Can the concept of short drama ＂pull the listed companies of series ashore＂ again？

Wen | refers to the moon

At the end of 2023, with the short play market becoming more and more popular, the concept stocks related to short plays in the securities market experienced a strong rising period in early 2024, including Huace Film, Tianwei Video, Baina Qiancheng, Tang De Film, Ciwen Media, Chinese Online and Ning Meng Film.

However, with the round of concept speculation and the changes in the securities market environment, the share prices of these companies once again took a roller coaster ride and experienced a period of sharp decline. Take Huace Film and Television as an example, its share price rose by 64.91% from January to March 2024, reaching a high of 11.06 yuan on March 22, but then it started a long road of decline, falling by nearly 30% as of April 16, and other short drama concept stocks were similar.

However, on April 17th, when the market picked up, these companies rose again, and the concept of short play once again became a hot topic.

In the near future, the revenge-themed short play "Advanced Record of Deep House" produced by Ning Meng Film and Television has continuously occupied the forefront in the hot list of DataEye. However, the whole drama is a high imitation of last year’s revenge short play "Black Lotus Upper Manual", which was removed from the platform for reasons such as "exaggerating the bad values of extreme revenge, fighting violence with violence, and confusing the concept of right and wrong". On April 17th, The Advanced Record of Deep House seems to have suffered the same removal treatment as The Upper Manual of Black Lotus, and it is no longer possible to search for key words on platforms such as Tik Tok.

In the ups and downs of the stock price, the influence brought by the rapid growth of short plays is obviously not to be underestimated, especially for the listed companies with sluggish performance in the past few years. Short plays are both a hot topic and a vast market for real money. Whether they can firmly grasp this lifeline seems to have become the biggest factor for these drama companies to prove their growth value.

On March 27th, Ning Meng Film and Television, a Hong Kong-listed company, mentioned the development of short drama business in its 2023 annual report. The annual report shows that in 2023, the company achieved revenue of 1.22 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.4%; The adjusted net profit was 227 million yuan, up 60.4% year-on-year, of which the accumulated contribution income of short drama related business was 32.23 million yuan, up more than 12 times year-on-year.

The annual report also mentioned that the number of micro-dramas, such as Twenty-nine, Behind the Traffic and Save My Family, which it launched, continuously occupied the list of short dramas on the vibrato short video platform TOP1. Therefore, in the traditional film and television drama companies that enter short plays, Ning Meng Film and Television has been called a real mature layout rather than just a gimmick.

On the one hand, the annual income of short plays of about 30 million accounts for a very limited proportion of the annual income of 1.22 billion; On the other hand, the gross profit margin of the short drama-related business disclosed by Ning Meng Film and Television is 25.2%, which is far lower than the gross profit margin of the company’s long drama business of 39.7%. In terms of earning power, it only brings the company about 8 million gross profit, and the real profit figure will be even smaller after deducting other expenses.

It can be seen that in the drama companies with large basic discs, short plays are still in the early stage of layout, and Raytheon has little rain and little sense of existence in the overall revenue for the time being.

The Huace film and television behind the recent hit drama "The Story of Success" has also focused on short plays since last year. In November, 2023, Huace Film and Television said that the company began to pay attention to short plays in 2022, and began to gradually cut into it in June, 2023, and clearly established two core competencies of short play script development and marketing distribution. Six teams have been established, and five short play projects have been filmed, among which "The identity of the president of the lonely husband was exposed" was launched on November 7, and four projects such as "My General Boyfriend" are expected to be.

At first glance, my husband’s identity as president was exposed, and my general boyfriend was a short program with the theme of following the wind. After it went online, it sank into the sea in the rolling craze of short programs and did not set off any waves. Huace, who has many big dramas and movie IP in his hand, seems to focus on the short drama development of his own drama IP at present.

At the beginning of 2024, Huace’s short play Going to a Windy Place, My Way Home is Windy, A Writer’s Odyssey’s short play The Girl Who Killed the Novelist Strikes Back, and the antique comedy Looking for the Song entered the Tik Tok 2024 boutique miniseries "Project Stars". Of the two short plays that have been broadcast, the Tik Tok broadcast volume of Seeking Song is currently 22 million+.The broadcast volume of "My Way Home is Windy" is as high as 190 million, and it has been praised by many mainstream media with the characteristics of literary travel and short drama. It can be seen that the extra-curricular mode of this kind of drama IP really has great potential to be tapped, and it is also one of the core competitiveness that traditional film and television companies can quickly establish.

The same is true of Ciwen Media, another listed company of veteran dramas, trying to quickly develop the reserved IP in the form of short plays. After signing an agreement on the three-dimensional development of Gulong IP in August, 2023, Ciwen Media promoted the development and production of five online mini-dramas, namely, Wulin Waishi, Sentimental Swordsman’s Ruthless Sword, Full Moon Machete, Legend of Chu Liuxiang’s Mystery, and Legend of Chu Liuxiang’s Jianghu tales of mystery, among which Full Moon Machete, Legend of Chu Liuxiang’s Mystery, Chu Liuxiang

Another veteran drama company, Tang De Film and Television, is now the holding company of Zhejiang Radio and Television Group, whose "Blue Media Short Play" platform is being put into operation steadily. On March 17th, Tang De Film and Television announced that the launching ceremony of the boutique female frequency-crossing mini-short drama "Copy Female General" jointly produced by Tang De Film and Television Corporation and Zhejiang Satellite TV (Z Vision) was held in Jiangxi Shifang Guangying Film and Television Base. The development of short plays in Tang De film and television may match the development rhythm of Zhejiang Radio and Television more.

For most drama listed companies, it is necessary to actively lay out short plays. Because from the perspective of the capital market topic, companies that can’t keep up with the hot spots of short plays are often regarded as slow to respond and miss growth opportunities. After all, the possibility of the future is always more concerned than the present. Therefore, acquiring short play studios and companies and trying to test the water may be the common idea of drama companies at the beginning.

Like Tang De Film and Television, Ciwen Media and Huanrui Century, they used to be drama giants with a market value of over 10 billion and 20 billion at their peak, but in recent years, their production capacity has dropped significantly, and video platforms have occupied the overwhelming initiative in the drama market, with more and more customized dramas. It has become increasingly difficult for ordinary drama companies to have both explosive capacity and work scale.Therefore, in addition to the "basic disk" of long dramas, drama companies are not necessarily committed to finding new growth points such as short dramas, but they are also "just needed" for real development.

Judging from the situation of the listed companies of the above-mentioned series, the copyright drama is still the core of each company’s business, because a large amount of investment in small programs and short plays and the development of betting content themes are not so easy to make money. In addition to the above-mentioned low gross profit margin of Ning Meng’s short film and television dramas, Beijing Dianzhong Technology, the publisher of the short drama "I became a stepmother in the 1980s" in 2024, responded to the media, and the overall gross profit margin of the company was about 10%, of which the net profit margin of short drama business was less than 1%.

On the other hand, according to DataEye’s "Data Report on Mini-short Plays in 2024", the scale of mini-short plays in China will exceed 30 billion yuan in 2023 and 40 billion yuan in 2024. In this upsurge, it is still the investment platform that has made a big profit.

With the listed companies of drama series joining the short drama industry one after another, it is bound to further promote the speed of industry development iteration. Whether it’s a vertical screen mini-drama or a horizontal screen short drama, in the two tracks with obvious differences, the entry methods of drama companies such as Ning Meng Film and Huace Film and Television are further "uncoiled" in production and lineup, which forces the industry to create quality content. Process.

At the same time, since 2024, the supervision of short drama content on short video platforms has been further tightened. For example, extreme revenge themes such as The Advanced Record of Deep House mentioned above have been removed from the platform, as well as contents such as promoting unhealthy and non-mainstream family views, love and marriage views, deliberately magnifying and exaggerating the contradiction between husband and wife, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, etc., such as My husband is a mother-in-law man, The Last Bottom Line, darling daughter Counterattack and Pregnant Women.

It may be the right time for listed companies to actively enter the short drama industry. Because the content of short plays that attract people’s attention with exotic themes and extreme values is bound to get narrower and narrower.Under the general trend of upgrading the overall quality of short plays and tightening the theme management, there will be more and more solo short plays customized by the platform, and the demand for professional content production will only increase day by day.

On the other hand, the IP resources and copyright resources held by drama companies can also have more room to play under the expansion of the short drama market. The "quality improvement and quantity reduction" of the long drama market is obvious. The Lighthouse Professional Edition "2023 Drama Market Report" shows that the number of effective dramas in the online drama market in 2023 is 294, which is 10.6% lower than last year, and the total broadcast index of large-scale feature films is 38.612 million, which is 7.7% higher than the trend. It can be seen that the current long drama market is somewhat inclined to the mode of head drama.

On the other hand, drama companies with IP resources and copyright adaptation obviously need the space of short drama market to try more low-cost and give play to their unique competitive advantages, which may be the reason why Huace Film and Ciwen Media mentioned above all develop their own IP resources in the short drama market.

From the commercialization point of view, it is easier for drama listed companies to open up diversified commercial services in the short drama market. Take Ning Meng Film and Television as an example, it has tried many ways to realize short drama layout, such as small program payment, platform customization, platform account sharing, brand sponsorship business, etc. Compared with small teams that can only rely on platform or C-side cash, listed companies may have more channels and resources to try diversified business models in the short drama market.

Although it may not be immediate, the strong entry of drama companies may be changing the state of the short drama industry. Can these revolutionary forces stimulate the innovation vitality of the short drama industry, or will it trigger a new round of chaos after raising the threshold?Although the results are not yet clear, it is foreseeable that with the continuous investment and active exploration of more drama companies, the short drama industry will usher in a new era with richer formats and greater commercial potential. At that time, for these drama listed companies, short dramas may really change from capital topic gimmicks to facade signs.

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