Tencent Music Entertainment Group (NYSE:TME) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 14, 2023 6:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Millicent Tu - Investor Relations
Kar Shun Pang - Executive Chairman
Ross Liang - Chief Executive Officer
Shirley Hu - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Alicia Yap - Citigroup
Alex Poon - Morgan Stanley
Zhang Lei - Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Lincoln Kong - Goldman Sachs
Thomas Chong - Jefferies
Alex Yao - JPMorgan
Xueqing Zhang - CICC
Wei Xiong - UBS
Millicent Tu
Good evening, good morning. Welcome to Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Webinar. I am Millicent Tu, Head of IR and the company. TME announced its quarterly financial results today before the U.S. market opened. Earnings release is now available on our IR website and via Newswire services.
Today, you will hear from Mr. Kar Shun Pang, our Executive Chairman, who will start the call with an overview of our company’s strategies and business updates. Next, Mr. Ross Liang, our CEO, will share additional thoughts on our platform strategies and developments. Finally, Ms. Shirley Hu, our CFO, will discuss our financial results before we open the call for questions.
Before we continue, I refer you to Safe Harbor statements in our earnings release, which applies to today’s call as we will make forward-looking statements. Please note that the company will discuss non-IFRS measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under IFRS in the company’s earnings release and filings with the SEC. [Operator Instructions] And please be advised that today’s webinar is being recorded.
With that, I am very pleased to turn over the call to Kar Shun, Executive Chairman of the company. Kar Shun?
Kar Shun Pang
Thank you, Millicent. Hello, everyone and thank you for joining our call today. We are pleased to report another quarter of strong growth in our online music services despite the top line headwinds of the social entertainment business while adjusting certain industry-wide live streaming interactive features represented some challenges for the quarter. It ultimately placed us on an even stronger footing for our long-term sustainable development. As a case in point, our evolving businesses have become more resilient, illustrated by group-wide margin expansion and strong cash flows for the quarter.
What’s particularly worth mentioning is our online music subscriptions. This business has registered accelerated year-over-year revenue growth. Growth momentum carried into the third quarter with expansion in both of our subscriber base and ARPPU. Our paying user base grew further to 103 million, a strong testament to the broad appeal and high value of our music products and services. Our impressive content offerings, compelling subscribers’ privileges and interactive product features, together with strong execution, enabled us to attract new subscribers while retaining existing ones. We are also pleased to see that monthly ARPPU expanded to RMB10.3, thanks to disciplined promotions, effective member acquisitions and our high subscriber retention rate. These achievements will result from the solid execution of our dual engine content and platform strategy. It further unlocks the value of music and pave the way for our long-term success.