Tang Yan, Chairman and CEO of Hello Group, said, "We delivered solid results in the first quarter, laying a good foundation for our business development in the post-pandemic era. Tantan delivered its first quarterly profit at the operating level, and the Momo cash cow business maintained its productivity thanks to our solid cost control, both of which contributed to the improvement of Hello Group's profitability."
Hello Group Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "Hello Group", Chinese: 挚文集团, NASDAQ: MOMO) recently announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2023. The financial results show that in Q1 2023, Hello Group's total net revenue was CNY 2.82 billion (USD 410.5 million), down 10.5% compared to CNY 3.15 billion in the same period last year; net income attributable to Hello Group Inc. was CNY 390 million, an increase of 34.6% compared to CNY 290 million in the same period last year.
In terms of main business segments, in Q1 2023, Hello Group's total value-added service revenues were CNY 1.36 billion, down 8.2% year-over-year; mobile marketing revenues were CNY 21.1 million, a decrease of 24.40% from the same period last year; mobile games revenues were CNY 3.7 million, down 85.50% over the previous year; net revenue from the Momo segment decreased from CNY 2.79 billion in Q1 2022 to CNY 2.51 billion in Q1 2023, down 11.51%; and net income from the Tantan segment was CNY 309 million, a decrease of 11.58% year-over-year.
Founded in 2011, Hello Group is a leading provider of mobile-based social networking services in China. In December 2014, the company was listed on the NASDAQ exchange in the U.S. According to the financial report, in March 2023, the monthly active users of the main app Momo were 106.5 million and the monthly active users of the Tantan app were 19.5 million.
In recent years, Hello Group has accelerated its globalization strategy. In 2021, Hello Group focused on Southeast Asia, with Tantan once surpassing Tinder in terms of downloads and active users in Indonesia. In 2022, Hello Group launched Soulchill in the Middle East market, with a significant increase in paid users and revenue in the first quarter after increasing revenue-oriented operations. In the same year, the company launched "Storybrooke", a Disney-style simulation game for female users in Europe and the US, which achieved rapid growth and steadily increasing ROI.
The major competitors of Hello Group mainly include Chinese companies such as Soul (Chinese: 上海任意门科技有限公司) and Tencent (Chinese: 腾讯), as well as international players such as Facebook and Microsoft from the US.
As of press time, Hello Group closed at USD 9.36 apiece, with a market cap of USD 1.77 billion.