(Yicai Global) March 2 -- IQiyi’s stock price surged after the Chinese video platform operator said it targets breaking even this year after racking up losses in the 11 years since it was founded.

Shares of Beijing-based iQiyi [NASDAQ: IQ] soared 21.5 percent yesterday to USD5.03 apiece. In pre-market trading in New York today, the stock was up a further 4.4 percent as of 5.14 a.m. local time.

“Our goal is to reach non-GAAP operating break-even for the full year of 2022 and to reach quarterly non-GAAP operating break-even as early as possible,” founder and Chief Executive Officer Gong Yu said on iQiyi’s earnings conference call yesterday.

Founded in 2010, iQiyi accumulated a total net loss of CNY41.99 billion (USD6.65 billion) from 2015 to last year, according to figures from its 2018 listing prospectus and annual earnings reports.

 “The overall competitive landscape for the online video industry is entering a new chapter,” Chief Content Officer Wang Xiaohui said on the call. “Within this chapter, we will focus more on the efficiency aspect, and hope to reduce our operating loss and increase profitability.”

For the 12 months ended Dec. 31 , iQiyi’s net loss narrowed over 11 percent from the year before to CNY6.2 billion (USD982 million), per the financial report the firm released yesterday. Its non-GAAP net loss shrank 16.7 percent to CNY4.5 billion.

The non-GAAP annual operating loss narrowed 33.3 percent to CNY3 billion. Revenue rose 3 percent to CNY30.6 billion, as income from memberships, online advertising, and content distribution rose, while the cost of revenue and expenses for administration, research and development fell.

For the fourth quarter of last year, iQiyi’s financial performance beat expectations amid a series of initiatives that optimized costs and improved organizational alignment. Despite its net loss widening 20 percent from a year ago to CNY1.8 billion, the non-GAAP net loss shrank 16.7 percent to CNY1 billion.

The non-GAAP operating loss was CNY515.5 million (USD80.9 million) in the quarter, versus CNY940.7 million a year earlier. Revenue was CNY7.4 billion, marking a small annual change.

“In the fourth quarter, we proactively adjusted our operating strategy, which focuses on optimizing costs and improving operating efficiency to reduce our operating loss overall,” Gong said. “The results have been very encouraging.”

“We also optimized our organization alignment, which will help to reduce our employee costs and also create a flatter operation and more elite team to help us to focus on the core business of IT and also to improve the overall operating efficiencies,” he said.

IQiyi also built a promotional mechanism in the period to focus on raising revenue performance of its library content, Gong added.

It had 97 million daily average subscribed members in the quarter, down 5.6 percent from a year earlier, while monthly average revenue per membership rose 13.7 percent to CNY14.16 (USD2.24), as the company raised its subscriber fees by between 9 percent and 20 percent in December.

“Heading into the first quarter of 2022, we expect to see further significant improvements in both GAAP and non-GAAP operating losses compared with the fourth quarter of 2021,” said Chief Financial Officer Wang Jun. “Again, this benefits from our initiatives in cost optimization and efficiency improvement.”

Editor: Futura Costaglione