Interface News Reporter | Hu Yujing
Interface News Editor | Jiang Yan
Yesterday, China Literature Group announced its 2023 annual performance report. The report showed that China Literature achieved revenue of 7.01 billion yuan last year, down 8% year-on-year; attributable to the company’s shareholders Net profit was 800 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.3%.
Reading 56.3% of its revenue comes from online reading. This revenue will be 3.948 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 9.5%. Online business revenue generated by Tencent’s product channels decreased by 42.2% year-on-year, while revenue from Yuewen’s core self-owned product Qidian Reading increased by 40% year-on-year. In 2023, the average monthly active users of the China Literature platform will be 210 million, and the average number of monthly paying users will rise from 7.9 million at the end of 2022 to 8.7 million. However, at the same time, the average monthly income per paying user will drop from 37.8 yuan to 32.5 yuan.
Reading plans to use AI translation to accelerate the publication of online articles overseas and expand overseas markets. Hou Xiaonan, CEO and President of Yuewen Group, introduced in the financial report conference call that Yuewen's AI translation model can currently achieve manual intervention and limited AI highly automated translation. Compared with manual translation, the translation efficiency is increased by nearly a hundred times and the cost is reduced by more than 90%. In December 2023, among the top 100 works on the webnovel best-selling list, AI translation works accounted for 21%. AI translation will cover more small languages in addition to English and Spanish.
In July 2023, the first large-scale model "Yuewen Miaobi" in the online literature industry and the application product "Writer Assistant Miaobi Edition" based on this model were launched. Hou Xiaonan introduced that the current weekly usage rate of the AI function in Writer Assistant has reached 30% , on the reader side, AI is mainly used to enrich user interaction, such as AI virtual characters, character group chats, small theaters, etc.
China Literature’s copyright operations and other revenue in 2023 will be 3.06 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.1%. According to the financial report, the decrease in revenue is mainly due to the decrease in revenue from subsidiary Xinli Media. The key reason is that there will be fewer film and television dramas online in 2023 than in 2022. Excluding the impact of Xinli, copyright operating income increased by more than 10% year-on-year.
In 2023, Xinli’s total revenue was 1.26 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 22.37%, and its profit was 487 million yuan, exceeding the 300 million required by the gambling agreement signed by China Literature. In the conference call after the financial report, the president of China Literature’s film and television division, Cao Huayi, CEO of Xinli Media, said that Xinli is expected to reach or exceed the upper limit of 500 million gambling in 2024.
In 2023, the four drama series produced by Xinli, "The Wind Rises", "The Ordinary Road", "The Sun Is With Me" and "Stalker", will be broadcast one after another, but overall they lack blockbuster hits and have mixed reviews. "Ordinary Days" "The Road" and "Sunshine With Me" were rated 7 points on Douban, while the other two dramas did not pass the passing mark.
Cao Huayi said that in the future, Xinli hopes to maintain the scale of 6-8 TV series per year and add 1-2 projects every year. At the same time, Xinli will develop a series of head dramas for Yuewen, such as the "Celebrating More Than Years" series, "The Son-in-Law" series, "The Watcher of Dafeng" series and the "Swordsman in the Snow" series.
"The Story of a Rose" poster
Compared with the slightly mediocre broadcast performance in 2023, China Literature and Xinli are expected to be popular this year. During the Spring Festival this year, Xinli's movie "Hot and Spicy", as the main producer, won the box office championship of the period. So far, the film's total box office has exceeded 3.4 billion. Previously, Sony Pictures had purchased the global distribution rights of "Hot and Furious" from Xinli, and the film is currently being released overseas. Two films, "Under the Stranger" directed by Wu Ershan and "Customs Front" directed by Qiu Litao, are also expected to be released within the year.
This year's drama series of China Literature include "Traveling with the Phoenix" starring Zhao Liying and Lin Gengxin, which will be broadcast on the evening of March 18, and "Qing Yu Nian 2" starring Zhang Ruoyun, Li Qin and others, adapted from the newspaper selling novel by a writer under China Literature. The drama series "The Watcher" based on Lang Jun's novel of the same name is adapted from Yi Shu's novel of the same name, the TV series "Rose and Other Stories" starring Liu Yifei, as well as TV series such as "Anti-Drug Storm" and "Ya She".
In the field of animation and games, in December last year, China Literature announced that it planned to acquire Tencent Animation for 600 million, and would include Chinese comic IPs such as "Under One Person" and "Fox Fairy Matchmaker" into the copyright library. Many games authorized by China Literature, such as "Douluo Dalu", "Fights Break the Sphere", "Sister-in-law", "Daily Life in Chat Groups", "Full-time Mage", "Full-time Master" and other games obtained version numbers last year, and some games are expected to be launched within the year. Divided into running water. The self-operated games "Battle Breaking the Sphere: Three-Year Covenant" and "Dafeng Watcher" have also obtained version numbers.The third season of the annual series "Fights Beyond the Sphere", the sequels of series such as "The Master" and "The Master", as well as the new series "Pet Master" and other IP animations will be broadcast this year.
