BEIJING, May 25 (TMTPOST)— Kuaishou Technology, operator of one of the most popular short video apps in China, posted better-than-expected performance in the start of the year in spite of ongoing challenges from the overall economic landscape in its home market.

Source: Visual China

During the first quarter of the year, Kuaishou’s revenue rose 23.8% year-over-year (YoY) to RMB21.07 billion (US$3.2 billion), beating the Wall Street’s estimates of RMB20.6 billion, and its adjusted net loss narrowed to RMB3.72 billion from the loss of RMB5.65 billion a year earlier, compared with the market forecasted loss of RMB4.46 billion. Online marketing service, the largest income source of the company, increased to RMB11.4 billion, representing the slowest YoY growth of 32.6% since it went public in February, 2021. The Hong Kong-listed company said the slowdown largely resulted from the offseason of the advertising industry, China’s cooling economic growth and the country’s Covid-19 resurgence. E-commerce, a business in small proportion of less than 9% of total sales, saw a faster growth of 54.6% in revenue, up from the previous quarter’s 40.2%. As of the end of the quarter, The gross merchandise volume (GMV) on the company’s platform reached RMB17.51 billion, increasing 47.7% YoY.

Thanks to effect of events including the seven-day Chinese New Year festival and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Kuaishou maintained high user engagement for its app as it boasted 323 million daily active users (DAUs) and 598 million monthly active users (MAUs) in the first quarter, both setting new record for three consecutive quarters, while the YoY increase slowed to 17% and 15% respectively from the last quarter of 2021’s 19.2% and 21.5%. The quarterly user traffic jumped more than 50% from the same period last year.

“We achieved satisfactory operation results in all the businesses in the first quarter, even under the very challenging surrounding,” Cheng Yixiao, the Chief Executive Officer of Kuaishou commented. Cheng said his company would continue to be engaged in creating more values for users and empowering more industries, advertisers and merchants through short videos and live-streaming, especially during the Covid pandemic.