Tencent Music Entertainment Group (NYSE:TME) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And then non-subscription revenue, we will see pockets of growth in the areas of advertising which is growing very well, long audio IoT services, but somewhat offsetted by volatility in digital album as well as sub-licensing.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question

Ross Liang: And also with the unique platform and content strategy of TME, TME is now starting to have some monetization through the content reductions, content licensing and also rising sponsorship with our life and brings. And also, as we mentioned, we started to have some artist-related merchandising revenue, which can help us to explore further e-commerce opportunities. Those will also help us to some new revenue streams in the future.

Operator: Okay. Thank you. And our next question from Charlene Liu from HSBC. Charlene, your line is open. Please un-mute yourself and go ahead.

Charlene Liu: Thank you so much. I have two questions. First, can you share your expectations for subscriber growth for paid music? And how should we think about impact from resumption of offline entertainment, first is willingness to pay as macro recovers post reopening? That’s the first question. Separately, on gross profit margin, I think management had mentioned that it still has room to improve further. What could be a mid-term target for GPM and also, I think kind of subset to that question is, how would investments into LLM impact us from a P&L standpoint? Thank you so much.

Tony Yip: I will take the first part on the subscriber growth and perhaps Shirley can add a bit of comments around gross margin. Our subscriber growth has been following a secular trend. So, irrespective of COVID, irrespective of reopening, we continue to see a secular trend behind the subscriber growth. Our focus is much more on subscription revenue as a whole which is driven by both paying user growth as well as ARPPU. And Barry mentioned offline and more offline activities. I think bear in mind that that also benefit us in the form of advertising monetization, as Cussion mentioned, because we organized a vast number of offline music events and we generate a meaningful amount of sponsorship advertising revenue as a result.

During the fourth quarter, that part of the business actually showed us some temporary impact because of COVID. Now with the reopening and with more offline activities, we actually expect there to be a positive impact to the sponsorship advertising revenue as a result. So, that would help act as a second growth driver to our online music revenue in addition to subscription.

Shirley Hu: And about the gross margin of music, we believe we can have the same gross margin rate about €“ came to the Spotify. And for the overall gross margin of our company, we believe in 2023, our gross margin will be increased and higher than that in 2022. And in the long-term gross margin, our target will be 35%, that is mentioned in our IPO, yes.

Operator: Thank you and we will take our last question today from Xueqing Zhang from CICC. Xueqing, your line is open. Please un-mute yourself and go ahead.

Xueqing Zhang: Thanks for another question. And one more question on labels cooperation. And today, we announced that TME reached an agreement with JVR and B’in Music, so can management give out some more color on labels collaboration and how does it affect our gross margins? Thank you.