管理層發言
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Zhihu Inc. First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded and webcast. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, madam.
Thank you, Amber. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Zhihu's First Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. Joining me today on the call from the senior management team are Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Wang Han, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Zhang Rongle, our Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may be materially different from views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law.
Additionally, the discussion today will include both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. In addition a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our IR website at ir.zhihu.com. Today Victor Zhou, an AI agent, representing Mr. Zhou Yuan will deliver prepared remarks in English on his behalf. As Victor is still being refined, we appreciate your understanding. Victor please go ahead.
Thank you, Yolanda. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Zhihu's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I am Victor Zhou, and I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, our Founder, Chairman and CEO. The first quarter of 2026 marked a strong start to the year as we advanced our high-quality growth strategy. Our community ecosystem continued to thrive, fueled by a more dynamic user base, deeper social connections and stronger engagement. Average daily time spent per DAU reached nearly 42 minutes. Our content creators remain highly active and expanded across AI and other specialized domains, further strengthening our trusted expert network. This quarter, professional, authentic and in-depth content from real people continued to flourish across our community. Its influence extended beyond our platform and reinforced our unique competitive moat in the AI era.
We also accelerated the integration of AI capabilities across our platform and business operations, with social interactions significantly enhanced across multiple use cases. Building on this solid foundation, Zhihu has continued to gain momentum along its recovery trajectory. In the first quarter, our total revenues achieved positive sequential growth and the year-over-year decline narrowed substantially, reflecting our healthier business ecosystem and more efficient monetization. Our core businesses are showing encouraging signs of recovery, while our new initiatives continue to gain momentum and deliver steady growth. Specifically, marketing services saw a meaningful narrowing of the year-over-year decline, signaling near-term stabilization. Revenue from IP operations delivered robust growth. Capitalizing on our premium IP library, we have significantly elevated both the production capacity and the quality of our short drama and comic drama adaptations.
Multiple short dramas and comic dramas gained billions of views and consistently topped the popularity charts. This success serves as a strong validation of the commercial potential of our high-quality IPs. Our expert data solutions have started to gain traction among key clients with early-stage monetization opportunities gradually taking shape. Our vibrant community fosters genuine connections and deep user trust assets that are increasingly valuable in the age of AI. This has directly fueled continued growth in user engagement on our platform. In 1Q '26, average daily time spent per DAU reached approximately 42 minutes, increasing on both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis. The daily active user coverage of positive interactions also grew year-over-year. Underpinning this momentum, our content ecosystem is scaling at a healthy pace. As of the end of the first quarter, cumulative content volume reached 972 million entries and cumulative topics grew to 4.38 million, up 8.8% and 15.7%, respectively, from the same period last year.
High-quality content creation continued to gain momentum. This quarter, daily creation of high-quality content rose 18% year-over-year with professional AI-related content growing over 30% year-over-year. Against the backdrop of rapid AI evolution, Zhihu's professional ecosystem and a high-quality creator network continue to offer distinct differentiated value as a hub for frontline developers, researchers and tech professionals. Zhihu remains the premier platform where cutting-edge industry trends are first discussed, rigorously analyzed and professionally evaluated. In the first quarter, we saw heightened engagement from subject matter experts across top universities, leading Internet companies and AI labs. They actively participated in deep discussions on topics such as AI self-evolution, next-generation large model development, video generation, model iteration and open-source ecosystems.
From computer science scholars at institutions like Tsinghua University to R&D leaders at tech giants and leading AI start-ups like Alibaba, ByteDance and Moonshot AI, Kimi, a growing number of professionals are sharing their frontline insights, technical reproductions and in-depth analysis on Zhihu. A substantial cohort of core experts from top-tier labs has joined the platform and remains highly active. In addition, updates to mainstream AI products consistently spark systematic technical interpretations and professional evaluations within our community. Notably, this quarter saw substantial in-depth discussions surrounding DeepSeek's expert mode, Alibaba's new video model, Happy Horse and developments related to Google's Gemma 4. This high-quality content ecosystem, continuously enriched by frontline practitioners, not only enhances Zhihu's professional credibility but also further solidifies our core competitive moat in the AI era.
Professional creators are the core engine that powers the vitality, trustworthiness and uniqueness of our expert network. In the first quarter, the number of verified honored creators on Zhihu grew over 10% year-over-year, reflecting our continued commitment to amplifying their industry influence. Momentum in AI-related creator activity remains strong. We have aggregated over 19 million AI-focused creators who not only fill our community's high-quality content ecosystem, but also represent a robust pipeline of potential B2B service providers. We also saw a notable influx of top research teams, institutional executives and core developers in fields like commercial aerospace and frontier technology. Their active participation has further solidified Zhihu's standing as a hub for professional discourse on advanced tech. At the same time, in the film, entertainment and cultural verticals, we deepened our reach and engagement among upstream IP holders, co-production teams and dedicated enthusiasts.
In May, we hosted the 12th Zhihu Xinzhi Youth Conference (Xinzhi Qingnian Dahui) in Beijing. This year's event placed a strong focus on the value of human creativity in the AI era, exploring the irreplaceable works and core strength of authentic creators amid rapid technological advancements. Overall, sustained engagement of high-quality creators across diverse verticals not only strengthens our foundation of professional trustworthy content, but also enhances the strategic value of our content assets. This ecosystem directly accelerates our AI-driven commercialization and reinforces the unique competitive advantages of our trusted expert network. Alongside the deeper professional engagement, our ecosystem is also becoming increasingly social and interactive. In the first quarter, we optimized both the creation and consumption experiences for our short-form Ideas product. This initiative effectively lowered barriers to entry while significantly boosting community vitality.
Looking ahead, we will focus on deepening the synergies between Ideas and our community-based Circle product by implementing more refined operations and expanding distribution scenarios. We aim to drive further positive momentum in core user retention and total time spent. Ultimately, this will unlock and expand a wider range of native commercial monetization opportunities. We continue to integrate core AI capabilities across content creation, discovery, consumption and community interactions. Through our open platform, API Shuju Kaifang Pingtai, and offline events like the AI Hackathon, we empowered developers and creators to explore AI-native content and interaction formats, further extending the practical application of AI technologies across the Zhihu community. As we embrace AI as a tool for creative efficiency, we further refine our AI-generated content governance framework to rigorously filter out low-quality machine-generated spam.
Since the start of 2026, we have removed over 250,000 pieces of low-quality AI-generated content and have penalized more than 11,000 violating accounts. These efforts have meaningfully safeguarded Zhihu's authentic atmosphere and significantly enhanced the experience for our creators and users. Now turning to commercialization. In the first quarter, total revenues grew sequentially, and the year-over-year decline narrowed significantly, signaling a clear recovery underpinned by a healthier commercial ecosystem. Our monetization efficiency continues to improve with new growth momentum steadily materializing. Let's take a closer look at our performance by segment. First, paid content and IP operations. Starting from the first quarter of 2026, we combined IP-related revenue previously included in other revenues with our existing paid membership revenue into paid content and IP operations revenue.
This change more accurately reflects the commercialization potential of our Yanyan Story franchise. This quarter, revenue from paid content and IP operations reached RMB 402.3 million, increasing 15.8% sequentially, driven primarily by the rapid growth of our IP operations, which reflected strong momentum in unlocking the commercial value of our original content IP. Average monthly subscribing members reached 13.1 million, up 7.9% sequentially with structural optimization. This growth was primarily driven by seasonal content consumption during the Chinese New Year holiday and improved customer acquisition efficiency with Zhihu's premium short-form paid content continuing to play a key role in attracting and retaining users. We maintained disciplined high ROI standards by proactively optimizing inefficient acquisition channels to drive high-quality growth in our subscriber base. Meanwhile, synergies between our AI-powered comic dramas and paid membership businesses are gradually emerging by distributing Zhihu's high-quality IP and adapted content beyond our community.
We effectively attract new users to in-community consumption scenarios, creating a strong connection with membership benefits. This strategy expands the reach of our IP while driving conversion among potential members, improving overall acquisition efficiency and enabling us to continuously optimize returns on our marketing spend. Revenue from IP operations delivered strong growth momentum this quarter. The number of our IP partnerships grew more than fivefold year-over-year and more than doubled sequentially. Several of our top titles sold both film and gaming rights, and we signed additional licensing deals in verticals like science fiction. Together, these deals further validate both the depth of our IP monetization capabilities and the pricing power of our IP assets supported by our IP library. Both the production capacity and the content quality of our short drama and comic drama adaptations remained stable in the first quarter.
Multiple short dramas and comic titles achieved billions of views, consistently ranking at the top of various major platforms. Looking ahead, leveraging our strong IP pipeline, we will continue to pursue end-to-end multidimensional commercialization and further extend the life cycle of each individual IP. Moving to Marketing Services. In the first quarter, Marketing Services revenue was RMB 191.4 million, broadly in line with the same period last year. Our disciplined execution across the client mix optimization and the product upgrades continued to deliver results. On client mix, ARPU rose sharply both year-over-year and sequentially in core verticals like gaming and automotive. Our industry mix also continued to improve with commercial efficiency improving notably across gaming, travel and transportation. This was supported by the ongoing consumption recovery and the wave of new game launches during the quarter.
On commercial products, in March, we launched our technology-themed IP "Tech Bytes," launched at this year's Appliance & Electronics World Expo with a focus on the home appliance and consumer electronics sector. At the on-site immersive exhibition zone, Zhihu creators hosted guided walkthroughs to answer consumer questions with professional technical insights. They also shared the latest trends in home appliances and consumer electronics. At the same time, a Zhihu reviewer jury hosted an online discussion forum, helping decode industry jargon and highlight the real value behind product innovation. Turning to Other revenues. In the first quarter, Other revenues were RMB 57.8 million. As I mentioned earlier, we have reclassified IP-related revenue into our new paid content and IP operations segment, which better reflects how each business is developing. Within Other revenues, our expert data solutions business won recognition from leading enterprise clients and began generating revenue this quarter.
As a pioneer in defining and delivering high-value data solutions, we are now translating our expertise into tangible value for our clients. Our differentiated value has been firmly validated by top-tier AI Labs. Looking ahead through the rest of 2026, we remain committed to deepening our services for key clients while expanding our footprint into new industries. To wrap up, the first quarter gave us a solid start to the year. As we move through 2026, our priorities remain clear. We will continue to strengthen operational profitability while leveraging our unique strength in the AI era to drive higher quality, accelerated growth. We believe the combined power of high-quality content times expert network times AI capabilities will further set Zhihu apart in this new era. Over the next three quarters, we will continue to execute on our strategy with discipline. We expect our core businesses to show an accelerated recovery.
In parallel, our AI-related new initiatives should continue to gain traction and contribute meaningfully to growth. With that, I will hand the call over to our CFO, Wang Han, whose remarks will be delivered through his AI voice agent. Han, please go ahead.
I will now go over our first quarter 2026 financials. For a complete overview of our results, please refer to our press release issued earlier today. The first quarter marked a strong start to the year with our operations and financial performance both improving. Building on the full-year non-GAAP profitability achieved in 2025, we delivered a strong sequential return to profitability in the first quarter, supported by continued gross margin recovery, disciplined cost management and focused resource allocation. These results reflect the cumulative impact of our multi-quarter structural optimization and provide a strong foundation for continued growth as we move through 2026. Now turning to the financial highlights of first quarter 2026. At the non-GAAP level, we are pleased to report that adjusted net profit turned positive in the first quarter of 2026, reaching RMB 17.2 million compared with an adjusted net loss of RMB 39.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Our total revenue for the quarter reached RMB 651.6 million, compared with RMB 729.7 million in the same period of 2025. The year-over-year decline reflects our continued efforts to optimize revenue mix and to prioritize high-quality services. More importantly, revenue grew on a sequential basis driven by strong revenue contribution from our paid content and IP operations segment. Our Marketing Services revenue for the quarter was RMB 191.4 million compared with RMB 197 million in the same period of 2025. The stabilization in Marketing Services reflects our proactive and ongoing refinement of service offerings with notably improving sequential trend. Paid content and IP operations revenue was RMB 402.3 million compared with RMB 420.9 million in the same period of 2025. Average monthly subscribing members were 13.1 million, an increase of 7.9% on a quarterly basis. We continue to focus our resources on strengthening user engagement and monetization opportunities.
In addition, revenue growth from our IP operations served as an earnings driver, supported by expanding IP initiatives. Other revenues were RMB 57.8 million compared with RMB 111.8 million in the same period of 2025. The decrease was primarily due to the strategic refinement of our vocational training business. Our gross profit for the quarter was RMB 388.3 million compared with RMB 451.1 million in the same period of 2025. Gross margin was 59.6% compared with 61.8% in the same period of 2025. Notably, gross margin improved sequentially from 53.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025. This improvement was attributable to prudent cost controls across content and cloud operations. Our total operating expenses decreased by 10.4% year-over-year to RMB 451.2 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared with RMB 503.7 million in the same period of 2025. The decrease in total operating expenses was in line with revenue, supported by management's careful cost controls.
R&D expenses fell by 22.4% year-over-year, while selling and marketing expenses also decreased by 11.1% year-over-year. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 11.1% year-over-year to RMB 285.1 million from RMB 320.6 million in the same period of 2025. The decrease was primarily due to more disciplined marketing spending and a decrease in personnel-related expenses. Research and development expenses decreased 22.4% year-over-year to RMB 110.1 million from RMB 141.9 million in the same period of 2025. The decrease was primarily driven by ongoing improvements in our research and development efficiency. General and administrative expenses were RMB 56 million compared with RMB 41.2 million in the same period of 2025. The increase was primarily attributable to an increase in the allowance for expected credit losses on trade receivables. Accordingly, our net loss narrowed by 15.6% to RMB 8.5 million from RMB 10.1 million in the same period of 2025.
On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted net income increased by 147.2% year-over-year to RMB 17.2 million from RMB 6.9 million in the same period of 2025. As of March 31, 2026, the company had RMB 4.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents, term deposits, restricted cash and short-term investments. As of March 31, 2026, the company has repurchased 34.8 million Class A ordinary shares on the open market for an aggregate value of USD 70.7 million on both the New York Stock Exchange and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. During the first quarter of 2026, the company repurchased 3.7 million Class A ordinary shares for a total consideration of USD 4.2 million. The share repurchase program continues to deliver value back to our shareholders. Building on the solid momentum achieved in the first quarter, we expect 2026 to be a year of high-quality growth. We remain focused on strengthening operational profitability and improving execution efficiency while further leveraging the unique advantages from our high-quality content, expert network and AI capabilities.
As these three pillars continue to evolve in unison, they will further highlight our distinctive value in the AI era. Looking ahead, we will continue to execute our established strategy with discipline and focus, driving sustainable growth and long-term shareholder value. This concludes my prepared remarks on our financial performance for this quarter. Let's turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session.
分析師問答
Our first question comes from the line of Xueqing Zhang of CICC.
My question is about AI. Could management share some of the latest strategic thinking and roadmap around AI? For example, in terms of integrating AI with the Zhihu community, what's our latest plan and progress?
Thank you for the question, Xueqing. I believe the relationship between the community and AI is not simply AI plus something else. As I mentioned earlier, average daily time spent per DAU increased, and I believe this stems mainly from our core strategy over the past period, which centers on building a high-quality, trustworthy community. In other words, interpersonal connections are becoming more active, and this vibrancy would still occur even without AI. What users truly need is never AI itself, but rather cognitive enhancement, experience sharing and real connections. Building a high-quality, trustworthy community is what Zhihu has been doing since day one. Whether navigating the Internet era or today's AI era, our underlying mission has never changed. Therefore, rather than viewing the community as simply an AI application scenario, we focus on how to leverage technology to better serve people.
Take the Xinzhi conference as an example. This year, on-site attendance exceeded 80,000, which set a historical record. We had over 100 partners on site featuring numerous workshops and coffee chats related to AI. There were also non-AI activities such as handicraft workshops, fitness areas and food markets. Ultimately, people gather for engagement. The meaning of Xinzhi does not necessarily represent new knowledge alone, but new cognition and new connections. This is precisely the core value of Zhihu's community. We have always believed that Zhihu's community ecosystem is not built to maximize superficial attention; the increase in time spent corresponds to the active growth of a mid- to high-attention user cohort. Our core priority is to continuously build Zhihu into a positive feedback system that helps people elevate cognition and establish connections. To achieve this, we have executed four initiatives over the past two years.
The first is sustained investment in community operations. Second is simplification of the product experience. Third is long-term investment in the underlying technical infrastructure. Fourth is advancement in AI innovation and efficiency. Regarding AI, we have one guiding principle: AI is not the end goal; people are. In Phase 1 for Zhihu Tu AI, we aim to integrate AI search with our trustworthy community content, ensuring answers are not just generated from the models but can be tracked back to real people and experiences. Phase 2, which is our current stage, advances in two areas. First, we are building a data platform aggregating high-quality, long-term community data that have been cleaned and credibly ranked. It's open to developers via MCP or skills. Second, we are building an open platform, our community APIs, and we hosted our first open platform-based hackathon. Now it's project-based, and we're turning it into product in the long term to enable engineers and AI creators to continuously innovate.
Therefore, integrating the community and AI is not simply dropping AI into the product. It's about leveraging an open platform to empower more creators to generate new value. Our exploration extends further. The open platform unlocks creativity; AI short dramas and AI comics unlock the value of our IP. Our paid content, stories and AI dramas are all organic extensions of our authentic discussions. This exemplifies our strategy of starting from and expanding beyond the community: community creates content, content generates IP, and new technologies help reach broader users. As the AI drama industry shifts from volume growth to quality, we believe the value of our IP will further unlock. Finally, Zhihu believes in the long term that our current progress is not driven by short-term tactics. Our core strategy remains unchanged: cultivate the community, focus on people, leverage AI innovation to better serve and empower people, and continuously drive the positive cycle of starting from the community and extending beyond it.
Such a transition cannot materialize within a single quarter or even a full year. Our current results stem from consistent execution over the past two years, while our ongoing efforts are laying the groundwork for structural improvements in the next three years. Thank you.
We will now proceed to take our next question from the line of Vicky Wei of Citi.
We noticed that starting from the first quarter, the company merged the original paid membership revenue with membership-related copyright licensing and IP derivatives revenue into a single category. Does this change reflect a new strategic strategy by management regarding the market potential and growth drivers of this business? And furthermore, how should we think of Zhihu's advantages and opportunities within this newly defined market space?
Thank you for the question, Vicky. This revenue reclassification indeed reflects how we view our paid content and IP operations strategically. Previously, the market saw our paid content primarily as membership revenue. But as China's top premium short-form original platform, the growth of Yanyan Story has unlocked far broader value beyond subscriptions. Our IP is now monetized through short dramas, comics, film or TV shows and games. Creators are already becoming writers and producers. Effective from the first quarter of 2026, the reclassification aims to better showcase the full life cycle value of our content and IP. This is an upgrade from a single subscription model to a full-chain IP operation and development model. It remains a crucial foundation, helping us validate content creation, user willingness to pay and IP potential. Building on this, content can unleash commercial value through IP partnerships, script adaptations, short dramas and more.
We aim to form a complete closed loop from content to consumption to IP streaming and multi-format monetization. In this new market landscape, we believe Zhihu has four competitive advantages. First, Yanyan Story is the leading player in the short story track. It has accumulated a vast library of premium short stories over time. Short stories naturally feature concentrated plots, clear character relationships and high-density conflict, making them highly suitable for adaptation. Compared to incubating content from scratch, adapting existing IP delivers higher efficiency in both content screening and monetization conversion. Second, we continue to strengthen our creator ecosystem through incentive mechanisms. We discover mid-tier creators and extend their life cycle by enabling the transition from novel writing to script adaptation. Our creators are showing high potential in utilizing AI for content inspiration and video generation models.
In the first quarter, total creator earnings surged 5.6x year-over-year, further demonstrating IP monetization. Third, AI short dramas are speeding up our IP monetization. In the first quarter, our total IP partnerships surged 564% year-over-year and 248% quarter-over-quarter, fully validating the commercial depth and premium pricing power of Zhihu's content assets. Competition will ultimately return to the quality of content. As the industry evolves, the lifetime value of individual IP will be further unlocked. Fourth, AI has increased production capacity. Our short-form IPs offer natural high-yield advantages for adaptation. As we deepen our participation and leverage AI for storyboarding, image generation, scripting and distribution, we anticipate lower costs and higher margins. Ultimately, AI doesn't just increase output; it empowers creators. Therefore, the revenue reclassification isn't just an accounting adjustment; it reflects how we redefine the commercial potential of Yanyan Story and our original IPs.
Going forward, we will drive deeper synergies across paid content, IP licensing, short dramas, AI comics and other formats. This allows us to maximize the lifetime value of each IP and turn paid content and IP operations into a growth driver.
We will now proceed to take our next question from the line of Luqing Zhou of Goldman Sachs.
My question is regarding AI investment. Can management elaborate more on the specific areas of allocation of your AI investment? And how do you plan to balance those AI investments with the group's long-term overall profitability goals?
Thank you for the question, Luqing. We are certainly integrating AI into all aspects of our operations. I understand the market is likely most concerned about when AI-driven revenue will reaccelerate our growth. We maintain our previous strategic focus, specifically targeting two fields: AI short dramas and comic dramas, and expert data solutions. The former represents AI-generated content that users are most willing to pay for, while the latter serves as the picks-and-shovels to the AI industry. Regarding how we balance new business investments with profitability, these two selections represent some of the healthiest cash-flow profiles among AI verticals, and Zhihu holds distinct competitive advantages here. Of course, there are challenges ranging from industry competition to the macro environment, which require a medium- to long-term perspective. However, we will not pursue a strategy of burning cash to chase growth. Our investments will focus on building core long-term capabilities to deliver fundamentally superior products.
We will now proceed to take our next question from the line of Daisy Chen of Haitong International.
Zhihu's profit has shown a significant improvement in Q1. Does management have any update to the shareholder return plan such as dividends and the payout scale?
Thank you for the question, Daisy. We remain firmly committed to our share repurchase program. We believe Zhihu has been one of the most active Chinese ADRs in terms of buyback intensity over the past two years. Since 2022, the company has repurchased a cumulative 63.5 million Class A ordinary shares in the open market with a total cost of USD 130 million. Year-to-date in 2026, the company has repurchased 4.61 million shares for a total consideration of approximately USD 5.06 million, representing 1.74% of total shares outstanding. Shares repurchased during the first quarter of 2026 have all been fully canceled. Thank you.
That concludes today's question-and-answer session. At this time, I'll turn the conference back to Yolanda for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly for Christensen Advisory. Thank you.
Thank you all. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.