iQIYI, Inc.
Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 22 Nov 2022

[Operator:]

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the iQIYI Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Chang Yu, Director of the company. Please go ahead.

[Chang Yu:]

Thank you, operator. Hello everyone and thank you for joining iQIYI's Third Quarter 2022 earnings conference call. The Company's results were released today and are available on the Company's Investor Relations website at ir.iqiyi.com. For the call today, our CEO Mr. Yu Gong will give a brief overview of the Company's business operations and highlights, followed by our CFO, Mr. Jun Wang, who will go through the financials. After the prepared remarks, the senior management team will join Mr. Gong and Jun in the Q&A session. Before we proceed, please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements, made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those outlined in our public filings with the SEC. iQIYI does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required under applicable law. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mr. Gong. Please go ahead.

[Yu Gong:]

Hello, everyone. I'm very pleased to take this opportunity to report on our progress in the third quarter and share our views on the business. Through efforts in the first 3 quarters this year, iQIYI has completed an iconic turnaround, with business performance far exceeding the targets we set at the beginning of this year. There are 2 parts to this iconic turnaround

[Jun Wang:]

Thanks, Mr. Gong, and hello, everyone. In Q3, we booked RMB 7.5 billion in total revenues, up 12% sequentially. Our non-GAAP operating profit reached RMB 524 million, increased 53% sequentially. Meanwhile, we have been generating positive operating cash flow for 2 consecutive quarters, and recorded nearly 200 million operating cash flow in the third quarter. These encouraging results demonstrated the resilience of our business under extremely challenging macro environment and the pandemic resurgence. Within the revenue lines, we recorded membership services revenue of RMB 4.2 billion. As Mr. Gong mentioned in his opening remarks, the performance of our membership business was back-loaded and the current Q3 result is not a full reflection of the strong momentum we observed. During the quarter, the number of subscribing members grew from 95.6 million as of June 30, 2022 to 106.2 million as of September 30, 2022, representing a net addition of over 10 million during the quarter. Now move on to the cost and expenses. The third quarter cost of revenues was RMB 5.7 billion, representing a cost saving of RMB 1.3 billion compared with the same period last year, or down 19% annually. Content cost, a significant component of cost of revenues, decreased 18% annually, and up 12% sequentially. The sequential increase is the result of operational initiatives under our calm growth strategy. We launched more hits during the quarter, bringing more subscribers, and generating more profits, which forms a virtuous cycle. Our gross profit margin, which is a direct metric to reflect the ROI of our content business, consistently expanded in the past 4 quarters and reached historical high of 24% in Q3, compared with 7% in the same period last year. Meanwhile, with the continuous optimization of our business operations, our total operating expenses decreased by 470 million year over year. The expanded gross margin and disciplined operating expenses combined contributed to our non-GAAP profit expansion. For Q3, non-GAAP operating profit was RMB 524 million, compared with the non-GAAP operating loss of RMB 1.1 billion for the same period last year, and it's up 53% quarter-over-quarter. At the end of the third quarter, the company had cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments of RMB 5.0 billion, compared with RMB 4.9 billion in the previous quarter. Our operating cash inflow reached a 196 million during the quarter. Going forward, we will continue to execute the Calm Growth strategy and our commitment to achieve healthy business growth remains unchanged. We are confident in our ability to generate value for our stakeholders in the long run. For detailed financial data, please refer to our press release on our IR website. Now, I will now open the floor for Q&A

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions]. And the first question will come from Thomas Chong of Jefferies.

[Thomas Chong:]

My question is about the membership business. Can management talks about the Q3 overall membership business performance as well as the growth driver. Is it coming more from the number of subs or from the ARM side and also what are the key drivers going forward?

[Yu Gong:]

The slight decline in membership revenue was due to 3 factors mainly. First, the temporary decline in consumer sentiment in May, June and July due to the pandemic resurgence in the first half of the year. Second, the delay of certain key dramas during June and July. And third, the significant reduction of marketing spending as part of our business stress test. And starting from the second half of August, we successfully reversed the trend with a series of premium content releases, including Love Between Fairy and Devil, Chasing the Undercurrent and Thousand Years For You. And also, the reasonable increase in marketing spending and recovery in consumer sentiment also contributed positively to strong and continuous growth in subscriber numbers. As such, our membership services revenue grew from a relatively lower base of the sub number in July. The strong subscriber number growth started to pick up in August. As a result, the performance of our membership business was back loaded and the current Q3 result is not a full reflection of the strong momentum we observed. In Q3, there are 2 months left for the summer vacation. And among our user base, there are a large number of students in this group so that they are the potential users for us. So therefore, we offered promotional discounts during the summer season to encourage more users to expand our services at a relatively lower price point. That's why it caused some of the fluctuations during the third quarter. And for our entire membership business going forward, our main goal is to grow the membership services revenue while achieving healthy performance on the subscriber numbers and ARM. And in terms of growing the sub numbers in the future, it comes from 2 aspects. One is the continuous investment in content, namely especially for the head of premium content. And also the second point is continued investment in marketing spending. For the ARM growth, it comes from 2 reasons. One is the lowering of the discount in the past years and also that increase in the listing price of our member business. Thank you.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Alicia Yap of Citigroup.

[Alicia Yap:]

Congrats on the strong results. My question is related to the video content. So IT has successfully released the numbers of heat drama this quarter this year that received very good feedback. So can management share with us how will IT ensure in the future that you will also have a very high hit ratio for your drama?

[Yu Gong:]

This question is content related. So I will invite our Chief Content Officer, Wang Xiaohui, to answer this question.

[Wang Xiaohui:]

We launched the ITE popularity index back in 2018. And since then, only 6 titles received a score above 10,000, 4 were released this year and 2 in Q3. And this perfectly demonstrates that there are a long-term commitment to original content. The original content has become one of the main contributors to our blockbuster content. The success was mainly contributed from 3 factors. First was mainly attributable to the powerful production team that we have built through our in-house studios, which contains highly experienced professionals with various creative styles. We also have very sophisticated supporting teams across different functions to support these studios through the entire process, which runs through processes from creative ideas development, content production, broadcasting and marketing. At the script level, we rely on the professional teams and get them relative flexibility in screening the creative ideas, emphasize on polishing scripts, which build a solid foundation for the content creation process. At the production level, once we have the solid content creation foundation in place, we will follow by rigorous process before projects entering into the billing process. In addition, we will collaborate with highly professional, creative and reliable partners in the production process, select the most suitable actors based on our comprehensive forecasting mechanism. All of the above will safeguard the continuous creativeness and the high quality of our original production. The second factor was contributed by we have established a mature and highly efficient mechanism running through the entire process from developing an idea into original drama series to broadcasting and marketing it. This mechanism enables highly efficient decision-making, strict quality controls and optimal content scheduling based on user preferences. And going forward, we will continue to seek an effective balance between embracing the diversity of content creativeness and efficiency in the production process. The third effect is that our intelligence reduction system is getting more sophisticated, which also helps in terms of increasing the possibilities of creating blockbuster content and improving efficiency.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Lei Zhang of Bank of America Securities.

[Lei Zhang:]

My question is mainly regarding cash flow. I noted that we have a meaningful improvement in free cash flow and operating cash flow with a positive free cash flow this quarter. So can you give us more color on the driver behind it and how should we look at the trend going forward?

[Yu Gong:]

So I think that to answer the second part of the question first, yes, we are very confident that this trend could continue in the future. And behind that, we do see if we can review the entire process of the turnaround, we will say that the starting point of the turnaround is a very disciplined expense management. It's a very ROI-focused talent strategy, and we have continued to do that throughout the 3 quarters. But on top of that, in the third quarter, we do see some new catalysts coming in and these UCAs including a virtuous cycle, which starts with our investment in the content. Then our investment content generate more hits, more hit titles and give users more value proposition, which in turn attracted more members than creating possibility for generating derivative revenues. Then on top of that we will cover into the profit then in turn, bring us more free cash flow. And we will certainly continue to do that, and we do believe this success is reputable, which support the trend -- which supports the positive free cash flow trend. So that's point number one. So on top of that, we also like to comment that because we have been very much focused on original content, as you guys have been asking questions around that. Now original content means IP value and IP value can generate derivative revenues with higher margin and this is consistent with our experience and observation of the media conglomerates globally. So this if not -- this creates the whole new opportunities for the company in the future.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Daniel Chen of JPMorgan.

[Daniel Chen:]

Congratulations on the really solid result. My question is on the content regulation overall environment for the long-form video. Could management share some color on this?

[Yu Gong:]

About 2021, is last year in the 2021, there are different authorities that roll out different policies that kind of tightened the photograph regulatory environment for the online video space. But as we entered into 2022, until now the regulatory environment seems to be relatively stable, and we haven't seen major changes in such process. The main current focus for us is to increase quality and optimize content quantity which not only applies to us and our peers, and we are glad to see that coincidently also applies to the various government authorities and then they would roll out policies that's actually positive to such process. After the three quarters of time for ITE, we now figure out a perfect balance between the quantity that we show for content and also the amount of marketing spending into this market to promote our content. So going forward, based on the success of our past 3 quarters and under the comp growth strategy, we believe that we can have healthy and sustainable growth for our business going forward.

[Operator:]

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to management for closing remarks.

[Chang Yu:]

Thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. Please do not hesitate to contact the IR team for the management if you have further questions, and see you next time. Thank you. Bye, bye.

[Operator:]

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.