Before the US stock market closed on March 12th, BOSS Direct Employment (NASDAQ:BZ,HK:2076) released its fourth quarter and full-year financial report for 2023.
In the fourth quarter, the direct employment of BOSS achieved revenue of 1.58 billion yuan, up 46.0% year-on-year; Calculated cash receipts amounted to 1.78 billion yuan, up 61.2% year-on-year and 8.8% quarter-on-quarter. In the fourth quarter, the company made a net profit of 331 million yuan, which turned from loss to profit compared with the same period of last year.
In the twelve months ended December 31st, 2023, the number of corporate customers paid by the company was 5.2 million, up 44.4% year-on-year.
In the challenging year of 2023, key indicators such as BOSS direct employment revenue, cash collection and profit all achieved steady growth, and the product value was continuously verified. In 2023, the direct employment of BOSS achieved revenue of 5.952 billion yuan, up 31.9% year-on-year; Calculated cash receipts were 6.685 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.9%; The net profit was 1.099 billion yuan, a sharp increase compared with 107 million yuan in 2022.
In 2024, with the arrival of the peak season of job hunting and recruitment, the scale of BOSS directly hiring active users and paying corporate customers continues to expand. The revenue in the first quarter of 2024 is expected to be in the range of 1.64 billion yuan to 1.67 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase in the range of 28.3% to 30.7%.
The company’s board of directors approved the new share repurchase plan, and it is expected to repurchase shares worth up to $200 million in the next 12 months. This is also the third stock repurchase plan released since BOSS was directly hired to go public. In November, 2023, BOSS also paid dividends for the first time after listing. The dividend funds came from the company’s surplus, about 80 million US dollars. These measures show that the management is full of confidence in the market and the future of the company.
Zhao Peng, the founder, chairman and CEO of BOSS, said, "In the past year, we have continuously invested resources in understanding the refined needs of user groups. Increase investment in scientific research and technology. We select colleagues who are more adaptable to challenges and more curious to take on heavy responsibilities. These efforts have all paid off. "
Steady recovery of recruitment demand drives revenue growth.
BOSS’s direct employment revenue mainly comes from providing online recruitment services to enterprises. Down-to-earth research on the actual needs of users and long-term investment in production and research have enabled BOSS to directly hire and establish the service ability to quickly and efficiently undertake the recruitment needs of enterprises in different tier cities, different industries and different scales. This also makes the company have stronger anti-risk ability and easier to grasp opportunities when the market environment fluctuates.
In the past year, the user group of BOSS direct recruitment has been expanding. The demand for blue-collar jobs represented by the service industry, second-tier and below cities, and the recruitment end of small and medium-sized enterprises has grown steadily. In the past, these user groups did not enjoy the bonus of online recruitment service well.
In 2023, BOSS’s direct employment revenue increased to 5.952 billion yuan, up 31.9% year-on-year; Calculated cash receipts amounted to 6.685 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.9%. In the twelve months ended December 31st, 2023, the number of corporate customers paid by the company was 5.2 million, up 44.4% year-on-year.
After the Spring Festival in 2024, the scale of platform users continued to expand. From the perspective of cities, the growth rate of active recruiters in second-tier and below cities is considerable. From the perspective of job categories, blue-collar jobs such as service industry, supply chain/logistics, and manufacturing have performed well in both increment and increase. From the perspective of enterprise scale, while the demand of small and medium-sized enterprises keeps rising, the recruitment demand of large enterprises is also recovering.
Low-tier cities and blue-collar jobs drive the expansion of users’ basic disk
In 2023, the average monthly active users (MAU) directly employed by BOSS reached 42.3 million, up 47.4% year-on-year.
In the past year, the job-hunting side also showed a trend of infiltration to second-tier and below cities and blue-collar workers. In the spring of 2024, this trend continued.
In the past, job candidates in products and technologies, which were regarded as "exclusive to first-tier cities", are increasingly appearing in second-tier and below cities. On the platform, programmers from Beijing returned to Aershan, a small border town bordering Mongolia, looking for part-time jobs in technical direction. There are also female programmers in Shanghai who returned to Hulunbeier to join a network security company and started operation and maintenance work.
The "recruiters" who used to be "job seekers" in first-tier cities and transformed into bosses in low-tier cities also showed considerable growth in 2023. The jobs they provide range from one or two to dozens. Some game special effects artists started a housekeeping company from Guangzhou to Heyuan, others graduated from prestigious schools, entered state-owned enterprises and mobile phone manufacturers, and finally came to Lincang, Yunnan Province from Shenzhen to sell tea, recruiting an "e-commerce anchor with goods".
After new users try, they stay and become old users. Old users continue to choose when they change jobs/start businesses, and jointly bring the direct employment of BOSS to all walks of life. It is worth mentioning that in 2023, while the number of active users continued to increase, the ratio of sales and marketing expenses directly employed by BOSS to income reached a new low, and the company’s operating efficiency continued to improve.
Self-developed recruitment industry vertical large language model to complete the record
In the fourth quarter of 2023, BOSS directly invested 430 million yuan in R&D, a year-on-year increase of 46.3%.
The company’s independent research and development of the recruitment industry vertical language model "Nanbeige" has passed the "Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services" for the record, and has begun to actively explore the landing scene in the field of job recruitment.
In February, 2024, "Nanbeige" participated in the standard compliance verification of trusted AI large model organized by China Institute of Information and Communication, successfully completed the special verification of large language model and finally got a 4+ rating. BOSS direct employment has also become the first batch of domestic enterprises facing the recruitment industry to pass this verification.
On the other hand, the Career Science Lab (CSL) directly hired by BOSS has made progress in the understanding of graph structure data and job recommendation based on large models, career path planning and cognitive diagnosis enhancement, and related achievements have been published in AAAI-2024, IEEE TKDE and other top international academic conferences and journals on artificial intelligence. In December, 2023, CSL, together with many universities, held the first international symposium on AI-enabled vocational science at ICDM-2023, which was the first international symposium in the world for the field of "vocational science".
Vocational science laboratories are also actively promoting cooperation in Industry-University-Research. By the end of 2023, academic exchanges and cooperation have been carried out with first-class universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, China Renmin University, China University of Science and Technology, Beihang University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), or a professional degree practice base/intelligent talent service technology research center has been jointly established, or an exchange mechanism for postgraduate school-enterprise joint training/visiting scholars has been established.
Improve the level of security.
In 2023, the security team will continue to improve the level of job security through iterations in technology and product functions. The accuracy and efficiency of the identification of recruitment verification materials are constantly improving, and the user interaction experience is also improving.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, the blue-collar job fidelity service "Conch Optimization" increased by 65.44% month-on-month, and "Conch Optimization" covered more than 17 million job seekers in a single quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2023, BOSS directly hired 45 clues of illegal crimes to public security organs all over the country. Successfully cracked down on 4 criminal gangs, cracked 10 cases and arrested 41 criminal suspects.