Bigo Live owner (Joyy) made $578 million in Q4 2020, but is still unprofitable

Joyy expects to grow by over 70% year-on-year for 2021


Rajitha Reddy

29 Mar, 2021

Bigo Live owner (Joyy) made $578 million in Q4 2020, but is still unprofitable | BEAMSTART News

The live-streaming market continues to grow, and apps from China continue to dominate the space.

Joyy, the company behind popular live-streaming app, Bigo Live, announced that it has made $579.9 million in revenue for the final 3 months of 2020.

This is a 77.5% increase from the previous year, and does not take into account YY Live's revenues ever since the company was sold to Baidu.

One of Joyy's Bigo Live offices.

Live-streaming made up a bulk of Joyy's revenues

Live-streaming was such a big part of Joyy's business that it accounted for nearly 95% of the company's entire revenues.

Much of its revenues came from Bigo Live, an app for creators to live-stream and chat with strangers (and fans), as well as Likee, a direct competitor to TikTok.

The surge in revenues are also attributed to the changing landscape due to the global pandemic, resulting in more people leveraging on Joyy's apps to generate additional side income.

The Likee app by Joyy.

Bigo Live and Likee monthly active users rise

Since the start of the pandemic, monthly active users (MAU) for both Bigo Live and Likee have surged, with average retention rates of users rising compared to previous years.

On Bigo Live, MAUs surged by 24.5% to 28.7 million people, compared to 23.1 million for the same time period in 2019.

Likee on the other hand, had a 4.2% increase in MAUs to 120.1 million.

Joyy's YY went public back in 2012.

Joyy is still losing money

Despite its massive growth, Joyy is still unprofitable — currently generating a net loss of a staggering $121.4 million.

The company expects to gradually narrow its losses in the coming months, and is looking to drive $590 - $605 million in revenues for the first quarter of 2021 — a year-on-year growth of 72.5% - 76.9%.

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