- Byte Dance, the second largest shareholder of ‘big bet’
Webtoon/Web Novel IP, Movie/Drama Success Guarantee Check
Naver and Kakao Challenge by attracting investment
[헤럴드경제=김성미·이호 기자] It was confirmed on the 6th that Kidari Studio, a content platform company, will receive up to 550 billion won in investment from ByteDance, a Chinese IT company that operates a short-form platform ‘TikTok’. It is expected to emerge as a threat to Naver and Kakao, the leaders in the domestic webtoon market, by attracting large-scale investments approaching the market cap.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry, Kidari Studio, which is currently on the way to the box office with the Netflix original drama ‘DP’, will carry out a third-party allocation capital increase of up to 550 billion won. Byte Dance will participate in the capital increase. After the capital increase, Byte Dance will become the second largest shareholder of Kidari Studio.
Both sides are conducting last-minute due diligence for this purpose. Currently, Kidari Studio’s market capitalization is 556.8 billion won, and it is known that discussions are underway to attract investment while maintaining management rights. ByteDance’s stake is expected to reach a maximum of 49%.
Founded in 1987, Kidari Studio has provided various content services and entered the webtoon market in earnest by acquiring Bom Comics, which operated the webtoon platform Bomtoon in 2017. In 2019, the web novel platform Panmoorim was newly introduced.
Last year, it acquired Lezhin Entertainment, which operates the webtoon platform Lezhin Comics, and became the third largest operator in the domestic webtoon market after Naver and Kakao. Lezhin Comics is seeing the effect of the acquisition by serializing ‘DP Dog Day’ as a webtoon, which is the original version of the Netflix blockbuster DP.
ByteDance, which made an investment in Kidari Studio, is working hard to grow into a comprehensive content company beyond TikTok. Recently, movies and dramas based on the intellectual property rights (IP) of platform companies such as webtoons and web novels are becoming a box office check, so it is interpreted that they made a big bet on Kidari Studio.
In addition, the market focused attention on the valuation of Kidari Studio. ByteDance estimates that Kidari Studio’s enterprise value is over 1 trillion won. Kidari Studio’s operating profit before amortization (EBITDA) last year was only 6.2 billion won.
An IB industry official said, “Kidari Studio’s EBITDA is expected to reach 13 billion won this year and 23 billion won next year,” said an IB industry official.
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