Sohu.com - Earnings Call - Q2 2025
August 4, 2025
Transcript
Speaker 3
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and good evening. Thank you for joining Sohu.com's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference call, Pu Huang, Investor Relations Director of Sohu. Please go ahead.
Speaker 2
Thanks, operator. Thank you for joining us to discuss Sohu.com Limited's second quarter 2025 results. On the call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Charles Zhang, CFO Joanna Lu, and the Vice President of Finance, James Deng. Also with us are Chaoyang Zhang, CEO Dewen Chen, and CFO Yaobin Wang. Before management begins their prepared remarks, I would like to remind you of the company's safe harbor statement in connection with today's conference call. Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current plans, estimates, and projections, and therefore you should not place any reliance on them. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement.
For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recent annual report on Form 20-F. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dr. Charles Zhang. Charles, please proceed.
Speaker 0
Thanks, Pu Huang, and thank you everyone for joining our call. In the second quarter of 2025, our marketing services revenues were in line with our expectations, while our online game revenues and bottom-line performance hit the high end of our guidance. For the Sohu Media platform, we continue to focus on refining products, enhancing the operation of our social networks, and improving synergies across our product matrix. During the quarter, we hosted differentiated events that not only attracted numerous participants with shared interests, but also encouraged them to build social connections and interact vibrantly with each other on our platform. With these efforts, we were able to increase our user engagement, further consolidate our brand influence, and capture more monetization opportunities. Our online games delivered solid results, underpinned by our dedication to serving users' needs through compelling new content and continuous optimization of our game.
Before going through each business unit in more detail, let me first give you a quick overview of our financial performance. For the second quarter of 2025, total revenues were $126 million, down 27% year over year and 7% quarter over quarter. Marketing services revenues were $16 million, down 21% year over year and up 14% quarter over quarter. Online game revenues were $106 million, down 28% year over year and 10% quarter over quarter. GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited was $20 million, compared with a net loss of $38 million in the second quarter of 2024 and a net income of $182 million in the first quarter of 2025. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited was $20 million, compared with a net loss of $34 million in the second quarter of last year and a net loss of $16 million in the first quarter of 2025.
Now I'll go through our key businesses in more detail. For the Sohu Media platform, we kept optimizing our products and refining operations while continuing to enhance its social features. We actively hosted diverse and distinctive events and activities, generated plenty of premium content, and stimulated social distributions and improved the interactive experience inherent in our product matrix. These robustly supported the striving development of our online communities. This quarter, building on last year's success, we continue to expand our influence in the area of K-pop and the Chinese custom Hanfu by hosting a series of attractive events and competitions. For example, in June, in K-pop, we launched the 2025 Sohu K-pop Dancing Festival, the We'll Do It Every Year, which attracted the participation of numerous K-pop enthusiasts and quickly became a blockbuster event in the field of K-pop dancing.
In July, we held a special K-pop random dancing event with K-pop superstar Vision Weave, which is the South Korean NCT SM, which also gained significant traction. During the quarter, we also hosted the 2025 Chinese custom model competition, Hanfu Li, Hanfu Matsudaze, which has completed almost 80 contests in nearly 30 regions in China so far this year. In addition, we continue to explore new verticals. In June, we held the first Salute to the Ultimate Explorer Sohu Jishan Tansorer Dahui, attracting lots of outdoor ultimate explorer broadcasters, self-media hosts, and celebrities who share their insights through speeches and panel discussions. These events not only provided opportunities for participants to connect and communicate, but also stimulated them to actively interact with each other on our platform in the longer term. With these, we were able to successfully enhance user metrics and foster a vibrant social atmosphere.
In terms of leading IP, the physics class, My Physics Class, is continuing to deliver cutting-edge physics knowledge to a wide range of audiences under various scenarios. During the quarter, July, and myself conducted several high-end dialogues with Nobel laureates and famous, well-known, highly achieved physicists and entrepreneurs in topics ranging from physics knowledge to the latest industry trends and social interests, promoting a multidimensional dissemination of Sohu's brand influence and attracting greater traffic to our platform. These competitions and live broadcasting events not only brought vitality and premium content to our platform, but also brought us more exposure and recognition from advertisers, providing us with additional monetization opportunities. Leveraging the advantages of our product matrix and our brand influence, we were able to satisfy the needs of advertisers by delivering differentiated marketing solutions through targeted campaigns.
Next, turning to our online game business, during the quarter, our online game business performed well, with revenues reaching the high end of our guidance. In our PC games businesses, we launched an expansion pack, regular TLBB PC, to celebrate its 18th anniversary, as well as various events for the Dragon Boat Festival, which received an enthusiastic response from the community. We fully upgraded the skill enhancement system of TLBB Vintage to refresh the combat experience of players of each clan, and we celebrated the 8th anniversary of Legacy TLBB Mobile with an expansion pack filled with diverse gameplay and generous rewards, effectively increasing player engagement. Next quarter, we will continue to launch expansion packs and content updates for the TLBB series and other titles to further keep players engaged.
Amid intensifying market competition and growing user demand for the quality and innovation, we will advance our top games strategy anchored in user transcendent principles. By continuously optimizing our research and development system, we aim to enhance efficiency and product success rates. Specifically, in product offerings, we are actively exploring opportunities to unlock the potential of our TLBB IP. Meanwhile, building upon our core strengths in MMORPGs, we are diversifying into multiple types of games, including card-based RPGs, sports games, and casual games, as well as expanding our offerings for global markets. Now I would like to give an update on the ongoing share repurchase program. As of July 31, 2025, Sohu.com Limited had repurchased 6.6 million ADS for an aggregated cost of approximately $83 million, so about more than half of the total. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joanna Lu, our CFO.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Charles. I will now walk you through the key financials of our major segments for the second quarter of 2025. All the numbers are on a non-GAAP basis. You may find the reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures on our website. For the Sohu Media platform, quarterly revenue was $19 million compared with $24 million in the same quarter last year. Quarterly operating loss was $69 million compared with an operating loss of $72 million in the same quarter last year. For Changyou, quarterly revenue was $107 million compared with $148 million in the same quarter last year. Quarterly operating profit was $51 million compared with operating profit of $32 million in the same quarter last year. For the third quarter of 2025, we expect marketing services revenue to be between $40 million and $50 million.
This implies an annual decrease of 20% to 25% and a sequential decrease of 4% to 10%. Online game revenues are expected to be between $107 million and $117 million. This implies an annual decrease of 8% to 16% and a sequential increase of 1% to 10%. Both non-GAAP and GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited is expected to be between $25 million and $35 million. This forecast reflects Sohu's management's current and preliminary view, which is subject to substantial uncertainty. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we would now like to open the call to questions.
Speaker 3
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question now, 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. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will now take our first question from the line of Thomas Chong at Jefferies. Please go ahead, Thomas.
Speaker 5
Hi, good evening. Thanks, management, for taking my question. First of all, may I ask about our marketing services revenue? I talk about our marketing services revenue basically largely in line with the low end of the previous guidance. We saw that in Q3, it seems that the advertising revenue is still suffering some sequential weaknesses. I just want to get some color from management with regard to our thoughts about the recent advertising sentiment. Is there any changes or deterioration because of the macro uncertainties? Any color that can be shared about the trend of different categories like auto, IT, FMCG, these categories? That's on the marketing services part. On the AI part, can management comment about how AI is applied into our operations in advertising and gaming? Are we also using our own model or third-party models?
Lastly, regarding the share buyback program, can management share about other than the share buyback program, are we thinking of any other capital return like a dividend or other program to shareholders? Thank you.
Speaker 0
Okay. All right, Thomas. The question about the forecast of the future Q3 advertising situation, yes, there's a weakness because the macroeconomic situation is not that good and there are a lot of uncertainties and also the downgrade of consumption because people just don't have disposable income to buy things. Also, the competition of companies, the profit margin is lower, so they're more cautious in investing in marketing spending. As to sectors, still our largest sector is the auto sector, followed by FMCG and IT services. For auto sectors, it's now kind of stabilized with the price war getting steady and the new energy, I mean, electric cars market share is expanding while the luxury cars and also joint ventures are kind of shrinking.
With this kind of market situation, we have this unique event and IPs and created or to launch a kind of unique event and combine with our online properties to have some kind of unique marketing opportunities so that they still, yeah, they do spend still on Sohu. That's about this. We're trying to, yeah. The whole macroeconomic situation is really not that good, but since our advertising market share is very small, if we are successful in our social media platform, we would get a larger share. We hope. That will not happen in the next few quarters. We'll continue to build our user base. As to your second question about the AI application, I think, yeah, it's improved, especially in the online game part, right? It does improve the efficiency, productivity online game.
For the media platform and the social networks, it helps our users to get answers or get results with the search capability on each app. Now people are actually doing information search on each separate app. We are using the AI to improve the AI answering questions, answering capability of the Sohu Video and Sohu News app. Back to apps, mostly social networks, now we turn it into a social network platform. The AI help is only marginal. We are using the open-source language model and then build on based on that, build on that, you know, to develop on that. We're using various models, a large language model. About share buyback, yes, we are halfway into it and over $83 million already consumed. We don't have any plan to have other investments or capital investment because we are fighting a major user base building and social network wall.
We need a war chest to do the battle. I hope to answer your question.
Speaker 5
Got it. Thank you, Dr. Charles Zhang, for the detailed answer. Thank you.
Speaker 3
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Citi Group. Please ask your question, Alicia.
Speaker 4
Oh, hi. Good evening. Can you hear me okay?
Speaker 0
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Hello. Can you hear me? Okay. All right. Good evening.
Speaker 0
Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah, Alicia, yeah.
Speaker 4
Okay. Yeah. Good evening, Charles and management. Thanks for taking my questions. A few questions for me. First, I'm just wondering if you can share with us when should we expect the loss from the marketing service revenue to last? In other words, do you have a break-even timing that you can share with us? This is the first question. The second question is related to the gaming guidance. It seems like sequentially we are guiding a sequential increase. If management can elaborate a little bit, the reason for the sequential improvement on the game revenue. The third question is, I think, Charles, on your opening remark, you mentioned a little bit on those like K-pop or these events. Just wondering how those events are actually able to help you accelerate your user growth for your Sohu app. I mean, Sohu user app. Sorry, Sohu app user space.
Speaker 0
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4
Thank you. That's all my question.
Speaker 0
As I said, with the current traditional internet media platform, it's very, for this kind of user base, it's very hard to break even, especially when we actually have three products that we're focusing on, three products. It's kind of a multiple, you know, battlefield. You have three battlefields to fight. That's why. Since all the social network products and the user base growth is nonlinear, it could hit a critical point, critical mass that it explodes or grows exponentially sometimes in the future. We don't know what that critical point is, so we don't know. Until that happens, before that, I don't think we will be able to break even because we have a, 我们战线拉得很宽, 我们三条战线. Yeah, we don't know. I hope. I'm optimistic. I'm hopeful.
I'm optimistic that I'm confident that it will happen, the critical point for social network to grow as to the game sequential increase, yeah?
第二个提示, 我们关于游戏第三季度指引环比增长的原因是什么?
是因为第三季度我们之前的老游戏相对稳定，同时我们在7月25号为《天龙八部》推出了一个新版本，《天龙八部归来》，它会带来一些收入的增量。
The old games are expected to perform relatively stable during the third quarter. We also rolled out a new version, a new game for TLBB PC on July 25, which is called TLBB 归来, or TLBB Return in English. We expect the new game will bring some additional revenue.
Yeah, 归来. K-pop events are just like the Hanfu events and other events. Also, the third question, all these events are community builders because when people actually, this competition is continued the whole year, competition and the events, and then people get to know each other and people become users and broadcasters or self-mediate. People get into your communities by groups, right? Now we are the.
Speaker 4
Sohu.
Speaker 0
Yeah, Sohu Video. Sohu Video Guangzhou is the most top K-pop platform in China. That's why when the South Korean pop, you know, K-pop teams, they're coming to China to do events after competitions among platforms, Sohu Video is the designated or chosen platform to do that because we are the number one in this field. Also in hanfu, we are building verticals after verticals and becoming the best in the verticals. That helps to help us to consolidate or attract our user base.
Speaker 4
I see. Thanks, Charles. I'll just follow up on that. Is there any revenue implication from this event that will contribute to the, I mean, already the second quarter, or maybe you can carry forward to the third quarter? Yeah.
Speaker 0
Yes. The revenue of sponsorship for these events is, unlike those My Physics Class or other, you know, unlike those ones, this is a secondary or less, I mean, it's not a priority, but we do get sponsorship, yes, for the Sohu K-pop Dancing Festival and for the hanfu events.
Speaker 4
I see. Okay. All right. Great.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Right.
Speaker 4
Thank you.
Speaker 0
Yeah. We really accept the top sponsor, like the name sponsor. We refuse the name sponsor. I mean, the 总冠名, 总冠名, title sponsorship, right? Yeah. Because our goal is to develop users and to market our brand, the product brand.
Speaker 4
All right. Thank you. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3
Thank you. I am showing no further questions. With that, we conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.