In today’s briefing:
- China Internet Weekly (10Apr2023): Tencent, Douyin, Bilibili, Alibaba, Baidu, World Perfect
- The Meteoric Rise of China’s Hottest Fitness App Keep and Its Ambitious Plans to Go Public
- [Alibaba (BABA US, BUY, TP US$109) Earnings Preview]: Recovery Is on the Way Amid Weakness in C1Q23
- NAVER Z: Owner of The Fastest Growing Avatar Platform Zepeto
- Smartkarma Corporate Webinar | Vividthree: Monetising Content Through Multimedia
- Japan’s SmartRyde Raises $3.4m to Grow Airport Transfer Services
- Huawei’s 2022 Profit Plunges 69% Amid Sanctions and Heavy R&D Outlays
- Malaysian Fintech-As-A-Service Firm Soft Space Closes US$31.5M Series B1 Round
- Tencent, SGInnovate Join US$18.1M Series A Round of Horizon Quantum Computing
- SDI Group PLC – Deep Dive
China Internet Weekly (10Apr2023): Tencent, Douyin, Bilibili, Alibaba, Baidu, World Perfect
- Tencent authorized video editing right to Douyin, one of its main competitors.
- Some of Bilibili’s video uploaders cannot survive the hard time.
- Both Alibaba and Baidu launched their ChatGPT-like apps, but Baidu’s app was .
The Meteoric Rise of China’s Hottest Fitness App Keep and Its Ambitious Plans to Go Public
- Keep Inc., the sports technology unicorn and the largest fitness app in China, has renewed its application proof in Hong Kong. Goldman Sachs and CICC are leading the upcoming IPO.
- With a mission to make the world move, the fitness app has been making waves in the fitness industry with its innovative approach to online fitness.
- Keep fitness app has been downloaded over 300M times since inception and there were 370M+ fitness users in China in 2022, the world’s largest market globally.
[Alibaba (BABA US, BUY, TP US$109) Earnings Preview]: Recovery Is on the Way Amid Weakness in C1Q23
- We expect BABA to report C1Q23 (F4Q23) top-line and non-IFRS net income (5.0%) and (5.9%) vs. consensus, respectively,
- Due to: 1) weak sales of Taobao, Tmall and 1P sales; 2) the on-going move of a key Cloud client;
- We maintain US$109 TP as: 1) Taobao and Tmall sales shows recovery trend; 2) near-term benefit of unveiling its LLM AI; and 3) benefit from the new business unit structure.
NAVER Z: Owner of The Fastest Growing Avatar Platform Zepeto
- Naver Z Corporation, a subsidiary of NAVER Corporation, focuses on developing VR and AR technologies. The company can be regarded as one of the promising players in the Metaverse market.
- The company’s flagship product, ZEPETO, has become particularly popular among younger users and has been downloaded over 300 million times worldwide.
- Naver Z (1838597D KS) ‘s VR and AR technologies have a variety of use cases, and the company has worked with businesses and brands in a variety of industries.
Smartkarma Corporate Webinar | Vividthree: Monetising Content Through Multimedia
For our next Corporate Webinar, we are glad to welcome Vividthree’s CEO, Jonathan Zhang.
In the upcoming webinar, Jonathan will share a short company presentation after which, he will engage in a fireside chat with Smartkarma Insight Provider, Angus Mackintosh. The Corporate Webinar will include a live Q&A session.
The Corporate Webinar will be hosted on Tuesday, 18 April 2023, 17:00 SGT.
About Vividthree
Headquartered in Singapore with subsidiaries in Malaysia and China, Vividthree Holdings Ltd. specialises in Visual Effects (“VFX”), animation and Virtual Reality (“VR”) for content creation and services across the Digital Entertainment and Out-of-Home Entertainment sectors, as well as collaborations in Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions (“MICE”) projects.
Since its establishment in 2006, Vividthree has secured its position as Singapore’s leading 3D animation and VFX studio with its multi-award-winning track record. In 2017, the Company expanded into the immersive media space with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) capabilities. The Vividthree brand of excellence can be found in many works, including Singapore’s box-office-breaking trilogy Ah Boys to Men, SG50 Future of Us Exhibition, NS50 Home Team parade and Train to Busan VR Tour show.
Vividthree has secured the exclusive rights to develop a VR tour show for Peninsula, the sequel to the 2016 Korean box office hit, Train to Busan, as well as acquired the intellectual property rights to the popular webcomic, Silent Horror.
Japan’s SmartRyde Raises $3.4m to Grow Airport Transfer Services
- SmartRyde, a Japan-based marketplace for pre-booked airport transfers, has raised around 450 million yen (US$3.4 million) through a third-party allocation of shares and a subordinated loan from Japan Finance Corporation.
- NVenture Capital led this series A+ funding round, which also saw participation from investors such as SMBC Venture Capital, Yamaguchi Capital, and Hiroshima Venture Capital.
- SmartRyde provides its transfer services to over 700 airports worldwide.
Huawei’s 2022 Profit Plunges 69% Amid Sanctions and Heavy R&D Outlays
- Huawei Technologies Co. posted its lowest profit margin ever for 2022 but managed a slight revenue gain in the third year of U.S. sanctions that forced the Chinese electronics giant to diversify its business into new sectors from cloud computing to automobiles.
- The company reported net profit of 35.6 billion yuan ($5.18 billion) for 2022, a 69% decline from 2021, on revenue of 642.3 billion, up 0.9% from a year ago.
- Its profit margin fell to a record low of 5.5%.
Malaysian Fintech-As-A-Service Firm Soft Space Closes US$31.5M Series B1 Round
- Soft Space, a fintech-as-a-service company in Malaysia, has completed its Series B extension round at US$31.5 million led by Southern Capital Group.
- Returning investor transcosmos, strategic investor JCB, and Hibiscus Fund (jointly managed by RHL Ventures and South Korea’s KB Investment) also participated.
- “Building on our strong momentum, the new funds will help expand our global footprint and widen our customer base by accelerating the innovation of our full-stack payments platform while expanding into next-generation technological solutions,” said Soft Space CEO Joel Tay.
Tencent, SGInnovate Join US$18.1M Series A Round of Horizon Quantum Computing
- Singapore-based Horizon Quantum Computing has secured US$18.1 million in a Series A investment from Sequoia Capital India, Tencent, SGInnovate, Pappas Capital and Expeditions Fund.
- The investment will allow the startup to strengthen its science and engineering teams to accelerate product development, establish its new engineering centre in Europe, and bring its technology to the market.
- This round takes Horizon Quantum’s total funding to approximately US$21.3 million.
SDI Group PLC – Deep Dive
- SDI was founded in 2008 with two subsidiaries, Atik Cameras and Synoptics, both engaged in digital imaging.
- SDI got listed on AIM in 2008 itself, with the intention to use the listing as a means of doing acquisitions in the digital imaging space.
- At the time of the initial listing, it had a market capitalization of £5 million. SDI did not raise any money through the listing.
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