(Yicai) Aug. 22 -- Kuaishou Technology’s shares advanced after the Chinese short-video platform reported a 23 percent gain in net profit for the second quarter, lifted by artificial intelligence tools, and announced its first special dividend since listing in Hong Kong over four years ago.

Kuaishou [HKG: 1024] closed up 4.4 percent at HKD74.90 (USD9.58) per share today. The stock has gained more than 80 percent year to date.

Net profit was CNY4.9 billion (USD682.2 million) in the three months ended June 30, the Beijing-based company's latest earnings report showed yesterday. Adjusted net profit rose 12 percent to CNY5.6 billion, with an adjusted net margin of 16 percent, both setting quarterly records.

Revenue climbed 13 percent to CNY35 billion (USD4.9 billion), with online marketing services and livestreaming contributing 56 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

Kuaishou said it will pay a special dividend of HKD0.46 per share as a result of the earnings, amounting to about HKD2 billion in total, adding that the firm may buy back more of its own shares or pay further dividends in the future.

“Both our content and business ecosystems continued to benefit from deeper integration of innovative artificial intelligence technology, driving record-setting operational and financial performances in the second quarter,” said co-founder Cheng Yixiao.

“Our large AI model capabilities are now embedded across the majority of scenarios on our platform, empowering merchants and key opinion leaders to operate more efficiently and providing creators with a more immersive experience,” he added.

“These enhancements enabled us to deliver richer content and higher-quality services to users, with average DAUs reaching a historical high of 409 million,” noted Chen, who is also chairman, and chief executive officer.

The average daily and monthly active users on Kuaishou’s app rose 3.4 percent and 3.3 percent to 408.9 million and 714.8 million, respectively. E-commerce gross merchandise volume jumped nearly 18 percent to CNY358.9 billion (USD50 billion).

Revenue from other services, which accounted for 15 percent of the total, surged 26 percent to CNY5.2 billion, mainly due to growth of the e-commerce and Kling AI businesses. Revenue from Kling AI exceeded CNY250 million (USD34.8 million).

“We continued to iterate Kling AI, fortifying its global leadership, while offering creators differentiated video generation solutions and fueling the rapid growth of its commercialization," Chen said.

Kuaishou launched the Kling AI 2.1 model series in May. It boasts comprehensive quality improvements, including better motion performance, more realistic physical simulation, and more accurate semantic responsiveness.

In terms of leveraging large AI models to empower content and business ecosystems, the firm released OneRec in June, an end-to-end generative recommendation large model that can significantly improve the efficiency of training and inference computing power.

“Looking ahead, we will continue to explore the transformative power of AI across our business scenarios to create meaningful growth for our company and long-term value for our users, partners, and shareholders,” Chen said.

In the first half of the year, Kuaishou's net profit rose 10 percent to CNY8.9 billion from a year earlier on a 12 percent increase in revenue to CNY67.7 billion.

Editor: Futura Costaglione