$KUAISHOU-W(01024.HK) Q3 performance quick read: The Q3 financial report landed smoothly, and due to the company's clear guidance and previous communication during the investor day in September, the final performance was basically in line with expectations.

(1) The Olympics + peak customer acquisition season led to good user metrics in Q3. This shows some differences from trends tracked by external third parties, so it can be considered a small surprise.

(2) External advertising continues to warm up as expected, with major growth areas including short dramas with high industry prosperity, competitive e-commerce, and local life services.

(3) The off-season for e-commerce + live e-commerce being affected by traditional shelf e-commerce competition has led to a marginal slowdown in the growth rate of e-commerce and internal advertising.

(4) Due to the inclusion of Olympic-related content, marketing expenses for customer acquisition and local life services continued to grow, and the recognition of costs such as AI pushed up R&D expenses, resulting in a quarter-on-quarter decline in both Q3 profit margin and absolute profit.

Overall, although Kuaishou is a short video platform and the company is actively exploring multiple growth curves such as local life, short dramas, gaming, and online recruitment, in the short term, Kuaishou's e-commerce attributes remain strong, and its performance is more susceptible to trends in the e-commerce industry, especially KOL live e-commerce. With Q3 performance already fully anticipated, management's guidance becomes very critical. It is recommended to pay attention to the management's description of the Double 11 performance and the outlook for next year's e-commerce business during the upcoming conference call.