JOYY Stock

JOYY Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates social entertainment platforms that offer live streaming, short-form videos, instant messaging, casual games and beyond. The company also operates a global smart commerce platform that enables merchants to build their brand online and sell their products to customers around the world.

The company operates in a number of markets across the globe, including North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Eastern Pacific regions and others. The number of global monthly active users on the company’s social entertainment platforms reached 267.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022.

JOYY operates several key platforms, including:

Live Streaming Platform—Bigo Live: Bigo Live is a leading global social live streaming platform. Bigo Live provides an interactive online stage for global users to host and watch live streaming sessions, share their life moments, showcase their talents and interact with people across the world. Bigo Live has extensive presence in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Eastern Pacific regions, among others.

Short-Form Video Platform—Likee: Likee is a leading global short-form video social platform. Likee empowers its users to easily discover create and share short videos, with the easy, all-in-one and powerful video creation tools as well as the personalized feeds. Likee is committed to building a long-term relationship with content creators, which in turn increases user engagement and boost connectivity. Likee has extensive presence in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Multiuser Social Networking Platform—Hago: Hago is a multiuser social networking platform. It provides over 400 casual games, integrating social features, such as audio and video multiuser chatrooms and 3D virtual interactive party games, which encourages users to connect and have fun. Hago has extensive presence in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South America.

Instant Messenger—imo: imo is a global instant messenger that provides audio and video communication services. It offers frictionless audio and video calls and other communication tools, such as group calls and document sharing, among others, fulfilling a variety of personal and business communication needs. It has attracted a massive and highly engaged user base in South Asia and the Middle East.

Smart Commerce Solution Provider—Shopline: Shopline is a global smart commerce enabler that provides an integrated omnichannel platform for merchants to create and grow their brands online and reach customers worldwide. Shopline provides merchants with various services to optimize their business, such as inventory and sales management, logistics, payment, marketing and data analytics. Shopline has helped over 500,000 merchants to launch and scale up their online businesses.

The company’s expertise in building and operating vibrant social entertainment platforms was tested and proven first in mainland China. In 2022, the company consolidated Shopline through further equity investments, diversifying its product offerings and expanding its global footprint.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is the backbone of the company’s business success and integrated to all critical aspects of its services and broader business operations. The company’s AI technology empowers product features and services, such as visual and voice recognition, personalized content recommendation and distribution, as well as automated product beta testing and critical corporate decision-making, such as budgeting, which not only improved user experience and enhanced its operational and managerial efficiency.

The company designed its social products, cultivated local content and launched online marketing campaigns tailored to the local cultures and preferences of its target markets. Such localized appeal resonates with users from different cultural backgrounds and differentiates the company’s products from others platforms.

With its diverse offerings, extensive global operational network and effective monetization capabilities, the company is well positioned to further grow its global presence and seize new growth opportunities.

Platforms and Products

Bigo Live

Bigo Live is a leading global social live streaming platform. Bigo Live enables its users to share their life moments, showcase their talents, socialize and connect with other users from all around the world through live streaming. Launched in 2016, Bigo Live has a strong presence in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Eastern Pacific regions, among others. Bigo Live is available in 22 languages and around 150 countries.

Bigo Live has built an engaged, interactive and diverse community. Bigo Live’s users come from different cultural backgrounds and have distinctive social needs. Bigo Live has been attracting more content creators and offering more localized content in various categories, such as music, dance, comedy, gaming and lifestyle, through cross-industry partnerships and localized activities.

Bigo Live has also been innovating its product features to enhance the quality and efficiency of users’ social experience. In 2022, Bigo Live launched a Virtual Live feature that enables users to create customized 3D digital avatars and enjoy live streaming using their virtual identities. Bigo Live also launched a Community feature that allows users to form and join different interest groups and quickly connect with like-minded people. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the average mobile monthly active users of Bigo Live reached 36.8 million.

Bigo Live monetizes its user base mainly through virtual tips for livestreaming. Users can purchase in-app virtual items and send them as virtual gifts to their favorite hosts to show appreciation and provide them with monetary rewards.

Among the various platforms operated by the company, Bigo Live is the largest revenue contributor. Bigo Live was ranked the second as the World’s Top Social Apps in terms of consumer spending in 2022, according to the data from Data.AI.

Likee

Likee is a leading global short-form video social platform. Likee enables users to easily discover, create and share short-form videos, empowered by its easy and all-in-one video creation tools, such as filters and special effects, and AI-backed personalized feed. Launched in 2017, Likee has a strong presence in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the average mobile monthly active users of Likee was 45.3 million.

In the past years, Likee has been dedicating its efforts to cultivate a localized and diverse content community. Likee has facilitated a large volume of user generated content to be produced and shared on a daily basis. Likee offers comprehensive creator support programs, providing creators across various genres with user traffic, creation tools, professional guidance, and diverse monetization methods to pave a path for their long-term personal growth and career development.

In 2022, Likee launched a community feature called Loop that helps users with similar interests connect with one another, which has in turned boosted user interaction and content quality within the interest groups.

Leveraging on Bigo Live’s local operational capabilities and successful monetization experience, Likee monetizes its user base mainly through virtual tips for live streaming, and it is also exploring other monetization opportunities, such as advertisements. It has made some preliminary progress on brand advertisements, helping brands to promote their businesses or products on Likee, via advertisements displayed on the app opening page and video feeds.

Hago

Hago is a multiuser social networking platform, which encourage users to connect and have fun. Launched in 2018, Hago has presence mainly in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South America. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the average mobile monthly active users of Hago was 6.7 million.

Following some strategic upgrades in the past two years, Hago has evolved from a platform primarily focused on casual games to a social platform that offers a variety of tools for engaging interactions. Users can make new acquaintances by playing multiplayer casual games (approximately 400 casual games are available on Hago), join video and audio chat rooms based on their interests, create and customize their 3D avatars in Hago Space and join Groups or Families with like-minded people for more frequent communication.

Hago monetizes its user base mainly through virtual tips for live streaming, and is also exploring other monetization opportunities, such as pay-to-play games, advertisements and virtual items.

imo

imo is a global instant messenger which provides audio and video communication service to its users. It offers smooth and stable international video calls and other features such as group calls and document sharing, fulfilling a variety of personal and business communication needs. It has a large and engaged user base in South Asia and the Middle East. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the average mobile monthly active users of imo reached 179.1 million.

In 2021, imo launched a new feature called VoiceClub, which is an online real-time voice chat communication space, enabling users to establish connections with users beyond their existing network. VoiceClub also enables users to send virtual gifts to their friends to express their support and appreciation.

imo monetizes its users mainly through advertisement and livestreaming. imo will continue to improve its communication experience and explore other monetization opportunities.

Shopline

Shopline is a global smart commerce enabler that provides an integrated omnichannel platform for merchants to create and grow their brands online and reach customers worldwide. Shopline provides merchants with various services to optimize their business, such as inventory and sales management, logistics, payment, marketing and data analytics, among others. Shopline has helped over 500,000 merchants to launch and scale their online businesses.

Shopline generates revenues through the sale of different subscription plans of its software solutions, and the ancillary fees and commissions from provision of related value-added solutions.

Global Branding and Marketing

Branding Strategy

With its growing global presence and its diverse product offerings, the company positions itself as a global technology company with an elevated group mission to enriching lives through technology. The company’s global brands, including Bigo Live, Likee, imo, Hago and Shopline, enable it to reach the full spectrum of coveted user and customer bases around the world.

Marketing Activities

The company devises and executes a variety of marketing plans tailored for its respective business and markets. For its social entertainment business, the company mainly employs performance-based advertising, social network marketing campaigns, as well as promotion through search engines and web portals, with an emphasis on efficiency and delivering measurable results. Furthermore, the company cooperates with application distributors, hardware manufacturers and other industry partners to attract user traffic. The company is also exploring innovative ways to enhance its user acquisition through various marketing activities, such as partnering with TV programs, online entertainment variety shows and dramas and others. For its smart commerce business, the company undertakes both online and offline marketing efforts to maximize its brand awareness and attract new merchants and ecosystem partners. The company organizes product marketing and awareness-driven campaigns aimed to inspire entrepreneurship and commerce digitalization. By attending offline exhibitions and industry summits, hosting global events and customer meetings and promoting its digital community (Shopline Blog) and other educational materials, the company intends to expand its customer reach and educate more small and medium-sized businesses on how to improve operating efficiency and achieve business success with Shopline.

Seasonality

The company’s results of operations of various products and services are subject to seasonal fluctuations, many of which are outside its control.

Competition

In relation to its global business, the company’s competitors primarily include global short-form video platforms, such as TikTok, and livestreaming platforms such as Twitch in certain regions. The company also faces competition from companies that provide smart commerce solutions for merchants, such as Shopify.

Technology

The company’s proprietary technologies are the backbone of its products and services. The company enhances its user experience though a variety of advanced technology, including its AI-based content recommendation technology, to accurately and efficiently identify and deliver tailored short-form video clips and live streaming content to its users.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms technologies

AI and algorithms technologies are embedded into the company’s technology DNA. For example, the company leverages its sophisticated machine learning models to enhance the effectiveness of its content tagging functions. The company has also implemented its AI-powered visual recognition technology into its content distribution engine so that it can, with the assistance from its large-scale deep neural network and various search-related technology, automatically tag and accurately recommend the most relevant short-form video clips and live streaming shows to its users.

In addition, the company is empowered by its cutting-edge computer vision (CV) and augmented reality (AR) technology to help its content creators in combining real life’s moments with virtual scenes to produce innovative and engaging video content. The company has launched Likee’s FaceMagic after years of R&D efforts in CV, which is able to help millions of creators on the platform to participate in virtual shows and share the astonishing moments with their fans.

QoS for online multi-media communications

Quality of Service, or QoS, assurance is a key element of any high-quality delivery of voice and video data over the internet. For live voice- or video-enabled communications, any data packet loss and jitter, or delay in transmission, is often immediately noticeable to users. The company devotes significant resources to maintain and develop a creative combination of multiple voice and voice-over internet protocol, or VOIP, quality assurance mechanisms to minimize data loss and jitter. The mechanisms the company employs include, but are not limited to, cloud-based intelligence routing, low-bitrate redundant solution, upstream-forward error correction and adaptive jitter. A special intelligent routing algorithm the company designed automatically seeks optimal ways of delivering voice and video data across its cloud-based network, enabling it to provide better QoS even when the QoS levels are lower on certain routes.

The company employs computer programs and design and implement a standardized set of measurements to help monitor its service quality. The company’s system periodically collects, and its team of experts analyzes, data from each of its data centers to evaluate the voice and video-quality for each user using a systematic standard.

The company’s adaptive audio and video encoding, transmission and decoding algorithms are conducive to delivering superior audio and video experience based on users’ local setup, including locations, devices, network condition and personal preference, optimizing both fluency and latency at the same time.

Large, Dedicated Cloud-Based Network Infrastructure

In 2022, the company continued to develop and expand its global data center network, to provide top-quality, real-time video and audio services to its users worldwide. The company’s infrastructure provides seamless integration and is highly customized for supporting its services with significant flexibility. The company’s team of experts developed a cloud-based network infrastructure specifically designed to handle multi-party voice and video-enabled real-time online interactions. The company owns over 27,000 servers which are hosted in the data centers it leases from third parties across the world as of December 31, 2022. The company’s cloud-based network infrastructure provides quality data delivery and enable many users to interact online from anywhere with ease and speed.

The company’s system is designed for scalability and reliability to support growth in its user base. The number of the company’s servers contributes significantly to its fast streaming speed and reliable services, and can be expanded with comparative ease and relatively lower cost, given the flexibility of renting data centers to host additional servers in any high traffic regions in its network. The company’s network facilities and broadband capacity provide it with sufficient capacity to carry out its current operations, and can be expanded to meet additional capacity relatively quickly. The amount of bandwidth the company leases is continually expanded to reflect increased peak concurrent user numbers. The company has been developing and expanding its data centers network around the world, focusing on Asia, Europe and the Americas. The company’s data centers’ key technological mechanisms include optimized data access, automated switch of servers, and intelligent routing, which help ensure the quality of data transmission for its users globally. In response to poor connection situations, the company is able to provide precise connection estimation, adaptive transcoding, segmentation-based coding and other advanced mechanisms to help users enjoy high-quality audio and video experience.

Proprietary Data-Driven Platform

Significant time and efforts are required to build and operate an infrastructure, such as the company’s. The technological difficulties which a platform that hosts 10,000 concurrent users faces differ greatly from the difficulties a platform with 100,000 and 1,000,000 concurrent users faces, including many issues to be considered when programming for the platform and planning the infrastructure.

Content Moderation

The company’s live streaming, short-form video and video communication platforms and other products enable users to exchange information, generate and distribute content, advertise products and services, conduct business and engage in various other online activities. A team within the company’s data security department helps in enforcing its internal procedures to ensure that the content in its system is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. They are aided by a program designed to sweep its platforms in real time and the data being conveyed in its system for sensitive key words or questionable materials. Content that contains certain keywords are automatically filtered by the company’s program and cannot be successfully posted on its platforms.

The company’s Hago platform has deployed deep learning-based voice recognition technology, which helps it to detect and delete prohibited content and deal with the relevant distributors in a timely fashion. The company has been continually localizing its content moderation efforts. In particular, the company has deployed approximately 1,000 dedicated content moderation personnel with local language proficiency and cultural understanding in a number of countries worldwide, including but not limited to, Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

IT Professionals

As of December 31, 2022, the company’s research and development team consisted of 2,852 members. All of the company’s service programs are designed and developed internally, including various interactive technologies.

Intellectual Property

BIGO and Others

As of December 31, 2022, the company held 1,244 registered domain names, including joyy.com, joyy.sg, Bigo.TV, Duowan.com, bigolive.sg, likee.com, 520hello.com, 746 software copyrights and other copyrights, 1,190 patents and 2,103 trademarks and service marks. In addition, as of December 31, 2022, the company had filed 3,277 patent applications, covering certain of its proprietary technologies, and 4,266 trademark applications. For the avoidance of confusion, the above numbers exclude intellectual property rights which will be transferred to Baidu following the full completion of the sale of YY Live to Baidu, which was substantially completed with certain matters remaining to be completed in the future.

Regulations

Section 43A provides that the company is subject to civil liability to compensate for wrongful loss or gain to any person arising from negligence in implementing and maintaining reasonable security practices and procedures with respect to sensitive personal data or information that the company possesses, deals with or handles in its computer systems, networks, databases and software.

With the sale of YY Live being substantially completed with certain customary matters remaining to be completed in the future, including necessary regulatory approvals from government authorities, the majority of the company’s business, especially its global platforms that it operates outside China, is not subject to the above regulations. Yet as the company maintained some of its audio and video capabilities and functions and cross-border smart commerce solution services in mainland China, its remaining business operations in mainland China are subject to regulations issued by the below authorities, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, or the MIIT; the Ministry of Culture, or the MOC, which currently known as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism; the General Administration of Press and Publication, or the GAPP; the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television, or the SARFT; State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China, or the SAPPRFT; the National Copyright Administration, or the NCA; the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, or the SAIC, which currently known as the State Administration for Market Regulation, or the SAMR; the State Council Information Office, or the SCIO; the Ministry of Commerce, or the MOFCOM; the Bureau of Protection of State Secrets; the Ministry of Public Security; and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, or the SAFE.

Research and Development

The company’s research and development expenses were US$261.8 million in 2022.

History

The company was founded in 2005. It was incorporated in 2011. The company was formerly known as YY Inc. and changed its name to JOYY Inc. in 2019.