Kanzhun - Earnings Call - Q4 2024
March 11, 2025
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Kanzhun Limited's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Wenbei Wang, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me today are our Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Mr. Jonathan Peng Zhao, and our Director and CFO, Mr. Phil Yu Zhang. Before we start, we would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations and observations, that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors not under the company's control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different. The company cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and do not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information, except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only.
For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at irzhipin.com. With that, I will now turn the call to Jonathan, our Founder, Chairman, and CEO.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Hello everyone, thank you for joining our company's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. On behalf of the company's employees, management team, and board of directors, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our users, investors, and friends who have continuously believed in us and supported us.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Let me first provide an overview of our financial performance. In the fourth quarter, the company achieved a GAAP revenue of RMB 1.82 billion, up 15% year-on-year. Our adjusted net income, which excludes share-based compensation expenses, reached RMB 720 million, reflecting a 15% year-on-year growth. In the fourth quarter, average verified monthly active users, or MAU, on the BOSS Zhipin app increased by 28% year-on-year to 52.7 million.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
For the full year of 2024, the company achieved a GAAP revenue of RMB 7.36 billion, up 24% year-on-year. Adjusted net income, which excludes share-based compensation expenses, reached RMB 2.71 billion, up 26% year-on-year. Furthermore, our adjusted operating income, excluding other income such as wealth management income, was RMB 2.32 billion for full year 2024, rising by 41% year-on-year. In 2024, we successfully delivered on our profit commitments.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Share-based compensation expenses as a percentage of revenue in 2024 decreased by 2.3 percentage points compared to 2023, and are expected to further decline in both absolute value and proportion of revenue in 2025.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
In 2024, we attracted nearly 49.5 million newly added verified users, setting a new record for annual user growth. At the same time, we reduced marketing expenses compared to 2023, thanks to our growing brand recognition and enhanced bilateral network effects, which have significantly improved customer acquisition efficiency. As of December 31, 2024, the company has provided service to over 225 million users and 16.6 million enterprises.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
MAU on the BOSS Zhipin app for the full year reached 53 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 25.3%. In the year, we facilitated over 1.85 billion successful resume exchanges based on mutual consent between job seekers and employers, which is what we refer to as achievement in daily operation.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Despite macroeconomic challenges in 2024, the company's user growth-driven revenue growth model remains effective, driving notable improvement in both revenue scale and profitability.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Some may argue that we are a more beta-driven business. However, I would like to emphasize that our business model is so much more than that.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
To date, user expansion has remained our core growth driver.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
The structural revenue growth driven by sustained user penetration is clearly reflected in the following key metrics. First, increasing revenue contribution from blue-collar segments. Blue-collars' user growth boosted their revenue contribution to overall revenue in 2024 up to 38%. Notably, the manufacturing sector emerged as a bright spot for blue-collar growth, posting the fastest growth rate among all industries.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign langugae]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Second, the revenue contribution from non-tier-one cities continues to grow.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Third, the revenue contribution from micro and small enterprises continued to rise. Micro and small enterprises are defined as businesses with fewer than 20 employees.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
These revenue gains jump from structural shifts in user growth. At the core of this success is the company's commitment to enhancing the user experience, which is underpinned by our continuous product and service optimization. It's not hard to imagine that within the online recruitment service industry, blue-collar workers, particularly those in the manufacturing sector, lower-tier cities, and micro-small enterprises are among the more challenging user groups to serve. Breakthroughs and growth in these areas not only validate our user-first strategy but also highlight the significant potential for our future user expansion and revenue growth.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Additionally, we have observed that recruitment demand from white-collar and large enterprises has stabilized. Enterprises with over 10,000 employees demonstrated the fastest quarter-on-quarter revenue growth in the fourth quarter.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
I want to highlight one more aspect of our products and services. Many investors and friends have shown interest in the company's exploration of closed-loop services initiatives, which we do have some progress. In 2024, the number of enterprises which we have provided placement-like service was near 40,000.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
In 2024, the total number of paid enterprise customers reached 6.1 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 17.3%. While the active user paying ratio remains stable, the average revenue per paying user, or ARPU, achieved year-on-year growth both for the full year and in the fourth quarter.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Now let me introduce some AI implementation. We faced rollout in version 13.030 of the BOSS Zhipin app, which was released across major app stores around March 7th.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
I'll start with our AI2C or AI for job seeker side updates. First, on job seeker's interaction for job search, we have added an AI-powered question-based search function, something many of you are likely already familiar with, and also kept our traditional keyword search. The search engine is powered by both our proprietary model called Nanbeige and the deployment of DeepSeek R1.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
The second thing on the job seeker side is we have released an AI bot to help job seekers with interview coaching. This feature primarily targets those who have graduated within the past three years. This AI bot has been trained on millions of real interviews, and its core skill is that he's very good at interviewing. As such, there are lots of things he can do. We will go step by step.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Now let's take a look at AI to business, which is the recruiter side. Our first application for enterprise users is an AI agent. Recruiters participating in the beta testing can communicate their needs to the agent, which can perform the following tasks: one, understand the recruiter's specific requirements; two, generate a curated list of candidates from our database; three, offer justification for its recommendations; four, deliver these results according to the recruiter's available schedule.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
For the second application, a beta version has been launched to a selected group of blue-collar enterprise users. The process unfolds as follows: once a recruiter selects a candidate they deem suitable and explicitly express their willingness to proceed by saying, "I'm willing to give this candidate a try," the AI handles all subsequent communication on behalf of the recruiter. The communication process continues until the AI either obtains a job seeker's confirmation of interest through the exchange of contact information, or the job seeker rejects the outreach of the recruiter who is represented by AI.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
On the operational front, AI has huge potential to improve management efficiency and reduce cost. For instance, leveraged AI for security review has improved our audit efficiency by 30%. Over the past two years, as our user base has expanded rapidly, the workload related to user security protection has increased accordingly. However, AI has enabled us to manage this without a proportional increase in staffing.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Next, I will briefly update you on this year's spring recruitment season. Following the Spring Festival, the recruitment market continued its steady recovery trend that began towards the end of 2024. Post Chinese New Year in February, the company's key metrics, including number of active users, active job postings, and new job postings, all reached historical highs. The average daily new job postings after Chinese New Year increased by more than 10% compared to the same period last year. Peak daily active users on the BOSS Zhipin app reached approximately 20 million, which are also historical high.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
A very important highlight on the supply and demand side: the job seeker to enterprise user ratio among new users improved compared to the same period last year, extending the positive momentum that began in November 2024.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
From an industry perspective, manufacturing, logistics, automotive, healthcare, education, and professional services have exhibited strong performance. In terms of job type, blue-collar positions have grown faster due to our user expansion, while white-collar roles have also demonstrated an improving year-on-year trend.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Notably, since the Spring Festival, average daily posting of AI-related jobs have surged by over 60% year-on-year, signaling a revitalized ecosystem for emerging businesses. This growth in AI-related roles, in turn, has fueled good sequential momentum in demand for product and technical positions since the Spring Festival.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Last but not least, we are very committed to shareholder returns. In 2024, the company repurchased approximately RMB 229 million worth of shares, accounting for 3.7% of total outstanding shares. This underscores our confidence in the company's long-term growth. That concludes my part of the call. I will now turn it over to our CFO Phil for the review of our financials. Thank you.
Phil Yu Zhang (Director and CFO)
Thanks, Jonathan. Hello everyone. Now let me walk through the details of our financial results of the fourth quarter and the full year of 2024. We delivered solid financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2024. The recruitment market environment in 2024 was challenging, but we are pleased to see that recruitment demand gradually stabilized towards the end of the year. Under such conditions, our revenues grew by 15% year-on-year to RMB 1.8 billion during this quarter, slightly beating our expectation, and it grew by 24% to RMB 7.4 billion for the full year. Our number of paid enterprise customers for 2024 expanded to 6.1 million, marking a 17% year-on-year growth. ARPU for the quarter was up by 6.8% year-on-year and 3.9% quarter-on-quarter, marking a fourth consecutive quarterly growth.
ARPU for the full year reached RMB 1.2 thousand, up by more than 5% year-on-year. It's a result of our efforts to explore customer needs and providing more valuable services. Moving to the cost and expenses side, our total operating cost and expenses increased by 7% year-on-year to RMB 1.5 billion during the fourth quarter and by 15% to RMB 6.2 billion for the full year. Total share-based compensation expenses decreased by 6% year-on-year in the quarter. As percentage of revenue-wise, share-based compensation went down by 4 and 2 percentage points, respectively, for the quarter and the full year. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, our adjusted income from operations grew by 27% to RMB 659 million and 41% to RMB 2.3 billion, respectively, for the quarter and the full year.
The adjusted operating margin for the fourth quarter reached a quarterly historical high of 36.1%, while the annual adjusted operating margin improved by 4 percentage points to 31.5% in 2024, continuing to demonstrate our strong operating leverage and beating our target. Cost of revenues increased by 14% year-on-year to RMB 314 million during the fourth quarter and by 17% to RMB 1.2 billion for the full year. This increase was primarily due to increases in payment processing costs, server and bandwidth costs, and other business-related costs, alongside with the growth of revenue and user base. It's worth mentioning that operational employee-related costs as percentage of revenue decreased by 0.9 percentage points year-on-year, an evidence of AI application to improve operating efficiency. As a result, our gross margin went up by 0.9% to 83.1% in 2024.
Sales and marketing expenses decreased by 2% year-on-year to RMB 426 million during this quarter and increased by 4% to RMB 2.1 billion for the full year. Our marketing expenses, including Olympic campaign sponsorship, decreased by 10% year-on-year, despite a higher new user growth versus prior year. We believe this improving trend of user acquisition efficiency will continue in 2025 and led to a further decrease of our marketing expenses on both absolute amount and as percentage of revenue. R&D expenses increased by 2% year-on-year to RMB 440 million this quarter and by 18% to RMB 1.8 billion for the full year. This increase was primarily driven by our further investments in AI infrastructure, which incurred AI-related server depreciation costs and cloud services fees. G&A expenses increased by 23% year-on-year to RMB 276 million during this quarter and by 35% to RMB 1.1 billion for the full year.
This increase was mainly due to increased employee-related expenses and investment in new business initiatives. Our net income reached RMB 444 million in the quarter and RMB 1.6 billion in 2024. Our adjusted net income increased by 15% year-on-year to RMB 722 million in the fourth quarter and 26% year-on-year to RMB 2.7 billion for the full year. Adjusted net margin continued to expand in the full year and reached a historical high of 36.9%. Net cash provided by operating activities amounted to RMB 956 million during the fourth quarter and increased by 16% year-on-year to RMB 3.5 billion for the full year. Our cash position stood at RMB 14.7 billion as of December 31, 2024, though there were share buyback spendings. The robust cash reserves, coupled with strong operating cash flows, strategically positioned us well to support future growth initiatives and shareholder returns.
During this quarter, we repurchased 6.7 million ADS for a total consideration of $93 million. This led to a 1.1% decrease in our total outstanding shares as compared to September 30, 2024, even after counting in shares issued for our share-based awards. Combined with shares repurchased in the preceding quarters, we have spent a total of $229 million for the share repurchases in 2024, representing substantial progress of our share repurchase programs. Now, for our business outlook for the first quarter of 2025, as we witness the recruitment spending bottoming out from last quarter and showing upswing trajectory post-Chinese New Year, we expect our total revenues to be between RMB 1.9 billion-RMB 1.92 billion, a year-on-year increase of 11.5%-12.7%. With that, that concludes our prepared remarks. Now, we would like to answer questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. We will now take our first question from the line of Eddy Wang from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, Eddy.
Eddy Wang (Analyst)
[Foreign language] Thank you, management, for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one is, could you please share your thoughts on how the AI boom driven by the DeepSeek might impact the online recruitment industry? And this includes the transformations in the industry technology and products, as well as its influence on the market recruitment demands. For example, the hiring surge in the tech industry. What are our competitive advantages in this context? The second question is, we actually have made a quite big or significant investment in AI already. So with the emergence of DeepSeek, will this promote any adjustments to our AI and the investment strategy? And what is our future roadmap for AI product development? Thank you.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you for your question. Let me first talk about the implication of the DeepSeek have on the online recruitment industry. First, especially for the demand side, in short term, we do see some changes. For example, on the recruiter side, as I just mentioned, the daily average daily newly added AI-related jobs surged by more than 64%, which is quite rare. Also, the existing jobs became more active. The average daily online active job number of AI-related jobs increased by more than 24%, which is also quite a big number.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
On the job seeker side, of course, everyone was trying to look for opportunities in this AI trend. On the numbers, we find that the active search results, the active search keywords with AI increased by more than 34% year-on-year.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
I believe these changes will deeply affect the future of the recruitment industry. I will talk about one positive side and maybe one slightly negative side. On the positive side, this trend of AI, its first initial usage is it has very strong understanding of human natural language and generate human natural language. This is first found and can be easily understanding. When people are starting to find a job, turning to the word, it will become a resume. When the recruiter is trying to hire someone, in the formatting of word, it will be a job description. In terms of expression of resume and job description, this kind of wording format in front of AI is very simple and transparent, and it's easy to understand. This can be very deeply affected.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
The second one, on the negative one, is a concern I will express with numbers. For example, on a platform, there are over 200 million AI-generated resumes, and on the other side, there are 40 million AI-generated job descriptions. Under such conditions and circumstances, what is the meaning of the people behind all those resumes and JDs, and what are our machines matching for? This is not a new topic. Currently, more and more people are using AI to search for results, to write articles, and there will be more and more AI made up, which is a historical fact that was not existing. With more than 1,000 times of repeat, that will become a fact. A lot of things have been polluted. Now, the massive pollution of resume or job description has not started yet. We need to be alert and prepared for that.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
After the DeepSeek moment, I have also been considering your question about what our advantages are, and I believe we do have some. First, we have been continuously investing in AI science in the past two years. We also have our own pre-trained model, Nanbeige, which is quite good. We have a lot of AI application scenarios and accumulated a lot of unique user behavior and vertical-related data. I think that's something we have facing this challenge of DeepSeek moment.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Your second question about our further investment in AI development, which I have always been considering recently. In early 2023, that ChatGPT moment two years ago seems like AI has been a spring moment. We have spent more than RMB 1 billion on purchasing GPUs with a lot of curiosity and a little bit of fear. Currently, we have stored enough computing power.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Before the restriction order of GPU purchasing, we have actually bought a lot of GPUs. Last year, under the overall environment, you need to have more and more GPUs and bigger and bigger computing power. Under that situation, we are a little bit awkward in our technology investment. We cannot buy more when we won't buy more.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Actually, DeepSeek has given us very high confidence in terms of the strategy of investment. As Yicheng has said, when challenges promote changes and changes will lead to progress. In the past, the biggest right and money means the future, that situation has gone. The technology innovation has brought changes to many things.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
The open source of DeepSeek 671B has enabled a lot of middle-sized internet companies to have the same level of AI capability with other large companies. We are at the same starting line. In the future, we will, and many other companies will, focus more on the AI application, AI agents, and continue our explore in the AI science.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
About our plan for our product roadmap, I talk a little bit about our current products and services. We will continue our exploration of AI application agents, and you will see upcoming launch of new services. On the revenue side, which you may concern more, from the AI to recruiters, we have one product which has been there for more than one year, and I think people might be interested to pay for that service, which can help increase the efficiency of achieving a mutual consent by 60% and saving the boss's time by more than 40%. I think this product should be welcomed by the recruiters.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
That's my answer to your questions. Operator, let's move on to the next question.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Timothy Zhao from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Timothy.
Timothy Zhao (Analyst)
[Foreign language] Thank you, Management, for taking my questions. I have two questions here. First, as you have shared a lot about the recruitment trend year to date, especially after the Chinese New Year, could Management share more detailed color about the recruitment demand between different enterprise size and also different industries, and more specifically, how should we think about the sustainability of the demand outlook? Second question is regarding the paying ratio and the ARPU trend on the platform. For this year, how are we going to plan to increase the monetization rate or ARPU on this platform? Thank you.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
This year's spring recruitment season compared to last year, we find that the sequential trend has been quite strong. One number is that the online active job postings before and after the spring festival. This year, the sequential growth is more than 173%, while last year is 141%. This is the big picture.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
White-collar industry are stably recovering. The highlight is that the AI-related jobs have been helping with some subsectors or sub-industries of the internet to start regrowing.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
One important point is that compared to last quarter, this quarter our overall cash in have shown accelerating growth trend.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
On the ARPU side, I do not have a very strong motive to increase ARPU very aggressively. I have witnessed recovery across different industries and different sides of companies. I will give them space to improve together. Last year we saw some good growth on the ARPU side, and also stabilized the paying ratio. I do not have very big aggressive plans to accelerate monetization, just waiting for things to turn better together.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
I would rather look at things on the side of we are able to provide service to different kind of users, especially enterprises. Our model can provide service to different kind of enterprises. There is a number that after the COVID reopening in the past two years, we have served accumulatively more than 6 million new enterprises, and annual paid enterprise customer enterprise numbers increased by 1.5 million. I hope this data can mean something and show our view on the growth potential.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
That's my answer to your question. Operator, let's move on to the next question.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Wei Xiong from UBS. Please ask your question, Wei.
Wei Xiong (Analyst)
[Foreign language] Thank you, Management, for taking my question. Firstly, I want to ask what's our current customer acquisition cost, and how does it compare to a few years ago? If we look at 2025, are there any major marketing or promotion plans that we should be aware of? Given the continued margin expansion over the past few years, how should we think about the long-term sustainable margin level for the company? Second, on the blue-collar business, wondering if Management could share the revenue contribution and client feedback from our Kanzhun program. What's our strategic focus and planning for our blue-collar business among other new initiatives for this year, and how should we think about the changing revenue mix from the blue-collar segment? Thank you.
Phil Yu Zhang (Director and CFO)
I will answer the first question. Simply speaking, there's no big marketing campaign ahead in 2025. We are still at a fast user growth stage. Our user growth target for this year is set as over 35 million above for 2025. In terms of the selling marketing to our business, it's still with business leverage. Traffic acquisition per user today compared with prior years is much lower because this is mainly because of brand awareness. The margin, the overall selling marketing as percentage of total revenue, we continue to see this percentage going down. Except for marketing, other major costs and expenses items like COGS, sales expenses to the revenue, and also R&D expenses are all well under control. Looking ahead, the gross margin and the operating margin are all expected to further improve for the full year.
As we communicated the last earnings call, we hope to secure high-quality bottom line growth first. Then we hope to actively look for additional upsize. We set our full year non-GAAP operating profit target as RMB 3 billion for 2025, which is 30% higher than RMB 2.3 billion non-GAAP operating profit for 2024. Lastly, our share-based compensation expenses, as I just mentioned in the prepared remarks, these expenses will decline sequentially, which makes our GAAP-based bottom line, GAAP-based bottom line net profit with even higher growth. That is my comment to the margins and our financial focuses for 2025.
Jonathan Peng Zhao (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you for remembering our Hai Luo, which we have been talking about several years. For the Kanzhun Hai Luo project, which is targeted for those agents with massive hiring demand, last year we saw the contract amount, full year contract amount for Hai Luo more than RMB 200 million. I think any new business having more than 2% of our revenue contribution and is growing is a good and valuable input. Also, in the fourth quarter, the accumulated agencies who have joined Hai Luo improved by 21% sequentially, covered, served more than 40 million job seekers. With the development of AI, I believe since March potentially have some change. In the past, those well-trained white people, white agencies have always had their advantages.
The new guys who have a shorter period of experiences, in the past they don't have advantages, but now with the empowerment of AI seems potentially to change to be equal. When we initiated Hai Luo, we didn't foresee this. Now with potential changes, we will keep you updated and on in progress. We will keep our investment or exploring into closed-loop services and placement-related services. That's my answer to your question. Given the time constraint, operator, I think that's our last question for today.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. That concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I'll turn the conference back to Wenbei for any additional or closing remarks.
Wenbei Wang (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our team directly or our team Investor Relations. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This has concluded the program. You may now disconnect.