Phoenix New Media

Phoenix New Media, the New York-listed Chinese internet company behind ifeng.com and the ifeng News and ifeng Video apps, reported a tiny attributable net profit of RMB 0.336 million in 2025 (about US$48,000) after losses of RMB 53.6 million in 2024 and RMB 102.5 million in 2023. Total revenue grew 8.8%, but the improvement did not come from a rebound in the core advertising/news-portal business: net advertising revenue actually fell 2.6%. Growth came from paid services, especially digital reading and other paid-content products delivered through mini-programs on third-party applications. Even so, the company still reported a full-year operating loss of RMB 34.4 million, and its non-GAAP adjusted net result remained a loss of RMB 19.5 million.

The headline reads “Chinese new media company returns to profit.” The income statement reads: a shrinking advertising business at the revenue line, a much larger marketing budget chasing pulp-fiction subscribers on someone else’s platform, an operating loss bridged to a barely positive bottom line by fair-value gains on investments, a 9% headcount cut, and a stock that has lost about 97% of its IPO-equivalent value since 2011.

Phoenix New Media: key financial indicators 2024–2025

Source: Phoenix New Media Limited, Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, filed with the SEC on 29 April 2026; and the company’s FY2025 results release of 9 March 2026. Reporting currency: RMB; the company’s stated translation rate is RMB 6.9931 = US$1.00 (the People’s Bank of China rate as of 31 December 2025).

Phoenix New Media is a Cayman Islands holding company headquartered in Beijing and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FENG since May 2011. Its operations in China run through “variable interest entity” (VIE) contractual arrangements rather than direct ownership, a standard structure for U.S.-listed Chinese internet companies, used to navigate Chinese restrictions on foreign investment in news and internet businesses. The company is 55%-owned (and 61.4% voting-controlled) by Phoenix TV, formally Phoenix Media Investment (Holdings) Limited, a Hong Kong-listed broadcaster whose largest shareholder, since 2021, has been Bauhinia Culture (Hong Kong) Holdings, a Chinese state-backed entity, with 21% of the stock. China Mobile, the state-owned telecom carrier, indirectly holds about another 19.7%.

Phoenix New Media: asset map

Signals

The 2025 result is a digital-reading story, not an advertising recovery

Strip the income statement down to its components and a clear pattern emerges. Net advertising revenue, which has historically been the company’s main business and still accounts for 80% of total revenue, fell 2.6% in 2025, from RMB 630.6 million to RMB 614.3 million. All of the revenue growth came from “paid services,” which more than doubled from RMB 73.1 million to RMB 151.2 million. And within paid services, almost everything is one specific product line: digital reading, audiobooks and other content-related sales, delivered mainly through mini-programs on third-party platforms, small, embedded apps that run inside larger apps such as WeChat. That paid-content line went from contributing 6.6% of total revenue in 2024 to 17.9% in 2025.

The cost picture matters too. Advertising-services gross profit actually rose from RMB 226.5 million to RMB 245.1 million, because advertising-services costs fell faster than advertising-services revenue: the segment is shrinking at the top line but margins improved. The step-change in total gross profit, however, came from paid services, where gross profit jumped from RMB 42.2 million to RMB 129.0 million as digital-reading revenue more than doubled.

That explains the gross-margin improvement. It does not explain the GAAP net profit. The company still reported an operating loss of RMB 34.4 million in 2025. The slim positive bottom line came from below the operating line, most importantly from RMB 23.8 million of fair-value gains on a private-equity fund investment, plus interest income on the company’s cash. Excluding those non-operating items, the non-GAAP adjusted net loss was RMB 19.5 million, narrowed from RMB 36.7 million in 2024 but still a loss. So the more accurate headline is not “return to profit” but: digital-reading revenue grew enough to keep the loss small, and a fair-value gain on a non-core investment pushed the GAAP number marginally positive.

Sales and marketing expenses tell the other side of the story. They rose 47.8% in a single year, from RMB 184.2 million to RMB 272.3 million: the company says explicitly that the increase was for promoting the digital-reading services. Mini-program businesses are subject to the policies and traffic algorithms of the host platform; change those policies and the channel can close overnight.

The shareholder structure points to Beijing

To understand who controls Phoenix New Media, you have to walk up the chain. The listed company is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Its controlling shareholder, with 55% economic ownership and 61.4% of the votes, is Phoenix Satellite Television (B.V.I.) Holding Limited. That entity is wholly owned by Phoenix Media Investment (Holdings) Limited — Phoenix TV, a Hong Kong-listed media group whose largest shareholder since 2021 has been Bauhinia Culture (Hong Kong) Holdings, a Chinese state-backed entity, with a 21% stake bought in June 2021 from the company’s founder. China Mobile, the state-owned telecom carrier, holds about another 19.7% indirectly.

That ownership cascade is reflected in the boardroom. The CEO and chairman of Phoenix New Media, Yusheng Sun, is concurrently an executive director, deputy chief executive officer, and editor-in-chief of Phoenix TV. Three other directors hold senior positions inside the Phoenix TV group, including its CFO. Effectively, four of Phoenix New Media’s six directors are also senior management at the parent company, a fact company filings mentioned in risk-factor language: “We may have conflicts of interest with Phoenix TV and, because of Phoenix TV’s controlling beneficial ownership interest in our company, may not be able to resolve such conflicts on terms favorable for us.”

Content licensing flows from the parent too. Phoenix New Media paid Phoenix TV Group RMB 51.8 million for content licensing in 2025, plus RMB 3.4 million in trademark fees. In November 2025 the parties signed a new program license agreement running to August 2027, with annual fees of RMB 55 million. The new agreement explicitly extends the licensed uses to include “artificial intelligence related use, including model training, application, research, and other related use”, a notable expansion in light of how Chinese state-aligned media outlets are positioning their content libraries for AI training.

The Media and Journalism Research Center’s State Media Monitor classifies Phoenix TV as “Captured Public/State-Managed.” That classification is formally attached to the Hong Kong parent rather than to Phoenix New Media itself, but given Phoenix TV’s control of Phoenix New Media, it is directly relevant to any ownership analysis of the U.S.-listed subsidiary.

The corporate structure carries political risk that is now openly disclosed

Like every U.S.-listed Chinese internet company, Phoenix New Media operates in mainland China through “variable interest entities”, Chinese-owned companies that the listed entity controls through contracts rather than equity. The 2025 20-F discloses that 50.7% of total revenue in 2025 was earned by entities the listed company does not legally own, but only controls through contracts. If those contracts are challenged or if Chinese law changes, the listing-company shareholders’ claim on those revenues could be weakened or extinguished.

The 20-F also names two specific U.S. regulatory risks. First, the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act: the company was an SEC-identified issuer after its 2021 filing, but after the PCAOB’s December 2022 determination that it could again inspect mainland China and Hong Kong audit firms, Phoenix has not been re-identified, and the company says it does not expect to be in 2026. The risk remains contingent on PCAOB access being maintained. Second, the company has previously fallen below the NYSE’s continued-listing minimum-price requirement: in early 2022, its ADS price dropped below US$1.00 for thirty trading days, prompting it to multiply its ADS-to-share ratio sixfold — a manoeuvre with the same effect as a reverse stock split — to lift the headline price back over the threshold. As of late April 2026, the ADSs trade at around US$1.71.

The stock has lost about 97% of its IPO-equivalent value

Phoenix New Media went public on the NYSE on 12 May 2011, raising US$137.2 million. After the May 2022 ADS-ratio change (1 ADS = 48 Class A shares, instead of 1 ADS = 8), the IPO price expressed on a like-for-like basis is roughly US$73.80 per ADS. By late April 2026, the ADSs trade at roughly US$1.71, about 97% below that level, valuing the entire company at about US$20.5 million. That is less than the RMB 1.02 billion of cash, term deposits, short-term investments and restricted cash on its balance sheet (roughly US$146 million at year-end 2025). The public market values the operating business at less than zero.

The company has tried twice to address the share-price problem with cash distributions: a US$100 million special dividend in 2019, another US$100 million special dividend in 2020, and a US$2 million repurchase authorization in 2023, under which the company ultimately bought back 120,981 ADSs for about US$0.2 million. Neither approach reversed the trajectory. Two things help explain the valuation gap. First, the operating business has not generated cash flow consistently. Second, although the balance sheet shows roughly RMB 1 billion of cash and equivalents, much of that sits inside Chinese subsidiaries and VIEs, and U.S. investors cannot count on it being distributable to the listed parent in any reasonable timeframe.

The headcount is shrinking; marketing spend is up sharply

Phoenix New Media employed 743 people at the end of 2023, 672 at the end of 2024, and 611 at the end of 2025, an 18% reduction over two years. General and administrative expenses fell 8.7% in 2025; technology and product development expenses fell another 8.7%. The company still disclosed a substantial editorial team (192 editors as of 31 December 2025) alongside roughly 130 outsourced content monitors.

At the same time, sales and marketing spending rose by RMB 88 million in a single year, almost all of it directed at acquiring digital-reading subscribers through paid traffic. Sales and marketing expenses (RMB 272.3 million) were higher than the entire paid-services revenue line (RMB 151.2 million) and higher than net-advertising-services gross profit (RMB 245.1 million); content and operational costs (RMB 367.1 million) remained the larger expense line. That is still a striking allocation for a company that describes itself as a journalism platform: the marketing budget for one growth product has reached the same order of magnitude as the cost of producing all of the company’s content.

What to watch in 2026

The unanswered question is whether the digital-reading business (now responsible for all of the company’s revenue growth and most of the marketing spend) can scale without burning through the cash cushion. Online novel mini-programs in China are a competitive, low-margin business operating on platforms (Tencent, ByteDance) whose policies the company does not control. Advertising on Phoenix New Media’s own portal and apps continues to shrink at the top line, even as advertising margins improve through cost cuts. The user base for traditional Chinese-language news portals continues to migrate to short-video and mini-program ecosystems. The 9% workforce reduction in 2025 is consistent with a multi-year pattern of cost cuts.

Beyond the operating business, three structural questions will shape the 2026 reading of Phoenix New Media. Whether the U.S.-listed entity can maintain its NYSE listing under the HFCA Act and the continued-listing rules. Whether the new program license agreement with Phoenix TV, and particularly its expanded AI-training rights clause, generates any visible new revenue stream or just adds cost. And whether Phoenix TV’s increasingly state-controlled ownership structure starts to affect editorial direction at the listed subsidiary in ways that are visible to outside readers.