Zhihu (NYSE:ZH) reported first-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company’s first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Zhihu Inc reported a strong start to 2026 with improving financial metrics, including a sequential increase in total revenues and a positive adjusted net profit of RMB 17.2 million for Q1 2026.
The company highlighted its strategic initiatives focused on AI integration, with significant progress in AI-driven content, such as short dramas and comic adaptations, alongside its expert data solutions.
Management emphasized the momentum in user engagement, with average daily time spent per DAU reaching 42 minutes, and a notable increase in high-quality content creation, particularly in professional and AI-related domains.
Zhihu’s marketing services revenue showed stabilization, and the company reclassified its revenue segments to better reflect commercialization potential, particularly in paid content and IP operations.
The company reaffirmed its commitment to operational profitability, strategic cost management, and shareholder returns, with ongoing share repurchase programs totaling 63.5 million Class A shares since 2022.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome To Zhihu Inc.’s First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be question and answer session. Today’s conference is being recorded and webcast. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Ma’. Am.
Yolanda Liu (Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Amber. Hello everyone. Welcome to Zhihu’s first quarter 2026 results conference call. Joining me today on the call from the senior management team are Mr. Zhou Yu, founder, chairman and chief executive officer, Mr. Wang Han, chief financial officer, and Mr. Zhang Rongle, our Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that today’s discussion will include forward looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S.
private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may be materially different from views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our public filings with the U.S. securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward looking statements except as required under ACOG law.
Additionally, the discussion today will include both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only. For a consideration of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our IR website at ir.zhihu.com Today, Victor Zhou (AI Agent), an AI agent representing Mr. Zhou Yuan, will deliver prepared remarks in English on his behalf as Victor is still being refined.
We appreciate your understanding, Victor. Please go ahead.
Victor Zhou (AI Agent)
Thank you, Yolanda. Hello everyone and thank you for joining Zhihu’s first quarter 2026 earnings call.
I am Victor Zhou and I’m pleased to deliver today’s opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, our founder, chairman and CEO. The first quarter of 2026 marked a strong start to the year. As we advanced our high quality growth strategy, our community ecosystem continued to thrive, fueled by a more dynamic user base, deeper social connections and stronger engagement. Average daily time spent per dau reached nearly 42 minutes. Our content creators remain highly active and expanded across AI and other specialized domains, further strengthening our trusted expert network.
This quarter, professional, authentic and in depth content from real people continued to flourish across our community.
Its influence extended beyond our platform and reinforced our unique competitive mode.
In the AI era We also accelerated the integration of AI capabilities across our platform and business operations, with social interactions significantly enhanced across multiple use cases.
Building on this solid foundation, JIFU has continued to gain momentum along its recovery trajectory.
In the first quarter, our total revenues achieved positive sequential growth and the year over year decline narrowed substantially, reflecting our healthier business ecosystem and more efficient monetization.
Our core businesses are showing encouraging signs of recovery while our new initiatives continue to gain momentum and deliver steady growth.
Specifically, marketing services saw a meaningful narrowing of the year over year decline, signaling near term stabilization. Revenue from IP operations delivered robust growth.
Capitalizing on our premium IP library, we have significantly elevated both the production capacity and the quality of our short drama and comic drama adaptations. Multiple short dramas and comic dramas garnered billions of views and consistently topped popularity charts. This success serves as a strong validation of the commercial potential of our high quality IPs. Our expert data solutions have started to gain traction among key clients.
With early stage monetization opportunities gradually taking shape, our vibrant community fosters genuine connections and deep user trust assets that are increasingly valuable in the age of AI. This has directly fueled continued growth in user engagement on our platform.
In 1Q26, average daily time spent per DAU reached approximately 42 minutes, increasing on both year over year and quarter over quarter basis. The daily active user coverage of positive interactions also grew year over year.
Underpinning this momentum, our content ecosystem is scaling at a healthy pace.
As of the end of the first quarter, cumulative content volume reached 972 million entries and cumulative topics grew to 4.38 million, up 8.8% and 15.7% respectively from the same period last year.
High quality content creation continued to gain momentum this quarter.
Daily creation of high quality content rose 18% year over year, with the professional AI related content growing over 30% year over year. Against the backdrop of rapid AI evolution, Zhihu’s professional ecosystem and high quality creator network continue to offer distinct differentiated value.
As a hub for frontline developers, researchers and tech professionals, Zhihu remains the premier platform where cutting edge industry trends are first discussed, rigorously analyzed and professionally evaluated. In the first quarter, we saw heightened engagement from subject matter experts across top universities, leading Internet companies and AI labs.
They actively participated in deep discussions on topics such as AI self evolution, next generation, large model development, video generation, model iteration and open source ecosystems. From computer science scholars at institutions like Tsinghua University to R and D leaders at tech giants and leading AI startups like Alibaba, ByteDance and Moonshot AI Kimi, a growing number of professionals are sharing their frontline insights, technical reproductions and in depth analysis on zhihu.
A substantial cohort of core experts from Top tier Labs has joined the platform and remains highly active.
In addition, updates to mainstream AI products consistently spark systematic technical interpretations and the professional evaluations within our community.
Notably, this quarter saw substantial in depth discussions surrounding DeepSix Expert Mode, Alibaba’s new video model HappyHorse and developments related to Google’s Gemini 4.
This high quality content ecosystem continuously enriched by frontline practitioners, not only enhances jihu’s professional credibility but also further solidifies our core competitive moat in the AI era.
Professional creators are the core engine that powers the vitality, trustworthiness and uniqueness of our expert network. In the first quarter, the number of verified honored creators on Zhihu grew over 10% year over year reflecting our continued commitment to amplifying their industry influence.
Momentum in AI related creator activity remains strong.
We have aggregated over 19 million AI focused creators who not only fuel our community’s high quality content ecosystem but also represent a robust pipeline of potential to be service providers.
We also saw a notable influx of top research teams, institutional executives and the core developers in fields like commercial, aerospace and frontier technology. Their active participation has further solidified Zhihu’s standing as a hub for professional discourse on advanced tech.
At the same time, in the film, entertainment and cultural verticals, we deepened our reach and engagement among upstream IP holders, core production teams and dedicated enthusiasts. In May, we hosted a 12th Zhihu Xinzhou youth Conference in Beijing. This year’s event placed a strong focus on the value of human creativity in the AI era, exploring the irreplaceable worth and core strengths of authentic creators amid rapid technological advancements.
Overall, sustained engagement of high quality creators across diverse verticals not only strengthens our foundation of professional trustworthy content but also enhances the strategic value of our content assets. This ecosystem directly accelerates our AI driven commercialization and reinforces the unique competitive advantages of our trusted expert network.
Alongside the deeper professional engagement, our ecosystem is also becoming increasingly social and interactive. In the first quarter, we optimized both the creation and the consumption experiences for our short form Ideas product. This initiative effectively lowered barriers to entry while significantly boosting community vitality.
Looking ahead, we will focus on deepening the synergies between IDEAS and our community based circle product by implementing more refined operations and expanding distribution scenarios. We aim to drive further positive momentum in core user retention and total time spent.
Ultimately, this will unlock and expand a wider range of native commercial monetization opportunities. We continue to integrate core AI capabilities across content creation, discovery, consumption and community interactions.
Through our open platform API, Suju, Kaifang, Pingtai and offline events like the AI Hackathon, we empowered developers and creators to explore AI native content and the interaction formats, further extending the practical application of AI technologies across the Zhihu community. As we embrace AI as a tool
for creative efficiency, we further refined our AI-generated content governance framework to rigorously filter out low quality machine generated spam.
Since the start of 2026, we have removed over 250,000 pieces of low quality AI generated content and have penalized more than 11,000 violating accounts. These efforts have meaningfully safeguarded Zhihu’s authentic
atmosphere and significantly enhanced the experience for our creators and users.
Now turning to commercialization in the first quarter total revenues grew sequentially and the year over year decline narrowed significantly, signaling a clear recovery underpinned by a healthier commercial ecosystem. Our monetization efficiency continues to improve with new growth momentum steadily materializing. Let’s take a closer look at our performance by segment first paid content and IP operations starting from the first quarter of 2026, we combined IP related revenue previously included in other revenues with our existing paid membership revenue into paid content and IP operations revenue.
This change more accurately reflects the commercialization potential of our Yanyan Story franchise. This quarter, revenue from paid content and IP operations reached RMB 402.3 million, increasing 15.8% sequentially driven primarily by the rapid growth of our IP operations, which reflected
strong momentum in in unlocking the commercial value of our original content.
The average monthly subscribing members reached 13.1 million, up 7.9% sequentially with structural optimization. This growth was primarily driven by seasonal content consumption during the Chinese New Year holiday and improved customer acquisition efficiency. With Zhihu’s premium short form paid content continuing to play a key role in attracting and retaining users.
We maintain disciplined high ROI standards by proactively optimizing inefficient acquisition channels to drive high quality growth in our subscriber base. Meanwhile, synergies between our AI powered comic
dramas and paid membership businesses are gradually emerging. By distributing Zhihu’s high quality IP and adapted content beyond our community, we effectively attract new users to in community consumption
scenarios, creating a strong connection with membership benefits.
This strategy expands the reach of our IP while driving conversion among potential members,
improving overall acquisition efficiency and enabling us to continuously optimize returns on our marketing spend. Revenue from IP operations delivered a strong growth momentum. This quarter. The number of our IP partnerships grew more than five fold year over year and more than doubled sequentially. Several of our top titles sold both film and gaming rights, and we find additional licensing deals in verticals like science fiction.
Together, these deals further validate both the depth of our IP monetization capabilities and the pricing power of our IP assets. Supported by our IP library. Both the production capacity and the content quality of our short drama and comic drama adaptations remain stable.
In the first quarter, multiple short dramas and comic drama titles achieved billions of views, consistently ranking at the top of various major platforms. Looking ahead, leveraging our strong IP pipeline, we will continue to pursue end to
end multidimensional commercialization and further extend the life cycle of each individual IP moving to marketing services, in the first quarter,, marketing services revenue was RMB 191.4 million, broadly in line with the same period last year. Our disciplined execution across client mix optimization and product upgrades continued to deliver results on client mix.
Ad revenue rose sharply both year over year and sequentially in core verticals like gaming and automotive. Our industry mix also continued to improve with commercial efficiency improving notably across gaming, travel and transportation. This was supported by the ongoing consumption recovery and a wave of new game
launches during the quarter, on commercial products,.
In March, we launched our technology themed IP TechBytes at this year’s Appliance and Electronics World Expo with a focus on the home appliance and consumer electronics sector. At the on Site Immersive Exhibition Zone, Shifu Creators hosted guided walkthroughs to answer consumer questions with professional technical insights.
They also share the latest trends in home appliances and consumer electronics.
At the same time, Zhihu Reviewers’ Jewelry hosted an online discussion forum helping decode industry jargon and highlight the real value behind the product innovation.
Turning to other revenues in the first quarter, other revenues were RMB 57.8 million. As I mentioned earlier, we have reclassified IP related revenue into our new Paid Content and IP operations segment, which better reflects how each business is developing. Within other revenues,.
Our Expert Data Solutions business won recognition from leading enterprise clients and began generating revenue this quarter.
As a pioneer in defining, delivering, high value data solutions, we are now translating our expertise into tangible value for our clients. Our differentiated value has been firmly validated by the top tier AI labs.
Looking ahead through the rest of 2026, we remain committed to deepening our services, for key clients while expanding our footprint into new industries. To wrap up the first quarter gave
us a solid start to the year. As we move through 2026, our priorities remain clear. We will continue to strengthen operational profitability while leveraging our unique strength in the AI era to drive higher quality accelerated growth. We believe the combined power of high
quality content times expert network times AI capabilities will further set Zhihu apart in this new era.
Over the next three quarters, we will continue to execute on our strategy with discipline. We expect our core businesses to show an accelerated recovery. In parallel, our AI related new initiatives should continue to gain traction and contribute meaningfully to growth.
With that, I will hand the call over to our CFO Wang Han, whose remarks will be delivered through his AI voice Agent Han, please go ahead..
Han Wang (CFO)
I will now go over our first quarter 2026 financials for a complete overview of our results, please refer to our press release issued earlier today. The first quarter marked a strong start to the year with our operations and financial performance both improving.
Building on the full year non GAAP profitability achieved in 2025, we delivered a strong sequential return to profitability in the first quarter supported by continued gross margin recovery, disciplined cost management and focused resource allocation. These results reflect the cumulative impact of our multi quarter structural optimization and provide a strong foundation for for continued growth as we move through 2026.
Now turning to the financial highlights of first quarter 2026 at the non GAAP level, we are pleased to report that adjusted net profit turned positive in the first quarter of 2026 reaching RMB 17.2 million compared with an adjusted net loss of RMB 39.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Our total revenue for the quarter reached RMB 651.6 million compared with RMB 729.7 million in the same period of 2025.
The year over year decline reflects our continued efforts to optimize revenue mix and to prioritize high quality services. More importantly, revenue grew on a sequential basis driven by strong revenue contribution from our paid content and IP operations segment. Our marketing services revenue for the quarter was RMB 191.4 million compared with RMB 197 million in the same period of 2025.
The stabilization in marketing services reflects our proactive and ongoing refinement of service offerings with notably improving sequential trend paid content and IP operations. Revenue was RMB 402.3 million compared with RMB 420.9 million in the same period of 2025. Average monthly subscribing members were 13.1 million, an increase of 7.9% on quarterly basis. We continue to focus our resources on strengthening user engagement and monetization opportunities.
In addition, revenue growth from our IP operations served as an earnings driver supported by expanding IP initiatives. Other revenues were RMB 57.8 million compared with RMB 111.8 million in the same period of 2025. The decrease was primarily due to strategic refinement of our vocational training business. Our gross profit for the quarter was RMB 388.3 million compared with RMB 451.1 million in the same period of 2025.
Gross margin was 59.6% compared with 61.8% in the same period of 2025. Notably, gross margin improved sequentially from 53.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025. This improvement was attributable to prudent cost controls across content and cloud operations. Our total operating expenses decreased by 10.4% year over year to RMB 451.2 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared with RMB 503.7 million in the same period of 2025.
The decrease in total operating expenses was in line with revenue supported by management’s careful cost controls. R and D expenses fell by 22.4% year over year while selling and marketing expenses also decreased by 11.1% year over year. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 11.1% year over year to RMB 285.1 million from RMB 320.6 million in the same period of 2025.
The decrease was primarily due to more disciplined marketing spending and a decrease in personnel related expenses. Research and development expenses decreased 22.4% year over year to RMB 110.1 million from RMB1.41.9 million in the same period of 2025. The decrease was primarily driven by ongoing improvements in our research and development efficiency.
General and Administrative expenses were RMB 56 million compared with RMB 41.2 million in the same period of 2025. The increase was primarily attributable to an increase in the allowance for expected credit losses on trade receivables. Accordingly, our net loss narrowed by 15.6% to RMB 8.5 million from RMB 10.1 million in the same period of 2025.
On a non GAAP basis, adjusted net income increased by 147.2% year over year to RMB 17.2 million from RMB 6.9 million in the same period of 2025. As of 31 March 2026, the company had RMB 4.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Term deposits, restricted cash and short term investments.
As of 31 March 2026, the company has repurchased 34.8 million Class A ordinary shares on the open market for an aggregate value of US$70.7 million on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Stock Exchange of Hong kong. During the first quarter of 2026, the company repurchased 3.7 million Class A ordinary shares, consideration of US$4.2 million. The share repurchase program continues to deliver value back to our shareholders.
Building on the solid momentum achieved in the first quarter. We expect 2026 to be a year of high quality growth. We remain focused on strengthening operational profitability and improving execution efficiency while further leveraging the unique advantages from our high quality content, expert network and AI capabilities. As these three pillars continue to evolve in unison, they will further highlight our distinctive value in the AI era.
Looking ahead, we will continue to execute our established strategy with discipline and focus driving sustainable growth and long term shareholder value. This concludes my prepared remarks on our financial performance for this quarter. Let’s turn the call over to the operator for the Q and A session.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for a meeting to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. In the interest of time, please ask one question each time. If you have any follow up questions, please go back to the queue. We will now take Alpha’s question and our first question comes from the line of Xue Qingzhong of cicc.
Please ask your question. Xue Qing, your line is open. Thanks Management for taking my question. My question is about AI. Could management share some of the latest strategic thinking and roadmap around AI? For example, in terms of integrating AI with the Juhu community, what’s your latest plan and progress? Thank you.
Liji Suing
Thank you for the question. I believe the relationship between the community is not AI plus or plus AI. So as I mentioned earlier, average daily timespan per DAU increase and I reckon it’s mainly stems from our position core strategy over the past period which centers on building a high quality trustworthy community. So in other words, the interpersonal connections are becoming more active and this vibrancy would still occur even without AI. So what users truly need is never AI is but rather cognitive enhancement, experience sharing and real connections.
So building a high quality trustworthy community is what Zhihu has been doing since day one. Whether navigating the Internet era or today’s AI era, our underlying mission has never changed. Therefore, rather than viewing the community as an AI application scenario, we focus on how to leverage technology to better serve people.
Take the Zhihu conference as an example. This year on site attendance exceed 80,000 which setting a historical record, we have over 100 partners on site and featuring numerous workshops and coffee chats related to AI. And there’s also non AI activities such as handicraft workshops, fitness areas and food markets. So ultimately people gather together for the engagement and the meaning of Zhihu does not merely represent the new knowledge, but the new cognition and the new connections.
And this is precisely the core value of the Zehu community. And we have always believed that Zhuhu’s community ecosystem is not built to serve like shadow attention. And the increasing time span corresponds not to a concept of like everyone, but to the active growth of a mid to Thai attention user cohort. So our core priority is to continuously build Zhihu into a positive feedback system that helps people elevate the cognition and establish connections.
And to achieve this we have executed four initiatives over the past two years. So the first one would be the sustained investment in the community operations and second would be the simplification of the product equation. And third one would be the long term investment in the underlying technical infrastructure. And last one would be the advancement in like AI innovation and efficiency.
Regarding AI, we have one principle. So AI is not the end goal but people are so like in the phase one for Zhihu Dao, we aim to integrate AI search with our trustworthy community of content, ensuring answers not just generated from the models but could be tracked back to real people and experiences. And the phase two which is our current stage we are advancing in two areas. So firstly we are building on data platform, aggregating the high quality long term community data that have been cleaned and credibly ranked.
It’s open to develops via like MCP (Multi-Category Platform) or skills. And secondly, we are building an open platform which is our community APIs and we hosted our first open platform based hackathon. Now it’s currently project based and will turn into a product as a long term open platform to enable the engineers and and AI creators to continuously innovate. Therefore, integrating the community and AI is not simply dropping into it’s about to leverage open platform to empower more creators to generate new value.
Our exploration extends further. If the open platform unlocks creativity, AI short dramas or the comics unlock the value of our IP, our paid content, Yanyan Story and today’s AI dramas are all organic extensions of our authentic discussions. This exemplifies our strategy of like starting from and extending beyond the community. A community create content and content generate IP which leverages the new technologies to reach broader users. As the AI drama industry shifts from the volume growth to quality, we believe the value of our IP will further unlock.
And finally, Zhihu believes in long term our current progress is not driven by skill focused tactics. Our core strategy remains unchanged. Deeply cultivate the community and focus on people, leverage AI innovation to better serve and empower people and continuously drive the positive cycle of starting from the community and extending beyond it. So such transition cannot materialize within a single quarter or even a full year. Our current results stem from consistent execution over the past two years, while our ongoing efforts are laying groundwork for structural improvements in the next three years.
Thank you,
OPERATOR
thank you, thank you. We will now proceed to take our next question from the line of Vicky Wei of Citi. Please ask your question. Vicki, your line is now open. So thanks management for taking my question. We noticed that starting from the first quarter, the company merged the original paid membership revenue with membership related copyright, licensing and IP derivative revenue into a single category.
Does this change reflect a new strategic within management regarding the market potential and growth drivers of payment this business? And furthermore, how should we think of Zhuhu’s advantages and opportunities within this newly defined market space? Thank you.
Zhang Rongle (COO)
Thank you for the question Vicky. This is from Zhihu Coo Zhang Rongle. This revenue reclassification is indeed reflect a strategic operating in how we view our paid content and IP operations. Previously the market saw our paid content as just membershIP revenue, but as China’s top premium short form original platform, the growth of Yanyan Story franchise has unlocked far broader value beyond the subscrIPtions our IPs now monetized through like short dramas,, comics, film or TV shows and games, creators are already becoming writers and producers.
So effective since the first quarter of 2026. The reclassification aims to better showcase the full life cycle value of our content. And I.
This means it’s upgrade from a single subscription model to the four chain IP operation and development. It remains as a crucial foundation helping us validate the content creation like the user willingness to pay and IP potential. Building on this content could unleash commercial value through the IP partnerships, script adaptations, short dramas and et cetera. And we aim to form a complete closed channel loop from the content to consumption to consumption and to the IP screening, and multi format monetization.
In this new market landscape we believe Zhuhu has four competitive advantages. Yanyan Story is the leading player in the short story, track. It has accumulated a vast library of premium short stories over time. Short stories naturally feature concentrated plots, clear character relationships and high density conflicts, making them highly suitable for the adoption into new content. Compared to incubating content from scratch, Adapting the existing IPs deliver high efficiency in both content screening and monetization conversion.
We continue to strengthen our creator ecosystem through the incentive mechanism. We discover the big time mid tier creators and extend their life cycle by enabling the transition from novel writing to script adaption. Meanwhile, our creators are showing high potential in utilizing AI for content, content inspiration and video gen models. So in first quarter total creator earnings surged 5.6 times year over year and further demonstrating the IP monetization.
AI short dramas, are really speeding up our IP monetization. So in the first quarter our total IP participation partnerships surged like 564% year over year and 248% quarter over quarter, fully validating the commercial dip and the premium pricing power of Zhuhu’s content assets computation will ultimately return to the quality of the content. As the industry evolves, the lifetime value of individual IP will be further unlocked. AI has increased the production capacity.
Our short form IPs offer natural high yield advantages for adoption. As we deepen our participation, leveraging AI for storyboarding, image generation, scripting and distribution, and we anticipate the lower cost and higher margin. Ultimately, AI doesn’t just increase output, it empowers creators. Therefore, the revenue reclassification isn’t just an accounting adjustment. It reflects how we redefine the commercial potential of in story and our original IPs.
Going forward, we will drive deeper synergies across paid content, IP licensing shop dramas, AI, comics, other formats and this allows us to maximize the LTV of each IP and turning the paid content and IP operation into a growth driver. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will now proceed to take our next question from the line of Lu Qing Zhou of Government Sex. Please ask your question. Looting. Your line is open. So thanks management for the opportunity. My question is regarding the AI investment. Can management elaborate more on the specific areas of allocation of your AI investment and how do you plan to balance those new investments with the group’s long term overall profitability goals? Thank you.
Han Wang (CFO)
Thank you for the question. Lo Ching. This is from Zhihu CFO Han Wang. We are certainly integrating AI into all aspects of our operations. However, I understand that the market is likely most concerned about when AI driven revenue will accelerate our growth. We maintain our previous strategic focus, specifically targeting two fields, the AI short dramas, comic dramas and the expert data solution. The former represents the AI generated content that users are most willing to pay for, whether the latter serve as the selling water and shovels to the AI industry.
Therefore, regarding how we balance new business investments with profitability, these two selections represent some of the healthiest cash flow profiles among all AI verticals and Zhihu holds a distinct competitive advantages here. Of course there’s challenges ranging from industry competition to the macro environment which require a medium to long term perspective. However, we will not pursue a strategy of burning cash to chase growth. Our investments will focus on building core long term capabilities to deliver fundamentally superior products.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will now proceed to take our next question from the lineup. Daisy Chen of Hai Tong International, please ask your question. Daisy, your line is open. Thanks management for taking my question out. Significant improvement in Q1 does have any update to the shareholder return plan such as the methods and the payout scale? Thank you.
Han Wang (CFO)
Thank you for the question Daisy. We remain firmly committed to our share repurchase. We believe Zhuhu has been one of the most active Chinese ADR in terms of buyback intensity over the past two years and since 2022 the company has repurchased accumulative like 63.5 million Class A ordinary shares in the open market with a total cost of 130 million and year to date in 2026 the company has repurchased 4.61 million shares for over the cost of US dollar for 5.06 million representing 1.74% of total shares outstanding and share repurchase during the first quarter of 2026 have all been fully cancelled.
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. That concludes today’s question and answer session. At this time I’ll turn the conference back to Yo Lander for any additional or closing remarks.
Yolanda Liu (Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly for Christensen Advisory. Thank you. Thank you all.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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