Kanzhun Limited (NASDAQ:BZ) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Yu Zhang: Okay. So I’ll answer the first question. So we previously announced that we will achieve 100 million new users in the next 2 to 3 years. So basically, according to this year’s progress, we are on track. So by the end of October, we achieved 40 million verified new users. So basically, this year, we would like to have a very good results in terms of the new user folks. Definitely, next year, we will continue our growth for the new users. And when I talk about the user growth you have seen is that in third quarter, we achieved a historical high of our operating margin. So that basically, we managed to grow without [indiscernible] previously, we communicated with our strategy. So our strategy is putting more resources on brand [indiscernible] over acquisition costs.

So basically, this strategy works well. And so next year, we will further increase new users. And we will continue to follow [indiscernible] , and we’ll try our best to find the best balance point between the growth and the profitability. So what I mean is that the growth is a priority for the company and all those growth comes from — to begin from new users, and we will do it carefully and spend our market carefully.

Peng Zhao: Yes. I will take your second question. For the outlook to [indiscernible] , I will go back to our forecast by [indiscernible] with 100 million newly verified users. By end of September, we have already achieved 40 million, but we are not planning to change our target at this moment because reason is that we will — based on the recovery trend of the enterprise side users on its quality and current state to address our acquisition for job [indiscernible] side to achieve a relatively to better balance the supply and demand. And in terms of how — in the end, the enterprise side performed, we don’t have exact focus at this moment. But based on what we have in [indiscernible] this year that the coming demand covered every quarter and really so we believe we listen to the hope that the enterprise side perform — continue to perform more good next year.

If you look at numbers, you can see that our monthly active users in October has been quite close to #1, and we are already the largest in terms of daily active users. And the reaction is which is the as a percentage of [indiscernible] the highest among our peers, and we may not believe this trend is growing trend will continue to maintain. In terms of the large companies renewing their contract by the end of this year, as we are expecting the latter companies to spend their budget for next year and so the contract in the coming months. But we see a very encouraging trend, but still the full recover of the common demand for larger companies still need to take some time.

Operator: The next question comes from Yang Bai of CICC.

Yang Bai: The first question is we have seen the company’s gross margin has rebounded in the 2 quarters, what are the company’s expectations for future gross margin change? And the second line is could the company give more color on the plans for new products and business such as the progress of a large language model globalization and other new initiatives.

Yu Zhang: Well, I would like to answer the gross margin question. So basically, you said our gross margin bottom out for consecutive 2 quarters and so basically, this gross margin improvement. This is a result of faster revenue growth and relatively controlled and stable cost of the business. So in the fourth quarter, so next quarter, we expect due to the seasonality reason, Q4 is a revenue low quarter. So the gross margin would be affected by the lower revenue. So temporarily, the gross margin will compact in Q4. But for 2024 for the next year because of the revenue growth, we expect that the gross margin will return to recovery predictor because of our costs, we will maintain a nongrowth that we probably will have a faster revenue growth. So that will secure our gross margin to further recover based on this year’s base. So this is the gross margin plan.

Peng Zhao: About new initiatives. The first 1 is we believe that already proven and established user service model and also a revenue model, we want to expand our service to other developed countries and areas and we are currently on the progress and hopefully in the next 3 to 5 years created non revenue growth contributor. In terms of large handled [indiscernible] , which is a question, the investors will confirm a lot actually, since the beginning of this year, we have made some substantial investment into this area, and we continue to focus on and continue to focus on it. One thing worth mentioning is that 1 of our [indiscernible] recently opened source of [indiscernible] model and we really have seen a very good result for that. On the same side of business models, we believe early among the top 10 players domestically.