Kanzhun Limited (HKG:2076)
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At close: May 27, 2026
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Earnings Call: Q1 2026

May 20, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Kanzhun Limited First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Laura Zhan, Senior Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are our Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Mr. Jonathan Peng Zhao, and our Deputy CFO, Ms. Wenbei Wang. 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 cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and does 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.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On behalf of the company's employees, management team, and board of directors, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our users and our investors for their continuous support.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Today's presentation will cover four main parts. First, our growth in the first quarter. Second, key trends among job seekers and enterprise users on our platform. Third, the company's perspectives on AI and its strategic approach. Finally, the shareholder returns.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Let me start with our first quarter growth. As a double-sided platform, we continue to see strong growth from both job seekers and enterprise user sides. Looking back to January to April this year, we acquired over 15 million newly verified users. Looking ahead, we believe that achieving over 40 million newly verified users for the full-year should be achievable.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Looking at paid enterprise customers condition, the number of paid enterprise customers reached 7.1 million for the 12 months ended 31st March , up 10.9% year-over-year and 4.4% quarter-over-quarter.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

In the first quarter, the average monthly active users, or MAU, on the BOSS Zhipin app reached 60.9 million, up 5.7% year-on-year. In March, MAU exceeded 72 million, up 4.6% year-on-year. The reason our MAU in March was more than 10 million higher than the first quarter average is that the Chinese New Year occurred later this year, resulting in a later peak recruitment season.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

2026 [Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

The 2026 Chinese New Year fell on 17th February while the 2025 New Year was on 29th January . This year the peak recruitment season only fell within March, whereas the peak recruitment season fell within both February and March in 2025.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Let me discuss our revenue. In the first quarter, the company achieved revenue of CNY 2.07 billion, up 7.6% year-over-year. Please kindly note that this figure also reflects the comparison between one month of peak season in 2026 versus two months of peak season in 2025. Looking ahead, we are confident that our revenue growth in the second quarter and for the full-year will be stronger than what we delivered in the first quarter.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

On the profit perspective, in the first quarter, the adjusted operating income excluding share-based compensation expenses reached over RMB 810 million, up 17.8% year-on-year. The adjusted operating margin was 39.4%, up 3.4 percentage points year-on-year.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Second, key trends among enterprise users and job seekers on our platform.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

As discussed multiple times earlier, our platform is suitable for different tier cities and different types of industries.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Overall, our continued rapid user growth has driven sustained rapid growth among blue collar workers, lower tier cities, and small and medium sized enterprises on our [Foreign language]. At the same time, recruitment demand from white collar workers and large enterprises has continued to improve.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

From the user growth perspective, as of 30th April among the newly acquired users in this year, excluding fresh graduates, nearly two-thirds were blue collar workers.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content] 40%。

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

From a revenue perspective, in the first quarter, blue collar revenue exceeded 40% of our total revenue for the first time.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content] 10.9%。

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

White collar recruitment demand has also accelerated after Chinese New Year compared to the same period last year. Looking into the specific subsectors, active job postings for software engineers increased by 10.9% from January to April compared to 2025.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

This is consistent with the recent observations from our U.S. peers. Referring to their public data, their active software development job postings in the U.S. grew by 9.1% year-on-year from January to April 2026. We are two percentage points higher than their number.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

On our platform, we have not seen the kind of alarming large scale reduction in programmer positions that some have feared. At the same time, revenue from AI related roles on our platform has grown by over 100%. Simply put, the development of AI has brought us more revenue, but we have not yet seen a large decline in job postings.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Among other industries, manufacturing, electronics, telecommunications, semiconductors, transportation and logistics, urban services, and various professional services led in year-on-year growth on our platform.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

For large enterprises, their recruitment demand, we saw a notably recovering trend during this year's spring recruitment season. In the first quarter, companies with 1,000 to less than 10,000 employees recorded the fastest growing year-on-year revenue growth, followed by those with 500 to less than 1,000 employees. This average number of job posting per enterprise users also increased modestly.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

If we compare it to the last quarter, back then we shared that the strongest growth in hiring demand was coming from small and micro-enterprises. This quarter, however, if we compare it to last quarter, back then, we shared that the strongest growth in hiring demand was coming from small and micro-enterprises. In this quarter, however, it is large enterprises that are delivering our fastest revenue growth year-on-year.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

That concludes the recent trend on enterprise users and job seekers on our platform. Then we will discuss two views and four strategic pillars on AI that we all concern.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Since the ChatGPT 4.0 launch in March 2023, this AI paradigm has given us 38 transformative months. Meanwhile, recent government disclosure of unidentified aerial phenomena have put our generation in an unprecedented territory. Our perspectives are broadening, our convictions are being reshaped, civilization is facing new challenges, which is unavoidable. Many things that once felt familiar are now becoming less so, including how we think about our companies and how you think about investment and competition.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

As one of the leaders in the worldwide and Chinese recruitment industry, as an entrepreneur myself, I've spent the past three years navigating between two mindsets, hoping that new technologies could solve major problems, while at the same time worrying about technology's potential disruptive impact. I have been torn yet hopeful and continuously exploring all within the scope of my responsibilities.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Our shareholders and employees have also gone through ups and downs, concerned at all times, excited as others, sometimes they have been with us, sometimes less so. Together we have all been on quite a roller coaster ride.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Looking back on the past three years, we believe it is time for the company to provide a progress report to our shareholders, the public, and our employees. This will be organized around two key observations and four main strategies. Our first observation is that to date, for the company's business model and industry position, the opportunities brought by AI technology have outweighed its risks.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Based on reliable third-party public data, credible data released by listed companies, and our own internal data, we have concluded that over the past three years, the company's market-leading position has been further strengthened. User achievements have continued to increase, and we have maintained steady growth surrounded by challenging environments.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Second, as we know, lower token costs have accelerated the proliferation of AI applications in both our internal operations and user services. In the past quarter, the ability for over 10 million users on our platform to be able to access to AI services has been made possible by this reduction in cost.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Third, extensive exploration in large model pre-training and application has accelerated growth of our young employees, including their sense of pride, cohesion, and standing with the company. The more widely AI technology are used, the more convincingly they solve real problems, the faster young talent will rise, and the smoother the process of rejuvenation of our leadership team will become. In the long term, this helps slow down the corporate entropy.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

The growth of leaders within an organization is, at its core, a result of individual aspirations and progress aligning with the company's shared vision. AI plus young talent essentially means that young people can more quickly gain recognition from the organization's shared system and stand out. This also explains why in every wave of technological and cognitive revolution, young people tend to emerge as leaders.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Add to that, those technology-oriented companies will enjoy the rise of young people and the reduce of corporate entropy.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Our second observation is that to date, neither enterprise side or job seeker side standalone agents have been capable of challenging the company's business current model. On the contrary, once agents are embedded with our double-sided network ecosystem, they leverage companies' accumulated user base and data to play a positive and constructive role.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Recruitment and job seeking is always a multiple people to multiple people game.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Whether a labor contract should be signed or not, or whether every day thereafter will go smoothly, ultimately comes down to a many-to-many game between two large groups of people.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

BOSS [Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

The double-sided network that BOSS Zhipin has been built for over the past 12 years, and our understanding on users for the past 12 years, has always been designed to reflect the real dynamics of job seeking and recruitment in human society.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

In essence, embedding various AI agents into our double-sided network serves as a driving force that enhances information collection, processing, and dissemination.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content] 60%。

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Looking at our first quarter data, first, the application of AI agents has improved the time efficiency from an initial chat to a successful mutual consent conversion rate by 60%.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content] AI agents

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Second, the large scale application of AI enabled user retention, which is its highest level since the pandemic in 2020.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Third, the average per enterprise user achievements increased by a double-digit %.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content] AI agent

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Overall, our study in data and theories told us that AI is our friend instead of the enemy.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Now let me walk you through our four strategic considerations of AI. First, investing in AI to advance the closed-loop business model. We firmly believe that in the recruitment industry, the important thing is that we could deliver the onboarding and placement of candidates for enterprise users.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

No matter we do survey or not to do the survey, every enterprise user is willing to pay for the delivering of candidates instead of the traffic exploration or the click on the candidate.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

We firmly believe that with the support of the AI technology, a result-oriented business model is achievable on our platform.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

It is very important part of our company. We will continue to allocate resources to this effort. While we're protecting the experience of the high-end job seekers, we are also open to leveraging new technologies and new operating systems to collaborate with the external companies that specialize in the closed-loop services.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content] 20%

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

I will share three data with you. First, within the company's in-house headhunting team, for consultants who frequently use AI, 20% of the candidate recommendations they deliver already come from AI-driven operations.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Our another closed-loop pilot project, the combined productivity of human plus agent increased by four times in the first quarter, already exceeding the average productivity level of headhunters in the industry.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Third, for the human plus agent campus recruitment service the company offers externally, revenue grew by more than 50% year-over-year in the first quarter.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Therefore, the AI-powered closed-loop service is one of our core strategy. Second, we are also maintaining a proportion of our resources in AI science, currently focused primarily on the training and development of small models. There are five reasons for this.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

First, small models are less expensive for us to use internally.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Second, continuous in-house R&D helps us enhance the business controllability and enables the development of long-term technical capabilities tailored to vertical recruitment scenarios.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Third, small models are increasingly gaining attention across the industry, which helps ensure a sense of pride and recognition for our science team.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Our in-house small model has also been effectively applied to our search and recommendation functions, demonstrating advantages in both efficiency and effectiveness compared to large models.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Under the current paradigm, the large models are too costly for us to pursue.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Our third strategy on AI is that we will continue to invest heavily in AI applications. Our primary evaluation criterion is that how AI helps our double-sided job-seeking and recruitment network ecosystem.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

According to the investigation for the past 12 months, we have formed some logical and common sense on this, and we believe that we will treat AI technology as a validated tool for identifying and solving problems.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Regarding the reward and bonus on the related areas, the teams that use AI to discover and resolve issues will be generously rewarded by us.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

So far [Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

We believe that our exploration, investigation and investment in AI will be based on our double-sided ecosystem theoretical frameworks.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Our fourth strategy is that we believe that AI-driven revenue growth is a natural process and a natural result.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

As AI technology improves platform efficiency, it will lead to higher user achievements, better satisfaction, and stronger brand reputation among users. This in turn will drive sustained revenue growth. We see this as a smoother, lower risk and more sustainable path.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Investors who are familiar with that understand that we are a very original self-developed monetization model, which we don't sell advertisement, we don't sell click. Our business model is based on protection of our double side network ecosystem.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

We believe that essentially to undergoing this current AI development model is already fully verified this model and a very functional method.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Whether to grow by 50% for this year or 15% for the next five years, we choose the latter. We believe the combination of our technology and our organization will support the second path very smoothly.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

After three years of exploration, those two points and the four strategies we just talked about actually have been fully verified. It is not that our pride, but we have been doing that for a long time. For the investors who cared about us, for the public who listen to us and our internal employees, I want to say that the strategies we just discussed is based on our real exploration and our employees who work at the front line of our AI development, and all the team leaders of our core AI teams have all contributed to the points I just discussed.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Finally, on shareholder returns, we have remained fully committed to delivering on our shareholder return promises. Since the start of this year, we have repurchased over $200 million in shares, or around 3% of our total outstanding shares. In aggregate since 2022, we have bought back close to 10% of our total shares.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

As a reminder, last quarter we announced that a shareholder return plan committing that over the next 3 years, the annual amount we allocate to buybacks and dividends will be no less than 50% of the prior year's adjusted net income. We are following through on that commitment as we all see.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

With that, I will now turn to our Deputy CFO Wenbei Wang to review our financials. Thank you.

Wenbei Wang
Deputy CFO, Kanzhun

Thanks, Peng Zhao. Let me quickly walk through the details of our financial results for the first quarter. We are delighted to report a solid start to this year, characterized by continuous expansion in our user base and engagement alongside sustained revenue growth. Despite a later Chinese New Year, which meant a shorter window of the peak recruitment season fell within this quarter, our revenue reached CNY 2.1 billion, up 8% year-on-year. We are witnessing accelerated revenue as well as cash collection growth post Chinese New Year, supported by a robust pre-recruitment season. Our paid enterprise customers grew by 11% year-on-year to 7.1 million in the 12 months ending March 31st, 2026, primarily driven by the growth of enterprise users.

Paying ratio among active enterprise users increased on a sequential basis. Growth from key accounts and large-size companies showed better trend compared to the same period last year, a more balanced structure. As a result, our ARPU in the first quarter increased 2% year-on-year. Moving to the cost side, our total operating costs and expenses decreased by 3% year-on-year to CNY 1.4 billion this quarter. Total share-based compensation expenses dropped by 24% year-on-year and 11% quarter-on-quarter to CNY 191 million. As a percentage of revenue-wise, share-based compensation accounted for 9.2% of total revenue for this quarter, went down by 3.9 percentage points year-on-year and 1.1 percentage points quarterly. We expect SBC expenses as a percentage of revenue to stay around 9% in 2026. Excluding share-based compensation expenses, our adjusted operating costs and expenses were CNY 1.3 billion, remaining relatively stable year-on-year.

Our adjusted operating income increased RMB 815 million, up 18% year-on-year, representing an adjusted operating margin of 39.4%, up by 3.4 percentage points year-on-year, despite first quarter normally having the lowest margin within the full-year due to seasonality. We believe there remains substantial room for further margin improvement in our core business segment due to the robust operating leverage of our business model. Considering our continued investment in AI, necessary marketing spending for long-term brands recognition, and investment in new businesses, along with the corresponding margin dilution brought by those new businesses, we can still expect a modest margin expansion for the coming years. Looking into each segment, cost of revenue decreased by 4% to RMB 298 million this quarter. This decrease was primarily due to lower employee-related expenses resulting from enhanced operating efficiency and partially offset by higher server bandwidth cost.

As a result, our gross margin went up by 1.8 percentage points to 85.6%. Additionally, the reduction in app store commission fees starting in March also contributed to gross margin improvement. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 2% year-on-year to CNY 502 million this quarter, primarily due to increase in advertising and marketing expenses, which partially offset by decrease in sales employee-related compensations as a result of our continued endeavor to improve sales efficiency. R&D expenses were CNY 424 million this quarter, remaining relatively stable year-on-year. Excluding SBC expenses, our adjusted R&D expenses increased by 5% year-on-year to CNY 351 million, primarily due to higher cloud service fees and server depreciation expenses relating to AI infrastructure. Our G&A expenses decreased by 16% year-on-year to CNY 222 million this quarter, primarily driven by lower share-based compensation expenses. Our interest and investment income was CNY 781 million this quarter, up 422% year-on-year.

This increase was primarily driven by investment income of CNY 614 million arising from fair value changes of one of our invested companies which went public in January 2026. Income tax expenses were CNY 299 million this quarter, up 293% year-on-year. This increase was also primarily due to those tax impact from the aforementioned investment income of CNY 154 million, as well as the provision of CNY 15 million top-up tax under the Pillar Two tax rule and the withholding tax of CNY 8 million, as well as higher income from operations. Our net income reached CNY 1.1 billion this quarter. Excluding share-based compensations, net gains from the aforementioned investment, our adjusted net income increased by 12% to CNY 856 million. Net margin improved to 54.4%, while the adjusted net margin increased to 41.4%, up 1.7 percentage points year-on-year.

Net cash provided by operating activities reached CNY 1.2 billion this quarter, up 19% year-on-year. Our cash position, including cash equivalent, short-term time deposits, and short-term investment by excluding investment in securities, stood at CNY 19.8 billion as of 31st March 2026. Our strong cash position and cash generative capability will support us to continue to deliver our commitment in shareholder returns.

As Peng Zhao just mentioned, we have purchased a total of over $200 million worth of shares, representing approximately 3% of our total outstanding shares. We will continue to maintain substantial shareholder return efforts, including share buyback and dividend, based on specific market and operating conditions. Now for our business outlook. For the second quarter of 2026, we expect our total revenues to be between CNY 2.38 billion-CNY 2.42 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13.2%-15.1%. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we would like to take other questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question now, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

We will now proceed to take our first question. The question comes from the line of Wei Xiong of UBS. Please ask your question.

Wei Xiong
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

[Non-English content]. Thank you management for taking my question.

I have two questions. First, you mentioned about the business impact from a delayed Chinese New Year this year. May I ask if we only consider the days in first quarter post CNY as well as the second quarter based on our expectation, do we see an improvement in the year-on-year growth rate? Which industries or job postings have seen more notable improvement? Second, regarding the AI disruption, have we seen any impact on the job postings on our platform? Considering we already have a very mature white-collar business, the AI disruption to blue-collar is theoretically smaller. Will we accelerate blue-collar business going forward? Also regarding the AI-powered closed-loop services, could management give an update on the latest progress as well as the feedback from industry participants such as agencies and headhunters? Thank you.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

[Non-English content]

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

I will take your second question first about the closed-loop service. Actually, we have talked a lot about opinions. I will give you several numbers. The first number is among all of our different business in the first quarter, actually the AI supported closed-loop service is the fastest among different experimental groups. Some have a growth rate over 100%, some have 50%. Yes, the overall revenue scale is relatively small. For the first quarter, our AI facilitated closed-loop service have a total revenue size of around CNY 50 million.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

About your first question regarding the spring recruitment season, I also can support you with data. Our average monthly active users for the first quarter is around 60 million. However, the MAU for March is over 70 million, and MAU for April is also close to the number of March. I think that's a very representative number that the overall industry have been relatively robust after spring season. On the premises that the ratio between supply and demand that which is enterprise users and recruiters is healthy. It's quite easy to understand it's a very good spring recruitment season.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

The overall newly added job posting number increased by 10% year-over-year.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Even to be more practical. For the first half and overall this year, I think the growth rate of our cash collection will be accelerating compared to last year. For the full-year, we are looking at the least double-digit number of year-on-year growth.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

About another question, most people have been quite concerned about, which is what kind of jobs will be impacted by AI or even replaced by AI. To be honest, our dear investors, I have been input serious resources into this matter and want to make our own conclusion, a very serious and scientific conclusion. Once we have our report, we will open to the public. But till today, our observation is that the software development engineer haven't experienced any decline in job posting. On the contrary, the active number of job posting increased by 10.9%. I will continue to work on this topic and our team want to publish some papers. I want to take more time. Just give me like two quarters of time, and I may give you more clear answer to this question.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Yes, that's some of our views.

Thank you.

And open to-

Operator

Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Eddy Wang of Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question. Eddy, your line is open.

Eddy Wang
Executive Director, Morgan Stanley

Laura [Non-English content]. Thank you management for taking my question.

My question is also related to AI. We have noticed that Recruit, our foreign peer company, mentioned in its latest earnings that AI has greatly contributed to the increase of their revenue, especially the average revenue per job. Can BOSS Zhipin enhance the revenue per job listing with the help of AI as well? How much can be enhanced and how can this be achieved? A follow-up question is that in the Chinese recruitment market, could there be a recruitment platform with lower matching efficiency than ours that might benefit more from AI? How does company view the change in the future industry competition patterns? Thank you.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Thank you for your question. We also noted that our predecessor, who established in 1962, have been making some statement like you said, and we are quite happy for the progress they have got.

From our perspective, the Chinese domestic market is our current main focused area. How it can help us to achieve higher revenue growth, I think I will divide it by third points. In the order of considering this, I think the first thing we insist is still to first provide better value and then we charge higher price. That's the first part. The second is, in China domestic market, there are over 40 million enterprises, which more than half of them have never used online recruitment services before. I think there is a process that from a raw area, a raw land, to a fully cultivated markets.

The third thing is that I have actually talked a lot in our industry that a very basic contradictory or controversy is that, whether you are selling exposure to the recruiter or onboarding. From the exposure to onboarding, there are very, very long journey and there are many, many different steps. We are all experiencing from selling one job exposure to selling one job candidate, and even after the testing period, you becoming a very good employees or even get promotion. What are we providing to our customers?

I think everybody is going through the exploration process. In all those three point I just discussed, with our help, where currently are we standing? I think without a doubt that let us to help with all those people who haven't used the recruitment services in China, to use their digitalized and network data to better help us to serve our clients. That's the first thing we need to do. Now we are using this to support our closer services. From the earliest recruitment services in 1997, from selling advertisement exposure to someday in the future, with help of our technology, we can tell you I can help you to deliver onboarding, and you can pay me based on that. That's what is we have been insisting.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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I also want to remind you with the number of our paid enterprise customers is over 7.1 million by end of this quarter. grew by 10.9% year-on-year and 4.4% quarter-on-quarter. Why I want to talk about this number is because this 10% increase not only representing a progress of our commercialization, it also means for us, we are helping more and more users in China who have not used online service before to going step by step to a more civilized way for hiring and job seeking. Now we are talking about price hiking, because for all those 7.1 million people, how many they are paying us by each individual?

Our revenue is around CNY 8 billion per year, on average, every paying customer is paying us around CNY 1,000. I think everybody can see there are huge potential in here for higher price. Between more paying customer, for example, we have 7.1 million today, in the future we can have 9.1 million or even 19 million paying customers. I choose to grow our number of paying customers first. By that time I think we still have huge potential to further increase our price. That's without doubt.

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

My idea about growing paying users or the price might change for one day, and I will communicate with people who concern about us timely about the changes. Then about whether there are potential for the AI empowering our peers who have maybe weaker technology than us to maybe exceeding us. I think their possibility definitely exists, but based on my experience, when I have experiencing from maybe a little bit concerned about AI, and more curious, and less concerned, and now we have our own views and strategies, and we are actually more practical people and solving questions together.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

Today I'm not that worried that our peers in China's recruitment industry who have maybe a weaker matching efficiency that maybe one day to exceeding us or disrupt us. I'm not that worried and it won't be quite sudden. Yeah, that's our answer to the question. Operator, let's proceed to our last question.

Operator

Thank you. Our final question today comes from Timothy Zhao of Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Timothy. Your line is open.

Timothy Zhao
Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

[Non-English content] My first question is regarding your operating expenses, issue regarding the World Cup marketing expenses and R&D expenses on AI. Just wondering if you can share some more detailed color and what is your outlook for this year's overall profit margin? I note that you have increased your buyback from the public market, just wondering if there's any updates on your shareholder return plans for this year and in the midterm. Secondly, is regarding your overseas expansion. We note that OfferToday has been growing very rapidly in the Hong Kong market. Just wondering if you can share some color on the latest user base and the monetization updates in Hong Kong, and any investments that you have made in Hong Kong in the first quarter. Do you have any other plan to further expand into new overseas markets? Thank you.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Thank you for your question. The World Cup is always a very good thing, which we can communicate with a lot of users during a very short period of time. Whether or how much we will invest on World Cup, it depends on the ROI. The advantage for this year is that there are more games and longer period of the World Cup events. The disadvantage is also quite clear because the time difference. We are still under communication and looking at the final ROI.

I will communicate once we have our results. Secondly, it is about the AI, we will continue to invest. This year, the one major change you have all witnessed that for some companies and some very critical jobs, the companies can offer very high salary for top talents. We should pay and find appropriate person to maintain our AI-related development capabilities. Another one is on the computing power, including rental service and recurring costs. We will also invest on that and maybe further expanding our expenses.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

For our margin perspective, our core this margin is quite high at over 50%. Considering all those investment on the World Cup sponsorship and the new business, I think it just a similar expectation for us from the beginning of this year. We are expecting a smaller increase in our adjusted operating margin.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

About shareholder return from buyback, I want to re-emphasize that year to date, we have spent more than $200 million to bought over 3% of the total shares. If you look at quarterly payout ratio, it's already exceeding what we planned in the first. There are two reasons we are doing this. First is actually our valuation is quite good, so it's very efficient to spend money. Also we want to provide more confidence. We have confidence in our company, and we want to express that, share that view with all those employees and investors who have been standing with us. We will continue to do that.

Jonathan Peng Zhao
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kanzhun

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Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Thank you for asking about OfferToday. Actually we did developing quite well in Hong Kong. Looking at the mobile side, which we have more advantages. Now currently our daily active users is approximately 50,000 daily active users. You can understand like this way, for the 3 million Hong Kong workers, there are 1 out of 50 are using us every day. Actually, we are providing our enterprise customer with a large amount of active, effective suppliers who can communicate today. That's why the recruiters are using very efficient and new model to communicate with job seekers. More and more people can get OfferToday. That's our current situation. There are two reasons we are developing our Hong Kong business. First is whether our business model based on double-side ecosystem can get verified in a market quite clear, close to the mainland.

Another more important reason is when we are developing internationally, we want to cultivate a very important and core team for us to go further. That's our purpose. Revenue is not our current priority, and we are investing a reasonable amount. I have been communicating with our employees and our investors that before, and we still have that view today, and we have confidence that we can turn OfferToday to Hong Kong local most satisfied job seeking recruitment platform for both job seekers and recruiters. That OKR has not changed for a day, and we will continue to invest and continue to make more efforts and hope you can keep following on us. That's all of our answers to the questions today. Operator.

Operator

Thank you. Due to time constraint, that concludes today's question-and-answer session. At this time, I'll turn the conference back to Laura for any additional or closing remarks.

Laura Zhan
Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Kanzhun

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.

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