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SINGAPORE, May 27, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — JOYY Inc. (NASDAQ: JOYY) (“JOYY” or the “Company”), a global leading technology company, announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter of 2025.
In the first quarter of 2025, JOYY’s revenue reached US$494.4 million, with its non-livestreaming revenue reaching US$123.0 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 25.3%. Non-livestreaming revenues accounted for 24.9% of the Company’s total revenues. JOYY’s GAAP and non-GAAP1 operating profits increased approximately 244.5% and 24.9% year-over-year to US$12.2 million and US$31.0 million, with operating margins of 2.5% and 6.3%, respectively. The Company maintained strong operating cash flow, which reached US$58 million.
JOYY continued to deliver returns to shareholders. During the first quarter, the Company distributed US$49.1 million in dividends to shareholders. On top of that, the Company repurchased approximately US$22.5 million worth of its shares from January 1, 2025 through May 23, 2025, reinforcing its commitment to returning value to shareholders.
Ms. Ting Li, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of JOYY, commented, “As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of our operations, we have evolved beyond social entertainment, steadily fostering a multifaceted ecosystem. Our multi-engine growth strategy is yielding clear results, with our core livestreaming business achieving consistent profitability, and our programmatic advertising platform, BIGO Ads, demonstrating strong growth momentum, which is fueled by AI-driven innovations in user insights, intelligent creative development, and precise targeting. We expect these advances to further strengthen our competitive advantages and position our non-livestreaming businesses to become JOYY’s second growth engine.”
First Quarter 2025 Financial Highlights
- Net revenues in the first quarter of 2025 were US$494.4 million.
- Operating income was US$12.2 million in the first quarter of 2025, compared to US$3.5 million in the corresponding period of 2024, representing a 244.5% year-over-year increase.
- Non-GAAP1 operating income was US$31.0 million in the first quarter of 2025, compared to US$24.8 million in the corresponding period of 2024, representing a 24.9% year-over-year increase.
- Net income from continuing operations attributable to controlling interest of JOYY was US$45.4 million in the first quarter of 2025, compared to US$45.3 million in the corresponding period of 2024.
- Non-GAAP1 net income from continuing operations attributable to controlling interest and common shareholders of JOYY was US$63.2 million in the first quarter of 2025.
First Quarter 2025 Business Highlights
Livestreaming Business
In the first quarter, JOYY’s livestreaming revenue was US$371.3 million, with BIGO contributing US$351.6 million.
The Company is continuously optimizing its user acquisition strategy by prioritizing advertising spend on higher quality paying users in core markets. In the first quarter, Bigo Live’s North American region saw Q1 MAU growth exceeding 7% year-over-year. At the same time, the number of paying users in the region increased by approximately 4% QoQ.
During the first quarter, JOYY’s products actively promoted a series of operational activities related to Ramadan in the Middle East region, which drove regional user activity and helped boost their brand influence among users. Notably, Likee achieved positive QoQ growth in the number of paying users.
JOYY continued to make important product feature updates that are creating clear operational benefits. In the first quarter, Bigo Live continued to enhance its user experience. Specifically, it improved its recommendation system, directed more traffic toward high-potential content creators, and upgraded its viewing interface. These changes led to a 4% QoQ increase in average viewing time per user. At the same time, Bigo Live launched an entirely redesigned VIP benefits system and improved its gifting experience, upgrading gift features for high-value users. These efforts delivered a 3% QoQ increase in ARPPU among Bigo Live’s high-end user cohort.
Likee also advanced its content strategy by building a more diverse and engaging content library. This led to impressive engagement metrics during the quarter. Videos viewed per user rose by 7% compared to the previous quarter, with overall video consumption time increasing by 10% over the same period. The refined approach to top streamer management and development also produced a notable 3% QoQ increase in Likee’s average paying ratio during the quarter.
Advertising Business
The BIGO Ads revenue grew 27% in the first quarter, supported by the Company’s comprehensive strengths, including local operations, extensive user base, industry-leading algorithms, and global network infrastructure, continuing to generate a positive profit contribution.
By integrating premium publisher traffic with the Company’s first-party traffic, BIGO Ads creates an advertising system that helps advertisers consistently reach their most valuable customers worldwide. BIGO Ads provides an intelligent, end-to-end advertising platform that covers user insights, creative development, precise targeting, and real-time optimization, leveraging its extensive global audience and years of quality data to build its own vertical model, integrating cutting-edge generative AI technologies. Its AI usage improves ad performance and ad returns while creating better revenue opportunities for the Company’s publisher partners. This success attracts both more advertiser spending and more publisher traffic, helping the BIGO Ads platform grow quickly.
1.This press release includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as additional clarifying items to aid investors in further understanding the Company’s performance and the impact that these items and events had on the financial results. The non-GAAP financial measures provided above should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. For details of the non-GAAP measures, including the reconciliations of GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures, please refer to the press release titled “JOYY Reports First Quarter 2025 Unaudited Financial Results” issued by the Company on May 27, 2025.
