“We are still recruiting people, from high-level managers to software developers. Many employees have changed jobs from big Internet companies. The recruitment area is not only in China, but also overseas.” An internal employee of Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) disclosed to the public. “The rapid growth of overseas business has made Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) one of the few Internet enterprises expanding against the market.”
listed for seven years
from game companies to global Internet platforms
In 2015, Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) landed on the gem of Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The first annual report after listing shows that the company’s annual revenue is 1.93 billion yuan, of which 1.9 billion yuan comes from games. It is a real game enterprise. In the 2021 annual report just released, the company’s operating revenue reached 4.85 billion yuan, 2.5 times that when it was listed.
In addition to the rapid growth of revenue, the company has richer and diversified sources of revenue, adding social entertainment, advertising, search, etc. on the basis of the original game revenue. According to the annual report, by the end of 2021, the revenue from social entertainment, advertising, search and games accounted for 43.70%, 20.17%, 16.22% and 16.04% of the operating revenue respectively.
” Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) ‘s business covers more than 100 countries and regions around the world, with nearly 450 million monthly active users and 70% of overseas market revenue, and is expected to further increase to about 80% in 2022. It can be said that we have successfully transformed into a global Internet enterprise.” Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) general manager Fang Han said.
Fang Han joined the company in 2008 and was appointed as the general manager of the company in 2021. At the same time, he served as a director of the company and completely experienced the transformation and upgrading of the company.
The two blockbuster acquisitions in 2021 laid the foundation for the company’s transformation. In January 2021, Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) completed the major asset restructuring of opera limited, a well-known Internet enterprise, and realized holding. In April 2021, Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) completed the merger and acquisition of Starx, an entertainment and social networking platform, and became the controlling shareholder with a shareholding ratio of 80%.
The 2021 annual report shows that both new companies have achieved high growth. Opera’s annual revenue was US $251 million, with a year-on-year increase of 52.1%. It is expected that the annual revenue in 2022 will be between us $300 million and US $310 million. Starmaker, the music social platform of star x, has about 240 million registered users, ranking among the top five in music / audio downloads in 82 countries around the world, including 26 countries.
opera: overseas information distribution and meta universe platform
Opera, released in Norway in April 1995, is one of the oldest browsers to date. In 2016, the browser was acquired by Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) and listed on NASDAQ in 2018. According to the total number of users in the global third-party browser series, Annie ranks first in the third-party browser series.
Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) how to rejuvenate opera after taking over?
Fang Han said: “after opera was acquired by Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) company, based on the” Opera + “strategy formulated by Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) company, its information and game businesses, such as opera news, opera GX and GXC, have been incubated to build a global traffic portal. At present, all operating data are very beautiful.”
According to the data released by the company, opera’s monthly active users reached 360 million by the end of 2021. Opera news, its news aggregator, continues to rank first in news apps in the African market. At the same time, opera news actively expanded to high ARPU value markets such as the UK, France, Germany and the United States, and ranked in the forefront of news applications. At present, the global user scale of opera news has exceeded 200 million.
Opera also has a layout for the popular metauniverse at present: building the metauniverse through opera GX browser for game players, gamemaker studio (GMS), a game engine for developers, and GXC, a game community platform that completes the two closed loops.
According to the latest data released by the company, opera GX has more than 14 million monthly active users, a year-on-year increase of 100%. The monthly number of active users of opera yuanuniverse project reaches about 1 million.
“The meta universe world has just begun. Games are the natural entrance to the meta universe. Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) is a game maker. We have enough ability and experience to occupy this entrance.” Fang Han stressed.
starmaker: overseas social entertainment platform
In the past two years, Starmaker under star x is one of the hottest entertainment applications in Southeast Asia. This social entertainment platform based on k-song firmly grasped the mentality of young people who like music and society, and soon became the fastest-growing social product. In 2020, Starmaker achieved the brilliant achievement of “the third largest number of downloads in the world and the second largest monthly average active user of Mau”.
After Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) became the controlling shareholder of the company, the operation and finance of the company continued to rise to a new level. By the end of 2021, Starmaker had about 240 million registered users, ranking among the top five in the music download list of 82 countries in the world, of which 26 countries ranked first. In developed markets and other emerging markets, Starmaker has made major breakthroughs and won the first place in the same category download list of countries such as South Korea, Spain and Italy. Other European developed countries (such as France and Belgium) and major countries in Latin American markets (such as Mexico, Brazil and Chile) have entered the top five.
“Karaoke is not a new product. It has been very popular in Chinese and Southeast Asia. But Starmaker’s users are growing so fast because of our operation ability, technical ability and management ability.” Fang Han stressed.
As an online karaoke platform, Starmaker has a massive high-quality music library, and also provides a variety of online entertainment scenes such as voice room, live studio and leisure games to meet the diversified social needs of users.
According to Fang Han, in the early days of Starmaker’s establishment, the team found that voice chat rooms were more popular with users in the Southeast Asian market, so it took root in the local community operation mode of “family system” after in-depth research. Users can join different families according to their music preferences, location or interests. At the same time, they can improve the status and popularity of the family by participating in family PK, billboard and other activities, Get a sense of honor from it.
The community system helps users reduce the difficulty of making friends and establish close social relationships, so as to significantly improve the user stickiness of the platform.
For a global entertainment and social application, it also needs to face many technical problems, such as complex international network conditions, a wide variety of terminal devices used by users and so on. Starmaker adapts the bottom layer of tens of thousands of overseas mobile phone models, hundreds of Android and IOS versions, which greatly optimizes the basic experience of users’ singing.
Fang Han believes that China’s technical team has made great contributions in this process. After experiencing China’s cruel Internet competition, they have great advantages in opening up territory in the international market.
In addition, in terms of management, Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) built a simple, direct, efficient and transparent organizational culture and a relatively mature and perfect management system, which also benefited Starx a lot. After the acquisition of Starx, based on Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) mature management system, it has built a team with strong inclusiveness, adaptability and self iteration ability, which can quickly polish products in line with local conditions. Fang Han stressed that in every country where Starx goes to sea, the market and customer service must choose local employees, and the local manager and operation post depend on the situation. The overseas team composed of employees from various countries can more accurately capture the changes in the overseas market and meet the needs of users.
Starx is currently developing a new blue ocean business. For example, using artificial intelligence technology, the excellent content of mainstream languages is automatically translated and read aloud by machine to generate audio content suitable for small language groups. This feature is currently being tested. There are hundreds of languages in the world, with no more than 10 languages spoken by more than 100 million people. There is still a big blue ocean for small languages in the world. Starx still has great potential in the future.
ark Games: global mobile game platform
In June 2021, a large-scale multiplayer online role-playing game “the legend of Neverland” (Chinese name “Neverland legend”, formerly known as “Holy Land tower”) ranked at the top of the game rankings of many countries in Southeast Asia. The “superstar tasting” hosted by the hard core alliance was selected as a superstar game product with fresh forest painting style and personalized game experience. In February this year, the game was officially launched in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (local name “star Neverland”). The game reached the top 1 of the dual platform free list in the pre download stage. After going online, it performed well, ranking ninth, eighth and fourth in the best-selling list of IOS Games in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao respectively, with a single day revenue of more than 2.5 million yuan.
After the great success in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, this game is also about to land in the larger Chinese market.
Ark games, the developer of this game, is a global game platform under Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) whose business scope covers the R & D, distribution and operation of mobile games, as well as the agent of high-quality game products at home and abroad.
In addition to the legend of Neverland, other self-developed games of ark games include “bright land · world – Awakening of soul: the God of death”, “holy land of demons”, “Legend of swordsman mobile version” and so on, which have gained good reputation and popularity of players in foreign markets in China, while proxy games include “Dragon Valley m”, “tribal conflict”, “tribal conflict: Royal war” and so on.
After a series of rectifications, China’s game market is still in the recovery stage. According to the report on China’s game industry in 2021 jointly released by the game Working Committee (GPC) of China music and digital Association and China Game Industry Research Institute, the actual sales revenue of China’s game market in 2021 was 296513 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%, and the growth rate was nearly 15% lower than that of last year; The actual sales revenue of China’s mobile game market was 225538 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.57% and a year-on-year decrease of 25%.
But globally, games are still one of the few fast-growing industries.
According to the newzoo report, the global game market will reach US $180.3 billion in 2021, and the number of global players is expected to exceed 3 billion. In terms of the geographical distribution of users and revenue, the Asia Pacific region accounts for more than 50% in both user scale and revenue volume. It is worth noting that the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are growing rapidly, especially the Middle East and Africa is the only region with double-digit user growth.
For the future of Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) game business, Fang Han said: “game is our best business. Although the proportion in the company’s business has decreased, we will continue to invest resources, especially in Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East and other emerging markets.”
strong cash flow, business expansion is expected
According to the annual report of 2021, the company achieved an operating revenue of 4.85 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.75%. Compared with the renewal business of the same caliber, the operating revenue increased by 16.33% year-on-year, and the company achieved a net profit of 1.547 billion yuan attributable to the shareholders of the listed company.
It is worth mentioning that the strong cash flow of listed companies indicates that the company may be able to tide over the industry downturn and expand.
According to the annual report, the net cash flow generated by the company’s operating activities from the first quarter to the fourth quarter of last year was 147 million yuan, 161 million yuan, 307 million yuan and 557 million yuan respectively, showing a trend of increasing quarter by quarter. The annual net cash flow was RMB 1.17 billion, an increase of 62% compared with that before the adjustment in 2020.
As one of China’s leading Internet platform enterprises going to sea, Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) has achieved remarkable results in global business layout and richer product matrix. Kunlun Tech Co.Ltd(300418) said that through years of continuous cultivation in overseas markets, the company’s business has covered many fields, including social networking, entertainment, UGC, information distribution and games. At the same time, through resource integration at the group level, it has promoted the coordinated development of various business segments. The company encourages bottom-up innovation and expects to work with like-minded people to create products that change the world.
