Game live-streaming platform Douyu recorded surging revenue, net profit, and strong growth in paying users in the first quarter of 2019, according to updates the company made to its US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
Total revenues increased 123.4% year on year to reach RMB 1.49 billion (around $222 million), with approximately 90.9% coming from the company’s livestreaming services, which grew 149.2% year on year. Growth was driven by a sharp uptick in the number of paying users and average revenue per paying user (ARPPU), which Douyu attributed to its cultivation of user paying habits.
Douyu booked RMB 18 million in net profit for the quarter ended March 31. In the same period last year, the company recorded a net loss of close to RMB 150 million.
The number of paying users reached 6 million in Q1, a 66.7% year-on-year increase, surpassing its biggest rival, US-listed Huya, with 5.4 million paying users as of the end of Q1 2019. Douyu’s ARPPU rose 51.7% year-on-year to RMB 226 but still lagged Huya’s ARPPU of RMB 287 during the same period.
The number of average total monthly active users (MAUs), which includes both PC and mobile users, rose 25.7% year on year to 159 million, beating Huya’s 124 million for the same period and making Douyu China’s largest game-focused live-streaming platform. Total daily time spent per active user on Douyu also rose by a third to 56 minutes compared with the same period a year earlier.
Douyu continued to lead in star game streamer recruitment. The company has exclusive agreements with 51 out of the top 100 game livestreamers in China as of the first quarter of 2019, eight of which are the 10 most popular livestreamers in the country according to iResearch cited in the company filing.
However, cost of revenues also doubled year on year to RMB 1.29 billion, mainly due to the increase in revenue-sharing fees and content costs, partly offset by improved operating efficiency and cost-control measures.
Douyu filed for an IPO in April to raise $500 million in a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and BofA Merrill Lynch were the joint bookrunners for the deal.
–This article originally appeared on TechNode.
