Mentioned in this article
- Chinese livestreaming platform Huya continues growth, reaching seven quarters of continued profitability and booking a net income of ¥122M RMB ($17.7M USD).
- Total net revenues for Q2 2019 increased by 93.6% YoY to ¥2.01B ($293M) from ¥1.04B in Q2 2018.
- Paying users increased by 46.7% YoY to 4.9M while average monthly active users rose 57.3% YoY to 143.9M, of which 55.9M are mobile users.
On Tuesday after the U.S. markets’ close, NASDAQ-traded Chinese livestreaming platform Huya (HUYA) released its unaudited Q2 2019 financial results for the period ended June 30, announcing 93.6% net revenue growth year-over-year.
The total net revenue of ¥2.01B ($293M) exceeded expectations of Huya’s previous Q2 business outlook by ¥220M ($32M).
“During the second quarter, we strategically upgraded our monetization tactics for sustainable longer-term growth. Despite the seasonal impact, Huya still achieved fast growth in both traffic and revenue” said Huya CFO Henry Sha in a statement “Our revenue growth once again exceeded the high end of management guidance range. We are also delighted to achieve better-than-expected profitability in the second quarter amid increased spending in content and marketing, both domestically and globally.”
At 96%, the majority of Huya’s revenues, ¥1.9B ($280M), were generated by its paying users. The amount of paying users increased by 46.7% YoY from 3.4M to 4.9M, with average spending per paying user increasing as well. Huya primarily attributes the increase in the number of paying customers to the company’s mobile strategy.
In the earnings call, Huya highlighted the success of its self-branded mobile esports tournaments. In Q2 2019 the Huya Mobile Game Arena (HMA), a tournament covering nine mobile games including titles such as Honor of Kings, CrossFire Mobile, and QQ Speed Mobile, hit record-high viewership contributing to a total viewership of 72M for Huya-organized esports tournaments in Q2 2019. This outperforms the aggregated 51M Huya-organized esports viewership during the first half of 2018.
Huya’s average monthly active users (MAUs) for the quarter reached 143.9M, up 57.3% from 91.5M in the same period last year, while mobile MAUs accounted for roughly 39% or 55.9M of all Huya MAUs.
During the second quarter, Huya has continued its efforts to push its overseas expansion. In June, Huya partnered with esports organization Team Liquid and launched its platform Nimo TV in Brazil. In the earnings conference call, a company representative stated that Huya’s overseas strategy is on track with management expectations and that the company hopes to reach break-even sometime next year.
Note: The exchange rate used by Huya for its financial report is the rate in effect as of June 28 at a rate of ¥6.8650 to $1.00. For the convenience of the reader, The Esports Observer used the same exchange rate for currency conversions in this article.
