Image source: The Motley Fool. DATEThursday, May 29, 2025, at 7:30 a.
EDTCALL PARTICIPANTSChief Executive Officer — Weidong LuoChief Financial Officer — Shan-Nen BongNeed a quote from one of our analysts.
[ tected]TAKEAWAYSTotal Revenue: 89 million RMB for Q1 2025, representing a 38% increase year over year compared to Q1 2024 and the highest Q1 revenue since the company's transition to a pure SaaS model.
Gross fit: Gross fit increased by 27% year over year in Q1 2025, achieving the highest gross fit level in nine quarters.
Gross Margin: Gross margin imved by 520 basis points quarter over quarter in Q1 2025.
EngageLab Contract Value: 63 million RMB newly signed in Q1 2025, bringing the total cumulative contract value to over 110 million RMB.
EngageLab Recognized Revenue: Grew by 127% year over year for Q1 2025, with customer count up 25% to 848 and operations now spanning more than 40 countries and regions.
Developer Services Revenue: Up 39% year over year, but down 12% quarter over quarter; includes Subscription Services and Value-Added Services. Subscription Services Revenue: 53.
5 million RMB subscription services revenue, up 26% year over year compared to Q1 2024, down 2% quarter over quarter, with ARPU up 22% year-over-year and both domestic and overseas showing growth.
Value-Added Services Revenue: 8.
9 million RMB, up 269% year over year, but down 46% quarter over quarter; spike attributed to more than 200% increase in advertiser spending compared to Q1 2024 and sequential decline due to seasonality ing Q4 online shopping festivals.
Vertical Application Revenue: Increased 35% year over year and 20% quarter over quarter, driven primarily by Financial Risk Management. Financial Risk Management Revenue: 22.
2 million RMB revenue for Financial Risk Management, up 64% year over year and 36% quarter over quarter, mainly due to 19% customer growth year over year and 38% ARPU growth year-over-year; represents the segment's highest quarterly revenue to date.
Market Intelligence Revenue: Decreased by 26% year over year but grew 4% quarter over quarter due to continued weakness in market demand for Chinese app data. Operating Expenses (OpEx): 60.
6 million RMB operating expenses, up 14% year over year compared to Q1 2024 and flat quarter over quarter; primary increase came from sales and marketing costs. R&D Expenses: 24.
6 million RMB for R&D expenses, up 8% year over year compared to Q1 2024, attributed to staff costs and increased cloud fees. Selling and Marketing Expenses: 23.
3 million RMB selling and marketing expenses, up 34% year over year, reflecting higher sales commissions and travel spending in line with revenue growth. General and Administrative (G&A) Expenses: 12.
7 million RMB, down 2% year over year due to reduced fessional fees.
Net Dollar Retention Rate (NDR): 96% net dollar retention rate for the core Developer Subscription for the trailing 12 months March 31, 2025.
Deferred Revenue: Deferred revenue reached a record high of 156. 9 million RMB as of March 31, 2025.
Accounts Receivable Turnover Days: 53 days for accounts receivable turnover as of Q1 2025, marginally higher than Q4 2024 due to slower collections during the Chinese New Year period.
Net Total Assets: Net total assets were 376 million RMB as of March 31, 2025, with cash and cash equivalents of 113. 6 million RMB and total liabilities of 261. 6 million RMB.
Adjusted EBITDA: Positive adjusted EBITDA for the seventh consecutive quarter.
Repurchase: 16,000 American depositary s (ADS) repurchased in the quarter, bringing total repurchases to 295,000 ADS since gram inception.
Q2 2025 Revenue Guidance: jected revenue for Q2 2025 is between 87. 5 million RMB and 90. 5 million RMB, representing a 10%-14% year-over-year increase compared to Q2 2024. SUMMARYAurora Mobile (JG 3.
20%) reported record first-quarter revenue at 89 million RMB, with strong, broad-based year-over-year growth across subscription, value-added, and financial risk management services.
EngageLab drove multinational expansion, reaching 848 customers with over 63 million RMB in newly signed contracts, and management highlighted multi-year contracts with customers outside China as supporting future international growth.
Despite market intelligence revenue declining 26% year over year amid weak domestic demand, 19% customer growth and 38% ARPU imvement pelled financial risk management revenue to historic highs.
Cost discipline was maintained, with OpEx rising less than revenue, and the company dered its seventh consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA while continuing repurchases and jecting sustained double-digit revenue growth into the next quarter.
Shan-Nen Bong said, "if you want net fit next quarter, I think we can do that. All we need to do is just to freeze our R&D and marketing expenses.
However, this will come at the expense of duct development and continuous market spend, and this will certainly hurt our ability to grow our revenue in the near future.
"Management attributed 269% year-over-year growth in value-added services revenue to a rebound in advertiser spending, specifically noted as "the recovery of the advertiser spending we have seen in Q1.
"EngageLab's geographic reach now includes over 40 countries and regions, underlining management's position that it is the int "engine of growth for us in the next 24 months.
"Deferred revenue balance reached a historical record of 156. 9 million RMB, indicating substantial prepaid future revenue commitments.
INDUSTRY GLOSSARYEngageLab: Aurora Mobile Limited's global SaaS communications and engagement platform, viding push notification and messaging services to app developers and enterprises.
Net Dollar Retention Rate (NDR): A SaaS key performance indicator representing percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including revenue expansion via up-sell and cross-sell, minus churn and contraction.
Value-Added Services: Additional solutions offered beyond core subscriptions (such as marketing or monetization features) that generate incremental revenue s.
Full Conference Call TranscriptWeidong Luo: Thanks, Rene. Greetings to all. Welcome to Aurora Mobile's 2025 First Quarter Earnings Call.
Before I on our Q1 results, I would to remind everyone that the quarterly earnings desk is available on our IR website. You may refer to the deck as we ceed with the call today.
As we did in the past, based on the Q1 numbers, I have a suitable discussion for the first quarter results, which is a quarter of accelerated growth driven by globalization for the ing reasons.
Firstly, our EngageLab had a monster quarter, where we closed out more than Chinese yuan renminbi (CNY) 63 million worth of contract value in just one quarter. This is unprecedented in our history.
This brings the total cumulative EngageLab contract value in excess of CNY 110 million by March 31, 2025.
Secondly, the group's revenue this quarter of CNY 89 million, achieving a remarkable 38% growth year-over-year.
This CNY 89 million was the highest Q1 quarterly revenue we had since transition to pure SaaS. EngageLab's recognized revenue also grew by 127% year-over-year.
This Q1 revenue number exceeds what we have previously guided in Q4 of 2024. Thirdly, our Financial Risk Management had its best quarter in its history, recording highest quarter revenue of CNY 22.
2 million, revenue grew by 64% year-over-year. Fourthly, gross fit grew strongly by 27% year-over-year, while achieving the highest gross fit for the past 9 quarters.
Gross margin has also imved 520 basis points quarter-over-quarter. Fifth, we recorded another adjusted EBITDA fit in this quarter.
This marks the seventh consecutive quarterly positive adjusted EBITDA we have had. Overall, it was a great quarter where all the lines have outperformed the targets we have set for them.
This is no doubt set a great momentum for the rest of 2025.
Equally important, the gress in our performance and our solid financial position enable us to invest more resources into the development of our enterprise AI agent platform and its global expansion.
Now let me more on the individual performance. Our total Q1 group revenue has grown 38% year-over-year, driven by the great numbers from Developer Services.
Within the group revenue, all segments, mainly Developer Subscription services, Value-Added Services and Financial Risk Management, all outperformed and record significant year-over-year revenue growth.
Developer Services revenues, which consists of Subscription Services and Value-Added Services, increased by a strong 39% year-over-year and decreased 12% quarter-over-quarter.
Subscription revenue has been recording a great number, where it increased by 26% year-over-year and decreased 2% quarter over quarter.
Value-Added Services revenue grew by an incredible 269% year-over-year and decreased 46% quarter over quarter. Our core, subscription services revenue of CNY 53.
5 million, record growth of 26% year over year and decreased 2% quarter over quarter.
The year-over-year revenue growth was mainly driven by a 22% increase in ARPU, carrying on the great momentum we had in Q4 of 2024.
Our subscription revenue record third consecutive quarter of CNY 50 million plus revenue. For Subscription Services, we had recorded year-over-year revenue growth in both the domestic and overseas.
In particular, our EngageLab revenue grew by 127% year-over-year. This remarkable number was a result of the hard work by team to convert many notable wins in the overseas.
Both the customer numbers and ARPU have solid growth year-over-year.
With the great ducts and services we have, I believe we can scale this globally to get more customers and new wins in many quarters to come. Next, I shall elaborate more on our EngageLab this quarter.
This always gets me very pump up when sharing with you. Firstly, the total contract value we have signed has broken CNY 110 million milestone in Q1 of 2025.
Just to recap, the total contract value was only CNY 10 million at Q3 of 2023. Six quarters later, this amount has grown 10x. This is a remarkable achievement by the team.
Secondly, customer acquisition continue to be the driving force of the success of this. The customer number has increased by 25%, reaching 848.
Thirdly, the revenue recognized for the EngageLab again record great growth of 127% year-over-year.
Fourthly, our EngageLab ducts and services are now sold to customers in more than 40 different countries and regions globally.
I'm truly pleased with the team's execution effort, results and the momentum of EngageLab. I believe that it's the engine of growth for us in the next 24 months.
Within subscription revenue, some of the notable new and renewable customers in this quarter include, but not limited to, DeepSeek BYD, SF Express, Monsha AI and [ Hangzhou Ben ], just to name a few.
Value-Added Services revenue were CNY 8. 9 million, increased by 269% year-over-year but decreased by 46% quarter-over-quarter.
The huge revenue year-over-year growth we have seen was mainly due to the recovery of the advertiser spending we have seen in Q1.
For the same period, the advertiser spending has increased more than 200%, which fueled the revenue spike year-over-year.
The sequential revenue decline was mainly due to the Double 11, Double 12 online shopping festival in Q4 but was not existent in Q1.
Let me pass the call over to Shan-Nen, who will more the Vertical Applications and other aspects of our financial performance of this quarter. Shan-Nen Bong: Thanks, Chris.
Next, I'll go over the revenue for Vertical Application that includes financial risk management and market intelligence.
Overall, Vertical Application had a very strong quarter, where revenue increased by 35% year-over-year and 20% quarter-over-quarter.
And within Vertical Application, financial risk management recorded a 64% growth in revenue year-over-year and 36% growth quarter-over-quarter.
Financial risk management has its best and biggest quarter ever, recorded Q1 revenue in excess of CNY 22 million.
This 64% year-over-year revenue growth was mainly due to the strong 19% customers number growth and 38% ARPU growth.
As I mentioned in the prior quarter that our team has fine-tuned and upgraded the service and ducts. The result is simply stunning to say the least.
The upgraded duct and services were in high demand amongst the financial industry vertical. The new and existing licensed financial institution for buying and consuming our duct and services.
Apart from Developer Subscription revenue that Chris mentioned earlier, financial risk management presented itself as the next growth engine in early 2025.
We are certainly very pleased to see the resurgence of this in this quarter and beyond.
The customers that we have signed up or renewed in Q1 include but not limited to [indiscernible], Ningbo Ehang, [indiscernible] and many more license credit and financial institutions throughout China.
Market intelligence revenue, on the other hand, decreased by 26% year-over-year and managed to record a modest 4% growth quarter-over-quarter due to the continued weakness in the market demand for Chinese APP data, and this result is in line with our expectations.
Next, I'll go through some of the key expenses and balance sheet items. On to operating expenses. The Q1 operating expenses was at CNY 60.
6 million, representing a 14% increase year-over-year and remained flat quarter-over-quarter. The majority of the increase was attributable to our sales and marketing department.
In a snapshot, our Q1 revenue grew by 38% year-over-year. Gross fit grew by 27%, while OpEx only grew by 14%.
Overall, we are very pleased to see how OpEx has been in view of the revenue and gross fit growth we have achieved. And this is a sustainable growth model for long-term basis.
I'll now go over the individual OpEx category. For R&D, expenses increased 8% year-over-year to CNY 24. 6 million, mainly due to the increase in staff costs and associated expenses.
Cloud cost has also contributed to the year-over-year increase in R&D expenses. Selling and marketing essences increased by 34% year-over-year to CNY 23.
3 million, mainly due to the increase in sales commission and traveling expenses in line with our revenue growth and cash collection recorded in this quarter.
G&A expenses decreased by 2% year-over-year to CNY 12. 7 million, mainly due to the reduction in fessional fees as a result of our continuous disciplined management of expenses.
Next, I'll 3 very important KPIs that we closely monitor.
For net dollar retention rate, a commonly used KPI for SaaS company, it stood at 96% for our core Developer Subscription for the trailing 12 months March 31, 2025.
And this high NDR percentage, reflecting that we have high customer retention rate, coupled with the ability to increase revenue to upsells through upgrades and expansion.
And this is another great quarter with such an impressive number. Secondly, another financial KPI for tr.