Roblox Corp (RBLX) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. My name is Brent, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Roblox Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Thank you. Stefanie Notaney, you may begin your conference.

早上好。我叫布倫特，今天我將擔任你們的會議接線員。此時，我想歡迎大家參加 Roblox 第四季度和 2022 年全年收益電話會議。 （操作員說明）謝謝。 Stefanie Notaney，你可以開始你的會議了。

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q&A session to discuss Roblox's Q4 and Full Year 2022 Results. With me today is Roblox's Co-Founder and CEO, David Baszucki; and CFO, Mike Guthrie. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that earlier this morning, we published a shareholder letter and earnings results on our Investor Relations website at ir.roblox.com.

謝謝。大家早上好，感謝您參加我們的問答環節，討論 Roblox 的第四季度和 2022 年全年業績。今天和我在一起的是 Roblox 的聯合創始人兼首席執行官 David Baszucki；和首席財務官 Mike Guthrie。在我們開始之前，我想提醒大家，今天早上早些時候，我們在我們的投資者關係網站 ir.roblox.com 上發布了一封股東信和收益結果。

On this call, we will make some brief opening remarks and reserve the rest of the time for your questions. For our webcast participants, please note the question icon at the bottom right of your screen where you can type in your questions. We'll do our best to take as many questions as possible in the time we have allotted today.

在這次電話會議上，我們將做一些簡短的開場白，並為您留出剩餘時間來提問。對於我們的網絡廣播參與者，請注意屏幕右下角的問題圖標，您可以在其中輸入問題。我們將盡最大努力在今天分配的時間內回答盡可能多的問題。

On today's call, we may be making some forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, our expectations of our business, future financial results and business and financial strategy. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in our forward-looking statements, and such risks are described in our risk factors included in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q.

在今天的電話會議上，我們可能會做出一些前瞻性陳述，包括但不限於我們對業務的預期、未來的財務業績以及業務和財務戰略。前瞻性陳述受風險和不確定性的影響，這些風險和不確定性可能導致實際結果與我們前瞻性陳述中描述的結果存在重大差異，這些風險在我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中包含的風險因素中有所描述，包括我們關於表格 10 的年度報告-K 和 10-Q 表格的季度報告。

You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. During this call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for our reported results can be found in our press release issued this morning as well as in our supplemental slides, copies of which can be found on our Investor Relations website. Finally, this call is being webcast. The webcast will be archived on our IR website shortly afterwards. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave.

您不應依賴我們的前瞻性陳述作為對未來事件的預測。除非法律要求，否則我們不承擔任何更新任何前瞻性陳述的義務。在這次電話會議中，我們還將討論某些非 GAAP 財務措施。我們報告結果的 GAAP 和非 GAAP 指標之間的對賬可以在我們今天上午發布的新聞稿以及我們的補充幻燈片中找到，其副本可以在我們的投資者關係網站上找到。最後，這個電話正在網絡直播。不久之後，網絡廣播將在我們的 IR 網站上存檔。有了這個，我會把電話轉給戴夫。

Thank you very much, and welcome team. Welcome, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here. Welcome to the Roblox community, and welcome to all of our investors. We continue to focus on innovation, and we're very pleased with our results from Q4 and the early signal on January. We have enormous headroom in our business. We have the whole company focused on one product, one platform. And in the midst of a fair amount of turmoil over the last year, we continue to hire and build an amazing team with amazing people. We're focused on our 4 growth vectors. One is bringing people together all around the world, one is expanding our platform to encompass people of all ages, third growth vector is we continue to see expansion into education, into concerts, into communication.

非常感謝，歡迎團隊。歡迎，邁克。很高興來到這裡。歡迎來到 Roblox 社區，歡迎我們所有的投資者。我們繼續專注於創新，我們對第四季度的結果和一月份的早期信號感到非常滿意。我們的業務擁有巨大的發展空間。我們讓整個公司專注於一種產品，一個平台。在過去一年的相當大的動盪中，我們繼續聘請和建立一支由優秀人才組成的優秀團隊。我們專注於我們的 4 個增長向量。一是將世界各地的人們聚集在一起，一是擴大我們的平台以涵蓋所有年齡段的人，第三個增長方向是我們繼續擴大到教育、音樂會和交流領域。

And finally, our economy is vibrant and growing as we'll share in our call. A couple of details Q4 bookings, $899 million, up 17% year-over-year or 21% on constant currency and highlighting this is around the world, including U.S., Canada and APAC each at 19% growth in Q4. Some slight acceleration in '22 going into '23 with December 20% year-on-year, January 21% year-on-year. And this is highlighting our global growth in January with Europe and APAC, up 29% year-on-year. For older users, which is an enormous opportunity for the platform, sometimes referred to as aging up, this is not a new thing for us. We are in the middle of aging up. And in January, we saw our 17 through 24-year-old segment grew at 39% year-on-year for bookings.

最後，正如我們將在電話中分享的那樣，我們的經濟充滿活力並不斷增長。一些細節 Q4 預訂量為 8.99 億美元，同比增長 17% 或按固定匯率計算增長 21%，這突出表明這是在全球範圍內，包括美國、加拿大和亞太地區，在第四季度各增長 19%。 22 年進入 23 年略有加速，12 月同比增長 20%，1 月同比增長 21%。這突顯了我們 1 月份在歐洲和亞太地區的全球增長，同比增長 29%。對於年長的用戶來說，這對平台來說是一個巨大的機會，有時也被稱為老化，這對我們來說並不是什麼新鮮事。我們正處於衰老過程中。在 1 月份，我們看到 17 至 24 歲人群的預訂量同比增長 39%。

Going into usage and DAUs, we're proud to report that in January, we had our highest ever DAUs at 65 million DAU and Q4 DAUs continue to show really strong growth. Europe 24%; APAC 21%. U.S. and Canada, up 19% in Q4 DAU. Amazingly, well, not really amazingly because we're still focused on innovation, we burned almost no cash in 2022, roughly negative 0.5% cash which we're really, really proud of. And on an adjusted basis, in Q4, our EBITDA was $183 million or 20.3% of bookings.

關於使用量和 DAU，我們很自豪地報告說，在 1 月份，我們的 DAU 達到了有史以來最高的 6500 萬 DAU，並且第四季度的 DAU 繼續顯示出非常強勁的增長。歐洲 24%；亞太地區 21%。美國和加拿大，第四季度 DAU 增長 19%。令人驚訝的是，嗯，並不是真的令人驚訝，因為我們仍然專注於創新，我們在 2022 年幾乎沒有燒掉現金，大約為負 0.5% 的現金，我們真的非常自豪。在調整後的基礎上，在第四季度，我們的 EBITDA 為 1.83 億美元，佔預訂量的 20.3%。

I want to highlight that underneath all of this progress, we focus very heavily on key drivers around sign-ups, retention, frequency, engagement and monetization. And all of these numbers continue to be near or at all-time highs, even as we've emerged from COVID. Long term, we remain singularly focused on ushering in this new category numbers of communication. And we continue to see what we believe are the benefits of this new category as we start to roll out voice and facial animation, including the ability for people to be virtually in the same place as they communicate, the ability to pick up many queues around human interaction, including eye tracking, arm tracking, which we don't sometimes pick up on the phone around a video call, the ability to stimulate more and more of the audio that we see in the real world that helps our communication.

我想強調的是，在所有這些進展的背後，我們非常關注圍繞註冊、保留、頻率、參與和貨幣化的關鍵驅動因素。即使我們已經擺脫了 COVID，所有這些數字仍然接近或處於歷史最高水平。從長遠來看，我們仍然專注於引入這種新的通信類別。隨著我們開始推出語音和麵部動畫，我們繼續看到我們認為這個新類別的好處，包括人們在交流時幾乎處於同一個地方的能力，能夠在周圍接聽許多隊列人際互動，包括眼球追踪、手臂追踪，我們有時不會在視頻通話中通過電話接聽，能夠刺激越來越多的我們在現實世界中看到的有助於我們交流的音頻。

And finally, of course, what everyone does on Roblox in addition to communicating, doing things together. This vision, we think, has enormous headroom for us. If you've been with us on our Investor Day or some of our calls at RBC, we believe this is the next generation of communication following from audio phone, video calls, texting, messaging. Behind the scenes on our innovation stack, there's a lot of metrics that are moving that to our average user are invisible, but are very, very important and go side by side with our innovation. We're constantly making improvements in the performance of all of our apps, in the speed at which people can connect to Roblox experiences in the performance of our cloud around the world and the performance all around the world as we roll out new edge data centers.

最後，當然，除了交流、一起做事之外，每個人在 Roblox 上所做的事情。我們認為，這一願景為我們提供了巨大的發展空間。如果您參加過我們的投資者日或我們在 RBC 的一些電話會議，我們相信這是繼音頻電話、視頻電話、短信和消息之後的下一代通信方式。在我們創新堆棧的幕後，有很多指標正在將其轉移到我們的普通用戶身上，這些指標是看不見的，但非常非常重要，並且與我們的創新並駕齊驅。我們不斷改進我們所有應用程序的性能，提高人們連接到 Roblox 體驗的速度，我們在全球範圍內的雲性能以及我們推出新的邊緣數據中心時在全球範圍內的性能.

And of course, the more visible parts of our innovation continue to be visible as well. We continue to roll out voice. We've had over 1 million experiences so far in enabled voice chat. And as we continue to roll this out, we're very pleased with the adoption and the level of immersiveness that this has brought.

當然，我們創新中更引人注目的部分也將繼續可見。我們繼續推出語音。到目前為止，我們在啟用語音聊天方面已有超過 100 萬次體驗。隨著我們繼續推出它，我們對它帶來的採用率和沈浸感水平感到非常滿意。

We talk about Dynamic Heads and Facial Animation because we're in the middle of this rollout. But we believe very soon we will assume this is just a core part of Roblox, and we will stop referring to Dynamic as -- it is just be part of an active avatar. This is the same with layered clothing with over 100 million -- 115 million people adopting layered clothing so far. This will transition to just being called the clothing system on Roblox.

我們談論動態頭像和麵部動畫，因為我們正處於這次推出的中間。但我們相信很快我們就會假設這只是 Roblox 的核心部分，我們將不再將 Dynamic 稱為——它只是活躍化身的一部分。分層服裝也是如此，目前已有超過 1 億人 - 1.15 億人採用分層服裝。這將過渡到僅被稱為 Roblox 上的服裝系統。

And finally, we're well on our way -- I believe we've passed 90% of our catalog now being UGC. We're well on our way to that being 100%, including all of the avatars on the system as well. And finally, we're really pleased from the safety and stability standpoint to have rolled out experience guidelines in Q4. This is really continuing our vision of building a platform for all ages around the world.

最後，我們進展順利——我相信我們已經通過了 90% 的目錄，現在是 UGC。我們正朝著 100% 的目標邁進，包括系統上的所有化身。最後，從安全性和穩定性的角度來看，我們非常高興在第四季度推出了體驗指南。這確實延續了我們為全世界所有年齡段建立平台的願景。

Our active developers are up 33% year-on-year. We've had 70 experiences now past 1 billion visits at the end of 2022. Brands continue to come to Roblox as this is a new form of bringing people together with brands. We're proud to welcome the NFL, FIFA, Netflix and of course, Elton John, Mariah Carey, we have a lot more coming in 2023.

我們的活躍開發者同比增長 33%。到 2022 年底，我們已經有 70 次體驗，訪問量超過 10 億次。品牌繼續來到 Roblox，因為這是一種將人們與品牌聯繫在一起的新形式。我們很自豪地歡迎 NFL、FIFA、Netflix，當然還有 Elton John、Mariah Carey，我們將在 2023 年迎來更多。

And something really near and dear to my heart, just given our -- my prior company was an educational software company, we're really proud to see institutions like the Museum of Science in Boston start to roll out large immersive educational efforts such as their mission to Mars, Roblox interactive experience. Finally, safety and stability is a foundation for us, and we were really pleased be the first tech company to support the landmark child safety legislation in California last year called the California Age-Appropriate Design Code. And we're hopeful more states will adopt it.

一些非常貼近我心意的東西，鑑於我們——我之前的公司是一家教育軟件公司，我們真的很自豪地看到像波士頓科學博物館這樣的機構開始推出大規模的沉浸式教育工作，比如他們的火星任務，Roblox互動體驗。最後，安全和穩定是我們的基礎，我們真的很高興成為第一家支持去年加州具有里程碑意義的兒童安全立法的科技公司，該立法被稱為加州適齡設計規範。我們希望更多的州會採用它。

With that, we'll either turn it over to comments unless Mike has something to chime in.

有了這個，我們要么將其轉為評論，除非 Mike 有什麼要插話的。

Yes. Thanks, Dave. I just want to add a couple of thoughts before we open it up for questions. As it relates to cash flow, as Dave mentioned, we did continue to take an investment posture this year, we're really happy to see high returns on those investments and to see margins coming back into the business really driven by top line growth.

是的。謝謝，戴夫。在我們開始提問之前，我只想補充幾點想法。正如 Dave 提到的那樣，與現金流有關，我們今年確實繼續採取投資姿態，我們真的很高興看到這些投資的高回報，並看到利潤率真正在收入增長的推動下重新回到業務中。

We spent over $400 million over the course of the year, investing in infrastructure, primarily related to our data center in Ashburn, Virginia, and still we're able to run the company effectively cash flow neutral for the year, which was a goal of ours internally. Those capital expenditures related to infrastructure will be down significantly in 2023, somewhere between 25% and 30% lower this year.

我們在這一年中花費了超過 4 億美元，投資於基礎設施，主要與我們在弗吉尼亞州阿什本的數據中心有關，但我們仍然能夠在這一年有效地運營公司，實現現金流中性，這是我們的目標我們的內部。與基礎設施相關的資本支出將在 2023 年大幅下降，今年下降 25% 至 30% 之間。

Dave also mentioned our focus on frequency, engagement and monetization. I also just want to point out, we had incredibly strong results and you can see it in our supplemental materials around payers on the platform. So in the fourth quarter, we reached an all-time high of 13.4 million payers, highest amount of returning payers that we've ever had, which means, obviously, people are sticking with us, which is great.

Dave 還提到了我們對頻率、參與度和貨幣化的關注。我還想指出，我們取得了令人難以置信的強勁成果，您可以在我們圍繞平台付款人的補充材料中看到這一點。因此，在第四季度，我們達到了 1340 萬付款人的歷史新高，這是我們有史以來最高的回頭客數量，這意味著，很明顯，人們都在堅持我們，這很好。

And we added more new payers than ever before with the exception of the very first quarter of COVID. So we had incredibly strong growth in payers. And at the same time, the monetization prepare in the fourth quarter was up significantly and as strong as it's ever been. We're also seeing very, very healthy what we refer to as payer conversion. So more users are becoming payers than ever before, and that's pretty much true across the globe.

除了 COVID 的第一季度外，我們增加了比以往更多的新付款人。因此，我們的付款人增長非常強勁。與此同時，第四季度的貨幣化準備顯著增加，並且一如既往地強勁。我們還看到我們稱之為付款人轉換的非常、非常健康的情況。因此，越來越多的用戶成為付費用戶，這在全球範圍內都是如此。

Each individual region is reaching its peak in payer conversion they did at least over the holidays. And so when we look at that on a seasonal basis, that looks very strong. So again, as Dave mentioned, a great end of Q4, a nice start to 2023 and why don't we pause there and open it up for questions.

至少在假期期間，每個地區的付款人轉化率都達到了頂峰。因此，當我們按季節來看時，它看起來非常強勁。所以，正如 Dave 提到的那樣，第四季度的美好結局，2023 年的美好開端，為什麼我們不在那裡停下來提出問題呢？

(Operator Instructions)

（操作員說明）

Your first question comes from the line of Omar Dessouky with Bank of America.

你的第一個問題來自美國銀行的 Omar Dessouky。

Everybody is talking about ChatGPT, it's being asked of all the big companies. So I wanted to ask, how does the availability of this new technology maybe accelerate or not your time line towards inexperienced creation tools. And what proprietary data sets do you have that could break through domain-specific -- that could create breakthrough domain-specific applications using the GPT3 models?

每個人都在談論 ChatGPT，所有大公司都在詢問它。所以我想問，這項新技術的可用性如何可能加速或不加速您對缺乏經驗的創作工具的時間線。您擁有哪些專有數據集可以突破特定領域——可以使用 GPT3 模型創建突破性的特定領域應用程序？

Great question. And this is a wonderful area. There's going to be a block post from our CTO, Dan Sturman coming out tomorrow sharing really the wide range of opportunities that you could imagine ML will accelerate and stuff we've been working on for quite a while. Going through the whole Roblox virtual universe, we can, of course, imagine code acceleration and the amazingly large set -- data set of Lua code that all of our creators have built on the platform that sits in our cloud that we can accelerate.

很好的問題。這是一個很棒的地方。我們的 CTO Dan Sturman 明天將發布一個大塊帖子，分享您可以想像的 ML 將加速的廣泛機會以及我們已經研究了很長時間的東西。縱觀整個 Roblox 虛擬世界，我們當然可以想像代碼加速和驚人的大集合——Lua 代碼的數據集，我們所有的創建者都在我們可以加速的雲平台上構建了這些代碼。

Of course, we can model -- imagine 3D model acceleration and something very near and dear to the heart of every player on Roblox is their own personal avatar. Traditionally, avatar have been created in many, many ways, including mixing and matching parts, moving sliders, but we're going to see more and more range of innovation around avatar creation that's much more natural and natural language-based creation.

當然，我們可以建模——想像一下 3D 模型加速和 Roblox 上每個玩家心中非常接近和珍視的東西是他們自己的個人化身。傳統上，化身的創建方式有很多種，包括混合和匹配部件、移動滑塊，但我們將看到越來越多的圍繞化身創建的創新，這些創新更加自然和基於自然語言的創建。

And behind the scenes, in addition to this, there's another wide range of opportunities around customer service, around how NPCs perform, around the performance of search and discovery, around the creation of 3D materials. So there's in many, many ways we're going to harvest and tap into ML here. We have a lot of data and feedback from our users and stand by and read more, please, on Thursday.

在幕後，除此之外，圍繞客戶服務、圍繞 NPC 的表現、圍繞搜索和發現的表現、圍繞 3D 材料的創建，還有另一個廣泛的機會。因此，我們將通過很多很多方式在這裡收穫和利用 ML。我們有大量數據和來自用戶的反饋，請在星期四待命並閱讀更多內容。

That's wonderful. Okay. We're looking forward to that, reading that blog. I guess first for a follow-up and a separate question. You've talked about the kind of transition -- you've talked about the transition to a limited items economy and exclusively limited items economy on Roblox. I just wanted to hear how your thoughts have evolved on that and what you think the timing might be, whether that would be phased or if it's already in progress and when it would kind of be complete? Also, I guess, as part of that process, will you still be having items created primarily by UGC creator program? Or will it become open by the time of the completion to the general public and the general user base?

那好極了。好的。我們很期待，閱讀該博客。我想首先是跟進和一個單獨的問題。你已經談到了過渡的類型——你已經談到了在 Roblox 上向有限物品經濟和獨家有限物品經濟的過渡。我只是想听聽你的想法是如何演變的，你認為時間可能是什麼，是否會分階段進行，或者是否已經在進行中，什麼時候完成？另外，我想，作為該過程的一部分，您是否仍會擁有主要由 UGC 創作者程序創作的項目？或者它會在完成時向公眾和普通用戶群開放嗎？

I'll share the long-term vision. You're going to see pieces of this rollout throughout the year. Long term in the real physical world, there's no constraints on who can create the items that we use in our everyday life. New people can enter that market at any point in time. And we have a wide range of pricing and activity in the real world. We have generic items like white T-shirts, we also have very expensive items like Gucci purses. We're working as quickly as we can to mimic the range and expressiveness of the commerce we see in the real world and potentially go beyond that.

我將分享長期願景。您將在全年看到此部署的一部分。從長遠來看，在真實的物理世界中，對於誰可以創造我們日常生活中使用的物品沒有任何限制。新人可以隨時進入該市場。我們在現實世界中有廣泛的定價和活動。我們有白色 T 恤等普通商品，也有 Gucci 錢包等非常昂貴的商品。我們正在盡可能快地模仿我們在現實世界中看到的商業的範圍和表現力，並有可能超越它。

So this is actively under development. We're moving to a UGC economy where there's no limits where everyone can participate and where robots doesn't make everything -- anything, really our community makes all of it where the economy is very vibrant, where more and more creators can make a living creating items on Roblox, and we have a wide range of pricing that makes economic sense. So look for more and more things during the course of this year and more and more innovations that mirror how the real world economy works in a virtual world like Roblox.

所以這正在積極開發中。我們正在轉向 UGC 經濟，在這種經濟中，每個人都可以參與，機器人不會創造一切——任何東西，實際上我們的社區創造了一切，經濟非常活躍，越來越多的創作者可以創造生活在 Roblox 上創造物品，我們有廣泛的定價範圍，具有經濟意義。因此，在今年的過程中尋找越來越多的東西，以及越來越多的反映現實世界經濟如何在像 Roblox 這樣的虛擬世界中運作的創新。

Thanks, Omar. We'll catch up with you in about an hour. We're going to move to the next caller if that's okay.

謝謝，奧馬爾。我們將在大約一個小時後趕上你。如果可以的話，我們將轉到下一位來電者。

Your next question is from the line of David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

你的下一個問題來自摩根大通的 David Karnovsky。

Dave, on the prior call, I think you mentioned that 17- to 24-year-old users were mostly monetizing in the top experiences, but were experimenting with some of the aged up experiences. So I wanted to see if you could update on this, whether those older users are starting to migrate further into the mature content and what opportunity that sets for next year?

戴夫，在之前的電話中，我想你提到過 17 到 24 歲的用戶大多在頂級體驗中獲利，但也在嘗試一些更老的體驗。所以我想看看你是否可以對此進行更新，那些年長的用戶是否開始進一步遷移到成熟的內容以及明年的機會是什麼？

And then, Mike, just on expenses, there was real moderation in cost growth quarter-over-quarter for R&D and infrastructure. Just wondering if you could kind of discuss how you're thinking about investment for those OpEx lines in 2023. And if that growth pace we saw in Q4 is kind of reasonable to assume going forward.

然後，邁克，就支出而言，研發和基礎設施的成本環比增長確實有所放緩。只是想知道您是否可以討論一下您如何考慮 2023 年對這些 OpEx 生產線的投資。我們在第四季度看到的增長速度是否可以合理地假設未來。

I'll give a general highlight. When we say mature experiences on Roblox, as of now with our experience guidelines, we do not have any 17 enough experiences. So the experiences on Roblox are nudging in that direction. We are seeing more and more things that, I would say, are exciting for older players. It's interesting that the core genre in Roblox has really perked up in the last 3 or 4 months, experiences like Doors and others have become very, very popular.

我將重點介紹一下。當我們在 Roblox 上說成熟的經驗時，根據我們的經驗指南，我們沒有任何 17 個足夠的經驗。因此，Roblox 上的體驗正朝著這個方向發展。我們看到越來越多的東西，我想說，對於老玩家來說是令人興奮的。有趣的是，Roblox 中的核心類型在過去 3 或 4 個月內真正活躍起來，Doors 等體驗變得非常非常受歡迎。

Many of the experiences on Roblox even for older players cover all age ranges as well. And just as in the very early days of Roblox, we saw the market really respond to the opportunity of that player base. We're seeing that with our game fund as well. So there's more and more aged up content showing up on the platform.

Roblox 上的許多體驗甚至適用於年長玩家，也涵蓋了所有年齡段。就像在 Roblox 的早期一樣，我們看到市場真正響應了該玩家群的機會。我們的遊戲基金也看到了這一點。因此，平台上出現了越來越多的過時內容。

So yes. And David, on costs, maybe just back up a little bit. We really -- if you look at our cost structure, there's really 4 primary areas of costs in the business. The first one is, of course, COGS and payment processing, which is more or less strictly variable, though, has been coming down as a percentage of bookings, primarily because we've been really successful with prepaid cards and other alternative payment methods that are lower cost. So that's one.

所以是的。而大衛，在成本方面，也許只是稍微後退一點。我們真的 - 如果你看看我們的成本結構，業務中確實有 4 個主要成本領域。第一個當然是 COGS 和支付處理，雖然或多或少嚴格可變，但佔預訂的百分比一直在下降，主要是因為我們在預付卡和其他替代支付方式方面取得了真正的成功成本更低。這就是一個。

The second one, of course, is the investment in the developer community. And in a sense, we have been leaning more heavily into that. We think that the returns are now -- we're seeing those returns in more content, better content, which has historically been a part of the flywheel that's driven Roblox for years. And in a way, the savings in margin that we've seen in COGS has more or less moved into over the last few years into the investment in the community, which we think is great. those are variable costs. On the fixed cost side, it's been infrastructure and people, as you rightly point out.

第二個當然是對開發者社區的投資。從某種意義上說，我們一直更傾向於這一點。我們認為現在的回報是——我們看到這些回報更多、更好的內容，這在歷史上一直是驅動 Roblox 多年的飛輪的一部分。在某種程度上，我們在 COGS 中看到的利潤節省在過去幾年中或多或少地轉移到了社區投資中，我們認為這很棒。這些是可變成本。正如您正確指出的那樣，在固定成本方面，它是基礎設施和人員。

We made a lot of investment in human capital over the last few years. This year, we're slowing down the rate of hiring, but we are still hiring quite a few people. We're making a huge investment in great engineers, we still need them. We still have ambitions that are large and a lot of work to get done. So we're going to continue to make that investment, but we are slowing that down just slightly over the last couple of years. And some of that is also digestion and bring in a more senior team to help manage and onboard and grow the engineering teams, which is great.

過去幾年，我們在人力資本方面進行了大量投資。今年，我們放慢了招聘速度，但我們仍在招聘不少人。我們正在對優秀的工程師進行大量投資，我們仍然需要他們。我們仍然有遠大的抱負，還有很多工作要完成。所以我們將繼續進行這項投資，但在過去幾年中我們正在略微放慢投資速度。其中一些也在消化並引入更高級的團隊來幫助管理、入職和發展工程團隊，這很棒。

As it relates to infrastructure investments and trust and safety, those are high priorities. They really tend to be driven by the growth in our user base. So the users have an amazing experience. But we do -- over a long period of time, we expect that is going to be a high -- an area of high operating leverage. I'm not prepared to talk about the growth rate of expenses. I'll have to go back and take a look at Q4 and reference exactly what you're talking about.

由於它涉及基礎設施投資以及信任和安全，因此這些都是高度優先事項。他們確實傾向於受到我們用戶群增長的推動。所以用戶有一個驚人的體驗。但我們確實 - 在很長一段時間內，我們預計這將是一個高 - 高運營槓桿的領域。我不准備談論費用的增長率。我將不得不回去看看第四季度，並準確參考你在說什麼。

But I would expect to see us to continue to invest because we think the investments are high ROI. But to the extent we are driving healthy growth in the top line, we have operating leverage, which is what you saw in the fourth quarter. So normally, just in terms of trends -- I know this question will come out, fixed costs tend to continue to grow throughout the year as we hire and invest in infrastructure, again, albeit at a slower rate possibly this year. But overall, as the top line keeps growing, we think that's the right way to show operating leverage because we do believe the investments we're making are very high ROI.

但我希望看到我們繼續投資，因為我們認為投資的投資回報率很高。但就我們推動收入健康增長的程度而言，我們有經營槓桿，這就是你在第四季度看到的。因此，通常情況下，就趨勢而言——我知道這個問題會出現，隨著我們僱用和投資基礎設施，固定成本將在全年繼續增長，儘管今年的速度可能會放緩。但總的來說，隨著收入的不斷增長，我們認為這是顯示運營槓桿的正確方式，因為我們確實相信我們正在進行的投資具有非常高的投資回報率。

Your next question is from the line of Mario Lu with Barclays.

你的下一個問題來自 Mario Lu with Barclays。

The first one is on the January trends for bookings 3-point acceleration ex FX. So I was just curious in terms of how to parse that out. You guys also mentioned the Lunar New Year coming in January this year. Is that typically an uplift to bookings or a drag? So any color in terms of what that trend looked like before Lunar New Year would be helpful?

第一個是 1 月份預訂趨勢 3 點加速 ex FX。所以我只是好奇如何解析它。你們也提到了今年一月份的農曆新年。這通常是對預訂的提升還是拖累？那麼，農曆新年前趨勢的任何顏色都會有所幫助嗎？

Well, December bookings is probably a good guide before the Lunar New Year because it was before Lunar New Year and the growth rate was pretty high. So that's probably a good way to look at it. What was -- and so what was the other question about?

好吧，12 月的預訂可能是農曆新年前的一個很好的指南，因為那是在農曆新年前，而且增長率相當高。所以這可能是一個很好的看待它的方式。什麼是——那麼另一個問題是關於什麼的？

Yes, so January -- yes, January accelerated a little bit over December because the business is accelerating. There's more content. There's better content. We're seeing growth. It really is basic stuff. We're seeing growth around the world, as Dave talked about, specifically incredibly strong growth in strategic regions.

是的，所以 1 月——是的，1 月比 12 月加速了一點，因為業務正在加速。還有更多內容。有更好的內容。我們看到了增長。這真的是基本的東西。正如戴夫所說，我們在世界各地都看到了增長，特別是在戰略地區的增長令人難以置信。

So I think Western Europe and East Asia, we talked about that area being a secular tailwind to the company, I think, in the last earnings call, and that continues to be the case. As an example, just in the month of January, within the strategic region alone, bookings grew by about 37%.

所以我認為西歐和東亞，我認為，在上次財報電話會議上，我們談到該地區是公司的長期順風，而且情況仍然如此。例如，僅在 1 月份，僅在戰略區域內，預訂量就增長了約 37%。

So -- and that's now becoming a pretty big part of the bookings. Opportunistic regions, Latin America, Southeast Asia, et cetera, grew at 23% in January. So again, huge part of the world, lots of population and also healthy growth. The other thing that's continued to allow us to drive bookings growth overall is the fact that in our core markets, U.S., Canada, U.K., Scandinavia, ANZ, those are the parts of the world where we had highest rates of penetration, biggest businesses going into COVID. Obviously, they popped up very high during COVID because we were so well established there. But we are now through that and now growing above the peaks that we had in terms of the user base in COVID.

所以 - 現在這已成為預訂的很大一部分。拉丁美洲、東南亞等機會主義地區 1 月份增長了 23%。同樣，世界上很大一部分人口眾多，而且增長也很健康。另一件繼續推動我們整體預訂量增長的事情是，在我們的核心市場，美國、加拿大、英國、斯堪的納維亞半島、澳新銀行，這些是我們滲透率最高的地區，最大的企業正在進入新冠肺炎。顯然，它們在 COVID 期間出現得非常高，因為我們在那裡建立得非常好。但我們現在已經度過了難關，現在已經超過了 COVID 用戶群的峰值。

And in particular, our younger users continue to grow even though that's the most highly penetrated part of the market. But really, it's those aged up users that Dave referenced, 13 to 16, in particular, 17 to 24-year-olds. And now we're seeing really interesting growth and substantial scale in the 25 and over user base. So really, it's strength around the world and strength in all age demos, but in particular aged up.

特別是，我們的年輕用戶繼續增長，儘管這是市場滲透率最高的部分。但實際上，戴夫提到的是那些年齡較大的用戶，13 到 16 歲，特別是 17 到 24 歲。現在我們在 25 歲及以上的用戶群中看到了非常有趣的增長和可觀的規模。所以真的，它是世界各地的力量和所有年齡段演示的力量，尤其是老年人。

Helpful. And then just one on the EBITDA margins. It was 20% in the fourth quarter, any update to your prior commentary that EBITDA margin should be below 10% in 2023, especially with the strong bookings growth in December and January? Or should we expect any upside to bookings kind of reinvested back into the business?

有幫助。然後只有一個關於 EBITDA 利潤率。第四季度為 20%，您之前關於 2023 年 EBITDA 利潤率應低於 10% 的評論是否有任何更新，尤其是在 12 月和 1 月的預訂量強勁增長的情況下？或者我們是否應該期待將預訂重新投資回業務的任何好處？

I think what we hope everyone takes out of the fourth quarter is that over the course of the year, we were really, really thoughtful about what we invested in. We believe that we had a business that had a very, very long way to go. We took a really long-term perspective. We believe that hiring great people was the right thing to do. We believe that investing in the infrastructure was the right thing to do.

我認為我們希望每個人從第四季度中得到的是，在這一年中，我們真的非常認真地考慮了我們的投資。我們相信我們的業務還有很長的路要走.我們採取了非常長遠的觀點。我們相信僱用優秀人才是正確的做法。我們認為投資基礎設施是正確的做法。

And that the best way to show operating leverage was to grow the top line. And so we were -- I know the concept of efficiency is being talked about a lot, which is obviously very, very important. And you can get there in a couple of different ways. You can get there through cutting costs, you get there through growth in the top line, you can get there by doing both. We chose very strategically last year to invest in the belief that the top line would grow, and we would see that kind of leverage. So my only update to what I said last year is that we are thoughtfully investing this year.

顯示運營槓桿的最佳方式是增加收入。所以我們 - 我知道效率的概念被談論了很多，這顯然非常非常重要。你可以通過幾種不同的方式到達那裡。你可以通過削減成本來實現，你可以通過增加收入來實現，你可以通過兩者來實現。去年我們非常有策略地選擇投資於收入會增長的信念，我們會看到這種槓桿作用。因此，我對去年所說的唯一更新是，我們今年進行了深思熟慮的投資。

We were fortunate to bring in a lot of very talented engineers over the last couple of years and talented employees in general. We can slow that growth this year a little bit, but we're still out investing. And our investments in infrastructure are supporting an ever-growing user base. And those users are converting at very high rates into payers, they're doing what they've always done, which is as they stay on the platform, they find great content, they make friends, they find a community, they end up being very valuable. And then -- and Dave has a follow-on.

我們很幸運在過去幾年中引進了許多非常有才華的工程師和一般有才華的員工。今年我們可以稍微放慢這種增長，但我們仍然沒有投資。我們對基礎設施的投資正在支持不斷增長的用戶群。這些用戶正在以非常高的速度轉化為付費者，他們正在做他們一直在做的事情，那就是當他們留在平台上時，他們會發現很棒的內容，他們結交朋友，他們找到一個社區，他們最終成為非常有價值。然後 - 戴夫有後續行動。

Reiterating on what Mike is saying, there is enormous long-term headroom in our business. We're focused on getting to 1 billion DAUs on the platform. The largest segments in our business are 17 and up and those are growing at enormous rates. And we really are focused on the appropriate balance of growth, innovation and efficiency. Our infra is amazingly efficient.

重申邁克所說的話，我們的業務有巨大的長期發展空間。我們專注於在平台上獲得 10 億個 DAU。我們業務中最大的細分市場是 17 歲及以上，而且這些細分市場正在以驚人的速度增長。我們真正關注的是增長、創新和效率之間的適當平衡。我們的基礎設施非常高效。

We've built our own cloud, which continues long term to bear efficiency benefits. And we have a fair amount of control on our headcount, velocity and growth. And simultaneously, we're trying to move as much money as we can to the developer base. So we're taking a very balanced approach here to the velocity of innovation as well as our efficiency.

我們已經構建了自己的雲，它會長期保持效率優勢。我們對我們的員工人數、速度和增長有相當大的控制權。同時，我們正在努力將盡可能多的資金轉移到開發者群體中。因此，我們在這裡對創新速度和效率採取了一種非常平衡的方法。

Your next question is from Bernie McTernan with Needham & Company.

您的下一個問題來自 Needham & Company 的 Bernie McTernan。

Just wanted your view on Western Europe and APAC. Just any additional color you can provide in terms of why the acceleration is happening right now from either engagement perspective or content perspective or anything else that's driving this?

只想了解您對西歐和亞太地區的看法。你可以提供任何額外的顏色來說明為什麼現在從參與的角度或內容的角度或任何其他推動這種情況的加速發生？

Some of the countries in APAC and Western Europe are not as mature as the U.S. as far as our user growth. But I would highlight the U.S., which has been traditionally where we got our start, continues to show amazing growth and continues to show growth in the 9 through 12 segment, which is really where we've got our start. So there's underlying growth that is worldwide as we focus on frequency and as we focus on engagement, we focus on the quality of our product, even for our core market.

就我們的用戶增長而言，亞太地區和西歐的一些國家不如美國成熟。但我要強調的是，傳統上一直是我們起步的美國繼續顯示出驚人的增長，並繼續顯示 9 至 12 歲細分市場的增長，這確實是我們的起步地。因此，隨著我們關注頻率和參與度，我們關注產品質量，即使是我們的核心市場，也會出現全球範圍內的潛在增長。

But on top of that, Germany, France, less mature than the U.S. continuing to grow in January. In Germany and in France, we saw DAU and hourly growth both north of 20%, so there's lot of room there. And we ultimately, once again, as part of our vision of innovating the way people come together, we are ultimately trying to get every country in the world to the same level of engagement as the U.S. And so some of those countries are just earlier on the growth curve.

但除此之外，不如美國成熟的德國、法國在 1 月份繼續增長。在德國和法國，我們看到 DAU 和每小時的增長率都超過 20%，所以那裡有很大的空間。我們最終，再一次，作為我們創新人們聚集方式的願景的一部分，我們最終試圖讓世界上每個國家都達到與美國相同的參與水平，所以其中一些國家更早增長曲線。

Yes. And Bernie, just as you're doing the math, maybe 2 thoughts. One is, I think David talked -- language is getting better and better everywhere around the world. So where there is translation, I think that certainly is helpful. But the other thing is because as Dave mentioned, in the U.S., we started off with a younger age demographic. Through that, age demographic became very, very popular there and then the older age demos started to come on board.

是的。伯尼，就像你在做數學一樣，也許有 2 個想法。一是，我認為 David 說過——語言在世界各地都變得越來越好。所以如果有翻譯，我認為那肯定是有幫助的。但另一件事是因為正如 Dave 提到的，在美國，我們從年輕的人群開始。通過這種方式，年齡人口統計在那裡變得非常非常受歡迎，然後老年演示開始出現。

In some of the other markets in Europe and Asia, it took a while for Roblox to sort of get there. And when it did, it was almost like we had much more content to all of the ages came on the platform almost more so at the same time. And so we get growth from U13 and over 13 almost at the same time in places like Western Europe and East Asia. And I think that has -- that affects the math as we see the platform really gaining traction because it's doing so across all ages in those markets at the same time.

在歐洲和亞洲的其他一些市場，Roblox 花了一段時間才到達那裡。當它發生時，幾乎就像我們在平台上同時為所有年齡段的人提供了更多內容一樣。因此，在西歐和東亞等地，我們幾乎同時獲得了 13 歲以下和 13 歲以上人群的增長。我認為這影響了數學，因為我們看到該平台真正獲得了吸引力，因為它同時在這些市場的所有年齡段都這樣做了。

One final riff on what Mike said and also riff on AI. One other thing behind the scenes is we continue to improve on our own natural language translation facility, which is getting better and better. The higher the quality of that system, the hire is our experienced quality around the world because our developers traditionally develop in one language and we auto-translate into many, many languages for them.

對 Mike 所說的內容進行最後一次復述，同時對 AI 進行複述。幕後的另一件事是我們繼續改進我們自己的自然語言翻譯設施，它變得越來越好。該系統的質量越高，聘用的人才就是我們在世界各地經驗豐富的質量，因為我們的開發人員傳統上使用一種語言進行開發，而我們會自動為他們翻譯成多種語言。

An example would be Japan, which we believe we started to hit the level of product quality, both on our app as well as the experiences to drive viral growth there. And in January in Japan, our hours and our DAUs were growing at over 100% year-on-year. So there's a little bit of a leverage as we improve the quality of our translation technology.

日本就是一個例子，我們相信我們開始在我們的應用程序以及推動在那裡推動病毒式增長的體驗上達到產品質量水平。 1 月份在日本，我們的工作時間和 DAU 同比增長超過 100%。因此，當我們提高翻譯技術的質量時，會有一點影響力。

And we do see signs of different kinds of content being popular in different parts of the world, and that obviously speaks to massive developer community. And when you have that -- again, that flywheel of content and users, it's very powerful. So what we see being very popular in Japan is slightly different than what we see in other parts of the world, slightly different than Europe, slightly different than the U.S.

我們確實看到了不同類型的內容在世界不同地區流行的跡象，這顯然說明了龐大的開發者社區。當你擁有它時——再一次，內容和用戶的飛輪，它非常強大。所以我們在日本看到的非常受歡迎的東西與我們在世界其他地方看到的略有不同，與歐洲略有不同，與美國略有不同。

There's generally a certain measurement of local affinity. And so the more we lean into the community, which we certainly did again last year, significant investments in our creator community, the more content that's appealing to more people around the world, and I think we're just continuing to see that leverage.

通常對本地親和力有一定的衡量標準。因此，我們越深入社區，我們去年確實再次這樣做了，對我們的創作者社區進行了大量投資，吸引世界各地更多人的內容就越多，我認為我們只是繼續看到這種影響力。

That's great to hear. And just as a follow-up to one of the previous questions on fixed costs. If we look at R&D and trust and safety, is there just a rough breakdown or rule of thumb we can think about for how those buckets are people versus infrastructure?

聽到這個消息我很高興。就像之前關於固定成本的問題之一的後續行動一樣。如果我們看一下研發、信任和安全，是否有一個粗略的細分或經驗法則，我們可以考慮這些桶是如何區分人與基礎設施的？

I can go very high level on that. Trust and safety, we believe which is our top priority over time, has a lot of headroom around automation. And our view as we add more ML and more automation to our trust and safety systems, we're optimistic this is going to scale well below a linear type rate. Whereas with R&D, we have a fair amount of more control on the more engineers we hire, the faster we can develop product and so tend we tend to balance that independently. But look for trust and safety to scale below linear as we grow.

我可以在這方面達到很高的水平。我們相信隨著時間的推移，信任和安全是我們的首要任務，在自動化方面有很大的空間。我們的觀點是，隨著我們為信任和安全系統添加更多 ML 和更多自動化，我們樂觀地認為這將擴展到遠低於線性類型的速率。而在研發方面，我們對僱用的工程師越多，我們的控制權就越大，我們開發產品的速度就越快，因此我們傾向於獨立平衡。但是隨著我們的成長，尋找信任和安全以低於線性。

And Bernie, we can spend some time on the models, but let me make a comment. I hope it's helpful and let's see if I can get towards your question. On trust and safety, most of the cost today is headcount-related. I think over time, it won't all be headcount-related, but that is more of a fixed cost in the short run number where you get leverage over time. Infra is about running data centers and the cost of the data center. So think of those as more like fixed cost investments where they get absorbed over time as the user base grows. And as the user base monetizes, you'll see absorption of that and then leverage on the model. So the infra is almost all the cost of the data center is very few people cost, and trust and safety is the opposite.

伯尼，我們可以花一些時間在模型上，但讓我發表評論。我希望這對您有所幫助，讓我們看看我是否可以解決您的問題。在信任和安全方面，如今的大部分成本都與員工人數有關。我認為隨著時間的推移，它不會全部與員工人數相關，但這更多是短期內的固定成本，隨著時間的推移，你會獲得槓桿作用。 Infra 是關於運行數據中心和數據中心的成本。因此，將這些視為更像是固定成本投資，隨著用戶群的增長，它們會隨著時間的推移而被吸收。隨著用戶群的貨幣化，你會看到它的吸收，然後利用這個模型。所以infra幾乎是數據中心的全部成本是極少數人的成本，而信任和安全是相反的。

Your next question is from the line of Brandon Ross with LightShed Partners.

您的下一個問題來自 LightShed Partners 的 Brandon Ross。

Kind of sticking on the cost theme here. I think in response to David's earlier question and a few times throughout the call, you talked about reinvestment in the community. And you paid developers more than ever in Q4. But if I look at it on a percentage of bookings basis, DevEx came down to, I think, 20%, the lowest it's been in 5 quarters.

有點堅持這裡的成本主題。我想在回答 David 之前的問題時以及在整個電話會議中幾次，你談到了對社區的再投資。您在第四季度向開發人員支付的費用比以往任何時候都多。但如果我按預訂百分比來看，我認為 DevEx 下降到 20%，這是 5 個季度以來的最低水平。

I was wondering if you could -- that doesn't feel like an area that would benefit from leverage. So just wondering what your thoughts are on the trajectory of how you're paying the debt community on a percent of bookings basis and what you see going forward as we kind of clean up our models?

我想知道你是否可以——感覺這不像是一個可以從槓桿中受益的領域。所以只是想知道您對如何根據預訂百分比支付債務社區的軌蹟有何看法，以及您在我們清理模型時看到了什麼？

Yes, Brandon, so it's not intended to go down as a percentage of bookings. Bookings grew very quickly in the fourth quarter. So we had a little bit of, again, absorption, if you will, of the cost. And so -- but generally, if you look at that over the last 3 or 4 years, you're going to see a shift of a few hundred basis points.

是的，布蘭登，所以它不打算降低預訂的百分比。第四季度的預訂量增長非常快。因此，如果您願意的話，我們再次吸收了一些成本。所以——但一般來說，如果你看看過去 3 或 4 年的情況，你會看到幾百個基點的變化。

So December was -- Q4 in general was a little bit unusual because of the spike in the growth rate of bookings. Our intention is to continue to move more of the economics towards the debt community. Our intention is to continue to find innovative and cool ways for the devs to monetize on the platform through various sources of bookings and monetization.

所以 12 月是——由於預訂增長率的飆升，第四季度總體上有點不尋常。我們的意圖是繼續將更多的經濟學轉向債務社區。我們的目的是繼續為開發者尋找創新和酷的方式，通過各種預訂和貨幣化來源在平台上貨幣化。

And yes, normally, I would expect that, that's one number that I can tell you will go up as a percentage of bookings this quarter and throughout the course of the year. So I'll go back up to where we have been, which is like that 22%, 23% range, and we'll still try to push through higher numbers. So what you're seeing in Q4 was unintended leverage because of the top line. Does that make sense?

是的，通常情況下，我預計，我可以告訴你，這個數字在本季度和全年的預訂量中所佔的百分比會上升。所以我會回到我們曾經去過的地方，比如 22%、23% 的範圍，我們仍然會努力爭取更高的數字。所以你在第四季度看到的是由於頂線而產生的意外槓桿。那有意義嗎？

Yes. Essentially, it's timing. It's like you're timing...

是的。本質上，這是時機。就好像你在計時...

It's timing. That's right. That's a good way to put it.

這是時機。這是正確的。這是一個很好的表達方式。

Just to make it simple...

只是為了讓它簡單...

In the month of December, that number -- the amount of capital at the debt community was an all-time high. And obviously, it's a seasonal number because it's -- because we obviously have high bookings and it's largely variable. But we noticed, as we did the math that if you run rate at December, you -- we can see a time in the near future where the market availability for debt is $1 billion plus, which is really exciting for us.

在 12 月份，這個數字——債務界的資本量創歷史新高。顯然，這是一個季節性數字，因為它 - 因為我們顯然有很高的預訂量並且它在很大程度上是可變的。但我們注意到，當我們進行數學計算時，如果你在 12 月運行利率，你 - 我們可以看到在不久的將來，市場上可用於債務的時間超過 10 億美元，這對我們來說真的很令人興奮。

Great. And then I wanted to dig in a little bit on brands and advertising because that was a highlight at RDC and your Investor Day. So couple of questions there. How have the ad test gone that you've been executing on? And do you expect advertising to be any kind of real contributor this year or next?

偉大的。然後我想深入了解一下品牌和廣告，因為這是 RDC 和投資者日的亮點。所以有幾個問題。您一直在執行的廣告測試進行得如何？你預計今年或明年廣告會成為真正的貢獻者嗎？

And you mentioned brand experience, the likes of Elton John, which actually caught my attention because the fan base for Elton is obviously much older than probably your typical user. And so have those been successful from an engagement perspective? And how -- to what extent are experiences like that driving this age up that we're really seeing from you guys?

你提到了品牌體驗，比如 Elton John，這實際上引起了我的注意，因為 Elton 的粉絲群顯然比你的典型用戶年長得多。那麼從參與的角度來看，這些成功了嗎？我們真正從你們那裡看到的那種推動這個時代進步的經歷在多大程度上是如何的？

Yes, they are a part of it and for performers like Elton John, we see millions and millions of people visiting their experience. But that's just a part of it. There's continuously more and more high-quality content that is a daily, weekly, monthly place where our older players come to visit as well. We are in the very early innings of advertising right now.

是的，他們是其中的一部分，對於像埃爾頓約翰這樣的表演者，我們看到數以百萬計的人參觀他們的體驗。但這只是其中的一部分。每天、每週、每月都會有越來越多的高質量內容，我們的老玩家也會來訪問。我們現在正處於廣告的早期階段。

We are -- we have our eyes right on the target of making this a self-service platform above and beyond the early experiences we're doing with brands. And we believe there's a huge market for on-platform advertising for brands who want to bring people to their experiences to engage.

我們 - 我們的目標是使這個自助服務平台超越我們與品牌所做的早期體驗。我們相信，對於那些希望讓人們參與到他們的體驗中的品牌來說，平台廣告有著巨大的市場。

We've been very, very conservative on the forecast this year as far as the contribution from advertising. But when we look at other platforms and whether it's print or online, web or video and we look at the level of engagement on those platforms relative to on Roblox, obviously, the opportunity is really, really large. So you will see us this year rolling out more and more self-serve capabilities for advertising but we're being very conservative on the contribution.

就廣告的貢獻而言，我們對今年的預測非常非常保守。但是當我們看看其他平台，無論是印刷還是在線、網絡還是視頻，我們看看這些平台相對於 Roblox 的參與度，顯然，機會真的非常大。所以你會看到我們今年推出越來越多的廣告自助服務功能，但我們對貢獻非常保守。

And Brandon, we're going to move on, just because we only have time for one more question, but we can catch up with you after. We have time for one more.

布蘭登，我們要繼續，只是因為我們只有時間再問一個問題，但我們可以在之後趕上你。我們有時間再來一次。

Your final question comes from the line of Clark Lammin with BTIG.

你的最後一個問題來自 BTIG 的 Clark Lammin。

Two quick ones, I guess, from me. Dave, I guess, just to clarify, was there any contribution from advertising or a meaningful one in the first quarter -- or in January, I guess, I should say? And could you comment maybe a little bit more on sort of what's working or not working? You talked about the ad units, sort of teleportation and then also more static units last quarter. Anything, I guess, that you would call out in terms of advertiser or deliver response so far?

兩個快速的，我想，來自我。戴夫，我想，只是為了澄清一下，第一季度是否有任何來自廣告的貢獻或有意義的貢獻——或者我想，我應該說在一月份？您能否就哪些有效或無效發表更多評論？你談到了廣告單元，一種傳送，然後是上個季度更多的靜態單元。我想，到目前為止，您會就廣告商或提供回應提出任何要求嗎？

And then, Mike, if there's time, could you remind us, I guess, given some of the lumpiness with sort of COVID and comps over the last year or 2, what sort of seasonal patterns maybe we should expect for either the duration of metrics reports over the next sort of quarter or 2?

然後，邁克，如果有時間，你能提醒我們嗎，我想，考慮到過去一年或兩年 COVID 和 comps 的一些不穩定因素，我們應該期望指標的持續時間有什麼樣的季節性模式下一季度或第二季度的報告？

Yes. We are working with a select number of brands as part of our early experiments with advertising. I think any contribution that essentially shouldn't be considered right now. We've got our eye on the prize of self-serve this year, at which point you'll start to see the contribution.

是的。作為我們早期廣告實驗的一部分，我們正在與一些選定的品牌合作。我認為現在基本上不應該考慮的任何貢獻。今年我們著眼於自助服務獎，屆時您將開始看到貢獻。

Yes. So Clark, on comps. We're largely, I think, through COVID comparison, which is nice to say. This time last year, we were basically coming out of Omicron. And so we don't really -- other than in emerging markets, we don't see too much of COVID variability in our numbers. And I think getting through that in December and January has been helpful and has cleaned up the analysis for people.

是的。所以克拉克，在比賽中。我認為，我們主要是通過 COVID 比較，這很好說。去年這個時候，我們基本上是從 Omicron 出來的。所以我們並沒有真正——除了在新興市場，我們沒有看到我們的數字有太多的 COVID 變異性。我認為在 12 月和 1 月完成這些工作很有幫助，並為人們清理了分析。

So I think going forward, I'm optimistic that we're more or less through that. I would -- it seems to me that December and January performance would indicate that we're done with that. So anyway, so I assume for the rest of the quarter, we'll feel the same way. We shouldn't see anything around COVID meaningfully affecting the numbers. Again, some of the emerging markets are a little bit behind where we are in the U.S. and Europe. But we don't really see that. We look through our trend data, we don't see big swings related to COVID anymore.

所以我認為展望未來，我對我們或多或少地度過難關感到樂觀。我會——在我看來，12 月和 1 月的表現表明我們已經完成了。所以無論如何，我假設在本季度的剩餘時間裡，我們會有同樣的感覺。我們不應該看到圍繞 COVID 的任何事情對數字產生有意義的影響。同樣，一些新興市場有點落後於美國和歐洲。但我們並沒有真正看到這一點。我們查看我們的趨勢數據，我們不再看到與 COVID 相關的大幅波動。

Yes. And keep an eye on our year-on-year numbers, which, in effect, neutralize seasonality. Q4 always tends to be bigger around the holidays. But keeping on our year-on-year numbers which kind of take care of that. Yes, I think we're going to wrap up here. Once again, I just want to thank our investors of the Roblox community, I appreciate you being on the call with us.

是的。並密切關注我們的同比數據，這實際上抵消了季節性因素。第 4 季度在假期前後往往會更大。但是保持我們的同比數據可以解決這個問題。是的，我想我們要到此結束了。再次，我只想感謝 Roblox 社區的投資者，感謝您與我們通電話。

Thank you for joining us today. And Brent, thank you for being a great operator, and that's a wrap for us.

感謝您今天加入我們。布倫特，感謝您成為一名出色的運營商，這對我們來說是一個總結。

Thank you, everyone.

謝謝大家。

Thank you, and that does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

謝謝，今天的電話會議到此結束。感謝您的參與。您現在可以斷開連接。