Phoenix New Media - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Today, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Phoenix New Media third quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Muzi Guo, from Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Muzi Guo (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Phoenix New Media's earnings conference call for the third quarter of 2025. Today's call will begin with an overview of our quarterly results, followed by a Q&A session. Our quarterly financial results and the webcast of this conference call are available on our website at ir.iphone.com. Before we continue, please note the safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which applies to any forward-looking statements made during this call. Unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned are in RMB. Joining me today are our CEO, Mr. Yushuang Sun, and our CFO, Mr. Edward Lu. I will now pass the call to Mr. Sun for his opening remarks. I will provide translation as needed. [Foreign language]

Yusheng Sun (CEO)

[Foreign language]

Muzi Guo (Head of Investor Relations)

[Foreign language] Thank you for joining today's call. This quarter, we stayed focused on both quality content and brand impact. Our reports around major social and cultural moments continue to perform well across platforms, while flagship events also achieve strong market response. From trending coverage to large-scale campaigns, we help clients amplify their presence and connect with audiences in meaningful ways. These efforts reflect our ability to combine storytelling, marketing, and innovation, keeping our brand relevant and resilient in a cautious ad market. Now, I'll hand over to Edward for a more detailed update on our business progress and financial results.

Edward Lu (CFO)

Okay. Thank you, Muzi. In the third quarter, through high-quality original content, innovative product experiences, and influential offline events, we further strengthened our influence and reputation in the media industry, achieving solid progress in both commercialization and user engagement. Our newsroom once again demonstrated its agility and depth in covering major news and breaking events. During the highly anticipated September 3rd military parade, our five-hour live broadcast on Phoenix Military Channel drew over 32 million total views across platforms, underscoring the strong audience trust in our in-depth coverage. During Typhoon Hua Jiaxia, our live stream delivered continuous 3D reporting, while our Tang Bohu Column reported the natural disaster with sharp, investigative storytelling that inspired public reflection and trended widely on Weibo, achieving both depth and broad reach.

On the international front, the Phoenix Insights column provided a balanced analysis of the U.S.-Russia summit through exclusive interviews with leading experts from the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine. The series was reported by influential publications such as Beijing Culture Review, earning strong recognition among professional and academic readers. Our media influence and the capabilities to integrate resources also supported significant growth in the public and regional sectors. In early September, as the exclusive media partner and co-organizer, we successfully hosted the Shanxi Cultural and Tourism Development Promotion Event, centered on integration, collaboration, and consumption. The two-day event generated more than 2 billion online impressions and 29 trending mentions across major platforms, rejuvenating Shanxi's cultural tourism brand with a modern image. Also, in September, we hosted the Phoenix Bay Area Finance Forum 2025 in Guangzhou. The forum achieved over 720 million total impressions and appeared on three trending lists.

It trended simultaneously on Weibo, Kuaishou, and Douyin, highlighting its strong brand influence. The Phoenix Star Awards also triggered enthusiastic organic promotion from awardees and broad coverage from mainstream business and finance media outlets, creating a second wave of dissemination. Our key IP programs continue to deliver both impact and reputation throughout Q3. Our mini-documentary Journey continues to resonate emotionally through human-centered storytelling. Its feature on the sausage vendor angle experimented with a new program plus live stream commerce model, trending on Weibo with over 30 million total views. Riz Talk maintained its premium standards with every original piece entering trending charts. The feature interview with cancer survivor and vlogger Zhu Ziguo was especially noted for its warmth and humanity, earning widespread praise as one of the most moving stories of the quarter.

Meanwhile, Key Talk Alliance expanded its international footprint through participation in global events such as IFA Berlin, empowering brands across markets and effectively transforming content influence into commercial value. While our flagship events generated large-scale offline buzz, our daily operations continued, converting that momentum into sustained user engagement. The number of our followers grew steadily across multiple platforms. For instance, our Phoenix Video accounts gained nearly 500,000 new followers this quarter alone, showing strong traction on video platforms. Our presence on Rednote also continued to build consistently, expanding our reach among younger audiences. From a product standpoint, we further optimized the app experience around reading interaction and seamless integration with the HarmonyOS ecosystem. Our strategic cooperation with HarmonyOS began to bear fruit. Phoenix News App was showcased as one of few premium apps at Huawei's new product launch.

Together with Huawei's Xiaoyi team, we co-developed an AI News Feature and launched the Phoenix TV Highlights App. Our Quick News product will go live soon, completing our HarmonyOS product suite. In summary, in the third quarter, we strengthened our core advantages in authoritative reporting and brand events while achieving measurable progress in user engagement, commercial innovation, and ecosystem expansion. Looking ahead, we will continue to prioritize content innovation and IP creation, enhance brand influence, diversify monetization channels, and improve operational efficiency to drive sustainable long-term growth. This concludes our CEO, Mr. Sun's prepared remarks. I will now walk you through our financial performance for the third quarter of 2025. All figures mentioned will be in RMB. Our total revenues were RMB 200.9 million, representing a 22.3% increase year-on-year from RMB 164.3 million. Specifically, net advertising revenues were RMB 159.3 million, representing a 7.3% increase year-on-year from RMB 148.4 million.

Paid services revenues were RMB 41.6 million, representing a 161.6% increase year-on-year from RMB 15.9 million. Primarily driven by revenue generated from our digital reading services offered through mini programs on third-party applications, cost of revenues increased by 3.1% to RMB 105.2 million from RMB 102 million in the same period of last year. Total operating expenses were RMB 109 million, reflecting a 23.6% increase year-on-year from RMB 88.2 million. This increase was primarily due to higher sales and marketing expenses incurred from the digital reading services mentioned earlier. Loss from operations was RMB 13.3 million, compared to RMB 25.9 million in the same period of last year. Net loss attributable to iPhone was RMB 4.9 million, compared to RMB 18.5 million in the same period of last year. Moving on to our balance sheet.

As of September 30, 2025, the company's cash and cash equivalents, term deposits, short-term investments, and restricted cash totaled RMB 1 billion, or approximately $140.5 million. Finally, I'd like to provide our business outlook for the fourth quarter of 2025. We forecast total revenues to be between RMB 205.9 million and RMB 220.9 million. For net advertising revenues, we project between RMB 171.4 million and RMB 181.4 million, while for paid service revenues, we project between RMB 34.5 million and RMB 39.5 million. This forecast reflects our current and preliminary view, which is subject to change and substantial uncertainties. This concludes the prepared portion of our call. We are now ready for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. We will now take our first question from the line of Alice Tang from First Shanghai. Please go ahead, Alice.

Alice Tang (VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hello, good morning. The company's advertising business managed to grow in the third quarter despite market pressure. Could you please share how this was achieved, and what's your outlook for the ad market in Q4?

Edward Lu (CFO)

Thank you, Alice. Good morning. It is a good question. Actually, achieving growth in advertising revenue under current conditions was not easy. Many clients are still very cautious with their budgets, and their marketing is changing faster than before. This brought more challenges for us. Actually, we focus on two main areas. First, each client industry sales unit now works more closely with related content teams, sharing insights and taking joint responsibilities for business results. This helped us respond to clients faster and more precisely. Second, we followed marketing trends and used our media influence to connect with more key clients. For example, in Q3, we organized the Shanxi Culture and Tourism Promotion Event, which involved the provincial government and multiple partners, strengthening our ability to serve public sector clients. Another highlight is our Star Anchor Program. It started last year and has tripled its revenue this year.

The program helps brand fans and train new generation hosts, meeting the rising demand for strong content creators. These efforts show how we are securing our position in the market. In the fourth quarter, competition will remain intense, and cost control will stay critical. We will keep focusing on innovation, improving our service capabilities, and doing our best to maintain steady performance. Thank you, Alice.

Alice Tang (VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, and I'll turn the conference back to Muzi Guo for her closing comments.

Muzi Guo (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. We have now come to the end of our earnings conference call for the third quarter of 2025. If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. Thank you for joining us today, and have a nice day.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.