Full information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as required under the applicable law. Additionally, the discussion today will include both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only.
For reconciliation of these non-gap measures to the most directly comparable gap measures, please refer to our earnings release issue earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our IR website at ir.zhuhu.com. Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Wang Han, CFO of Zhuhu. Han, please go ahead. Thank you, Yolanda.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Zhuhu's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, founder, chairman, and CEO of Zhuhu. 2024 marked a transformative turnaround for Zhuhu, where we successfully executed the strategic roadmap laid out at the first of the year and delivered results that far surpassed our expectations. The fourth quarter was a strong finish for 2024,
with robust profitability. For the first time ever, we reported adjusted net income of RMB 97.1 million compared to an adjusted net loss of RMB 91.3 million in the same period last year. Moreover, we swung from an adjusted net operating loss of RMB 165.3 million in the first quarter last year to an adjusted operating profits of RMB 23.1 million this quarter.
The strategic decisions made at the beginning of 2024, combined with consistent quarter-after-quarter execution, yielded significantly better than expected financial results this quarter, showcasing the strengths of our strategic judgment and execution capabilities. By prioritizing community trust and enhancing the core user experience, we made a deliberate choice to forego some peripheral users.
This approach not only saved the community user acquisition related expenses by 80% year over year, which is one of the key drivers to profitability, it also resulted in notable growth in key engagement metrics, time span, retention, and content creation while maintaining a stable overall user base. AI represents a historic opportunity for Zhuhu. As the AI landscape evolves, it is more and more clear that
authentic, professional, and in-depth content created by real individuals and most valuable assets to help AI overcome hallucinations. And this is the most unique asset that Jiuhu has been accumulating for 14 years. In essence, the Jiuhu community is a dynamic network of real experts who continuously share knowledge, experiences, and insights.
Through rigorous community peer review, content is validated through discussions across diverse fields, driving the creation of high quality and multidimensional content. Just two days ago, Zhida underwent another major upgrade. Users can now clearly see the contribution of our professional creators to each piece of Zhida's output. They can also proactively engage with specific Zhuhu content creators
who are real experts with certificated professional backgrounds within the community. Currently, JIRA has achieved over 10 million MAU on our app and PC platforms and continues to receive positive user feedback in key areas such as response completeness, accuracy, and reduction of hallucinations. Going forward, we will continue enhancing our product in this direction.
further strengthening the synergies between Jira and Juhu community while reinforcing trust between users and creators through professional, authentic, and in-depth content. Moving to our user and content. During the first quarter, we maintained our focus on improving user engagement, retention, and acquisition efficiency. Average MAUs were 81.4 million, up 0.3% sequentially.
A strong result given our strategic decision to decrease community-related promotional expenses by over 45% from Q3 and nearly 90% year-over-year. This focused approach delivered clear results during the quarter with improved user engagement. Time spent per DAU grew 23% year-over-year, while core user retention rates improved both sequentially and year-over-year.
Throughout 2024, we comprehensively optimized our community ecosystem through product enhancement, refined content strategies, and algorithm upwards. This initiative has made high-quality content more discoverable and consumable, inspiring and motivating creators to produce their best work. As a result, we have witnessed the most insightful and dynamic discussions in various professional domains take place in our community.
making us the go-to platform for professional and in-depth discussions. Notably, our community has already become a center for AI-related topics long before the engaging discussions sparked by DeepSeek's open-source release of the R1 model and has continued to gain momentum since then. In the first quarter, both AI-related content volume and AI-focused creators grew more than 50% every year.
Our community of creators includes many leading entrepreneurs and industry pioneers who engage in multidimensional, professional, and in-depth discussions, such as Wang Xinxin, CEO of Unitrix Robotics, who has been an active contributor in Zhihu's community since 2016. In early March, we were honored to be selected by DeepSig as exclusive Chinese content platforms to release the latest details and cost-benefit analysis of their open-source model.
This demonstrates that we are the community with the highest concentration of AI professionals and entrepreneurs and the most important discussion hub for AI trends across the Internet. Users join our community for insightful discussions spanning diverse topics. For example, during the U.S. president election cycle, our community generated more than 23,000 answers across nearly 200 questions, driving over 140 million page views of related content.
We remain dedicated to discovering new high-quality content creators and supporting their growth through advanced creation tools and operational initiatives unique to our platform. This commitment ensures a dynamic creator base and a continuous flow of diverse, authentic, and professional content. As of the end of Q4, cumulative content volume on our platform reached 874.6 million pieces.
an increase of 12.9% year-over-year. This included 654.8 million Q&A entries of 10.5% year-over-year. The Google community is now home to 77.7 million content creators of 8.9% year-over-year. The growing vibrancy of our content creators community is reflected in the growing daily activities of high-tier content creators.
Income-generating creators increased substantially by over 22% year-over-year during the quarter, with high-chair creators accounting for the most significant gains. The revenue share of ZhiZhi plan grew by nearly 20% between September and December 2024. During the quarter, we prioritized onboarding of new high-chair creators.
Notably, many podcasters have demonstrated their ability to develop exceptional visual and written content that drives strong user engagement with our community. Within 30 days of joining, these creators achieved a daily active rate of over 90% on average. In late January 2025, Li Ziqi, the renowned short video creator celebrated for showcasing the beauty of Chinese culture, officially became Zhihu's intelligible culture heritage officer.
During the Chinese New Year holiday, her insights into the first World Intangible Cultural Heritage Edition Spring Festival and detailed explanations of Siu Chuan's holiday costumes sparked widespread community discussions about regional traditions. As we continue optimizing the creators and user experiences and enhanced community atmosphere, negative user feedback has declined consistently, while positive engagement has increased.
Average daily engagements per DAU rose consistently on a sequential basis throughout the year, with the fourth quarter's monthly average upward surging over 30% year-over-year. A healthy and consistent active community ecosystem remains our core assets, providing us with strong competitive advantages in AI era. Moving to commercialization.
Since April 2004, we have prioritized the core user experience and community trustworthiness by actively managing the proportion of commercial content distributed and ensuring differentiated experiences for distinct user groups. This strategy has driven the ongoing optimization of our community ecosystem and enhanced the trustworthiness of our brand. While this approach has short-term trade-offs, including sunsetting lower quality revenue streams,
We're confident that the long-term value from students and trust in our brand and improved health of our community will prove more impactful. Total revenues during the fourth quarter were RMB 859.2 million, which revenues for full year 2024 came in at RMB 3,598.9 million, a decrease of 14.3% from last year as a result of strategic adjustments away from lower quality revenue.
That means your performance by segment. For pay membership business, we focus on maximizing ROI in an environment of rising user acquisition costs and challenge expenses. We drove an increase in output of 7% sequentially during the quarter while maintaining a relatively stable membership base. Average monthly pay members were 14.1 million during the quarter, a slightly decrease of 0.8% every year.
while pay membership revenue were RMB 420.2 million. Our leadership in premium short-form pay content, strengthened as our Zhihu Yanyan Story brand continues to gain user mindshare. In December 2024, Zhihu Yanyan Story hosted the 2024 Short Story Impact Night in Bo'ao, Hainan province, honoring 76 outstanding creators and stories.
This event introduced new categories like Best Audio Drama and Rookie Creators of the Year. For expanding the influence of Zhihu Yansari creators across platforms and reinforcing our multimedia short-form content ecosystem. With an improved content supply and creator ecosystem, income-generating creators for pay members shared by 78.3% year-over-year during the fourth quarter.
We also further unlock the monetization potential of Yanyan Stories IP, driving a nearly 50% sequential increase in IP revenue during the first quarter. Going forward, we'll continue leveraging the strengths of our premium short-form paid content to drive paid membership engagement while exploring new diverse paid content formats and monetization opportunities. Turning to marketing services,
In line with our company-wide focus on trust and quality, we are establishing a new baseline for marketing services revenue, which reached RMB315.9 million during the quarter. Encouragingly, the rate of decline narrowed compared to the third quarter of 2024, with revenue growing 23.1% sequentially.
Brand advertising was resilient, maintaining a stable performance despite the high base last year. Key clients increasingly recognized the premium value of our high-quality user base and brand equity. This is clearly seen by year-over-year increase in brand advertiser output during the 2024, with standout growth in sectors like e-commerce, IT and 3C, beauty and personal care, FMCG and healthcare.
as we streamline the acquired business. Our self-operated business maintained robust momentum, delivering double-digit growth year-over-year and achieving a turnaround in operating profitability. The strong increase in revenue from our self-operated business was driven by our strategic focus on high-performing courses categories like AGI and film post-production, which remained highly popular during the quarter.
Deep community integration continues to foster a loyal user base with an extended lifecycle. Operating efficiency initiatives show further ROI improvements during the quarter, with over 80% of courses now delivering returns exceeding 2x, leading a clear path towards profitability for our vocational training business. The integration of advanced AI is accelerating these gains in operating efficiency. During the quarter,
AI drove conversion efficiency gains by 10% and reduced cost by 20% for our proprietary live streaming platform. We also piloted a new AI-driven sales model during the quarter, which is already making solid progress. For example, the customer service to user ratio for our proprietary writing course tripled when we compared to the manual processes we previously deployed.
Going forward, our priorities include deeper integration of our vocational training business across our community, developing additional proprietary high margin courses that address evolving user demand, and fostering greater engagement. Simultaneously, we will expand the deployment of AI to enhance operational efficiency and accelerate our path to sustainable long-term profitability.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, we not only drove a turnaround in both net income and operating profits, but also achieved a double-digit net margin, demonstrating our profitability potential. AI presents a historic opportunity for growth, and our substantial cash reserves gives us the flexibility to invest in strategic initiatives that may evolve short-term losses.
We view this investment as crucial steps towards achieving long-term profitability and maximizing our competitive advantages in the AI area. From an operational standpoint, we will focus on reinforcing the trust and credibility that underpins the GQ community and unlock the commercial opportunities by catering to evolving needs of high-value users and consumers.
We strengthened our presence in automotive sectors by hosting the first E-Club Qingzhi Technology Conference in Chengdu, where we brought together key industry players like BYD, Chang'an Qiyuan, and Exelon alongside with our automotive expert network. The event facilitated in-depth, professional, and impartial discussions on EV trends and technologies, generating 630 million online impressions and 30 million video views.
For CCS business, content optimization remains our central focus. We reduced low-quality commercial content by over 50% year-over-year and sequentially during the quarter, further enhancing advertisers' trustworthiness for users. This drove a 15% sequential decline in negative user feedback on commercial content. Looking to 2025, we will empower more emerging product categories
especially those with technological barriers, to increase their market exposure and credibility leveraging our professional ecosystem and the trust of our high value users. At the same time, we will deepen greater partnerships, enable them to monetize their expertise and maximize earnings throughout platform. Lastly, our vocational training business, where revenue decreased 50.4% every year to RMB 84 million in the quarter,
We believe this will solidify our unique position and competitive advantage in AI area as we continue to explore innovative AI applications that effectively leverage Shuhua's distinct strengths. This concludes Mr. Zhulian's remarks. Now I will review the details of our fourth quarter financials. For a complete overview of our fourth quarter 2024 results, please refer to our press release issued earlier today.
The fourth quarter of 2004 was a true milestone for us, an inflection point that underscores our strategic focus and strong execution. For the first time, we achieved positive operating profits and net income on both GAAP and non-GAAP basis, a clear testament to the strength of our approach and the momentum we have built. Total revenues for the quarter were RMB 859.2 million.
compared with RMB 1,138.3 million in the same period of 2023, reflecting our strategy to prioritize trust, quality, and return on investment. Our revenue mix has become more diversified, with paid membership and vocational training contributing over 62% of total revenues. Our market services revenue for the quarter was RMB 315.9 million, compared with RMB 465.2 million in the same period of 2003.
The decline was mainly driven by our proactive and continuous optimization of service offerings strategically aimed at enhancing margins. Pay membership revenue was RMB 420.2 million compared with RMB 455.9 million in the same period of 2003. While our average monthly subscribing members saw a slight year-over-year decline, our premium paid content continued to maintain high engagement rates, well, among
We purchased another 33 million Class A-oriented shares for an aggregate value of US$38.5 million via tender offers, which we completed on November 8, 2004. In total, the company purchased 75.3 million Class A-oriented shares for an aggregate value of US$1.2 billion.
Looking ahead to 2025, we will focus on continuously enhancing the trustworthiness of our community while strengthening our profitability for strengthening our mutually reinforcing journey of shareholder returns and enterprise value growth. This concludes my prepared remarks on our financial performance for this quarter. I turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question,
Please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. In the interest of time, please ask one question each time. If you have any follow-up questions, please go back to the queue. Once again, that's star 11 for questions. We will now take our first question from the line of Xueqing Zhang from CICC. Please ask your question, Xueqing.
Thank you, Manager Chen, for accepting my question. First of all, congratulations to the company on winning its first profit in both the GAAP and non-GAAP levels in the fourth quarter. My question is about the call-to-response.
Can you share with us the user guide and the data of Search for Answers? What is Zhihu Zhida's impact on the ecosystem of the Zhihu community? Also, from an industry perspective, are we worried that the Zhihu will be replaced by AI on the basis of new LMM reasoning capabilities? Thank you.
paying users. Well, our pool declined year over year. It grew 7.3% sequentially. Vocational training revenue was RMB $84 million compared with RMB $169.3 million in the same period of 2003. The decrease was primarily due to our strategic refinement of acquired business with a continued focus on prioritizing the fast-growing self-operated programs. Our revenues were RMB $39.1 million.
compared with RMB 48 million in the same period of 2003. Our gross profit for the first quarter was RMB 540.7 million, compared with RMB 673.1 million in the same period of 2003. Driven by improved operational efficiency, our gross margin expanded further year over year, reaching 62.9%.
Driven by disciplined cost management and enhanced efficiency from technological innovation, our total operating expenses per quarter declined by 37.9% year-over-year to RMB 528.8 million. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 40.1% to RMB 316.2 million from RMB 527.6 million in the same period of 2023.
The decrease was primarily driven by more disciplined promotional spending and a decrease in personnel-related expenses. Research and development expenses decreased by 37% to RMB 146.6 million from RMB 232.6 million in the same period of 2003. The decrease was primarily attributable to more efficient spending on technological innovation.
General and administrative expenses decreased by 27.5% to RMB66 million or RMB91.1 million in the same period of 2003. As of December 31st, 2004, the company has cash and cashier equivalents, term deposit, restricted cash, and short-term investment of RMB4.9 billion compared with RMB5.5 billion as of December 31st, 2003.
Since our Hong Kong IPO up until December 31st, 2024, we repurchased 31.1 million Class A ordinary shares for an aggregate value of U.S. dollar 66.5 million on the open market and subsequently canceled them. We also repurchased a total of 11.1 million Class A ordinary shares for an aggregate value of U.S. dollar 17.8 million to be utilized upon vesting of restricted shares in future. In addition,
Thanks, management, for taking my question, and congratulations on the first profit quarter on both GAAP and non-GAAP basis. My question about Zhihu Zhida, could management share your insights regarding the US size data of Zhihu Zhida? How does it benefit the overall Zhihu community ecosystem?
Additionally, from an industrial perspective, is there any concern that with the advancements in LLM inference capabilities, Zhihu could be replaced by AI? Thank you. Thank you, Xueqing. I am Zhou Yuan. Thank you for your constant attention to Zhihu. Actually, you asked three questions just now. The first question is about
In the past six months, Zhihu's data has been growing very healthily. The user size of Zhihu has increased from millions to tens of millions. This process is the result of a natural growth. It mainly comes from the users' feedback and reputation.
Thank you, Xueqin. This is from Zhufu CEO, Zhou Yuan. Thanks for your long time support for the company. So I will just start by addressing your first question. Over the past six months, Zhida's user-based data grow healthily, and the MAU have grown from the scale of about 1 million to 10 million.
And we believe this strong organic growth has been driven by the high repeat visits and the positive word-of-mouth. The second question is about the direct impact on the community. Today, we can see that Zhihu community has an irreplaceable and unique expert network.
And to your second question, how did that benefit our overall community?
So Drupal community has an irreplaceable and a unique position over the whole internet with this network of experts. This network is increasingly crucial because the extension of the AI-generated content and AI hallucination has made trustworthy content and environment a rigid demand.
Although many AI products have already existed today, the lack of ability to generally connect with real people
Especially experts. Now we have a new solution for this problem or this demand. We have released the latest version of Call-to-Answer in the past two days. The PC version has been fully released. The mobile version, which is the app version, is now being decoded. You should be able to decode it soon. Today, you will find that we have two
a new way to connect AI and the community. In AI, in Alipay, the Alipay-directed inference results can be directly transferred to a real user in the community. And second, you can also directly go to the app and introduce a user, so that each Alipay user becomes your knowledge base for interaction.
And we believe this question may be answered in an alternative way. We have a very latest update that has perfectly addressed this need. And we can see now the PC platform is fully rolled out and another Zuhu app is already in the grayscale testing now.
In this update, we've introduced two new ways to build these connections within the community through AI. Firstly, the inquiry of results of Zhuhu Zhiba can now directly be traced back to the actual community contributor. And secondly, you can directly, as mentioned, special contributor. These effectively turning average Zhuhu experts
into users' interaction personal knowledge base. We are very happy that after the launch of the new guide, we see that there are a lot of positive user reviews in the community. This afternoon, I just met Scott, an excellent player in the field of 3G games and drawing. His review is that
He said that if the call-to-action before the upgrade is defined as a high-efficiency AI search tool, then the call-to-action after the upgrade becomes a way of connecting people. This is very call-to-action. Another owner said that he used to think that the industry's bigwigs were unreachable. Now, through the app function, they can stand on the shoulders of giants. The call-to-action update really
I don't have much to say. I hope everyone can use Alipay more.
And we are very glad to see, let's say, that we received many positive feedbacks from our own content creators. I just came across an excellent content this afternoon. This is from one of our content creators, Scotty, who specializes in single-player games, painting, and art topics.
Gauti just mentioned if the pre-update Zhihu Jida was defined as an efficient AI search tool, then the post-upgrade Jida has now become a form of human-to-human connection. This is very in Zhihu style. And I will just quote from another Zhihu content creator.
This creator said, I used to think industry leaders were out of reach, but now with this app feature, I can stand on the shoulders of giants. This Juga Update has truly taken knowledge accessibility to the extreme. So, I will just pause here a little bit, and you are all welcome to try it out more.
Now, just to address your third question is about whether AI could replace Zhihu. We believe, actually it's uncontroversial, AI will significantly enhance Zhihu's development.
In an AI-driven era, we believe trustworthiness is paramount, making an expert network very essential.
Zhihu has the strongest expert network available.
The evolution of technology and industry is very good at using and embracing new technologies, including AI technology. They will become a stronger combination of people and AI. In fact, professional creators will not only be replaced by AI, but also 10% of the top experts in each industry will be expanded. As more and more experts in the community, the content ecology will become more credible and better.
And second, Zhihu's expert network has attracted pioneers from diverse industries who lead cut-edging transformations and industry evolutions. As they embrace and use new technologies, including AI technologies, they embody a seamless integration of human and AI capabilities. So far from being replaced by AI,
The value of the top tier experts, for example, the top 10% with their respective industries, will actually be amplified. As more and more experts join and engage with our community, our content ecosystem will become even more credible and trustworthy.
Thank you for your question, Thomas. This is from Zhibu CEO, Zhou Yuan.
So, this year, our focus is on strengthening social interactions and enhancing our brand as a trusted content platform. We have already seen very encouraging developments since the start of this year. So, in the product environment direction, we have been developing social circles
and new ideas suitable for the shorter form and high-frequency content, and columns and podcasts for longer-form content and subscription plans, establishing these as important values for community engagement and content consumption. In terms of content and brand,
such as Dazhu Review Group, Yanclang, and Zhihu's Science and Technology. These content IPs will be the focus of this year. We will further categorize these content IPs and continue to expand new native influence IPs. This will also provide new business cooperation opportunities on the basis of Hang Shi's Kexin content brand.
In terms of content branding, IEP initiatives such as our Zhuhu Renewal Jewelry and Yin Club and Assign Season will be key areas of focus this year. We also plan to expand into more specialized verticals and introduce new original IEPs, further strengthening our
position as a trusted content brand while creating new commercial opportunities. So I want to say that this professional influencer and credible content brand is undoubtedly the most important asset in today's era. After that, with enough differentiated advantages, our work will continue to make this asset increase and grow.
So in this era, we believe the influential experts, contributors, and the trusted content brand are most valuable than ever. This is where we stand out. We have a very clear-cut advantage here, and our priority is to maximize the value of these assets.
You just mentioned the combination of AI work and AI. AI plus community is undoubtedly the direction of our important products. AI will also promote the whole ceiling of our product strategy. Specifically, one is that with the launch of the new version, we have already started to use completely different methods to connect AI and community in depth.
With the credibility and the trust at our foundation, we can leverage AI to further improve the efficiency of high-quality content production.
and dimensionation, attracting and serving an even wider range of users. Thank you. Thank you for your question. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please ask your question, Thomas.
Good evening, thank you for your question. My question is also related to AI. I would like to ask you, will there be any changes or innovations in terms of product this year? On the other hand, will there be any new directions in terms of AI? Thanks management for taking my question. My question is also about AI. What other changes and innovation can we expect on the product side this year?
Are there any new directions about AI integration? Thank you. Okay, thank you for your question, Thomas. The focus of this year's product is the improvement of social and credible content brands. Since this year, I guess you have seen a lot of positive changes happening. In terms of products,
This integrated work will continue to evolve in order to better expand the influence of expert networks. The second direction is that there are many workflows in the community that will be supplemented by AI, which will lead to a higher quality of content production, including the efficiency of transmission.
So, I believe, as you mentioned, you want to know more about our plan to better integrate AI with our entire community. So, our AI-related initiatives will take these questions to the next level, and we will advance on two fronts.
The latest version of GDG, we have implemented completely new ways for AI to integrate with our community. We will continue deepening this integration to amplify the impact of our expert network. And second, AI will empower many of our community workflows
boosting the efficiency of high-quality content creation and distribution.
We believe this is a new beginning for us. In the era of AI, we are exploring and experimenting with many new possibilities. We believe that thanks to Zhuhu's continuous accumulation of high quality content, we are well positioned to better embrace this new era. Thank you. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Daisy Chin from Haitong International. Please ask your question, Daisy. Thank you, Director Chen. As you just mentioned, the impact of AI models on the digital economy. I would like to ask a more detailed question. I would like to ask if your products for online marketing are helpful.
Good evening, Benjamin. Thank you for taking my question. You just have mentioned that you just have talked about the AI and the large network model. How do you – yeah. And the inference about – the inference on the Zhuhou community.
My question is about how can the AI and the network model benefit to online marketing products? Do you have any example or data to share? Thank you. Thank you for your question, Daisy. I'm Wang Han from CIFO. It seems that most of the players in the industry are still in the exploration stage of AI advertising marketing model. But I can share some of our thoughts.
Thank you for the question, Dizzy. This is from Zhihu CFO Wang Han. AI is changing the monetization model of advertising, and the most industry players are now staying in the exploration stage. But I can share some of our current thinking. Have you noticed a very interesting phenomenon? In the past, what did people say about the challenges of Alipay?
I don't know whether you may notice or not, what were once seen as the challenges for Zhukou in traditional internet era has now become our biggest competitive advantage and are in the most AI-native way.
In the past,
Drupal has been recognized for its highly knowledgeable users and in-depth content features, which were maybe regarded as difficult to monetize in the traditional Internet paradigm that prioritized high traffic and lengthy user engagement. And these may often favor entertainment-focused platforms.
However, in the AI era, this has completely reversed. AI LLM now prioritizes the most high-quality answers generated by top-tier experts.
We believe that net margins typically range from 25% to 40% or even higher to 50%. This reflects the fundamental advantage of UGC platforms over media platforms, which incur copyright-related costs. Speaking of the prospect of profit in 2025, we believe that AI is a historic opportunity.
Looking ahead to our profitability outlook for 2025, we believe AI represents a historical opportunity for Zhihu. Also, given our strong cash position, we may choose to maintain
Consequently, traffic is increasing down towards the highest quality content. I can give you an example here. For example,
This example comes from the chatbox. Many popular AI chatbots rely heavily on GQ's real expert-generated content for their index responses, attributing its considerable importance.
If this is the case, advertisers will pay more attention to the content and word of mouth in the call station. In the past, everyone did SEO, the optimization of the search engine. Now there is a more and more established consensus that everyone should layout the SEO of the AI era in advance, which is called GEO, which stands for Generative Engine Optimization. Do you want to get more commercial exposure and commercial opportunities in the answer of AI? Then you have to do more content in the call of the highest authority. Isn't it a variable choice?
So for advertisers, they are becoming increasingly focused on the content marketing and brand reputation management on our platform. Previously, the industry often mentioned on the SEO, search engine optimization, and today,
This is shifting towards geo or generative engine optimization to gain visible in AI-generated answers. So, if you aim to maximize business opportunities and monetization efficiency within AI-generated results, actively managing their content, you should actively managing your content on our platform.
Thank you. Thank you for your question. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vicky Wei from Citi. Please ask your question, Vicky.
Thanks management for taking my question and congrats on a very solid quarter.
My question is regarding to the long-term margin profile. So how should we think of the long-term profitability of Zhihu? And how should we think of the 2025 margin outlook for this year? And how should we think of the cash utilization? Thank you. Thank you for your question, Vicky. This is from Zhihu's CFO Wang Han.
This Q4, we achieved profitability for the first time in our history with a double-digit non-gap net profit margin of 11%.
If we look broadly across the global landscape of the UGC platform, the user-generated content platform,
a slightly overall loss temporarily to continue pursuing and capturing the potential opportunities arising from deeper integration between Drupal and AI. Regarding the use of cash, although our market value has risen a little in the past few months, it is still much lower than that of cash. At this obviously lower stage, we will still carry out a real-time public market repurchase. In fact, in the past period, we are also the company with the highest share repurchase ratio among medium-to-large listed companies.
So, regarding cash utilization, although our market value has increased in recent months, it still remains significantly below our net cash position. At this clear undervalued stage, we will continue to conduct open mark buybacks at appropriate times. In fact, looking back over the past period,
We have been one of the U.S. listed Chinese companies with the highest share repurchase ratio. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. This concludes our answers. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I'll turn the conference back to Yolanda for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you, operator, and thank you all again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or request an adversary. Thank you. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.