Sogou’s Q2 financial report in 2020: the loss narrowed and the revenue of intelligent hardware increased by 25%

On August 10, Sogou announced its unaudited financial report for the second quarter of 2020, with a total revenue of 261.2 million US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 14%, and a net loss attributable to Sogou of 8.5 million US dollars. Zhou Wenjuan, CFO of Sogou, said that although the company’s top line performance was under pressure due to the long-term impact of the epidemic, the company’s net loss had been shrinking continuously.
The financial report showed that Sogou’s search and search-related revenue was 241 million US dollars, down 13% year on year; Other income was $21 million, down 25% year on year. In addition, the company’s R&D expenditure of US $49 million was also 4% lower than that of last year. Seen from the current output and input, Sogou is under great pressure to develop.
In recent years, Sogou has been making efforts in AI technology to achieve ecological layout through AI. In this regard, Sogou said that AI empowerment can make all business lines better develop together and form a joint force, which is an important direction for the strategic upgrading of Sogou.
At the input method level, Sogou mobile phone input method covers handwriting, multilingual, barrier-free input and other vertical input scenarios. The number of daily active users has reached 484 million, and the average daily voice request volume has exceeded 1.4 billion times, which is the largest voice recognition application in China. However, from the growth of the number of daily active users in the same period last year, the growth rate of 6% was only one third of that of last year.
However, as a strategic extension of the input method business, Sogou’s smart hardware business achieved a 25% year-on-year growth in revenue in the second quarter of 2020. Sogou said that in the future, input methods will continue to enrich AI input services such as voice, OCR, translation, and optimize user experience.
In terms of search, Sogou Search takes building knowledge engines as the direction and actively builds knowledge ecology. At the level of knowledge production, Sogou Search takes encyclopedia, Chinese and other general and vertical content as the construction focus; At the level of knowledge computing, we will continue to optimize the search quality and improve the coverage of the first question and answer by organizing structured content.
At the same time, on top of the medical search that carries the user’s entrance, Sogou also vigorously develops AI medical health. It has not only formally established the AI medical center, focusing on creating medical services characterized by professional separation, but also jointly launched the world’s first AI dietitian with the Chinese Nutrition Society.
Although it is difficult for Sogou to deliver outstanding results at present, its development potential has been coveted by Tencent. Recently, Sogou received Tencent’s non-binding acquisition offer at the price of $9/ADS to acquire its remaining shares. In this regard, the board of directors of Sogou has not made any decision.