Sohu's net loss in the first quarter was US$68 million. Sogou's revenue increased by 16%

in 2017, Sogou's income reached 1.12 billion yuan, an increase of 16% over the same period last year, based on a faster growth rate than the industry. This can also be said to be the only business under Sohu Group that maintains such a high growth rate.

original title: Sohu, who outperformed "slow beat" by Sogou, suffered a net loss of 68 million US dollars in the first quarter

the affair between her boss and Taylor Swift could not save Sohu.

on the afternoon of April 24th, Sohu released the company's unaudited results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. Sohu's revenue in the first quarter was $374 million, down 8 per cent from a year earlier, according to the financial report. In Non-GAAP terms, Sohu posted a net loss of $68 million and a diluted net loss of $1.75 per share, while Sohu posted a net loss of $22 million in the same period last year.

compared with the overall 15% decline in revenue in 2016, this is good news. Analysts' expectations on Wall Street fluctuated up and down.

according to data compiled by Yahoo Finance, six Wall Street analysts on average expect Sohu to make a net diluted loss of $1.69 per American depositary receipt (ADS) per share in the first quarter, excluding non-GAAP. The financial report shows that Sohu posted a diluted net loss of $1.75 per ADS share in the first quarter, which was lower than analysts' expectations.

in addition, on average, six Wall Street analysts expect Sohu's total revenue in the first quarter to reach 365.87 million US dollars. According to the financial report, Sohu's total revenue in the first quarter was $374 million, higher than analysts' expectations.

Total revenue continued to decline and apportioned to all sections, with the exception of Sogou, revenue decreased: brand advertising revenue was $81 million, down 35% from the same period last year and 18% month-on-month; revenue from online games was $85 million, down 17% from the same period last year and 11% from the previous year.

when Sohu released his 2016 annual report, Zhang Chaoyang said that "Sohu Group is facing a very challenging operating environment." the weak macro-economy, intensified competition and tighter regulatory measures for the search industry have affected Sohu's financial performance.

Zhang Chaoyang says he only sleeps four and a half hours a day and works on the front line. "Sohu returns to the center of the Internet stage" has been expressed more than once in public, and he also believes that Sohu is expected to make a profit in 2019. However, Zhang Chaoyang's hard work and plans were not immediately revealed in this quarter's results.

count Sohu's major business in detail. The era of news portals has passed, Sohu News did not play its own brand appeal, in the face of Jinri Toutiao, Tencent News's competition, positioning is in jeopardy; video is a money-burning business, which Zhang Chaoyang also said in previous annual reports.

the only interesting things are in the game business and Sogou.

Financial reports show that according to GAAP, Changyou's total revenue in the first quarter was $120 million, down 8% from the same period last year. The net profit attributed to Changyou was $30 million, while the net profit attributed to Changyou in the same period last year was $32 million, which was basically the same as the same period last year. This means that Changyou has lost its growth momentum in the face of NetEase's game and Tencent Games's squeeze.

in October 2016, there was news that Sohu Group had loaned 1 billion yuan to Changyou, a wholly-owned subsidiary, at an annual interest rate of 6 percent.

Sogou is like a dark horse of Sohu Group. In 2017, Sogou's income reached 1.12 billion yuan, an increase of 16% over the same period last year, based on a faster growth rate than the industry. This can also be said to be the only business under Sohu Group that maintains such a high growth rate.

in the first quarter, Sogou made a good start in both the core search business and the innovative field of artificial intelligence. According to data provided by Sogou, overall search traffic increased by 26 per cent by the end of March compared with a year ago, especially mobile search traffic by more than 50 per cent.

according to CTR data, the proportion of people covered by Sogou searching for PC, WAP and APP terminals reached 32.8%, ranking second in the industry. Sogou searches for 560 million monthly active users on mobile, ranking second in the industry. The contribution of mobile search revenue to overall search revenue has further increased to 72%.

in the field of artificial intelligence, Sogou focuses on natural language understanding, applies it to products and has made achievements.

in terms of speech recognition, the daily voice input frequency of Sogou's mobile phone input method has exceeded 240 million, more than double that of a year ago. The number of users of Sogou's mobile phone input method has increased by more than 60% compared with a year ago, making it the third largest mobile application in China in terms of DAU.

in March 2017, the mobile input method launched the Chinese-English voice translation function, which allows users to translate in a dialogue environment without switching programs. The translation technology has also been applied in many speeches.

Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan said: "at present, Sogou's artificial intelligence technology takes natural language processing as the core, and does natural interaction and knowledge computing on the basis of language. Under this system, Sogou will focus on technological innovation in translation, dialogue, Q & An and other directions, and effectively promote the landing of products. "

in the whole development process of mobile Internet, Sohu always gives people the impression that he is a bit slow. In several cases of portal transformation, Sohu neither developed solid games and e-commerce business like NetEase, nor grabbed the entrance of mobile Internet traffic by live streaming and Weibo, as Sina did. At this rate of development, Sogou will become the booster of Sohu Group as a whole.

Edit: nancy