Interface News Reporter | Feng Yuchen
After ushering in the first 20cm limit of the year the day before, on May 15, Tom Cat (300459. SZ) continued to close at 4.45 yuan per share. In May last year, thanks to seizing the AI outlet, Tom Cat's share price once hit an all-time high of 9.47 yuan per share, and then fluctuated and fell.
Since the first half of 2021, Tom Cat's net profit has continued to show negative growth, and in 2023, Tom Cat's huge goodwill risk will hit, and the performance will turn from profit to loss to -865 million yuan after the impairment of 1.015 billion yuan.
On May 14, Tom Cat's official Weibo posted an article to "ride" the current hot spot GPT-4o in the AI circle, saying that the large model R&D team it invested in has unique strategic deployment capabilities.
In February last year, the deployment of AI began
Recently, OpenAI launched the first native multimodal model GPT-4o at the spring press conference, breaking through many bottlenecks in human-computer interaction of previous large models. Superimposed Tencent WeGame's official blog announced that the annual press conference "Game Night" will open at 8 pm on May 19th, and dozens of new works will be unveiled to release exclusive news.
Benefiting from the above news, the gaming sector led the rise in A-shares on May 14. Tom Cat soared to 20% intraday limit, with a turnover of 2.555 billion yuan.
When the stock price was high, on the evening of May 14, Tom Cat continued to release news through the official WeChat, saying that Jinke Tom Cat has recently reached authorization cooperation with Muma Star Kitchen, Ruizshi, and Bingquan Children's Washing Series Products, and new progress has been made in the licensing business.
Before the market on May 15, Tom Cat's official Weibo used GPT-4o news to publicize a wave of its own investment in the large model research and development team Xihu Xinchen.
It mentioned that when the large model R&D team invested by the company was established in 2021, Xihu Xinchen had already paid attention to the shortcomings of the emotional ability of the AI large model in human-computer interaction, and devoted itself to research and dedication to creating a multi-modal large model with both high IQ and high emotional intelligence. After watching the movie, the start-up team was attracted by the form of Samantha in the play and the technology behind it, especially the ability of AI to resonate with people's emotions, and immediately determined to "create an AI companion that accompanies a billion people".
He also said that since its inception, Xihu Xinchen has focused on the research in the field of AI emotion, and is committed to creating a large AI model that is full of warmth and better understanding of people's hearts, and takes this as its mission to serve the public, which coincides with the vision of Open AI in the future. The GPT-4o update demonstrates natural and vivid human-computer interaction, fills in the shortcomings of some artificial intelligence in terms of emotion, and also confirms the unique strategic deployment ability of West Lake Xinchen.
Straight flush shows that Tom Cat is wearing as many as 38 concepts, including ChatGPT, brain-computer interface, metaverse, multimodal AI, robots, AIGC, Hongmeng and other cutting-edge hot spots, as well as conventional themes such as three children, IP, online education, film and television entertainment.
What kind of company is Tom Cat?
According to the data, Tom Cat is mainly an IP ecological operator with the core of the Tom Cat family IP, which meets the cultural and entertainment needs of users through online mobile applications, animation, film and television and other content, and develops chain formats such as IP derivatives and licensing business and new business service business offline.
Since the beginning of 2023, as artificial intelligence has become a hot spot in the market, Tom Cat has begun to gradually deploy AI, strategically investing in Xihu Xinchen, a large model R&D team focusing on emotional interaction, cooperating in the research and development of Tom Cat AI storytelling and other products, and launching the first AI mobile game "Talking Ben AI" test in Slovenia, Cyprus and other regions. According to its 2023 annual report, the Tomcat AI hardware team is developing an AI voice interaction companion robot based on generative AI technology.
Thanks to the popularity of AI, in the three months from February to May 2023, Tomcat's stock price has risen by more than 165%.
In July 2023, Tom Cat also announced that it plans to raise no more than 2.3 billion yuan to invest in AI, of which 300 million yuan will be used to supplement working capital, and 2 billion yuan will be used for Tom Cat family IP series AI interactive terminal product projects, vertical domain model development projects, and high-density big data computing infrastructure projects. At present, the private placement is in the stage of approval by the general meeting of shareholders.
Advertising is the main source of revenue
It is worth noting that behind the "dazzling" business form, the majority of Tomcat's current revenue does not come from games, film and television, nor from AI applications, but from advertising business. From 2021 to 2023, Tomcat's advertising business revenue will be 1.48 billion yuan, 1.232 billion yuan, and 1.035 billion yuan respectively, accounting for 76.21%, 75.42%, and 76.78% of the total revenue.
From May 7th to May 10th, Tom Cat held an investor relations meeting, when asked why most of it comes from advertising revenue, Tom Cat explained that its game series products have a huge user base around the world, and the company's game products cooperate with Google, Meta, Mobvista, ironSource, ByteDance's Chuanshanjia and other advertising and marketing service providers, so as to obtain the marketing needs of a large number of advertisers. and push such advertisements to users of the Company's mobile application products to obtain advertising revenue. In the actual operation process, the company has built its own advertising control platform Mediation, through which the company carries out real-time bidding ranking on the advertisements pushed by global marketing service providers, and gives priority to the display of high-priced advertisements, thereby improving the monetization efficiency of the company's access to advertisements.
However, due to factors such as the contraction of the industry and the decline in user activity, the advertising revenue of Tom Cat game products has declined in recent years. Tom Cat's overall revenue is also declining, with total revenue of 1.941 billion yuan, 1.633 billion yuan, and 1.348 billion yuan from 2021 to 2023 respectively.
During the same period, Tomcat's net profit fell into an embarrassment, showing negative growth since the first half of 2021, with 708 million yuan, 440 million yuan, and -865 million yuan from 2021 to 2023 respectively.
In the 2022 annual report, Tomcat was questioned by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange for not making any provision for impairment of large amounts of goodwill. At that time, the book value of Tomcat's goodwill was 3.648 billion yuan, accounting for 58.44% of the total assets and 93.82% of the attributable net assets, mainly due to the acquisition of Outfit7 Investments Limited and Hangzhou Daily Power Technology Co., Ltd. According to the Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises, the management of Tomcat is required to conduct an impairment test on the goodwill every year and adjust the carrying amount of the goodwill based on the results of the impairment test.
In reply to the inquiry letter, Tomcat stated that in terms of the overall fairness of the financial statements, the company's treatment of goodwill impairment is in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises in all material aspects.
In 2023, Tomcat's huge goodwill impairment risk is still coming, and the total amount of partial credit impairment and asset impairment provisions will be 1.015 billion yuan. Among them, the impairment amount of goodwill formed by the acquisition of Outfit7 Investments Limited and Hangzhou Daily Power Technology Co., Ltd. was 968 million yuan.
Recently, Tom Cat has been subject to regulatory attention again for "revealing stuffing" during on-site inspections.
In April 2022, Tom Cat announced the transfer of 20% of the equity of Guangdong Tom Cat, a shareholding company, to Huzhou Ronghao, with a transaction consideration of 460 million yuan. After the completion of the transaction, Tom Cat still holds a 15% stake in Guangdong Tom Cat. In April this year, the 15% stake changed, Tom Cat withdrew from the ranks of Guangdong Tom Cat shareholders, and Shaoxing Shangyu Feida Real Estate became a new shareholder, holding 15% of the shares.
On May 8, the Zhejiang Securities Regulatory Bureau found in the on-site inspection of Tom Cat that the disclosure of relevant information on the equity transfer of Guangdong Tom Cat was inaccurate and incomplete, and the company only disclosed the transfer of 20% of the equity of Guangdong Tom Cat, and did not disclose the transfer of the remaining 15% of the equity. In addition, from 2020 to 2022, the company failed to implement effective control and follow-up management of its shareholding subsidiaries Guangdong Tom Cat and Zhejiang Xiangxin Cultural Tourism Industry Group Co., Ltd., and the company's "Internal Control Self-Evaluation Report" was inaccurate. The Zhejiang Securities Regulatory Bureau issued a warning letter to Tom Cat and related personnel.
At present, the shares held by Zhu Zhigang, the actual controller of the top three shareholders of Tomcat, Wang Jian, the former chairman, and Jinke Holding Group Co., Ltd., the controlling shareholder, are all in a highly pledged state, and the pledge ratio exceeds 98%.