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Weibo Corporation recently reported its second-quarter 2026 results, with revenue rising to US$453.83 million while net income fell to US$67.38 million, alongside lower earnings per share versus a year earlier. Beneath the headline revenue growth, value-added services helped offset softer advertising demand, but profitability weakened materially over both the quarter and first half of 2026. Next, we will examine how Weibo's revenue growth alongside sharply lower earnings might reshape the company’s investment narrative and risk profile. Invest in the nuclear renaissance through our list of 92 elite nuclear energy infrastructure plays powering the global AI revolution. To own Weibo, you need to believe its core social platform can still convert engagement into consistent profits despite a tougher ad market. The latest results show modest revenue growth alongside sharply lower earnings, which weakens the near term profitability story and highlights margin pressure as the key short term risk. For now, the big catalyst around AI driven engagement and monetization is still on the table, but the earnings drop makes execution quality more important. Against this backdrop, the recent decision to pay an annual cash dividend of US$0.61 per share for 2025 stands out. It signals a willingness to return capital even as net income for the first half of 2026 fell to US$102.09 million from US$232.65 million a year earlier. For investors focused on how sustainable Weibo’s cash generation really is, this mix of weaker earnings and continued payouts directly links back to the risk-reward trade off around margins. Yet beneath the surface, investors should still be mindful of how quickly ad budgets can keep shifting toward rival platforms and what that means for Weibo’s... Read the full narrative on Weibo (it's free!) Weibo's narrative projects $1.9 billion revenue and $370.8 million earnings by 2029. This requires 1.8% yearly revenue growth and about a $52.3 million earnings increase from $318.5 million today. Uncover how Weibo's forecasts yield a $8.54 fair value, a 21% upside to its current price. Some of the lowest ranked analysts were already assuming largely flat revenues around US$1.8 billion and shrinking margins by 2029, which is far more pessimistic than consensus and could look different again once this latest earnings miss on profit and rising compliance concerns are fully reflected. Explore 5 other fair value estimates on Weibo - why the stock might be worth over 2x more than the current price! Don't just follow the ticker - dig into the data and build a conviction that's truly your own. A great starting point for your Weibo research is our analysis highlighting 3 key rewards that could impact your investment decision. Our free Weibo research report provides a comprehensive fundamental analysis summarized in a single visual - the Snowflake - making it easy to evaluate Weibo's overall financial health at a glance. These stocks are moving-our analysis flagged them today. Act fast before the price catches up: The future of work is here. Discover the 38 top robotics and automation stocks leading the charge in AI-driven automation and industrial transformation. AI is about to change healthcare. These 40 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10b in market cap - there's still time to get in early. Uncover the next big thing with 23 elite penny stocks that balance risk and reward. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include WB. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email [email protected]

Image source: The Motley Fool. Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026 at 7 a.m. ET IR - Sandra Zhang Chief Executive Officer - Gaofei Wang Chief Financial Officer - Fei Cao Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Weibo Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Sandra Zhang, IR. Please go ahead. Sandra Zhang: Thank you, operator. Welcome to Weibo's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are our Chief Executive Officer, Gaofei Wang; and our Chief Financial Officer, Fei Cao. This conference call is also being broadcasted on the Internet and is available through Weibo's IR website. Before the management remarks, I would like to read you the safe harbor statement in connection with today's conference call. During today's conference call, we may make forward-looking statements, statements that are not historical facts, including statements of our beliefs and expectations. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Weibo assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements in this conference call and elsewhere. Further information regarding this and other risks is included in Weibo's annual report on Form 20-F and other filings with the SEC. All the information provided in this press release is current as of the date hereof. Weibo assumes no obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. Additionally, I would like to remind you that our discussion today includes certain non-GAAP measures, which exclude stock-based compensation and certain other expenses. We use non-GAAP financial measures to gain a better understanding of Weibo's comparative operating performance and the future prospects. Our non-GAAP financials exclude certain expenses, gains or losses and other items that are not expected in future cash payments or are nonrecurring in nature or are not indicative of our core operating results and outlook. Please refer to our press release for more information about our non-GAAP measures. Following management prepared remarks, we will open the lines for a brief Q&A session. With this, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Gaofei Wang. Thank you. Gaofei Wang: [Interpreted] Hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On today's call, I will share with you highlights on Weibo's product and monetization in the second quarter 2026. On the user front, in June 2026, Weibo's MAUs reached 561 million and average DAUs reached 254 million. This year, we have proactively rationalized our channel budget allocation strategy. Instead of scaling up user acquisition, we shift our focus towards improving the conversion rate of newly acquired channel users into active users. Concurrently, as the homepage information feed revamp is still in the phase of continuous optimization, some low-frequency users will need time to adapt to the changes. As a result, our DAU base declined slightly year-over-year in June, but remained largely flat quarter-over-quarter. Now let me walk you through the financials. Our total revenue in the second quarter reached USD 453.8 million, an increase of 2% year-over-year. Our total ad revenue reached USD 381 million, a decrease of 1% year-over-year. VAS revenue reached USD 72.9 million, an increase of 19% year-over-year. Although our advertising business was impacted by the consumption market headwinds and tightened budget from advertisers in certain industries, advertising revenue from automobile Internet service and food and beverage still achieved solid year-over-year growth this quarter. Ad revenues from selective marketing also maintained year-over-year growth trends. Our non-GAAP operating income in the second quarter reached USD 125.4 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 28%. In 2026, we will continue to enhance user experience, improve platform operating efficiency and content quality, continuously stepping up AI investment in product operation and strengthening user retention and long-term engagement. On the product and operation front, we will continue to refine the homepage information feed. By leveraging trending topic examination, social interaction and hot topic discussion, we aim to ensure that users gain timely access to the key trending content, content worth discussing and sharing as well as high-quality posts tailored to those to their interest when they access Weibo. Furthermore, we will continue to strengthen product capabilities across core consumption scenarios such as video, interest-based community and search, thereby enrich user experience in video content consumption, interest-driven interaction and information discovery and further enhance the platform long-term competitiveness. The use of AI in both product and operations this year has also delivered tangible results in new feature and product development as well as operational strategy optimization. On the user growth and engagement front, we continue to optimize the homepage information feed product in the second quarter, while maintaining a stable social consumption experience in the relationship-based feed, we focus on strengthening the capabilities of interest-based feed to distribute relationship-based content, trending topics and video content and sustained user engagement and consumption. By doing so, we aim to improve content matching efficiency while further highlighting Weibo's differentiated advantages in social interaction, trending topics and opinion discussion, which ultimately increase users' willingness to open Weibo and stay engaged. Specifically, with the continuous improvement of distribution capability of the interest-based feed, the platform has strengthened its ability to better organize and distribute content, social content that users have a strong demand for, trending discussion and high-quality video content received greater exposure through the interest-based feed. This in turn drove overall increase in the time spent, the number of engaged users and the interaction for the homepage information feed since second quarter. At the same time, we have observed that for some low-frequency users still take time to adapt to new product format and thus, the recovery of those, their visit frequency and retention continue to lag behind the improvement in the overall consumption metrics, posing challenges in time spent and retention. Going forward, we will continue to optimize product experience, keeping a better balance between improving recommendation efficiency and accommodating different user habits, thereby strengthening the homepage feed ability to drive user visits and long-term engagement. On the video front, in the second quarter, we continued to optimize video distribution and supply with a focus on improving video consumption efficiency and expanding the supply of high-quality video content. On the distribution side, with enhanced recommendation algorithm of interest-based feed, we were able to more effectively identify and distribute high-quality video content, shifting traffic towards high-quality content. This helped reduce the negative impact of repetitive and low-quality videos on the user experience. In the second quarter, total time spent on video views continue to grow double digit year-over-year and average time spent per user on video views grew even more meaningfully, indicating deeper video consumption. On the supply side, the supply of high-quality video content across the platform continued to grow double-digit quarter-over-quarter in the second quarter. As the upgraded interest-based feed continue to drive greater distribution and consumption of high-quality video content, we further beefed up our efforts to expand the video content creator base and strengthen content operation. By improving our content creator acquisition mechanism, enhancing traffic support and sustaining operation, we have gradually established a clear framework for creator onboarding, content production and creator retention. As a result, the scale of video production from newly acquired content creators and their corresponding user consumption performance has largely met our expectations and gradually forming a positive cycle between video content supply and consumption. In the second half of this year, we will further step up our efforts to expand our video creator base, accelerate the onboarding of the high-quality creators with stable production capabilities and strong content influence. We also leverage traffic support to strategically supplement key video content in alignment with our users' consumption needs. At the same time, through our ongoing operation, we will help video content creators better understand the type of content that resonates on Weibo's platform and establish consistent production. As the supply of high-quality video content expands, the recommendation algorithm will also be able to better understand users' video consumption preference, improving the efficiency of matching quality content with targeted users. By simultaneously improving video creator supply, content distribution and content consumption, the video business will more sustainably drive user time spent, long-term engagement and monetization efficiency, while further enhancing the vitality and competitiveness of the platform's content ecosystem. Moving on to content ecosystem competitiveness. Throughout 2026, we will continue to focus on 3 core areas: trending topics, social network and search, while further enhancing the health and core competitiveness of our content ecosystem. On social attributes, Super Topic is a core interest-based community on Weibo and an important areas for strengthening our competitiveness in the interest-based social engagement. In the second quarter, we accelerated product and feature integration around the core needs of users across different interest-based communities, aiming to further reinforce Weibo's competitiveness in the interest-based social scenarios. For example, in celebrity Super Topic, we enhanced the check-in experience and introduced a celebrity memory album feature as well as online to offline engagement initiatives. The sports and e-sports Super Topics, we introduced features for event reviews, ratings and discussion and leverage the World Cup to strengthen user awareness, driving a significant increase in the sports Super Topic user base. These new features further encourage users to move from content consumption to interaction and deeper participation. As a result, both daily active users and the number of users participating in discussion on Super Topics double-digit year-over-year growth in the second quarter. On search, building on the scaled rollout of Weibo Intelligent Search last year, our focus this year has shifted further towards deepening the use of multi-turn conversations and integrating AI search more naturally into content consumption experience. In the second quarter, we continued to enhance intelligent search ability to understand context and user intent in multi-term conversations with a particular focus on enhancing the search experience in areas where Weibo has differentiated content strength such as trending topics, public speakers and IPs. At the same time, we are embedding search entry points more deeply into users' journey for browsing posts, videos and trending topics, allowing us to promptly address the needs as they arise during content consumption and continue to improve the efficiency and user experience of information discovery. Monetization in the first half of the year, our advertising product and sales team focused on 2 key strategies. First, we sought to bring Weibo unique content marketing value to more industries and advertisers. Second, we systematically enhanced advertising performance and conversion through AI integration. In the second quarter, the recovery in the domestic consumption market remained relatively subdued with divergent trends across industries and advertisers. Some advertisers continue to face challenges such as limited recovery in consumption demand, intensifying industry competition and rising cost and margin pressures. As a result, they become more cautious with their marketing budget, placing greater emphasis on the measurable returns and ROI certainty. Although Weibo continue to be well positioned to capture advertising budget in areas such as new product launch, celebrity marketing and sports event marketing, the aforementioned factors weigh on our advertising business to a certain extent. Consequently, Weibo's ad revenue experienced temporary pressure in the second quarter and decreased 1% year-over-year. By industry, advertising revenue from the automobile sector grew year-over-year, driven by intensive launch of new energy vehicles. The Internet service sector continued to book solid growth, primarily benefiting from the increased demand among AI and software service advertisers for performance-driven advertising and content distribution. The food and beverage sector also delivered growth, mainly fueled by the World Cup, celebrity marketing and the promotion of key new products. On the flip side, some industry continue to face headwinds. Following intense competition last year, the e-commerce sector has gradually returned to a more normal market condition. Despite overall stable ad spend during the June 18 shopping festival, the relatively high revenue base from certain business lines last year posted noticeable pressure on revenue growth this year. In the handset sector, overall ad budget contracted under the cost and margin pressure, but Weibo's wallet share within the sector remained largely stable. In light of advertisers' budget trends, in the second half of the year, we will focus on further strengthening our content marketing products and services. By offering more standardized product solution and more convenient advertising tools, we aim to lower the barrier for advertisers across content planning, resource allocation and information feed placement. Thereby further enhancing Weibo's ability to capture ad budgets. Among its marketing scenarios, celebrity marketing was one of our key focus area in the second quarter. We are pleased with the growing demand from advertisers for celebrity marketing. In the first half of the year, we not only supported advertisers with celebrity marketing campaigns on Weibo, but also became involved earlier in campaign planning and resource matching, providing more comprehensive service aligned with their brand objectives and communication goals. Leveraging measured resource investment and enhanced service capabilities, we successfully expanded their ad spend on celebrity marketing products. Taking Mono's partnership with Erling Haaland as an example, we help match the brand with the right celebrity resource and work with both the brand and celebrity to co-create content and drive engagement around key event-related topics. During the World Cup, topics related to Erling Haaland attracted broader attention on Weibo, generating over 5 billion topic views and 1.4 million discussion. Mono also further enhanced its brand exposure and user engagement thanks to the celebrity content and World Cup-related discussion. During the campaign, Weibo effectively integrated celebrity resources, event-related trending topics and social discussion to provide the advertiser with one-stop service spanning resources matching, content co-creation and campaign execution. This empowers the brand to extend a single celebrity collaboration into sustained content buzz and brand exposure. On advertising products, we will continue to apply AI across key stages of advertising process, focusing on creative supply, intelligent ad placement and creative quality management to improve advertisers' campaign efficiency and user experience. In the second quarter, driven by the advancement of video generation models, we automatically generated viable ad creatives for e-commerce advertisers facing a shortage of video materials, resulting in solid improvement in the coverage and usability of AI produced videos for target products with continued gains in efficiency and quality of AI creative production. On the ad placement front, the consumption share of AI-generated ad creatives in the promoted feed ad offerings and the real-time bidding system continued to increase, reaching 50% in June. Meanwhile, we use AI to identify ad creatives with low quality and those generating high levels of negative feedback and apply targeted optimization accordingly. In the e-commerce sector, AI optimized materials saw a drop of over 30% in negative feedback rate compared with client original materials, effectively enhancing the user experience in ad content consumption. Going forward, leveraging an increasingly mature creative quality evaluation system and implementing differentiated generation strategies for various distribution scenarios, we aim to continuously improve the adaptability of AI creatives to their respective scenarios. With these initiatives, we hope to further improve advertising performance and campaign efficiency. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we believe the recovery in consumer demand will take some time, while pressure on advertisers from cost, profitability industry competition is likely to persist. Competition for advertising budget is also expected to remain intense. It's worth mentioning that the food delivery price war in the third quarter of last year created a relatively high revenue base for comparison. And moreover, due to factors such as prime match broadcaster times and the advertiser dynamics during this year's World Cup, the incremental boost to the related ad budget was lower than that of the previous tournament. These factors are expected to put some pressure on year-over-year advertising revenue growth in the third quarter. Faced with this market environment, we will continue to invest in building Weibo's differentiated commercial service capabilities, keep pace with shift in clients' marketing needs and budget structures, reinforce our content marketing value proposition and add conversion effectiveness and enhance our capability to capture clients' budgets with more certainty to stabilize our overall ad revenue base. With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for a financial review. Cao Fei: Thank you, Gaofei, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Let's start with user metrics. In June 2026, Weibo's MAUs and average DAUs reached 561 million and 254 million, respectively. During this quarter, our user strategy continued to focus on improving user quality, driving retention and deepening engagement, while MAUs saw a modest sequential decline, DAUs remained resilient and broadly stable quarter-over-quarter. We continued to see solid engagement among our core users, along with improving consumption and engagement in the recommendation feed. Video consumption also continued to improve, supported by better content distribution within our revamped feed. AI continued to serve as an important enabler across our product, content and monetization systems, helping us better understand user interest, improve ad targeting and delivery and enhance operating efficiency. Turning to financials. As a reminder, my prepared remarks will focus on non-GAAP results. All monetary amounts are in U.S. dollars and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Now let me walk you through our financial highlights for the second quarter 2026. Weibo's second quarter 2026 net revenues were USD 453.8 million, an increase of 2% or a decrease of 4% on a constant currency basis. Operating income was USD 125.4 million representing operating margin of 28%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached USD 102.7 million and diluted EPS was USD 0.38. Let me give you more color on the second quarter 2026 revenue performance. Weibo's advertising and marketing revenues for the second quarter 2026 were USD 381 million, a decrease of 1% or 6% on a constant currency basis. The decrease was mainly reflecting softer demand in certain key advertising verticals and was partially offset by the favorable foreign exchange impact on reported numbers on a year-over-year basis by industries. Our top 3 verticals were FMCG, e-commerce and automobile. In terms of growth, Internet services and automobile were primary contributors despite softness in overall automobile sales, ad revenues from the auto sector delivered solid year-over-year growth, supported by Weibo's strong content ecosystem and frequent new energy vehicle launches during the quarter. Advertising revenues from Internet companies also increased, driven by stronger marketing demand for AI-related products and services as leading Internet platforms increased marketing activities around their AI offerings. As for industries facing headwinds, the handset sector remained under pressure in the second quarter. Softer ad demand continued to weigh on smartphone shipments while rising component costs put additional pressure on handset manufacturers profitability and marketing budgets. As a result, advertising revenues from the sector declined year-over-year. The FMCG sector saw divergent performance during the quarter. Food and beverage delivered solid growth, benefiting from the early release of World Cup-related marketing budgets during the quarter. The cosmetics vertical remained soft as certain international brands reduced marketing spend amid weak sales and intensified competition. In addition, game developers remained cautious on advertising spend amid continued softness in the online game market. The ad product, promoted feed ads remained our largest format followed by social display ads and search and topic ads. ECPM continued to improve both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, supported by deeper AI integration in creative generation, marketing and bidding. These improvements helped enhance ad delivery efficiency and advertiser ROI. Our IP and content marketing solutions also continued to see solid demand. Ad revenues from Alibaba for the second quarter was USD 39.2 million, an increase of 10% or 3% on a constant currency basis. During the quarter, higher spending on AI-related activities more than offset softer spending in local services as we have noted previously. Alibaba's advertising spend on Weibo is closely tied to its own marketing priorities and pace of product launches, which may therefore vary from quarter-to-quarter. Value-added service revenues were USD 72.9 million in the second quarter, an increase of 19% or 12% on a constant currency basis. The increase was primarily driven by one-off ticket proceeds from offline activities held by Weibo, solid growth from membership services as well as favorable foreign exchange impact on reported numbers on a year-over-year basis. Turning to costs and expenses. Total cost and expenses for the second quarter were USD 328.4 million, an increase of 16%, mainly due to higher ad production costs and marketing expenses. Operating income in the second quarter was USD 125.4 million, representing operating margin of 28% compared to 36% in the same period last year. Turning to income tax and GAAP. Income tax expenses for the second quarter were USD 23 million compared to USD 31.7 million last year, mainly due to lower income before taxes. Net income attributable to Weibo in the second quarter was USD 102.7 million, representing a net margin of 23%. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow items. As of June 30, 2026, Weibo's cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled USD 2.64 billion compared to USD 2.41 billion as of December 31, 2025. In the second quarter, cash provided by operating activities was USD 15.5 million. The decrease in operating cash flow for the quarter was primarily resulted from settlement of corporate income taxes, collection schedule of receivables as well as payment schedule of annual rebate compared with prior quarter. Capital expenditures totaled USD 3.1 million and depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to USD 15.7 million. We remain disciplined in capital allocation with measured capital spending and continued support shareholder returns. We closed the first half of 2026 with continued progress across our product, content and monetization initiatives. While soft consumer demand and intensified industry competition continued to weigh on advertising demand, we are encouraged by measurable improvements from our product revamp and AI initiatives, particularly in user engagement and advertising efficiency. Entering the second half, we will focus on advertising opportunities with better budget visibility while carefully managing the pace of investment and maintaining our focus on operating efficiency. Our priority remains to balance near-term sustainable profitability and financial flexibility while strengthening the foundation for Weibo's long-term development. With that, let me now turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first questions come from the line of Timothy Zhao from Goldman Sachs. Timothy Zhao: Great. I think my question is regarding the outlook of the advertising revenue into the second half of this year. Just wondering, can management share more detail on your expectations on the ad revenue growth? And what is the trend for different subsectors? And what is the latest update on your advertising strategy? And more specifically on AI, just wondering if you can share more color on how AI has increased the overall eCPM of the advertising business and what are other operating metrics that you may share? Sandra Zhang: [Interpreted] Yes. Thank you very much for the question. First of all, I'd like to talk about my expectations over the second half of this year. First of all, as I have already stated just now for the performance in Q2, except for some of the verticals that were increasing the performance, for instance, automotive and food and beverages, for the rest of the other verticals, we did see some of the stressful situations. It was because of the overall macro economy, especially on consumption, we have seen some of the pressure the customers were decreasing their budget on advertisement. Okay. And let's talk about some of the performance in the second half of the year. First of all, there are still a lot of uncertainties first in terms of the automotive industry. We did see the less sales and also poorer performance in terms of the sales and production of the first half of the year. But still, in the first half of the year, we did see a lot of launches and new energy [indiscernible] launched and available to the market. So Weibo is actually a very strong platform in doing the advertisement for the new product launches and new product availability. So you can see that on this front, we did see actually an increase in ad revenue for that. And that particular increase and that particular momentum could be kept until the second half of the year. And next, I would like to talk about the Internet industry, especially the vertical of the software and application services. So we believe that the second half of the year will be quite similar to that of year still because the customers are having high requirements over the ROI as well as the allocated budget on developments. As a result, we do not expect too much of the growth in the second half of the year. So I believe that this particular industry, the software and application services are going to be having a flat performance or a little bit increase in the second half of the year. And next vertical is the headset industry. So in the first half of the year, we did see the down performance and mainly due to the decrease for most of the customers. So except for Apple, the rest of the other handset makers were having double-digit decrease in terms of the total performance. So in the second half of the year, of course, we might be expecting some of the new products launched in the market. So -- but still, we are observing that in September for the Apple new product launch event, whether or not this is going to trigger more allocation of the budget from the other handset makers to launch or to allocate to the new product availability of the medium to high end of the products. So in Q3, we had not that optimistic view on the handset industry, but still keeping observing observation into the Q4 performance of this year, and next, in the second half of the year, we had some of the really bad fluctuations over the industries of e-commerce and the food delivery as well. So you know that last year, primarily the food delivery price war was happening in about Q3 and Q4. So that actually did have a lot of impact on the ad revenues to this. So this year, still, we have been seeing some situations. And in the second half of the year, I believe that the anti-involution policies from the Chinese government will continue on this one. So this is going to be weakening this competition among different food delivery brands. So as a result, this was impacting our overall ad budget of this year as well. So it is still uncertain for the industries like the local service or local lifestyle and also food delivery and e-commerce, et cetera. So we had actually [indiscernible]. And on this particular ad-related strategies, first of all, in terms of the performance-based, of course, we do see an eCPM increase but quarter-by-quarter, but that does not represent that the ad revenue was going to also increase because last year, we had a lot of restructuring of the ad products. So that did impact some of the core users. So in the first half of this year and also second half of last year, we have been doing some of the optimizations of this part. For instance, in terms of this bad user experience of the ad and some of the negative experience products had some elimination process conducted. So reduce the exposure of those low-frequency users or low-frequency users exposure. So that caused a stressful situation to our ad load. So in the second half of the year, while we are seeing a tendency of increased time user spend and also the kind of other relevant situations, we are expecting to have a little bit of improvement, but still -- and also a little bit release of the ad to the eCPM a little bit increase does not represent an overall growth momentum of this site. And in terms of the brand-based ad, we can see that except for having an optimized pricing schemes, we believe that the most important parameter here is the sales rate of our core resources. So you can see that this particular parameter has been shown a decline tendency if we're comparing that with the ad revenue trend. So because of the decreased demand from our ad users on ad customer side. So of course, at this current stage, that's the very reason why we are now trying to actually focus more on the celebrity-based or KOL-based marketing or the content-based marketing. So especially for those ad customers that may actually have the budget of between 5 million and 20 million, I believe that the KOL-based marketing will be the best option for these customers and they're going to be putting most of their available budget or ad budget with Weibo so that, for instance, especially the example of P&G of having most of the budget left on the Weibo platform to actually use the KOL marketing because this is going to help them to actually really help to catch the attention of those medium-level users and the consumer. So this is actually going to help us to increase also the budget attraction as well as the ad revenue on this front. So the very important core part is to improve the parameter of the sales rate of the core resources. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question and the questions come from the line of Yicheng Yuan from UBS. Yicheng Yuan: [Interpreted] So let me translate myself. So could you please provide an update on user growth and engagement trends, including content consumption, time spent and usage frequency, et cetera. In addition, in terms of our digitalization strategy and AI initiatives, could you please share the latest progress and the main areas of focus for the second half of the year? Gaofei Wang: [Interpreted] So for this question, first of all, for the previous 2 quarters of this year, we did see, as I have already elucidated just now, we have some of the adjustments of our product structure. So in the last year's second half, this did have some of the low-frequency users as well, especially because of the changes of the using habits. So this year, of course, in terms of the core users, we did see a very good trend of increasing the time spent on Weibo as well as the interactivity with Weibo. But still, this is quite stressful for the low-frequency users still because of 2 reasons. First reason is that previously, we were pretty much focused on the pre-installed app of -- in those handsets. But this year, we had lower shipments of those handsets with the pre-install app. So that did help us to impact the overall parameter of attraction of new users using those pre-installed app. So this had around 10% of impact to our overall business. And second reason is that now at the current stage, we are primarily focusing on the recommendation-based feed. And because of that, if we are competing with our peers, we do not see that much of a difference if we're talking about the low-frequency user attraction. So that did give us actually a quite stressful situation. But I believe that in the second half of this year, we are going to focus on this particular issue and hope to have some better achievements in the second half of the year. And the next part is about the video-related consumption, as you -- as we have already stated in the prepared remarks that time spent on the Weibo video and production as well as the consumption of Weibo video, we did see actually a double-digit growth on these parameters. And especially after Q2, we did see some of the particular resources and investments invested by us in order to attract those video users or video accounts to be created entered Weibo or we are attracting the video content creators from other platforms to enter the Weibo platform. But of course, in the past, it was quite difficult to actually create new accounts if it was purely based on the relationship-based feed. But at the current stage, we're now converting to the recommendation-based feed. And that really give us an advantage of giving more traffic to those video content creators so that they are more willing to open accounts on our Weibo platform. And I believe that at the current stage, the overall trend is pretty good in terms of video content created and also the consumption as well. So we are going to keep investing on this front. And in terms of the number of those video content creators at the [ current account ] at current stage, it is amounting to around 10,000 of them. So in terms of the retention rate, it is about 70% also. So meaning that those accounts keep updating the video-related content now. So this -- and the second part is about incentives that we are providing to those content creators or the video content creators. And the ROI then was about 70% to 100%. And this did help to contribute a lot to the ads of the current year. And also, of course, that we believe in terms of the impact of this part to the gross margin of Weibo a little bit negative. So if you're talking about -- and also in terms of the long term, I do believe that there is going to be a lot of benefits added to our overall business because this did help us to increase the ad at the same time, having better attraction to the users and improve. I think that now I would like to talk a little bit about the Intelligent Search, Weibo Intelligent Search. So we've been launching this in the past years and especially the agentic AI and AI Intelligent Search. And so in terms of the year-on-year performance, we did see actually an increase. But here, if you're talking about the quarter-by-quarter performance, this did have some of the negative trend. But still, in Q1, we had a massive update of the capabilities of LLM, and at this stage, we are focusing on the upgrading of the technology as well as improving the user experience, especially changing the user behaviors from those fixed box based and typing kind of a search to an interactive search and Q&A-based search or the introduction based or guidance -- or guided search in this front. So hopefully, that we are going to see a very positive overall trend of this particular user behavior and some of the other relevant areas. Okay. And next part is about the AI application and its overall impact to enhance the R&D efficiency and maintenance as well. So at the current stage, we do see some of the positive impacts of AI use to facilitate the R&D of the products. But first of all, in terms of the core product R&D, there is not much to be shared because this is actually quite standardized. But especially on the product of the Super Topics, I think that this is really important in my opinion. And for the Super Topics, because of the efficiency of generating the Super Topics [indiscernible] by . We did see more kind of sub apps to be created by those content accounts like from the game industry or sport industry, et cetera. So you can see that this particular super topic interaction and the activity rate at the current stage is already reaching the historical high status just because of this facilitation by the AI technology to this particular area. And we're seeing a very good trend of Super Topics. Operator: We appear to have no further questions at this time. So I will now hand back to Sandra Zhang for closing remarks. Sandra Zhang: This wraps up our conference call today. Thank you all for joining us. We'll see you next quarter. Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you. 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This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Weibo (WB) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

HONG KONG, Aug. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Weibo Corporation ("Weibo" or the "Company") (Nasdaq: WB and HKEX: 9898), a leading social media in China, today announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. "We delivered a solid quarter," said Gaofei Wang, CEO of Weibo. "On the user front, with our continued efforts to improve user quality and drive user retention through information feed revamp, we saw solid engagement among our core users and increased consumption in the information feeds. Video consumption continued to improve, supported by better content distribution within our revamped feed and increased supply of high quality contents. On the monetization front, we focused on bringing Weibo's unique value on content marketing to more advertisers and enhancing advertising performance through AI integration. We saw solid performance of certain pillar industries and good momentum of celebrity marketing. On the AI front, we made solid progress in the integration of AI to enhance our product, content and monetization systems." Second Quarter 2026 Highlights Net revenues were US$453.8 million, an increase of 2% year-over-year or a decrease of 4% year-over-year on a constant currency basis [1]. Advertising and marketing revenues were US$381.0 million, a decrease of 1% year-over-year or a decrease of 6% year-over-year on a constant currency basis [1]. Value-added services ("VAS") revenues were US$72.9 million, an increase of 19% year-over-year or an increase of 12% year-over-year on a constant currency basis [1]. Income from operations was US$118.9 million, representing an operating margin of 26%. Net income attributable to Weibo's shareholders was US$67.4 million and diluted net income per share was US$0.26. Non-GAAP income from operations was US$125.4 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 28%. Non-GAAP net income attributable to Weibo's shareholders was US$102.7 million and non-GAAP diluted net income per share was US$0.38. Monthly active users ("MAUs") were 561 million in June 2026. Average daily active users ("DAUs") were 254 million in June 2026. Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results For the second quarter of 2026, Weibo's total net revenues were US$453.8 million, an increase of 2% compared to US$444.8 million for the same period last year. Advertising and marketing revenues for the second quarter of 2026 were US$381.0 million, a decrease of 1% compared to US$383.4 million for the same period last year. Advertising and marketing revenues excluding advertising revenues from Alibaba were US$341.8 million, a decrease of 2% compared to US$347.6 million for the same period last year. The decrease was primarily due to the descending trend of advertising demands from handset and online game sectors year-over-year, and was partially offset by increase of advertising revenues from internet service and automobile sectors as well as favorable foreign exchange impact on the reported numbers from the overall appreciation of RMB against the U.S. dollar ("foreign exchange impact") on a year-over-year basis. Advertising and marketing revenues from Alibaba were US$39.2 million, an increase of 10% compared to US$35.7 million for the same period last year. The increase was primarily attributable to the favorable foreign exchange impact on the reported numbers on a year-over-year basis and a modest increase in advertising demands from Alibaba mainly due to its AI application promotion. VAS revenues for the second quarter of 2026 were US$72.9 million, an increase of 19% compared to US$61.4 million for the same period last year, primarily attributable to additional revenues of one-off ticket proceeds from off-line activities held by Weibo, and solid growth from membership service as well as favorable foreign exchange impact on the reported numbers on a year-over-year basis. Costs and expenses for the second quarter of 2026 totaled US$335.0 million, an increase of 12% compared to US$299.2 million for the same period last year, mainly due to the increases in ad production costs and marketing expenses. Income from operations for the second quarter of 2026 was US$118.9 million, compared to US$145.6 million for the same period last year. Operating margin was 26%, compared to 33% last year. Non-GAAP income from operations was US$125.4 million, compared to US$161.8 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating margin was 28%, compared to 36% last year. Non-operating loss for the second quarter of 2026 was US$27.8 million, compared to non-operating income of US$12.8 million for the same period last year. Non-operating loss for the second quarter of 2026 mainly included (i) loss from fair value change of investments of US$22.8 million, which was excluded under non-GAAP measures; and (ii) net interest and other loss of US$5.1 million. Income tax expenses for the second quarter of 2026 were US$23.0 million, compared to US$31.7 million for the same period last year. The decrease in tax expenses was mainly due to lower income before tax in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the same period last year. Net income attributable to Weibo's shareholders for the second quarter of 2026 was US$67.4 million, compared to US$125.7 million for the same period last year. Diluted net income per share attributable to Weibo's shareholders for the second quarter of 2026 was US$0.26, compared to US$0.48 for the same period last year. Non-GAAP net income attributable to Weibo's shareholders for the second quarter of 2026 was US$102.7 million, compared to US$143.2 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP diluted net income per share attributable to Weibo's shareholders for the second quarter of 2026 was US$0.38, compared to US$0.54 for the same period last year. As of June 30, 2026, Weibo's cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled US$2.64 billion. For the second quarter of 2026, cash provided by operating activities was US$50.5 million, capital expenditures totaled US$3.1 million, and depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to US$15.7 million. Conference Call Weibo's management team will host a conference call from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM Eastern Time on August 19, 2026 (or 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM Hong Kong Time on August 19, 2026) to present an overview of the Company's financial performance and business operations. Participants who wish to dial in to the teleconference must register through the below public participant link. Dial-in and instructions will be provided in the confirmation email upon registering. Participants Registration Link: https://register-conf.media-server.com/register/BI4542e6edec00491e9198327b87da5adb Additionally, a live and archived webcast of this conference call will be available at http://ir.weibo.com. Non-GAAP Financial Measures This release contains the following non-GAAP financial measures: non-GAAP income from operations, non-GAAP net income attributable to Weibo's shareholders, non-GAAP diluted net income per share attributable to Weibo's shareholders and adjusted EBITDA. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, measures of the Company's financial performance prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The Company's non-GAAP financial measures exclude stock-based compensation, amortization of intangible assets resulting from business acquisitions, net results of impairment and provision on investments, gain/loss on sale of investments and fair value change of investments, non-GAAP to GAAP reconciling items on the share of equity method investments, non-GAAP to GAAP reconciling items for the income/loss attributable to non-controlling interests, income tax effects related to the amortization of intangible assets resulting from business acquisitions and fair value change of investments (other non-GAAP to GAAP reconciling items have no tax effect), and amortization of issuance cost of convertible senior notes, unsecured senior notes and long-term loans. Adjusted EBITDA represents non-GAAP net income attributable to Weibo's shareholders before interest income/expense, net, income tax expenses/benefits, and depreciation expenses. The Company's management uses these non-GAAP financial measures in their financial and operating decision-making, because management believes these measures reflect the Company's ongoing operating performance in a manner that allows more meaningful period-to-period comparisons. The Company believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information to investors and others in the following ways: (i) in comparing the Company's current financial results with the Company's past financial results in a consistent manner, and (ii) in understanding and evaluating the Company's current operating performance and future prospects in the same manner as management does. The Company also believes that the non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information to both management and investors by excluding certain expenses, gains/losses and other items (i) that are not expected to result in future cash payments or (ii) that are non-recurring in nature or may not be indicative of the Company's core operating results and business outlook. Use of non-GAAP financial measures has limitations. The Company's non-GAAP financial measures do not include all income and expense items that affect the Company's operations. They may not be comparable to non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. Accordingly, care should be exercised in understanding how the Company defines its non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the Company's non-GAAP financial measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures are set forth in the section below titled "Unaudited Reconciliation of Non-GAAP to GAAP Results." About Weibo Weibo is a leading social media for people to create, share and discover content online. Weibo combines the means of public self-expression in real time with a powerful platform for social interaction, content aggregation and content distribution. Any user can create and post a feed and attach multi-media and long-form content. User relationships on Weibo may be asymmetric; any user can follow any other user and add comments to a feed while reposting. This simple, asymmetric and distributed nature of Weibo allows an original feed to become a live viral conversation stream. Weibo enables its advertising and marketing customers to promote their brands, products and services to users. Weibo offers a wide range of advertising and marketing solutions to companies of all sizes. Weibo generates a substantial majority of its revenues from the sale of advertising and marketing services, including the sale of social display advertisement and promoted marketing offerings. Weibo displays content in a simple information feed format and offers native advertisement that conforms to the information feed on our platform. We are continuously refining our social interest graph recommendation engine, which enables our customers to perform people marketing and target audiences based on user demographics, social relationships, interests and behaviors, to achieve greater relevance, engagement and marketing effectiveness. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology, such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "confidence," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, Weibo's expected financial performance and strategic and operational plans, as described, without limitation, in quotations from management in this press release, contain forward-looking statements. Weibo may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in the Company's periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), in announcements, circulars or other publications made on the website of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (the "Hong Kong Stock Exchange"), in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the Company's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, Weibo's limited operating history in certain new businesses; failure to sustain or grow active user base and the level of user engagement; the uncertain regulatory landscape in China; fluctuations in the Company's quarterly operating results; the Company's reliance on advertising and marketing sales for a majority of its revenues; failure to successfully develop, introduce, drive adoption of or monetize new features and products; failure to compete effectively for advertising and marketing spending; failure to successfully integrate acquired businesses; risks associated with the Company's investments, including equity pick-up and impairment; failure to compete successfully against new entrants and established industry competitors; changes in the macro-economic environment, including the depreciation of the Renminbi; and adverse changes in economic and political policies of the PRC government and its impact on the Chinese economy. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in Weibo's annual reports on Form 20-F and other filings with the SEC and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. All information provided in this press release is current as of the date hereof, and Weibo assumes no obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. Contact:Investor RelationsWeibo CorporationEmail: [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/weibo-announces-second-quarter-2026-unaudited-financial-results-302855055.html

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Total Net Revenues: USD453.8 million, an increase of 2% year over year (or a decrease of 4% on a constant currency basis). Advertising and Marketing Revenues: USD381 million, a decrease of 1% year over year (or 6% on a constant currency basis). Value-Added Services (VAS) Revenues: USD72.9 million, an increase of 19% year over year (or 12% on a constant currency basis). Non-GAAP Operating Income: USD125.4 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 28% (compared to 36% in the same period last year). Net Income Attributable to Weibo: USD102.7 million, representing a net margin of 23%. Diluted EPS: USD0.38. Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 561 million in June 2026. Daily Active Users (DAUs): 254 million in June 2026. Ad Revenue from Alibaba: USD39.2 million, an increase of 10% year over year (or 50% on a constant currency basis). Total Cost and Expenses: USD328.4 million, an increase of 16% year over year. Cash, Cash Equivalents and Short-term Investments: USD2.64 billion as of June 30, 2026. Cash Provided by Operating Activities: USD15.5 million in the second quarter. Capital Expenditures: USD3.1 million. Depreciation and Amortization Expenses: USD15.7 million. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 4 Warning Signs with WB. Is WB fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Release Date: August 19, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Total revenue increased 2% year over year to USD453.8 million, with VAS revenue up 19%. Advertising revenue from automobile, internet services, and food and beverage sectors saw solid year-over-year growth. Video consumption improved, with total time spent on video views growing double digits year over year and average time per user increasing even more. AI integration in advertising improved eCPM and reduced negative feedback rates by over 30% for AI-optimized e-commerce creatives. Super Topics daily active users and discussion participants grew double digits year over year, driven by new features and AI-enhanced content generation. Advertising revenue decreased 1% year over year due to consumption market headwinds and tightened advertiser budgets. DAU base declined slightly year over year in June, impacted by channel budget rationalization and low-frequency user adaptation to feed changes. Operating margin fell to 28% from 36% year over year, due to higher ad production costs and marketing expenses. Third-quarter advertising revenue growth is expected to face pressure from a high base due to last year's food delivery price war and lower World Cup ad contributions. Handset sector ad revenue declined due to soft demand and rising component costs, while e-commerce and cosmetics verticals also faced headwinds. Q: What is the outlook for Advertising revenue in the second half of 2026, and what are the trends across different verticals? How has AI impacted eCPM and other advertising metrics? A: CEO Gaofei Wang stated that the second half outlook is uncertain. While the automobile sector should maintain its growth momentum due to new energy vehicle launches, the internet/software sector is expected to be flat. The handset sector remains under pressure, with a cautious view on Q3. The company has low expectations for e-commerce and food delivery due to the high base from last year's price war and the government's anti-involution policies. On AI, Wang noted that while eCPM is increasing quarter-over-quarter, it does not necessarily translate to overall revenue growth due to past ad product restructuring. The key focus for brand advertising is improving the sales rate of core resources, with a strategic push into celebrity and KOL-based marketing to capture budgets from mid-sized advertisers. Q: Can you provide an update on user growth and engagement trends, including content consumption, time spent, and usage frequency? What is the latest progress on video strategy and AI initiatives? A: CEO Gaofei Wang explained that while core user time spent and interactivity are improving, low-frequency user retention remains a challenge due to two factors: a 10% impact from lower handset shipments with pre-installed Weibo apps, and the shift to a recommendation-based feed which makes it harder to attract low-frequency users compared to peers. On video, the company is seeing double-digit growth in time spent and is successfully attracting video creators, with around 10,000 new accounts and a 70% retention rate. The ROI on creator incentives is between 70% and 100%. Regarding AI, Wang highlighted that the intelligent search has seen year-over-year growth, and AI has significantly improved the efficiency of creating "Super Topics," leading to a historical high in user interaction and activity on that feature. Q: What were the key drivers of the 2% year-over-year revenue growth in Q2 2026, and what is the breakdown of the Advertising and VAS segments? A: CFO Fei Cao reported total Q2 revenue of $453.8 million, up 2% year-over-year. Advertising and Marketing revenue was $381 million, a 1% decrease year-over-year, impacted by softer demand in certain verticals. Value-Added Services (VAS) revenue was $72.9 million, a 19% increase, driven by run-off ticket proceeds from offline activities and solid growth from membership services. The top three ad verticals were FMCG, e-commerce, and automobile, with internet services and automobile being the primary growth contributors. Q: How did the performance of specific advertising verticals differ in the second quarter? A: CFO Fei Cao noted that the automobile sector delivered solid year-over-year growth, supported by frequent new energy vehicle launches. Internet services also increased, driven by stronger marketing demand for AI-related products. The food and beverage sector benefited from early World Cup-related marketing budgets. Conversely, the handset sector declined due to soft ad demand and rising component costs. The cosmetics vertical remained soft as international brands reduced spend, and game developers remained cautious with their advertising spend. Q: What was the contribution from Alibaba to advertising revenue in Q2 2026? A: CFO Fei Cao stated that Ad revenues from Alibaba were $39.2 million in the second quarter, an increase of 10% year-over-year (or 50% on a constant currency basis). This increase was primarily due to higher spending on AI-related activities, which more than offset softer spending in local services. Cao reiterated that Alibaba's ad spend on Weibo can vary from quarter to quarter based on its own marketing priorities. Q: What were the main drivers of the increase in total costs and expenses, and how did this impact operating margin? A: CFO Fei Cao reported that total costs and expenses for Q2 were $328.4 million, an increase of 16% year-over-year. This was mainly due to higher ad production costs and marketing expenses. As a result, non-GAAP operating income was $125.4 million, representing an operating margin of 28%, compared to 36% in the same period last year. Q: What is the company's strategy for user growth, and why did the DAU base decline slightly year-over-year in June? A: CEO Gaofei Wang explained that the company has proactively rationalized its channel budget allocation, shifting focus from scaling up user acquisition to improving the conversion rate of newly acquired users. Concurrently, the homepage information feed revamp is still being optimized, and some low-frequency users need time to adapt to the changes. As a result, DAUs declined slightly year-over-year in June but remained largely flat quarter-over-quarter. The company is focusing on improving user quality, retention, and deepening engagement. Q: What are the key focus areas for the advertising product and sales team in the second half of 2026? A: CEO Gaofei Wang stated that the company will focus on strengthening its content marketing products and services by offering more standardized product solutions and convenient advertising tools. This aims to lower the barriers for advertisers in content planning, resource allocation, and information feed placement. A key focus is on celebrity marketing, where Weibo is becoming involved earlier in campaign planning and resource matching to provide more comprehensive services. The goal is to improve the sales rate of core resources and capture more ad budgets. Q: How is AI being used to improve advertising performance and user experience? A: CEO Gaofei Wang detailed that AI is being applied across key stages of the advertising process, including creative supply, intelligent ad placement, and creative quality management. In Q2, AI-generated ad creatives reached a 50% consumption share in the promoted feed and real-time bidding systems. In the e-commerce sector, AI-optimized materials saw a drop of over 30% in negative feedback rates compared to clients' original materials, effectively enhancing user experience in ad content consumption. Q: What is the company's expectation for the third quarter of 2026 regarding advertising revenue? A: CEO Gaofei Wang cautioned that the food delivery price war in Q3 of last year created a high revenue base for comparison. Additionally, due to factors such as primary match broadcast times and advertiser dynamics during this year's World Cup, the incremental contribution from related ad budgets is lower than the previous tournament. These factors are expected to put pressure on year-over-year Advertising revenue growth in the third quarter. For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.

Weibo Corporation (NASDAQ:WB) shares advanced 3.29% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after the Chinese social media company reported second-quarter earnings and revenue above analysts’ expectations. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.38, ahead of the consensus forecast of $0.36. Revenue increased 2% year-on-year to $453.8 million, exceeding the $442.44 million expected by analysts. Advertising and marketing revenue declined 1% from the previous year to $381.0 million, while value-added services revenue climbed 19% to $72.9 million. The increase in value-added services was supported by one-time ticket revenue from offline events alongside solid growth in membership services. “We delivered a solid quarter,” said Gaofei Wang, CEO of Weibo. “On the user front, with our continued efforts to improve user quality and drive user retention through information feed revamp, we saw solid engagement among our core users and increased consumption in the information feeds.” Weibo reported 561 million monthly active users in June 2026, alongside an average of 254 million daily active users. Despite the revenue beat, profitability weakened compared with the same period last year. Weibo’s non-GAAP operating margin declined to 28% from 36%, reflecting a 12% year-on-year increase in costs and expenses to $335.0 million. The company attributed much of the increase to higher advertising production costs and marketing expenditure. Non-GAAP net income attributable to shareholders fell to $102.7 million from $143.2 million in the second quarter of the previous year. Advertising revenue from customers excluding Alibaba decreased 2% year-on-year to $341.8 million. Weaker demand from the handset and online gaming industries weighed on performance, although stronger spending from internet services and automotive customers provided a partial offset. Revenue generated from Alibaba advertising moved in the opposite direction, increasing 10% from a year earlier to $39.2 million. Weibo finished the quarter with a substantial liquidity position. As of June 30, 2026, the company held $2.64 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. The stronger-than-expected headline results helped lift Weibo shares before the opening bell, although the contraction in operating margins and decline in adjusted net income remain important considerations for investors assessing the company’s underlying earnings trajectory. Weibo Corporation stock price

Interested in Weibo Corporation? Here are five stocks we like better. Weibo’s Q2 revenue rose 2% year over year to $453.8 million, as a 19% increase in value-added services offset a 1% decline in advertising revenue. Non-GAAP operating income was $125.4 million, while net income attributable to Weibo reached $102.7 million. User levels remained broadly stable, with 561 million monthly active users and 254 million daily active users in June. Feed improvements increased time spent and interactions, but lower-frequency users continued to show weaker visit frequency and retention, while reduced handset shipments affected new-user acquisition. Video consumption, interest-community engagement and AI-powered advertising tools all showed strong growth, but the advertising outlook remains cautious because of constrained consumer demand, intense competition and pressure on advertiser profitability. Management expects continued investment in creators, AI and content-marketing products to support longer-term growth. Paramount’s 30-Film Promise Puts AMC Back in the Box Office Conversation Weibo (NASDAQ:WB) reported second-quarter 2026 revenue growth of 2% as gains in value-added services offset a modest decline in advertising revenue amid cautious spending by advertisers in several industries. Total revenue for the quarter was $453.8 million, up 2% year over year, though down 4% on a constant-currency basis. Advertising and marketing revenue declined 1% to $381 million, while value-added service revenue rose 19% to $72.9 million. The company reported non-GAAP operating income of $125.4 million, equal to a 28% operating margin, and net income attributable to Weibo of $102.7 million, or diluted earnings per share of $0.38. → Looking Beyond CrowdStrike? 3 AI Security Stocks Stand Out Plot Twist: 12 States Could Stall the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery Mega-Merger Chief Executive Officer Gaofei Wang said advertiser budgets remained constrained by a subdued consumer market, heightened competition and pressure on customers’ costs and profitability. Still, the company recorded advertising growth in automobiles, internet services, and food and beverage, while celebrity marketing also expanded year over year. Weibo reported 561 million average monthly active users and 254 million average daily active users in June. Monthly active users declined modestly sequentially, while daily active users were broadly flat from the prior quarter, according to Chief Financial Officer Fei Cao. → 3 Robotics Stocks Under $10: Value, Momentum, or Bet? The Netflix-Lionsgate Rumor Exposed a Bigger Shift in Media M&A Management said the company has shifted its user-acquisition strategy toward improving the conversion of newly acquired users into active users rather than expanding acquisition volume. The company also continues to refine its homepage feed, placing greater emphasis on recommendations for relationship-based content, trending topics and video. Wang said the changes improved time spent, the number of users engaging with the homepage feed, and interaction volumes during the second quarter. However, lower-frequency users are still adapting to the revised feed format, and their visit frequency and retention have lagged broader consumption improvements. → Michael Burry Is Betting Against Palantir Again—Should Investors Care? During the question-and-answer session, management added that lower shipments of handsets carrying pre-installed Weibo applications pressured new-user acquisition. Wang said this factor had an approximately 10% impact on the business. The company expects overall feed time spent and interactions to grow in the second half, but said converting lower-frequency users remains a key challenge. Weibo said video views and total video consumption time increased by double digits year over year in the second quarter, while average video consumption per user rose more sharply. The supply of high-quality videos also grew by double digits sequentially. The company has increased investments in attracting and supporting video creators as its recommendation system gives it more capacity to distribute content from newer accounts. Management said it added fewer than 10,000 video creator accounts in the second quarter and that roughly 70% continued to update videos weekly after one quarter. Wang said creator incentives and revenue-sharing arrangements could result in a near-term effect on gross margin, but the accounts are expected to generate additional content, advertising inventory and user engagement over time. Management said it expects the return on those investments to reach 70% to 100% by the end of the year, with fuller incremental returns anticipated next year. In its “super topics” interest communities, Weibo introduced new features for celebrity, sports and esports users, including event reviews, ratings and discussions. The company said daily active users and discussion participants in super topics increased by double digits year over year. Management said AI-enabled product development has helped the platform offer more customized features for different communities. Weibo continued to use artificial intelligence across product development, operations and advertising. In search, the company said it is enhancing its AI-powered Zhisou product’s ability to understand context and user intent in multi-turn conversations, particularly around public figures, intellectual property and trending topics. Management said Zhisou grew year over year in the first half but declined sequentially as competing large language models improved significantly during the first quarter. Weibo is upgrading the technology and adjusting the product experience, with a greater focus on guided and question-and-answer search embedded within posts, videos and trending-topic browsing. In advertising, AI-generated creative materials accounted for 50% of spending in promoted-feed, real-time-bidding ads in June. The company said it has used video-generation tools to help e-commerce advertisers with limited video assets. AI-optimized advertising materials in e-commerce had negative-feedback rates more than 30% below clients’ original materials, according to Wang. Cao said eCPM improved both year over year and sequentially, supported by AI integration in creative generation, targeting and bidding. However, Wang cautioned that higher eCPM did not necessarily indicate broad-based advertising-demand growth, because Weibo has also reduced lower-quality ad exposure and managed inventory to improve user experience. Weibo said automobile advertising grew on the back of frequent new-energy vehicle launches, while internet-services advertising benefited from marketing demand for AI-related products and services. Food and beverage revenue also rose, aided by World Cup-related marketing and new-product promotion. By contrast, handset advertising declined as manufacturers faced weaker demand, higher component costs and profitability pressure. E-commerce faced difficult comparisons with the prior year, while cosmetics and online gaming advertisers also remained cautious. Advertising revenue from Alibaba was $39.2 million, up 10% year over year, or 3% on a constant-currency basis. Cao said higher spending on AI-related activity offset softer spending in local services. For the second half, management said consumer-demand recovery may take time and competition for advertising budgets is likely to remain intense. Weibo also cited a high comparison base from last year’s food-delivery price war and a smaller advertising lift from this year’s World Cup than in the prior tournament. The company plans to expand standardized content-marketing products, simplify advertising tools and further develop celebrity marketing to attract more mid-sized advertisers. Wang cited a World Cup campaign involving Wang Lao Ji and footballer Erling Haaland, which generated more than 5 billion topic views and 1.4 million discussions on Weibo, as an example of its integrated celebrity, content and event-marketing approach. Weibo Corporation operates one of China’s leading social media and microblogging platforms under the brand name Weibo. Launched in August 2009 by Sina Corporation, Weibo enables users to create, share and engage with short-form posts in real time. The platform supports text, images, videos and live streams, and offers features such as trending topics, hashtag campaigns and public discussion forums to facilitate user interaction and content discovery. Weibo’s product suite extends beyond basic social networking to include digital content services such as live streaming, online games, value-added messaging and e-commerce integrations. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Weibo Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

BEIJING, July 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Weibo Corporation (NASDAQ: WB and HKEX: 9898), a leading social media for people to create, share and discover content, will announce its unaudited financial results for the second quarter 2026 before the U.S. market opens on Wednesday, August 19, 2026. Following the announcement, Weibo's management team will host a conference call from 7 AM – 8 AM Eastern Time on August 19, 2026 (or 7 PM – 8 PM Hong Kong Time on August 19, 2026) to present an overview of the Company's financial performance and business operations. Participants who wish to dial in to the teleconference must register through the below public participant link. Dial in and instruction will be in the confirmation email upon registering. Participants Registration Link: https://register-conf.media-server.com/register/BI4542e6edec00491e9198327b87da5adb Additionally, a live and archived webcast of this conference call will be available at http://ir.weibo.com. About Weibo Weibo is a leading social media for people to create, share and discover content online. Weibo combines the means of public self-expression in real time with a powerful platform for social interaction, content aggregation and content distribution. Any user can create and post a feed and attach multi-media and long-form content. User relationships on Weibo may be asymmetric; any user can follow any other user and add comments to a feed while reposting. This simple, asymmetric and distributed nature of Weibo allows an original feed to become a live viral conversation stream. Weibo enables its advertising and marketing customers to promote their brands, products and services to users. Weibo offers a wide range of advertising and marketing solutions to companies of all sizes. Weibo generates a substantial majority of its revenues from the sale of advertising and marketing services, including the sale of social display advertisement and promoted marketing offerings. Weibo displays content in a simple information feed format and offers native advertisement that conform to the information feed on our platform. We are continuously refining our social interest graph recommendation engine, which enables our customers to perform people marketing and target audiences based on user demographics, social relationships, interests and behaviors, to achieve greater relevance, engagement and marketing effectiveness. Contact:Investor RelationsWeibo CorporationEmail: [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/weibo-corporation-to-report-second-quarter-2026-financial-results-on-august-19-2026-302837535.html

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Revenue: USD421.3 million, an increase of 6% year over year. Advertising Revenue: USD369.8 million, an increase of 9% year over year. Non-GAAP Operating Income: USD119.8 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 28%. Net Income: USD91.9 million, with a net margin of 22%. Cash and Cash Equivalents: USD2.59 billion as of March 31, 2026. Cash Provided by Operating Activities: USD154 million. Capital Expenditures: USD11.9 million. Depreciation and Amortization: USD15.5 million. Value-Added Service Revenues: USD51.6 million, a decrease of 11% year over year. Total Cost and Expenses: USD301.5 million, an increase of 13% year over year. Income Tax Expenses: USD15.7 million. MAUs: 562 million in March 2026. DAUs: 254 million in March 2026. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 4 Warning Signs with WB. Is WB fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Release Date: May 28, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Weibo Corp (NASDAQ:WB) reported a 6% year-over-year increase in total revenues, reaching USD421.3 million. Advertising revenues grew by 9% year over year, driven by strong performance in internet services, local services, and the automobile sector. The company saw double-digit growth in video consumption, with significant increases in time spent on video playback pages. Weibo Corp (NASDAQ:WB) enhanced its AI capabilities, improving ad targeting, bidding, and creative generation, which supported promoted feeds and real-time bidding ad products. The company maintained a strong cash position with cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaling USD2.59 billion as of March 31, 2026. Monthly Active Users (MAUs) experienced a modest decline both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, reflecting challenges in user acquisition and retention. The handset sector faced pressure due to rising chip and memory costs, impacting advertising budgets and profitability. Value-added service revenues decreased by 11% year over year, primarily due to a decline in game-related revenue. Operating margin declined to 28% from 33% in the same period last year, attributed to increased investments in monetization-related initiatives. The online games sector continued to face headwinds due to a lack of blockbuster releases, impacting revenue growth. Q: Based on the trend so far in Q1 and recent months, can management comment about Weibo's advertising outlook in Q2? Additionally, how does AI benefit advertising and monetization? A: Gaofei Wang, CEO, explained that Q1 saw a 9% year-on-year growth in advertising revenue, driven by internet-based software deployment and AI-related investments. Despite challenges in sectors like automotive and handset due to cost pressures, new product launches are expected to drive ad revenue. AI is enhancing ad material generation and targeting, although public acceptance of AI-generated content is still being evaluated. Q: Could you please provide an update on the progress of Weibo's video strategy and the key priorities for the next phase? A: Gaofei Wang, CEO, stated that the video strategy has led to a significant increase in video consumption on Weibo, with double-digit growth in time spent on video content. The focus is on attracting more vloggers and content creators by providing resources and incentives. The aim is to enhance video content supply and user engagement. Q: What are the recent developments on the AI front in terms of user-facing code? A: Gaofei Wang, CEO, highlighted that Weibo is investing in AI to improve user experience and content creation. The introduction of interactive dialogue-based search has seen significant user growth. An AI content creation center has been established to assist creators in generating text, images, and videos, with collaborations to enhance video generation capabilities. Q: How is the information-based feed update impacting user growth? A: Gaofei Wang, CEO, noted that the update completed in Q3 2025 has improved user experience, although there was a slight decline in MAUs and DAUs due to strategic changes. The focus is on enhancing user interaction and video consumption, with expectations of improved user metrics in the future. Q: Can you share insights on the impact of AI on Weibo's advertising strategies? A: Gaofei Wang, CEO, explained that AI is crucial for performance-based ads, improving ad material generation, targeting, and recommendation efficiency. AI adoption among KOLs and celebrities is progressing, although public acceptance of AI-generated content is still being assessed before large-scale commercialization. For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.

Never miss an important update on your stock portfolio and cut through the noise. Over 7 million investors trust Simply Wall St to stay informed where it matters for FREE. Weibo, listed as NasdaqGS:WB, reported Q1 2026 results that highlight a refocused homepage feed and upgraded video content. The company outlined greater use of AI-powered advertising tools and a more stable advertising business during the quarter. Shareholders also approved the re-election of directors at the annual general meeting, keeping the current leadership team in place. Weibo enters this phase of product and advertising changes with its stock at $7.86 and the share price down 25.4% year to date. The stock has also fallen 24.9% over 3 years and 77.2% over 5 years. This provides context for how investors may view any signs of business improvement. For readers watching NasdaqGS:WB, the focus now is on whether an optimized feed, stronger video offering, and wider use of AI tools can support engagement and advertising performance. The continuity in Weibo’s board may help keep these initiatives on a consistent track as the company works to translate them into more resilient monetization over time. Stay updated on the most important news stories for Weibo by adding it to your watchlist or portfolio. Alternatively, explore our Community to discover new perspectives on Weibo. Does the team leading Weibo have what it takes? See our full breakdown of the management team's track record and compensation. The Q1 2026 numbers give mixed signals for you as an investor. Revenue of US$421.33 million was higher than the US$396.86 million reported a year earlier, helped by a 9% rise in advertising revenue and management’s push on video content and AI-powered tools. At the same time, net income fell from US$106.96 million to US$34.72 million, with basic EPS from continuing operations moving from US$0.45 to US$0.15. That gap between revenue and earnings points to either higher costs, weaker margins, or both, even as user retention and ad conversion trends are described as improving. The renewed focus on an optimized feed, video content, and AI-powered advertising lines up directly with the narrative that AI integration and interest-based feeds can deepen engagement and support more efficient ad placements. The drop in net income and EPS could challenge the narrative that AI and content partnerships alone will support earnings stability, especially with competition from platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou. The re-election of Charles Guowei Chao, Gaofei Wang, and Pochin Christopher Lu extends leadership continuity, which is not fully captured in the narrative but may matter for how consistently these AI and video initiatives are executed. Knowing what a company is worth starts with understanding its story. Check out one of the top narratives in the Simply Wall St Community for Weibo to help decide what it's worth to you. Earnings softness in Q1 2026, with net income and EPS down year on year, signals pressure on profitability even as revenue grows. Heavy reliance on advertising, in a market where TikTok’s Douyin and Kuaishou compete aggressively for budgets, may keep revenue and margins sensitive to shifts in advertiser demand. Q1 2026 revenue growth and a 9% increase in advertising revenue show that user engagement and monetizable traffic are still supporting the top line. A stable board and CEO continuity give management more room to pursue longer-term AI and video priorities without interruption from leadership turnover. From here, focus on whether Weibo can convert its optimized feed, heavier video usage, and AI-powered tools into sustained earnings quality, not just revenue. Watch for any commentary on cost control, ad pricing, and AI-driven conversion rates in upcoming quarters, along with user growth and engagement trends versus rivals like Douyin and Kuaishou. The consistency of decisions from the re-elected board and how quickly they respond to competitive and regulatory pressures will also be important signals. To ensure you're always in the loop on how the latest news impacts the investment narrative for Weibo, head to the community page for Weibo to never miss an update on the top community narratives. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include WB. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email [email protected]

Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 7 a.m. ET Chief Executive Officer — Gaofei Wang Chief Financial Officer — Fei Cao Gaofei Wang: [Interpreted] Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On today's call, I'll share with you highlights of Weibo's product and monetization in the first quarter 2026. On the user front, in March 2026, Weibo's MAU was 562 million and average daily users reached 254 million. Our MAU is still in a modest decline on both a year-on-year and a quarter-over-quarter basis. This is primarily driven by our strategic focus on enhancing the user experience and driving user retention. We have proactively rationalized our channel budget allocation, shifting our focus towards improving the conversion rate of newly acquired users into active users. Concurrently, driven by our recent efforts to optimize information feed product experience for our core business, which includes engaged users and click-oriented users, coupled with the sustained growth in video content consumption on the platform, the scale and engagement frequency of our core users have maintained a solid trend. As a result, our DAUs achieved modest growth quarter-over-quarter. Our total net revenues for the first quarter reached USD 421.3 million, an increase of 6% year-over-year. Our total ad revenues reached USD 369.8 million, an increase of 9% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP operating income for the quarter reached USD 119.8 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 28%. Next, I will highlight Weibo's key development in the first quarter across user growth and engagement, content ecosystem competitiveness and monetization. On user growth and engagement, in 2026, we will focus on improving user retention and building a high-quality, highly engaged and sustainable user growth framework. Information feed still remains in optimization stage post the product update last year and related strategies began to deliver positive results starting in March, with content consumption and interactive measures among our core users beginning to improve. And meanwhile, the sustained growth in time spent on our video playback pages has served as a more solid foundation for the growth of our overall user time spent and retention. Moving on to information feed product. In 2026, the strategy focuses on the product optimization after the information feed upgrade, which aligns with our long-term direction. Building on Weibo's strength in social network and hot trend discussion, we will further enhance the distribution capabilities of Weibo's distinctive native content, establish a more stable and consistent content consumption experience and continue to strengthen users' trust in the information feed. Specifically, in the first quarter, we focused on a series of optimization initiatives aimed at balancing the distribution of social content, trending topics and vertical interest-based content. For Weibo's engaged core users, while ensuring their consumption of social content, we also prioritize improving recommendation efficiency for trending and interest-based content. Meanwhile, we further strengthened the distribution of content from authentic accounts, high-quality original content and reposted content, while stepping up our governance over low quality and overly promotional content to enhance the consumption experience within our information feeds. These strategies were gradually rolled out throughout the first quarter and began to make positive impacts in March. Looking at the preliminary results, the scale, time spent and engagement model of the social engaged users within our information feed have all shown month-over-month improvement demonstrating that our strategy is more effective in retaining and serving this specific user cohort. These preliminary results have boosted our confidence to further advance the optimization of information feed products. In the second quarter, building upon the experience improvement for our socially engaged users, we will place greater focus on user groups that rely more heavily on the recommendation feed and have higher expectations for content matching efficiency through the continued optimization of product strategies and content matching algorithms, we aim to improve the seamless content consumption for these users within the recommendation feed and further strengthen Weibo's competitiveness in recommendation driven content consumption scenarios. Moving on to video. Our video business is set to serve as a crucial driver for increasing user time spent and retention throughout 2026. In the first quarter, we continued with the proven path established in the second half of 2025 and saw continued improvement on video consumption. During the first quarter, total time spent on the video playback pages achieved double-digit year-over-year growth, while also maintaining an upward trend quarter-over-quarter. Notably, the growth in per capita time spent on video playback pages was even more pronounced. Specifically, during the first quarter, our video business initiatives centered around 2 key aspects: distribution and supply. On the distribution side, we continue to optimize the recommendation conversion efficiency for videos across core scenarios such as information feeds and trending feeds. At the same time, we reduced the distribution rate of repetitive low quality and excessively commercialized the content. This ensures that the growth in video watch time is increasingly driven by high-quality content and the rising users' meaningful viewing behaviors. On the supply side, we further strengthen the supply of high-quality video content by investing more resources to attract high-quality video content creators and incentivize their content production. This includes celebrity and top KOL live vlogs, trending topic analysis, and derivative creation of popular content, all of which are distinctive to our platform and strategically steer our traffic distribution toward these high-quality offerings. In the first quarter, both the number of top-tier accounts, for example, the golden and orange verified accounts, publishing original videos and the number of original videos posted recorded double-digit year-over-year growth. Meanwhile, we are also exploring and validating the introduction of more diverse video content formats such as short plays and video podcasts. In the first quarter, leveraging the continued integration of our video AI large model, we further built on the platform strength in vertical IP by opening up AI creation tools to the creators, enabling them to produce derivative video content and expand IP-related content. As of April, we had made copyright materials available from over 20 top-tier TV drama and variety show IPs on the platform and have actively collaborated with partners to launch AI-driven content recreation initiatives, which have attracted nearly 3,000 creators and generated nearly 8,000 pieces of AI content. Meanwhile, we further enhanced Weibo's AI creation platform by providing creators with resources such as graphic text generation tools, trending topics creation tools, video generation capabilities, copyright material and campaign templates. This empowers creators with richer materials and inspiration, allowing them to translate their content expertise and creative ideas into publishable videos and text-based post at a significantly lower cost. This, in turn, has helped improve content production efficiency for creators on Weibo. Moving on to content ecosystem competitiveness. Throughout 2026, we will continue to focus on our 3 core businesses: trending topics, social network and search, while further enhancing the health and core competitiveness of our content ecosystem. In the first quarter, our focus within the company ecosystem was on enhancing the quality of trending topic consumption, deepening community interactions and advancing our AI search capabilities. Through these efforts, we aim to significantly improve users' content consumption efficiency and their overall engagement experience on the platform. With respect to hot trends. In the first quarter, we focused on strengthening the influence and the credibility of our trending list. We optimize the ranking mechanism, improve the quality of content presented on the list and enrich the content supply and discussion atmosphere on the landing pages. These efforts drove higher content consumption and more vibrant discussion under the hot trend scenarios. Compared with the fourth quarter last year, both average time spent and average discussion volume per user under the hot trend scenarios increased in the first quarter. The strength and stickiness of user engagement around hot trends further reinforced Weibo's competitive position as a go-to platform for hot trend discovery and a public discussion. On social attributes, in 2026, we aim to deepen user engagement and increase revisit intention within interest-based communities, leveraging richer community engagement features and stronger interaction mechanisms. In the first quarter, the Super Topics community continued to enhance its product capabilities and standardized event-based operations across categories such as celebrities, IPs and sports events, which sustainably drove user engagement. As a result, both DAUs and engaged users of Super Topics recorded year-over-year growth. With AI further integrated into product development efficiency and content understanding, we will continue to center on core needs of users of community products, accelerating its iteration of interactive community products and features and thereby further improving research, social fulfillment and sense of belonging on Weibo. On search products, as we continue to enhance our AI capabilities, in the first quarter, we have upgraded our Weibo intelligent search function from a single-turn Q&A summary into an AI-powered multi-turn of follow-up queries and can understand multimodal content, including videos and images with text. Meanwhile, we integrated AI agent capabilities into key scenarios such as public figure search and hot trends search and conducted product experiments on search landing pages and comment sections. Leveraging AI agent capabilities will enhance the user search experience and efficiency and further reinforce Weibo's differentiated value proposition in the search market. Moving on to monetization. We have continued to execute on 2 key strategies that have underpinned our ad products and sales teams since 2025. First, driving broader adoption of Weibo's unique content marketing value across more industries and clients. And second, systematically improving ad conversion effectiveness by leveraging AI capabilities. In the first quarter, Weibo's ad revenues increased 9% year-over-year. Overall, we will continue to leverage differentiated strength in hot trends plus social plus content marketing across proven marketing scenarios such as new product launches, Chinese New Year campaign, sports events and celebrity marketing, leading to growth across multiple key industries. By industry, the main growth contributors in the first quarter were verticals such as Internet services, Local services and Automobiles. The Internet services sector delivered robust year-over-year growth, primarily driven by incremental budget we captured from the Internet service companies. For example, during the Chinese New Year period, various AI large language model players ramp up their marketing investment, leveraging Weibo's strong KOL ecosystem and professional discussion environment in the digital and technology verticals. We effectively fulfilled AI company's market needs in areas such as new product launches, technology, education and word-of-mouth building, which resulted in a notable increase in related marketing revenues. We believe that as AI technologies and applications continue to evolve, AI-related content will become a major incremental driver of Weibo's content ecosystem. In May, the number of AI-focused professional content creators, the average daily number of AI-related hot trends and the discussion volume of AI content on Weibo all increased more than 30% compared with January this year. This technological transformation in AI have been continuously stimulating content-creation and user discussion on our platform and will further build us flywheel between content ecosystem engagement and monetization growth. The Local services sector was also among the fast-growing sector in the first quarter, supported by ongoing competition in the food delivery as well as a seasonal boost from the Chinese New Year holiday. The automobile sector delivered double-digit year-over-year growth, primarily driven by favorable policies and new vehicle launches, relatively stable ad spend around new product launches, users reputation building and brand awareness. The handset sector recorded modest year-over-year growth in the first quarter. But looking ahead, market competition in the sector continues to intensify despite ongoing support from trade-in subsidies, rising chip and memory costs continue to put pressure on handset manufacturers' profitability, which may weigh on their ad budgets going forward. We will closely track new product launch cycles and client budget dynamics and optimize our sales strategy accordingly to ensure solid coverage of key clients. Among other verticals, the apparel and footwear sector achieved double-digit year-over-year growth in the first quarter, primarily fueled by the Winter Olympics, concentrated marketing campaigns by sports and outdoor-based brands and celebrity endorsement activities through which advertisers effectively leverage events and celebrity moments to improve the brand awareness. As mentioned last quarter, we have seen a recovery trend in demand for celebrities and IP-based content marketing from certain brand advertisers. In the first quarter, this trend continue to play out in a number of key industries and campaigns with related revenues maintaining solid year-over-year growth and providing a meaningful supplement to our overall content marketing business. Celebrity marketing has always been a distinctive component of Weibo's content marketing capabilities. Over the past quarter, we focused more on enhancing service depth and ad placement efficiency for clients in this area. Based on clients' brand objectives, budget levels and target audience, we integrated Weibo resources in hot trends, IP, celebrities and KOL ecosystems to provide more tailored resource matching, content planning and campaign execution services. This initiative enables clients to effectively achieve brand exposure and user engagement. While our products and service capabilities are still being further refined, we have already seen encouraging execution results and the client feedback in some of the pilot projects. Looking forward, we will continue to advance our celebrity and IP content marketing services, positioning them as a key component to deepen collaboration with brand advertisers and enhance our content marketing competitiveness while driving greater synergy with our overall ad product portfolio. With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for the financial review. Cao Fei: Thank you, Gaofei, and hello, everybody. Welcome to Weibo's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Let's start with user metrics. In March 2026, Weibo's MAUs and average DAUs reached 562 million and 254 million, respectively. During the first quarter, we continued to focus on user quality, retention and engagement. MAUs saw more of this sequential decline, mainly reflecting our ongoing rationalization of channel investment and the transition forming our information feed revamp. At the same time, DAUs remained resilient and improved slightly quarter-over-quarter, supported by better retention of core users, continued optimization of the homepage feed experience and improving video consumption. AI continued to serve as an important enabler across our product, content and monetization systems. On the monetization side, AI-powered targeting, bidding and ad creative generation continued to support promoted feeds and real-time bidding ad products. Internally, we are also expanding the use of AI tools to improve execution efficiency across products, operations and sales teams. Turning to financials. As a reminder, my prepared remarks would focus on non-GAAP results. Monetary amounts are in U.S. dollar terms and all comparisons are on a year-on-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Now let me walk you through our financial highlights for the first quarter 2026. Weibo's first quarter 2026 net revenues were USD 421.3 million, an increase of 6% or 1% on a constant currency basis. Operating income was USD 119.8 million, representing operating margin of 28%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached USD 91.9 million, and diluted EPS was USD 0.34. Let me give you more color on the first quarter 2026 revenue performance. We started the year with our advertising business returning to year-over-year growth supported by improving demand from selected verticals and continued execution in content marketing and performance-based ad products. Weibo's advertising and marketing revenues for the first quarter 2026 was USD 369.8 million, an increase of 9% percent or 3% on a constant currency basis. By industry, our largest verticals were FMCG, e-commerce and 3C products in terms of growth. Internet services, Automobile and Local services were the major contributors. Advertising revenues from Internet companies increased primarily due to incremental advertising spend from leading players in the sector. The automobile sector also saw sustained growth, supported by auto-related content ecosystem and ad spend from electric vehicles. For handset sector, advertising revenues recorded a modest growth, but we remain mindful that their marketing budgets may face pressure amid intensified competition with the handset market as well as rising component costs. As for areas facing headwinds, FMCG continued to face a year-over-year gap, although we saw sequential recovery as certain advertisers resume spending in celebrity and KOL marketing campaigns. The online game sector was still on a descending trend due to lack of blockbuster release this quarter. By ad product, promotive feeds ad was the largest, followed by social display and search and topic. Promoted feed delivered solid growth, benefiting from better ad matching in revamped information feed, continued demand for Weibo's differentiated IP and content marketing solutions and a deeper AI integration in targeting, bidding and creative generation. These product improvements helped advertisers combine brand exposure with more measurable conversion objectives. Ad revenues from Alibaba for the first quarter were USD 43.3 million, an increase of 2% year-over-year or a decrease of 4% on a constant currency basis. The modest decline of revenues from Alibaba was primarily due to higher sales last year, which included one-off revenues from promotional ad budget for Alibaba's sponsorship of Spring Festival in 2025 and AI-related budget in the first quarter last year. Ad spend from Alibaba highly correlated to its own marketing strategies, which may fluctuate with Alibaba's campaign priorities and product launch schedule, et cetera. Value-added services revenues were USD 51.6 million in the first quarter, a decrease of 11% or 15% on a constant currency basis. The decrease was primarily attributable to declined in game-related revenue. Turning to costs and expenses. Total cost and expenses for the first quarter were USD 301.5 million, an increase of 13%, mainly due to higher ad production cost and marketing expense, partially offset by the decrease of general and administrative expense. During the quarter, we continued to make major investments in selected monetization-related initiatives primarily around advertising product capabilities, content marketing ecosystem and client service offerings. We will continue to manage the pace of these investments with ROI discipline and within a controllable budget framework. Operating income in the first quarter was USD 119.8 million, representing operating margin of 28% compared to 33% in the same period last year. While operating margin declined year-over-year due to these investments, we remain focused on balancing near-term execution needs with sustainable profitability and healthy cash flow generation. Turning to income tax. Under GAAP, income tax expenses for the first quarter were USD 15.7 million compared to USD 24.3 million last year, mainly due to a decrease in deferred tax liability related to equity pickup adjustment. Net income attributable to Weibo in the first quarter was USD 91.9 million, representing a net margin of 22%. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow items. As of March 31, 2026, Weibo's cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled USD 2.59 billion compared to USD 2.41 billion as of December 31, 2025. In the first quarter, cash provided by operating activities was $164 million. Capital expenditures totaled USD 11.9 million, and the depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to USD 15.5 million. Let me share some color on our shareholder returns. We have completed the distribution of the annual cash dividend of $0.34 (sic) [$0.61] per ordinary share or ADS for fiscal year 2025 with aggregate amount of approximately USD 150 million in 2026. We will continue to take our disciplined approach to capital allocation, balancing shareholder returns with the financial flexibility needed to fund our long-term product, AI and the content ecosystem initiatives. Overall, first quarter was a quarter of continued transition and steady execution, while macro consumption sentiment and industry competition remain uncertain with the initial signs of stabilization in core user engagement and advertising demand. We will continue to balance investment needs with operating efficiency and healthy cash flow generation as we build a more sustainable foundation for long-term development. Before turning to the Q&A session, let me provide you a brief update on ESG front. In April, we published our fifth ESG report, highlighting our efforts across social value, tech empowerment, information security, employee development, content ecosystem and green operations. MSCI also recently upgraded our ESG rating from BB to AA, recognizing our progress in sustainability, innovation and social responsibility. Please visit our IR website for more information. With that, let me now turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Thomas Chong: [Foreign Language] Based on the trend so far we see in Q1 and recent months, can management comment about Weibo's advertising outlook in Q2? In addition, can management also comment about our advertising strategies, any updates for the full year? And separately today on AI. Can management share about how it benefits advertising and monetization? Gaofei Wang: [Interpreted] Thank you for the question. So first of all, let's talk about the overall recap of Q1 performance as well as the expectation of the second half of the year. First of all, we had a year-on-year growth of about 9% of the advertising revenue in Q1. If we're talking about the definition of RMB, it was about 3% of the growth. And in Q1, primarily the advertising revenue growth was driven by the Internet-based software deployment and AI-related investments as well as the other local lifestyle and automotive industry related. Okay. And next, I would like to say that in Q1, overall speaking, we had a better than expectation growth of our ad revenue in terms of the consumption area. But if you're talking about the key accounts that we have, especially from different verticals, we've been seeing a stressful situation. For instance, in terms of automotive sales, they've been experiencing double-digit decrease. And for the handset, they had also a decrease in terms of their overall revenue because of the additional cost of the memory, and most of the handset makers have to adjust their overall price. And also for e-commerce, we've been experiencing also a stressful profitability situation. So even if our ad revenue was growing, we have still a stressful operation for our customers. Okay. And next, in terms of Q2 and also the future outlook, I think that although we've been seeing a stressful operational situation for consumption industry, we did have the different responses from different customers. First of all, in terms of automotive industry, at the current stage, they've been experiencing some of the decrease of their sales volume. However, they were not just stopping in terms of the promotional activities for their new products and new product launch as well. So this year, we've seen more new product launches than that of last year. In Q1 and Q2 as of the near future, I think that this is going to be accelerated. As you can see that we always have more and more frequent launches of new EVs. And also, Weibo is a very good and natural ecosystem to generate and stimulate the discussions around the topics of technology-related and new energy related. At the same time, for the handset industry, as you can see that, it is difficult for us to have a very correct prediction of the performance in the second half of the year. But the industry did experience a drop of the sales volume in the first half of this year. Of course, this year, however, still we are seeing more launches of new products and new smartphones and especially increasing the frequency of the smartphone launches for the medium to high-end segment. In summer holiday, we might have been experiencing some of the adjustments of the strategy from the handset industry. And of course, this year, we've been seeing Apple proactively adjusted their price, causing some of the stressful situations to some of the Chinese handset makers. So as a result, our ad revenue and ad budgets was primarily related to the frequency of the new product launches of the different verticals as well as the sales, but not necessarily related to the operational result of the customers in different verticals. And also lastly, let's talk about some of the other industries like the e-commerce and local lifestyle as well as the FMCG industry. First of all, for the e-commerce, we've already had a very high base number in entering into Q2. And of course, also for the industry, some of the promotional activities and especially budget allocated to the fast food delivery was not as intense as before. So this is going to be not that stressful. And also, I would like to comment on FMCG. Entering to the second half of the year, we are going to have the World Cup as activities. So I believe that we are trying our best to catch the opportunity to gain that ad revenue or ad budget from that customer. And also, you can see that talking about the AI topic, as we have already previously stated, that the AI was primarily very effective on the effects-based or performance-based ads. So you can see that AI was quite useful in terms of the ad material generation, eCPM and also the recommendations as well. So in terms of those generated materials for the advertisements, the primary consumption rate was already reaching to about like 40%. And in Q1, in the information-based feeds, we had a double-digit growth, especially talking about eCPM and the other relevant areas. Also, of course, you know that Weibo is very good at doing the business in the advertisement industry for the brand-based advertisement and key customers' advertisements. So we are very good at doing the business of the celebrity based or the content-based marketing. And at the current stage, we've been having a very good progress in terms of adoption of the AI among those KOLs and also the celebrities as well. So AI is pretty much useful in generating those ad materials for those KOLs to be very much facilitative. But of course, in Q1 and Q2, we've been seeing some of the headwinds in terms of the adoption rate as well as the acceptance by the public in terms of those ad generated by AI or those contents generated by AI. So at the current stage, we're not doing a massive commercialization as for the front. But still, we are going to wait still. We are doing some internal testing among the KOLs and the public acceptance is the criteria for us to evaluate the before we go massive commercialization. Operator: Now we're going to take our next question, just give us a moment. And the question comes from the line of Jenny Huang from UBS. Jennifer Huang: [Foreign Language] Could you please share some updates on the impact of the state of events on the user growth? Now last quarter, you highlighted video strategy as a key focus for this year. Could you please provide an update on the progress so far as well as the key priorities and targets for the next phase? And lastly, could you please also share the developments on the AI front in terms of user facing products? Gaofei Wang: [Interpreted] Okay, thank you for this question. So first of all, as for the update of the information-based feed, we've been seeing that this was actually completed in about the mid of Q3 of 2025. And before which it was primarily based on the recommendation-based feed. But when we actually had that update and the adjustments, we've been seeing a very good improvement of the user experience in the front. And in Q1, we had a little bit decrease of MAU and DAU of the site primarily due to the strategic or strategy changes of channel placement and also some of the low shipments of the handset. So we had a lower number of pre-installs and also on the user side as well. And in Q1, you can see that we've been seeing a very good user acquisition. We can see a user acquisition cost increase because it was actually the hot season in terms of the AI application adoption and also the usage. But at the same time, still, we are keeping a very good number in terms of the social-based users and also the click-based users. And after Q2, we are going to see a very good improvement both in terms of the time spent, total time spent as well as the interactive volume. So in the long run, our overall objective of doing the update and changes of this existing product is that we would like to, first of all, get rid of those user experience that was primarily based on the relationship-based feed. And of course, at the current stage, there are still some of the challenges from the user side in terms of the acceptance and getting used to this new version. But still, in the long run, we have 2 objectives by doing this kind of change. First is that we hope that we are going to fully release the value of Weibo to those consumers. At the same time, using our algorithm to better enhance the user experience and also the depth of the user interaction on the social media. And second point is that we hope that our total video consumption in terms of the time spent and also the total video-based consumption could be further improved because of this kind of a strategy. Also, we would like to attract more bloggers to be on the Weibo to open an account and generate more video content. And also this would be helping them to do more deployment and the placements as well as the generation and production of the video-related content. So this will be really helpful for us to increase the time spent on video-related content on Weibo. And also in terms of the overall results of the video strategy for the video front. First of all, of course, we've been seeing actually a very good growth of the number of users consuming the video-related content on Weibo, and you can see that this was pretty much forming a new mindset of the consumers on the video-related content. And we had a very good double-digit growth year-on-year in terms of the time spent on the video related content on Weibo. And on the supply side of the video content, because of this recommendation based fees, we hope that we are able to attract more creators and bloggers from outside of Weibo to actually by providing them with more resources and also more budgets. And based on this, the new algorithm and new incentive plans and encouragement plans, we hope that we are able to attract more and more of those external bloggers and also content creators to be landing on Weibo and helping us to enrich the supply of video content. In terms of the AI, we had a lot of R&D investments and try to encourage people to actually use AI to facilitate what they do. And when we launched the Zhisou in 2025, we had actually a very good boost in terms of the total volume of search. But still in Q1, we had some of the challenges because at the current stage, we've been seeing a lot of AI tools that were emerging. And on the consumption side or on consumer side, they're actually now -- more and more consumers are now trying to use the interactive and dialogue-based search instead of just a pure search function. So in Q4, we made that interactive dialogue-based search available and experiencing 100% of the growth in terms of users and adoption in Q1. But still at the current stage, the base number of the user for these particular features only at a level of 1 million. So we hope that in the future, we are able to further boost that and further strengthen our AI-related strategy on this front. So in Q1, yes, in Q1, especially targeting those content creators, we are now establishing an AI content creating center, facilitating those content creators to generate the text and images as well as video content as well. So at the current stage, you can see that we had a lot of important key account or the key content creators that had a very good video generated through -- in the center and those text and images as well. Also, we've been seeing a very good collaboration with ByteDance and Qwen to actually have the capability to help the content creators to generate video with a length of 1 minute long, which primarily it's about like several seconds or 10-or-so seconds, but we are able to help to generate the videos of 1 minute long. So this, of course, is the feature that is not accessible by all users, but at the current stage, we're only providing this to some of the new certified users. But in the future, we hope that we are able to have a rollout. But before that, we are going to have further consolidation internally. Operator: Dear participants, due to time constraints of today's call, we will not be addressing any further questions. Thank you very much for taking participation. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.] Before you buy stock in Weibo, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Weibo wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. 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As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Weibo (WB) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool