Bilibili's first full-year profit! Advertising contributed, while gaming faced pressure...

On the evening of March 5th, Bilibili announced its quarterly and annual reports through December 31, 2025. Data shows that in 2025, Bilibili’s full-year revenue reached 30.35 billion yuan, a 13% increase year-over-year; net profit was 1.19 billion yuan, turning a profit after a loss of 1.36 billion yuan in the same period last year.

Bilibili’s Chairman and CEO Chen Rui stated in the earnings report, “2025 is a milestone year. In terms of commercialization, Bilibili achieved its first full-year profit under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).”

However, the market reaction was lukewarm. On March 6th, Bilibili’s Hong Kong stock closed down 4.46% at HKD 201.2 per share. Looking at revenue structure, Bilibili’s turnaround was largely driven by advertising. Specifically, value-added services remain the largest source of income, with full-year revenue of 11.93 billion yuan, an 8% increase; advertising was the fastest-growing segment, with a 23% year-over-year increase, totaling 10.06 billion yuan; mobile game revenue grew 14% year-over-year to 6.39 billion yuan; IP derivative products and other income slightly declined by 3.3% to 1.966 billion yuan.

As revenue and profit both increased, several user metrics also hit new highs. The latest financial report shows that in 2025, daily active users (DAU), monthly active users (MAU), and average daily usage time all reached record highs. The full-year DAU approached 112 million, MAU exceeded 368 million, both up 8% year-over-year; average daily usage time increased to 108 minutes, up 6 minutes from 2024.

During the earnings conference on the same evening, Chen Rui said that future user growth will be an inevitable process. When discussing Bilibili’s future competitive strategies, Chen emphasized two main points: first, maintaining and strengthening high-quality content; second, enabling content creators (UP主) to develop better on the platform, enjoy longer lifecycles, and achieve more commercial returns.

However, it’s hard to ignore that despite continued growth in several user metrics, the growth rate of MAU and DAU in 2025 has slowed to single digits compared to previous double-digit increases. In Q4 2025, MAU was 366 million, down from 376 million in Q3, a decrease of 10 million users. Revenue from value-added services was also flat, with growth slowing to 6%. As early as 2023, senior management had announced plans to reach 400 million MAU within the year, but as of now, Bilibili still has some way to go to achieve this goal.

Additionally, the quality content ecosystem at Bilibili has experienced some turbulence over the past year. Public reports indicate that since early 2025, several top accounts—under names like “4K Restoration” and “Movie Fan Society”—have appeared, re-uploading complete movies and anime from domestic and international sources. These accounts often modify titles, adjust durations, or cut clips to upload pirated videos, which frequently appear in user homepage recommendations, with some videos garnering hundreds of thousands to over a million views.

As a platform for ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) content creation and sharing, content re-uploading has been a notable feature of Bilibili’s early days. Some users see this phenomenon positively, believing it reflects the platform’s original intent. However, others argue that while re-uploaded and pirated videos may boost short-term activity, the proliferation of such content could erode Bilibili’s content ecosystem rooted in high-quality original works. Over the past year, it remains unclear how much of the user growth and engagement is driven by quality content versus the demand for convenient access to resources, blurring the lines between the two.

Compared to advertising and value-added services, Bilibili’s gaming business has shown clear pressure. In Q4, revenue was 8.32 billion yuan, up 8% year-over-year, with value-added services increasing 6% to 3.26 billion yuan; advertising revenue grew 27% to 3.04 billion yuan; but gaming revenue declined 14% to 1.54 billion yuan.

Bilibili explained in its financial report that the decline in gaming revenue was mainly due to the high baseline set by “Three Kingdoms: Strategy of the World” (referred to as “Three Strategy”) in the same period last year. Looking at a longer timeline, from Q3 2024 to Q3 2025, quarterly mobile game revenues were 1.82 billion, 1.79 billion, 1.73 billion, 1.61 billion, and 1.51 billion yuan, showing a downward trend.

Regarding game product structure, challenges for Bilibili’s gaming segment include the waning momentum of “Three Strategy” as a blockbuster and the limited revenue scale of “Escape from Duckov” despite its brief popularity. To achieve future growth, Bilibili likely needs to continue expanding its scale of self-developed games and long-term operational capabilities.

Some analysts believe that Bilibili’s Q1 gaming revenue will remain under pressure. However, by the end of Q4 last year, the company’s deferred revenue increased 23% year-over-year and also saw a slight quarter-over-quarter increase. With relatively stable performance in value-added services, this growth may indicate additional contributions from gaming. With the launch of “Three Kingdoms: Hundred Generals,” Q2 gaming revenue is expected to see a significant boost.

During the earnings conference, Chen Rui stated that Bilibili will continue to pursue two strategies in gaming: first, maintaining long-term operations—“In an industry where gaming dividends are decreasing, only long-term operation can make the business more solid”; second, focusing on niche and leading titles—“All our upcoming self-developed projects and new agency titles must be top in their niche, as this will be the source of future growth in our gaming segment.”