couple of factors worth highlighting. Our fintech business continues to perform well, and we expect continued strong growth in revenue with a substantial uplift over 2019. Sequential growth rates will naturally moderate versus our past trajectory given our already large scale. Our estimates have also largely discounted the impact of new markets and expanded product offerings as difficult to forecast this potential.

Search revenue is expected to grow at mid-single digits in 2020, depending on our search partners' underlying monetization trajectory with some upside tied to our initiatives to grow this revenue stream faster.

Advertising growth is expected above the levels achieved in 2019, benefiting from increased monetization on Opera News and building out Opera Ads.

Retail and technology revenue are expected to, combined, decrease by approximately $20 million versus 2019. As a reminder, neither of these revenue lines contributes meaningfully to our adjusted EBITDA.

And finally, for new initiatives, such as OList and European fintech, we are building in about $10 million of revenue to our 2020 expectations, predominantly in the second half of the year. Further, we believe these businesses will exit 2020 with potential to contribute meaningfully to 2021 growth.

With that said, for the first quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $123 million to $133 million, representing a year-over-year growth rate between 147% to 167%. Our strong revenue guidance reflects continued fintech growth as well as continued positive momentum around our advertising efforts, offset by a $4 million sequential decrease in tech and other revenues and the typical Q1 seasonality in search and advertising with a similar sequential impact.

Now moving to adjusted EBITDA. We expect full year 2020 adjusted EBITDA to be $70 million to $80 million, an increase of 54% to 76% versus 2019. This view incorporates several items: increased cost of revenue, mostly driven by growth in micro lending and our content strategy around Opera News Hub; increased credit losses and compensation costs in existing businesses, largely a consequence of our growth in microlending; slightly higher absolute marketing and distribution costs, but lower as a percentage of revenue versus 2019; general growth in other cost categories following the continued scaling and expansion of our business; and finally, approximately $30 million in spend toward new initiatives such as OList and European fintech detracting from near-term profits but additive as we look beyond 2020. We expect first quarter adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $11 million to $14 million, which represents slight growth versus last year.

To summarize, we are very pleased with our strong results, our continued execution and our ability to yet again exceed expectations. Our outlook for 2020 has us exceeding well over $500 million in revenue and growing adjusted EBITDA rapidly, while investing heavily in future growth. We've come a long way in the last 18 months since our IPO, when our revenue run rate was $160 million or about 1/3 of what it will be in 2020. We plan to continue moving as fast as we have done since then and look forward to this $500 million milestone that is now well within reach and, more importantly, what comes after.

With that, I will turn it back to the operator for questions.

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from the line of Lee Krowl with B. Riley FBR.

Congrats on a really solid quarter and outlook. Just I wanted to start out initially on the incremental $30 million in investments. Could you maybe just talk about the cadence of that $30 million as you go through 2020? Is it first half weighted? Or is it evenly distributed throughout the year?

I would say it's relatively even distributed throughout the year but will ramp slightly quarter-to-quarter.

Yes. Lee, this is Derrick. It's really a function of headcount. So a lot of the headcount we brought on board already, but there will be additional hires.

Got it. And then on the lending business, 2 questions. Obviously, the loss ratio improved significantly. Is that a reset to a sustainable level? Or would you anticipate that it kind of moderates going forward? And then tied to that, could you maybe just talk about the timing of the launch of new markets for that business?

Yes, sure. Yes. So as we said on our Q3 call, we did see that Q4 was showing a material improvement there. And it was quite -- it was expected because our businesses had matured more. We had a bigger base of existing customers, and we saw an increase in returning users. As we look ahead, I -- all else equal, launching new markets will tilt the percentage a bit or losses a bit up again, although I think given our scale at this moment, we won't see very big swings.

Got it. And then just lastly, obviously, with shares pulling back significantly, definitely not getting credit for a lot of the initiatives you guys have put in place. Would you guys anticipate to use that entire share repurchase program in short order? Or is this sort of a measured approach throughout the year?

I think at this point, I will just say that we are looking at this as a very strong ROI opportunity, and we will act so long as that remains the case.

(Operator Instructions) And our next question comes from the line of John Godin with Lake Street.

Congrats again on a nice quarter. First question is around Opera News. I guess can you give us some more color as to how you're going to kind of balance growth of users with overall monetization there, and where you're really seeing success with kind of ramping up that monetization?

Sure. So -- yes, this is Song Lin. I think I'll just try to answer that. I think for Opera News, as also a bit mentioned earlier there, I think for us, there are some key principles. So number one is that we're definitely going to continue to grow in Africa. I think we have already shown that we are really, really strong there. And then as I mentioned, we have also tried -- we have also actually launched Opera News Hub, which is a really big success for us in Nigeria, and we're just going to expand to other markets.

So I think I would just say that we are relatively confident about our position in Africa, but then that also gives us a great opportunity to monetize. I would just say, at least in Africa, I think we are really well positioned, and we can just be more bold on monetize, both in terms of new ad formats, new loads, but as well as because of the increased user time spent on those things, this would definitely help our monetization. So I think that part, we are really good.

On the other hand, I think, we will remain probably a bit tactical on areas outside of Africa. I think we are just being consistent in saying that in other regions, like South Asia, Southeast Asia, we will -- we're still growing there, this and that. But I think our tactics there would just be that we will -- we treat this as a ROI opportunity. If we can find a good ROI, we'll definitely do it. But then if we see that for whatever reason on that particular market, if somebody else is spending a lot of money, throwing money away, that we will not follow.

So I think at high level, in summary, I would just say that the way for Opera News, we will continue to be super strong in Africa. That's our #1 market. We are in a very good position, both growth-wise and monetization-wise, while some other markets like South Asia or Southeast Asia, we'll just be tactical.

Yes. This is Derrick. I would add to Song's question (sic) [answer]. In Africa, I think we're positioned very well for monetization, given our scale and given our market share in those markets. And so as we push up the ad loads and add a bunch of new ad formats, I think we feel pretty good about where we're going.

Awesome. All right. And then second, on OList. Can you talk just a little bit about what you guys have learned as you're kind of entering that market, what the technology looks like and the monetization? And then outside of real estate, down the road, you mentioned scale. I guess where else do you guys think you could be effective in monetizing through OList?

Yes, sure. I think I'll just quickly also comment on that. This is Song Lin here. So I think the big learning experience is probably that it actually is almost the same as some other parts of Africa that we find out -- basically, we have 2 ways of doing things, right? One is you can actually get revenue by actually doing advertisement. But then what we find out is that, typically, in countries like Nigeria, other guys are not even very good, like you can sell that inventory to others, but they are actually not even very good at that anyway.

So we find out that the most effective is probably to do the transaction ourselves, for instance. That's why we find out that it's actually much, much more -- will make a lot of sense for us to actually do -- learning to do the real estate transaction because -- just to give an example, right? So if I am renting a house in Nigeria, the agency fee can be as high as 10% or even more. So that is actually highly lucrative if you know how to do it.

So I think our biggest takeaway is just that instead of just selling our ad inventory to others, which they don't really know how to do it, the best way is for us to went straight in and then to went into that real estate market, which, as we also commented, that has very big potentials. We comment that it could easily be a billion-dollar market, and it could make even more sense.

So I guess that's the biggest takeaway. And then on top of it, we also commented that there are some other similar opportunities like secondhand cars, et cetera, which are also very lucrative, which we think can make a lot of sense, so yes.

I mean hopefully, in -- I think still with that being said, we're still at very early stage. We just launched this in Q3 anyway. So our goal is just to make sure that we remain -- well, we get our position to be the #1 player in Nigeria this year, and we also have plans to expand to other markets, maybe second half of this year.

And John, this is Derrick. The transaction revenue we expect to get will obviously grow as the year goes on. And I think as you think about your model multiple years out, the idea is that participating in these transactions can be a many-time bigger multiple than the ad market because you're participating in a much higher value transactions than if you were just taking a little bit.

Awesome. And last one for me, just on the fintech business. Could you guys just kind of comment on the competitive landscape there? And really, how you guys are able to leverage your brand, your other offerings and how that's been able to help you guys achieve scale?

Sure. This is Frode here. So I would say these are definitely competitive markets. And essentially, the products are priced based on the cost of capital and sort of collection probability in the market.

So I think the benefit that Opera has is of a threefold: One, we have -- as you mentioned, we have the brand and we also have the distribution power, allowing us to quickly ramp new products in the markets. Second, we have a very strong AI team that allows us to make quite good predictions on probability of prepayment. And third, we have decades of experience in these markets. So we're quite good at getting feet on the ground and creating truly local businesses present in those markets. I think those are advantages in that space.

And our next question comes from the line of Hillman Chan with Citi.

Song Lin, Frode and Derrick, congrats on another strong quarter of results. First question is on the OList business. Could you share more on the go-to-strategy, I would say? Given that online classified is a businesses that relies on a lot of the online traffic -- user traffic, big merchant base, and then the related network effect can make it more effective? And then how should we think about our go-to-strategy in terms of building up the user mindshare, the merchant mindshare, as a new player in the field?

And then my second question would be on the European fintech development and related to the Pocosys investment. Given the model is for a banking-as-a-service operation model, could you share more, again, on the monetization strategy and the go-to-strategy for the first market that you also announced in the press release? And what are we trying to achieve with this European fintech acquisition in the medium and longer term? And how should we think about the synergy with the existing businesses, if any?

Sure. Hillman, this is Song Lin. I think, yes, it's -- yes. I think maybe I'll just start commenting on the OList part. So I would say it's a very good question. So I think what we have been learned in OList is that you are absolutely right in saying that for classified business, it really needs a lot of traffic because you need a larger amount of user base to drive those almost -- use cases. So I would say, I think we are very unique in that -- so number one, we do have a very big online traffic. Everybody know that in Nigeria, I would say, we are probably one of the very, very few players which has a massive traffic reach. And even better is that for OList as a service, it doesn't limit it to apps or anything. So any web page or even a feature phone, they can actually use our product.

So what we have been seeing is that we are able to really use the Opera traffic to the extreme that both for feature phone, smart phone, they can both access our traffic. This actually has -- make a very significant impact in the last quarter of how we're actually building up our traffic build.

So online, that -- maybe I've also been commenting that I think what's been a bit unique about us is that many other companies who are trying to do the same, they can do it online, but they don't know how to do it off-line. So I think for us, what's been very unique is that we have also been shown that we can do very good in Nigeria, even in off-line, that we are able to build like a strong off-line execution, both indicated in main areas, both the Opera News and also for this case. That actually allow us to be able to actually facilitating the agency transaction path, which allow us to actually be part of that transaction fee. So I think for those who are very optimistic about it, and so just as a summary that for our go-to-market strategy, we're able to use both online but also good off-line opportunities.

And then maybe I'll just very quickly comment in also on the European fintech part. I think it's still probably a bit too early, so I don't know how much data we can share at this point. We also want to be prudent. But I would just say that we find Europe as a very interesting market. It's just because -- like also I would say, the market is very different than some other place. Typically, we find out that in Europe, you typically, although they have this user base, which we also have, there's (inaudible). They need a lot -- like they are very unhappy with the current, like, fintech landscape with traditional banking. So that's why I think our major focus will be around payments, and also -- to some extent, also around open banking, which is new European initiatives, and around how to help them get access to more different payment options.

So I would almost encourage you maybe -- I think it's a bit too early for us, but I think it's fair maybe for you to look at all those other good European fintech initiatives, which might give you good guidance about what we are up to. Like, again, I think -- yes, we can hopefully disclose a bit more around later part of the year of the exact plans.

Song Lin, just to follow up on the OList part, could you also share a bit more -- given that you talk about the traffic, right, share about the proportion of user traffic that we generate from the organic sources from our online properties as well as those paid user traffic acquisition?

And then on the other hand, I think you touched on a good point about the off-line transaction. That's something we could be doing much better than our competitors who are leveraging more on the ad monetization. But just to let them -- be a bit more -- how labor or capital intensive has the off-line transaction become? And related to that, how much of that is factored in, in our EBITDA guidance for 2020, just for the OList off-line transaction development?

Yes. So understand -- I think Frode might also have a bit more comment, but I would just say that it's possible regarding your question of organic vs. paid traffic, I would just say that for now, almost by far majority, I would say probably more than 90% are organic in a way that they are coming from Opera traffic. Just because we have such a big user base here in Nigeria that we don't really have to spend a lot of effort to try and to buy traffic. So yes, I would say, more than 90% is actually organic in that way. That's number one.

So number two, I think, yes, it's a very good question that, to be honest, if -- I think we have been able to demonstrate even in some other parts of our business that we are able to leverage a huge off-line team in a very cost-efficient way.

So maybe I'll just put it like this. So we have now in Nigeria already hundreds of people working for us off-line, if not more. And then -- but the cost of them is probably only about, let's say, a few people as what you would see in Europe. So I think that's actually the major differentiating part of us towards maybe some other companies that we are able to use a big, big off-line team, very timely fashion, but then also very cost efficient.

So I would say that part actually would not be a major part of our EBITDA cost, but it will actually help boost our business in -- as a major differentiator.

Yes. And Hillman, what we tried to do for our guidance was fully weighed expenses and be a little more conservative on revenue contribution. And so the idea is that, hopefully, we can do what we've done in past years and overachieve.

And our next question comes from the line of Huang Haizhou with CICC.

Congratulations on the strong result. So I'm actually especially impressed by how we managed to lower the default rate and credit loss in fintech revenues. But how should we expect the credit loss to be when the business turn to mature? Do you have an internal model for that?

I would say on the countries where we are live today, I think this is a relatively decent level in terms of mapping out expectations with slight variations. Launching new businesses, all else equal, will drive losses up slightly. But given the scale of our existing businesses today, we don't expect major swings. I would expect it to go up slightly in the first half of 2020, but not as high as the levels that we have had for -- in the past.

Okay. In the mature areas, this is like, assuming that we didn't -- we start expanding to new areas. In the mature areas, how low can it be? I mean the credit loss as a percentage to fintech revenue.

Yes. That's a little bit hard to say, but I would say, overall, the weather in the mature countries, it will continue to go down from where we were. I don't want to promise that. I think it's better that you more expect that it remains stable. Also keep in mind, we are broadening our fintech offering with additional services, et cetera, that are not just lending, which by default would have -- won't have that prepayment risk.

Okay. And my next -- and next question is on cash flow. Noticing we have an active cash flow for operating in 2020 and excluding -- understanding that most of the reason is because of fintech business, but how do we expect the cash flow in 2020? Any chance to turn positive?

We don't really give cash flow guidance. But I think one important comment I made was that what we saw in Q4 was that at its core, the growth in microlending was self-funded. So if you just look at the growth in the loan book and compare it to revenue less loss provisions, it actually funded itself, the growth of the loan book. Then there is naturally OpEx, et cetera, that needs to be covered, but we're definitely moving towards a level where the cash flow is turning positive, even with the high-growth rates that we have seen.

Sure. And another question is on users. I mean, our active users are increasing really quick. But for the fourth quarter, Q-on-Q, we see the numbers are kind of light. Just trying to have more color on that. What are the reasons that we're losing users and what are the reasons they are still growing really strong?

Yes. So like -- this is Song Lin. So maybe I'll just comment that, as we also commented, I think, in Africa, we are definitely growing very well. Also in Europe, we're also growing very well, that's very important for us. As we said that in some other markets, I think, in particular, South Asia -- Southeast Asia, we are just very tactical. We will get users when we see good opportunity. But if we see that for whatever reason in a certain market, the ROI becomes not good enough, we will not invest just to grow that.

And maybe just to further comment that the users we're talking about, of course, are mostly the browser and new users. We do also have a huge amount of users in Southeast Asia for, say, tech, but we -- yes, just to say that those markets are still very important for us, but we choose to be tactical that we'll -- we think making most sense, we'll do that. But then we'll like -- yes, if it doesn't make sense, ROI-wise, we won't do it, though.

Yes. I think in South Asia, we're focusing on gaining users we know we can monetize and putting less focus on users where the monetization isn't there. And I think that's really the point Song was making.

Yes. I think the same strategy, to be honest, that we are going to execute also in 2020, that I think we need to be very tactical. In key markets like Europe, very good growth. Africa, we are very happy about this. In other regions, I think we will just be tactical.

And our last question comes from the line of Lance Vitanza with Cowen & Company.

Regarding the short seller, I appreciate the rebuttal you included in the press release. I've never heard of this particular short seller, but I've have seen these drive-by hit pieces before. And they're typically successful in driving down the share price just long enough for the author of the report to cover their position at the expense of the readers of the report. So my question is, has this short seller made any attempt to engage with you? And if so, have these efforts been fruitful?

Yes. I mean, this is Derrick. I would say we did not speak with the short seller prior to them publishing the report. And obviously, as Frode has said, our focus is just keep printing good results, keep growing the business. Frode, anything to add?

There was a journalist that contacted us 1 or 2 days prior to that report with similar questions. We answered all of those questions, but none of that was reflected, I think, in the short report. But we haven't -- as Derrick said, we haven't had any direct contact.

And this concludes today's question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

All right. Thank you. So yes, from our end, we would like to say thank you to everyone who has joined our earnings call today. We feel great about these results. We feel great about the year we're in, and we're looking forward to keeping you posted. Thanks, all. Have a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, you may now disconnect.