text | Xuyuan Gen
Wang Jia never thought that the Ultraman he watched when he was a child would become his son’s favorite now. Just buying Ultraman cards for his son would cost hundreds of dollars a month.
"Not only have cards now, the little guy asks me to take him to the nearby Fengyun again to play Ultraman and fight monsters game consoles." The game console the little guy wants to play refers to the Ultraman transformed into a big battle arranged in many large shopping malls and entertainment areas.
This bright-looking game console can capture the player's movements through the camera, so players can transform into cosmic heroes and fight monsters. After the game is over, they can also take a desirable photo such as a souvenir as a souvenir.
Ultraman transformed into a decisive battle has been welcomed by many children and parents. Behind the gaming console of
is Huali Technology (301011.SZ), which has obtained Ultraman IP authorization.
Huali Technology successfully landed on the A-share main board last year. This Guangzhou company, which has many classic animation and game IP agency rights, started with amusement machine products in China with years of deep cultivation in the field of amusement machines and regional advantages. Its current business involves the production and sales of animation IP derivative products and other aspects.
Huali Technology's 2021 financial report shows that its animation IP derivative business revenue has increased rapidly, with revenue of 175 million yuan in 2021, and increased by 156.52% year-on-year, which is expected to become the company's "second growth curve".
Can the rapid improvement of the card business become another leg of Huali Technology's reliance on?
has a rich IP proxy circle, which is Huali Technology's ballast stone
tip is a post-85s. He has loved to play arcade games, fighting, shooting, racing , sports, and even music games such as dancing machine and taigu masters.
"My dad took me to the amusement hall for the first time, and since then he opened up a new world." Tie Fei said that his father was more open to his games than most parents. As long as he did not delay his studies, he did not object to playing games by himself, but he had to accompany him every time he went there.
Tipping father loves racing. Due to domestic restrictions at that time, it was difficult to see foreign racing competitions. Once the racing game console was launched, he took the tip to experience it.
"That was my first time going to the amusement machine hall and also my first time playing arcade games. Although I had played games like ridge racing with my dad at home on TV, the feeling of arcade games was completely different."
They played the world's first 3D racing game developed by the Japanese arcade overlord Sega (SEGA) company, OUTRUN. The racing seats, steering wheel and gear handle that were filled with realism made Tired's father very excited.
When the car crossed the finish line, Tifei and Dad were both very happy. From then on, every week my father would take tips to play OUTRUN.
Until now, he still maintains the habit of going to the shopping mall near his home every week to play racing games, and relax from his busy work and life.
"Although the OUTRUN series is still being updated, there are many racing games in domestic amusement halls, such as classic IPs like Initial D have been introduced for a long time."
Initial D's reputation is more well-known than OUTRUN because of its attributes as a comic-adapted work, but mainly because of the live-action movie starring Jay Chou , Edison Chen , and Shawn Yue more than ten years ago.
's work itself is also a racing story focusing on young racers. The words "drain drift" and "five consecutive hairblocks" are all from this work. The initial text of the domestic amusement hall is D Zero, which is manufactured and operated by Guangzhou Huali Technology.
Huali Technology successfully landed on the A-share main board in June 2021 and is known as the "first stock of amusement equipment". One year after
was listed, Huali Technology's performance has steadily increased.According to Huali Technology's 2021 annual report, the company's revenue in in the previous fiscal year of was 627 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.55%, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 52.53 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.06%.
dismantling Huali Technology's revenue of 627 million yuan, of which 302 million yuan came from the sales of game and amusement equipment, accounting for 48.28%. Although the proportion has decreased compared with 62.24% in the previous year, the revenue of amusement machine equipment is still the main revenue of Huali Technology. The revenue of
amusement equipment is stable, and comes from Huali Technology's long-term deep-rooted industry and has obtained equipment and IP authorization from major game companies in the world.
Finance Wuji checked the company's annual report and found that Huali Technology has established strategic partnerships with world-renowned game companies such as Microsoft t (Microsoft ), Bandai Namco (Bandai Namco), SEGA (Sega), Raw Thrills, IGS (Gangxiang Electronics).
Currently, the company has obtained global or regional agency rights for a number of IPs in the field of game and entertainment equipment, including Minecraft, Pokémon, Ultraman, Mario, Halo, Transformers , Tomb Raider, Giant Beast Catastrophe, Initial D ZERO, Fire Line, Mecha Hero, etc.
is able to obtain so many IP proxy rights, which is directly related to the composition of senior personnel of Huali Technology. When reviewing its prospectus, Finance Wuji found that one of the two Japanese executives in the company had worked at Sega for a long time, which had a unique advantage in obtaining Huali's IP.
's main business growth rate is not as expected. We need to find new growth points.
Huali Technology, which has rich IP agency rights, will naturally make a wide layout of its products. Huali Technology products can be seen in well-known domestic indoor game entertainment chain stores including Wanda Baby King , Big Players, Star Legend, Resurrection, and AEON Fantasy.
When visiting the resurgent store in Nanjing, Finance Wuji found that several products promoted by Huali Technology, such as the initial text D Zero, Ultraman Fusion Fight, Terminator 4th Generation Skynet, Dinosaur Hunter, Super Dragon Ball Hero, etc., are all placed in the most obvious location in the store.
At the same time, when browsing the official event news of Fengyun Aoqi, Finance Wuji found that Fengyun Aoqi will hold corresponding offline amusement machine events every year, and racing events use the initial text D Zero.
As Huali Technology's main source of revenue, its amusement equipment sales revenue contributed 79.19%/59.94%/62.24% of the company's operating income from 2018 to 2020 respectively. Although the company's entertainment equipment sales revenue decreased from 2018 to 2020, the market share of increased to 2.71% in 2020.
The revenue of game amusement equipment is directly related to the operation of offline indoor and outdoor amusement parks.
The impact of the epidemic in recent years on offline consumption is obvious. For Huali Technology, the direct impact is the fluctuations in equipment procurement and operation performance.
Compared with Huali Technology's revenue in 2021 and 2020, the revenue growth slowed down by 0.72%.
In addition to the operational performance being lower than expected, another important impact of the epidemic is the delay in overseas procurement suites.
company's annual report also issued a corresponding risk warning for this, "The company needs to purchase kit products overseas. The epidemic has led to an extension of the kit procurement cycle. As the shipping market remains tight, the company's kit material procurement cost has increased. At the same time, the epidemic has caused the company to delay the resumption of work, which has affected the number of orders for downstream amusement park operators and has also had a certain impact on the operating performance of the company's self-operated amusement park."
Huali Technology urgently needs to create a "second growth curve" by developing animation IP derivative products.
Wang Jia introduced to Caijing Wuji that his son wanted to buy Ultraman cards. In addition to his son's thought it was fun, he mainly wanted to have more common topics with his classmates.
Ultraman card seems to have become a social password between primary school students, especially among boys.Wang Jia's son told Caijing Wuji that the boys in the class have more or less Ultraman cards.
Finance Wuji searched on the e-commerce channel and found that taking the Ultraman series cards sold in the card-you- flagship store as an example, the number of card sequence levels is surprising. Ultraman card types are divided into SP, XR, GP, ZR, LGR, OR, CP, USR, UR, HR, SLR, LR, TNR, TZR, TGR, TSR, TR, WCR, GMR, SSR, PR, SR, and R, a total of 23 types. The minimum price of Ultraman cards sold in the
Cards and the lowest price is 29.9 yuan per set of 150 pieces. The most expensive third anniversary gift box is priced at 358 yuan. It includes two high-level XR cards, 30 cards, 4 packs of 32 pieces of supplementary bags, 1 card brick, and 1 collection book.
This most expensive third anniversary set has a monthly sales volume of more than 10,000 sets.
If you purchase bulk cards through offline supermarket channels, the price ranges from 2 yuan to 20 yuan per pack.
In September 2021, Kayou Animation was exposed to have received investment in Sequoia Capital , with a valuation of US$1 billion. Public information shows that Kayou Animation not only covers multiple online channels such as e-commerce, but also has more than 100 offline distributors. Its products are spread across 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across the country, with a coverage rate of more than 90%.
According to the magazine "Chinese and Foreign Toy Manufacturing ", Kayou Culture, which uses Ultraman series image cards as its flagship product, had revenue of 1 billion to 2 billion last year, accounting for most of the market share of my country's card market. The total value of the "Ultraman" series has exceeded 10 billion US dollars.
From the perspective of the global card game market development, according to data from the Huajing Industry Research Institute, the global trading card game market size has reached US$11.13 billion in 2020, and is expected to expand to US$31.26 billion in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.9% from 2021 to 2027, maintaining a very high growth rate.
Huali Technology began to deploy amusement machines and card business mainly based on Ultraman IP as early as 2018. According to the company's prospectus, the sales of "Ultraman" image cards grew rapidly after being launched in 2018, and by 2020, the sales revenue reached 41.6802 million yuan.
Anime IP card is a good business for Huali Technology?
In addition to the big IP of Ultraman, Huali Technology also owns the copyrights of ACG IPs such as Pokémon, Minecraft, Dragon Ball, etc., and has launched card products other than gaming and entertainment equipment accordingly. Can
IP derivative cards really make this Guangdong company that started with amusement equipment a newcomer in the card field?
Finance Wuji believes that the possibility is not high. There are three reasons.
One, the copyright attribute of IP. Whether it is Ultraman or Pokémon, the copyright holder will undoubtedly draw a very large proportion of the performance in the revenue of related business. Huge copyright agency fees will become a compressed Huali profit .
Its annual report shows that the "rare material cost" of the "animation, culture and entertainment industry" is 319 million yuan, accounting for more than 70% of the operating cost. Although Huali Technology did not provide detailed explanations on "raw materials" in the annual report, we can understand it as the cost mainly based on copyright agency fees.
Although the country has not yet issued corresponding regulatory measures for this industry, given the news that Pop Mart has previously caused penalty for regulatory authorities, which is essentially the same as it is, and Ultramanka involves more minors, it will sooner or later attract the attention of regulatory authorities.
Third, the card business is just an incremental, not a basic market. According to the annual report, the extended animation IP business has indeed brought rich benefits to Huali Technology, but its basic foundation is still based on the sales and operation of amusement machines.
Anime IP derivative products can build a strong ability to resist risks for Huali Technology.If the epidemic is repeated, the sales of amusement machines and self-operated amusement parks will be affected, and the card business can maintain overall revenue through online channels.
Huali Technology's first quarter report showed that it achieved revenue of 128 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.10%, while operating costs simultaneously exceeded 100 million yuan, reaching 102 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 48.85%.
Huali Technology, which was successfully listed by IP proxy, has a long way to go next, and when we can get rid of the shackles of IP copyright is worth looking forward to.
Ultraman Tiga once said, "What humans can solve on their own must be solved by humans."
(Wang Jia and Tie are both pseudonyms in the article)
-References-
"Huali Technology 2021 Annual Report"
"Huali Technology 2022 First Quarter Report"
"Huali Technology 2022 First Quarter Report"
"Prospectus for Huali Technology to IPO and List on the GEM"
"Blind Box" Ultraman Cards are popular, harvesting the "leeks" of primary school students. Some companies sell cards to earn 170 million yuan per year - Poster News
"Ultraman Cards" are popular, behind the popularity of "addiction" problems cannot be underestimated - Xiaoxiang Morning News
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