Participants

Huang Pu; Investor Relations; Sohu.com Ltd

Charles Zhang; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Sohu.com Ltd

Joanna Lv; Chief Financial Officer; Sohu.com Ltd

Unidentified Company Representative

Unidentified Company Representative_2

Thomas Chong; Analyst; Jefferies Hong Kong Limited

Alicia Yap; Analyst; Citigroup Global Markets Asia Limited

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and good afternoon. Thank you for joining Sohu's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.
I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference call, Huang Pu, Investor Relations Director of Sohu. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Huang Pu

Thanks, operator. Thank you for joining us to discuss Sohu's fourth quarter 2024 results. On the call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Charles Zhang; CFO Joanna Lv, and the Vice President of Finance James Deng. Also with us are Changyou's CEO, Dewen Chen; and the CFO, Yaobin Wang.
Before management begins their prepared remarks, I would like to remind you of the complicate cover statement in connection with today's conference call. Except further historical information contained herein, the matters discussed by the company contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current plans, estimates, and the projections, and therefore, you should not place undo rights on them.
Forward-looking statements involve key risks and uncertainties. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause actual result different materiality from those contained in forward-looking statements. For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the commerce filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recent annual report on Form 20-F.
With that owner turn the call over to Doctor Charles Zhang. Charles, please proceed.

Charles Zhang

Thanks, Huang Pu, and thank you everyone for joining our call. In the fourth quarter of 2024, our brand advertising revenues hit the high end of our previous guidance while both our online game revenues and the bottom-line performance was much better than expected.
For social media platform, including Sohu Media and Video, we continue to refine our products, optimized algorithms and strictly controlled budgets. By integrating the advantages of these so-called product matrix with our unique IPs and the high energy events, we are able to promote the generation and the social distribution of premier content.
Effectively enhance user experience to attract more users and further unlock monetization potential. The online games business delivered solid performance thanks to the relentless efforts to produce high quality new games and revitalize legacy games.
Before going through each business unit in more detail, let me first give you a quick overview of our financial performance. For the fourth quarter of 2024, total revenues $135 million, down 5% year-over-year and 11% quarter-over-quarter. Brand advertising revenues, $19 million, down 7% year-over-year and 1% quarter-over-quarter. Online game revenues, $110 million, down 4% year-over-year and 14% quarter-over-quarter.
GAAP net loss attributable to Soho.com Limited, $21 million compared with a net loss of $13 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 and a net loss of $16 million in the third quarter of 2024. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited, $15 million compared with the net loss of $11 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 and a net loss of $12 million in the third quarter of 2024.
For the whole year of 2024, total revenues $598 million flat compared with 2023. Brand advertising revenues, $73 million, down 17% compared with 2023. Online game revenues, $502 million, up 5% compared with 2023. GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited, $100 million compared with the net loss of $66 million in 2023. non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited was $83 million compared with the net loss of $51 million in 2023.
Now let me go through our key businesses in more detail. First, the Sohu Media platform. We consistently focused on improving our technology and optimizing our products with cutting edge technology. Meanwhile, we also kept improving user experience by closely monitoring their needs.
We organically integrated our diverse online and offline events, maximizing the synergy of the Sohu product matrix and fostering a thriving online community. These efforts allowed us to attract more users, especially the younger generation, to our platform, actively promoted their interactions and stimulated more content generations.
So in 2024, we held a series of K-pop dancing tour competitions in several major cities in China. From which the most outstanding contestants were selected to join the 2024 Dream Concert overseas in South Korea in October. Later in December at the final show of the above series of dancing events, the 2024 Sohu Video dancing festival was hosted with great success.
This dancing festival brought together a lot of top dancers in (inaudible) It has become the most eye-catching annual events in the field of K-pop dancing for the year. Also, during the last quarter -- during this quarter, we hosted a 2024 Sohu Video [Guofeng Festival] the largest nationwide competition showcasing the traditional Chinese Hanfu costume.
It received widespread acclaim and sparked extensive discussions and disseminations across multiple social media platforms. These events not only strongly strengthened our leading position and influence in the K-pop and Hanfu event verticals but also stimulated numerous social interactions and distributions on our platform.
We also continued to host our flagship events such as the 2024 Sohu Fashion Awards. And at the end of the year and the 2024 Sohu Finance Annual Forum (inaudible) which further consolidated our brand influence as a mainstream media platform and provided us with abandoned premium content. These events were not only attractive for users but also enabled us to provide unique marketing solutions to our advertisers.
And further persisted in broadcasting the Charles' Physics Class, (inaudible) which has been going on for three years with three books published. And also, the (inaudible) English class. These classes have jointly become the leading IPs for Soho.
Leveraging these unique IPs and collaborations with our -- with science-related broadcasters, we were able to attract millions of users -- viewers, popularized cutting edge professional knowledge to them and reinforce our core competitiveness in the field of knowledge and science-related live streaming.
Benefiting from the above, we're able to combine the knowledge, dissemination and brand marketing through diverse channels, delivering unique experiences to advertisers and audiences and driving [advertising] budgets.
In 2024, we continuously enriched our content library by acquiring TV dramas, rolling out original dramas, and bringing in premium American TV series as well as introducing short dramas. For example, our TV drama, (inaudible) Hairpins in the Palace and the American TV series, The Bear (spoken in foreign language) and also the HBO series were well received by the audience. We're talking about Sohu Media platform include both the Sohu News and Sohu Video.
Now, next, let me turn to the online game business. During the quarter, our online game business performed well with revenues exceeding our prior guidance. In our PC games business, we launched a new plan jointly for regular TLBB PC and TLBB Vintage jointly. Along with the various snow and ice themed events and the gameplay, effectively boosting players' enthusiasm for the game.
In addition, we introduced an innovative survival PVP gameplay for regular TLBB PC and refreshed some classical -- classic gameplays of TLBB Vintage to enhance player experience and renew their interest in the game. For Legacy TLDB Mobile, we launched a new expansion pack featuring crossover content such as themed dungeons, outfits, and a rich innovative gameplays, which drove higher users' satisfaction.
Next quarter, we'll continue to launch expansion packs and content updates for the TLBB series and other titles to further keep players engaged. As market competition intensifies and user demand for quality and innovation continues to rise, we'll forge ahead with our top game strategy, staying true to our user-centric philosophy. We'll continue to optimize our research and development process and enhance the execution to improve efficiency and product success rate.
Meanwhile, we will intensify our efforts to expand our international presence. While maintaining our core competitiveness on MMORPGs, we also actively expand our portfolio with diverse types of games, including card-based RPGs, sports games, and casual games, et cetera. With these efforts, we're confident that we soon can bring more high-quality games to the market.
Now, I would like to give an update on the ongoing share repurchase program. As of February 13, this year, 2025, Sohu had repurchased 4.2 million ADS for an aggregated cost of approximately $52 million. So with that I'll turn to the call to our CFO, Joanna. Joanna?

Joanna Lv

Thank you, Charles. I will walk you through the key financials of our major segments for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2024. All the numbers on the non-GAAP basis. You may find the reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures on our IR website. For Sohu Media platform, quarterly revenues were $24 million compared with $25 million in the same quarter last year. Quarterly operating loss was $69 million compared with the operating loss, $68 million in the same quarter last year.
For the full year 2024, revenues were $91 million compared with $140 million in 2023. The full year operating loss was $287 million compared with the operating loss $269 million in 2023. For Changyou's online game business and 17173, quarterly revenues $111 million compared with $150 million in the same quarter last year. Quarterly operating profit was $48 million compared with operating profit, $47 million in the same quarter last year.
For the full year 2024, revenues were $506 million compared with revenue $485 million in 2023. The full year operating profit, $196 million compared with the operating profit $203 million in 2023. For the first quarter of 2025, we expect brand advertising revenue to be between $30 million and $40 million dollars. This implies annual decrease of 13% to 19% and a sequential decrease of 26% to 31%.
Online games revenues to be between $105 million and $150 million. This implies annual decrease of 2% to 11% and a sequential decrease of 4% to a sequential increase of 5%. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited to be between $16 million and $26 million. And GAAP net loss attributable to Sohy.com Limited to be between $20 million and $30 million. This forecast reflects the management's current and the preliminary review which is subject to substantial uncertainty.
This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we would now like to open the call for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Thomas Chong, Jefferies.

Thomas Chong

Hi, good evening. Thanks, management for taking my question. My question -- my first question is about the, brand advertising business. It seems that for the Q1 guidance, the sequential decline is a bit soft versus previous years, and the year-on-year decline is a bit -- also more than Q4. So I just want to get some color with regard to any reason behind the latest advertising sentiment.
And on the gaming business, can management comment about how we should think about when we should expect it to have a Q-o-Q decline or Q-o-Q growth because it seems the range is a bit wide. And how is the trend so far? And then my last question is about the invitation activity. Can management comment about how we should think about the integration with Sohu? Thank you.

Charles Zhang

So your first question is about the advertising, right? The second question is about game. Okay, all right. The third one is the application of the DeepSeek, right? Okay. The first one, I'll answer the first question, for Q1 decline, right? Speaking of the macroeconomic situation. So people are spending less. That the advertisers are spending less in marketing because of the overall economic situation. And so yeah. It's overall economy.
So the second question is about the game, right?

Unidentified Company Representative

(spoken in foreign language)

Unidentified Company Representative_2

(spoken in foreign language)

Unidentified Company Representative

The performance of the first quarter is expected to be flat quarter-over-quarter.

Charles Zhang

Okay, so about the DeepSeek application, we've been actually -- in the last two years, we've been applying the language model to our Sohu Media and the social network products. For example, the organized of the content, the better -- the generation of content and especially knowledge-based content and the text-based abstract writing and internal editing with the apply of AI technologies really increased the efficiency.
And in the future, we're going to -- also to -- for example, in our live streaming, our AI technology can help us to summarize different -- basically to summarize the video content into text form. And to automatically to mark the different sections of the streaming video content.
And in terms of social network, people interaction will be in our product in the future will have the AI-aided interaction or -- and also is voice-to-text and also sometimes in the future, probably, help with the -- or DeepSeek or in large model, language model to help users to generate content with the voice and word text to turn them into some pictures and videos, and to have really generate some quality, really ease the production process and make it really very -- actually, some of the content will not be able to produce, but now, we'll be able to do it.
So there's a wide range of application of the AI technology and probably DeepSeek. We haven't (inaudible) but, we're looking at that possibility. So basically, help us with our media and the social network user experience and content generation, content organization and editing. Yeah. And also, I think it's also in our gaming, right, also applied language model, right, the AI technology.
(spoken in foreign language)

Unidentified Company Representative_2

(spoken in foreign language)

Unidentified Company Representative

The AI technology application in terms of gaming development is mainly in the area of video production and the second -- and the two-dimension art design.

Charles Zhang

Yeah. Okay, I hope we answered your question, Thomas.

Thomas Chong

Got it. Thank you, Charles.

Operator

Alicia Yap, Citi.

Alicia Yap

Hello. Good afternoon. Good evening, Charles, and management. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few follow up. Number one, can management maybe comment a little bit on the overall macro sentiment as related to the advertising budget sentiment? Just curious, given there's a lot of hypes and talks about the technology breakthrough from China.
So I'm not sure, will some of these positive technology sentiment will that -- have you seen any of this actually translate to a slightly better advertiser budget spend on certain category. And also, have you seen any change of the consumer behavior in terms of the consumption as related to some of these positive development. So that's the first question. And then, second question is can you remind us, with your $52 million buyback amount. What's the outstanding amount on the buyback currently? Thank you.

Charles Zhang

Well, the buyback, we bought 4.2 million, right? 4.2 million ADS. So we spend one-third of the $150 million right? One-third of $52 million yeah, already, so there's another $100 million to go, right? Approved by the Board. So that's the 4.2 million ADS, okay? In terms of -- as to the macro macroeconomic situation, I think it's just consumption.
Just people that have less money to consume, to spend. That's why companies, products, companies that, accordingly, spend less in marketing, in terms, for example, the most of our auto companies, they're advertising. Budget, I can see in the year 2024, I can see a trend of like almost like cut by half
A lot of companies just if they want to spend CNY6 million, now they spend CNY3 million so instead. So it seems that because the consumption is weak, that's why market companies are spending less money in marketing. That's why we can feel that, right? The advertising promote -- marketing platform, we can feel the decline, right? So as to the DeepSeek, I mean, not only DeepSeek but the overall AI technology, bring -- has brought quite an enthusiasm, right, and excitement. But I don't think it's -- I can now translate into any immediate benefits of marketing or companies.
Because it's really -- the problem is really people are spending less. People have less money because people bought houses and then they have much less money left to spend, right? But so -- especially to pay the mortgage, that's why, companies don't have them, and there's the product and sales volume that drops, I think. And I don't think AI technology can help that in the short run. And sometimes the AI technology actually destroy jobs, right, not creating jobs. That's what I can see.

Alicia Yap

I see. So, maybe can I follow up a little bit, Charles? So any other kind of sub-sector that is holding up in terms of the ad budget, for example, let's say the FMCG or even, have you seen, let's say, electronics like the cell phones, given the trade-in and all that, have you seen any increase in terms of the ad spending on any of the categories?

Charles Zhang

Yeah. I think FMCG become -- has risen to the top sector among our advertiser, I mean, the sectors. Previously, before I remember, automobile, although it's number one, right, number one sector, but now FMSG is number one and auto and IT services are becoming number three and number four. Yes, people are actually spending more on some smaller items like food, alcohol, liquor, and electronics, yes.
So, yeah, there -- and also, I think the trading policy also stimulated that to some extent.

Alicia Yap

I see. Okay. Very helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Charles. Thanks, management.

Operator

Thank you for the questions. With that, we now conclude the conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.