With Continued Focus on Innovation and Cooperation, Huya Q1 Mobile MAU Grows 8.5 Percent

Chinese game live streaming platform Huya announced its First Quarter 2022 financial results on Tuesday. Against the backdrop of macro headwinds, the company has shown resilience in its Q1 financial performance and made great strides in expanding its user base.

Huya’s total net revenues for the first quarter of 2021 stood at 2.46 billion yuan ($389 million), with non-GAAP net income for the period sitting at 46.6 million yuan, turning positive from the previous quarter. Furthermore, the average mobile MAU of Huya Live in the first quarter grew 8.5 percent year-on-year to 81.9 million. The user growth was mainly driven by the strong performance of e-sports tournaments in the first quarter, as well as extensive cooperation with game studios, according to Huya’s earnings conference call.

“In our relentless efforts to advance product innovation to enable a cross-platform and more immersive experience for our community, our users can now better integrate their live streaming experience on Huya’s platform with their game play,” said Dong Rongjie, Chief Executive Officer of Huya. “Leveraging our operational and technological expertise, we believe in our agility and ability to navigate the evolving and dynamic market conditions.”

Over the past quarter, one interactive feature called “gift drops”, a task-type activity during game live streaming, has become a popular way to connect game streaming viewers directly with their gameplays. Huya introduced the feature during a Peacekeeper Elite live broadcast last year and have now added it to over 20 game titles, such as Honor of Kings, LoL Wild Rift and Call of Duty Mobile. More titles are being added as Huya continues to deepen its relationships with different game studios. Additionally, more than 10 million users on Huya‘s platform engaged with this interactive feature during the first quarter alone. In addition to improving user interaction metrics on the Huya platform, more game operations teams have noted that the feature encourages gamers to return to gameplay thus bolstering reactivation rates.

Meanwhile, the company has continued to focus on enriching its professional e-sports content, where the e-sports content serves as a key driver of user traffic and fuels a superior experience for all Huya users.

During the first quarter of 2022, Huya broadcasted around 80 third-party e-sports tournaments. According to the earnings call, the company is deliberately being more selective in its tournament procurement to ensure the highest quality of content and to improve ROI metrics. Although the first quarter of the year is typically not a strong period for e-sports events due to seasonal trends, the total viewership of licensed e-sports tournaments reached more than 700 million, exceeding the previous quarter’s viewership.

SEE ALSO: HUYA Inc.: A Company That Strives to Unleash Future Potential in a Changing Global Environment

Despite macro challenges that continued to impose near-term pressure on the entire industry, Huya said at the earnings call that the company has confidence in its strategy and will continue to focus on harnessing the strength of its business fundamentals to further improve operational efficiency.