Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Kanzhun Limited fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Ms. Wenbei Wang, Head of Capital Markets and IR. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you operator. Good evening and good morning everyone. Welcome to our first quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me today are our Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Mr. Jonathan Peng Zhao, and our Director and CFO, Mr. Phil Yu Zhang. Before we start, we would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements which are based on management's current expectations and observations that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors not under the company's control, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different. The company caution you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and do not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purpose only.
For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at ir.zhipin.com. With that, I will now turn the call to Jonathan, our Founder, Chairma, and CEO.
大家好，欢迎参加我们公司二零二一年四季度和全年的业绩发布会。首先我代表公司员工对一直相信我们、一直支持我们的用户和投资人表示感谢。
Hello everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and the full year 2021 earnings conference call. On behalf of our entire company, I would like to express our sincere thanks to our users and investors for your trust and support.
先看一下2021年四季度的情况。四季度公司的GAAP收入为人民币10.9亿元，实现了69%的同比增长，超出公司的收入指引上限。扣除股权激励费用的经调整后净利润达到3.5亿元，连续三个季度保持盈利。四季度不算是中国招聘市场的旺季。经过努力，平台上的各项数据也都保持了稳定。
Let's review the performance for the fourth quarter first. The company recorded GAAP revenue of RMB 1.09 billion, achieving a year-on-year growth of 69% during the period, exceeding the high end of our revenue guidance. Our adjusted net income, excluding share-based compensation expenses, reached RMB 350 million, and we maintained profitability over the last three consecutive quarters. While the fourth quarter is not a traditional peak season for China's recruitment market, we successfully maintained our stable performance data through our relentless drive to cultivate our abilities.
看一下2021年的概况。这一年公司面临很多挑战，还是获得了不错的成绩。我们累计注册完善的用户超过一亿人，2021年全年实现GAAP收入42.6亿元，同比增长119%。经计算的现金收款50.2亿元，同比增长98%。扣除股权激励费用的经调整后，全年净利润达到8.5亿元，是公司自成立以来第一个年度盈利。
Despite the challenges the company have faced throughout 2021, we propelled our business forward with improvements to our key performance metrics. Our accumulated verified users rose to more than 100 million and our GAAP revenue grew to RMB 4.26 billion in 2021, representing a year-on-year growth of 119%. Our calculated cash billings reached RMB 5.0 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 98%. Our adjusted net income, excluding share-based compensation expenses, reached RMB 850 million, which is the first time the company achieved a positive full-year's non-GAAP profit since our initial establishment.
我们在业务的诸多方面也都取得了进展。首先是公司核心业务平台服务的能力得到全面提升，围绕改进用户的体验，提供更为高效的求职招聘服务，我们做了许多工作。贯穿上下半年，我们通过在产品和技术层面的努力，提高对用户深度需求的理解能力。举一个例子，我们发现很多用户在职业生涯中会因为自己的改变，或者家庭的需要，或者市场的变化，对于跨行业、跨职类的工作产生新的需求。我们通过优化推荐算法模型，同时结合我们对职业科学的探索和认知，取得了进步，越来越让用户看到更加丰富合理的推荐效果，从而提升了用户的满意度。简单地说，用户能够在平台上有更多的收获和更少的打扰。一个结果就是在2021年下半年，在没有新注册用户的情况下，平台用户的活跃度和收获都很稳定。求职和招聘的双边生态的繁荣度也没有减弱。一个例子就是，在2022年春节后，DAU的高峰超过了2021年的同期。当然，这也是一个历史最好的记录。
We made excellent progress across many areas of our business. Let's start with the overall improvement of the coming service capabilities of our core business platform, which is to enhance user experience and provide more efficient job seeking and recruitment services. We have increased our ability to understand users in depth needs through our relentless efforts on the product and technical levels. For example, we found that many users will generate new demands seeking for cross industry or cross professional job opportunities due to changes in their personal situation, family or fluctuating market conditions. By optimizing our recommendation algorithm and strategy, combined with our exploration and understanding of career science, we have been able to present more users with more abundant and reasonable recommendation results and further improving user satisfaction level. Simply put, users are able to achieve more with less irrelevant interruptions.
As a result, we are pleased to see that even with the suspension of new user registration since latter half of last year, our key indicators for user engagement and achievements on the platform still remain stable and our ecosystem still remain robust. To give an example, the peak DAU following the 2022 Spring Festival exceeded the number in the same period of 2021, which is a record high and proof of our strong user stickiness.
在之前的季报当中，我曾经向大家报告，在没有新用户注册的情况下，我们将更专注于爱护好平台的老用户。实际上，刚才说的提高对用户深度需求的理解能力，在2021年整个下半年的工作中，是我们爱护好老用户的一个基础工作。大家看到了，结果是不错的。随着我们平台服务中国用户越来越多，那么爱护好老用户的价值就会越来越大，因此我们会持续努力。这非常重要。
As I have mentioned in the previous earnings call, in the absence of new user registrations, we deepened our focus on better serving our existing users. What I just said about developing a deep understanding of users' true needs is a fundamental aspect in taking good care of existing users. As you can see, our strategy has been proved effective along with the continuous growth of our platform's user base. Serving our existing users will create increasing values in the long run. Therefore, it will be very important that we are and will continue to do so.
在运营层面，我们针对不同的用户群体继续深耕和细化服务。对于白领和金领人群，通过如校园招聘、与猎头顾问更好合作等方式，拓宽平台上的岗位来源的渠道，为他们提供更丰富的求职机会和更强大完善的求职工具。值得一提的是，平台上高收入人群占活跃用户比例持续提升。这一方面因为精细化运营导致高收入用户的活跃度变高了，另一方面因为很多进入求职周期再次回归平台的老用户，他们的收入涨了，一部分人变成了高收入用户。当然我们会为他们感到开心。
On an operational level, we continue to cultivate and refine our services for different user groups to better serve the white-collar and golden-collar users. We have broadened the source channels for the job openings on our platform via campus recruitment, cooperation with headhunting consultants and etc., so as to provide them with more job opportunities as well as the powerful and the sophisticated job-seeking tools. Moreover, the proportion of high-income users among total active users on our platform continue to increase. This is because on the one hand, driven by our refined operations, high-income users engagement on the platform has increased, and on the other hand, the salaries of many returning existing users have increased, folding them into the high-income user bracket. We are sincerely happy for them.
在蓝领业务方面，我们取得了一些进展。在过往的季报中，曾有投资人询问，基于制造业蓝领中中介组织存在一些不规范、不诚信的现象，我们有什么做法？我很愿意简单回顾我们的观点。解决方案就是从保护求职者的利益和感受出发，把四方即工人一方、工厂一方、平台一方和中介一方的游戏设法变成两方的游戏。也就是说，平台要与求职者站在一起，进而与用人单位站在一起，从而共同约束中介的行为。经过努力，目前许多头部中介已经认可了我们在保护求职者前提下制定的游戏规则。今天很高兴公开一下这个内部计划的名字叫海螺计划。海螺这个词是为了向左晖先生的贝壳表达致敬，因为治理中介市场，设法让中介可以有尊严地赚钱，左晖先生是全局意义上的第一个人。我们利用技术手段，并结合人工校验的手段，已经覆盖了八万个以上中介经纪人的账号，初步建立了全新的行业服务规则和可视化的更安全的产品模式。同时，对于经过我们线下安全团队核验和甄别的优秀中介所提供的岗位，我们将其列入了一个叫做海螺优选的项目。
We also made progresses in the blue collar sector. In previous quarters, some investors have asked for our views on the phenomenon of irregularities and dishonesty in the intermediary agencies in blue collar recruitment for manufacturing industry. I'd love to share our thoughts. The solution is to protect the interests and feelings of the job seekers to reduce the number of involving parties from four, namely workers, manufacturers, platforms and agencies into two, whereby platforms standing solidly with the workers and then the manufacturers to jointly restrain the negative behaviors of agencies and thus change the rules of the game. After our efforts, many top agencies have acknowledged our rules, which is established under the premise of protecting job seekers. Today we will announce this, the name for this internal project, which we called Hail uo Project.
The word Hail uo, which means conch in English, is a salute to Mr. Zuo Hui's Beike, because Mr. Zuo is believed to be the first person to have effectively regulated the intermediary market to let the agencies to earn money with dignity. By leveraging our technologies combined with manual verification, we have established a network covering more than 80,000 agencies, leading to the establishment of a new industry service rule, and a more transparent and secure product model. At the same time, we have listed high quality companies and positions provided by good agencies that have been verified and screened by our offline screening team as Hail uo selected.
制造业蓝领中介组织当中存在的不规范、不诚信的行为，对于求职者，对于工厂和对于招聘平台都造成伤害。这个现象相信是可以改变的。我们取得了一点成绩，我们将继续投入很大的力量去做这件事情。
Throughout all these years, we have witnessed the irregularities and dishonesty among blue collar agencies in the manufacturing industry and the harm they have caused to job seekers, employers, and recruitment platforms. We firmly believe this phenomenon can be changed. We will continue to work on helping enact industry reform. What I just introduced are some achievements so far.
说一下平台的安全能力建设。我们认为遵守法律是一个企业的底线，而保护用户的能力是一个企业的天花板。怎么理解呢？我们认为一个企业的增长，它的赚钱的能力，它赚钱的追求要低于，要服从于，要滞后于用户保护能力的建设。换言之，一定要在保护用户的能力之下去发展，而不可以把盈利能力置于用户保护的能力之上。这是我们对于一个企业赚钱和保护用户这两件事孰重孰轻，孰先孰后的一个哲学意义上的理解，也可以理解为这是我们对于用户安全和企业增长关系的理解，这也在工作中代表了我们花钱做事的顺序。
Now let's talk about the improvements we have made to our security capabilities on our platform. We believe that compliance with the law is the very base floor of our business, while the willingness and ability to protect users represents its ceilings. Let me put it in another way, it's the growth of an enterprise. Its capabilities to make money should be lower than, subject to, and lag behind its ability to protect the users it serves. We must grow our business based on our capabilities to protect users instead of putting protection beneath profitability. This is our philosophic understanding of the chicken and egg problem between profitability and user protection. It can also be seen as our understanding of the relationship between enterprise growth and user security, which also represents our spending priorities in our daily work.
我们从三个方面提升平台的安全能力，奠定公司长期稳定发展的基石。第一个是个人信息保护。严格按照相关法律法规的要求和平台自身的业务属性，建立完善的个人信息保护机制，努力能够成为中国人力资源服务行业中的相对领先者。第二是平台用户的安全守护，着眼于保护平台用户的利益和感受。为此，我们成立了行业第一支线下审核团队，结合线上的AI筛查和审核策略，在中国50个大城市对企业用户进行线下的核验。三是数据安全能力的提高，在技术和人力上不断增加投入。在2021年，公司关于安全的相关团队增加了750人，总人数已经超过1,000人，并将不断扩大规模。
We have greatly improved the security capabilities of our platforms from three aspects, laying a solid foundation for our long-term and sustainable business development. The first is personal information protection. We have established a comprehensive personal information protection mechanism, both in compliance with the requirements of relevant laws and regulations, and further enhanced by the business attributes of our own platform, which we hope will become a benchmark among human resources service enterprises in China. The second measure is platform user safety protection, which focuses on protecting the user's interests and feelings. Here we have established the industry's first online security team. Combined with online AI screening and security process, we can verify enterprise addresses, recruiter enterprise relationships, and identify high-risk positions and businesses in 50 cities offline. The third is the comprehensive improvement of our data security capabilities, leading to the increased investment in technology and talents.
In 2021, we increased the security related headcount by over 750, and currently our safety related teams have more than 1,000 people and will continue to expand.
我们认真地实践一个企业的社会责任，坚持一个公众公司的担当。2021年，公司在帮助大学生就业、帮助残疾人就业以及重大灾害事件上提供捐赠以及参与生态环境建设等方面都有积极的行动。比如，公司获得了中国企业慈善公益论坛所颁发的2021年中国企业抗洪捐赠五百强，获得了2021年中国企业慈善公益五百强的荣誉称号。公司以及我个人因为积极支持大学生就业的工作，做出了突出的贡献，获得了中国教育部颁发的感谢状，成为中国教育部2021年度高校毕业生就业工作卓越合作伙伴。我们也非常荣幸地成为北京2022冬奥会和冬残奥会官方人力资源服务独家供应商。这表达了一家北京的企业和我们企业几千个北京的居民的诚意和喜悦。
We have practiced concerted social responsibility and integrated throughout the company, both as a responsible corporation and as a highly visible public company. In 2021, the company has taken an active part to assist college students and the disabled in job seeking endeavors, provided donations to assist the victims of major natural disasters, and we participated in green construction projects. We have been recognized for our contributions. We were also named in the Flood Fighting Donation 2021 Top 500 Chinese Enterprises and the Philanthropy 2021 Top 500 Chinese Enterprises issued by the China Enterprise Charity Forum. Both the company and I were awarded a certificate of appreciation from the Ministry of Education of China and were named the 2021 Excellent Partner in the Employment of College Students for our active support and outstanding contributions to the employment of college students.
We were also honored to be the exclusive provider of official human resources services for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the Winter Paralympics, which was a moment of great pride and joy for us as a company headquartered in Beijing with thousands of Beijing residents as our employees.
不论刚刚过去的2021年，还是我们创业八年以来，我们都非常地感激用户和投资人对我们的相信与支持。我们也会坚持我们的愿景、使命和价值观，坚持和提高我们做事的方法。前段时间我们宣布了一个1.5亿美元的股票回购计划，这也表达了公司管理层对于业务长期发展的信心和我们希望为投资人和用户传递长期价值的理念。我的介绍部分就到这里。接下来由我们的CFO Phil为大家介绍我们的财务情况。多谢。
Regardless of 2021, eight years since our establishment, in 2022, we will remain true to our mission and values as we cooperate with cybersecurity scrutiny and prepare for future growth. We sincerely thanks the support from our investors, and we will continue to improve the measures how it works. The $150 million share repurchase plan we announced early this month is a testament of our management team's confidence and faith in the future development of our business and the belief in our ability to deliver long-term value to our investors and users. With that, I will turn to our CFO, Phil, for the review of our financials. Thank you.
Thanks, Jonathan. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call today. Before I begin, please note that all amounts are in RMB and all comparisons are on a year-on-year basis unless otherwise stated. We are pleased to close 2021 with solid financial results. In this quarter, our total revenues increased by 69% to RMB 1.09 billion, beating the high end of our guidance range. Our total revenues for the full year of 2021 achieved a 119% growth to RMB 4.26 billion. With online recruitment services revenue accounting for about 99% of our total revenues. Our calculated cash billings increased by 24% to RMB 1.17 billion in the quarter and was up by 98% to RMB 5.02 billion in 2021.
Now, I would like to further elaborate on the top line, which represents a sustainable and quality growth. Despite we were suspended for new user registrations in early July, we recorded strong user growth in the first half of 2021. There were 20.7 million newly verified users from January to June, among which 3.4 million are enterprise users. Our total accumulated verified enterprise users reached 14.9 million by first half, a 79% year-on-year growth. Meanwhile, to guarantee user experience and better serve our existing users, we continued to provide innovative commercial products that controlled the pace of our monetization.
Benefiting from our resilient model and high user retention, we see that both customer demand and willingness to pay are well-maintained, which resulted in a 4.0 million paid enterprise users in 2021 with an 82% year-over-year growth, a key contributor to our total revenue growth. Moving on to the cost side. Let's look at the fourth quarter numbers first. Excluding share-based compensation, total operating costs and expenses grew by 25% to RMB 726 million. Translating to an adjusted operating margin of 34%. Our cost of revenue increased by 89% to RMB 150 million in the quarter, with our gross margin remained stable at 86.3%. Primarily driven by increased headcount, especially in security and operation personnel, a testimony of our excellent efforts to improve platform security and user safety.
Sales and marketing expenses increased by 16% to RMB 374 million, representing 34% of our total revenue, down by 15.5 percentage points year-over-year. We continued our trend of improving marketing efficiency since last quarter as a result of reduced marketing activities during the user registration suspension. Research and development expenses increased by 31% to RMB 199 million, primarily due to enhanced investments in hiring R&D talent. General and administrative expenses decreased by 81% to RMB 119 million in this quarter, which were mainly due to RMB 533 million share-based compensation expenses recognized related to the issuance of Class B ordinary shares to Techwolf Limited in the same quarter of 2020.
Excluding share-based compensation expenses, our adjusted G&A expenses increased by 74%, primarily as a result of increased headcount. Our net income reached RMB 233 million compared to the net loss of RMB 729 million same quarter last year. Excluding share-based compensation, our adjusted net income was RMB 349 million in this quarter, translating to an adjusted net margin of 32%, demonstrating the healthy and robust margin profile of our core business. For 2021, our total operating costs and expenses, excluding share-based compensation, grew by 51% to RMB 3.4 billion, representing an adjusted operating margin of 21%, an increase of 36 percentage points compared to 2020, resulting from improving operating efficiency. Among which our gross margin remains robust at 87%, with cost of revenue increased by 131%.
Sales and marketing expenses increased by 44% to RMB 1.9 billion and R&D expenses increased by 60% to RMB 822 million. G&A expenses were RMB 1.99 billion for the year, primarily due to the one-off share-based compensation expenses of RMB 1.5 billion relating to the issuance of Class B shares to Techwolf Limited, including share-based compensation. Our general and administrative expenses increased by 60% to RMB 310 million. Our net loss for the year was RMB 1.07 billion. Excluding share-based compensation, we achieved a non-GAAP net profit of RMB 853 million for the year, for the whole year.
Our net cash generated from operating activities was RMB 535 million for the fourth quarter and RMB 1.6 billion for the whole year. As of December 31st, 2021, end of the year, our cash equivalents and short-term investment totaled RMB 12.2 billion. Our cash reserve and robust operating cash flows will set a solid foundation for our long-term sustainable growth. Now for our business outlook. For the first quarter of 2022, we expect our total revenues to be between RMB 1.1 billion and RMB 1.12 billion, representing a year-over-year growth rate of approximately 40%-42%. A further testament of our effective business and monetization model. With our user engagement data remains robust, we are confident of a full recovery and expedited growth when time is ready. That concludes our prepared remarks.
Now we will answer questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to withdraw your request, please press the pound or hash key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Our first question comes from the line of Eddy Wang from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.
赵总、李哥、文蓓，感谢接受我的提问。首先，也先恭喜那个季度业绩非常的强劲。那我看到就是说咱们，之前李哥在说的就是，一季度的这个指引啊，其实给得也非常好，环比还是有增长的。那我就以这个指引为起点吧，以小见大，可能想听一下，赵总这边的解读，三个问题。第一个就是说，如果看一季度的话，整个招聘市场的这个情绪是怎么样的，有没有受到这个宏观以及疫情的影响？那如果有的话，我不知道就是说这个影响是在一季度就有体现呢，还是说这个影响可能会有一些滞后性，会在后面几个季度反映出来，这个有没有反映在咱们的这个指引当中？这是第一个问题。第二个问题的话就是，其实最近也看到很多新闻当中说，比如说像互联网行业有广泛的裁员，那就是说我不知道这个对我们的影响有多大，特别是，赵总前面也提到了，咱们高收入的人群占的比重，其实已经越来越高了。这个是——就是相比是看得到的一个大厂的一些情况吧，这个对我们的影响怎么样？更重要的其实想问一下，就是说更广泛的我们看不到的那些中小企业，他们在这个最近的这个招聘当中，他们的状态是怎么样的？第三个就是说，还是想回到这个指引上来，就是说咱们环比的增加，收入的增长，这是在我们运营方面，除了赵总前面有提到的一些，包括蓝领方面，这个我不知道还有没有商业化，在一季度，除了这些方面以外，咱们运营其实有多做一些其他的什么事情，让我们这个收入可能在过去两个季度，包括今年一季度，在这个不能注册新用户的同时，还能保持一个非常稳定的情况。好，那我可能简单地翻译一下。My question is regarding the first quarter guidance.
We noticed that the guidance have been very resilient and we still expect a QoQ, Q-on-Q growth. Just want to hear your thoughts on three questions. First is that what's the hiring sentiment in the first quarter? Your hiring sentiments have been affected by the macro weakness as well as the, you know, the COVID-related lockdown. Second question is about we have heard that there's some cut on the TMT industry recently. Just want to know if there's any impact, you know, from this, TMT, you know, the sector. On top of that, what the, you know, hiring sentiments of the SMEs in China in the first quarter. The third question is about our operation.
What have been the incremental operational efficiencies or the efforts we have been doing in the first quarter to secure this very solid first quarter revenue guidance? Thank you.
好，谢谢你的问题。关于我们一季度的时候有一个环比增长的预期，我觉得首先要注意一个中国招聘市场的特点，就是一季度是个旺季。那么在新年和农历春节之后，很多人拿到年终奖，那么这是一个找工作的时候，而他们的离开会导致很多岗位的空缺，这些空缺的岗位也会出来招人。这是为什么有一个说法，就是春节是旺季的一个原理，大概是这么来的。刚才在我的报告中我也讲了，其实四季度不是一个中国招聘市场的旺季，而一季度是一个非常旺的旺季，所以这个因素很大。
Okay, I will answer your first question regarding our guidance for first quarter of 2022. I would like to emphasize that the first quarter of every year is a big season for recruiting, because after the Chinese New Year festival. Hello, can you hear me?
Hello.
Yes. Can you hear us?
Yes.
Okay. Can I continue?
Yes, we can hear you, but the voice is a little bit, you know, volatile. Yeah.
We have a little problem on the signal. Just give us one minute. Can you hear us now?
Yes.
Okay. I will continue. After the Chinese New Year festival, a lot of employees, they receive their year-end bonuses and they were looking for a job change, job switch. I just said the fourth quarter is not a peak season, but the first quarter is the peak season. It's a very robust season for recruiting market.
然后关于宏观的影响，您刚才提到的一个是比方互联网巨头裁员，一个比方说有些行业的影响。先要说一下，就是您提到互联网了。先要说一下，就是我们看到的，一些非常大的互联网公司在招聘上面是不是很热烈，但是从整个互联网行业看，非常多的中小互联网公司的招聘是很积极的。所以如果讲整个互联网行业的话，我们没有看到说整个互联网行业的招聘变得不积极这样一个事。你刚才提到这个行业。
Regarding your second question on the macro impact, you just mentioned that we have seen lots of internet giants news come out for their heavy layoffs of their employees. We have noticed that within the internet sector, the big companies like the internet giants, they are not very active in recruiting. For the whole industry-wise, we observe that the medium- and small-size enterprises, they are still very active. They are still hiring a lot of people. From the overall internet industry perspective, we didn't notice very significant changes.
然后说一下您刚才提到的这个疫情的影响。两年多时间了，我们一直在关注这个事。那么疫情其实是带来两个方面的影响。第一个方面呢，就是不论是招聘者还是求职者，有更多的人愿意使用 online 的方式，或者说这种 direct chat 就直接交流的这种方式来提高招聘面试的效率。这一点其实大家应该早就看到了。那么另外一方面呢，影响呢，就是说有一些行业，那么在疫情这种保持距离
的情况会受影响，主要是我们看到的是，一些城市的蓝领服务业，那么他没办法开业的话，他确实招聘的行为会下降。但是总的来看，总的来看，我们在今年，我们在去年吧，因为去年的这个业务，我们觉得就没有严重的影响招聘这个业务。然后从今年一季度到现在为止的观察看，也并没有构成全局的严重影响，而只是对一些城市的一些行业的招聘者的开放岗位的情况有影响。
You talk about the impact of the COVID-19. We observe that there are two impact of this situation. First one this impact has been observed for a long time. That is lots of more and more people coming online for their job seeking and recruiting activities. They want to use the direct chat function to increase their hiring efficiency. The second thing that some industries where the COVID-19 has a more severe impact. Some cities where the people need to keep their social distance and stay at home. We saw that they have some impact because especially in the over service sector of the blue collar, there are lots of restaurants they need to shut down temporarily.
Their hiring activities will naturally goes down. Overall, last year we were not impacted very seriously. This year from the first quarter year- to- date, we saw some impact in several cities and several industries, but no material impact to us.
刚才您提到了中小微企业、SME的情况，这还是挺有意思的一个情况。我们服务的客户里面，80%几都是SME，然后他们有一个特点就是比较顽强，比较顽强。我们发现中小微企业在招聘上面有一个特点，他总是努力地想survive，然后他如果今天有一个需求，或者有一个人离职了，他就会比较简单地决定说我有一个需求，那么我要招一个人，或者有一个人离职了，我要补一个人。所以的话，在非常微观的层面，这些小一点的企业不太像很大的企业那样，因为对比方一年以后或者六个月以后有一个什么样的信心问题，于是直接作用于今天的招聘行为，他们不这么做的。那这一点的话，我觉得多说一句的话，不仅给招聘市场，而且我也相信给中国经济带来更强的适应性和韧性。因为他们每释放的这个一个职位，那么累计起来是一个可观的数据，这就会给非常多的人有就业的机会，或至少有就业的希望，这一点是非常重要的。
The third question you mentioned about SME small and medium-sized enterprises. This is quite an interesting topic. Our platform, more than 80% are SMEs, and they have a characteristic of a very stubbornness. They always try to survive. So when people left the company, they need to hire another person immediately, so to live on. So from a micro level, not unlike many big enterprises, what they might raise their headcount or even lay off people because they lose confidence in maybe six months or one year from now, and they just hire people as their business grows. This point is very important, not only to the recruitment market, but to the overall China's economy, which provides more resilience to the overall economy.
Because a lot of these individual positions accumulated up to a very big number of job openings and hiring needs. This will bring the hope to overall market.
我就想到这些，回答你。
That's my answer. I will pass to Phil.
I can offer you with some additional information. First of all, our first quarter guidance, that number does include the consideration of a macro impact during the fourth quarter.
I mean the last quarter of last year, we did notice some like weakness in certain industries, for example, like in real estate area and in online education area. Those areas we did see declining with their revenue contribution. We noticed that for some like a new retail type of online commerce and a live show type of internet service, also there were some decline. After Spring Festival, we noticed that some like retail industry, retail sector, there was a little bit of weakness, but we have noticed some like a growing sector, for example, like advanced manufacturing. Overall, I think, you know, the macro economy does have impact to the online recruitment service area.
Because we have a broad-based customer base with our service and, as Jonathan just mentioned, we have a huge number of small medium-sized enterprises and we catch the very resilient demand from high-quality industries, the industries and high-quality companies. Overall, we think that the macro impact to our business is limited, you know, controllable. Within our overall revenue contributions, like IT and the technology and the internet still one of the major area and their growth in last quarter of 2021 is still healthy. In the first two months of this year, they also recorded a nice growth.
Although their growth is slightly lower than overall. You know, the top internet or top technology companies, their contribution to our overall revenue is very, very small. Top 100 companies, you know, their total revenue contribution in our numbers is around mid-single digits. We have a diversified revenue contribution from all of the industries and all of the companies. That's reduced our, you know, received the macro impact . In terms of your last question regarding what we did during the last quarter and probably the third quarter and fourth quarter, how we achieved our growth.
One of the reasons is that the key accounts, all those, you know, higher quality companies and, you know, they enhance their spending with the platform because of, as we previously communicated, we have a three-layer funnel to do our business. Basically, we have a lot of users use our service for free, and we have a large number of small- and medium-sized, like, employers. They use our service with a small amount purchase. We have, you know, offline contract signing purchase. Basically, our high quality service and our good user experience effectively help us convert those, continuously convert those free users into small amount purchasers and into those offline contract, you know, buyers.
During the past third quarter and the fourth quarter, we continued with this development. That contributes a healthy revenue contribution to our business. Overall, our paying ratio with all of the business users on our platform remain stable. That's basically the full picture.
Right. Thank you. Our next question comes from Timothy Zhao from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.
Thank you, management, for taking my question and congrats on the strong results. My first question will be about competitive landscape in the online recruitment industry. As we see, some of our peers have launched some new initiatives, including in the blue collar segment as well as college graduates. Could management share your view on the latest competitive landscape and how it will evolve in 2022? My second question is about R&D expenses as the absolute amount has been in a mild growth over the past two quarters and the percentage of revenue will also decline very significantly.
Can management share how we should look at the R&D expenses in this year and what kind of areas that we are going to invest in, and shall we expect any new product or new features? Thank you.
I can answer your second question first.
Regarding the R&D expenses, basically we maintain the, you know, steady growth with our R&D engineer headcounts during the past couple of quarters. Our total number of R&D engineers by first half of last year, that number was 980, and now that number, you know, by third quarter, that number was 1,070. By the end of last year, that number was 1,140. From that you can see. During the third quarter, during the last quarter of last year, although we were, you know, still in the cybersecurity review, and our, you know, revenue got some limitations, but we still, you know, suddenly increase our R&D , you know, people. We think that we will, you know, further invest in this area, so continue this pace.
我补充一下那个第二个问题中关于我们将来的研发的投入和往哪里花，就是我们还是会继续去请更多更贵的工程师和产品经理。刚才在报告中提到，我们已经从针对用户的精细化运营和针对用户的深度需求的理解上获得了一些成就，体现在用户的收获更多，打扰更少，满意度提高。这件事是非常花钱的，也是一个挺长的路。所以的话我们会在这方面继续加大投入。
I would like to add something on the second question about our R&D expenses, which is how we will spend our money. We will continue to hire more people, more expensive engineers and product managers to improve our capabilities. As I mentioned in my speech just now, we have switching to more refined operations to our existing users to understand their in-depth needs, and which in order to make them have a greater achievement and less interruptions on our platform, to increase the users overall experience. This is very difficult and very costly. We will continue to do that.
然后关于您关心的竞争格局的变化，我有这么几个事情要说一下。首先呢，就是我们跟您一样，也注意到了在过去半年当中，在我们这个行业，其他的企业有一些在蓝领白领服务当中的一些动作，我们非常尊重，也注意到了这些动作。接下来我想说的就是，据不完全统计，中国做互联网招聘服务的大大小小的机构是非常多的，那么这是一个充分竞争的市场。我们也觉得吧，应该会有人某件事情抢在我们前面，这也是正常的事情。这是关于有其他企业在蓝领白领的工作中有新的举措，我们注意到了，我们尊重，这是一个现实。接下来就是想说呢，在竞争格局上，迄今来看，迄今来看，虽然大家都知道，我们有半年多没有新用户的注册，最近看到的这个第三方的数据，我想你们也都会看快手的数据。我们在月度的用户数量上仍然保持一个较大的领先，同时呢，在用户的活跃度上，用户的使用时长等方面也保持一个稳定的领先。那这个原因呢，其实也在报告中提到了，就是我们花了很大的力量集中在对我们老用户的保护上。那现在呢，就是想说一个观点，我们有一亿用户，那么中国有六亿多非农业的劳动人口。那么其实一亿用户相当于美国的所有的这个劳动者的一个较大比例了。没记错的话，美国在一亿多吧，一亿三、一亿二的样子。所以的话，这一亿用户我们也是有足够可以去做的事情，我们也努力把它服务好。所以综上来看，关于竞争，我们尊重任何人的创新，我们有信心把用户服务好的话，就能保持我们一个比较稳定的市场地位。
To answer your first question about competitive landscape, I have several points to make. The first one is we have noticed that during the past half year, there are other enterprises within our industry. They have taken some actions in either blue collar or white collar services. We have noticed that, and we fully respect them. According to a very incomplete statistics, there are lots of enterprises and institutions within this industry.
It's a fully competitive industry. It's natural that there will be some ideas some people are thinking ahead of us and doing that. It's very normal. We have noticed and we respect them. The second point is that till now, we haven't been able to grow our users over seven or eight, you know, eight months. According to the third-party data, which I believe you all can see, our user number, our MAU and DAU still are ahead of our peers by a large amount. Our user activities, our user time spent and the usage frequency, we are ahead of them very steadily.
The reason is that we have paid a lot of attention and focus on protecting our existing users. There is a view that we have already accumulated over 100 million users, and there are 600 million non-farm employees in China. In the United States, there are about 130 million workforce. We have already achieved that number. We have enough users to do something for them to better serve them. We fully respect our competitors or our peers for their innovation and their actions. We have confidence we can better serve our existing users and to maintain our market position.
关于我们在最近有没有值得公布的新产品这一点，我们实际上是在做一些探索，但是现在我觉得我们没有今天就值得去说的一个新产品。还有就是其实刚才说过了，就是在中国六亿多非农业劳动人口中，我们仅服务了一亿左右的人。所以我们还是应该去下功夫，更好地精细化地去服务好用户，更好地去理解用户的需求和行业的知识。那这件事情其实路很长。那么再补充一个关于竞争的观点，就是其实我们好好服务我们的用户，使得我们的用户和市场是满意的，那这是我们该做的事情。
For your last question about what new product we have been doing and can tell the market, we have done a lot of research and initiatives on many aspects, but nothing we think should be worth discuss today. We might release in the future when it's mature. As I just said, there are 600 million non-farm working population in China, and we only served over 100 million of them. We will continue to refine our service and products to understand the in-depth needs of the users to accumulate more industry knowledges. This is, there's still a very long way to go.
To supplement another competitive view, which is we believe what we should do today is just to continue to provide the best service to our users.
Given this opportunity, I'd like to update the number like we provided in third quarter last year. Due to the cybersecurity review process, because we are not allowed to grow users during the third quarter results, we you know mentioned the number of failed user registrations around that time. By the end of March 15th, we recorded the accumulated number of failed user registration as 34 million users. That's a huge number. We believe you know there's still very strong market demand. Because we have a very you know strong you know user service capabilities, and we deliver best user experiences. Once we were allowed to grow, we definitely can grow our users.
That concludes our answers for these questions.
Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Wei Xiong from UBS. Please ask your question.
谢谢赵总、雨果、文蓓，各位晚上好。感谢管理层接受我的提问，也恭喜这个季度非常强劲的业绩。那我有两个很快的问题，一个是刚刚我们也提到，就是监管结束了，我们还是希望能够尽快地去增长用户，并且这段时间其实咱们从内部数据也看到，还是有很多用户希望来注册咱们平台，那想听一听，就是咱们之后具体这个增长用户的策略是怎么样的，就是怎么样能够在更短的时间之内重新恢复之前这个用户增长强劲的趋势。那另外第二个问题，想很快地请教一下利润率，因为这个季度咱们的利润率又非常的强劲，那一方面也是因为收入的稳健增长，当然也是因为咱们监管期间，其实市场费用方面有些节省，那未来刚才也有提到说是希望能继续增加产品研发、技术等等方面的投入，所以想请教一下我们应该怎么去考虑一季度跟全年这个利润率的趋势。那我也自己很快地翻译一下。Thank you, management, for taking my questions.
First question, I want to ask, as we're still under the impact of the cybersecurity review, just wondering if the company has any plan to quickly restore the user growth momentum once the cybersecurity review is behind us. Second, just on the margin trend, we've seen that Q4 margin is again very solid. How should we think about the margin trend in the first quarter and also 2022? Thank you.
谢谢你的问题，我来回答那个第一个，就是花钱的事。首先感谢你的美好预言和祝愿，我们在恢复用户增加之后，我们会增加我们营销费用，这是我们当前的一个重要工作吧，就是增加我们服务用户的规模。不过呢，这个招聘者是有个特点的，就是他确实要找工作的时候，他会注意到一个招聘平台。当然他来到我们平台之后，你们已经发现他们的稳定性很强，但首先他要注意到。所以的话，我们也会符合这个规律，就是聪明地花钱，也不会说上来就使劲儿地这个爆发式地花钱，这还需要尊重市场规律。大概就是这样一个打算。
I will answer your first question about our growth strategy after you bring our user registration. First, thank you for your good wishes. Once we were allowed to grow user, the first thing we will do is to increase our marketing expenses to, because it's very important to increase the user base we are serving. There is a characteristic of job seekers. When they looking for jobs, they when they start looking for jobs, they need to notice a platform. History has proved that when people come to our platform, their stickiness is very high, but they need to first notice that. We will spend our money very very cautious and smartly. That that's my answer.
I can offer a little bit more. First of all, as Jonathan just mentioned, once we were allowed to grow, we definitely will increase our marketing, you know, activities because of what we consider that user growth as the, you know, core driver and the right thing to do during our current stage. Having said that, we definitely will spend money wisely and we will try our best to balance the, you know, the top line growth, user growth, and with the profitability. That's what we think about. During the first quarter, the last quarter of 2021, that number, our profit number already showed to investors that we have nice margin. Basically, that's our core margin profile.
During the 2022 full year, we think that we would like to try to at least maintain the full year like a margin situation. But having said that, we need to consider our growth strategy once we were allowed to grow. For the first quarter, first quarter normally is a seasonality high spend quarter. From the 2021 first, number one, number two , number three, number four . From that, you can see the first quarter of the 2021 is a loss, only loss quarter in last year. Because normally we would like to spend more with our marketing activities in the first quarter. In this year we have the Olympics games marketing campaign.
That means we will continue the seasonality pattern. First quarter of 2022, the margin would be low. After that, starting from second quarter, the margin will recover to the normal situation. That's pretty much the situation. That's mainly because of the seasonality issue.
All right. Thank you. Due to time constraint, that concludes today's Q&A session. At this time, I'll turn the conference back to Wenbei for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you once again for joining us today and sincerely apologize for the signal interruption during this call. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or TPG Investor Relations. Thank you.
Thank you. This does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.