Col Group Co.,Ltd. officially submitted a listing application to the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on February 27, 2026, aiming to establish an "A+H" listing structure, with Citigroup serving as the sole sponsor.
Since its initial public offering in 2015, Col Group has frequently pursued market trends, leading to problematic mergers and acquisitions and prolonged financial losses. After 2023, as the short drama market rapidly heated up, the company again invested heavily in promoting short dramas overseas, significantly increasing marketing expenditures and further eroding its profit margins.
In the first three quarters of 2025, Col Group's sales expenses surged to 660 million yuan, a 93.65% year-on-year increase, nearly doubling. The sales expense ratio reached 65.31%, a significant increase of 23.11 percentage points compared to the same period last year. From 2018 to 2025, the company's cumulative net loss after deducting non-recurring items reached 4 billion yuan.
As of the end of January this year, Col Group's current assets stood at 693 million yuan, while its current liabilities were as high as 1.021 billion yuan, resulting in a working capital deficit of 327 million yuan. Total interest-bearing debt increased to 528 million yuan, nearly doubling from the end of 2023, with an increase of 262 million yuan. This includes 412 million yuan in short-term borrowings, while the cash balance was only 239 million yuan, indicating substantial short-term debt repayment pressure.
Faced with persistent performance pressure and tight cash reserves, the company's executives have opted to "vote with their feet." According to Wind data, company executives have cumulatively reduced their holdings by 43.2577 million shares, cashing out over 530 million yuan in total. On February 3, four executives announced another plan to sell shares worth 18 million yuan.
For Col Group, chasing market trends appears to have become more of a means for executives to generate personal gains.
Founded in 2000 and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2015, Col Group was the first digital publishing enterprise to go public on the A-share market. After more than 20 years of development, the company has transformed into an AI-driven leading digital entertainment platform, primarily providing online literature content domestically and short dramas overseas, aiming to build a next-generation, full-industry-chain digital content ecosystem.
Since 2018, Col Group has frequently encountered substantial losses. From 2018 to 2024, the company reported a net profit after deducting non-recurring items only in 2021, with losses recorded in all other years, accumulating to over 3.3 billion yuan.
An earnings forecast indicates that Col Group expects a net loss after deducting non-recurring items between 579 million yuan and 699 million yuan for 2025, representing a year-on-year loss expansion of 114% to 158%. Including the previous year's loss, the cumulative loss since 2018 approaches 4 billion yuan.
The company's continuous losses are closely linked to its aggressive development strategy. As one of the first enterprises involved in digital publishing in China, Col Group initially benefited from the rapid growth of the internet and digital books, successfully listing on the ChiNext board in 2015.
After its IPO, leveraging the financing convenience of the capital market, the company began diversifying its investments to chase market trends. In 2016, spurred by the proliferation of smartphones and the boom in mobile gaming, Col Group invested over 1.7 billion yuan to acquire all equity of the anime-themed mobile game publisher Chenzhike and invested in Acfun (A站), a vertical social platform for anime culture that was once comparable to Bilibili.
However, A站 was later forced to suspend and rectify due to regulatory issues, and the investment in Chenzhike resulted in continued losses due to underperformance. Col Group ultimately sold Chenzhike for 324 million yuan and was compelled to record a significant goodwill impairment, directly leading to a net loss after deducting non-recurring items of 1.966 billion yuan in 2018.
When the metaverse concept gained popularity in 2021, the company announced it would make the metaverse its core development focus for the next decade, allocating substantial funds to establish laboratories and conduct technical research. However, as metaverse development fell short of expectations, the related businesses failed to generate stable revenue streams, and the前期投入的费用 severely impacted company profits, causing a shift from profit to loss in 2022 for net profit after deducting non-recurring items.
After 2023, as the short drama market rapidly warmed up, Col Group again bet on promoting short dramas overseas, expanding its business by establishing overseas subsidiaries and increasing overseas advertising spending. Based on current results, the performance of its overseas short drama business is not ideal. Impacted by a sharp rise in overseas marketing expenses, the net loss after deducting non-recurring items for 2025 widened further.
In terms of revenue composition, Col Group's business is primarily divided into online literature and short dramas. Both segments require substantial investment in user acquisition, directly leading to consistently high sales expenses.
For the upcoming Hong Kong listing, Col Group positions itself as an "AI-driven leading digital entertainment platform." In reality, however, its largest operational cost remains user acquisition. Particularly since 2023, the company has significantly reduced its R&D investment, with the R&D expense ratio continuously declining.
From 2023 to 2024, Col Group's R&D expenses were 86.2507 million yuan and 61.5745 million yuan, decreasing by 35.25% and 28.61% year-on-year, respectively. The R&D expense ratios were 6.12% and 5.31%, falling to single-digit levels. Although R&D expenses grew by 41.86% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025, this growth rate was far lower than the increase in user acquisition costs. During the same period, the company's sales expenses were approximately 12 times its R&D expenses.
According to Wind data, Col Group's total historical fundraising exceeds 3.2 billion yuan, including 204 million yuan from its IPO and 3.02 billion yuan from secondary offerings. In stark contrast, the company's total historical dividend payments amount to 34.2495 million yuan, resulting in a dividend-to-financing ratio of only 1.06%, ranking at the bottom among its peers.
Currently, there are 29 listed companies in the A-share publishing sector. The cumulative total financing is 70.609 billion yuan, and the cumulative total dividends are 67.248 billion yuan, resulting in an average dividend-to-financing ratio of approximately 99.39%. Among them, Xinhua Winshare Publishing and Media Co., Ltd. has the highest ratio at 432.58%, about four times the industry average. Although Tianzhou Culture ranks second to last, its dividend-to-financing ratio is still three times that of Col Group, at approximately 3.04%.
Since 2018, due to continuously negative retained earnings, Col Group has not met the conditions for dividend distribution and has therefore not paid any cash dividends. As of the end of September 2025, the company's accumulated losses reached 2.704 billion yuan. Even if it returns to profitability in the future, profits would need to be prioritized to cover these losses. Given the current performance, the prospect of resuming dividend payments appears distant.
Nevertheless, Col Group's performance in the capital market has been quite strong. From April 2025 to the present, the company's stock price has increased by over 50%, with the peak gain approaching 130%.
The sustained activity in Col Group's stock price is closely related to its布局 in the AI field. In 2023, following the popularity of the large language model ChatGPT, domestic companies increased their exploration and investment in AI. Col Group was no exception, launching its own text generation model, "Chinese Xiaoyao," the same year, which supports functions like generating ten-thousand-word novels with one click and creating stories from images. Influenced by this, the company attracted investor interest in the capital market, with its stock price surging over 100% in November 2023.
In early 2026, the video generation model Seedance2.0, under the brand Doubao, gained rapid popularity due to its short generation time, low production cost, and high-quality output. In this context, listed companies in the film, television, and short drama sectors became favored by investors, including Col Group. On February 9 and 10, Col Group's stock price hit the 20% daily limit for two consecutive days, rising over 44% in just two trading sessions. Although the stock price has recently retreated, this fully demonstrates that, amid the AI boom, Col Group continues to attract investor attention despite its persistent losses.
It is noteworthy that during periods of significant stock price increases, company executives have repeatedly announced plans to reduce their holdings. On February 3, Director Zhang Fan, Director and Executive Deputy General Manager Xie Guangcai, Deputy General Manager, Board Secretary, and Financial Director Wang Jingjing, and Chief Operating Officer Yang Ruizhi disclosed plans to sell 181,600 shares, 239,800 shares, 228,500 shares, and 7,950 shares, respectively. Based on the closing price of 28.26 yuan per share on the most recent trading day (March 12), the total value of these planned sales exceeds 18 million yuan.
In fact, since 2017, multiple executives at Col Group have taken turns reducing their holdings. According to Wind data, company executives have cumulatively sold 43.2577 million shares, cashing out over 530 million yuan in total.
From 2022 to early 2023, Zhang Fan, Xie Guangcai, Wang Jingjing, and Yang Ruizhi sold 430,300 shares, 568,300 shares, 541,400 shares, and 18,700 shares, respectively, cashing out approximately 20 million yuan in total. In 2024, the four collectively sold over 1.17 million shares, cashing out more than 32 million yuan. From June to August 2025, they again sold a combined 876,900 shares, cashing out over 23 million yuan. Including the latest planned sales, the total value of shares sold by these four executives since 2023 approaches 100 million yuan.
While executives have profited handsomely, the company itself is struggling. In 2023, 2024, and the first three quarters of 2025, the net cash flow from operating activities for Col Group was -10.1036 million yuan, -52.49 million yuan, and -173 million yuan, respectively, indicating that its core business is continuously bleeding cash.
As of the end of January this year, Col Group's current assets were 693 million yuan, while its current liabilities reached 1.021 billion yuan, resulting in negative working capital of 327 million yuan. Total interest-bearing debt amounted to 528 million yuan, an increase of 262 million yuan, nearly doubling from the end of 2023. This includes 412 million yuan in short-term borrowings, against a cash balance of only 239 million yuan, highlighting significant short-term debt repayment pressure.
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