Zhihu Inc. (NYSE:ZH) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: The next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Thomas Chong : [Foreign Language] My question is about margin and the OpEx trend. Can management comment about the outlook for our GP margin as well as the OpEx outlook? On that front, can management comment about the timing to achieve breakeven?

Henry Sha: So our outlook for the GP margin, that will somehow be more certain or more sustainable at around maybe 53% to 55% as we are improving our utilization. As you may know, as we introduced in the remarks that we said that we improve our utilization of the cloud services and the focus on improving the operation efficiency for the cost control. And as you can see, we have a shift in our revenue structure. And to see the business, for example, like Paid Membership as well as the Vocational Training business – maybe their margin is not as high as the Advertisement business, but going forward we believe that we will keep that around like — the GP margin will between 53% to 55%. That’s question one. About our OpEx trend, we believe that we have seen some like opportunities to lower the percent of our sales marketing as a percent of our revenue in the next year.

Because we are a content platform, so we believe that there is still some room space to do more like better cost control in the OpEx spending. And about the breakeven point, we believe that will happen in the next year.

Operator: The next question comes from Eileen Lin with China Renaissance.

Eileen Lin: [Foreign Language] I will translate myself. I have a follow-up question to Thomas’ question. Can management share more quarter-to-quarter trends for the breakeven timing? And is there any color you can share on the selling and marketing expense?

Henry Sha: Eileen, this is Henry. Because we are in the year-end budgeting work stream, so I think we will update with the markets our progress about the breakeven point. We believe that will be somehow some quarter – maybe one quarter next year. About the sales and marketing, as I mentioned in the previous question, we believe that there is still some like percentage point space to lower our sales and marketing as a percentage of our total revenue in the next year and in the next quarter. Yes, that’s my answer to your question.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Iris for any closing remarks.

Iris Liu: Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or Piacente Financial Communications. Thank you.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

Henry Sha: Thank you all.

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