BEIJING, August 11 (TMTPost)— Overseas businesses, especially TikTok, are becoming more important for ByteDance Ltd.  as its growth in home market experienced a sharp slowdown these years.

Credit：Visual China

ByteDance recorded revenue of US$85 billion last year with a 38% yearly increase, mainly spurred by businesses outside China, The Information cited people with knowledge of the financial results earlier this week.  The U.S. tech media outlet reported revenue from China grew to US $69 billion with at growth rate of 25%, about one third of annual growth for the year 2021, as growth in the market had slowed to 68% that year, down from rates of 150% and 105% in 2019 and 2020 respectively. In comparison,TikTok as well as video games, business softwares and other businesses overseas contributed US$16 billion last year, more than doubling US $6.5 billion of sales in 2021. These overseas operations only generated US$1.2 billion in year 2020.

It was reported that ByteDance’s worldwide daily active users (DAUs) excluding those in China reached 840 million as of late 2022, rising 40% from a year ago, and DAUs in domestic market bumped up 13% to 850 million.    

ByteDance also delivered a robust growth at the bottom line. The Information learned that it operating income surged 80% to US$18 billion and net income gained 67% to US$15 billion last year. Its operating margin in 2022 stood at 21%, almost on par with that of two U.S. internet giants Meta and Alphabet, whose margin were declined to 25% and 26% respectively, hit by a slump in digital advertising market that year.

ByteDance didn’t respond to TMTPost’s request for confirmation of The Information’s data. 

If the recent data were accurate, ByteDance sales would match its archrival Tencent Holdings Ltd. Tencent disclosed in April that total revenue in 2022 fell 1% year-over-year (YoY) to RMB554.55 billion (US$80 billion), the first annual negative growth for the Shenzhen-based company founded in 1998. It was still better than the analysts’ forecast of RMB554.2 billion. The chairman and CEO Ma Huateng noted the changes his company made during 2022 such as increase in business efficiency, sharpening focus on core activities positioned it to benefit from, and contribute to, a rebound in China economic growth.

ByteDance management has cautioned growth prospect facing various headlines. The leading edge in content offerings, including Douyin, TikTok, and Toutiao, has diminished over the past year or two, CEO Liang Rubo said in an internal meeting held on March 16 to celebrate ByteDance’s 11th anniversary, according to Chinese tech media outlet 36Kr. “We are not very confident to say our work, either in terms of understanding in business or technical capability, is better than peers in China or the global market, as we are still facing severe competition,” Liang warned. He concluded one of the main goals ByteDance will achieve is to focus on two main businesses-- content offerings and e-commerce.

According to the report this week, Douyin’s e-commerce is one of ByteDance’s revenue pillars last year. Another The Information report in April said most of ByteDance’s growth came from its core advertising business in China, which generated about $10 billion, approximately 2.5 times greater than the revenue of the business in 2021. It also said the e-commerce gross merchandise volume (GMV) at Douyin, the sister app of TikTok that ByteDance operates in China, had a strong 76% growth to RMB1.41 trillion ($195 billion).

The growth that Douyin revealed later was even stronger. Douyin platfrom had a growth of 80% in gross merchandise volume (GMV) last year, and out of the annual volumes, the mall GMV increased 277% and GMV from the e-commerce search up 159%, Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin’s e-commerce unit, said at Douyin's Ecosystem Conference held in May. Wei said more than 30 per cent of the total GMV came from the "marketplace" channel. She added that the company will invest RMB10 billion yuan this year to help merchants grow their business on the platform.