Bilibili has really become a "little broken station" now

This article is from WeChat official account: second tier investor, and the head picture is from Visual China

On Children's Day, Bilibili submitted an annual report with a completely different style from the past few years. Data shows that the Q1 revenue of Station B was 5.1 billion yuan, an increase of only 0.3%; The net loss significantly narrowed by 72% to 630 million yuan; After adjustment, the net loss still narrowed by 38% to 1 billion yuan.

After the financial report was released, the US stock market on Bilibili fell by over 7% at one point

At the user level, the monthly activity of Bilibili in the first quarter was 315 million, a slight increase from 293 million in the same period of 2022, symbolizing that Bilibili has officially entered the era of 300 million monthly activities. The daily activity has increased from 80 million in the same period of 2022 to 93.7 million, which is in line with the strategy of B Station's current emphasis on daily activity growth.

Unlike the significant loss exchange for significant growth that we have been familiar with in the past three years of the epidemic, in the first quarter when most technology internet companies resumed growth, B Station unexpectedly experienced a stagnation in growth, but also faintly saw the dawn of profitability.

This is consistent with the interpretation of the previous Q4 annual report by the "Zhong'er Investor", which is that B Station is giving up on the "Star Ocean" and pursuing to become a "small broken station" with a daily life of 100 million days and the ability to negotiate commercially. But the question arises, can Uncle Chen Rui lead the team to Station B?

Farewell to the starry sea, is that all for the little station?

There is an interesting question about Station B, whether the 300 million monthly and nearly 100 million daily life of Station B has really reached the growth ceiling, or whether it is the result of Uncle Chen Rui stepping on the brake. This is a highly divergent matter of cognition.

The growth rate of B station during the same period last year is still astonishing, with revenue growth, monthly and daily activity growth reaching 30%, at the cost of a huge loss of 2.3 billion yuan.

With almost no growth in revenue, the net loss of Station B has narrowed to 630 million, mainly due to saving money. The financial report shows that the operating costs of Station B decreased by 7% in the first quarter, while the revenue sharing cost directly related to UP's main revenue decreased by 8%;

At the same time, the sales and marketing expenses of B station decreased by 30% to 880 million, while in this era of artificial intelligence taking off, the research and development expenses that directly display the layout of cutting-edge technologies have hardly increased.

Saving money is certainly not without its cost. In terms of content business, it is reflected that UP owners have started to complain about not making money, and recently there has been a well-known UP owner shutdown event; Reflected in the market, the user growth rate of B station is declining, and the monthly live growth rate has decreased from 30% to less than 10%. Overall, reflecting the fact that Station B looks increasingly distant from the sea of stars, it is actually getting closer to the "small" broken station that can live 100 million days but lose less.

Behind the "Star Dome Railway" and "Blissful Pure Land", is it difficult for the anime platform to earn anime money?

Where is the problem? Looking at the revenue structure of B station, it has been rapidly changing in recent years. In the first quarter, the most eye-catching growth was in advertising revenue, with a year-on-year growth rate of 20% to 1.3 billion yuan.

But as the main source of revenue and profit when Bilibili went public, mobile gaming revenue decreased by 17% year-on-year to 1.1 billion yuan. In the financial report, Bilibili admitted that the decrease in revenue was due to a lack of new games during the same period.

Whether the revenue from B-station games can be overturned depends on this year's "Racecourse"

In recent years, the newly developed e-commerce platform on Bilibili, which is now IP derivatives, also declined by 15% to 510 million yuan in the first quarter. B station stated that this is due to a decrease in sales of comics, animations, and IP derivatives.

In other words, from the perspective of income structure, the development of anime mobile games and anime products in Station B is not very smooth, but the advertising sales are getting better and better. The conclusion is also very clear. Station B, a content platform famous for its anime traffic highland, is having trouble making anime money.

There are many short-term reasons behind this, but in the final analysis, Station B's past layout of anime content ecology was insufficient, and Station B failed to complete the layout of a series of upstream CPs with its advantages of high secondary flow. By analogy, Tencent did not establish an IEG (Tencent Interactive Entertainment Business Group) or invest in companies such as Riot during its development process.

This is essentially a strategic capability issue for B station. Reflecting on the market, there have been two representative events in video content and games recently. One is Miyou's once again successful Collapse: The Dome Railway. Although its output is far from Genshin Impact, it is still a first-line work. Station B is the intermodal carrier of 'Star Dome Railway', but its share has decreased compared to the previous work of 'Crash'.

Looking back at history, the success of the game IP "Crash" and even the success of the manufacturer of Miha Games can be said to have been greatly contributed by Bilibili. However, on the path of Miha Games evolving towards the world's top game developers, Bilibili can only become a passing customer with a small amount of money.

The movie "Pure Land of Jira" has been popular on Bilibili for almost ten years

In addition, in the second quarter, Blissful Pure Land, which also attracted the attention of the whole people and made a hot search, was a typical anime content that had been popular in Station B many years ago, but Station B could only share the flow money for so many years.

When Station B was listed that year, people mainly doubted the scale of anime audience and consumption potential, but when anime content really reached the high point of realization and House A waved money to spend, they found that Station B was getting harder to earn anime money. And B's reputation among the anime audience is getting worse and worse, which is a ghost story.

Can Station B really cross this technological cycle?

At the same time, the entire technology internet industry is also rapidly developing, while frugality is being pursued on Bilibili in order to achieve self consistency and profitability. In the first quarter, the rise of AIGC and AGI has become an industry consensus.

But while external technology companies and content platforms are trying to catch up with the trend, Bilibili is particularly quiet. Its research and development expenses in the first quarter only slightly increased by 2%, indicating that B Station is excited about the new technology.

But the problem is that as an important output and circulation channel of game content and anime content, Station B is almost certainly one of the first objects of AIGC wave reform.

Even if Bilibili, who focuses on making small and broken websites, does not keep up with the wave of big models, it must explore the transformation of AIGC's video content. But at least at this point in time, there are not many actions from Station B yet, and the strategic ability of Station B's management team is also full of doubts.

Can Station B pass through this technological cycle? I don't think it's easy to say.

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