Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the Bilibili 2020 first quarter earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would now like to hand the conference over to Juliet Yang, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Please note the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements relating to the company's future performances and are intended to qualify the safe harbor from liability as established by the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performances and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors. Some of these risk factors are beyond the company's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today's press release and this discussion. A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect Bilibili's business and financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company 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 purposes only.
For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the 2020 first quarter financial results news release issued earlier today. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. In addition, an investor presentation and a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on the Bilibili investor relations website at ir.bilibili.com. Joining us today on the call from Bilibili senior management are Mr. Rui Chen, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Carly Li, Vice Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Xin Fan, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Fan, who will read prepared remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen.
Thank you, Juliet. Thank you, everyone, for participating in our 2020 first quarter conference call. I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Chen. 2020 is off to a remarkable start. We are proud to deliver stellar results and set new records within our key operating and financial measures. For the first quarter, our MAU grew by 70% year-over-year, reaching 172 million, and our mobile MAU grew even faster at 77% year-over-year to 156 million. Our user engagement level also reached a new height. Our DAUs achieved a major milestone of 69% year-over-year to 51 million. Along with our live user numbers, we saw a striking increase in the amount of daily time spent on our platform, up 10 minutes from Q4 to an average of 87 minutes. This is the highest level we have seen in our corporate history.
These statistics once again demonstrate our strong execution and high-quality growth we aim to deliver. We attribute our success on increasingly broad content, friendly, and a sticky community, as well as improved brand awareness. Building on the success of our New Year Eve Gala event, we welcome more new users, especially during the extended winter holiday. Bilibili is becoming many people's first choice when it comes to content creation and consumption. In 2019, we affirmed user growth as one of our key objectives and raised our target of MAUs for 2021 to 220 million. We are pleased to say, with the solid execution of our initiatives, we are on a fast track to meet this target. As we roll out more premium content and services and strengthen our monetization capabilities, we are converting more traffic to paying users.
Our MPUs grew by 134% year-over-year to an impressive 13.4 million in the first quarter. The paying ratio also grew to 7.8%, more than doubled from two years ago. Our revenue reached an all-time high of RMB 2.3 billion, surpassing the top end of our guidance by more than RMB over 100 million. As our top line expands, we have seen increasing the operating leverage. Gross margin jumped to 23% in the first quarter, up from 14% for the same period last year, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of margin improvements. Our strategic partnership is also expanding. On the heels of our agreement with Tencent and Baba, we were excited to bring our longstanding partnership with Sony to the next level, with this $400 million U.S. equity investment and business collaboration plans.
Under the agreement, we plan to bring even more world-class anime and mobile game content to the domestic market, further enhancing our advantage in these sectors. The equity investment will not only fuel our future growth, but also demonstrate Sony's confidence in our unique positioning and growth prospects. With that overview, I'd now like to walk through some of our initiatives and the trend we are seeing in each of our core areas of content, community, and commercialization, and how they fit into our long-term strategy. I will begin with content. Bilibili has cultivated one of the most attractive and friendly environments for our creators. Creators can easily upload content, actively interact with users, and can build a fan base. For these reasons, Bilibili has become many people's first choice for PUGV creation, especially during the extended winter holiday, when more people were looking for ways to express themselves.
We saw a significant increase in the number of active content creators and the video submissions during the first quarter. We had about 1.8 million content creators uploading 4.9 million videos per month, representing increases of 146% and 138% respectively, both year-over-year. With a growing number of creators and the effective operational campaign, we are getting even more diverse and innovative content submission, and further increasing our mass-market appeal. For the first quarter, our most heavily trafficked verticals were lifestyle, game, entertainment, animation, tech, and knowledge. For lifestyle, during the extended holiday, people were looking for ways to entertain themselves while staying at home. We actively promote subcategories such as foodie, online fitness, and vlog. Many people look for ways to cook, stay fit, and express themselves. Similarly, games overtook entertainment verticals, and we fortified our games content library, becoming the host for more and more gamers.
With our recent partnership with Tencent Music and Sony Music, our music content is also attracting a growing amount of traffic, giving it universal appeal. In addition, we expanded our technology and education categories in order to support those looking to catch up on their studies, learn a new skill, or simply gain more general knowledge during the long holiday. Turning to our OGV business, building our years of investment and key leadership in anime, documentary, and other categories, we continue to turn our OGV library into valuable IP assets, attracting new users as well as converting paying users. During the first quarter, we launched The Daily Life of the Immortal King, a Bilibili-produced Chinese anime series. This high-quality series quickly gained over 100 million video views in less than 30 days, setting a new record for our OGV history.
It not only attracted many new anime fans to our platform, but also converted a considerable amount of premium members. Similarly, we further expanded our documentary and variety show offerings to attract broader audience. Our reality show, Animal Hospital Season 2, and First Man Out of China, a documentary that we co-produced with Discovery, were also welcomed by many pets and survival show lovers respectively. Turning to our community, as I mentioned, we are seeing record high across all of our premium user metrics. With this well-paid interest to our community, the quality of our platform, our content, our users, has gotten even stronger. In the first quarter, our daily video views reached a record high of 1.1 billion, up 113% year-over-year. Our users were more engaged with content and each other than ever before, and our overall community retention levels were improved.
In the first quarter, our users generated nearly 4.9 billion monthly interactions through the bullet chats, comments, likes, and Bilibili Moments posts, more than triple the amount from the same period in 2019. Members of our official membership also grew at an accelerated pace in the first quarter. By the end of Q1, we had 82 million official members who passed our 100-question exam, up 66% year-over-year, and the 12-month retention rate for these users remained high as well, well above 80%. The strong community engagement and retention level continue to be excellent indicators of the quality of our user growth. Turning to our commercialization progress, I will first review the status of our game business. Revenue from games increased 32% year-over-year to RMB 1.15 billion, accounting for 50% of our total first quarter revenues. Fate/Grand Order, or FGO, delivered a robust performance for the period following a major content update.
Other exclusive licensed titles such as Granblue Fantasy and Phantasy Star Online 2 also continued their popularity during the first quarter. In April, we launched the highly anticipated Chinese-Japanese RPG, Princess Connect! This exclusively licensed game was an immediate hit, attracting millions of players and topping China's iOS download and grossing chart within a week after release. The phenomenal success of this release with that game proved our strong distribution power and deep understanding of the ACG game market. Our jointly operated games also continued their growth momentum in the first quarter. Newly released updates of Arknights, [New Found Hope] and [Foreign language] were welcomed by many existing and new players. With an increasing number of gamers gathering and more efficient distribution operations, our platform is an inevitable channel for game developers who want to maximize their exposure to quality players and reach potential new fans.
Later this year, we will be further expanding our game offerings. With 30 high-quality games in our upcoming game pipeline, we are looking forward to further diversifying our portfolio. We have 8 titles that have acquired approvals and are scheduled to be released in the coming months. This includes [Foreign language] , an ACG title that we plan to roll out this summer. On the jointly operated game front, we will continue to work with leading game developers to bring our users premium games such as miHoYo's Genshin Impact and NetEase's Harry Potter: Magic Awakened. Turning to our VAS business. Revenue from VAS increased by 172% year-over-year, reaching RMB 794 million in the first quarter. Our growth was mainly driven by increased contribution from premium members, live broadcasting, and other value-added services.
As part of our video content ecosystem, we continue to enrich our live broadcasting offerings and increase our live broadcasting penetration among growing user traffic. Our investment of top live broadcasting IP continue to fuel our user growth and attract more live broadcasting hosts to our platform. We are seeing more talent agencies and individuals come to Bilibili to grow their influence on our fast-developing platform. With access to our exclusive members have become accustomed to paying for high-quality content. By the end of the first quarter, our premium members reached an exciting milestone, exceeding 10 million, for a record 10.9 million subscribers. This represents an increase of 127% year-over-year and further demonstrates that our users represent a golden cohort with a high willingness to pay for premium entertainment material.
As for our advertising business, our rapidly growing community and increasing brand equity continue to make Bilibili a leading platform for advertisers. Despite macro headwinds, revenue from our advertising segment continued to increase year-over-year, up 90% to RMB 214 million in the first quarter. The leading three industry verticals for brand advertising were e-commerce, games, and 3C products, and the top three verticals for performance-based ads was games, education, and e-commerce. Advertisers are seeking out new and innovative ways to increase their visibility, and online channels represent a popular, heavily trafficked avenue. Beginning from this year, we host multiple online new product launch conferences, including Huawei, Vivo, OPPO, and McDonald's. We expect this offline to online marketing transition will continue throughout the year. Advertisers in other industries such as online education and e-commerce are also seeking out our platform to increase their brand reach.
To summarize, we had an outstanding first quarter, marked by excellent growth across our primary operational and financial metrics. The success was attributable to years of devotion in building a healthy content ecosystem, friendly community, and improved commercialization capabilities. We are also pleased with our strong execution in raising our brand awareness, growing our user base, as well as forming high-level strategic partners. Building on this early 2020 momentum, we will continue our user growth strategy, improve our top line, and drive value for all of our supporters, our growing community, and our stakeholders. This concludes Chen's remarks. I will now provide a brief overview of our financial results for the first quarter of 2020. Our total net revenues increased by 69% year-over-year to RMB 2.3 billion, exceeding the high end of our guidance.
With a 50/50 revenue split from our game and non-game business, we are pleased with our commercialization progress and the implications of this diversity. We are also converting more and more online traffic to paying users. The average number of monthly paying users increased by 134% year-over-year, reaching 13.4 million in the first quarter. Cost of revenues increased by 61% year-over-year to RMB 1.8 billion. Revenue sharing cost, a key component of cost of revenues, was RMB 889 million, a 61% increase from the same period in 2019. Gross profit increased by 180% year-over-year to RMB 530 million. We are also starting to see operating leverage from our diversified revenue streams. With more revenue contributions from our higher margin business, as well as additional income from paying users, our gross profit margin continued to improve, reaching 23% in the first quarter.
Total operating expenses increased to RMB 1.1 billion, 117% from the same period in 2019. Selling marketing expenses was RMB 606 million, representing a 234% increase year-over-year. The increase was primarily attributable to the increased channel and the marketing expenses associated with Bilibili's apps and brand, as well as expenses for company's mobile games and the sales and marketing personnel. Building on the success of our New Year Eve Gala and the strong user demands during the extended holiday, we made additional investment in branding and the channels to further drive user growth and raising brand awareness, which we believe will yield considerable return in the long run. G&A expenses was RMB 171 million, representing a 33% increase year-over-year. The increase was primarily due to increased headcount in general and administrative personnel and increased share-based compensation expenses. R&D expenses was RMB 297 million, representing a 60% increase year-over-year.
The increase was primarily due to increased headcount in research and development personnel. Net loss was RMB 539 million for the first quarter of 2020, compared with RMB 196 million in the same period of 2019. Adjusted net loss, which is a non-GAAP measure that includes share-based compensation expenses and amortization expenses related to intangible assets and acquired through business acquisition, was RMB 475 million, compared with RMB 145 million in the same period of 2019. Basic and diluted net loss per share was RMB 1.62.
Adjusted basic diluted net loss per share were RMB 1.46. RMB 1.43, sorry. As of March 31, 2020, before Sony's investment, we had cash or cash equivalents, time deposits, as well as short-term investments, of RMB 7.9 billion, or $1.1 billion, compared to RMB 8.1 billion as of December 31, 2019. To further grow our business, we plan to improve our monetization by leveraging our considerable and growing traffic. We also see benefit in further expanding our diverse revenue streams and continuing to improve our paying ratio. Longer term, we believe our monetization efforts, high-paying user conversion rates and scale will yield an improved bottom line. With that in mind, we are currently projecting net revenue for the second quarter of 2020 to be between RMB 2.50 billion and RMB 2.55 billion. Thank you for your attention. We would like now to open the call to your questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, 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. Please, for the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to the management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. Once again, that is star one on your telephone if you wish to ask a question. Okay, your first question today comes from Jialong Shi from Nomura. Please ask your question.
早上好，管理层。非常感谢接受我的提问。我这里主要是有一些关于用户方面的问题。我想问一下，我们第一季度的MAU的增速是非常快的，那么我想问一下，在第一季度的MAU增长有多少是因为疫情的驱动的，有多少是本身的自身性的增长？然后现在因为从四月份以来，学生已经逐渐地返校，疫情也差不多都控制住了。我想问一下，现在管理层看到的我们的MAU最新的趋势在疫情之后是怎么样的？还想请教一下，在一季度我们获取的新的用户，它的用户的活跃度，包括在我们的平台上的时长，还有它的留存率，跟老用户相比的话是怎么样的？那么最后我其实是想问一个大的宏观性的问题，确实有很多投资人想了解一下，对于中国的这样一个PUGV的这个市场，我不知道这个市场的最终的这个用户规模能够有多大？不知道管理层能不能给我们提供一些color。那么我自己来翻译一下。Congratulations on a very solid quarter. My question is about MAU. We saw a big acceleration in this quarter. Could management give us some colors on how much of the growth was driven by the pandemic in Q1 and how much was organic?
As life in China is getting back to normal, how should we look at the trend of your MAU growth post the pandemic? For the new users acquired in the quarter, how is their engagement level compared to those of old users? Lastly, for China's PUGV market, could you give us some colors on what would be the size of the user base this segment could potentially reach? Thank you.
好，那我一个一个回答你的问题。第一个就是关于我们的第一季度做得非常好的用户增长。我觉得我们用户增长的主要原因其实是两个。第一个就是优质的内容供给和扎实的内容生态，这个是我们过去十年持续建设的。第二个我认为是不断扩大我们的品牌的影响力，以及我们更积极的用户获取的策略。
The first question on the MAU. Indeed, we had an outstanding first quarter in terms of user growth, and we believe that user growth is built on two factors. One is 10 years of devotion and dedication in building a healthy content ecosystem and friendly community to ensure that we always have the highest quality content to offer to our users. Second of all, is our continuously raising brand awareness and our active and effective user acquisition strategy.
我相信大家也都能够感觉得到，B站应该是越来越成为现在
不仅是年轻人，甚至是我们周围的人，他们首选的在线娱乐的一个消费方式。我们也越来越多地听到我们周围的人不断地谈起B站的内容。
Probably you have already experienced that Bilibili has become not only for the younger generation, but more for mass market people first choice when it comes content creation or content consumption. There's more and more chatters about what type of videos you've seen on Bilibili.
我刚才说的这些，其实和因为疫情引起的假期延长是没有关系的。
All of the factors that we've mentioned above actually have nothing to do with the extended holiday resulted by the pandemic.
我认为这个延长的假期对我们的用户增长和用户活跃起到了加速的作用，但是它不是主要的作用。
We believe the pandemic only helped us to accelerate our user growth process, but it will not change or become a main factor of how our user grow.
第二个问题是复工复产以后，我们看到的用户增长的趋势。
OK。现在基本上所有的学校都复课了，同时大家基本上也都复工了。但是我仍然对我们未来的用户增长也是有很强的一个信心。就像我刚才所提到的，我们认为我们第一季度的这么好的用户增长的一个成绩，因为疫情引发的假期延长，它只是起到了一个加速的作用。所以我觉得未来我们Q2和Q3，我们仍然可以看到一个好的用户增长。
Regarding your second question about how the MAU is trending after people are returning back to school or work. As I mentioned earlier, the accelerated user growth that we've seen in the first quarter has more to do with the fundamentals of our company. The extended holiday only help us to accelerate the process. We are still quite confident that in the second and third quarter, we will still be seeing relatively decent rate of user growth.
第三个问题就是我们的一季度新用户整个活跃度、时长、留存，然后他们的整个表现是什么。
我们新用户的画像其实跟过去几个季度没什么区别，仍然是以年轻人为主。新用户的平均年龄是20岁左右，新用户的来源超过50%是三线以及三线以下的城市。
In terms of the new user profile that we've seen in the first quarter, there's no big difference between the new users and the old users. It's still majority younger generation. Their average age is around 20 years old, and over 50% of the new user comes from 3rd tier cities or below.
我们做用户增长，我们从来不做数字。其实我们一直是在健康的生态之下，我们再来做用户增长的一个工作。我们可以看到，从我们公布的一个数据来看，我们MAU增长70%，我们DAU增长也是69%，同时用户的使用时长是增加了10分钟到87分钟，我们的视频播放数也超过了10亿，到达11亿。从这些数据我们可以看到，虽然我们的用户的增加是一个很大的服务，但是他们的活跃度，他们的黏度是没有任何改变的，甚至说还有提升。而且从用户的留存率来说，我们第一季度正式会员的留存率也比以前要高，80%多。
In terms of user growth, we never just purely focused on the quantity, but we always put the quality first. As you can see from the user metrics, our MAU grow 70% year-on-year. Our DAU also grow 69% year-on-year. Our time spent per DAU increased 10 minutes quarter-over-quarter to 87 minutes per day. Our video views passed 1 billion, reaching 1.1 billion on a daily basis. The overall retention rate, the engagement level of our user base is also very, very strong. The 12-month retention rate of our official member who taken past the 100-question test, they are also well above 80%. All of this metrics was achieved under the environment that the overall user increased significantly. This is another set of results that demonstrate our quality of growth.
而且还有一个很重要的数字是，在我们的MAU增长70%的情况下，我们的月均付费用户是增长了100%。
172。
对，172%。这个其实也说明了我们的用户增长其实是以用户质量为主。
At the same time, as you can see, our paying users also experienced very fast growth. Our paying users have reached over 13 million this quarter, which means we are converting more traffic to paying users. This is another very strong metric that supports the quality growth.
PUGV。
PUGV，就是PUGV的整个宏观的市场潜力。
因为刚好有一个第三方的报告，说现在中国视频的用户已经达到了8.5个亿。我认为这只是一个开始，因为随着5G的普及，我认为视频会成为互联网最普遍的一种媒体形式。未来我认为所有的互联网用户都应该是视频的用户，也就是说这个用户数一定会超过10个亿的。
According to the latest CNNIC report, the overall Chinese video user has already reached 850 million. As the adoption of 5G technology, we believe video will become the most common format of content consumption or creation. By that time, we believe the overall video user is probably going to be equivalent for the overall internet users.
我觉得PUGV我们之所以称作Professional，其实我们是认为它有着更好的质量。我认为没有用户会拒绝更好质量的视频。所以理论上，我认为所有的视频用户都应该是PUGV的用户，他们都应该去享受更好质量的内容。
The reason why we call PUGV is the professional part of the terms, because it is professionally produced, so it has higher quality. We don't believe anybody will say no to higher quality video content. Because of that, we think that all the video users could potentially be PUGV users.
而且我认为未来视频化的趋势不仅仅是娱乐，也不仅仅是内容，我认为它甚至是通信，甚至是场景，甚至是服务。当我们现在看到，无论是大家营销也用视频，甚至是我们在今年，我们可以看到几千万人在B站上面去看各种知识类的内容，他们其实是在B站上面学习。这个其实已经是一个场景和服务了。所以在我看来，视频在未来就相当于互联，大量的人与人之间的连接，服务与人之间的连接，场景与人之间的连接，都会通过视频来实现。
We believe in the near future, everything will be videoized, which is a great opportunity for Bilibili. From what we have observed, we believe video is not just pure content or communication, it has become as of a service or as of a scenario or an important part of entertainment. Based on what we have seen so far, there's a trend that everything marketing related has become more videoized, and there are tons of users are studying, learning new things, gaining general knowledge on Bilibili. Does this video become a format of gaining knowledge? In the longer term, we believe video is going to be the new connector that connects everything. Hope that answers your question, Jialong.
Yes, indeed. Thanks very much for the color.
Your next question comes from the line of Lei Zhang. Please ask your question, Lei.
Hi，管理层早上好。恭喜非常强劲的业绩。我的问题是关于我们非游戏商业化的进展，因为依旧有看到非游戏这块的业务增长也很快，尤其是VAS业务。想了解一下，我们在现在这个时间，对今年的非游戏商业化有没有什么进一步的想法可以分享？尤其是看到我们最近对直播和公会方面的一些策略的进展，还有就是怎么看今年非游戏业务的增长，可能广告跟直播这两块大类的话，哪一块大家可能觉得潜力更大一些呢？谢谢。我翻译一下。My question is mainly about the commercialization of non-game business.
We have seen a strong revenue growth in fourth quarter of non-game, especially VAS. We also noticed some positive business development recently in music and live streaming. Could management share more color on the efforts we have made in non-game business, especially our policy with live streaming? Also wondering your growth outlook in non-game business in live streaming and advertising in 2020. Thank you.
其实我们从最早上市前的路演开始，到现在我们对于非游戏业务的描述就一直没怎么变过。
We haven't changed our tone about our non-game business plan or strategy since our IPO. As regards of our live broadcasting business, we've always emphasized live broadcasting for Bilibili as an ability. It's based on our current video content ecosystem, and we have massive users gathering around Bilibili, consume a lot of entertainment content such as animation and other professionally-generated content. We've launched our premium membership services to satisfy their growing needs. If I have to talk about our strategy again, it still comes back to the same logic, that we have the user, we understand the needs, and we recommend the right product to suit their right needs. Our strategy is always to attract massive, loyal, engaged users through PUGVs. At the same time, to provide them live broadcasting content, professional OGV content to satisfy their growing needs.
In terms of the growth potential of our business, we believe for many years to come, we will maintain a high growth rate for a relatively longer term. To be more specific, regarding the high growth rate, will be over 100%. We avoid using monetization when we talk about our commercialization progress. It's because we believe essentially, our commercialization process is providing users better services, more premium content. This is beneficiary for our users.
Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Alex Liu from China Renaissance. Please ask your question, Alex.
Thanks for this opportunity. My question is on sales and marketing spending. Could the management provide us some breakdown on this quarter's sales and marketing expenses? Could the management share more updates on this year's brand image upgrade, considering our recent platform trending initiative resulted in pretty heated discussion among users. Thank you.
Okay. Alex, I will take your question, and Carly will add more color about the brand upgrade program. As Chairman Rui Chen mentioned, our user growth is still the top priority of our business in this year. It's also the cornerstone of our commercial monetization progress.
If you look at all the numbers, the main component for our marketing expenses, they are channel promotion, the channels like App Store as well as some Vivo channel, and our brand publicity activities, as well as for our game release and promotion and our sales staff salary bonuses. The incremental part, if you compare that with our Q4 numbers, are mainly for the channel promotion and brand activities. We don't set a very specific market cost target for financial purpose, but instead we monitor all the ROI very closely to ensure the high-quality user growth. The decision will be made according to both the quality and the quantity observations on all the newly added users, including their activity degree, for example, the DAU, their retention level, time of spend, and average daily VV and the numbers of their interactions.
When the market opportunity comes and the ROI are reasonable, we will continue to invest. At the same time, with the deepening of our commercialization progress, the new users we see, they also effectively converted into our paying users. In Q1, MAU just increased by 70% year-on-year, but the number of paying users increased over 130% year-over-year. The overall paying ratio also improving. That demonstrates that we still have room to raise our paying ratio and get better long-term return from our UG strategies. The users growth will also lead to the growth of the top line. You will see that the leverage is still there. The top line increased by, I think, 69% in Q1, and our gross profit increased by 180%. That means we just need to accelerate our commercialization progress to get a better return from our investment.
Currently, we have over RMB 10 billion cash reserve after Sony's capital injection. All the strategic shareholders, they are still very supportive for our user growth strategy. Generally, in Q1, we still generate positive operating cash flow and actual cash burn for Q1 is just like RMB 200 million, which is much less than the loss recorded in our P&L statement. The financial status is quite healthy. We believe the market is still booming and the opportunity is still there, so we're just on the right track to catch those kinds of opportunities. I will let Carly to comment about the brand upgrade program.
As you can already aware, user growth will be our primary focus for 2020, and we have set up a comprehensive plan to grow our user in 2019 last year. That includes to raise brand awareness and to rectify some misperception of how our brand represents or some of our content vertical represents among users or content consumers. From late last year, we have tried some independent marketing campaign. Some of the events you probably already are very aware. One is our investment in the World Championships in League of Legends, and our New Year Eve Gala, and the most recent, the Youth Day campaign regarding the new generations. All of that have echoed strongly with our existing and potential users.
We'll also actively promote our content verticals within Bilibili ecosystem, such as studying, such as vlogs, letting people know this is the go-to platform to consume those content verticals. This is also helping us to raise more brand awareness and platform awareness. From the Q1 operating data, it's already pretty obvious that the efforts and initiatives that we take have quite significantly raised our brand awareness and influence among internet users that age between 15-35. We have been very proud of what we have done so far. Going forward, we will continue to promote our brand through online and offline campaigns. We'll create festivals, create more events, and we'll continue to educate our users about our categories and our content offerings.
所以未来，在未来我们也会围绕重要的节点，包括毕业季，包括B站的11周年、616周年庆、暑假等关键节点，把B站的品牌长期的愿景跟短期的主张会展示给不同的用户人群。
Going forward, we're going to launch a series of campaigns in terms of raising our brand awareness, our brand mission, and positioning through a bunch of online and offline activities. The timeline will be surrounded with several important timestamps. For example, the graduation season and Bilibili's anniversary, as well as summer vacations.
所以明天520也是一个比较好的日子，所以我们也会将跟知名新生代的歌手毛不易发布一个毕业歌，叫《入海》，也会即将送给毕业生以及已经毕业的同学们，也可以让大家期待一下我们的一个小小的作品。
Tomorrow, on May 20th, it is also a very interesting time of the year. We will collaborate with a famous singer, Mao Buyi, to launch a graduation theme song called "Ru Hai," to dedicate the song to the new generation that is about to graduate from school and enter the society. We quite look forward to that piece to meet everybody.
好的，谢谢。
Your next question comes from the line of Wendy Chen from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Wendy.
[Foreign language]
My second question is regarding, since we're doing some very innovative campaign to market our new title Princess Connect, wondering we will utilize such a marketing toolkit for the future games to be launched. Lastly, wondering if management can share your insight on our strategy cooperation with Sony in terms of the game business. Thanks very much.
我觉得疫情对我们游戏的业务收入影响应该不明显吧。所以我们接下来肯定还是会按照我们的计划去做。我觉得今年我们的游戏业务我们还是挺有信心的。我们现在有超过30款代理的游戏的储备，其中8款已经拿到版号。而且现在我们的储备里面已经是以高质量的国产的游戏为主，优质的进口游戏为主，所以我觉得整个的我们的pipeline的健康度还是挺高的。
We actually don't believe the overall pandemic has big influence on our game business. Actually, we're quite confident throughout the rest of the year with our game business. We currently have 30 games, exclusively licensed games in our pipeline. Eight of those already acquired approval, and majority of those pipeline are domestic titles, and relatively smaller scales are from imported titles. It's a very healthy component.
我觉得《公主连结Re:Dive》的成功应该是B站对于二次元游戏的发力能力的又一次证明吧。这次我觉得从执行的效果来看，确实挺好的。我们的开服之前的预约是650万，开服之后我们免费版霸榜应该是一周的时间。而且从目前用户的一个反馈来看，我觉得这也是一款高口碑的游戏。
The success of Princess Connect, we believe this is another strong testimony of our strong distribution power and our deep understanding in terms of ACG games. Before the game was launched, the game had over 6.5 million pre-registered users. Since its release on April 16th, it has topped on the China's iOS top downloading chart for a week and reached the number 2 on top grossing. Based on our strong execution, we believe this is a very successful event and very successful launch.
而且我们认为这也是一款非常强生命周期的游戏，我们认为它应该是在未来至少三年以上的一个生命周期。
Based on the existing data and feedback that we have received, we believe this is going to be a title with very long life cycle, probably over three years.
我觉得就像我刚才所说的，我认为《公主连结Re:Dive》它是我们对于二次元游戏发行能力的又一次证明。我认为B站在中国已经成为二次元游戏发行必须合作的一个渠道。而且随着我们在内容的运营能力，我们在整体的这种宣发能力，以及我们社区规模的不断扩大，这个优势还会进一步提升。
As I mentioned, Princess Connect is another strong testimony of our distribution power in terms of ACG games, and we are becoming the inevitable channel in China to launch ACG related titles. We believe this advantage will further expand as our overall community is getting bigger and our overall user and gamer become more and more active.
我们接下来的话，我们会从我们很具有优势的二次元游戏领域，向玩家向的，以及高口碑向的游戏领域做进一步的扩展。我也认为这个扩展正如我们在视频内容方面的扩展一样，我们在游戏内容上的这个扩展也会取得好的成绩。
Going forward, similar with how we expand our content verticals, we'll also seek to expand our game offerings into more high-quality content, high-quality titles. We are quite confident this will also be very successful as well.
就是索尼在游戏这边有什么计划？
我们跟索尼其实在这一次投资之前，我们就一直和他们保持着无论是游戏还是动画方面的合作。所以的话，在这个战略合作建立之后，无论是在游戏还是在动画方面的合作，我们都会加深的。
We indeed have a long-standing relationship with Sony. Before the equity investment, we already are working with them on multiple business aspects, including animation and games. With the strategic partnership, we are going to further solidify and bring our partnership to the next level in terms of animation and mobile games.
对，这个可以稍微补充一下，因为索尼是全球娱乐跟科技领域的领导企业，索尼的这个战略投资其实本质上也是认可B站的文化以及它未来的发展潜力。所以我认为其实中国内容消费市场还是特别巨大的，B站在这个也会占据比较核心的位置了，这个也是索尼为什么会投资我们的原因。所以未来的话，除了刚才李旎所说的，就是在动画、在游戏上有进一步的合作，其实我们也特别期待跟索尼除了动画游戏以外，包括影视、音乐等等领域可以有更多的合作，去满足B站用户对于文化娱乐消费的这种新的增长需求。
Sure. probably want to add something on. First of all, Sony is a world leader in terms of entertainment and technology, and Sony's strategic investment really demonstrate their confidence in Bilibili's growth potential and our unique positioning in the China's entertainment market. On top of the animation and games, Mr. Chen mentioned that we are also hoping to work with Sony on other aspects, including music as well as movies. We're hoping to really bringing more world-class premium content to satisfy our growing user needs.
好，非常感谢。
Your next question comes from Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, Alex.
你好，管理层，谢谢接受我的提问。我第一个问题想问一下，现在一季度已经做到1.7个亿的MAU，那么你们其实今年1.8个亿已经非常接近了，而且明年2.2个亿这个目标指引会不会进一步的上调呢？第二个问题想问一下，刚才有提到PUGV这个市场，想问一下关于这方面的竞争，因为现在很多不同的平台都能给很多的方便的工具，Up主去上载内容，他们也有很多的奖金的激励。请问管理层怎么看这些Up主的留存和他们在其他平台都上载内容，在这方面的竞争，如果要看这些PUGV的回报率，我们应该去怎么看？谢谢。
I'll translate my question. My first question is regarding MAU targets. As we already achieved more than 170 million MAUs in the first quarter, should we expect to revise up the full-year target and also next year? My second question is related to PUGV competition. There are many more platforms allowing content creators to upload platform, and they also provide a lot of easy tools and cash returns to these content creators. How should we see the ROI of PUGV in future? Thank you.
Okay. Regarding the first question on the user target, we are confident to say we are going to achieve our user target in advance. When we get there, we'll discuss further about raising our user target.
Your second question about the competition, I think the foundation of your question relies on how we're able to keep our content creator, or essentially how we are able to grow our content creators. As you can see from our Q1's data, that actually we have the experience of very fast growth in terms of our active content creator and their content creation. A number of content creator with more than over 10,000 followers, the growth rate is also expediting. All of that means we have cultivated a very healthy ecosystem that allows our content creators to grow on our platform. The mechanism behind that is to truly respect the high-quality content and respect the high-quality content creators, and always put the quality in our priority. It's much easier said than done.
You have to persist that principle for over 10 years, and to make sure this mechanism that helps you keep attracting and retaining those users. As you can see, actually those top content creator are staying with us and growing with Bilibili. I think that's the key competitive edge Bilibili has compared with other competitors.
That concludes the question and answer session for today. I would now like to hand the conference back over to management for any additional or closing comments.
All right. Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact myself, Juliet Yang, Bilibili Senior IR Director, or TPG Investor Relations. Our contact information for IR in both China and the U.S. can be found on today's press release. Have a great day.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for all participating today. You may now all disconnect.