Dear investors, welcome to IGG 2025 interim results announcement. Today, the briefing and Q&A session will be conducted in Putonghua. The PPT has already been uploaded to igg.com IR section. Before we start, please allow me to introduce our senior management. Executive Director and the CEO, Mr. Xu Yan.
Greetings.
Executive Director and the CFO, Ms. Chen Jiale.
Greetings.
Today's briefing will be conducted in two parts. First, 2025 interim results and financial performance. It will be followed by a Q&A. Mr. Xu will give us a briefing first, please.
Dear investors, friends, thank you for coming to the 2025 interim results announcement. First, on behalf of IGG, thank you for your support. This year is a very unique, very different, and exciting year for us. In the past, we have seen very stable growth in 12 months.
This year, in July, we have seen a very major watershed of the company. Before that, we had a lot of tests, fine-tuning, and iteration. After August, we have seen explosive growth of our business. First, some summary of the first half. The total revenue is HKD 2.72 billion, very stable YOY basis. For our games, Doomsday contributes to HKD 520 million, Viking Rise HKD 360 million, Lords Mobile HKD 1.15 billion, very stable. For Doomsday, for the first half, the revenue is around HKD 520 million, with a monthly average of over HKD 80 million, very stable. During the period, we have done a lot of iteration, optimization, and tests. In Q3, the ROI in terms of short-term and long-term, and also the retention, all exceeded our expectations. In August, the performance has seen a very major change.
We expect that the gross billing will reach a historical high. Actually, it has already achieved in August. In August, it reached nearly HKD 110 million. Before, it was only around HKD 80 million. For the first half, it's very remarkable. For the second half, the monthly gross billing will continue to grow. Given the ROI and retention data, it will also contribute to our revenue. In December, we will introduce a very famous Japanese animation IP called "Attack on Titan," which will assist our monthly gross billing to exceed over $20 million in December. The revenue will also reach HKD 160 million. In terms of our APP Business, it's also very good. For the first half, revenue is around HKD 530 million, YOY increase of 30%. Its MAU increased by 79% to reach 73 million.
It has laid a very solid foundation for our growth for the second half. For the second half, we know that in Europe and U.S., there will be Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's a golden time for the e-commerce advertising expense. We expect APP gross billing will have a very good growth. The most important one is that in August, we have a new game introduced called Fate War. Based on its solid quality and innovative gameplay, for the first 3 weeks, the gross billing exceeds HKD 20 million. Actually, after all the years of efforts, it is the best opening for all our new games. We believe that this new game will become a brand-new growth engine for the coming years.
Because of our very stable growth and confidence brought by Doomsday, APP Business, and Fate War, we decided the interim dividend to be HKD 0.139 per share. The total amount will take up 50% of the profit of the first half. For share buyback, it is also HKD 35 million, representing 11% of the interim profit. In total, dividend and the buyback represent 61% of the interim profit. Because of the confidence brought by Doomsday, APP Business, and Fate War, we will also maintain and improve our buyback price. For the first half, we have maintained our main market value to be above HKD 5 billion. It will also drive momentum for our return to Hong Kong Stock Connect. For the group's interim profit, it is at HKD 320 million. There was a half-on-half growth of 29%.
The core business profit contribution is HKD 340 million. Now let's look at the PPT. First, let's turn to page seven. This is our gross billing performance. In the past half year, our game business have seen a very stable growth, no abrupt fluctuation at all. For our APP Business, there is also a very steady growth. The monthly gross billing is maintained at HKD 417 million, out of which, Lords Mobile contribute to around HKD 200 million per month. Let's turn to page eight. It is the operation data of our main games. This is the data until June 30th. We can see in terms of MAU, Lords Mobile, 7.7 million, Doomsday, 3 million, Viking Rise , 3 million. It is actually relatively steady and robust performance.
Actually, in June, we continued to reduce some of the advertising costs, and some budget have been diverted to Fate War, we can see that there is some slight drop of the MAU of Lords Mobile. It is mainly due to the advertising cut, it has very little impact on our overall revenue. Let's turn to page nine. This is about APP Business. First, for our MAU, it reached 73 million, YOY increase of 79%. In terms of revenue, it reached HKD 530 million, YOY increase of 30%. Profit margin also increased from 5% of same period last year to 14%, a very healthy growth. For the second half, we'll continue to improve our revenue of APP Business with the increase of the users. We believe the profitability will continue to be improved. Let's turn to page 10.
This is our new SLG game, Fate War. It is the simulation and a strategy game with combination of SLG. Its initial first three week MAU, 1.2 million, with a gross billing of HKD 20 million. Now for the retention payments and ROI data, it exceeds that of the Doomsday and the Lords Mobile. This game has a very good quality and performance. Because of its good quality, it has also been featured globally on Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. In August, we actually had 1.2 million of registered users, acquired users. In the end of September, with the new version, we will greatly increase the daily user acquisition. Later, we will continue our marketing and promotion of this new game. Let's turn to page 11.
This is about the growth in our classics and new titles for the second half. For the games, Doomsday, after our efforts for the first half of this year and also the previous year, in total one and a half years of continuous revision and iteration, upgrading and testing and optimization, finally, it's come back to normal. In August, it reached a historical high. The second half, it will ride on the tide. In December, we will also introduce the famous Japanese IP, Attack on Titan, to exceed a monthly gross billing of over $20 million. For the new games, that is the Fate War, we will continue to enrich the content, optimize the data, and we will try our best to push the revenue to a new high. Let's turn to page 12. This is the financial analysis.
Let's look at the consolidated revenue. For the first half, we reached HKD 2.721 billion. The gross profit is HKD 2.257 billion, a YOY increase of 5%. The GP margin also increased to 83%, increased by 4 percentage points. R&D expenses is HKD 394 million on par with that of last year net profit, to HKD 325 million. Page 13. This is about cash position. It's very stable, very robust. Now we have HKD 2.5 billion of cash or cash equivalents. Because of the profitability, the net cash generated from operating activities is HKD 360 million. Now, page 14. The total asset. Now it's standing at HKD 4.6 billion with HKD 3 billion current assets and HKD 1.63 billion non-current assets. Page 15. It's about the share buyback and dividend.
We already mentioned, we have allocated 50% of profit to return to our shareholders. The dividend is HKD 0.139 per share. For the first half, the buyback is standing at HKD 35 million, representing 11% of the interim profit. In total, we allocated 61% of profit to return to our shareholders. Sum up. For Doomsday, after one year of tests and upgrading and iteration, its ROI and retention has been improved significantly, exceeding our expectation. The August gross billing reached a new historical high. It will continue to grow. For our APP Business, it will also realize very steady growth in the future. For the second half, we will continue to expand the business, because we have the holiday season in Europe and the U.S. in the second half, we believe the revenue will also reach new highs.
For the new game, Fate War, for the second half, we will continue to enhance the promotion and the marketing to bring IGG to a new level. Just now, we mentioned for the first three weeks, it has 1.2 million users. Actually, the scale is relatively small. Like Lords Mobile when it was first introduced, daily user acquisition is 300,000. In the future, for Fate War, I believe the growth will be worth our expectation. It will be very promising. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Xu. Now is the Q&A session. We will receive questions from telephone and online platform. For online participants, please put in your questions in writing. You can input your question in the Q&A area, and we will read out. First, let's start with the telephone participants. Please follow the audio guide. We will invite the teleconference assistant to moderate. Hello.
If you want to raise questions, please press star and one to wait. After you hear the beep, please speak out. Let me invite the first speaker to raise the question.
Thank you. I'm from CICC, I'm Lu Xiang. I want to know about the subsequent arrangement of Fate War and its expectations, especially about the ceiling. In terms of the whole industry, how do you see the overseas market competition landscape? For Fate War, I will answer your question about the ceiling. Actually, the ceiling will be raised with the performance improvement of Doomsday: Last Survivors, because these two games have a very similar fundamental structure. That is also why we spent one and a half year, and a lot of energy to do the improvements, refining, and the test. All these experience can be used on Fate War too. Fate War is very lucky.
With its birth, it has a mentor to guide it. For Fate War, its own art design is extremely exquisite. After its launching, we found that its acquisition cost, as compared with that of Doomsday: Last Survivors, is relatively low. Its retention is also better than Doomsday: Last Survivors. We believe that the potential of this game is I believe it will be actually the biggest of all the main games in our company. In the meantime, because of its premium quality, it also easily got the recognition of Apple and Google platforms. In the initial three weeks, the feedback from the market are very good. Actually, we do not have a large-scale acquisition because after its initial launch, when we need a very steady growth of promotion, we only acquired around 1.2 million users. Its gross billing is over $3 million.
For the second half, the target is to exceed that of a Viking Rise, we believe that it will have a higher revenue. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Xu, for your answer. Now let's answer the online questions. Want to know how is the monthly gross billing for Lords Mobile, what is the expectation for the second half, or will it be steady? For Lords Mobile, for the first half, the monthly gross billing is around $24 million to $25 million. It's very steady. That's the first point. Secondly, it has a history of 10 years already. This year we will have a very major revision of this game. We expect that it will happen around November and December of this year.
For this revision, actually, with Doomsday: Last Survivors and Fate War out on the field to test, we will introduce some new user gameplay strategy for Lords Mobile, because for Lords Mobile, it's a new user orientation, the gameplay has a history of 10 years. It's a little bit outdated already. Therefore, with the new games, we will create it into a new version similar to Doomsday: Last Survivors and Fate War. Some new gameplays will be introduced. There will be a very material and major revision to this game to revive its growth and recover the growth in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Xu. Next question is about pipeline. Is there any new game to be expected in the future?
Yeah. For now, in terms of the pipeline, for the second half, there will be a new gangster game. The gangster game is a little bit interesting.
We have 2 years of testing while developing it without any advertising cost. Its daily revenue is around a few thousand US dollars. Gangster theme is a very interesting hit, has a natural target audience globally. These target audience are very favorite of gangster theme. We will continue to see its performance, like advertising, its ROI, and retention after the launching. We will later disclose the related information to the investors. By the end of November, we will have another new game with the theme of Doomsday. Our Shanghai team spent 3 years to develop this game with multi rounds of tests. We hope that it will have a good performance. We do not have any launching data. We will not do any estimations, after launching, we will inform you more details. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Xu.
Next question is from online platform. It is about Fate War. There were 3 questions related. The first question: for the August 1.2 million new user acquisition, what is the cost? For the second half, after more acquisition, will it impact your profit?
Let us answer one by one. The first question first. Fate War's acquisition cost is relatively low. We acquired the users across all markets, to test the game in different markets globally. We acquired in Japan, the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asian countries. On average, the cost is around $3 per user. Overall speaking, the acquisition cost is okay. Of course, in some markets, like Japan and the U.S., the cost is a bit higher, like $6-$7 per user. To compare with other games, it is still relatively low. That is why we are confident in this new game.
The second question. Compared with other SLG games, is there any innovative gameplay? For this new game, in terms of innovative gameplay, it is more on its art design. For all the SLG games, they are mostly based on Doomsday. The SLG gameplay is quite similar. In terms of the innovating gameplay, its difference lies in the simulation. You will operate some small town, your business in the town, like bathing house and a restaurant. You can enter to see there are guests and clients in the bathing house and the restaurant. There will be some NPC. You can see their emotional feedback. This is different from the traditional SLG games, which is more on the battles. Here, apart from taking part in the battles, you have to take care of the NPC, the emotions, and the wellbeing.
This is a difference. We also found that the users of a simulation and SLG has a very major overlapping. They all like business making. That is why we combine simulation and SLG in the gameplay. Okay, next question is for Fate War. What is the expected length of ramp-up period? How soon there will be profit? What is the profit margin expectation? Okay. For Fate War, the ramp-up period, we expect it will run from this October to the first half of next year. We can see that its ROI is very good. The ramp-up period will not impact on its profitability a lot. In the meantime, other games are also contributing, like Doomsday. Its revenue is increasing. They will support Fate War. Most importantly is that we have done very well on the in-game third-party payments.
You can see that our net profit margin is already 84%. Compared with the past, the gross profit margin is only 70%, we can contribute more income in the investment of this new game. Because of its very prominent ROI, the future is worth our expectation. The last question is on the current retention and what is about the frequency of iteration in the future. The retention is around 30%, but in some regions like Japan, it reached 40% almost. U.S. is also very high. Why it is 30% on average? In Southeast Asian regions like Philippines and Indonesia, the retention rate is only 20%. I was very surprised when seeing this data, why this high-quality game has such a low retention rate. We found through the tests that it's not the problem for the game.
Rather, it cannot perform in full in some low-end mobile phones because it is a very high GPU consumption. On the low-end mobile phones, it cannot be fully delivered, and the GPU consumption cannot be handled by the low-end mobile phones. That's why there is no large-scale global launching at the moment. We are adjusting the performance of this game to adapt to the low-end mobile phones, how to render it, and what is the best speed to perform on such mobile phones. We are improving and also doing a lot of optimization in this regard. We hope that when the Southeast Asian markets pick up, we will accelerate the global promotion and marketing. In the meantime, we have abundant gameplays in preparation, actually at an overwhelming scale, more than the users can take.
A main feeling is that after you enter into the game, there will be a lot of clicks. They find it so fun. You find that there's no social activities at all. That is against our principle of SLG game. We are also improving the games to reduce some unimportant gameplays. You do not need to have so many clicks. We'll do some deduction, some combination, or some full automation operations, you do not need to have a lot of clicks for 40-60 minutes. We hope that it will be completed in five minutes to complete the routine activities, and the rest time will be spent with your friends, hanging out, run a dungeon, and play together some social activities. We expect that by September 30th, the new version will bring about a brand new Performance.
At that time, we will also officially kick off the global advertising and the promotion. September 30th is the date. Thank you. Next question is about "Frozen War." What is the plan? For "Frozen War," for the first half, after our testing, we found that its revenue is not so stable. In the initial stage, the daily revenue is around $30 thousand-$40 thousand, but soon it dropped. It's somewhat different from that of "Fate War." The "Fate War's" revenue is relatively high and steady, and its retention is also performing very well, especially in Japan and U.S. or some major markets. For "Frozen War," first, its gross billing continued to drop. The retention, it is also not good in some major markets. We asked the team to refine this game.
We hope that in the future, we'll be tested again in the market. Next question is about the APP Business. For the second half, what is the expectation of the monthly gross billing? For APP Business, for the first half, you can see the revenue has increased around 30%. MAU increased by 79% to reach 73 million. Actually, the revenue did not catch up with HKD 530 million because of the U.S.-China trade war and the e-commerce advertising expense is dropping, so there is some impact. I think it is opportunity for us. We have not slowed down the user acquisition on our part. When the price is very low, we continue to accumulate our user pool, so it has reached a very significant level of 73 million. For the second half, there will be a golden holiday season for e-commerce.
There will be a very frantic advertising expense period, and it will be the harvest time for us. We expect the monthly gross billing will be around HKD 16 million-HKD 17 million or even higher. The second question is about the second half revenue and profit target for APP Business. Revenue, it will continue to improve and grow. Now it's around HKD 12 million-HKD 13 million. We expect that by the end of the year, it will reach HKD 18 million. Actually, it will soon come there. September, no holiday, October, Halloween, there will be Halloween. November, Thanksgiving. December, Christmas, which will be the peak. For the second half, the revenue will enter into a rising channel. There will be a linear growth of the revenue. We have a monthly active user of 73 million.
Apart from that, we will continue to acquire new users and boost MAU. We have a bigger acquisition. We believe that the trade war will be over very soon. For the second half and next year, there will be a very bright prospect for us. Although the revenue is not so high, the acquisition cost is also very low. We expect that next year we will continue to accumulate our users, and next year, the user, we expect, will exceed 100 million. That's our target. Thank you. Next question. We want to know about the dividend and the buyback scale for the second half. Okay. Now, because our performance is quite good, and as a game company, we are a light asset one, we do not have a very high demand or consumption of cash.
If the performance continue to grow and profit continue to grow for the second half, we will refer to the first half model in terms of dividend and buyback. Next question is for "Tycoon Master." What's the plan? "Tycoon Master" also faces the same problem as "Frozen War." The revenue somehow is very difficult to hold. For the first half, we improve the gross billing to around HKD 20,000 per day, but soon it dropped to around HKD 4,000-HKD 5,000 or even HKD 2,000-HKD 3,000 per day. There is a very rapid drop of the revenue. We need to improve this game further. It's not like "Fate War." After its launching, we actually achieved quite high revenue, even though some players haven't started battling yet and are still in the base building.
You can see that Fate War is wholly different from Tycoon Master and Frozen War. Its revenue model is wholly different. Fate War is our top priority at the moment. Thank you. Next question For Doomsday and Viking Rise, it has been introduced for 2 to 3 years already with a high input. The worldwide revenue growth is slowing down and half-on-half growth . Even dropped a little bit in the first half. Is it peak already? First, about Viking Rise. We continue to adjust it. For this year, every month there will be quite steady growing in the second half of this year. For the beginning of this year, it's around $6 million per month. In December, we expect to reach $10 million per month.
Every month, we expect to see that it will exceed by 3% as compared with the previous month. It will be climbing up steadily like a snail. This is about Viking Rise. For Doomsday, for the first half, there is no growth at all. We have done a lot of tests of this game globally in different markets. After the test, in July, finally, we have some conclusion. In terms of the retention rate, the payment rate, and other data, it all exceeded our expectations. In July, we started to further promote it. In August, we have seen that its overall revenue has reached a new historical high. In the future, it will continue to pick up. In December, there will be a very major IP co-branding.
We collaborated with a famous Japanese IP, Attack on Titan. It's a very famous animation IP. Through these co-branding efforts, we expect that in December and next January, it will exceed $20 million. Thank you. Next question is about the APP Business users, and will be some interaction with the game users. Any plan? For the APP Business, now, the user profile is not very similar to that of the games, because it is mainly featuring news. To some extent, some users can be diverted to games, but we also found that the news traffic buying fee is much higher than that of the game companies. We face two options: first, to buy or not, because others have a higher bidding price, it's even by 3 to 5 times higher, we decided not to buy.
We also consider whether we can buy the remaining traffic. After verification and calculation, we found that it's not worth it. We decide it's better not to disturb our players, because we want to give the better experience to the players. They have spent a lot on advertising, so the users deserve a better experience in the game. We do not have compulsory plant-in of games in the news app. We also see some potential. For example, the sports app, these are targeting at the youngsters and the sports lovers. These users have major overlapping of our game users. In the very near future, after the users reach scale, there may be some interaction of the APP users and game users. Okay, next question. There were two questions actually.
The first one, for SLG, what are these changes of the competition landscape? Especially, there were some breakthroughs of the Chinese game companies. What is the expectation? What experience can be learned from them? In the next 3 to 5 years, what is the strategy approach, advantages and disadvantages of the company? Recently, we have seen that for some big SLG games, they are all done by the Chinese companies. That is also a reminder for us. Now SLG has entered into the 4th generation, but our Lords Mobile is only 2nd generation. It is a combination of SLG and RPG for Doomsday. Actually, it followed very closely. It is the 3rd generation. Now, in the market, it is dominated by 4th generation with a combination of SLG and simulation. For example, King's Road and Whiteout Survival, they all adopted the simulation model.
Actually, we are following the trend closely. On the one hand, Fate War is also adopting the simulation model. In the meantime, I also mentioned, for our old game, Lords Mobile, we are doing some major revision of this game. The old RPG gameplay will be changed to a combination of SLG and simulation. Do you have any plan for other genre? We will have some try, but our main focus will be on what is familiar to us. That is SLG. Okay, next question. Any plan to return to Hong Kong Stock Connect? Yes, because we have seen our performance improvement and also the future potential for growth. This year, we are actually preparing for that. We hope that we will go back to Hong Kong Stock Connect as soon as possible.
The direct approach is that in terms of share buyback, we have lifted the price cap to HKD 4.5 so that our market value will be maintained at above HKD 5 billion. In the future, with our performance development, we will continue to try our best and to push our market value to very high levels, and we will do our best part in return to Hong Kong Stock Connect. Thank you. What is the marketing expense expectation for the second half? Okay, for marketing expense, we assume that there were no Fate War, that it will be the same as the first half, but with Fate War, there will be some additional input. For Fate War, our expected expenditure will be around HKD 30 million as its initial start.
The target is that after the marketing expenditure in December, the end of the year, the target of monthly gross billing will be around $10 million. For this HKD 30 million, it will be from our APP revenue growth. For the second half, with e-commerce, the revenue will see a very significant surge. For Doomsday, the revenue is also increasing. Actually, the expenditure of advertising is the same, but with improved ROI and retention rate, the revenue will also continue to grow and will reach new historical high continuously. Without further advertising expenditure, we will continue the Doomsday revenue, and the additional revenue will be put in Fate War. The HKD 30 million of marketing expenditure in Fate War actually will not affect profitability that much because the whole revenue is growing for our games. We have given the benchmark of HKD 30 million for Fate War. Okay.
Second question is: what is the CapEx plan for the second half? For the second half, there will be no major expenditure except for around $10 million of the last payment of the Fuzhou office building. Apart from that, there will be no extra expenditure. We have our own office building and our staff work in this building, so there will be no rent fee at all. We can save a lot of cost. For the second half, in terms of CapEx, there is no major expenses at all. Thank you, Mr. Xu. Next question. For SLG, we are seeing continuous blockbusters with monthly gross billing over $100 million. Will that competition affect acquisition and the gross billing performance of the company? We have seen that just because of this competition, we, when designing Fate War, are paying extra attention for its art design.
We make it to the top notch of the world-class level. We use an extremely eye-catching art design to attract the users and to compete with other games. Now we can see that in terms of the acquisition cost, it is very low, and it has very strong competitiveness in the market. That is why we are very confident in this new game. Next question. What is your expected headcounts for this year and next? For these two years, in terms of the headcounts, there will not be major changes for our staff. The staffing is very stable, and our projects are very stable. We have all decided the projects, and also its numbers. There will not be major changes. For next year, there will be some slight increase because there will be some new trendy toy business in the Southeast Asian region.
There will be around an increase of 200 headcounts in Southeast Asia. That is in Southeast Asian countries. The cost actually will be similar to an increase of 20-30 headcounts in mainland China. There will be no very obvious increase of headcounts. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Xu. Next question: how do the senior management see AI can empower the business? What is the application of AI, and do you see any impact on cost reduction and efficiency improvement? Actually, AI has helped IGG a lot. Two years ago, we already started to use AI to do customer service, on art design, and for the advertising and the marketing, we also use AI. 70% of our advertising print art is done by AI, 40% of advertising video is also done by AI. For the art design of the games, we also use AI to assist.
For the next step, we want to find a proper timing to try the two very important parts, like game planning and programming with AI assistance. Overall speaking, we are embracing AI. For me, personally, in the past two months, I spent over 500 hours to train AI, to test AI, and use AI to try to develop a new game. This is all our trials in AI. We hope that in the future, AI can help us in game planning, programming, more automation. Apart from cost reduction and efficiency improvement, we want to improve the designing and the programming capability of games. That is what we expect of AI in next one or two years. Next question. For the second half, what is the cost of R&D and administration? Actually, for these costs, we expect it will be on par with the previous level.
For our R&D, the projects have been largely decided and determined, and for the administration, the staffing is also quite well-equipped. No need for further expansion or reduction. The HR will be very stable in that regard. Because of the time, that will be the end of our results announcement. Thank you all for your continued attention to IGG. Thank you for your participation. Thank you all.