有道 (DAO) 2026年第二季度业绩电话会：营业利润创历史新高，AI驱动学习业务增长

核心要点

• 有道公布2026年第二季度净收入为15亿元人民币，同比增长3.5%；营业利润达1.115亿元人民币，创单季历史新高，几乎是上年同期的四倍。
• 公司已连续八个季度实现营业盈利。营业利润率从上年同期的2.0%提升至7.6%。
• 在有道领世及AI驱动产品的支撑下，学习服务收入增长20.9%至7.956亿元人民币。领世续报率超过75%。
• 由于有道优先选择高回报业务，在线营销服务收入下降7.7%至5.844亿元人民币。毛利率提升约3个百分点至28.7%。
• 经营活动产生的净现金流入增长80.7%至3.342亿元人民币。上半年经营性现金流从上年同期的流出7050万元人民币改善至流入2.411亿元人民币。
• 管理层预计第三季度在线营销毛利率将实现同比增长，2026年下半年智能硬件毛利率将回升至40%以上。

主要财务业绩

2026年上半年，净收入同比增长3.6%至28亿元人民币。营业利润同比增长27.3%至创纪录的1.69亿元人民币，经营性现金流达2.411亿元人民币。

截至2026年6月30日，现金、现金等价物、受限资金及短期投资合计为8.493亿元人民币。合同负债为8.351亿元人民币，而2025年底为8.477亿元人民币。

业务与运营表现

学习服务与AI产品

学习服务是主要的增长引擎。其第二季度毛利率从上年同期的59.8%提升至65.5%，反映出AI带来的运营效率提升及规模效益。

有道领世的“AI英语作文批改”使用量环比翻倍以上。AI驱动的题目推荐及高考志愿填报咨询服务也助力该产品的续报率保持在75%以上。编程课程的续报率同样超过了75%。

第二季度，AI驱动的订阅类产品产生销售额约1亿元人民币，同比增长超20%。Hi Echo流水增长超100%，而AI同声传译的使用量增长了约100%。

有道推出了“子曰”大模型4.0，在多模态、语音及翻译能力方面进行了升级。管理层表示，翻译推理速度提升了约80%，同时该模型在处理包含复杂图表的视觉数学和物理问题时展现出更强的推理能力。

在线营销服务

在线营销收入有所下降，原因是有道放弃了低回报项目，将资源集中于更高质量的业务。这一策略推动毛利率从25.8%提升至28.7%。

公司在本季度新增了100多家广告主，同时广告主留存率环比提升了约5个百分点。AI应用和短剧广告收入连续第二个季度实现同比增长超50%。

有道还推出了第二代AI广告投放优化器，并引入了集中化账户管理、自动化数据更新以及智能异常预警功能。

智能硬件

智能硬件收入下降31.5%，该板块毛利率从41.5%降至32.8%。管理层将这一压力归因于需求减弱、存储器成本上涨以及硬件规模效应减弱。

在618购物节期间，有道词典笔连续第七年斩获京东和天猫同品类销量冠军。公司还推出了有道词典笔X8，内置8000万词库并支持AI拍题答疑。

管理层业绩指引

• 管理层预计第三季度在线营销毛利率将继续同比改善，同时将盈利性和可持续增长置于快速扩张之上。
• 有道计划在第三季度推出海外KOL营销Agent（智能体），以帮助中国企业更高效地拓展国际市场。
• 公司计划在9月发布多款AI Agent及大模型产品，重点关注语音、数学及其他STEM学习应用。
• 尽管存储器成本维持高位，但得益于架构和工程调整以及计划于第三季度推出的新产品，管理层预计2026年下半年智能硬件毛利率将回升至40%以上。
• 管理层表达了对在2026年下半年保持强劲毛利率表现并推动营业利润进一步增长的信心。

风险与关注事项

• 智能硬件业务仍面临需求下滑、存储器成本居高不下以及规模效应减弱带来的压力。
• 鉴于有道继续放弃低ROI广告机会以优先保证盈利能力，短期内营销收入可能继续承压。
• 营业费用从5.806亿元人民币增加至6.053亿元人民币，主要包括销售与营销以及研发支出的增加。
• AI原生战略的执行取决于能否将新模型和Agent转化为持续的用户采纳、留存、运营效率及商业化收入。

分析师问答环节要点

管理层指出，前沿语音技术和数学学习是“子曰”大模型4.0的两大重点领域。其14种语言的语音克隆模型的潜在应用包括多语种学习、内容创作、配音及跨国交流。

针对有道领世，管理层表示AI正在同时提升用户学习效果和服务可扩展性。核心功能包括个性化学习路径、自适应题目推荐、中英文作文批改以及高考志愿填报咨询服务。

在广告业务方面，管理层强调了第三季度的三大重点：扩大AI赋能的广告能力、拓展包括AI应用和短剧在内领域的客户，以及通过更低成本的创意制作和更高效的流量选择来提升利润率。

业绩电话会完整文字记录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Good day, and welcome to Youdao's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jeffrey Wang, Investor Relations Director of Youdao. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Wang

Thank you, operator. Please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements related to the future performance of the company, which 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 this discussion.

A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect Youdao's business and financial results is included in certain company filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update this 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 the definitions of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the 2026 second quarter financial results news release issued earlier today.

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. A webcast replay of this conference call will also be available on Youdao's corporate website at ir.youdao.com.

Joining us today on the call from Youdao's senior management are Dr. Feng Zhou, our Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Lei Jin, our President; Mr. Peng Su, our senior VP; and Mr. Yongwei Li, our VP of Finance. I will now turn the call over to Dr. Zhou to review some of our recent highlights and strategic direction.

Feng Zhou

Thank you, Jeffrey. And thank you all for participating in today's call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that all numbers are denominated in renminbi, unless otherwise stated. We maintained solid momentum in the second quarter, delivering robust results. Net revenues for the quarter reached RMB 1.5 billion, representing a 3.5% year-over-year increase. In terms of profitability, we achieved a record high in Q2, with operating profit reaching RMB 111.5 million, nearly fourfold year-over-year. This marks our eighth consecutive quarter of operating profitability, representing a critical step towards our goal of healthy and sustainable development. Meanwhile, net cash inflow from operating activities was RMB 334.2 million, up 80.7% compared with the same period last year. These strong quarterly results also drove strong first-half performance.

In the first half of 2026, total net revenues reached RMB 2.8 billion, up 3.6% year-over-year, while operating profit increased 27.3% to a record RMB 169 million. We also generated RMB 241.1 million in net operating cash flow, compared with a net outflow of RMB 70.5 million in the same period last year, reflecting a substantial improvement in cash generation.

Let me begin with an update on our progress in AI technology and Confucius, our proprietary Large Language Model. AI remains a key driver across our business. During the second quarter, we continued to translate advances in our LLM capabilities into practical products and applications across our business lines. First, we rolled out Confucius 4 in the second quarter, with significant upgrades in multimodal, voice and translation capabilities. The new model delivers stronger performance in visual math and physics reasoning, particularly on complex diagrams. We also improved its reasoning architecture and training data to significantly reduce inference costs.

In translation, an optimized acceleration mechanism increased inference speed by approximately 80%. Second, our growing portfolio of AI agents was showcased at the 2026 World AI Conference. Products including LobsterAI, Hi Echo, Youdao Baoku, InfunEase and iMagicbox, together with Confucius 4, demonstrated how AI is moving beyond basic Q&A toward executing more complex tasks across learning, work and advertising scenarios. Beyond technological advances and user adoption, our AI capabilities also continued to gain recognition and support from authoritative bodies. In Q2, the Beijing Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence for Multilingual Translation co-founded by Youdao was officially launched. Going forward, we will continue advancing end-to-end multilingual translation models and accelerate their application across learning, international conferences and cross-border trade.

I will now walk through the performance of each of our business lines during the second quarter. Net revenues from learning services were RMB 795.6 million, up 20.9% year-over-year, primarily driven by the strong performance of Youdao Lingshi, one of our strategic focused areas. AI continues to play an increasingly important role across our learning ecosystem. Following the strong reception of our AI English Essay Grading feature launched in the first quarter, grading volume more than doubled sequentially in Q2. Together with AI-powered quiz recommendations and college admission advisory services, these differentiated AI capabilities helped enhance the user experience and contributed to a retention rate of over 75% for Youdao Lingshi in the second quarter.

For our programming courses, continued product upgrades and channel expansion helped broaden the user base, while improvements in the learning experience supported a retention rate of over 75% in the second quarter. Within learning services, our AI-driven subscription products generated approximately RMB100 million in sales during the second quarter, up more than 20% year-over-year. Our AI Simultaneous Interpretation feature also maintained strong momentum, with user engagement increasing by approximately 100% year-over-year. We also launched what we believe is the world's first 14-language, cross-lingual, accent-free voice cloning technology, enabling rapid voice replication across languages while preserving the speaker's emotional characteristics. To support broader adoption, we open-sourced the model weights and tool chains for local deployment and commercial use, significantly lowering the barrier to multilingual content production.

Meanwhile, Hi Echo continued to perform strongly, with second quarter gross billings increasing by more than 100% year-over-year. The product also received positive feedback from both domestic and international users at WAIC.

Turning to online marketing services, net revenues were RMB 584.4 million in the second quarter, down 7.7% year-over-year. The decline reflects our deliberate focus on higher-quality, higher-margin opportunities as we continue to prioritize the long-term health and profitability of the business. As a result, gross margin improved to 28.7%, up approximately 3 percentage points year-over-year. At the same time, we continued to make progress in client acquisition and retention, adding more than 100 new clients during the quarter and increasing advertiser retention by approximately 5 percentage points sequentially. Our AI application and short-form drama advertising businesses also maintained strong momentum, with revenues growing more than 50% year-over-year for the second consecutive quarter.

On the product side, we recently launched the second generation of our AI Ad Placement Optimizer, further improving advertising efficiency and quality. Unified Account Management provides centralized access across accounts, simplifying campaign operations. Automated Push Notifications delivers real-time data updates to help users respond more quickly. Intelligent Alerts provides 24/7 anomaly detection with second-level response times, helping reduce wasted ad spend and operational losses. Together, these upgrades further enhance advertiser value and strengthen the long-term health of our marketing ecosystem.

Moving to smart devices, improving profitability remains our primary objective. Net revenues were RMB 86.8 million in the second quarter, down 31.5% year-over-year, while the overall operational health of the business continued to improve. Our market position remained strong. During the 618 Shopping Festival, Youdao Dictionary Pen ranked #1 in sales in its category on both JD.com and Tmall for the seventh consecutive year. Our Youdao Tutoring Pen also received recognition from several government authorities for its application of AI in education, including the Ministry of Education, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

We also recently launched the Youdao Dictionary Pen X8, featuring an expanded database of 80 million authoritative words and AI-powered, photo-based tutoring across multiple subjects. Initial market response has been positive. Looking ahead, we will continue to execute our AI-Native Strategy, leveraging our technical capabilities to deepen the application of vertical LLMs across learning and advertising. We will also continue expanding our portfolio of AI Agents to enhance user experience and satisfaction, supporting further improvements in our key financial metrics in the second half of the year.

With that, I will hand over the call over to Peng Su for a deeper dive into our financial results. Thank you.

Peng Su

Thank you, Dr. Zhou, and hello everyone. Today I will be presenting some financial highlights from the second quarter of 2026. We encourage you to read through our press release issued earlier today for further details. For the second quarter, total net revenues were RMB 1.5 billion or USD 216.2 million, representing a 3.5% increase from the same period of 2025. Net revenues from our learning services were RMB 795.6 million or USD 117.3 million, representing a 20.9% increase from the same period of 2025. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by the strong momentum of tutoring services compared with the same period of 2025.

Net revenues from our smart devices were RMB 86.8 million or USD 12.8 million, representing a 31.5% decrease from the same period of 2025, primarily due to a decline in demand for smart learning devices. Net revenues from our online marketing services were RMB 584.4 million or USD 86.1 million, representing a 7.7% decrease from the same period of 2025. The year-over-year decrease reflects Youdao's disciplined, strategic approach to engagement acceptance, which places greater emphasis on higher ROI return on investment engagements. Youdao believes this strategy has enhanced the overall operational efficiency of its business.

For the second quarter, our total gross profit was RMB 716.9 million or USD 105.7 million, representing a 17.6% increase from the same period of 2025. Gross margin for learning services was 65.5% for the second quarter of 2026, compared with 59.8% for the same period of 2025. Gross margin for smart devices was 32.8% for the second quarter of 2026, compared with 41.5% for the same period of 2025. Gross margin for online marketing services was 28.7% for the second quarter of 2026, compared with 25.8% for the same period of 2025. For the second quarter, our total operating expenses were RMB 605.3 million or USD 89.2 million, compared with RMB 580.6 million for the same period of last year.

Looking at our expenses in more detail. Sales and marketing expenses for the second quarter of 2026 were RMB 424.1 million, compared with RMB 401.8 million in the second quarter of 2025. Research and development expenses for the second quarter of 2026 were RMB 142 million, compared with RMB 128.3 million in the second quarter of 2025. Our operating income margin was 7.6% in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 2% for the same period of last year. For the second quarter of 2026, our net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was RMB 73.8 million or USD 10.9 million, compared with net loss attributable to Youdao's ordinary shareholders of RMB 17.8 million for the same period of last year.

Non-GAAP net income attributable to ordinary shareholders for the second quarter was RMB 90.6 million or USD 13.4 million compared with RMB 12.5 million in the same period last year. Basic and diluted net income per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders for the second quarter of 2026 were RMB 0.62 or USD 0.09 and RMB 0.61 or USD 0.09 respectively. Non-GAAP basic and diluted net income per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders for the second quarter was RMB 0.76 or USD 0.11 and RMB 0.75 or USD 0.11 respectively. Our net cash provided by operating activities was RMB 334.2 million or USD 49.3 million, for the second quarter.

Looking at our balance sheet, as of June 30, 2026, our contract liabilities, which mainly consisted of deferred revenues generated from our learning services, were RMB 835.1 million or USD 123.1 million, compared with RMB 847.7 million as of December 31, 2025. At the end of the period, our cash, cash equivalents, current and non-current restricted cash, and short-term investments totaled RMB 849.3 million or USD 125.2 million.

This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your attention. We would now like to open the call to your questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Brian Gong with Citi.

分析师问答

Brian Gong

I want to ask about the ongoing integration of the large language model across our business and financial performance. So I would like to ask management what is the core strength of this model? And are there new product launches in the pipeline targeting this capability?

Feng Zhou

Brian, I will take the question. For large language models, we focus on areas where we see strong user demand, significant potential for value creation and also differentiated strength for Youdao. In addition to translation, which has long been one of our core strengths, I'd like to highlight 2 areas today: advanced voice and audio and mathematics learning. So in both areas, we believe Youdao has a significant strength. For voice, we have seen strong user adoption for several years already. The success of our products, Hi Echo and Youdao Simultaneous Interpretation demonstrated clear demand for high-quality, low-latency voice interactions in both learning and communications.

In Q2, user engagement with simultaneous interpretation increased by approximately 100% year-over-year. So while Hi Echo's gross billings also grew by more than 100%. So one recent development I want to highlight is Confucius4-TTS. As we discussed in our prepared remarks, this modern text-to-speech model supports cross-lingual accident-free voice cloning across 14 languages while preserving speaker identity and emotional expressions. So we see broad potential applications in areas such as cross-lingual learning, multilingual content creation, dubbing and international communications for this model. So we plan to launch more voice-related models and products in the coming months.

So the second area I want to highlight is mathematics. Mathematics is another very important focus for us. AI-driven math learning is highly demanded by users. And it's also an area where we have a strong technology and learning expertise. Math is, we all know a challenging subject for many learners and is foundational to almost all STEM disciplines. So at the same time, students' needs in math learning are highly personalized and often resolve around very specific problems and knowledge gaps. So this makes math learning a significant opportunity for AI to provide personalized explanation, to provide diagnosis practice and tutoring at scale. So Confucius 4 significantly improved reasoning for vision math and physics prompts, particularly those involving complex diagrams. Going forward, we plan to introduce additional model capabilities and also AI agents for math learning with similar opportunities across other STEM subjects.

I'm also pleased to share that we plan to launch multiple new AI agent and model products in September next month. So we will continue expanding our models and agent capabilities around these key areas. So we look forward to share more very soon. Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jing Wang with CICC.

Caini Wang

My question is also about AI, but it's more about AI features of Lingshi's AI Essay Grading. We all know that Lingshi's AI Essay Grading feature has earned well spread user recognition. Do you plan to further expand its AI-powered features in the future?

Peng Su

Thank you. This is Peng Su. I will handle the question first. Yes. And for the Lingshi, we see the AI creating value for Lingshi in 2 important ways by improving the learning experience and also expanding what we can offer to the users. and by improving the scalability and operational efficiency of our services. Over the past 4 years, powered by our continued investments in our large language model computers, Youdao Lingshi has focused on resolving the core pain points across the learning and college application scenarios. Through continuous product refinements and exploration of latest use case, we have built a comprehensive AI interactive courses and service metrics.

This platform empowers students to enhance their learning quality and efficiency, winning broad acclaim from our users. At the core learning features level, Youdao Lingshi has crafted granular and personalized intelligent learning solutions. The first is about the personalized learning path recommendations. Centered around specific knowledge points, this function time points of student's weak areas to generate a tailor-made learning plan by targeting shortfall directly and eliminating redundant practice. It boosted the learning efficiency a lot.

And second is about the AI-based recommendations, leveraging individual learning profile within the Youdao Lingshi Intelligent Learning system. This feature dynamically recommendation adaptively exercise, help students master core concepts through the application and variations. And the third is the AI Essay Grading for Chinese and English. Based on the explicit evaluation rubrics, this feature diagnose writing floors with high precision and provide target optimization suggestions, helping students to polish their writing skill efficiently.

And the last is the AI-based college admission advisers. Expanding beyond academic learning, Youdao Lingshi leverage its massive user space and extensive industry data to offer the professional AI-based college application advisory services. By enhancing user's performance, strength, interest and risk preference, it intelligently generates multiple well-balanced application strategies to guide candidates in their decision-making process. Our retention metrics serve as a strong proof of our service capabilities. In the second quarter of this year, with our Lingshi achieved a retention rate exceeding 75%, maintaining an industry level -- industry-leading level and demonstrated high user satisfaction with our AI direct courses.

So for us, AI is not simple additional features for Lingshi. It became important drivers of both users' value and business efficiency, helping us to improve the quality, scalability and the long-term economics of our business. I hope I answered your questions.

Caini Wang

That's very clear.

Operator

The next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Thomas Chong

Could management share the outlook for online marketing services in the first quarter?

Lei Jin

This is Jin Lei. Thank you for your questions. In the second quarter, our advertising business became more profitable with gross margin improving by about 3 percentage points. We expect gross margin to continue improving year-over-year in the third quarter. Our online marketing revenue grew from about RMB 100 million in the first quarter of 2022 to about RMB 600 million per quarter in the first half of this year. This growth was driven by our continued investment in AI and data capabilities, which has helped us expand into new business opportunities. Whenever we capture key opportunities, revenue experienced a rapid acceleration in the subsequent quarters. In the third quarter, we will focus on the 3 areas.

The first one, strengthening our AI plus advertising capabilities. We are integrating AI into all parts of our advertising business through our priority vertical LLM by KOL marketing. After upgrading in the first quarter, we plan to launch an overseas KOL marketing agent in the third quarter to help Chinese companies reach global markets more efficiently. The other programmatic advertising matching the second quarter, our second-generation AI Ad Placement Optimizer improved traffic matching and helps increase targeting accuracy and operating efficiency.

The second, expanding our advertiser base. With the support of our team and AI capabilities, we added more than 100 new advertisers in the second quarter. And in the third quarter, we will focus on fast-growing sectors such as AI applications and short-form dramas, both in China and overseas. The third, we are improving profitability. We will continue to improve gross margin through 2 initiatives: using Youdao device to reduce the cost of producing advertising creatives and using the AI Ad Placement Optimizer to identify more cost effective traffic. In summary, over the medium to long term, we will continue to apply AI to programmatic advertising and KOL marketing. This will help improve advertiser's ROI while supporting our growth in both revenue and profitability. In the short term, we will continue to prioritize profitable and sustainable growth over rapid expansion. We will also keep upgrading our advertising and KOL marketing tools to support the future growth. Thank you.

Operator

Our last question comes from the line of Bo Zhan with Huatai Securities.

Bo Zhan

This is Zhan Bo, Huatai. Could management share the outlook for the gross margin in the third quarter?

Yongwei Li

Thank you, Zhan Bo. This is Yongwei Li. I will take your question. As reflected in our financial results, we delivered an impressive performance in gross margin level, reaching 47% in the first half of this year, representing a year-over-year improvement of around 2 percentage points. especially gross margin for online marketing services and learning services expanded by 1 percentage point and 3 percentage points year-over-year, respectively. I will give more details on the reason why for the improvement on the profitability and its outlook by segment.

First, in terms of online marketing services, the margin expansion in our advertising business stems from the execution of our AI native strategy and profitability priority discipline. As for AI native strategy, the agents such as the AI Ad Placement Optimizer and iMagicBox have significantly boosted productive across Ad planning, user profiling and creative asset production. As for profitability priority approach, we proactively prevent certain Ad opportunities with relatively low ROI, focusing our resources instead on campaigns that deliver higher value to users. Second, learning services. The improvement in learning services' gross margin was primarily driven by AI-enhanced learning efficiency and scaling benefits. On the AI empowerment side, features such as AI Essay Grading for Chinese and English and AI quiz recommendation have been widely adopted. This tool effectively elevated the efficiency of our teaching assistance, which in turn boosted both student retention rate and gross margin.

On the economies of scale side, as cost/revenue has steadily declined since the second half of 2025, we expect the economies of scale in learning services to become even more pronounced throughout 2026, which drives further gross margin expansion. Third, aspect of smart devices, similar to the broader consumer electronic industry, our smart devices segment has faced cost pressure from the rising memory costs alongside a reduction in hardware economies of scale. Consequently, the gross margin for smart devices stood at around 37% in the first half of this year, down roughly 11 percentage points year-over-year. Although memory costs are likely to maintain, elevate in the near term. Architecture and engineering improvements designed to reduce memory reliance will meaningfully mitigate margin compression with new product launch planned for the third quarter.

We anticipate the gross margin of smart devices to recover to over 40% in the second half of the year, narrowing the year-over-year decline. Looking ahead, we will further deepen the AI native strategy and broaden LLM integration across all product lines while maintaining rigorous cost and operational efficiency optimization. This strategy will maintain central throughout 2026, giving us confidence in delivering strong gross margin performance and achieving meaningful breakthroughs at the operating profit level in second half of 2026.

Hope the information mentioned is helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to the management for any closing remarks.

Jeffrey Wang

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at Youdao directly or reach out to Piacente Financial Communications in China or the U.S. Have a great day.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.