JOYY Inc

NASDAQ:YY

Earnings Call Analysis

Revenue Declines Amidst Strategic Adjustments

In 2023, amidst a global economic backdrop of high inflation impacting user spending, the company saw group revenues dip by 6% year-over-year to $2.27 billion, with their largest segment, BIGO, contributing $1.92 billion but experiencing a 3.6% decrease. Despite this, non-GAAP net profits soared by 46.8% to $293 million, largely thanks to BIGO's robust operating margin of 15%. Mobile monthly active users (MAUs) grew slightly by 2.6% to $275 million. The company is shifting away from just live streaming, with non-live segment revenues now 12.7% of the total, up from 5.4% in 2021. They remain committed to cost-effective global expansion and technological innovations, eyeing a continued revenue diversification to bolster long-term growth. The firm resumed shareholder distributions, with $355 million in buybacks and dividends in 2023 alone.

Navigating Positive Groves Amidst Economic Challenges

Despite a challenging economic climate marked by high inflation and regional adversity, the company managed to chart a steady course, reporting group revenues of $570 million in Q4 and $2.27 billion for the full year of 2023. The core business segment, BIGO, was particularly resilient, recording a 3.1% year-over-year increase, reaching $491 million in Q4 revenue, with non-GAAP net profits for the group soaring to $293 million, a nearly 47% jump from the previous year.

Strengthening Dominance In The World of Social Apps

Mobile Monthly Active Users (MAUs) grew by a modest 2.6%, pushing the number to 275 million. BIGO LIVE maintained its status as the world's second-largest social app, an accolade reinforced by a significant 4.5% MAU increase in Q4. The company continued to refine its algorithms and improve user engagement, which led to notable gains like a 23.3% increase in connections and a near 15% boost in direct chat messages between users.

Innovating for Growth While Facing Revenue Headwinds

The company's Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) saw a decline due to macroeconomic factors, but alongside this challenge came strategic pivots that included refining noncore live streaming operations. These adjustments, though momentarily dampening live streaming revenues, set the stage for a recovery in ARPU and revenue towards the latter part of the year. Building on this recovery, the company anticipates a sustained upward trend and is expanding into new monetization models, which have already grown to represent 12.7% of total revenue, a promising rise from 5.4% in 2021.

Rewarding Shareholders and Achieving Cost Efficiency

A focus on cost efficiency led to a streamlining of operations and a reduction in operative expenses. Moreover, the company's commitment to shareholder value remains firm, illustrated by a significant $355 million in shared buybacks and cash dividends, which translates to over 121% of the non-GAAP net profit from 2020-2023. Looking ahead, the company plans to utilize an additional $530 million for share buybacks in 2024, underscoring confidence in long-term growth opportunities.

Consistency in Profitability and Operational Activities

The company has demonstrated consistency in enhanced profitability for the third consecutive year while maintaining productive operational activities. This is evidenced in the operating cash flow of $97.2 million for Q4 and a robust cash position of $3.7 billion at the end of 2023. The organization also achieved its first full-year profitability for verticals Likee and HAGO, marking significant milestones for these entities.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the JOYY Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] 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 Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us today are Mr. David Xueling Li, Chairman and CEO of Joy. 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. dollar. 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 fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. First, we will provide a quick review of our performance for the quarter and the full year.

During the fourth quarter, our group revenue comes at $570 million. Our core business segment, BIGO, recorded revenue for $491 million, a year-over-year increase for 3.1%. Group's non-GAAP net profit is $64.2 million, with BIGO contributing $63.5 million. For the full year of 2023, group's revenue reached $2.27 billion, with around $1.92 billion coming from BIGO. On reflection, 2023 provide to be a year of progress. Our focus on continuous product enhancement, nimble operational strategies and our strong execution yield positive results, despite the prevailing macro challenges.

First, our relentless optimization of operational efficiencies generated enhanced profitability for the third consecutive year. In 2023, our non-GAAP net profit reached $293 million, increased by 46.8% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP net margin was 12.9%, up by 4.6 percentage points year-over-year. BIGO's non-GAAP operation profit reached $288 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 15% higher than our expectation. Notably, our social products under the BIGO segment include BIGO LIVE, Likee and other products were [ quite stable ] in 2023, Additionally, HAGO under the All Other segments generated a positive operation cash flow for the year.

Second, our global average mobile MAUs have now resumed year-over-year growth for the 3 consecutive quarters, even as we adhere to a disciplined marketing spending strategy. In the fourth quarter, our global average mobile MAUs increased by 2.6% year-over-year to $275 million.

Third, we [ solidly ] defined our relationship position within the global social entertainment industry. According to Data.ai's State of Mobile report released in January 2024, BIGO LIVE retained its position as the world's second largest social app based on consumer spending on 2023.

Out of the 29 countries and regions spanning the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific covered by Data.ai, BIGO LIVE ranked among the top 5 social apps in 18 countries and regions and among the top 10 social apps in 7 countries and the regions in terms of customer spending. Other social products also achieved a significant breakthrough in key markets in 2023. In terms of customer spending, Likee claimed the third place among social apps in Saudi, Arab, where HAGO secured a top 10 position in both Indonesia and the Philippines.

Despite this progress, the group and BIGO segment revenues were down by 6% and 3.6% respectively, year-over-year. The decline was primarily due to 2 facts. First, despite middle single digit growth in BIGO's pay user throughout the fourth quarter, BIGO's ARPU was still down year-over-year, primarily due to high inflation, which negatively affected users, paying segment.

Second, to strengthen our global positioning and foster sustainable growth, we proactively made proactive adjustments to certain noncore live streaming operations starting in the second quarter. Those adjustments had a negative impact on our live streaming revenues in certain regions. However, by fine tuning our operations and focusing resources on the more resilient, developed countries, region, we saw BIGO'S ARPU stabilize and a recovery in BIGO'S revenue in the 2 most recent quarters. With our more focused operational strategy, we believe BIGO will continue to recover and grow steadily during 2024.

Looking ahead, we believe there is the simple rule for growth. To capture such potential, the key is to deliver unique experience and value to users, stay relevant and achieve sustainable growth. Such as our priorities for 2024 are as follows: First, we remain committed to our global valuation strategy, while we acknowledge queries regarding the potential impact of YY Live transaction on our future strategies.

We are currently in discussion with Baidu on the next step following the termination of the SPA. And we are unable to disclose any further information at this time. However, we can confirm that our globalization strategy will remain unchanged. The globalization through localization was has been our foremost strategy and our strong global -- localized operational capabilities on the core zone of our global success.

In 2024, we will double down on our emphasize on local talent and drive innovative operations to further build our brand's global influence. Our, [ albeit ], collaborations with KOLs and local partners were instrumental in enhancing product awareness and capitalizing user growth in 2023. Building on this success, we will uphold our efforts to drive further steady rules of our global user community.

Second, we will continue to strike a balance between growth and efficiency. In 2024, well, we anticipate the sustained recovery of BIGO. We also expect to maintain profitability and our positive cash flows at the group level. This year, we remain committed to dedicating resources to build our cost tranches, which encompass both our global operational capacity and our technology.

At the same time, we will prudently explore long-term growth opportunities by driving innovations at the product and operational levels. We have been exploring new monetization models beyond live streaming and achieved a meaningful progress. In 2023, revenue from our nonlive streaming business made up to 12.7% of our total revenues, up from 5.4% in 2021. We expect this upward trend to continue in 2024, further expanding the diversifying our revenue streams, and ultimately, for refining multilevel growth engine for our long-term development.

Now let's take a closer look at our products. We will start at BIGO LIVE. BIGO LIVE maintained its user growth momentum in the fourth quarter with MAUs increased by 4.5% year-over-year to 38.4 million. We saw growth across several regions, with year-over-year MAU increase of 10.9% in Europe, 8.4% in Eastern Pacific region and 12.6% in the Middle East. BIGO LIVE's revenue and pay users sustained their recovery chain and sequential growth. For the first quarter, it's typical, the peak reason of local operational activities worldwide to capitalize on this. BIGO LIVE organize a series of events to discover both outstanding creators across various domains and inspire new and diverse content creation.

On October, BIGO LIVE hosted the second season of its BIGO's most talented creator content in North America. This event attracts talented dancers, musicians, comedians and more. BIGO LIVE also introduced a brand-new Creator Incentive Program across major region around the world. While BIGO LIVE continues to support its experienced professional streamers and PUGC as program, place a stronger emphasis on major streamers and UGC as well as generous economic rewards, BIGO LIVE provides comprehensive training courses for immature streamers, helping newcomers to develop their skill and learn the ropes of successful streaming.

As of the end of 2023, the UGC incentive program has already attracted over 300,000 major streamers. In January, we held our annual year-end flagship event, The BIGO Awards Gala in Las Vegas. The online live streaming of the event attracted over 1.2 million viewers from across the globe. This year, we also hosted supplementary region galas in various locations, including Indonesia, Milan and the Philippines, both the flagship and regional gala saw BIGO LIVE recognize the most outstanding streamers and families of 2023, and the talented creators were invited to give captivation, diverse performance.

The BIGO Awards Gala, typically the streaming of BIGO LIVE has helped numbers of exceptional creators enhance their influence and gain exposure on the global stage. Our galas remains an essential component of our committee to support our creators in their growth journeys and help them maximize their value accretion.

On the fourth quarter, our family-based activities encouraged the user to further explore and engaging in family events. Families provide a robust social contributors and reasonable with users, and we amplified this to drive user acquisition, nurturing long-tail streamers and convert free users to paying users.

On a sequential basis, revenue contributed by family members increased by 5.7%. The number of contracted streamers in families rose by 16.5% and average DAUs in families increased by 5.5%. Throughout the first quarter, we personalized the user experience by refining recommendation algorithm for our diverse user base. Recommendations will continuously fine tune based on user behavior, ensuring each user receives the most relevant feed.

As a result, user engagement, user retention and average viewers' time spent per live sessions all improved. The net user retention rate in the fourth quarter rose by 2.3% sequentially, while average viewer time spent per session surged by 6.4%. BIGO LIVE's Real Match feature continues to foster high-quality social connections among users by refining and optimizing the overall matching progress, including user profiles and matching strategies, we successfully leveraged The Real Match to cultivate a great number of stable user connection. In the fourth quarter, the total number of connections increased by 23.3% sequentially. And the number of direct chat message between matched the user growth by 14.8%.

Next, let's take a look at Likee. Likee maintained its strategy focused on its core, Middle East and Europe markets. In recent quarters, Likee implement a series of targeted operational and product optimization to drive user recovery and stimulate monetization growth in its core regions. Although Likee's overall MAUs [ turned ] down sequentially during the first quarter, it's DAU deal in the core developed country, especially Europe and maintained high single digit growth for the past 4 quarters. In terms of monetization, Likee's revenue for the full year was up year-over-year in 2023. The recovery of DAUs in its core region and involving creator services ecosystem, and a more established business and creator marketplace all contributed to Likee's advertising revenue, growing by nearly 2.4x for the full year of 2023, despite a decline in its live streaming ARPU, which was a negative affected by macroeconomic uncertainties.

The member of Likee's pay user has grown for four consecutive quarters. Thanks to its [ improved ] monetization and disciplined spending, Likee maintained its profitability during the fourth quarter. This means Likee achieved the first full year profitability in 2024, another significant milestone.

On the product front, Likee continues to focus on delivering comprehensive greater services incentive within diverse content creation and fostering community interactions. In the fourth quarter, Likee introduced text and image posting features alongside new monetization options, enabling user subscription for both video collections and individual videos. Those features offer greatest creator flexibility in terms of content formats and open up new opportunities for monetization. Likee also rolled out a variety of interactive games in the fourth quarter to better align with users' evolving entertainment preferences.

During the fourth quarter, Likee continued to enhance its content production and quality, leading to 2.7% sequential growth in average user time spent. Thanks to upgraded interactive features, overall user engagement as mirrored by the ratio of DUA's and MAUs improved by 2.2% in the same period.

Now turning to HAGO. The fourth quarter, HAGO innovative year-end events and new operational features, strong middle single digit sequential revenue growth. HAGO continued to generate positive operating cash flow in the quarter and therefore, achieved its first full year operation cash flow breakeven in 2023. HAGO's users' social interactions also improved during the first quarter. Average time spending per user in social channels increased by 4% sequentially, surpassed 99 minutes. Average time spent in per user in multi-guest voice room saw similar change, increased by 4.9% Q-over-Q.

Finally, let me provide some updates on cash flow and capital return. We continue to generate robust positive operational cash flow, reaching $97.2 million in the fourth quarter. Our commitment to create and retaining value to our shareholders remains an important priority. And our track record is a testament to our long-term dedication.

Over the course of 2023, we repurchased share and distributed cash dividends, averaging an amount of $355 million, equivalent to 121.5% of our revenue non-GAAP net profit from 2020 to 2023, we have, in total, distributed approximately $1.38 billion in capital returns. As of the end of the fourth quarter, we still had approximately $530 million unutilized in the quarter under our current share repurchase program. We intend to steadily execute additional share buybacks under the program in 2024.

Looking ahead, we will continue to cultivate our content and social ecosystem to steadily grow our thriving user community and reinforce our leadership in core geographic regions. At the same time, we will further dedicate our resources to build our costs tranches and carefully explore long-term growth opportunities. By driving innovations in both our products and operations, we expect to further diversify our revenue streams and capture long-term sustainable growth.

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. Before I go into our financial details, we would like to remind you that despite the latest development in the YY Live, to the date of this press release, we have not obtained control over YY Live and therefore, have not consolidated the business. The financial results presented in our press release and this conference call primarily consisted of BIGO excluding YY Live.

Now let me go through the details of our financial results. Despite the ongoing macro uncertainties that ended 2023 with another strong quarter, our total net revenues were $569.8 million in the fourth quarter. Revenues from BIGO segment were $491.3 million, up by 3.1% year-over-year, driven by strong annual increase of 7.9% in BIGO's quarterly paying users and stabilizing up, which was down by 2.6%.

Geographically speaking, as we always prioritized our operational resources towards developed countries and regions, revenues from developed countries was up by double digits year-over-year, outperforming other regions. Cost of revenues for the quarter decreased to $368.4 million, among which, our revenue-sharing fees and content costs decreased to $242.2 million. BIGO's cost of revenues was $309 million, which was up year-over-year, consistent with the rebound in live streaming revenue and elevated creator support during the quarter.

Gross profit was $201.5 million in the quarter, with a gross margin of 35.4%. BIGO's gross profit was $182.3 million, with a gross margin of 37.1%. Our gross operating expenses for the quarter were $199.4 million, compared with $231.2 million in the same period of 2022. Among the operating expenses, sales and marketing expenses decreased to $92.3 million from $100.8 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 the effectiveness of user acquisition.

R&D expenses was $72.6 million, compared with $73.6 million in the same period of 2022. General and administrative expenses decreased to $34.6 million from $41.9 million in the same period of 2022, mainly due to the company's efforts to improve management efficiency during the year. BIGO's operating expenses for the quarter were $131.3 million, compared with $127.8 million in the same period of 2022.

Our group's GAAP operating income for the quarter was $4.8 million. Our non-GAAP operating income for the quarter, which excludes SBC expenses, amortization of intangible assets from business acquisitions, loss of the consolidation and disposal of subsidiaries as well as impairment of goodwill and investments was $27.9 million in the quarter, with a non-GAAP operating income margin of 4.9%.

BIGO's GAAP operating income for the quarter was $53 million and BIGO's non-GAAP operating income was $67 million, representing a non-GAAP operating income margin of 13.6%. Our gross GAAP net income attributable to controlling interest of JOYY in the quarter was $45.8 million, compared to net loss of $377.5 million in the same period of 2022.

GAAP net income margin was 8% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to net loss margin of 62.4% in the same period of 2022. Our net loss last year was primarily due to an impairment loss from an active investment recognized in the quarter. BIGO's GAAP net income in the quarter was $52 million, with a GAAP net margin of 10.6%. Non-GAAP net income attributable to controlling interest of JOYY in the quarter was $64.2 million compared to $50 million in the same period of 2022.

The Group's non-GAAP net income margin was 11.3% in the quarter compared to 8.3% in the same period of 2022. BIGO's non-GAAP net income was $63.1 million, with a non-GAAP net margin of 12.9%. For the fourth quarter of 2023, we booked net cash inflows from operating activities of $97.2 million. We remain a healthy balance sheet with a strong cash position of $3.7 billion as of December 31, 2023.

Now I would like to briefly walk through the full year financial highlights. Our total net revenues for the full year were $2,267.9 million compared to $2,411.5 million in 2022. BIGO's revenues for the full year were $1,924.3 million. We have enhanced profitability at the group level for the third consecutive year.

Our non-GAAP net income attributable to controlling interest and common shareholders of JOYY for the full year of 2023 was $292.5 million, up by 46.8% from $199.3 million in 2022. Non-GAAP net income margin for the full year of 2023 was 12.9%, up from 8.3% in 2022. Notably, BIGO's non-GAAP net income expanded to $302 million in 2023, with its non-GAAP net income margin improved to 15.7% from 14.4% in the prior year. Importantly, we have continued to enhance returns to shareholders through dividends and share repurchase.

In the full year of 2023, we have retained an aggregate amount of $355.4 million to our shareholders through share buybacks and cash dividends, which, altogether, represent 121.5% of our non-GAAP net income. As of the end of 2023, we still have around $530 million unutilized quota under our current share repurchase program. We intend to proceed with a steady execution of additional share buyback in 2024.

Turning now to our business outlook. We anticipate continued top line recovery in the BIGO segment. 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 segments.

Separately, as we have implemented some proactive adjustments to certain operations in the previous quarters, we have had and will continue to have a negative impact on our revenues. At the group level, we expect our net revenues for the first quarter of 2024 to be between $543 million and $560 million. This forecast reflects our preliminary views on the market and operational conditions and business adjustments, which are subject to changes.

In conclusion, balancing between growth and efficacy remains a priority in 2024. We remain committed to dedicating resources to build our cost benefits and prudently explore long-term growth opportunities. With our proven execution capabilities and robust financial position, we are confident that we are well positioned to save 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. Thanks.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question comes from Yiwen Zhang from China Renaissance.

[Yiwen Zhang, analyst]

[Foreign Language]. My question regarding FY 2024 user and the monetization cost trend. Could you discuss, like, BIGO LIVE and, like, ROIC, respectively?

[Xueling Li, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you, Yiwen. This is David. I will take your question. First of all, let's look back at the monetization trend in Q4 thanks to elevated operational activities such as our year-end gala, our revenue came in line with our expectation with BIGO sustaining its top line year-over-year growth for the second consecutive quarter. And in particular, BIGO's 3 core social global products achieved mid-single-digit year-over-year growth in terms of revenue. And this was mainly attributed to a strong growth in their number of paying users and a stabilizing ARPU.

And geographically speaking, considering that we have a more targeted operational strategy with prioritizing high-end users in the developed countries, we can see a continued recovery in the developed countries region. In Q4, the top-line growth rate from developed countries actually reached double digits year-over-year for the BIGO segment.

In 2024, we expect to maintain our nimble and targeted operational strategy. Dependent on ROI and also the recovery pace of the global markets, we will continue to prioritize our resources towards regions with stronger growth, and we expect BIGO segment to continue its top line recovery trend in 2024.

And in terms of our growth drivers, as we mentioned earlier, in the past 2 years, we've been exploring new monetization models beyond live streaming and achieved meaningful progress. Revenue contributed by our non-live streaming businesses have contributed a higher percentage of our group's revenue in the year '23.

And for the coming year of '24, to better satisfy the development needs of our non-live streaming business, we've made some business upgrades and strategy upgrades to these non-live streaming businesses, and we expect our non-live streaming business to further grow and to take up a higher percentage of the group's revenue in the year '24. Eventually, we'd like to fortify a multilevel growth engine for our long-term development.

And in terms of user growth, our group's MAU has resumed positive year-over-year growth for 3 consecutive quarters. Going forward in -- even as we continue to adhere to a disciplined marketing spend and strategy. And going forward into the year '24, we expect to continue to adopt a balanced and sustainable growth strategy at all products, focusing on the quality of user growth and continue to enhance our overall user acquisition efficiency. Next question, please.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley.

[Chun Poon, analyst]

[Foreign Language] My question is related to our margin trend for BIGO and overall group levels in 2024.

[Fuyong Liu, executive]

[Interpreted] This is Alex. I will take your question. If you look at our results for the full year, we actually delivered better-than-expected profits. In particular, if you're looking at BIGO segment, the non-GAAP gross margin of BIGO segment has been 38.3%, up from 37.6% in '22. And the non-GAAP operating margin has been improved to 15%, up from 14.4% in the prior year, and that was mainly due to our continued optimization of our payment channel expenses, server, depreciation expenses and also our sales and marketing expenses.

And looking forward to the year '24, we will continue to optimize our cost structure and improve our operational and management efficiency. At the same time, we expect to prudently reinvest some of our operating profits into operational activities that can drive further revenue growth and also businesses that align with our long-term strategy.

For example, we intend to prudently expand our collaboration with KOL and their incentives. Therefore, specifically for the BIGO segment, while excluding the impact from the proactive adjustment to some noncore live streaming business that we made since the second half of the year '23, we expect BIGO to continue its top line recovery.

And with its non-GAAP operating profit, the amount of non-GAAP operating profit should be roughly stable compared to the year of '23. And for the all other segment, also excluding the impact from the proactive adjustments that we made to certain noncore live streaming businesses since the second quarter of 2023, we expect to continue to narrow the amount of non-GAAP operating loss of this segment for the year of '24 as well.

So all in all, at group level, we will continue to strike a balance between profit and growth. And we will value profit and cash flow self-sufficiency and drive further improvement of our operational efficiencies. All in all, at group level, we expect to maintain profitable, maintain a positive operating cash flow and drive a long-term sustainable growth of the group's business.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Brian Gong from Citi.

[Brian Gong, analyst]

[Foreign Language]

[Xueling Li, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you, Brian. I will take your -- this is David, I will take your question. So since we established our globalization strategy, it's been 9 years. And you can see that we have actually built a very global business with a diversified and balanced revenue mix across different regions. And looking at our group's live streaming revenue for the year '23, developed countries and regions actually contributed around 38%; Middle East, around 22%; Mainland China, around 14%; and the remaining 25% came from Southeast Asia and other areas, which you can see is very, very diversified and balanced.

And even within the developed countries region, we can further break it down into second-tier sub regions such as North America, Europe, Eastern Pacific and others and the contribution among these second-tier subregions are also very dispersed, taking North America as an example, it only accounts for low teens in terms of percentage contribution to the group's overall revenue.

Therefore, you can see that due to the comprehensive differences across the markets, either in terms of politics, economics, cultural and industry development differences, a multinational company will definitely encounter more operational complexity and greater macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties in terms of business operation than those who operate in a single market. However, as we have established our own global operational capacity and accumulated business of scale and also have a relatively proven business model, a globalization strategy with a balanced mix can actually significantly lower the concentration risk of operating in a single market, and it also enables us to tap into a much greater growth opportunities at the global level.

Therefore, moving forward, we will continue to pursue a balanced globalization strategy and remain nimble and targeted in our operational strategy. We will continue to prioritize our resources investment into regions with a stronger growth potential dependent on ROI and also market recovery. Next question -- final question, please.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Henry Sun from JPMorgan.

[Hongrui Sun, analyst]

[Foreign Language] My question is about shareholder return. Could you share any new thoughts and outlook in this area?

[Fuyong Liu, executive]

[Interpreted] This is Alex. I will answer your question. In the year '23, we remain very active in returning value to our shareholders. For the full year, we have dedicated around $355 million in shareholder return, which contributed -- which is equivalent to around 121.5% of the group's annual non-GAAP net profit.

And for the year '24, we'll say that creating and returning value to our shareholders remain an important priority for the management. As of the end of '23 we will have around $530 million unutilized quota under our share repurchase program. And actually, from January to March 15, we have already repurchased an additional 25 million of our shares. And for the year '24, we expect to continue to execute additional share buybacks and strive to improve our execution consistency in the new year.

So that was the end of this conference call. Thank you so much for joining today, and we expect to be speaking with everyone next quarter. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]