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IQ, iQIYI Inc.
Revenue is led by Membership (62%) and Advertising (19%), with 2 more lines behind.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What it is
- A diversified business; where the profit really comes from, and whether it is earned or bought, is what the segment detail settles.
- Situation
- Unprofitable. No sustained operating profit across the record; an earnings multiple has nothing to rest on. What the record does show is revenue, the gross-margin trajectory, and the burn against the cash on hand.
- What moves the needle
- Operating margin has run around −20% through the cycle on a 6.1% gross margin, the operating line deeply negative — so the lever is the path to a margin at all: revenue growth against the cost curve and the cash runway, not the level of a margin that isn't there yet. The cash cycle has run negative through the cycle (a median of −101 days): the operation is paid before it pays, so working capital releases cash as the business grows rather than tying it up. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 20-F →Membership is 62% of revenue, with Advertising the other meaningful line at 19%.
- Membership62%CN¥16.8B
- Advertising19%CN¥5.2B
- Others10%CN¥2.8B
- Content distribution9%CN¥2.5B
From the segment footnote of the company's own 20-F. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMDec 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| CN¥11.2B | CN¥17.4B | CN¥25.0B | CN¥29.0B | CN¥29.7B | CN¥30.6B | CN¥29.0B | CN¥31.9B | CN¥29.2B | CN¥27.3B | CN¥27.3B | RevenueRevenue |
| −2% | −0% | −9% | −5% | 6% | 10% | 23% | 28% | 25% | 21% | 21% | Gross marginGross mgn |
| (CN¥2.8B) | (CN¥4.0B) | (CN¥8.3B) | (CN¥9.3B) | (CN¥6.0B) | (CN¥4.5B) | CN¥1.3B | CN¥3.0B | CN¥1.8B | CN¥229M | CN¥229M | Operating incomeOp. inc. |
| −24.8% | −22.7% | −33.2% | −31.9% | −20.3% | −14.7% | 4.5% | 9.4% | 6.2% | 0.8% | 0.8% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| (CN¥3.1B) | (CN¥3.7B) | (CN¥9.1B) | (CN¥10.3B) | (CN¥7.0B) | (CN¥6.1B) | (CN¥118M) | CN¥2.0B | CN¥791M | (CN¥204M) | (CN¥204M) | Net incomeNet inc. |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| CN¥2.6B | CN¥4.0B | CN¥2.9B | CN¥3.9B | (CN¥5.4B) | (CN¥6.0B) | (CN¥71M) | CN¥3.4B | CN¥2.1B | CN¥106M | CN¥106M | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| CN¥306M | CN¥349M | CN¥312M | CN¥476M | CN¥480M | CN¥400M | CN¥337M | CN¥275M | CN¥148M | CN¥138M | CN¥138M | DepreciationDeprec. |
| CN¥5.4B | CN¥7.4B | CN¥11.6B | CN¥13.7B | CN¥1.1B | (CN¥244M) | (CN¥290M) | CN¥1.1B | CN¥1.2B | CN¥172M | CN¥172M | Working capital & otherWC & other |
| CN¥400M | CN¥1.0B | CN¥612M | CN¥740M | CN¥241M | CN¥262M | CN¥174M | CN¥37M | CN¥79M | CN¥96M | CN¥96M | CapexCapex |
| 3.6% | 5.9% | 2.4% | 2.6% | 0.8% | 0.9% | 0.6% | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.4% | Capex / revenueCapex/rev |
| CN¥2.3B | CN¥3.7B | CN¥2.6B | CN¥3.4B | (CN¥5.7B) | (CN¥6.2B) | (CN¥245M) | CN¥3.3B | CN¥2.0B | CN¥10M | CN¥10M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 20.5% | 21.1% | 10.3% | 11.8% | −19.0% | −20.3% | −0.8% | 10.4% | 6.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% | Owner earnings marginOE mgn |
| CN¥2.2B | CN¥3.0B | CN¥2.3B | CN¥3.2B | (CN¥5.7B) | (CN¥6.2B) | (CN¥245M) | CN¥3.3B | CN¥2.0B | CN¥10M | CN¥10M | Free cash flowFCF |
| 19.7% | 17.2% | 9.1% | 10.9% | −19.0% | −20.3% | −0.8% | 10.4% | 6.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% | Free cash flow marginFCF mgn |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| — | CN¥1.5B | CN¥10.6B | CN¥10.5B | CN¥14.3B | CN¥4.3B | CN¥7.9B | CN¥5.4B | CN¥4.5B | CN¥4.7B | CN¥4.7B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| — | CN¥2.2B | CN¥2.9B | CN¥3.6B | CN¥3.3B | CN¥2.7B | CN¥2.4B | CN¥2.2B | CN¥2.2B | CN¥2.5B | CN¥2.5B | ReceivablesReceiv. |
| — | CN¥7.0B | CN¥10.2B | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | CN¥10.2B | Accounts payablePayables |
| — | (CN¥4.8B) | (CN¥7.3B) | CN¥3.6B | CN¥3.3B | CN¥2.7B | CN¥2.4B | CN¥2.2B | CN¥2.2B | CN¥2.5B | (CN¥7.6B) | Operating working capitalOper. WC |
| — | CN¥5.7B | CN¥19.9B | CN¥20.3B | CN¥22.3B | CN¥11.5B | CN¥13.8B | CN¥12.6B | CN¥9.5B | CN¥10.3B | CN¥10.3B | Current assetsCur. assets |
| — | CN¥11.6B | CN¥19.8B | CN¥20.2B | CN¥24.9B | CN¥22.5B | CN¥28.1B | CN¥22.3B | CN¥21.5B | CN¥22.1B | CN¥22.1B | Current liabilitiesCur. liab. |
| — | 0.5× | 1.0× | 1.0× | 0.9× | 0.5× | 0.5× | 0.6× | 0.4× | 0.5× | 0.5× | Current ratioCurr. ratio |
| — | CN¥3.3B | CN¥589M | CN¥3.9B | CN¥3.9B | CN¥3.9B | CN¥3.8B | CN¥3.8B | CN¥3.8B | CN¥3.8B | CN¥3.8B | GoodwillGoodwill |
| — | CN¥20.2B | CN¥44.8B | CN¥44.8B | CN¥48.2B | CN¥42.5B | CN¥46.0B | CN¥44.6B | CN¥45.8B | CN¥46.7B | CN¥46.7B | Total assetsAssets |
| -25.2× | -14.2× | -87.7× | -10.1× | -5.7× | -3.3× | 1.8× | 2.6× | 1.7× | 0.3× | 0.2× | Interest coverageInt. cov. |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 3.43B | 3.24B | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 343M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| CN¥3.28 | CN¥5.36 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | CN¥79.67 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| CN¥-0.90 | CN¥-1.15 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | CN¥-0.60 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| CN¥0.67 | CN¥1.13 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | CN¥0.03 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| CN¥0.65 | CN¥0.92 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | CN¥0.03 | Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh |
| CN¥0.12 | CN¥0.32 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | CN¥0.28 | Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh |
Share counts before 2017 are restated ×10 for a stock split, so per-share figures sit on one basis.
The diluted share count moved ×1/9.47 into TTM — shares retired, not a split the totals corroborate — and the per-share figures carry the counts as filed.
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +63.3%/yr (1-yr) | +63.3%/yr (1-yr) |
| Owner earnings / share | +67.8%/yr (1-yr) | +67.8%/yr (1-yr) |
| Capital spending / share | +170.0%/yr (1-yr) | +170.0%/yr (1-yr) |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked. Share counts on the current split basis.
Owner earnings vs. net income
Owner earningsNet incomeThe accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.
Where the cash went
ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetainedEach year's operating cash, by what management did with it: the mix, and how it drifts.
Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.
In fiscal 2025 the business turned a CN¥204M loss into CN¥10M of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.
| FY2025 | FY2024 | FY2023 | FY2022 | FY2021 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported net income | (CN¥204M) | CN¥791M | CN¥2.0B | (CN¥118M) | (CN¥6.1B) |
| Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back | +CN¥138M | +CN¥148M | +CN¥275M | +CN¥337M | +CN¥400M |
| Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items | +CN¥172M | +CN¥1.2B | +CN¥1.1B | −CN¥290M | −CN¥244M |
| Cash from operations | CN¥106M | CN¥2.1B | CN¥3.4B | (CN¥71M) | (CN¥6.0B) |
| Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow | −CN¥96M | −CN¥79M | −CN¥37M | −CN¥174M | −CN¥262M |
| Owner earnings | CN¥10M | CN¥2.0B | CN¥3.3B | (CN¥245M) | (CN¥6.2B) |
| Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue | 0% | 7% | 10% | -1% | -20% |
Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position .
Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Will it survive?
- Does not cover its interestOperating income CN¥229M ÷ interest expense CN¥1.1B
What this means
A full year of operating profit didn't cover the interest bill. This is the zombie zone: the business depends on refinancing, asset sales, or forbearance to service its debt.
- Debt under-captured — leverage unknown, not low
What this means
This company pays far more interest than its tagged debt implies (the rest sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so its net cash or net debt cannot be read honestly: the gap is unknown, not zero, and 'net cash' here would be exactly the fiction the figure is meant to prevent. Judge it on the record and owner earnings instead.
- Negative, funded by othersDSO 34 + DIO 0 − DPO 172 days
What this means
Days cash is tied up between paying suppliers and collecting from customers. A negative cycle is a quiet moat: suppliers and customers fund the operation (Buffett's “float”), the company grows on other people's money. (Little or no inventory, a services / asset-light model, so the inventory leg is ~0.)
Is it a good business?
- Debt under-captured
What this means
This company's interest bill implies far more debt than its filings tag at the consolidated level (the rest sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so invested capital, and the return on it, cannot be read honestly. Judge this one on Owner Earnings and the record instead.
- Solid through the cycle10-yr median margin, range -20%–21%; latest CN¥10M = operating cash CN¥106M − maintenance capex CN¥96MIndustry peers: median 3%
What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's 0% of revenue this year, a 7% median across 10 years.
- Are earnings backed by cash? CN¥106MLoss, but cash-generativeNet income (CN¥204M) · cash from operations CN¥106M
What this means
The company reported a net loss, so a conversion ratio isn't meaningful. What matters then is whether operations still threw off cash, here, they did.
How is the cash used?
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Investing or harvesting? 0.69×HarvestingCapex CN¥96M ÷ depreciation CN¥138M
What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.
Graham’s defensive tests · 0 of 3 met
Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.
- Adequate size —Revenue ≥ $2B (a dollar floor) · CN¥27.3B
What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's floor is a dollar figure — about $2B of revenue as a conservative modern stand-in. This company reports in its home currency and we carry no exchange rate, so we show the figure and leave the size bar for you to apply rather than convert it with a number we don't have.
- Strong liquidity MissCurrent ratio ≥ 2× · 0.47×
What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
- Conservative debt —Debt ≤ working capital · —
What this means
The filings tag only a fraction of the debt this company's interest bill implies (much of it sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so this test can't be run honestly.
- Earnings stability MissA profit every year (10-yr record) · 8 loss years
What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
- Dividend record MissUninterrupted dividends · none paid
What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
- Earnings growth —Earnings +33% over the record · —
What this means
Earnings were negative early in the record, a growth rate isn't meaningful.
- Moderate price —P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price
What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are CN¥0.13/share (latest year CN¥-0.03), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.
Durability & moat, 2016–2025
Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.
- Profitable years 2 of 10
What this means
Lost money in 8 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
- Operating margin −27% → 5% (3-yr avg ends)
What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about −27% early to 5% lately, median −20% — pricing power intact or improving.
- Owner earnings growth −11%/yr
What this means
Owner earnings shrank about 11% a year over the record.
- Worst year 2018 · −33.2% op. margin
What this means
Operations went underwater in 2018, understand why before trusting the good years.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.
The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product; it frames AI mainly as a capability.
The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of fiscal year-end, Dec 31, 2025Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.
- Cash & short-term investmentsCN¥4.7B
- ReceivablesCN¥2.5B
- Other current assetsCN¥3.1B
- Debt due within a yearCN¥738M
- Accounts payableCN¥10.2B
- Other current liabilitiesCN¥11.2B
From the company's latest filing.
How the cash was used, 2016–2025
Over the record, the business generated CN¥7.5B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a balanced allocator, splitting cash between the business, owners, and the balance sheet.
- ReinvestedCN¥3.7B · 49%
- Retained (debt / cash)CN¥3.9B · 51%
- Net change in share count−90.0%
The diluted count fell from 3425M to 343M, so the buybacks outran the stock issued to staff.
- Dividend record—
No dividend line was reported in the filing data over the span; the record here neither confirms nor rules out a payout.
Buybacks are gross of stock issued to staff; the share-count line above is the net of that, the figure that decides whether owners gained. The average price paid blends a year of purchases (and any accelerated repurchase), so it is close, not exact. The record of where the cash went and on what terms.
Peers, Entertainment & Studios
The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Gross margin | Op. margin | ROIC | Owner earn. margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NFLXNetflix Inc. | $45.2B | 39% | 18.1% | 18% | 3% |
| IQiQIYI Inc. | CN¥27.3B | 8% | -17.5% | — | 9% |
| LIONLionsgate Studios Corp | $2.6B | — | 1.5% | — | 6% |
| STRZStarz Entertainment Corp. | $1.4B | — | 0.1% | -5% | -1% |
| Group median | — | — | 0.8% | — | 4% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFEnter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. Per the filing's own cover, “American Depositary Shares ( each representing seven Class”; iQIYI Inc. reports in CNY, so every figure in this tool is stated per ADS and translated at CNY 1 = $0.147 (2026-07-17, reference rate) so your dollar quote reconciles exactly. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed, in CNY.
Type today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what iQIYI Inc. has delivered.
Through the cycle, iQIYI Inc. earns about $347M on its 8.6% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 0.0% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
—
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner earnings $1M on 965M shares outstanding (a weighted cover-text, the only count this filer tags); net cash $501M. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Manual order: ← IPHA its page in the Manual IRS →
Industry order: ← IMAX the Entertainment & Studios chapter LION →