Operator: Our next question comes from Alicia Yap from Citi. Please go ahead Alicia.
Alicia Yap : I have three questions. First, I wanted to follow up on the previous — Thomas questions on the advertising, Charles. So, can you elaborate — you mentioned it was a little bit sluggish and bouncing back is a little bit weaker than expected. So, do you expect the situation to actually continue into the next few months and also the rest of the year? Internally, is that worse than what you had previously expected? Or is this like worse than everybody has expected? So, this is the first question on advertising, just a follow-up.
Charles Zhang : I think it’s probably throughout the year, not just the quarter. And just like everyone — actually in Q2, you probably remember last quarter phone call, conference call that we have — we seem to note after the three years of the COVID lockdown, after — and we — everyone expected a stronger bounce back of economy. But then now in the middle of Q3, we are seeing — we’re not seeing that strong bounce back like everyone did — like everyone is seeing nothing. So pretty sluggish.
Alicia Yap : I understood. Would you also kind of attribute some of the reason natural events, like the flooding, to maybe kind of like amplify the magnitude? The overall macro sentiment is also getting softer or worse because of some of the natural events that happened as well?
Charles Zhang : I don’t know, the flooding just happened. It’s nothing to do with the flooding, but I think the overall macroeconomic situation, the export, the — people have less disposable income because people — so not having enough disposable income. People are not buying things or then the — if you don’t have export and people are not buying — does not have the money to buy things, then those products, there’s no sales of those products. Those companies then stop hiring job opportunity, and no job opportunities. So, it’s a negative downward. It’s a spiral down, right, trend. But I still — In terms of entire companies and a company like Sohu, I think I’m still not that pessimistic because if our people are not spending — large item spending like buying cars or buying houses.
Then in terms of cash, they probably have more cash to buy little things. So, like the subscription of — the monthly subscription our video drama membership or just playing games, playing online games, and consuming the social networks. And then so if the auto and some large item advertisers are kind of — the spending is declining a little bit, then probably some small items FMCG side could come up because China’s economy is still large and the population and the consumers — number of consumers pretty — is still the largest. So, I’m still kind of optimistic. So that’s why we are investing to continue to develop our social network and the information delivery and also social networks so that at this economic downtime, we take advantage of — we have — actually, we are more — we are actually cash-rich and we can spend it to grow our user base.
So, it’s a good time to grow our use base.
Alicia Yap : Okay. The second question I wanted to ask is gaming. You just mentioned on the small items. So, I think I understand your guidance hasn’t baked in the new TLBB launch. Just anything that you can share in terms of your expectation. Is it something that the game potentially, it could be a title that you guys — you haven’t seen it for a long time that you guys actually are looking very much looking forward for that launch, that you’re going to attract back some of the gamers and also potentially brings in the growth for the gaming business again? So, any expectations that you can share would be helpful.
