Dow Jones Newswires: Bilibili’s Hong Kong shares fall sharply after deeper-than-expected net loss

United States

Bilibili’s Hong Kong-listed shares 9626, -11.63% fell sharply after the Chinese video-sharing platform reported a third-quarter net loss that was steeper than analysts expected.

Shares were recently 12.0% lower at 88.90 Hong Kong dollars (US$ 11.39) in Asian morning trade on Thursday after earlier touching HK$ 87.60, their lowest intraday level since November 2022, according to FactSet. The company’s American Depositary Receipts BILI, -11.09% issued in the U.S. dropped 11.1% to US$ 11.86 on Wednesday after its third-quarter results were released.

Net loss for the July-September period stood at 1.35 billion yuan (US$ 189.3 million), Bilibili said after the Hong Kong market closed on Wednesday. That was higher than the median estimate for a CNY1.01 billion net loss in a FactSet poll of 16 analysts, and compared with a net loss of CNY1.71 billion a year earlier. Total net revenue rose to CNY5.81 billion in the third quarter from CNY5.79 billion a year earlier.

For 2023 as a whole, Bilibili expects total net revenue to be at the low end of the CNY22.5 billion to CNY23.5 billion range, due to lower-than-expected mobile game revenue, the company said.

“We feel Bilibili management did not prepare the company well for tough times and therefore appears to be caught off-guard by worsening macro and industry environment,” Nomura analyst Jialong Shi said in a research report. The brokerage downgraded the company’s ADRs to neutral from buy and lowered its target price to US$ 13.00 from US$ 18.00.