Company: ZHIHF
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001410578-25-000729
Chunk: 32

Company: Zhihu Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 3
Chunk 32
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 operation may be materially and adversely affected.

We may be subject to risks associated with strategic acquisitions.

When appropriate opportunities arise, we may strategically acquire additional businesses or assets that are complementary to our existing business. The acquisitions and the subsequent integration of new businesses and assets into our own require significant attention from our management and could result in a diversion of resources from our existing business, which in turn could materially and adversely affect our operations. Acquired assets or businesses may not generate the financial results or realize the synergies as we expect. For example, we may not realize the intended synergies following our acquisitions of related businesses in vocational training space in enriching the content supply for our operations if we fail to effectively integrate their businesses.

In addition, we may not be able to effectively identify appropriate businesses for strategic acquisitions, and the costs of identifying and consummating acquisitions may be significant. Acquisitions could result in the use of substantial amount of cash, potentially dilutive issuances of equity securities, the recognition of goodwill in connection with acquisitions, which may lead to significant impairment charges, amortization expenses for other intangible assets, and exposure to potential unknown liabilities of the acquired business. Our acquisitions involved and may continue to involve performance-based purchase price adjustments, which may result in an increase in the cash or equity-based consideration. We may need approvals and licenses from applicable government authorities for the acquisitions and to comply with any applicable PRC laws and regulations, which could result in increasing delay and costs and may derail our business strategy if we fail to do so. Any failure in relation to the potential strategic acquisitions, or other potential strategic alliances we may enter with various parties from time to time, may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

We work with certain channel partners, which mainly include partners for pre-installations on mobile devices and application marketplaces, for our user growth. If any of our major channel partners becomes less effective or terminates collaboration with us, our user growth, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected.

We work with certain channel partners for app pre-installations of on mobile devices to support our user growth. Currently, all pre-installations of the Zhihu app are made on Android devices, representing an insignificant portion of the Zhihu app installations on Android devices. Due to the intense competition, these channel partners may raise their charges on us to a point where it becomes cost inefficient for us to increase user growth through them, or they may decide to discontinue their collaboration with us. In