Bilibili Net Loss Narrows Sharply on Stronger Revenue — Update

By Jiahui Huang

Bilibili more than halved its net loss in the second quarter as revenue rose on stronger sales across its advertising, value-added services and mobile-game businesses.

The Chinese video-streaming company said Thursday that total net revenue for the quarter rose 16% from a year earlier to 6.13 billion yuan, equivalent to $859.4 million. That beat market expectations of 6.03 billion yuan based on a FactSet poll of analysts.

Net loss for the period was 608.7 million yuan, compared with 1.49 billion yuan a year ago, helped by a much narrower loss from operations and stronger revenue. The bottom line beat a FactSet estimate for net loss of 638.2 million yuan.

Adjusted net loss, which excludes share-based compensation expenses and fair-value changes in some investments, among other items, was 271.5 million yuan in the quarter, narrowing from 962.6 million yuan a year earlier.

Revenue from Bilibili's value-added services segment, which includes livestreaming and premium memberships, rose 11% to 2.57 billion yuan, thanks to a rise in the number of users paying for the premium membership, live broadcasting and other value-added services.

Revenue from the company's advertising services rose 30% to 2.04 billion yuan, which it attributed to improved product offerings and more effective efforts.

Revenue from its mobile-game segment rose 13% to 1.01 billion yuan, "mainly due to the launch of the company's new exclusively licensed games," it said, including "Three Kingdoms." The company launched a mobile version of the game in June.

Bilibili, founded in 2009, hasn't been profitable since first listing in the U.S. in 2018. The company has said it hoped to achieve profitability by 2024.

Citi analysts said in a recent note that they expect Bilibili to turn profitable in the third quarter on the strong performance of the "Three Kingdoms" game title.

The company, known locally as a Chinese equivalent to YouTube, competes with ByteDance's Douyin and Baidu's iQIYI. The latter reported revenue of 7.4 billion yuan for the second quarter, down 5% from a year earlier.

Write to Jiahui Huang at jiahui.huang@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 22, 2024 08:09 ET (12:09 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.