Posted in: Comics, Current News, Manga | Tagged: china, TenCent

China Literature Buys All Of Tencent Comics For $84,000,000

Yesterday, China Literature Limited, China's largest online publishing and e-book company agreed to buy Tencent for $84 million.

Published Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:57:08 -0600

by Rich Johnston

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Article Summary

China Literature acquires Tencent Comics for $84M, enhancing its IP ecosystem.
Tencent Animation and Comics sold despite recent losses totaling $41M.
Acquisition includes hit titles like The Outcast, with billions of video views.
China Literature's stock jumps 13%; plans to leverage AI in production.

Yesterday, China Literature Limited, China's largest online publishing and e-book company, itself a a spinoff of Tencent Holdings, agreed to buy the animation and comics business from its controlling shareholder, Tencent for $84 million. This includes all of Tencent Animation and Comics, their related business and IP rights of works, animation and film projects, including the Tencent Animation and Comics App platforms. After the purchase is completed, China Literature plans to production capacity from Tencent Animation and Comics to expand and upgrade China Literature's existing IP ecosystem.

Tencent Animation and Comics has been making a loss for the past two years, losing $26 million in 2021 and $15 million in 2022. With a book value for the company of $62 million, that's a significant premium in purchase value.

Established in 2012, Tencent Animation and Comics is a domestic animation and comic platform that includes titles such as The Outcast, The Fox Spirit Matchmaker, and Spare Me, Great Lord. The animated adaptation of The Outcast has had 6.5 billion video views on the platform. Already about 50% of Tencent Animation and Comics' top 30 best-selling titles originate from China Literature's intellectual properties, said Hou Xiaonan, CEO of China Literature. He stated that this transaction will enrich China Literature's upstream top-tier IP reserves, enhance cooperation in novel-to-animation adaptations, accelerate the process of visualizing textual IPs, and become one of the driving forces for future growth. "Online literature has served as a rich vein of storytelling material for successful comics and animation, while comics and animation have created vivid imagery to accompany stories from our platform, significantly enhancing their IP value". and that this acquisition will enrich China Literature's reservoir of blockbuster IPs, bolster its pipeline of comic adaptations and further expand its production capacity for animation, Hou said. "We expect this alliance to become a key driver of China Literature's future growth, and through robust synergies, we believe the combined entity will create more value than either party could achieve individually."

Tencent has been closing down loss-making aspects of its business, including its seven-year-old live-streaming service Now at the end of the year. Shares of China Literature surged 13 percent on the Hong Kong stock market after the announcement. In future, China Literature has stated it will use artificial intelligence to speed up production and distribution works.

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