Bilibili (NASDAQ: BILI / 09626.HK) reported total revenue of RMB 7.003 billion for Q1 2025, a year-on-year increase of 24%, maintaining over 20% growth for a second consecutive quarter. Net loss narrowed by 99% year-on-year to RMB 10.7 million. Under non-GAAP measures, adjusted net profit was RMB 362 million, marking a turnaround from the previous year’s loss.
Bilibili first achieved single-quarter profitability in Q3 2024, on a non-GAAP adjusted net profit basis. In Q4, both GAAP and non-GAAP net profits turned positive. However, it returned to a net loss in Q1 2025.
Costs and expenses increased in the quarter, with operating costs rose 10% due to higher revenue-sharing expenses related to games. The company also increased promotional spending for its flagship game “Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition” and collaborated with state broadcaster CCTV to provide exclusive bullet-screen livestreaming and content services for the Spring Festival Gala, leading to a 26% year-on-year rise in sales and marketing expenses. However, general and administrative, as well as R&D expenses, declined.
Thanks to the strong growth of high-margin advertising and gaming businesses, Bilibili’s gross margin improved by 8 percentage points year-on-year to 36.3% in Q1.
The quarter included the winter break and Chinese New Year holidays, contributing to traffic growth. Monthly Active Users (MAUs) reached a record 368 million, up 7.8% year-on-year and an increase of 28 million from the previous quarter. Daily Active Users (DAUs) hit 106.7 million, up 4% year-on-year and up 3.7 million quarter-on-quarter. Average daily user time increased from 105 minutes a year ago to 108 minutes, also a record high.
During the earnings call, CEO Chen Rui said that in today’s environment of content oversupply, users spend more time on high-quality content.
He described Bilibili as the Chinese platform with the “most mature mental positioning around quality content,” offering long-term value and emotional return. He cited growth in user time and paying users as evidence, and said Bilibili would continue investing in quality content to help creators gain more traffic and income.
Regarding content creators, about 1.5 million Bilibili uploaders earned income on the platform in Q1. The number of creators earning ad revenue through the “Sparkle” brand sponsorship system grew 16% year-on-year. Total income from virtual tipping by users rose 200% year-on-year.
Chen believes high-quality content will also help Bilibili maintain its edge in the AI era and said that Bilibili is already “the world’s largest and highest-quality corpus of Chinese-language video data.”
While large models are no longer limited in their understanding of text, improving deep interaction capabilities requires high-quality video data for training. “In the future, AI can easily pretend to be users and post comments, but it will still be difficult to generate high-quality, customizable video content. That’s where Bilibili has an advantage.”
In Q1, value-added services, advertising, gaming, and IP derivatives & other businesses accounted for 40%, 29%, 25%, and 6% of total revenue, respectively. The proportion of gaming revenue increased.
Value-added services revenue rose 11% year-on-year to RMB 2.807 billion, mainly due to growth in live-streaming and other premium services. By the end of Q1, Bilibili had 23.5 million active premium members with paid access to film and TV content, over 80% of whom were on annual or auto-renewal plans.
Advertising revenue reached RMB 1.998 billion in Q1, up 20% year-on-year, with performance ads growing over 30%. The top five industry contributors were gaming, internet services, e-commerce, home appliances/furniture, and automotive, and the total number of advertisers rose more than 35% year-on-year.
Chen noted that Bilibili’s active users have an average age of 26, which means they now have more disposable income and participate in more consumption scenarios, boosting commercial value.
At the same time, Bilibili improved ad targeting through multimodal large models. In Q1, AI-generated content (AIGC) covered 30% of performance ad impressions. AI-related ad revenue rose nearly 400% year-on-year. Moreover, due to its concentration of AI-interested users, ad spending from other internet companies promoting their AI products doubled.
Mobile game revenue was RMB 1.731 billion in Q1, up 76% year-on-year, still driven by Bilibili’s self-developed game “Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition,” launched last year. This title, led personally by Chen Rui, is designed for long-term operations, targeting a stable commercial cycle of at least five years. “We want to make a game users can play for a lifetime,” he said. The game ranks highly in user engagement and monetization among peers. A new season will launch at the end of May, a spin-off mini-game is planned for the summer, and a Traditional Chinese version for the Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan markets will be released by year-end.
Beyond “Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition,” Bilibili’s gaming strategy includes maintaining long-life games such as FGO and Azur Lane, while preparing for new releases. Four to five new titles are ready to launch pending license approval.
Revenue from IP derivatives and other businesses came to RMB 467 million in Q1, down 4% year-on-year.
