JOYY Inc

NASDAQ:YY

Earnings Call Analysis

Company Achieves Revenue Growth Despite Uncertainties

In the third quarter, the company saw total net revenues of $567.1 million, marking its first year-over-year top-line growth in six quarters, driven mainly by developed countries. This is an increase from BIGO's segment revenue by 2.2% year-over-year. The company's net profit for the period stood at $72.9 million with a net margin of 12.9%. Despite ongoing global uncertainties, they managed to increase gross margin to 36.9% from a refined marketing and operating cost strategy leading to savings. Share buybacks continued vigorously, returning $355.4 million to shareholders. Looking ahead, revenue is expected to range between $551 million and $579 million for the fourth quarter, with a commitment to pursuing high-quality growth and improving operation cash flows.

Revenue and Profitability Growth

The third quarter highlighted a strong performance for the company, with Group revenue reaching $567.1 million, which is a 3.6% increase from the previous quarter, aligning with the higher end of our expectations. This upswing is particularly significant when viewed alongside our core business segment, BIGO, which not only maintained its recovery momentum but also achieved its first year-over-year top-line growth in six quarters. BIGO recorded revenues of $494.1 million, a sequential increase of 4.9% and a year-over-year increase of 2.2%. This growth was accompanied by an increase in user activity and improved monetization efficiency, resulting in a non-GAAP operating profit of $81.2 million, an 11.7% growth from the previous year.

User Growth and Engagement

We continued to experience user growth, with our global average mobile MAUs (Monthly Active Users) growing by 2.6% year-over-year to reach 276.8 million. BIGO Live, a key player in our portfolio, has been on a strong growth trajectory, with MAUs increasing by 14% year-over-year to 40.3 million. The increase in paying users by 6.6% year-over-year, improved ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), and enhanced operational efficiency have all contributed to the robust performance of BIGO's non-GAAP operating profit, which grew by 11.7% year-over-year.

Forward-Looking Prospects

While we anticipate maintaining our recovery trajectory, we're also mindful of the ongoing uncertainty in the global macroeconomic environment. We believe this may lead to varied recovery paces across different markets and potential short-term fluctuations in user pay sentiment. Nevertheless, our focus remains on high-quality growth, operational strategy, and continued innovation across our product suite. We are committed to sustainably improving our operating cash flow.

Product Development and Innovations

Our product BIGO Live sustained its user growth in key regions, with a 14% year-over-year increase in MAUs. We implemented several initiatives to drive user engagement, including diverse and viral content creation, collaborations with key opinion leaders (KOLs), and enhanced social interaction features such as the Real Match feature, which significantly boosted overall engagement. These efforts propelled positive progress in both user monetization and user acquisition, with a particular emphasis on enhancing the user experience and providing exceptional value through social entertainment offerings.

Geographic Expansion and User Community Events

Notably, BIGO Live registered impressive growth in Europe and the Middle East, signaling robust expansion in these crucial markets. Other products in our portfolio, like Likee, saw mid-single digit sequential revenue growth and continued profitability. We also celebrated important cultural events, such as the Saudi National Day, with offline and online community activities, fostering deeper connections among users and creators. These strategic moves are aimed at driving product outreach, community interaction, and, ultimately, organic user growth.

Financial Discipline and Shareholder Returns

Our diligent approach to financial management has allowed us to expand profitability and maintain a strong cash provision of $3.8 billion as of the end of the third quarter. In line with our commitment to enhancing shareholder value, we continued our share buyback program, repurchasing approximately 43.5 million of our shares. We are also extending our buyback program to November 2024, emphasizing our focus on delivering shareholder returns. This fiscal prudence reflects a balanced approach to growth, efficiency, and sustained profitability.

Fourth Quarter Guidance and Long-Term Strategy

Looking to the fourth quarter, we expect our net revenues to be between $551 million and $579 million, bearing in mind macroeconomic uncertainties and market variability. Our overarching strategy is to continue enhancing product value, user experiences, and monetization efficiency, all while adhering to our financial discipline. This positions us well for sustained recovery and high-quality growth, aligning with our long-term objectives.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the JOYY Inc. Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.I'd now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Jane Xie, the company's Senior Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Jane.

[Tingzhen Xie, executive]

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to JOYY's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. David Xueling Li, Chairman and CEO of JOYY; Ms. Ting Li, our COO; and Mr. Alex Liu, the Vice President of Finance.For today's call, management will first provide a review of the quarter, and then we will conduct a Q&A session. The financial results and webcast of this conference call are available at ir.joyy.com. A replay of this call will also be available on our website in a few hours.Before we continue, I would like to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements, which are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from our current expectations. For detailed discussions of the risks and uncertainties, please refer to our latest Annual Report on Form 20-F and other documents filed with the SEC. Finally, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in U.S. dollars.I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. David Xueling Li. Please go ahead, sir.

[Xueling Li, executive]

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2023 earnings call. First, we will provide a quick snapshot of our performance for the quarter. During the third quarter, we once again delivered a strong performance. Our Group revenue come in at $567.1 million at a 3.6% sequential increase. Approaching the high end of our guidance, [ we see ] a non-GAAP net profit of $81.2 million, a 5.5% year-over-year increase with a non-GAAP net margin of 14.3%.Our core business segment, BIGO maintained its recovery momentum and recorded revenues of $494.1 million, a sequential increase for 4.9% and a year-over-year increase of 2.2%. The first year-over-year top line growth for BIGO in 6 quarters. BIGO's revenue [indiscernible] was accompanied by improvements in user activity and monetization efficiency. At the Group level, our global average mobile MAUs grew by 2.6% year-over-year to $276.8 million. Notably, BIGO Live's MAUs maintained its strong growth trajectory, increasing by 14% year-over-year to $40.3 million.BIGO's number of paying users experienced a steady increase for 6.6% year-over-year. With ARPU also improving sequentially during the quarter, with monetization recovering, and as we continue to enhance our operational efficiency. BIGO's non-GAAP operation profit grew by 11.7% year-over-year, reaching $81.9 million, representing [ expanded ] non-GAAP operating profit margin of 16.6%.As one of the leaders in the global social entertainment sector, we have always been committed to building [ affordable ] device and inclusive global user community. We aim to provide users with unique value and exceptional experience through our broad range of social entertainment products. We firmly believe that creating a positive user value and experience are the foundations of effective user management and monetization.To maximize the product value for our users, we have always [Audio Gap] our highly localized operations and innovative product optimization, are our most effective instrument for enhancing user content and improving user social interaction experience. To give you a better understanding of our progress on those 2 fronts, I'd like to share some examples from the third quarter.On the content front, BIGO Live expanded its collaborations with top KOLs and introduce more diverse and viral content. We also launched several major updates for our content segregation strategies and recommendation algorithm. These upgrades improved our ability to efficiently channel users to content they enjoy, particularly our new user cohorts.On the social interaction front, we prioritize the optimization of interactive tools within BIGO Live's Family Feature and allocated additional operational resources to support families. We also further integrated new social features, such as Real Match, which cater to different user cases and help users expand their social networks. These targeted initiatives have been actively driving positive progress in user engagement and monetization.The introduction of more diverse and viral content alongside the collaboration with KOLs and successfully enhance our brand exposure, is pending product outreach and fostered online -- organic user growth. This acceleration of organic traffic has been the primary reason for our robust user growth in recent quarters, even as we adhere to disciplined market expense. At the same time, our amplification of families' social functions has yielded positive results in terms of user acquisition, payment conversation and recruitment of long-tailed streamers.Our improved user engagement and user experience, coupled with exciting seasonal promotions, such as the regional mid-year galas have fulfilled recovery in user paying activity and overall monetization.Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we anticipate the people's global business will maintain its recovery trajectory on a year-over-year basis. However, given the ongoing uncertainty in the global macro landscape, we believe the pace of recovery across different markets will vary and short-term fluctuations in users' paying segment, [ certain ] sentiments may persist. We will remain cautiously optimistic.The focus on our operational strategy and priority high-quality growth. We will also continue to explore innovations across our products and operations and drive the steady recovery of our global business, with a sustained focus on improving operation cash flow.Now let's take a closer look at our products. We will start with BIGO Live. BIGO Live maintained its double-digit user growth momentum in the third quarter, with MAUs increasing by 14% year-over-year to 40.3 million. We saw growth across several key regions, with the year-over-year increase by 12.9% in Europe and 15.3% in the Middle East; and 14.4% in Southeast Asia and other emerging markets.In the third quarter, BIGO Live recorded mid-single-digit revenue growth in a sequential basis. The developed country region, especially Europe and Eastern Pacific countries outpace the other markets and generated a high single-digit sequential growth in revenue. As mentioned earlier, BIGO Live introduced a diverse range of high-quality and virtual content during the third quarter. In the Middle East BIGO Live premiered The Acting Coach exclusive show, in which legendary Jordanian actor shared his personal insight into the art of acting.In Indonesia, BIGO Live debuted Friends for Live a collaborative min-series, features in 3 BIGO Live streamers and some local up and coming actors. The show was broadcast on a popular Indonesia video platform called Vidio, introducing BIGO Live streamers to new audience. BIGO Live also expanded its collaboration with top KOLs in the third quarter. We launched a summer wide campaign in the MENA region, and teamed up with several local KOLs, who have tons of millions of followers, to share the freshest summer fashion chains, and travel experience, significantly boosting user engagement and inspiring creativity.Building upon the success of last quarter's Family Month campaign, we continue to encourage users to explore and participate in family activities on BIGO Live. The third quarter saw a steady increase in the size of families, with a 5.1% sequential increase in DAUs and 17.4% sequential increase in the number of contracted streamers in Families.With regards to interaction and optimization of our product features, we retain our focus on content enrichment and improve social interactions. We further refined our content recommendation algorithms and continue to incentivize the BAR creators. We started to develop a premier content pool on our BAR channel, covering popular genres such as K-pop, pet and work out in the third quarter. The number of users sharing videos on BAR, surged by 42.8% from the prior quarter. While the average effective views per person for video content rose by 29.3% in the same period.At the same time, we fine-tuned features to enhance the appeal and interactivity inside livestreaming rooms. This drove an 8.5% sequential increase in the total number of livestreamers, along with a 3.7% sequential increase in the number of livestreamers in multi-guest rooms. In line with our commitment to fostering social interaction and forging relationships, we enhanced BIGO Live's Real Match feature to make it easier to connect with people nearby, by simply swiping through profiles. The upgrade fueled a [ 16.3% ] sequential increase in the number of people mutually following each other through Real Match, and a 21% sequential increase in direct chat messages.Next, let me show some updates for our other products. As we have previously mentioned, compared to BIGO Live, our other products have a much larger aggregated user base. But they are generally in the early phase of monetization as their contributions to revenue and profit are relatively small. As such, our main objective of those products is to systematically enhance our monetization efficiency and feasibility well, strengthening their ability to organically acquire new users. Since this product started to generate consistent profit, we will have a solid foundation, from which we can [ reinnovated ] the user growth.Let's begin with Likee in the third quarter. Likee's revenue grew by mid-single digits sequentially, and it continued to be profitable at the product level. On the user front, despite a sequential decline, the Likee's MAUs in this quarter, it's still used in core regions, particularly in developed countries regions, maintaining a high single digital sequential growth.In September, Likee orchestrated a series of offline community events, in celebration of Saudi National Day. These included streamer parties and movie days, accompanied by online discussions designed to deepen connections among users, creators, and the platform.During the quarter, Likee also partnered with a number of popular creators to exhibit at the Asian Culture Festival, an event that captivated fans of anime, K-pop, and more, highlighting the ACG, that is an integral component of Likee's content ecosystem and community.At the product level, Likee remained dedicated to fostering community interaction, driving a 14.7% overall sequential increase in average user time spent. Overall user engagement, as measured by the ratio of DAUs to MAUs, increased by 1% sequentially, while the IM penetration rate rose by 1.5% over the same period.Next, let's take a look at Hago. During the third quarter, Hago achieved sequential mid-single digit percentage increase in revenue, and its operating cash flow remained positive during the quarter. Efficient content remained a priority, along with a refined push notification strategy designed to boost participation in multi-guest interactive rooms across regions. Hago also iterated, and enhanced its IM and interactive features, helping to drive increased social activity among users.Notably, the average user time spent in social channels reached nearly 95.8 minutes per day, and the average time spent in multi-guest audio livestreaming rooms grew by 1.2% sequentially. Besides Hago 3D Space, Hago is actively exploring alternative social interactive applications and combining livestreaming and interactive gaming experience, powered by AI.Finally, some updates on cash flow and capital return. We continue to drive -- to generate robust positive operating cash flow, reached $72.9 million in the third quarter. Meanwhile, we maintained an active pace of share repurchases, and bought back additional 43.5 million of our shares. Our Board has authorized an extension of the buyback program, which assumed at [ $530 million ], as of the end of the third quarter, until November 2024.To summarize effectively, conclusion of our operational strategy and driving the ongoing recovery of BIGO's revenue profit and user activity. Looking ahead into the remainder of 2023 and beyond, we remain committed to our long-term targeted strategies to pursue high-quality growth. We will continue to explore with innovations across all our products and operations and drive the steady recovery of our global business, with continued focus on improving operation cash flows. We will further concentrate our resources on building our core experiences, and the global business that align with our long-term strategy, and effectively pursue growth opportunities. And at the same time, we will continue to enhance shareholder returns through share buybacks.This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn the call to our Vice President of Finance, Alex Liu, for our financial updates.

[Fuyong Liu, executive]

Thanks, David. Hello, everyone. Despite the ongoing macro uncertainties, we achieved solid progress in the third quarter.Our global business segment, BIGO, booked positive year-over-year growth in both revenue and non-GAAP operating income during the quarter. We continued to grow our global MAUs, even as they adhere to our disciplined marketing spend. The monetization efficiency resource were also up during the quarter, with the number of BIGO's quarterly paying users, up by 5.1% and ARPPU up by 2.2% quarter-over-quarter. It's a result of our continuing dedicated strategy to optimize product value and the user experience, and the strong execution of our global operational team.Now let's look at the numbers in detail; our total net revenues were $567.1 million in the third quarter. Revenues from BIGO segment were $494.1 million, up by 2.2% year-over-year. The first year-over-year top line growth in 6 quarters, mainly driven by strong growth in the developed countries.Cost of revenues for the quarter decreased to $357.9 million, among which our revenue sharing fees and content costs decreased to $232.3 million. BIGO's cost of revenues were $299.2 million, which was up year-over-year, consistent with rebound in live streaming revenue.Gross profit was $209.2 million in the quarter, with a gross margin of 36.9%. BIGO's gross profit was $194.8 million, with a gross margin of 39.4%. Our Group's operating expenses for the quarter were $191.3 million compared with $202.2 million in the same period of 2022. Along with the operating expenses, sales and marketing expenses decreased to $92.5 million from $96.8 million in the same period of 2022, primarily due to the optimization of overall sales and marketing strategies across various product lines, to be more focused on ROI and effectiveness of user acquisition.R&D expenses increased to $71.6 million from $61.2 million in the same period of 2022, primarily due to increased R&D personnel-related expenses, as we prioritized resources into building our technological capabilities.BIGO's operating expenses for the quarter were $126.7 million, down by 5.3% year-over-year. Our gross GAAP operating income for the quarter was $12 million. Our non-GAAP operating income for the quarter, which excludes expenses, amortization of intangible assets from business acquisitions, loss on the consolidation and disposal of subsidiaries, as well as impairment of goodwill and investments, was $40.4 million in this quarter, with a non-GAAP operating income margin of [ 7.1% ].BIGO's GAAP operating income for the quarter was $68.5 million, and BIGO's non-GAAP operating income was $81.9 million, representing a non-GAAP operating income margin of 16.6%, up from 15.2% in the same period last year.Our Group's GAAP net income attributable to controlling interest of JOYY in the quarter was $72.9 million compared to net income of $515.3 million in the same period of 2022. GAAP net income margin was 12.9% in the third quarter of 2023, compared to net income margin of 87.8% in the corresponding period of 2022. Our Group's GAAP net income was larger in the third quarter last year, primarily due to a one-off remeasurement gain of active investment.BIGO's GAAP net income in the quarter was $70.2 million, with a GAAP net margin of 14.2%. Non-GAAP net income attributable to controlling interest of JOYY in the quarter was $81.2 million compared to $76.9 million in the same period of 2022. The Group's non-GAAP net income margin was 14.3% in the quarter compared to 13.1% in the same period of 2022. BIGO's non-GAAP net income was $81.9 million with a non-GAAP net margin of 16.6%.For the third quarter of 2023, we booked net cash inflows from operating activities of $72.9 million. We [ remain ] a healthy balance sheet with a strong cash [ provision ] of $3.8 billion as of September 30 of 2023.In the third quarter, we continued to enhance returns to shareholders and repurchased an additional of approximately 43.5 million of our shares. In the first 3 quarters of 2023, we have retained an aggregate amount of $355.4 million to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, which altogether represent 155.6% of our aggregated non-GAAP net income during the corresponding period. We will continue to actively utilize our share repurchase program in the coming quarters.Turning now to our business outlook; we anticipate continued recovery in our global operations. However, due to the ongoing uncertainty in the global macro landscape, we recognize that the pace of recovery may vary across different markets, and there may be short-term fluctuations in users paying sentiment.Separately, as previously communicated, we had made proactive adjustments to certain non-core operations, in line with our commitment to high-quality growth and global [ revenue ].Taking all factors into consideration, we expect our net revenues for the fourth quarter of 2023 to be between [ $551 million and $579 million ]. This forecast reflects our preliminary views on the market and operational conditions and business adjustments, which are subject to changes.In conclusion, our dedicated efforts to enhance product value and optimize user experience, are yielding positive results, as shown in our accelerating user growth and top line recovery. Simultaneously, our financial discipline has allowed us to further expand profitability and fortify our financial standing.Moving forward, we will maintain a focused operational strategy and direct our resources towards high potential business, that align with our long-term objectives. We will also strive for a steady recovery in our global operation, while prioritizing improvement in operating cash flows, with a strong foundation and other proven execution capabilities. We are confident that we are well positioned to seize growth opportunities and deliver sustainable value to our shareholders.That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we would now like to open up the call to questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Thomas Chong from Jefferies.

[Thomas Chong, analyst]

[Interpreted]My first question is about the margin trend for BIGO in 2024, as well as the outlook for the Group's blended margin? And my second question is about shareholders' capital return. Can management share your thoughts on this front? Thank you.

[Fuyong Liu, executive]

[Interpreted]Thank you, Thomas. This is Alex. I will take your first question. So if you look at our Q3 results, we actually delivered better than our previous expectation. BIGO segment non-GAAP gross margin was improved from 39% to 39.5% this quarter, with a non-GAAP OP margin improved from 16% to 16.6%. Although we did spend more on content incentives and sales and marketing for our midyear gala, our better-than-expected profit was mainly due to accelerating top line recovery.Looking ahead to Q4, as we enter the year-end peak of operational activities, we expect BIGO's content cost and sales and marketing expenses to be sequentially up. Therefore, BIGO will have a slightly lower gross margin and non-GAAP operating margin in Q4 as a result. However, if you look at our progress so far in the first 3 quarters of '23, we have already -- for BIGO segment, we have already achieved a non-GAAP OP of 15.4%. So for the full year of '23, we're still expecting the non-GAAP OP of BIGO segment should be higher than the level of 22%, which was 14.4%.And as for the outlook for '24, we believe it's still early to give a detailed guidance, as our profit potential also depends on the pace of top line recovery. In general, we aim to strike a balance between scale and efficiency, and on a constant currency basis, we expect BIGO segment to pursue steadily top line recovery, while maintain a relatively stable OP margin, non-GAAP OP margin.As for the all other segment, excluding the impact from our proactive adjustments to certain products, it has been on a continuing trend of narrowing operating losses, which we expect to continue in 2024. So to sum up, we continue to value profit and positive cash flow, and drive further improvement in our operating efficiency. And at Group level, we still expect to remain profitable and continue to generate positive operating cash flows.As for your second question on capital return, if you look at Q3, we have repurchased approximately 43.5 million of our shares during the quarter. And in the first 3 quarters of 2023, our aggregated capital return has reached USD 355 million, through dividends and share buyback, which is representing 156% of our aggregated non-GAAP net income during the corresponding period. So as of the end of Q3, we still have $530 million unutilized quota under our previous share buyback plan. And our board has just authorized an extension of the program for another year. So shareholder returns will remain one of our top focuses, and we will continue to steadily execute our share buyback.

[Operator]

Next question comes from Brian Gong from Citi.

[Brian Gong, analyst]

[Interpreted]I will translate myself. Regarding BIGO Live's recovery, can you elaborate a little bit more on the expected growth momentum across different regions in 2024? What factors are driving this recovery?

[Xueling Li, executive]

[Interpreted]Thank you, Brian. This is David. On your question about BIGO Live's recovery, if you look at our Q3 results, you can see that our revenue recovery in the quarter was better than expected. Looking at a product standalone basis, BIGO Live actually delivered a higher Q-on-Q growth than the BIGO segment, and that was mainly driven by a high single-digit Q-o-Q growth from the developed countries region. Actually, the developed countries have been on a sequential recovery momentum for quite a few quarters already. And we've also booked a positive growth, a decent Q-o-Q recovery for the Southeast Asia region as well during the quarter.And if we look at the driving factors, we believe it's mainly attributed to strong MAU growth and also ARPU recovery. I think it's the result of our continued implementation of highly targeted operational strategies, which actually prioritizes our user acquisition spending, product optimization and other operational resources towards premium end users and also the developed countries.However, as I've just mentioned, given the global macro uncertainties, we believe the pace of recovery across different regions do vary, and that users paying sentiment are still in a fluctuating status. Therefore our -- in our current Q4 guidance, we actually expect BIGO Live to achieve a modest growth year-over-year. I think it's still early to give guidance on '24, but generally speaking, we expect BIGO Live to resume top line year-over-year recovery gradually, driven by MAU growth, together with stabilizing monetization efficiency.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Yiwen Zhang from China Renaissance.

[Yiwen Zhang, analyst]

[Interpreted]So a couple of questions. First, on user side. How should we think about overall user trend into 2024? And then secondly, we see the ongoing impact of the global macro environment. How should we think about this impact to our business, such as in Europe? And what has the company done to mitigate such adverse [ effects ]?

[Xueling Li, executive]

[Interpreted]Thank you, Yiwen. This is David. So on user growth, if we look at our progress in the past 2 quarters, we managed to achieve a rebound in our Group's MAU year-over-year, while we maintain a relatively disciplined marketing spend. Our Group's MAU rebound achieved positive year-over-year growth for 2 consecutive quarters, and BIGO Live's continued double-digit user growth for the 6 consecutive quarters. I believe that overall speaking, our user acquisition efficiency has steadily improved, as shown by an increasing trend in our organic traffic, influencer led traffic and also a higher percentage of premium users.So I think I believe that the current user growth strategy of BIGO Live has been effective. And moving forward, we believe that there are a few actionable points for continuing our user growth. First of all, we will continue to remain targeted in terms of our user acquisition strategy and prioritizing quality of user growth, with a focus on ROI.And second, we continue to leverage our localized operations, with primary focuses on content and social experiences as the key drivers of our user acquisition. In the recent quarters, you can see that BIGO Live has successfully expanded product outreach by -- with our original content. For example, our variety shows mini-series, as well as some third-party high-quality content. And our new feature, Real Match, actually, we see very positive user feedback in Southeast Asia and drove an increase of downloads in those markets. And by collaborating with KOLs, we have maintained a positive momentum in influencer led traffic, especially in Southeast Asia and Latin America and other emerging countries.And thirdly, we will continue to work on product features and user experiences, for targeting user Groups to further improve our user retention. In the recent quarters, we have actually introduced refined content segregation policies and differentiated recommendation algorithm for -- tailored to different target user groups. And after several rounds of iterations, focusing on premium users, new users and female user cohorts, we've actually found that the retention rate and also their user time spend has been consequently improved within those target groups.And as we previously mentioned, BIGO Live has a very diverse global user community, and there is empty room for targeted optimization and we aim to continue to make perfection in each and every dimension and further enhance user experiences within each and every user groups.To sum up, we expect BIGO Live to maintain a relatively healthy and steady user growth in the year '24, for other products. I believe that our goal is still to focus on the core functionalities and contribution of core product value, and once they start to generate a consistent process, then we can -- then we will have a solid foundation to revisit user growth. The actual time line may vary. Some might be slightly ahead. The others may be slightly behind. However, I don't think that it will interfere with the big picture here, which is recovering user growth at Group level.

[Operator]

Next question comes from Lei Zhang from Bank of America Securities.

[Lei Zhang, analyst]

[Interpreted]Want to see any updates on your global business in terms of regulatory risk?

[Fuyong Liu, executive]

[Interpreted]This is Alex. I will take the question. For a global social entertainment company, the regulatory landscape across different markets actually varies and have been -- and it's subject to constant evolvement, and we have always considered business compliance and business safety as the crucial prerequisites for high-quality growth of our global business. And to achieve that, we will remain vigilant in monitoring the regulatory developments, and actively engage with the local regulatory authorities. And internally, we'll continue to optimize our compliance framework and execution, and more proactively adapt our business and operations with the regulatory changes to ensure alignment with the evolving regulatory and industry requirements.So that was the end of our Q&A session. It's been great catching up with everyone. Thank you so much for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

[Operator]

This conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]