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Media/Entertainment
youngchinabiz.com : latest Business news about Media – Entertainment in China by expert / journalist Doug Young : more than two decades of experience in writting about Chinese Companies
Bottom line: Tencent’s online literature unit is likely to make a Hong Kong IPO later this year, and should get a relatively strong reception due to strong backing and its market leading position for a product with stable long-term demand.
Tencent literature unit eyes HK IPO
If you don’t succeed the first, second and third times, then try again. That could well be the mantra for the digital literature unit of former online entertainment giant Shanda, which has gone through quite a few attempts at an IPO, only to stumble each time. This particular story has quite a few twists, which I’ll review shortly. But the end result appears to be that the unit, previously called Cloudary, may finally succeed in its latest attempt to go to market, this time under its current parentage as the online literature unit of Internet giant Tencent (HKEx: 700). Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Foundering prospects of cross-border tie-ups involving DreamWorks and Paramount shows the love affair between Hollywood and China may be entering a new phase of lowered, more realistic expectations.
DreamWorks Animation eyes sale of China JV stake
The old saying says that what goes up must come down, and that certainly appears to be the case with new reports of the unraveling of two more China-Hollywood tie-ups. The latest reports say that US giant DreamWorks Animation is looking to sell out its stake in Oriental DreamWorks, its landmark China animation joint venture that was launched with fanfare 5 years ago. At the same time, another report is saying a $1 billion film production tie-up between two Chinese partners and Paramount is reportedly running into trouble due to turmoil at the Hollywood studio.
The unraveling of these two major deals comes just weeks after another deal involving Wanda Group’s planned purchase of Dick Clark Productions also appears to be coming unglued. In that case the culprit is China’s recent currency controls, which were preventing Wanda from getting the necessary funds outside the country to complete the $1 billion purchase. But Wanda was apparently also worried it was overpaying for the asset. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Ant Financial will counter bid for MoneyGram, following a surprise rival bid for the company, while Alibaba Pictures’ absorption of the former Youku Tudou looks like a logical consolidation of Alibaba’s filmed entertainment assets.
Ant’s MoneyGram offer attracts rival bidder
Two of Alibaba(NYSE: BABA) founder Jack Ma’s biggest endeavors outside his core e-commerce business are in the headlines, led by a counter bid for a US financial services company his Ant Financial is trying to acquire. That particular deal has a US company called Euronet Worldwide announcing a bid for MoneyGram that’s 15 percent higher than Ant’s own $880 million bid made back in January. The other news is slightly more mundane but still significant, and has Ma’s Alibaba moving its Youku Tudou online video service into its separately listed Alibaba Pictures (HKEx: 1060) filmed entertainment unit. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Yidao’s announcement of plans for an IPO hint at a looming sale of the company by controlling stakeholder LeEco, which could be mulling sales of other recently purchased assets in a bid to ease its cash-crunch.
Yidao prepares for IPO
What do you do when you’re running low on cash? The answer is obvious for private car services firm Yidao: make an IPO. That would normally seem like a relatively smart and logical choice for most up-and-coming companies, but Yidao isn’t quite one of those. For starters, the company operates in an extremely competitive space now dominated by the likes of Didi Chuxing, UCar and Shouqi, just to name a few.
The other big factor weighing on the company is its majority ownership by cash-challenged online video company LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104). To be precise, LeEco paid $700 million for 70 percent of Yidao in 2015, back when both companies were far healthier than they are today. Thus this latest pronouncement that Yidao is even considering an IPO seems to hint that LeEco may be considering a sale of some of the many assets it acquired during a breakneck expansion that got it into its current mess. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Oppo’s major new cricket sponsorship deal shows its commitment to India, but may have to be renegotiated if and when the company’s fortunes decline in the next 1-2 years following its meteoric rise.
Oppo in India cricket deal
Smartphone high-flyer Oppo is trying to show the world it’s serious about India, with word it will pay 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million) for rights to sponsor the nation’s national cricket team. News of the deal comes just three months after China’s top smartphone brand announced plans to build a production facility in the hotly contested India market, which has become a magnet for Chinese brands over the last year.
All that raises the question of whether Oppo is for real, or just another passing fad in China’s constantly changing smartphone landscape. That landscape has seen players like Lenovo (HKEx: 992), Xiaomiand Huawei become dominant players in the world’s largest smartphone market one day, only to rapidly fade the next. It’s obviously still too early to say if Oppo will follow in that trajectory, though my educated guess would be the answer to that question is quite possibly “yes”. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: NetEase’s new global expansion could stand a good chance of success due to its strong record with self-developed titles, which could help it pass Baidu in market value over the next 1-2 years.
NetEase holds developer forum in San Francisco
The company that made its name from a series of games based on the famous Chinese novel Journey to the West is trying to turn that story into reality, as NetEase (Nasdaq: NTES) eyes expansion outside its home market. The West contained in NetEase’s latest announcement is quite different from the West in the classic novel, the former referring to North America and Europe while the latter refers to India.
But other similarities between the novel and this new global expansion do abound in NetEase’s new announcement that it has just held its first-ever developer’s forum in the West. In both cases, the main character is traveling into unfamiliar terrain in pursuit of major rewards. And in both cases, each faces big challenges before attaining those goals. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: LeSport’s reported default on payments for Asian Football Confederation soccer games marks the start of the popping of a bubble for sports broadcasting rights dating back to last year.
LeSports soccer drive on the skids
In what could be the first domino to fall in China’s overinflated market for sports broadcasting rights, the sports unit of cash challenged LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104) has reportedly defaulted on payment for one of several high-priced packages it purchased last year. In this case, it appears that fans of Asian Football Confederation soccer games won’t be able to watch their favorite pastime on LeSports, which reports are saying has been stripped of its broadcasting rights after missing a payment. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: iQiyi’s issue of convertible notes to raise its latest $1.5 billion shows it continues to post big losses, and investors are increasingly skeptical that it can become profitable in the next 2 years.
iQiyi lures investors with convertible notes
It seems no one is quite ready to believe that China’s cash-burning online video sites are ready for the profit column just yet. That seems to be the message coming from Baidu-backed (Nasdaq: BIDU) iQiyi, one of the leading players, which has just raised a fresh $1.5 billion via a convertible note issue. That would indicate that investors are hoping they can convert their notes into iQiyi stock when they come due, but can also simply collect back their money with interest instead. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Wanda will continue to operate its ffan e-commerce site for another year, following the departure of its CEO, but could quietly end the initiative afterwards due to lack of synergies with its brick-and-mortar shopping malls.
Success evades Wanda in e-commerce
The headlines have been buzzing this week about the departure of the chief executive of the e-commerce unit Wanda Group, the real estate-turned-entertainment giant with a voracious appetite for global acquisitions. The big theme from the chatter is that the departure of Li Jinling, the unit’s third CEO in 3 years, marks a setback and possibly even presages a death knell for the Wanda initiative into the online shopping realm.
Wanda is speaking out on the subject, saying it never intended to launch a website that would compete directly with the likes of sector leaders Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and JD.com(Nasdaq: JD). Perhaps that’s true, though that didn’t stop Wanda and its ultra-confident chief Wang Jianlin from boasting of lofty ambitions when it signed up Internet titans Baidu(Nasdaq: BIDU) and Tencent (HKEx: 700) as partners to its ffan e-commerce site in 2014. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: A new arbitration claim by a LeEco supplier could trigger a domino effect that sends the company into crisis, while TCL’s first BlackBerry model is likely to get lukewarm reviews when it debuts in March.
TCL teases first BlackBerry model at CES
We’ll close out the week with a couple of smartphone headlines, which seems appropriate since the world’s biggest consumer electronics show, CES, is taking place this week in Las Vegas. All 3 companies in the news are showing off their wares at CES, including cellphone stalwart TCL (Shenzhen: 000100), which is teasing us with video of its first model under a new tie-up with struggling smartphone pioneer BlackBerry (Toronto: BB).
Meantime, the other company on my radar, the cash-challenged LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104), was also in CES headlines earlier this week after showing off a sexy new energy car it’s helping to develop. But the company has just landed in a far more ominous headline here in China, where one of its smartphone manufacturing partners is calling for arbitration to try and get cash for a growing pile of unpaid bills. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Closure of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post was inevitable due to the decline of traditional media, and its online effort ThePaper stands a better than 50 percent chance of longer-term survival due to relatively good execution.
Oriental Morning Post yields to ThePaper
On this next-to-last work day before the New Year, I’m taking a break from the usual high-tech buzz to zoom in on a subject that’s even closer to my heart — and wallet. That subject is the rapid transformation sweeping through the media both in China and the west, creating huge uncertainties. That wave is in the headlines today with announcement of the closure of one of Shanghai’s largest and most respected newspapers.
Here I have to admit my own bias, since as a Shanghai resident until recently I was at one point quite fond of the Oriental Morning Post, which has just announced it will cease publication on January 1. The news is hardly shocking, as it was first rumored in the middle of the year and a couple of my sources informally confirmed it for me since then. Read Full Post…
