The demand for non-academic tutoring is substantial. With clear compliance and governance guidance in place, our business grows initiates with new enrollments, and subsequently generates incremental revenues through retention and course expansions. So we have confidence in our operational capabilities and the reputation we have established among students and parents. Therefore, we anticipate triple-digit year-over-year growth in our academic tutoring sections, while also our traditional learning services, which is basically a high school business, continue to maintain a leading edge in the online space. We will leverage our existing competitive advantages to further deepen this moat. We anticipate that the growth rate of our traditional business will far exceed that of 2023.
And regarding learning services we provided for college students and adults, we are glad to see it rebound in Q4 2023. We always prioritize margin improvements over revenue expansion in this sector and ascertain the profitability at a unit economics level and then focus on achieving the effective growth as our primary strategy. So based on all those considerations, we are willing to elevate our targets and goals for both gross billings and revenue growth in 2024 and have confidence in overall growth prospects for the whole year. Secondly, in terms of those growth and efficiency, our explorations of diverse customer acquisition channels have effectively lowered customer acquisition costs. From high quality content generating on short video, live streaming platforms and to extending into offline customer acquisition paths, our unwavering commitment to creating customer value serves as drivers for our sustainable growth.
And in terms of the guidance for the first quarter, in the first quarter, we are still in a phase of adjusting the revenue structure. And we have the confidence that, in the more near future, like in the second quarter of 2024, we will see an accelerated growth rate for both of our gross billings and revenues. That basically addresses your questions.
Operator: The next question comes from Crystal Li with CMS.
Yishan Li: Congratulations on those strong results. I just noticed that your gross profit margins narrowed slightly in this quarter compared to last quarter and last year. Could you please share the reason behind this? And could you give us more color on your margin outlook going forward?
Shannon Shen: It’s a very good observation. So, we observed a 4.7 percentage point decrease in GP margin on a year-over-year basis. This year-over-year decrease in GP margin was due to a few reasons. Firstly, in terms of our revenue contributor, to meet diverse user needs, actually, we have constructed a product matrix, which primarily focused on online large live classes, complemented by one-on-one classes, smart textbooks and offline small classes. So, among these, online large live classes posted the highest level of GP margins. As our business expands, the proportion of revenue generated from our one-on-one classes, smart books and offline small classes is gradually increasing, altering the revenue mix and substantially impacting the GP margin level.
And secondly, in preparation for the peak season during the winter vacation, we have proactively reserved a proportion of teachers and tutors. These teachers and tutors have not yet reached their full capacity levels in the fourth quarter, thus affecting gross profit margins as well. But as always, we always need a period for our new teachers and tutors to gradually adopt our learning methodologies and provide sufficient training period for our teachers and tutors, so they can better serve our students. So we do see these investments as valuable. So looking forward, in the middle term, our margins are expected to improve. And also in the long run, our gross profit margin will depend on the future revenue structure. Hope that address your question.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Catherine Chen for any closing remarks.
Catherine Chen: Thank you, operator. And thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our Investor Relations department or our management via email at ir@gaotu.cn directly. You are also welcome to subscribe to our news alert on the company’s IR website. Thank you very much again for your time. Have a great night.
Shannon Shen: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
