Zhihu (ZH) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

May 24, 2023 7:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Zhihu Inc. First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference call is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Iris Liu, IR Manager. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Yolanda Lian Liu

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. Participants on today's call will include Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer of Zhihu; Mr. Li Dahai, Chief Technology Officer; and Mr. Henry Sha, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's prospectus and other public filings as filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law.

During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only. For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today.

In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at ir.zhihu.com.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Henry Sha, CFO of Zhihu.

Henry Sha

Thank you, Iris. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zhihu.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Zhihu's first quarter 2023 earnings call. We are delighted to start 2023 with a solid first quarter highlighted by sustaining the revenue growth and a significantly narrowed net loss, both beating the market consensus. While continuously expanding our user base over the past two years, we have also been closely following and capturing the evolving demand for short-form online reading, including both knowledge sharing and notebooks. In addition to the various Yan Selection membership services, we launched a new app Yanyan Stories in major app stores recently to serve the broader user content demand as a part of Zhihu's product metrics. Yanyan Stories will not only contain content generated from the Zhihu community, but also provide more differentiated content. Moreover, Yanyan Stories will cover users from different tier cities and support more audio books, by offering more effective assistance for content creators. The installations are bouncing the premium content, compared with our widely recognized brand name, compared to the number of average monthly subscribing members to a record high of 14.9 million in the first quarter, representing 116% year-over-year and 14.5% sequential growth respectively.