Weibo reports Q1 EPS 41c, consensus 38c

Reports Q1 revenue $396.9M, consensus $394.21M. Monthly active users were 591M in March. Average daily active users were 261M in March. “We are pleased with our progresses made on the AI product front,” said Gaofei Wang, CEO of Weibo (WB). “On the user front, we remain committed to creating user value by focusing on the integration of Weibo’s social features and upgrade of the recommendation system. In the first quarter, we further grew our user community and deepened user engagement. On the AI application front, we have made Weibo Intelligent Search, our AI-powered search function, available to all users. During the first quarter, both the user base and daily search queries of Weibo Intelligent Search achieved decent sequential growth. On the monetization front, we delivered solid performance of ad business, leveraging our strengths in content marketing and enhanced ad placement efficiency of our real-time-bidding information feed ad products. Benefiting from solid execution of disciplined spending strategy, our operating efficiency further improved, which laid foundation for us to invest for our product competitiveness, AI technology, as well as shareholder return.”