Tencent Music 3Q25 Quick Interpretation: The third-quarter report overall exceeded expectations, especially with the partial realization of the second growth curve story. However, the flaw is that the market's concerns about intensified competition before the earnings report have not been disproven.
It is recommended to pay attention to the management's discussion on ByteDance's recent actions and the company's countermeasures during the conference call.
Specifically:
1. Overall: Both revenue and profit beat expectations, primarily driven by the accelerated growth of other music revenue.
2. Core Subscription: Revenue grew by 16%, which, although in line with expectations, shows a trend shift from user growth to ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User) growth (increased penetration of SVIP). The net increase in subscriptions was 1.3 million, continuing to decline quarter-on-quarter. This growth logic works in a stable competitive environment, but if competition intensifies, the ARPPU growth may struggle to sustain.
3. Other Music Services: This segment includes advertising, digital album sales, copyright sublicensing, and value-added services. It saw an unexpected acceleration in growth by 53% in the third quarter, reaching 2.5 billion, thanks to the resumption of offline concerts. Fan economy is one of Tencent Music's three major future growth points (the other two being SVIP and long-form audio). Specific products and services include concert tickets and merchandise, physical albums, and artist-fan interactions (rewards, Bubble, etc.).
4. Social Entertainment: Continues to recover. Third-quarter revenue declined by 3%, with a continued slowdown quarter-on-quarter, and is expected to gradually return to positive growth. However, this business segment is subject to regulatory and industry downturn trends and is not a future focus. The main goal is to maintain stability, but overall gross margin can be improved by reducing revenue sharing.
5. Rising Expenses: After three years of restrained operating expenses, this quarter finally saw an increase. However, overall growth remains in the low range, with an 8% year-on-year increase. In absolute terms, the increase is mainly due to administrative expenses (including R&D).
Dolphin Research believes that the increase in expenses indicates Tencent's strong desire for the second growth curve, reflected in the spending on recruitment.
Although the operating profit of the core main business still saw a high year-on-year growth of 34%, the profit margin did not continue to improve but declined by 2 percentage points quarter-on-quarter. $Tencent Music(TME.US) $TME-SW(01698.HK)
