NetEase Inc (NTES) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

NetEase Inc (NASDAQ: NTES) Q4 2022 earnings call dated Feb. 23, 2023

Corporate Participants:

Margaret Shi — Director, Investor Relations

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Alicia Yap — Citigroup — Analyst

Yang Bai — CICC — Analyst

Lincoln Kong — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Natalie Wu — Haitong International — Analyst

Alex Poon — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Felix Liu — UBS — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good day and welcome to the NetEase 2022 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time. I would like to turn the conference over to Margaret Shi. IR Director of NetEase. Please go ahead.

Margaret Shi — Director, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Please note the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements relating to future performance of the company and are intended to qualify for the Safe Harbor from liability as established by the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions and other factors. Some of these risks are beyond the company’s control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today’s press release and in this discussion.

A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect NetEase’s business and the financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 20-F and the announcement of the filings on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company does not undertake any obligation to update its forward-looking information, except as required by law.

During today’s call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only. For a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the 2022 fourth quarter and full year earnings news release issued earlier today. As a reminder, the conference is being recorded.

In addition, on the investor presentation and a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on the NetEase corporate website at ir.netease.com. Joining us today on the call from NetEase senior management team is Mr. William Ding, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Charles Yang, Chief Financial Officer, as well as other members of senior management team.

I will now turn the call over to Charles who will read the prepared remarks on behalf of William.

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Margaret. And thank you everyone for participating in today’s call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that all percentages are calculated based on RMB. 2022 marks another year of solid growth for NetEase. Healthy development in each of our core businesses pave the way for meaningful financial gains. We achieved another record-high net revenues of RMB96.5 billion for the full-year, up 10% Year-over-Year, with games and related value-added services coming in at RMB74.6 billion for 2022 [Phonetic], also up 10% Year-over-Year.

This demonstrates NetEase’s unique ability to deliver solid and sustainable growth throughout different macro cycles we’ve time proven track-record. In the fourth-quarter players continues to show their strong passion for our legacy titles including Fantasy Westward Journey Online and the Westward Journey Online Series. With our consistent rollout of content updates, these games have been staying at the forefront of the market for almost two decades, acclaimed for their robust ecosystem an depth in their game design. Adding to their success, we will soon introduce Westward Journey Return, a more casual and lite version of the legacy IP. This game is designed to retain the essence of the franchise and has spark, a resurgence of interest amongst older fans, giving them an opportunity to relive cherished memories. With this new addition, we anticipate a further expansion of our user base of the Westward Journey Online franchise.

Our new game Eggy Party took game market in China by storm in the fourth quarter. The game was initially launched in May of last year and the number of daily active users has been continuously growing after a few months of operation and fine tuning. During the Chinese New Year, Eggy Party further grew its user base exponentially through word-of-mouth and scaled new heights to the number three position in China’s iOS grossing chart. It’s daily active users has now exceeded 30 million, making it the largest gain in NetEase history in terms of user scale.

Adding to the dynamic and interactive gaming experiences that we produced in-house, Eggy Party distinguishes itself from other party games through the unique contribution of user-generated content. Players of Eggy Party are encouraged to take advantage of a diverse toolset available in editor mode to design and publish new levels on the platform. As a result, player engagement with user-generated content has further enriched the content spectrum on top of our in-house PGC content. This setup creates a virtuous cycle that continually adds fresh content to the platform and enhances player engagement and loyalty. With a goal of cultivating a driving and self-sustaining ecosystem with long-lasting potential, we will continue to provide these players with tools and incentives to inspire and empower them to generate even more content.

While Eggy Party represents a huge breakthrough for us in terms of our efforts to expand into casual games, we have been steadily building up our capabilities through many great gains over the past few years. For example, our award-winning adventure mobile game Sky which was launched in 2019, also delivered a strong performance in the fourth-quarter. Sky offers players a heartwarming gameplay experience and has established a dynamic and passionate fan community. With a cool Halloween updates during the quarter, Sky also surged to the top position on China’s iOS top grossing charts. While experiencing significant progress in casual games, we have also maintained our strong presence in the hardcore genre. This is evidenced by the sustained popularity of our key titles such as Invincible and the mobile version of New Ghost.

Now let’s move on to our pipeline. 2023 is exciting. We assessed to expand our reach even further with a host of new titles. We have already received license approval in China for a number of exciting titles such as Justice mobile game, Racing Master, Badlanders. Starting with the Justice mobile game, it complements the success of the PC version and aimed to be rolled out later this year. The mobile version will recreate the vivid world of the Song Dynasty on mobile devices with cutting edge game technologies such as Real-time ray tracing for amazing graphics that brings in games scenes to life.

With extensive support of a highly-skilled and experienced development team, Justice mobile game boasts a wealth of exciting and engaging content that players can enjoy for a sustained lifecycle. Equally importantly as a next-generation MMO, this game represents a major evolution beyond the conventional norms of player interaction within the MMO genre, offering a truly unique game experience.

We think the captivating and immersive open world experiences we have created with Justice mobile game will continue to raise the bar for both MMOs and the broader mobile gaming industry.

Second, the launch of Racing Master is also on track. As our second car racing game, Racing Master boasts a AAA quality racing stimulation. Players can expect an authentic racing experience with dynamic car handling and performance. With a range of over 100 licensed vehicles from renowned car brands globally, players can fully immerse themselves in the thrilling world of racing and experiencing like never before.

As for Badlanders, it is our next-generation looter shooting mobile games featuring a brand-new escape mechanism and exciting looting experience on the battlefield. We will go through rounds of testing and hope we can bring this game to live soon.

On the international front, we are preparing the highly-anticipated global launch of our Harry Potter Magic Awakened. Our team is making dedicated efforts to continue enhancing and refining its gameplay and user experience, ensuring that our global players will live the amazing wizardry live on both mobile and PC. At the same time, we are also working on the series of expansion packs that will be ready to go so that our global players will always have plenty of engaging content. Looking beyond these launches, we continue to enhance our robust pipeline and are actively working on a variety of exciting new game titles including Naraka: Bladepoint mobile version. These pipeline games are making solid progress and show great potential. In the fourth-quarter, we have also made further progress in our global expansion assets. For example, we are thrilled to welcome Canadian-based SkyBox Labs to the NetEase game family. SkyBox Labs has an impressive track record in game development and has contributed to some of the industry’s most renounced franchises such as Halo Infinite, Minecraft, and Fallout 76.

Earlier this month, we also announced the establishments of Spliced, a new global game studio. Spliced is driven by a talented group of passionate industry gurus from a variety of backgrounds, including participating in the development of major game franchises like GTA, Call of Duty, The Thing, Rocket League and Red Dead Redemption. We value their dedication and innovative approach and look-forward to supporting the development of their latest project, which seeks to redefine gaming and how we engage with it. We are excited to see what’s [Indecipherable] Spliced will bring to the industry and the impact they will have on the gaming landscape.

After years of planning, we’ve built a robust portfolio of NetEase global game studios spanning multiple continents and established strong connections with the best-in-class talent within the global developers communities. As we further expand our global ambition, we are unwavering in our commitment to providing the support and resources needed to unleash the full potential of games and more broadly speaking, interactive entertainment.

In 2023, we will remain dedicated to fostering an environment where our talented developers can harness their full ability and bring their innovative ideas to life with the ultimate goal of creating uplifting experiences and next-generation blockbuster game franchises for our global players.

Moving on to Youdao. During the fourth-quarter, Youdao achieved record-breaking net revenues of RMB1.5 billion and for the first time ever a positive income from operations, which totaled RMB25 million. This impressive outcome is a testament to our constant efforts to provide cutting-edge updates for our smart devices and enhance our learning services. Net revenues from smart devices hit RMB407 million, up 28% Year-over-Year in Q4. Thanks to the successful launch of new products. Our new product Youdao Dictionary Pen P5 now has translation capabilities across more than 100 languages and expand our dictionary vocabulary in 16 professional fields such as economics, law, medicine and computer science. It’s user experience is further improved with even greater recognition, accuracy, leveraging our natural language processing technology.

We also launched the Youdao smart learning Pad X10 with an improved learning dashboard, supported by AI for better personalized learning experiences. The sharpened iterations of our smart devices have garnered robust demand from customers, translating directly to substantial growth in sales.

Our STEAM courses delivered another quarter of strong growth. In Q4, we collaborated with Minecraft education edition and successfully launched enriched updates to Youdao literature. Youdao literature is an online learning app that provide an immersive learning experience aimed at developing a comprehensive range of skills. Using artificial intelligence technology Youdao literature deliveries a wealth of engaging learning materials that combine literature, traditional culture and stories, as well as tours of iconic architectures globally. The highly positive reception from learners and parents is evidenced by the app’s impressive subscription rate and renewal rate.

In addition, we strengthened our Youdao Go course offerings by introducing the Champion class led by Ke Jie, a world Champion in Go tournament. Our chunking class is part of a comprehensive learning path that covers everything from entry-level to advanced and culminates in the chunking level classes. This new offering was met with great success, bolstering gross billings by more than 50% in Q4 Year-over-Year, along with a remarkable retention rate.

Looking ahead, we will continue to focus on technological innovation and leverage our cutting-edge technology to ensure the long-term success of our smart devices and learning services amongst others.

Now let’s look at our Cloud Music business. In 2022, we achieved record financial results while enhancing our music inspired offerings and differentiated music ecosystem. Total net revenues for Cloud Music in 2022 were RMB9 billion, representing 29% growth Year-over-Year. Due to steady sales growth rate and an optimized cost structure, we continue to see strong gross margin expansion, which reached 14.4% for the year and 17.8% in Q4, up from just 2% and 4.1% respectively from the previous year. We’ve continued efforts to provide better user experiences and bring music lovers, broader music listening stereos. Our total MAUs for 2022 was RMB189.4 million, up 4% year-over-year and our paying ratio rose to 20.2% in 2022, up from 15.8% in 2021 underpinned by our high-quality and young user community ongoing content enhancement initiatives and continued innovation to our unique features.

Recently, we signed several licensing agreements with major labels such as Being Music which produces music for nationally renowned stars including [Indecipherable] and top Japanese music label Pony Canyon. Additionally, we renewed our cooperation with Payback, one of Japan’s largest music labels. Throughout 2022, we also established partnerships with other leading Asian labels, including SM entertainment, YG entertainment, Emperor Entertainment Group, China Record Group, Fenghuang Qiushi, Modern Sky, and [Technical Issues] Entertainment. By continuously expanding our music library, we are working to provide even broader selection of offerings to our community of music enthusiasts.

Digital albums, particularly those from well-renowned artists such as [Indecipherable] and [Indecipherable] witnessed impressive sales in Q4, demonstrating high-quality audience base, deep user engagement and user’s increasing willingness to pay for premium content on our Cloud Music platform.

Meanwhile, the top 10 best-selling digital albums of 2022 on our platform span diverse music categories including Chinese Pop, K-Pop, Western Pop, Chinese folk songs and alternative rock, showcasing the personalized music taste of our young and diversified user base. With an unwavering commitment to fostering an inspiring environment in which musicians are encouraged and empowered to create, we introduced several new forums to support this effort. We launched Music Talk, an online column that allows musicians to exchange ideas on professional topics that help with creation. We also rolled-out the original music zone and the local zone to help music lovers explore new music content and expand independent artists exposure. By the end of 2022, the number of registered independent artists on our platform has surpassed 600,000. Our in-house music studios also made solid progress, popularizing a batch of hit songs, including Goodbye Monica, [Indecipherable] and demonstrating our ability to produce excellent music content organically. And it is one of the many reasons that sets our platform unique. Going-forward, we will continue to prioritize product innovation and content creation to further grow our community.

Moving on to Yanxuan, in the fourth-quarter, our private-label consumer brand launched more popular products through diversified channels, adding to our concentrated categories like pet supplies, home cleaning products and home furniture. We released popular items such as detergents, bathroom fragrances and Chinese New Year gift boxes. We will continue to focus on original design, facilitating pleasant lifestyle options for consumers.

Looking at our business as a whole, we are on to have been recognized for our contributions to society in terms of our environmental, social and governance practices. We were recently added to the 2022 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and continue to obtain outstanding ESG scores on MSCI and Sustainalytics. Furthermore, our dedication to diversity and equality has led to our second year of inclusion in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index. We remain committed to continuing the work of advancing the quality, diversity and inclusion and building a company where people are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.

We believe a truly inclusive workplace will be viewed with creativity, innovation and development, and this motivates us to push forward. During 2022, we continued strong performance in each of our business lines and made new progress in each major vertical we operate in. Our extensive portfolio of products and services are reaching audience on a broader scale as we move forward to our global aspirations. And with a solid ground we gained across our businesses, we believe that we are well-positioned to achieve even more in 2023 and beyond.

Looking-forward, we will continue to innovate, diversify and expand our reach to generate value to our users and the broader stakeholder community. This concludes William’s comments.

I will now provide a very brief review of 2022 annual results with a focus on the fourth-quarter. Given the limited time on today’s call, I will be presenting some abbreviated financial highlights. We encourage you to read-through our press release issued earlier today for further details. Our total net revenues for 2022 were RMB96.5 billion or $14 billion, representing a 10% increase Year-over-Year. For the fourth-quarter, total revenues were RMB25.4 billion or $3.7 billion, up 4% Year-over-Year. For 2022, our net revenues from gains and related value-added services were RMB74.6 billion, up 10% from 2021.

Despite a high base in 2021, total net revenues from our games and related VAS continued Year-over-Year growth in the first-quarter, reaching RMB19.1 billion, an increase of 2% Year-over-Year. The growth was primarily due to increased revenue contribution from both our existing games such as Fantasy Westward Journey Online and Fantasy Westward Journey mobile game and our new blockbuster Diablo Immortal, which we introduced mid of the year last year.

Revenues from mobile games continue to make up a lion’s share of our games businesses, accounting for 66% of our total net revenues in the fourth-quarter and 67% for the full-year. The Youdao net revenues for 2022 reached RMB5 billion and in the fourth-quarter were up 9% Year-over-Year to reach RMB1.5billion, primarily due to increased sales of our new services and smart devices. NetEase Cloud Music’s net revenues were RMB9 billion for the full-year, up 29% Year-over-Year and up 26% Year-over-Year in the fourth-quarter to reach RMB2.4 billion. The increase was mainly due to the contribution from membership subscription and digital album sales.

Total revenues for innovative businesses and others were RMB7.9 billion for the year, up 7% Year-over-Year. And in Q4, this segment recorded RMB2.4 billion net revenues, up 3% Year-over-Year, mainly due to increased revenue contribution from Yanxuan. Our total gross profit margin was relatively flat in the fourth-quarter at 52.2% compared with 53% for the same period in 2021.

Looking at our fourth-quarter margins in more details, GP margin was 59.1% for our games and related VAS compared with 60.9% in the same-period of last year. The slight decrease was mainly due to the one-off recognition of royalty fees related to certain licensed games. Improved margins in our smart devices segment drove Youdao’s GP margin expansion to 53.3% in the fourth-quarter compared with 60.7% in the same period of last year. The Year-over-Year increase was mainly due to the robust sales of new smart devices, which carry higher GP margins.

Gross profit margin for Cloud Music continues to improve in the fourth-quarter, climbing to 17.8% versus 4.1% in the same period a year-ago. The significant margin improvement primarily resulted from strong top-line growth, as well as improved efficiency in content investment. For our innovative businesses and others, GP margin was 31.5% in the fourth-quarter, slightly improved from 30.5% in the same period of previous year.

Total operating expenses for the fourth-quarter was RMB8.8 billion or 35% of our total net revenues. Taking a closer look, our selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of total net revenues were largely stable Year-over-Year, both for the fourth-quarter and for the full-year at 13.5% and 13.9% respectively.

Our R&D expenses as a percentage of total net revenues also remained stable Year-over-Year at 16.1% in the fourth quarter compared with 15.8% for the same period last year. On a full-year basis, R&D expenses as a percentage of full-year net revenues slightly improved to 15.6%, compared with 16.1% in 2021. We remain committed to investing in content creation and product development. We are also seeing leverage in our R&D investments in the longer-term. Our other income was RMB343 million for the fourth-quarter compared with RMB3 billion last quarter. The high base from last quarter was mainly due to one-off gain resulting from the disposal of investments, as well as financial gains resulting from fluctuations in exchange rates.

Effective tax-rate was 20.7 for the full-year and 20.2 for the fourth quarter. As a general rule, reminder, our effective tax-rate is presented on an accrual basis and the tax credit is differed from each of our legal entities at different time period depending on applicable policies and our operations. Our non-GAAP net income from continuing operations attributable to shareholders for the fourth quarter totaled RMB4.8 billion or $698 million. Non-GAAP basic earnings per ADS from continuing operations for the fourth quarter was $1.08 or $0.22 per common share.

Additionally, our cash position remains strong. As of year end, our net cash position was about RMB95.6 billion compared with RMB85.6 billion at the end of 2021. In accordance with our dividend policy, we are very pleased to report that our Board of Directors has approved a dividend of $0.054 per common share or $0.27 for ADS.

Lastly, we continue to buy-back shares during the period under our prior share repurchase program for up to $3 billion, which was completed on January 9, 2023. Approximately $34 million ADS has been repurchased under this program. And our Board has announced a new share repurchase program of up to $5 billion of the company’s ADS and ordinary shares in open market transactions for a period not to exceed 36 months commencing on January 10, 2023. Meanwhile, under NetEase purchase program for up to $15 million of Youdao’s ADS, NetEase’s purchased approximately $2.7 million of Youdao’s ADS for a total cost of about $22 million as of December 31st 2022. Thank you for your attention. We would like now to open the call to your questions.

Operator, let’s go to the Q&A.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from Alicia Yap with Citigroup. Please go-ahead.

Alicia Yap — Citigroup — Analyst

[Foreign Speech]. Can management comment on the domestic gaming landscape. So with domestic games approval process normalizing, will NetEase reallocate more resources to domestic game development or will put more resource in content that is targeted specifically towards Chinese gamer or will you actually still retain your strategy of putting more resource into the overseas games development. Thank you.

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

[Foreign Speech]. The process of license has started normalized, which is very good news for us. So I think in the past we’ve always had the same focus on both China market and the global market. So there’s no real change in direction. We’ll continue to place the equal emphasis on both the China market and the global market. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Yang Bai from CICC. Please go-ahead.

Yang Bai — CICC — Analyst

[Foreign Speech]. Can you comment on the competitive landscape in the overseas gaming market? What are the current advantages and the gaps between NetEase’s overseas game and other overseas leading game companies and also NetEase has continued to make much progress in overseas market this year. What kind of synergies can be created between domestic and overseas? Are there any products under development to share results? Thank you.

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

[Foreign Speech] What we are observing currently is that overseas games are actually very different. For the Western gameplay as they prefer PC games and console game, for them the mobile games are more of a casual type. For the Japanese market, we think the players will accept both PC games and the mobile games. For China market, it is obviously they are more inclined to play mobile games.

So in terms of content creation, PC games and mobile games are very different in design and in developing. So it is a challenge, but I’m very confident that NetEase will find a solution to create games that appeal to both the China market and the international audience. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Lincoln Kong. With Goldman Sachs. Please go-ahead.

Lincoln Kong — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

[Foreign Speech] So my question is about the Justice mobile. So we’re sitting this game having gotten the approval. So can management provide some update in terms of the development and progress and the launching time for Justice mobile and how does this game sort of compare with the PC version? And we also have seen this game sort of impact [Indecipherable]]. Thank you.

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

[Foreign Speech].Thank you. So yes, we got the license approval in January, and we’re going through the final phase of testing now, and hopefully we’ll be able to introduce the game to you in the third half of this year. In terms of our mobile game version, I think we are more focused on the game experience in terms that we are trying to make a different, trying to create game that appeals to different type of gamers, whether it’s RPG gamer or no RPG gamer.

And we think we’ve achieved lots of breakthroughs on top of a traditional MMO RPG user experience through advanced technologies such as AI. The aim is to create more personalized experience for our gaming users. And I think that this is a game that is built on our 20 years of experience in MMO, and on top of that, we have delivered more innovative experience. So, I think it’s a very exciting game for our gamers. Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Natalie Wu with Haitong International. Please go ahead.

Natalie Wu — Haitong International — Analyst

[Foreign Speech]. My question, a party recorded quite a success recently. Just wondering how should we think about the success? As a matter of fact, we noticed that NetEase has been witnessing positive surprises with successful launch of new things more frequently in the past several years or should I say, that may show up becomes higher business for company. That makes us wondering if it is more simple to view the Eggy Party as randomly single title success or it is as a result of our refined development and operation skills. Just wondering any kind of new games in your pipeline that compelled Eggy Party with that we can expect.

Another question for the games longevity, actually some of your games enjoy quite great longevity like [Technical Issues], but some [Technical Issues] so, just curious from management point of view if there is a good way for us to have a better judgment on the games longevity forward, let’s say, how should we think about the longevity thing of the Eggy Party? Thank you.

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

[Foreign Speech]. Yeah, so Eggy Party is one of the very successful games we recently launched and this is the type of game that you have fun your friends and family. So we think, what you worry about probably will not happen because we learn from our mistakes. So we hope this is a game that will continue to bring joy to our gamers.

We will dedicate more resources on to the game to ensure a longevity of that game. When we talk about longevity, we need at least 10 years, games like FWJ has been running for more than two decades. So we hope to replicate the similar types of longevity when in all of our games. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Alex Poon with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Alex Poon — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

[Foreign Speech] Thanks, management for taking my question. My first question is related to Naraka: Bladepoint, the console performance on Xbox and our future plans with PS4, PS5 and mobile version and international launch. My second question is related to our overall margin trend in the next 22 years, considering we have Youdao and Yanxuan. They are improving their margins and gaining business. We are investing more R&D and G&A in overseas market. Thank you very much.

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

[Foreign Speech] So our Naraka: Bladepoint was launched last June, our Xbox, and we are pleased to have joined the FCP program. And so since we have seen a huge number of gamers in China now again, and we have been optimizing using experience based on their feedback, and we’ve been working tirelessly with our Montreal office and to ensure we can deliver the best experience for our users.

And based on those efforts we have a more — even more improved version with our PS5 version. And so we are going through testing for the PS5 version. And in terms of mobile games, also we’re going through — we are going through testing stages for that game, and we hope that — we’re pretty confident that the mobile game will kind of replicate the same level of user experience as one would on the original PC version. Thank you.

Right, Alex. And, and to your second question on the margin outlook, the next two to three years, our game margin will remain relatively stable. You are right that for our overseas studios, they are in an investment phase and likely the games developed by our overseas seize game studios will only come into the market in 2025 and beyond.

However, we do have a very strong and sizable existing portfolio of games that provides a very, very strong support to cash flow, to profitability, to the margins. And for our subsidiaries like Cloud Music, Youdao, they have already demonstrated a clear trend of narrowing down the losses.

We are very confident give them another six to eight quarter, both businesses are very, very optimistic to be self-sustainable and breaking even. So all in all, I think in the next two to three years, our margins will be steady and slightly improving with positive surprises coming in 2025 beyond, which will then primarily be filled by the commercial launch of our overseas games that’s currently in the development phase.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Felix Liu with UBS. Please go ahead.

Felix Liu — UBS — Analyst

[Foreign Speech]. Okay. Let me translate myself. Thank you management for taking my question. You mentioned the improved regulation outlook in China about game license. We’re definitely happy to see that. outside of the license gain that you already mentioned if we look into second half this year and maybe 2024, could you give us some spoilers, the big titles or big [Technical Issues] that you have a good pipeline for? Thank you.

Charles Yang — Chief Financial Officer

[Foreign Speech]. Okay. I’m sure this year and next year and many years ahead, we will continue to see more games to be launched, new games to be launched from NetEase. The subject innovation is perpetual and we will continue to focus on innovating our game play and our game quality. And you’ve seen we — and we are confident, we’ll continue to be able to deliver strong blockbuster games to the market year after year.

Last year, we had amazing blockbuster Bladepoint. This year we have Eggy Party. So those are breakthroughs that were been equally successful in the cold weapon type of [Technical Issues] games and we are equally successful in the casual games that you play with family and friends. So, I’m very confident you’ll continue to see new, exciting, innovative games coming from different genre out of NetEase. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to the management for any additional or closing comments.

Margaret Shi — Director, Investor Relations

Thank you again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us directly or financial communications. Have a great day. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]