From the "Floating Life for Qing Song", "XiFei Biography", "Xifei Q Biography" and other core games to the debut of the 2022 blockbuster "Ling Yunnuo", the ancient style RPG women to the head of the enterprise friendship time (06820) has repeatedly verified the maturity of women to the track.
On March 22, Friendship Time (06820) released its 2021 financial report showing that the company's revenue reached 1.616 billion yuan during the period (unit: RMB, the same below); Adjusted profit for the year of $309 million; Profit for the year was $275 million; Earnings per share were RMB0.13. The reason for the short-term pressure on performance is that there is no large product launch in Friendship Time in 2021, and the income obtained by old products has peaked and declined. It is worth noting that the company is developing a number of new 2D and 3D games for female gamers that will be launched in 2022 and 2023, which is expected to partially compensate for the contraction in operating games and give the Group new growth opportunities. In terms of capital markets, the company's valuation (PB: 1.63 times) also reflects the possibility of a business rebound in 2022.
In addition, the company has maintained a high dividend policy, with a dividend yield (TTM) of 9.52% (as of the close of trading on March 25). The continuity of dividends reflects the company's long-term value investment prospects and is becoming increasingly valued by investors.
The old game solid basic disk "Lingyunnuo" led to a recovery in performance
As a leader in the field of ancient chinese games, Friendship Time has been strategically focusing on mobile games for female players, capturing the significant growth potential of the mobile game industry and women to the game market, and achieving eye-catching results. Among the top 10 best-sellers of women's games in mainland China, there are 4 products that are friendship times, and the manufacturer's share accounts for 62%.
Zhitong Finance APP is optimistic about the business strategy of friendship time, on the one hand, it stabilizes the basic disk with old games such as "Floating Life as Qing Song" with a long life cycle, and on the other hand, the new game "Lingyunnuo" performs well on the line, which is expected to continue to contribute to the increment and drive the performance to bottom out.
On January 20, 2022, "Lingyunnuo" was officially tested on all platforms, and on the first day of launch, it was recommended by The Today on the homepage of Apple's App Store, quickly jumped to the first place in the Chinese mainland iOS game free list, and then won the apple App Store game recommendation and the editor's favorite January best game. As of now, "Lingyunnuo" has won the 34th place in the best-seller list of Chinese mainland iOS games. "Ling Yunnuo" is expected to relay "Floating Life for Qing Song" to set another industry benchmark, mainly due to the following two points: First, the game style innovation (traditional brush strokes + watercolor ink) and intentional innovation (light "love", heavy "career").
Specifically, in terms of presenting the national style culture, "Ling Yunnuo" combines contemporary aesthetic standards, uses traditional Chinese painting line colors, integrates ink brush stroke techniques, and refreshes the ancient wind direction product force again with the attitude of "new national style mobile game". With the fine art expression of costumes, architecture, symbols and other details and the strong vocal shaping of the national rhyme, it also shows the charm of the national style culture for the player visually and audibly.
In terms of innovation, the two-line story of the male and female protagonists of "Lingyunnuo" makes the game more inclusive of the player's gender. The grand national style world view setting, a change in the love attributes of the raiders, so that female players can also appreciate the experience of living in the temple, becoming a woman who has established her life for the people. In addition, the game also has a "cultivation" element, which can continuously expand the protagonist group in the career advancement, cooperate with lightweight battles to create a bondage retinue, and deepen the player's immersive game experience with side tasks such as national style dress-up and flower arrangement skills.
Second, the publicity of "Lingyunnuo" is also remarkable, and platforms with strong social attributes such as WeChat Circle of Friends, Douyin Open Screen, etc. are selected for accurate delivery; at the same time, "Lingyunnuo" has also increased Android's own channels in addition to iOS channels in terms of delivery channels. Similar to the growth curve of "Floating Life as a Song", the ranking of "Ling Yunnuo" has also shown a good upward trend after its launch, and it has now ranked 34th in the best-selling list of Chinese mainland iOS games, and the subsequent ranking is expected to climb further. Based on the high ARPU and long LTV characteristics of women-oriented products, "Lingyunnuo" is expected to become another long-term main product after "Floating Life for Qingge" (the highest TOP5 in the iOS best-seller list and top 30 for a long time), and the performance of thickening can be expected.
It is worth noting that while the team of "Lingyunnuo" is committed to creating a high-quality national style women's game, it has also become a pioneer in promoting the charm of traditional culture. In January 2022, "Ling Yunnuo" joined hands with Chinese painter Ye Luying, Su embroidery non-hereditary inheritor Yang Xue, traditional handmade medicinal incense inheritor Gu Xiaosi, hua chao ji Hanfu designer Wang Jiajia, four new national style officials, to create a new national style impression PV of "national style new rhyme, origin of Yunnuo", and protect the ancient rhyme of intangible cultural heritage.
Outstanding ability to develop, issue and operate Profitable growth potential
In the long run, the reason why Friendship Time has considerable growth potential is that the company's highly integrated business model that integrates game development, distribution and operation capabilities has driven its long-term sustained growth.
In terms of game development, Friendship Time focuses on the female to the track, has created a number of excellent female to the game products, has a deep understanding of female players, and has set up a data (mainly including player login frequency, game time, game participation, skill level growth, the use of specific game features preferences, player retention rate) to promote the operation model, which helps to increase the probability of launching high-quality blockbuster products.
On the basis of the plot attributes of the story, on the one hand, Friendship Time adheres to the basic disk of women to users and excavates diversified themes in addition to the ancient style themes; on the other hand, it actively explores the pan-user categories of women outside, including strategy and secondary categories, and continues to explore the market potential of new themes and new categories.
Taking the "Dulala Promotion" mobile game as an example, as the first urban workplace theme game launched by Friendship Time, the game breaks the previous "ancient style, domineering president, paper people in love, dressing" and other weak styles of female positioning, aiming at female users in the new era, effectively starting from the needs of female players, showing the awakening of contemporary women's independent consciousness, with a significant brand of the spirit of the times. The company is expected to launch the "Dulala Promotion" within the year, which fills the gap in the market in a timely and accurate manner and gives players a more diversified choice of games, so it is expected to bring significant brand reputation and flow performance to the company after the game is launched.
In addition, the company's agent product "Ji Ji Alliance" (two-dimensional RPG) was launched on the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets on February 16, and ranked among the top 50 and TOP30 (Qimai data) of the best-seller list respectively, and the multi-level product echelon ensured long-term sustained growth.
In terms of game distribution, most of the games of Friendship Time are self-published, and they maintain stable cooperative relations with the App Store and Google Play, and the distribution business has a stable channel guarantee.
In terms of game operation, Friendship Time uses the long-life cycle strategy to finely operate products, and while the success of "Xifei Biography", "Xifei Q Biography" and "Floating Shengwei Qing Song" has been successful, it has not stopped the pace of research, but continues to maintain high-frequency version iterative optimization, and cooperates with long-term purchase volume delivery while constantly creating updates to jointly promote the product flow to remain stable.
In 2021, Friendship Time launched a series of online and offline marketing strategies to ensure the player's gaming experience and enhance the visibility of the company's brand and games. For example, the linkage activity "Floating Life for Qing Song" and "Legend of the Paladin Sword" is opened, "Floating Life is Also Free", unlocking new gameplay, maps, costumes and pet mounts, etc.; taking the pet mounts in "Floating Life as Qing Song" as the prototype, designing and creating Yooe Ancient Style Spirit Pet Series Blind Boxes, etc.
The high-quality operation ability makes the company's three core mobile games focus on long-term operation, the life cycle is far beyond the industry average of 7-16 months, has been operating for more than 7 years, and still contributes considerable income; "Floating Life for Qingge" is firmly in the iOS rankings. In the view of Zhitong Finance APP, strong boutique operation capabilities, prolong product life cycle, dilute development costs, obtain profits to a greater extent, and enhance performance certainty.
"Her mobile game" is in the ascendant Layout leading firm long-term value
Following 2020 as the first year of Otome Games, the popularity of women's games has continued until 2022. In the past 4 months, Tencent has successively launched "Brilliant Star Path" and "Phoenix Yufei of Yanxi Raiders", and has invested in the capital market in the research and development manufacturers palm dream network and Chengdu Longyuan, which focus on women's game development. Women ushered in a golden period of games, because the mainland game market has entered the stage of stock competition, and major manufacturers seem to regard market segmentation as the next outlet.
According to the "2020 Game R&D Strength Survey (Mobile Game)", from 2018 to 2023, the average annual compound growth rate of the women's game market is 18.4%, and the market size is expected to reach 95.8 billion yuan in 2023. Northeast Securities also believes that the female mobile game market is expected to reach a scale of 100 billion yuan in 2023. In the friendship time when gufeng women established an absolute leading edge in the field of mobile games, a highly integrated business model that integrates game development, distribution and operation capabilities has increasingly consolidated its advantage barriers and has a bright future.
More importantly, with its success in the Chinese market, Friendship Time has further established its position in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and overseas markets through strong localization capabilities and excellent distribution capabilities. In 2021, "Fusheng for Qingge" ranked 4th, 1st and 9th in the iOS game best-seller lists in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan respectively, and won the highest ranking of 13th place in the Korean iOS game best-seller list. In 2021, the company's overseas market revenue reached 485 million yuan, accounting for 30% of the total revenue, with excellent results in going overseas and high performance.
All in all, Friendship Time has established an absolute leading edge in the field of ancient women to mobile games, and the refined operation ensures the long life cycle of the game, and actively explores other fields for women, highlighting the strong research and development strength and publishing ability. In addition, good follow-up operation extends the life cycle of blockbuster games, improves performance stability, and strengthens the long-term value of the company.