Bilibili's Profit Report: Advertising Growth Supports Performance, Game Revenue Growth Hides Hidden Risks

Bilibili-W (09626.HK, hereinafter referred to as “Bilibili”) achieved its first full-year profit.

On March 5th, Bilibili announced its Q4 2025 and full-year financial reports, with revenue of 30.35 billion yuan, up 13% year-over-year; net profit of 1.19 billion yuan, turning from loss to profit—after a net loss of 1.36 billion yuan in 2024.

In the fourth quarter alone, Bilibili achieved total revenue of 8.32 billion yuan, an increase of 8% year-over-year; net profit under U.S. GAAP was 510 million yuan, up 478%; adjusted net profit reached 880 million yuan, up 94%.

While turning profitable, Bilibili’s gross profit also saw significant improvement: gross profit increased substantially to 11.11 billion yuan, with gross margin rising from 32.7% in 2024 to 36.6%. This to some extent indicates that Bilibili is shifting from “burning money for growth” to “high-quality operation.”

From the revenue structure perspective, Bilibili’s turnaround was largely driven by advertising.

In Q4 2025, Bilibili’s advertising revenue reached 3.04 billion yuan, up 27%, maintaining high year-over-year growth for 12 consecutive quarters; full-year revenue exceeded 10.06 billion yuan, up 23%.

Specifically, AI-related advertising on Bilibili grew over 150% year-over-year; performance ads, brand ads, and Huohua ads all flourished, further consolidating Bilibili’s leading position in digital appliances, home furnishings, and other advantageous industries, while attracting advertisers from automotive and e-commerce sectors.

However, behind this bright advertising data, there are potential “side effects” that cannot be ignored for Bilibili’s content community and financial structure:

First, the breakthrough in advertising revenue is not uniform across all sectors but concentrated mainly in gaming, digital appliances, internet services, e-commerce, and automotive industries. This means Bilibili’s ad performance is highly tied to the prosperity of these industries; if gaming regulation policies change or the automotive market weakens, Bilibili’s ad revenue growth could quickly slow down.

Second, the financial report mentions that Bilibili is expanding more consumption scenarios to “continuously enrich advertising inventory,” meaning the frequency and formats of ads are increasing, which inevitably damages user experience.

Although Bilibili emphasizes “ensuring user experience is unaffected,” this “boundary game” between commercialization and community atmosphere is a dynamic balance with no fixed answer. It cannot be measured precisely by specific indicators on when commercialization will cross community red lines; adjustments are made through trial and error, which is inherently uncertain.

Fortunately, Bilibili is currently deliberately pursuing a “moderate commercialization” approach. In 2025, core user metrics reached new highs: daily active users (DAU) totaled 112 million, monthly active users (MAU) exceeded 368 million, both up 8% year-over-year; meanwhile, average daily usage time increased to 108 minutes, a 6-minute increase compared to 2024.

Additionally, Bilibili’s gaming business in 2025 achieved double-digit growth, with annual revenue of 6.39 billion yuan, up 14%. The analysis shows that the core is not just scale expansion but a structural upgrade from “dependency on代理 (agency/agent-based models), driven by user acquisition” to “self-developed breakthroughs + long-term operation.” The self-developed benchmark effect of “Escape from Duck Kov” and the long-term cash flow support of “Three Kingdoms: Strategy for the World” complement each other.

However, quarterly data shows Bilibili’s gaming revenue declining, from 1.73B yuan in Q1 to 1.54 billion yuan in Q4. This is due to the waning momentum of popular titles like “Three Kingdoms: Strategy for the World,” leading to a relative gap in product tiers. Although “Escape from Duck Kov” was a hit, its revenue scale remains small (250M yuan).

Therefore, Bilibili’s gaming business, still in the transitional phase, needs to address a key issue to sustain growth: the breakthrough from “single blockbuster” to “scaled output” in self-developed games. Bilibili has yet to establish a replicable self-developed game R&D system; whether it can continue to launch multiple high-quality self-developed titles aligned with its ecosystem—avoiding “one blockbuster dominates all”—is crucial for the sustainability of its self-developed strategy.

Beyond these two major businesses, value-added services remain Bilibili’s largest revenue source. In Q4 2025, revenue from value-added services reached 3.26 billion yuan, up 6%; full-year revenue was 11.93 billion yuan, up 8%, mainly driven by steady growth in live streaming, VIP memberships, and other value-added services.

As of the end of Q4 2025, Bilibili’s VIP membership count reached 25.35 million, up 12% year-over-year, with about 80% being annual subscription or auto-renewal users. This data far exceeds the average level of long-form video platforms, confirming the robustness of this “fundamental” business.

However, the 8% YoY growth rate lags significantly behind advertising and gaming, exposing a growth bottleneck: while the core business remains stable in scale, its efficiency faces obstacles, and innovation is insufficient. The underlying issue is that Bilibili’s value-added services lack innovation in product development, content rights, and tiered operations.

This should be a key focus for Bilibili to break through, as value-added services are not just about “increasing revenue growth,” but more importantly about deepening paid user engagement to strengthen the community ecosystem’s core competitiveness.

After all, paying users of value-added services are Bilibili’s most core and loyal user base. Their willingness to pay reflects recognition of Bilibili’s community culture, content ecosystem, and creators. Deeply binding these users is the most vital business value.

Of course, creating a positive cycle of “more paying users → increased creator income → more high-quality content → stronger community stickiness → more user payments” can not only make value-added services a core growth engine for Bilibili’s commercialization again but also provide a more solid user base and ecosystem support for advertising, gaming, and other businesses, helping Bilibili achieve its long-term goal of “high-quality operation.”

Bilibili’s first full-year profit report in 2025 is the inevitable result of years of optimizing business structure, reducing costs, and deepening the ecosystem. It marks a key developmental transformation for Bilibili.

But this is not the end, only a new beginning.

Risks from industry dependence in advertising, the need for scaled breakthroughs in game self-development, and innovation in value-added services—especially the dynamic balance between commercialization and community ecology—are ongoing challenges Bilibili must continuously address.