HONG KONG, CHINA – Media OutReach – 1 April 2019 – Mobvista Inc. (stock code: 1860.HK) announced its annual results for the first time after its initial public offering on Hong Kong stock exchange in December 2018. For the year ended 31 December 2018, Mobvista’s revenue rose by 38.9% to US$435 million. The growth was attributable to the increased global expenditure on mobile advertisements, and reflected the company’s capability to capitalize on the trend in China and the wider region in Asia Pacific. By the end of 2018, more than 340 million consumers interacted with mobile applications (“apps”) which had been developed with Mobvista’s software development kit (“SDK”) for the monetization of such apps every day. Mobile advertisements delivered by Mobvista were seen by over 1 billion mobile device users.
From left: Mobvista’s Joint Company Secretary, Mr. Jason Qian, President and Executive Director, Mr. Clement Cao, and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Sean Song, jointly host an investor presentation on their company’s 2018 annual results in Hong Kong.
Mobvista’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (“EBITDA”) for 2018 reached US$43.2 million, beating expectations.
Programmatic advertising continues to be a major source of revenue
Programmatic advertising is now the biggest contributor to the revenue of the global market for mobile advertising. Mobvista’s revenue from programmatic advertising increased by 98.7% to US$227 million in 2018, accounting for 52.3% of the company’s total revenue from mobile advertising.
Mintegral, Mobvista’s proprietary platform for programmatic mobile advertising, launched an incentive plan to encourage app developers to integrate the Mintegral SDK as a way to broaden their mobile app-enabled marketing channel and gain access to high-quality mobile internet traffic.
Mobvista’s growth in China fuelled by the trend of Chinese companies going global
More stringent regulations of cyberspace and keener domestic competition meant more China-based app developers looking for growth opportunities in overseas markets. Companies such as TikTok increased their overseas advertising spending for acquiring users and increasing market share. 63.8% of Mobvista’s revenue in 2018 came from many of these Chinese companies targeting overseas markets. Meanwhile, only 44.9% of its revenue in 2017 came from China-based companies which focused on the domestic market.
Although mobile game publishers continued to make up a significant portion of Mobvista’s customer base, the biggest contribution in 2018 came from social media apps, which accounted for 38.6% of the company’s revenue – more than doubling the percentage in 2017.
Investment in research and development and artificial intelligence
Mobvista continues to invest significantly in its research and development, with almost half of its whole workforce focused on technology development. In addition to the continued development of its Mintegral, Mobvista put into operation MindAlpha, a machine learning platform designed to intelligently manage and organize advertising campaigns towards the end of 2018. The platform is able to analyze tens of billions of changing features and more than 100 billion data points so as to respond to advertisers’ requirements for optimal media placement in just a few milliseconds. Mobvista’s customers can already take advantage of MindAlpha when they conduct their mobile app marketing campaigns.
