Shedding the Goodwill "Burden" of New Leli Media, Yuewen Group Strives for "IP+AI" to Find a New Growth Curve | Financial Report Analysis

Cailian Press, March 17 (Reporter Wang Yanlin, Intern Reporter Jiang Yumin) AI animated dramas generate over 100 million yuan in revenue, and IP derivative products GMV doubles… After shedding the goodwill “burden” of New丽 Media, Yuewen Group (00772.HK) is seeking new growth curves through an “IP + AI” strategy.

The company released its financial report tonight. By 2025, revenue reached 7.366 billion yuan, down 9.3% year-on-year; net loss was 776 million yuan, compared to a net loss of 209 million yuan in 2024; non-IFRS profit attributable to equity holders was 859 million yuan, down 24.8% year-on-year.

The company stated that the loss was mainly due to a 1.8 billion yuan impairment of goodwill for New丽 Media, resulting in a total other loss of 1.246 billion yuan in 2025.

In August 2018, Yuewen Group acquired 100% equity of New丽 Media for 15.5 billion yuan. However, New丽 Media failed to meet performance commitments for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, Yuewen Group adjusted the performance agreement requirements, and only then did New丽 Media meet its commitments.

Regarding the impairment, Yuewen Group previously stated that New丽 Media has made more cautious adjustments to its production strategy, intentionally controlling the creative pace to improve content quality through more thorough polishing. This may extend the cycles of script incubation, pre-production, filming, and post-production, potentially significantly impacting profit expectations.

It is noteworthy that Yuewen Group also announced that after this impairment, the goodwill of New丽 Media has been fully written off, and no further impairment will be made.

Looking at business segments, Yuewen’s online business, including online paid reading, advertising, and third-party game distribution, grew 0.4% year-on-year to 4.047 billion yuan in 2025, accounting for about 54.9% of total revenue. In 2025, Yuewen attracted 400,000 new authors, resulting in over 800,000 novels with a total of 42 billion words added. Meanwhile, the flagship platform Qidian Reading APP saw a 40% year-on-year increase in the number of works with over 100,000 subscriptions, and for the first time, two blockbuster works with over 300,000 subscriptions were launched.

Copyright operations and other businesses generated 3.319 billion yuan in revenue in 2025, down 18.9% year-on-year. Among them, copyright operation revenue declined 20% to 3.191 billion yuan, mainly due to delays in broadcasting schedules, leading to a decrease in the number of film and TV projects launched in 2025.

However, last year, Yuewen achieved diversified breakthroughs in new formats such as IP derivatives, short dramas, and AI animated dramas. The GMV of IP derivatives exceeded 1.1 billion yuan in 2025, more than double that of 2024, setting a new record.

Since the launch of AI animated dramas in the second half of 2025, nearly 1,000 AI animated works have been released, with over 100 videos surpassing 10 million views, 12 videos exceeding 100 million views, and revenue in the second half surpassing 100 million yuan.

Yuewen Group CEO and President Hou Xiaonan said, “Yuewen is at the starting point of a new wave of content industry transformation. New formats are emerging continuously, and AI technology is driving rapid iteration of production methods. While consolidating our advantages in literature, animation, and other ecosystems, we are actively expanding into new content ecosystems such as short dramas and AI animated dramas. In the face of the AI wave, we will continue to increase efforts to empower creators in the AI era—regardless of how formats evolve, good content remains our core, and that is the foundation of Yuewen.”

Currently, Yuewen is actively embracing the AIGC wave and has gradually built a comprehensive AI solution covering the entire IP lifecycle. In the field of online literature-assisted creation, Yuewen’s “Writer’s Assistant” has been upgraded with the new AI “Miaobi Tongjian” intelligent engine, capable of deep understanding and real-time analysis of web novels of millions of words. Additionally, based on the open-source intelligent agent OpenClaw framework, it deploys dedicated AI creative agents for millions of web authors on the platform.

In the IP adaptation segment, Yuewen launched the “Copyright Assistant” tool, which deeply mines Yuewen’s library of over one million works and accurately links downstream needs, significantly accelerating the screening and development of high-quality IP.

For AI animated dramas, Yuewen introduced the “Drama Assistant” tool, which connects multiple leading multimodal large models domestically and internationally, supporting full-process industrialized production from text to visuals, greatly improving adaptation efficiency and lowering production barriers.

(Cailian Press, Wang Yanlin)