Opera Ltd (OPRA) 2024 Q1 法說會逐字稿

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  • Matt Wolfson - IR

  • Thank you for joining us. As usual, I have with me today our co-CEO, Song Lin; and CFO, Frode Jacobsen. Before I hand the call over to Song, I'd like to remind everyone that the conference call today, 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 how we perceive 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 adjusted EBITDA for different from our consolidated financial statements that are prepared and presented based on IFRS. We believe that the use of our non-IFRS financial measures provides 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. We have also posted unaudited quarterly historic financial results of Opera on our Investor Relations website.

  • With that, let me turn the conference call over to our co-CEO, Song Lin, who will cover our first quarter operational highlights and strategy. And then further Jacobsen will discuss our financials and expectations going forward.

  • Lin Song - Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director

  • Song? Thanks, Matt, and thanks to everyone joining us this morning to review our first quarter results. Turning to the poll is already off to a strong start with revenue of $102 million, driven once again, by organic growth paired with cost discipline, resulting in $25 million of adjusted EBITDA, representing a margin of 24%. Both revenue and EBITDA exceeded the fourth-quarter guidance that we outlined on our last quarterly call.

  • Our user growth strategy remains focused on quality over quantity. We continue to see growth of users in Western markets, GX users and other high-value users globally, offset by declines in no monetization of mobile users in emerging markets. Annualized ARPU was $1.44 in the fourth quarter, it's an up of 24% year over year. This was primarily driven by the growth of the users in high aftermarkets as well as continued growth of Opera GX broadly, which consistently attracts highly monetizable users across markets.

  • In the fourth quarter, Search revenue was $43 million, up 14%. This category has consistently grown in the mid-teens, and the [faster] global search market, enabled by continued focus on growing the highest value users. During the quarter, our new will exercise its option only to extend our current Search revenue partnership. Assign of the value of this relationship to those products.

  • In the first quarter, advertising revenue was $39 million, growing 21% year over year and representing 58% of total revenue. Advertising revenue continues to benefit from both our owned and operated, Mini browsers as well as our Opera Ads business. There is a clear trend that the digital advertising industry have put more focus on high user intent events. Indeed, the shopping journey of the user for the payment activity in association with a travel booking. Being a browser, we are best positioned to capture these interactions, giving users help choices and suggestions at the right moment. This could be in the form of a product recommendation or relevant page link with context aided by AI to help put everything into perspective.

  • As a result, advertising revenue within the browser experienced the fastest year-over-year growth since the second quarter of 2021, when advertising revenue was still rebounding post the onset of the COVID pandemic. That's a very direct example of our focus of high value users translating into financial results. As an independent browser, we are known for our continuous innovation and bringing exciting new additions to our browser.

  • Opera One, which was launched last year was a great success with the introduction of our browser AI, ARIA. In addition, it came with [beautiful design], whether it is a tab islands innovation or start page animations, benefiting from a robust engine enabling complex graphical operations (Inaudible) to be separated out from background processes, ensuring the most elegant browsing experience possible.

  • Let's see how such features and our strong browser brand drive adoption where user consider a new browser, we are more and more often considered and children. We remain encouraged by our results of recently implemented digital markets ads in the EU. The DNA requires apple to a browser choice into IOS users in the region, and we're qualified for the choice screen in every new country.

  • Post implementation, we saw a 63% increase in new IOS users in the EU from February to March. We still from a small base and with lots of work remaining ahead to fully seize the opportunity. We are very excited about this with developments and will increase our IOS investments, now that the playing field more level. Ways, other key regions potentially also opening up. We are starting from a modest base due to previous platform limitations maybe have to believe that with growth potential is substantial.

  • Again, this reflects a general trend that people show interest to move away from the boring system browser to differentiated products that are tailored for particular orders and needs. We believe that this trend will continue and even accelerate.

  • Turning to our gaming browser, Opera GX. We have spoken about it repeatedly, but I think it's a good example of when you do something truly differentiated to market and users loving it. In less than five years Opera GX has reached 29.5 million users, up 6.1% versus the fourth quarter alone. We addition to consistently growing our user base, monetization of the GX user base continues to grow. Reaching $3.49 in the first quarter, up 10% compared to a year ago even as this geography footprint expands in non-Western markets. GX remains our highest monetizing browser both in developed and emerging markets while the regional differences in monetization is less than other markets.

  • One of the most welcomed new features is a GX Mods, which allows users to customize almost all aspects of the browser. These Mods has a wide spectrum and are very creative. [3a] gaming franchises can provide the GX Mods like those will just announce association was set up on the tools and seven, a very popular game where the loyalty index, but also our users actively create Mods, for example, the data on music can react in real-time to the actions and moods of the users while giving the browser based on our key strokes or move of the mouse. The options are limitless.

  • Users can also upload their Mods to the GX Store and share with fellow gamers. Since the introduction of Mods a year ago, over 6,000 Mods have been created and shared by all users and all Mods have been installed over 113 million times. That is a great testimony of how this functionality is appreciated by the gamer audience and the potential related to differentiation in the browser space is still largely untapped.

  • I'm going to end on the continuation of the evolution of our embrace of AI. Will continue to roll out new generative AI (Inaudible) using the Opera browser. In the fourth quarter, we announced our AI featured growth project, which gives lots of our Opera One developer build access to our latest AI explorations. We drop new features as often and every few weeks, making us one of the fastest movers in this space.

  • One highlight is a fundamental support of larger central different local large language model variants from approximately 50 families of models, which are not natively supported to be downloaded and can run locally on the users own controller within the browser. And in coms last week, we added support for the latest alarm actually model just one day after its release.

  • This marks the first time local live blended models can be easily accessed and managed from a major Brower to building feature. The local AI models are a complementary addition to Opera's ARIA AI service which utilize our new fully green energy called AI cluster in Iceland that were announced in February and is now fully operational. This is indeed an interesting time for browser with a massive user base and a brand for innovation. We are designated about all the changes happening around us and cannot wait to explore the path ahead.

  • So now let me turn the call over to Frode to discuss the financials and guidance for the second quarter and 2024 in more detail. Frode?

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Thank you, Song. 2024 is off to a solid start with Q1 exceeding the guidance ranges we set just two months ago. Revenue grew 17% year over year, nicely ahead of the 15% midpoint growth we had guided. Net of continued FX headwinds, we saw an even stronger underlying constant currency revenue growth of 23% or 6 percentage points higher.

  • Advertising remains our strongest growth driver, though Search has also been performing ahead of the underlying market growth, clearly showing the benefit of our high ARPU user focus. In terms of costs, marketing cost came in slightly below expectations as did the other OpEx category. Salary cost came in as expected, while an investment in scaling new advertising revenue streams in our browsers drove up cost of revenue for the quarter.

  • In total, we managed costs to stay on budget, resulting in the revenue overperformance translating to adjusted EBITDA overperformance as well. Tax cost of $4.6 million was 19% of adjusted EBITDA, which was somewhat elevated mainly due to our tax assets, which reduced in USD value when local currencies weakened.

  • Our cash generation was particularly strong in the quarter with operating cash flow reaching as much as $31 million or 125% of adjusted EBITDA. This quarter, we made an all-cash investment to establish our new AI data center, representing an unusual amount of CapEx for us. While we were still able to generate free cash flow from operations of $8 million or 33% of adjusted EBITDA.

  • Cash generation fluctuates more than EBITDA from one quarter to the next and as the year progresses, our year to date cash conversion rates will stabilize similar to what we saw last year. We paid our semi annual dividend in January $0.40 per ADS or $35 million total. Of the total $25 million was offset against our Star X receivable and $10 million was paid in cash.

  • The final $8 million of our Star X receivable will be cleared as part of our next recurring dividend payment, which we continue to expect for July, same as last year. We remain committed to our dividend program, viewing it as the best way to return cash to shareholders without impacting our free float or trading volumes.

  • Having said that, as we've also demonstrated several times in the past, we continuously monitor for opportunities to generate ROI for our shareholders through buybacks when conditions favor that. Yesterday, we issued our 20-F for 2023 and I just want to highlight the one estimate update as part of the annual report relating to the fair value of our 9.4% ownership stake in OPay.

  • We ultimately set the year end 2023 valuation to $253 million as opposed to $269 million initially estimated, which led to an updated Q4 valuation gain of $90 million as opposed to a gain of $106 million. This is an estimate of an unrealized gain, and you'll see that the ownership stake is carried at a new value on our balance sheet, but it had no impact on our revenue, cash or other operating metrics.

  • In keeping with our well-established tradition to guide cautiously, we translate the overperformance of Q1 to a $4 million lift off the low end of our full year revenue guidance, while leaving the high-end assets. Our new revenue guidance becomes $454 million to $465 million, which results in the midpoint increasing from 15%, to 16% full year growth.

  • In terms of adjusted EBITDA, our guided range was already quite narrow at $106 million to $110 million, and we retain it based on the same logic. This maintains a 24% adjusted EBITDA margin expectation for the year as a whole. Overall as only two months have passed since we issued our original guidance for the year, we prefer to progress further into the year before we fully extrapolate our trajectory.

  • For the second quarter, we guide revenue of $107 million to $109 million or 14% to 16% year over year growth. We guide adjusted EBITDA of $22 million to $25 million or a 22% margin at the midpoint. That translates to OpEx pre adjusted EBITDA of $84.5 million at the midpoint, which includes a steady increase in marketing spend, annual salary adjustments effective in April and adding just over 8 percentage points of cost of revenue items relative to revenue.

  • Other OpEx items are expected at about the quarterly average of 2023. Our cost expectations for the year as a whole remain in line with our prior directional commentary. With marketing cost and cost of revenue ticking a bit up as a percentage of revenue while compensation costs and other OpEx items ticking down overall offsetting one another.

  • All in all, we are off to a solid start of 2024 and excited to continue executing on our strategy. We'll also participate at a number of upcoming investor conferences in May, which gives Matt and I, a chance to meet up with many of you in person soon as well.

  • With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for questions.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions)

  • Lance Vitanza, TD Cowen.

  • Lance Vitanza - Analyst

  • Hi, thanks. Thanks, everyone, and congratulations on the quarter, guys. A lot to go through here, but maybe we could start with the DMA in Europe. I find this very exciting. And you mentioned the 63% increase in new IOS users just from February to March. Now I understand it's off of a very small base, but could you talk a little more about the opportunity there?

  • Just you know, how many iOS users are there in Europe and what's Opera's penetration like today? Where do we think that could realistically go over, let's say, three to five years or whatever you think the right timeframe is? And then also what are the odds that we see a similar kind of DMA framework? You did talk, I think, Song, you talked about you do see other markets potentially embracing this kind of a framework. You know, what are your thoughts there in terms of the US at some point? Thanks.

  • Lin Song - Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director

  • Yeah. So, I think I'll just briefly comment. It's a big topic. So I think number one in general, we are very excited to see the trends because I think as you know, Europe, of course, is a key market and there's almost a leading role in many of those, I would say we would actually matters to make sure that there's a bit more fair playing ground.

  • So I think we are happy that the EU have been taking this approach and we are even more happy that it proves to everyone that we are they are easy, because many times we saw that there are some actions taken by government, nothing happens. And in this case, I think Apple on data compiled, which we're very happy about that as well. And the end result is also quite satisfactory, I would say, probably more than many people thought. So I think that's very encouraging.

  • And I'd like also just to comment that like we also see a general trend that sales also happening in other markets. I guess I mean, I'm no expert on this by I guess we all know that just last week starting to DOJ also has a case against Apple. Well, it's obviously not nationwide in the US. So and some of the things I have been saying. So we just saw that, I think there is a good chance that's more like it also from an EBIT point of view, I guess if they already agreed to open this up in one market marketing, just that they have a whole and this had a small natural also for them to offer a worldwide, which then of course can make a real difference because it only limited in the EU of course is already a very good start.

  • And I think in terms of opportunity, right, like I think we all know that on the mobile space, I think Apple has got a much like especially if they segment the section to be, let's say, performance of smartphones, which I think is also a case where DOJ had been using, then I think app almost has 70% of the total market, right. Which means no need to buy the higher end smartphones and because of the kind of limitations on that basis is almost nonexistent for any other round of layoffs, et cetera, because Apple don't almost allow it. And if you don't allow, it's loss of energy.

  • So so we feel that now this almost opened a new ground that presumably 70% of those performance smartphones in the US And I would say maybe 50%, 60% out, will have a chance to be assessed by us and by other browser vendors, which can be very interesting playground. And we have been able to show that our Android, whatever it is relatively on the level of yield, we're able to take a strong market shares and we have high hopes that this can also be replicated in the IOS.

  • So more likely now, we are perhaps viewed the user base to subways IOS. We have millions of users, but then of course, compared with our total user base, which we are now after the 300 million, there's still a big growth potentials. So I think you know, now you don't always see major growth. There are many, many opportunities ahead, which can have meaningful impact on our revenues in years to come. So I think that's more like a general fitness. And while we are excited by that, of course, is even interesting to see how this develops in the next few months to come.

  • Lance Vitanza - Analyst

  • And you did mention that there would be an increase, understandably, I would hope and be an increase in your IOS investment spend. And I just wanted to check with your proto. Is that presumably that was already kind of anticipated. And so as we think about the guidance that you sort of talked about for the budgeting and the marketing spend over the course of the year -- over the balance of the year I should say. There's no there's no incremental upside to the guidance.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • In terms of marketing spend, I would say we already reflect the Western markets, Europe, North America, that is where we spend the majority of our marketing spend, correlates with the revenue and where our revenue growth is really coming from as well. Even though it still represents only 17% of our total user base, that is where we continue to investing in as part of this strategy that we've been following for the past years.

  • Lance Vitanza - Analyst

  • Okay. And then just on the GX browser, you called out some dilution in the monetization as GX expands in non-Western markets. I imagine that's actually a good thing despite that but I'm wondering if you were to control for the geography, do you have a sense for what the year-on-year growth in monetization might have otherwise been? I think it was 10% overall, but kind of market by market, so to speak or emerging market versus --

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • We typically don't go into that level of detail. But overall, I think for the Company as a whole, I think we'd see an ARPU growth sort of at about twice that. So I think that's a good indication.

  • Lance Vitanza - Analyst

  • Again, just directionally is the growth kind of comparable in each market? Or are you seeing monetization growth now? Greater or lesser in one market or the other?

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • I think we see across the regions that we are doing well on monetization and growth. And for GX in particular, I think we continue to advance on greater ad revenue drivers as it has historically been very search driven and isolation still not, let's say, caught up to our other products in terms of mix between advertising and search. But we are progressing on that.

  • Lance Vitanza - Analyst

  • Okay. Last question for me. Iceland, we talked about the economics quite a bit back in February. I think it was at it and It seems like the pace of incremental CapEx, investments is pretty well contained. And then we saw meta announce another big increase in it's CapEx budget. And so I'm just wondering what are the chances that we start to see these big data center investments pop up more frequently, you know, quarter to quarter, year to year, et cetera.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • I don't think I would expect any cash flow surprises there because, you know, even if we did want to expand that over time, there is significant lead time on that.

  • Lance Vitanza - Analyst

  • Okay, thanks. I'll get back in queue.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Yeah.

  • Operator

  • Mark Argento, Lake Street.

  • Mark Argento - Analyst

  • Good morning, guys. Congrats on a nice quarter. Just a couple of quick ones here. Anything to read into that kind of a more accelerated timetable on the Google renewal? I know you guys had mentioned that, but they had a trigger that and then just wanted to touch on what's outstanding right now on the buyback?

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Frode here, I can begin. In terms of the buyback, we have fully consumed our most recent $50 million buyback plan. So I think now it's a bit of a watch and see as we have historically always done and sticking with the tradition that when we announce something, then we execute pretty quickly thereafter. In terms of the Google renewal, it was, of course, a nice, nice gesture of them to renew it this early in the year as they had the whole year. And from my point of view, I think it's just a nice recognition of the joint potentials that we also have with Google.

  • Mark Argento - Analyst

  • That's helpful. And then just quickly back on the browser, it sounds like GX continues to perform well in North America, you get -- in terms of any uptake on the mobile side or on the desktop side, especially with more AI product or more AI technology rolling out? How do you see the non GX browser as a potential growth driver for you?

  • Lin Song - Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director

  • Yes, it's only had just commented, right. So yeah, I think as we also commented a bit that I mean possible, of course, Opera One is primarily AI focus above for now and also they are launching the latest AI data, it's always Opera One and Opera One developer build. So I think it's -- yeah, I think now is almost becoming involved meeting major milestones, which have the capacities and all this access to all their technologies, which we are very proud of.

  • So yes, I think, especially among key opinion leaders and many others that have already been established and definitely helpful to our growth in non-GX browsers and even more at the moment to do that, for instance, with IOS. Now, while the major officials we have the broadcast disease, vascular support AI, which will I know that's obviously both. So I think also provides, yeah that is a good opportunity for us to grow.

  • And especially if you can also touch on IOS opportunity declares as you know, IOS are EBITDA definition becoming really a high segments. And then there's also typically quite conscious about the features that we can provide that essential on AI. So I think it's a very good playground. And even for GX, just want to mention that GX also have the mobile versions, and it's also doing very well on IOS and that is also super happy that now doesn't work in the afternoon. They can do more.

  • So we are quite positive about in general.

  • Mark Argento - Analyst

  • That's helpful. Thanks, guys. Good luck for the rest.

  • Operator

  • Eric Sheridan, Goldman Sachs.

  • Unidentified Participant

  • Hi, this is Alex on for Eric. Thanks for taking the question. Just a quick one on marketing spend. There's been a lot of discussion broadly around the industry on elevated ad prices in developed markets and sort of competitive ad auctions. Obviously, that's where you're focused on adding users. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the market and ad auctions, which digital ad channels are working well for you how is role has trended in recent months, that would be really helpful. Thank you.

  • Lin Song - Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director

  • I have commented on that may be coming also from material grounds as well. So I would say a high level, I think that we are rather come periodically in marketing, I think is also part of it that's why we actually have a bit higher adjusted EBITDA. As we saw some I think the reason just because if you look at if you are more like a traditional ad buy all well, typical buy the search ads or you typically buy from native apps than that. Of course, you are pretty limited and you're always facing a lot of the competitions right that's not so much we can do.

  • And I think for us, it's a bit different that as a browser, especially desktop varies from the starting point, don't really fit nicely on those. It just because we were never able to compete in that way. So where, for instance, focusing more on the influences that we work with all influencer and propositions and nobody likes that.

  • And so I think it was also actually enable us to be able to acquire those in a rather unique way and perhaps maybe not so much affected or impacted as much by those, I guess movements in the pure ad marketing spend space. And so I think maybe that's the base depreciations, however, is always some monetization point of view, I just want to comment that we actually see an interesting trend like that we did adjust the pure they're buying from us all to have a lot of our enrollments not as exciting because I saw that people advertisers are actually exploring very hard, this so-called high user intent events, which means (Technical Difficulty)

  • And with time, we will take actions. But so what you do, even if it is something we want something to be show up. So that's actually interesting trends, which was driven by so much on marketing, but it actually has benefited our advertisements, which I will talk about that now on starting from this year, we saw a lot of other guys approaching us for potential cooperation. And we are working with some of those channels, how to make sure they can pop up ads in the right moment with high user intent, which is a very good contract for both because of the data.

  • Of course, we have good knowledge of what we were doing and what time and so what kind of recommendations can in dividends so I think that's actually one of the interesting trends that I just traveled on the digital advertising space, which is something I'm changing a lot excited about it. So yes, so this is I shouldn call them center.

  • Unidentified Participant

  • That's helpful. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions)

  • Naved Khan, B. Riley Securities.

  • Naved Khan - Analyst

  • Thanks a lot. So maybe just on the DMM mutation and the trends you saw. Maybe you can provide some color on the existing base if you are able to retain that. And then what are you seeing in terms of usage after people are kind of set up as a default versus previously, maybe not being a default? Just talk about that a little bit?

  • Lin Song - Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director

  • Yes. It's only I think that the spread we commented that. So I don't think we have to disclose the separation of our IOS with us. It's not so relevant is the mid end of the range. So it's still big. But as I commented on that in total, of course, as assets still small, but the EBITDA like you saw essentially presumably because I knew you'd ask them. There are also a major uplifting in the existing active user base, which while they're happy about.

  • And I think what we see is that yes. So and you are right in the sense that allows us to do for the brands also, first of all, we do see a significant increase of the default data with us virtually that's very common in most other platforms, which are and a big portion of I did not say it was a default now as possible. So the ratio is somewhat higher, which we are very happy because, yes, that has direct impact on purchases of office because they simply so much more and they have a chance to expose the end user more. So so all of those are very positive.

  • And I think the only thing just add with your, of course, well, I don't have beginning because now it's only new and it should also be the fragment, the other big countries, many countries. So we feel that the way we rather feel this is probably the timing of that as we head into some bigger markets like the US, which we had anticipated. So let's see how this develops and the end case by the company or the growth because it's the right trend the cost to move off or to.

  • Naved Khan - Analyst

  • Okay. And then maybe a quick follow up for Frode. Maybe just could talk about the opportunity you're seeing for marketing spend, you came in a little bit lighter than the first quarter, and how should we kind of think about that going out? And do you see some new channels you can deploy ad dollars into.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • So we had expected Q1 marketing spend to be very similar to Q4. It came in 2% below. So I think it was quite on expectation. And for the rest of the year, we continue to expect like $1 million to $2 million of incremental spend quarter by quarter. So I keep ticking up as the year progresses. I think in terms of the channel mix, we expect to continue what we do today, which is to work with influencers and to keep turning more of the spend into western markets and other high value populations and then in particular for Opera GX and its global growth.

  • Naved Khan - Analyst

  • Understood and then for Opera GX, specifically, maybe -- is the growth you're seeing in some of these new emerging markets? Is that primarily word of mouth or how much of that is advertising? And how does the the monetization there kind of change over time. Do you think that it's early days and it might actually improve as you as you become a bigger presence in a certain geo or is that -- just give us some thoughts there?

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Sure. I mean, in terms of word of mouth and distribution mix, we do benefit from a strong brand once we have started to build presence, so that we also show a chart on in our investor presentation to sort of illustrate the size of the organic inflow of users, but it does require investment to start building a presence in the example of GX rates awareness of that product. So we do we definitely do that.

  • I think the second part of the question was around monetization opportunities and we are in the process of expanding the monetization of Opera GX. I think the Q4 to Q1 ARPU was almost flat, down a couple of percentage points, something like that, which is very strong given the seasonally strong fourth quarter. The product does benefit that the users at the tracks outside of western markets are relatively more affluent than the average user in those regions. But let's say if ARPU was constant and it continues to grow internationally, that, of course, would be a headwind. But fortunately, we have been able to grow the underlying ARPU faster than the, let's say, the geo mix impact.

  • Naved Khan - Analyst

  • Understood. Thanks a lot, guys.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Sure.

  • Operator

  • Vicky Wei, Citi.

  • Vicky Wei - Analyst

  • Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the solid quarter. I've got one question. And since the announcement of adding experimental support for 150 local LM model from 50 families to offer a long process in development stream. Any color you could share, which are the top five favorite models from that you will see on your Opera One. Any indication how some of these usage of models could help on future financial growth? Or will this be more enhancement tools with limited monetization? Thank you.

  • Lin Song - Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director

  • Yeah, it's somehow So yes, I'll briefly comment, right. So first of all, I would say, I think it's more like a normal. I would say this feature is rather a reflection of way, but also many, many was like us many key opinion leaders in the industrial field, well, the AI is heading to that. Now it is always about the combination of you have this very powerful large language models with China hosted by the guys of OpenAI and the likes. And but then also in combination I would say local models in more like?

  • Well, I think the typical example, LA and a few others, I think resin just because the weather just because the dollar has that you wanted some help very fast. And then for privacy and other considerations, you do not want this to be uploaded to a cloud. And and also there are some cost considerations among others.

  • So I think, you know all the needs that was I'm very, I know for some time, actually overtaken by remotely. And those are the actions which will have to be done locally. So I think that's where we are heading to and we feel that we're quite happy and proud almost the fourth major ones to go to that place. I think we'll just because we have other independents. We don't have any more like for some other players. I understand there are some other considerations, pricing on some of the cloud service a lot of our performance, why just the scale what is used on need blood. So I think that's what's important for us.

  • And then you run the models. I think the typical ones. Now, of course, it will always be Vibratto two of the most powerful ones from Facebook, a meta. And then you also have when you have Google had gamma right which has gone down. As you know, Microsoft has announced some locomotives nightlife. I was happy that this further to the right trend and also we do, yes, we do have this also trial number three, which is the latest model we just had. So quite proud of because it's only coming out last week and now the try that on Opera and use it very easily.

  • Just a few stats you'll have to develop or whatever. So I think that's a real airplane allow had thought of it on. Yes. So more like those are the things that we're happy to do. It doesn't like unlike meta and a few others where we have had, which has been, I think, a very smart way so this will not bring up the heavy costs and it's almost mostly upside just because essentially this makes our product more differentiated and hopefully retention will be high. And if we saw the use of aluminum. We hope that they will speak to us longer.

  • So I think it's a win-win situation because in the end of the day, what every company is the user's CPU and the electricity on his own network, which I'm sure you're happy to take, and we also doesn't bring additional cost to us. So I think all those are good is a good product for us and we hope to remain the leading roles in the field and in AI field and the browser.

  • Vicky Wei - Analyst

  • Thank you.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • I can mainly time in -- I can maybe chime in from the monetization point, I think being able to take these types of AI features mainstream that can attract to us exactly the type of user profile that we monetize the best right. And we expect that these offline models will exist in combination with the online models like ARIA because of the needs that require essentially updated information access to product to access to other at live things that won't be captured in an offline version. So slightly different use cases.

  • Vicky Wei - Analyst

  • Thank you.

  • Lin Song - Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director

  • Okay. So a lot of questions. I would just say that, thank you all for joining us today. We have been looking forward to share this quarterly update with you. It is certainly exciting times and as you see way innovate and evolve quickly to seize the opportunities ahead. There will be more to talk about as the year progresses. So stay tuned and thank you for your time.