SINGAPORE, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- JOYY Inc. (NASDAQ: JOYY) ("JOYY" or the "Company"), a leading global technology company, today announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026.

In the second quarter, JOYY generated total revenues of US$590.8 million, up 16.3% year over year and 6.3% quarter over quarter. Social entertainment revenue was US$422.7 million, up 7.4% year over year and 5.6% quarter over quarter. BIGO Ads revenue reached US$133.7 million, up 53.1% year over year. SHOPLINE revenue reached US$34.4 million, with year-over-year growth further accelerating to 28.6%. Non-livestreaming revenue accounted for 31.8% of total revenues for the quarter, further increasing as JOYY's diversified ecosystem continued to advance. Non-GAAP¹ operating profit reached US$49.1 million, up 28.2% year over year and 29.4% quarter over quarter, while non-GAAP¹ EBITDA reached US$56.9 million, up 18.1% year over year and 24.4% quarter over quarter. Operating cash inflow for the quarter was US$64.9 million. As of June 30, 2026, the Company held US$3.06 billion in net cash.

Supported by a better-than-expected operational performance in 1H26 and enhanced operating leverage from improved efficiency across its business segments, JOYY now expects the Group's non-GAAP¹ operating income growth to accelerate to approximately 20% year over year for the full year 2026.

In May, JOYY updated its three-year shareholder return plan, establishing a US$1.5 billion shareholder return program running through the end of 2028. Since the start of this year, the Company has accelerated its capital returns. From January 1 to August 21, 2026, JOYY repurchased US$216.4 million of shares and paid US$142.4 million in dividends, returning a total of US$358.8 million to shareholders.

Ms. Ting Li, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of JOYY, commented, "Building on a strong start to the year, we delivered another solid result in the second quarter, recording revenue growth both year over year and quarter over quarter. Our Social Entertainment, BIGO Ads, and SHOPLINE businesses all advanced in tandem, while our globally diversified ecosystem continued to unlock growth momentum. AI is a foundational technology driving broader application and deeper integration across our core operations, fueling our multi-engine growth strategy. Looking ahead, as we continue to strengthen the core competitiveness and profitability profile of our three business segments, we expect to drive JOYY's long-term value creation into its next phase."

Second Quarter 2026 Financial Highlights

• Net revenues in the second quarter of 2026 were US$590.8 million, representing an increase of 16.3% from US$507.8 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 6.3 % from US$555.7 million in the first quarter of 2026.

- Social Entertainment revenue was US$422.7 million, representing an increase of 7.4% from US$393.8 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 5.6% from US$400.4 million in the first quarter of 2026.

- BIGO Ads revenue was US$133.7 million, representing an increase of 53.1% from US$87.3 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 7.1% from US$124.8 million in the first quarter of 2026.

- SHOPLINE revenue was US$34.4 million, representing an increase of 28.6% from US$26.7 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 12.5% from US$30.5 million in the first quarter of 2026.

• Operating income was US$13.8 million, representing an increase of 138.1% from US$5.8 million in the second quarter of 2025, and an increase of 102% from US$6.8 million in the first quarter of 2026.
  
• Non-GAAP¹ operating income was US$49.1 million, representing an increase of 28.2% from US$38.3 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 29.4% from US$38 million in the first quarter of 2026.
  
• Non-GAAP¹ EBITDA was US$56.9 million, representing an increase of 18.1% from US$48.2 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 24.4% from US$45.7 million in the first quarter of 2026.
  
• Net cash as of June 30, 2026 was US$3,059.3 million.
  
• Net cash from operating activities was US$64.9 million.

Second Quarter 2026 Business Highlights

Social Entertainment Business

In the second quarter, the Company's social entertainment business continued its steady growth momentum, with revenue increasing 7.4% year over year and 5.6% quarter over quarter. Within this segment, livestreaming revenue grew 7.3% year over year and 5.9% quarter over quarter. The number of core livestreaming paying users grew 3.9% year over year and 1.7% quarter over quarter, while ARPPU increased 2.4% year over year and 3% quarter over quarter. In terms of the overall user scale, JOYY's global average mobile MAUs reached 277.1 million, up 5.5% year over year.

Bigo Live, the Company's flagship product, recorded stronger sequential growth in the second quarter. This momentum was driven by ongoing enhancements to its streamer-incentive and growth mechanisms, a richer content ecosystem, and AI-powered improvements to content distribution and payment experiences. Together, these efforts effectively drove user engagement and greater willingness to pay. In the second quarter, Bigo Live's average daily active streamers increased 4.4% quarter over quarter, while newly signed streamers going live increased 5.4% quarter over quarter.

Bigo Live continues to develop and refine its AI-driven content understanding capabilities. In particular, its focus is on improving onboarding content for new users and deepening user consumption. Through effectively identifying and distributing high-quality content across regions, Bigo Live can better match content with users' interests, improving their consumption experiences. To improve payment experience, Bigo Live has been expanding its AI-generated content and interactive virtual gifts. In May, these gifts accounted for 34.3% of total virtual gift consumption.

On the operating side, Bigo Live has continued to strengthen its global ecosystem by leveraging cultural events, local activities, and content partnerships. During the second quarter, Bigo Live launched integrated online and offline campaigns around major cultural celebrations, including Thailand's Songkran Festival, Cinco de Mayo in Los Angeles, and the Atlanta Juneteenth Festival, facilitating multicultural exchanges and strengthening connections across diverse communities. Meanwhile, Bigo Live successfully hosted MISS BIGO 2026 in Vietnam and launched BIGO Miss America 2026, spanning North America and Latin America. These initiatives further reinforced Bigo Live's commitment to empowering women by providing a platform for them to express confidence, embrace diversity and showcase their individuality.

In the MENA region, Bigo Live entered into a strategic partnership with MLBB to exclusively restream MPL MENA Season 9, further expanding its esports content portfolio and strengthening engagement with regional gaming communities. During the summer football season, Bigo Live launched a dedicated interactive content zone, leveraging football-themed content and creator-led activities to drive user engagement and foster greater community participation.

BIGO Ads Advertising Technology Business

In the second quarter, BIGO Ads generated revenue of US$133.7 million, up 53.1% year over year and 7.1% quarter over quarter. Notably, its third-party Audience Network ad revenue maintained strong momentum, delivering 74.1% year-over-year growth and 9.3% quarter-over-quarter growth.

On the supply side, BIGO Ads' developer ecosystem and global traffic coverage continued to expand. Its SDK traffic maintained a steady increase, up 37.7% year over year in the second quarter. On the demand side, BIGO Ads' strategic presence across multiple verticals, combined with AI-driven algorithm iterations, growing traffic scale, and regional market expansion, drove strong advertiser demand. As a result, performance advertising demand across multiple channels, including Web and IAA, delivered standout results. Web-based demand grew 91.7% year over year, while IAA demand recorded 70.6% year-over-year growth.

On the algorithm side, continued investments in algorithm and engineering infrastructure, platform algorithmic capabilities, and cost efficiency are compounding into a positive cycle that will drive the next stage of BIGO Ads' development. As it accumulates more advertiser feedback data and continues to refine its multi-channel attribution capabilities, its user profiling and targeting capabilities are improving. Building on this, BIGO Ads continues to iterate its vertical-specific models and strengthen its platform capabilities. The business is focusing on traffic segmentation and budget matching, traffic bidding, and post-campaign optimization. Together, these efforts are improving the matching efficiency between budget and traffic, and overall monetization efficiency. At the same time, BIGO Ads is advancing upgrades to its algorithm and engineering systems and continuously optimizing compute scheduling and server costs, which allows it to manage infrastructure costs more efficiently even as request volumes grow rapidly.

As BIGO Ads builds out its three-layer system of vertical algorithms, platform algorithm capabilities, and engineering infrastructure, the data accumulated from a growing customer and traffic base is expected to further feed back into model optimization. This will help drive a virtuous cycle across delivery performance, advertiser budgets, and traffic monetization efficiency, providing stronger technological momentum for the next stage of BIGO Ads' scaled growth.

SHOPLINE E-Commerce Business

In the second quarter, SHOPLINE generated revenue of US$34.4 million, up 28.6% year over year and 12.5% quarter over quarter, with revenue growth speeding up from the first quarter. Business from cross-border merchants sustained strong growth of 73.5% year over year, driving the acceleration in overall revenue expansion.

As AI opens up new traffic and transaction entry points, commercial scenarios are becoming increasingly diverse and fragmented, driving growing demand among merchants for a unified, open, and connectable e-commerce infrastructure. This trend further highlights SHOPLINE's value as an omnichannel commerce infrastructure. SHOPLINE has expanded its integrations with multiple leading AI Agents. This enables merchants to capture the traffic and transactions from these new entry points, while converting orders, customer relationships, and operating data across channels into a lasting asset for merchants. In the first half, for SHOPLINE merchants, page views from AI channels grew nearly 15-fold year over year and order volume grew over 35-fold year over year. In addition, SHOPLINE Copilot is being rolled out in phases and has entered closed beta testing, enabling merchants to manage their online stores more efficiently using natural language. This marks another step in SHOPLINE's efforts to gradually integrate AI across the entire merchant operating journey and help merchants connect with consumers, manage operations, and drive business growth more efficiently.

SHOPLINE's long-term growth is aligned with merchant success. High-retention subscription services provide a stable revenue foundation. Value-added services such as payments and marketing allow SHOPLINE to participate more deeply in merchant GMV growth. As its merchant base and GMV continue to increase, value-added services are expected to deliver stronger operating leverage and contribute more momentum to SHOPLINE's business growth.

1.This press release includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as additional clarifying items to aid investors in further understanding the Company's performance and the impact that these items and events had on the financial results. The non-GAAP financial measures provided above should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. For details of the non-GAAP measures, including the reconciliations of GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures, please refer to the press release titled "JOYY Reports Second Quarter 2026 Unaudited Financial Results" issued by the Company on August 26, 2026.

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