Southwest Securities has released a research report stating that for 2026, it is mainly bullish on three directions.
First, AI film and television: with the releases of the seedance2.5, minimaxH3, and Kling 3.0 models, model performance has achieved major breakthroughs in duration and picture quality, and AI animated dramas and AI short dramas are gradually expanding into AI medium-to-long dramas and AI films. Relevant targets include Mango Excellent Media (300413.SZ) for AI medium-to-long dramas and Bona Film Group (001330.SZ) for AI films.
Second, AI marketing: attention should be paid to the catalyst from the launch of MOBVISTA's (01860) AI Infra.
Third, gaming: in the gaming sector, the report highlights Kingnet Network (002517.SZ) and Giant Network (002558.SZ), with other targets including NetEase (09999), whose future self-developed new game launches are expected to contribute incremental growth.
The main views of Southwest Securities are as follows.
AI film and television: 1) AI short dramas. In 2026, the market size of China's micro short dramas and AI drama cartoons is expected to exceed 121 billion yuan (of which AI drama cartoons exceed 40 billion yuan), with a user base of 851 million. In the first half of the year overseas, in-app purchases on both platforms totaled about 1.27 billion US dollars. On the leading platform DramaWave, more than 90% of new episodes in July were AI-generated, with downloads up 39.82% month-on-month. Hongguo free short dramas reached 357 million MAU, surpassing multiple long-video platforms. In September 2026, the WeChat short drama content center launched the free short drama mini-program "Green Bubble Short Dramas," aggregating short drama content within the WeChat ecosystem through a free viewing and advertising monetization model.
2) Medium-to-long dramas: Mango Excellent Media produced China's first fully AI-generated prime-time long drama "Later Journey to the West," which premiered on August 31. On its premiere night, the real-time ratings peak reached 0.3384% with a market share of 1.7862%, taking first place in its time slot among provincial satellite TV stations. AI production costs and cycles are greatly shortened: the production cycle was 4 months, with costs significantly reduced, achieving major savings in virtual shooting, set construction, digital humans, special effects, and other links.
3) AI films: the first AI hyper-realistic theatrical film "Sanxingdui: Future Past" has officially been set for release on October 23, 2026. "Unplanned: Guanghan Operation" already passed project filing with the China Film Administration in April 2026, has started shooting, and has entered the production stage.
4) Interactive dramas: on September 29, the National Radio and Television Administration publicly disclosed the filing information for the first interactive drama "Dinosaur Fight: Huaxia Secret Realm," representing that interactive dramas have formally entered a stage of standardized development.
AI marketing: large AI models have deeply penetrated the marketing field. AIGC enables second-level batch production of copy, images, and videos, while marketing agents autonomously complete research, strategy, placement, and customer service interactions. In the first half of 2026, the AI marketing Agent track entered the stage of large-scale commercial monetization, and the product architecture of leading vendors upgraded from "single-point tools" to "multi-Agent collaborative systems." Marketingforce launched the AI-Agentforce 3.0 intelligent agent platform, integrating more than 500 agent applications and covering the full chain of marketing, sales, and service; Qutui Group released the "full-sensory physical AI agent" system, evolving offline terminals into edge-side agents with environmental perception and content generation capabilities. For MOBVISTA, attention should be paid to subsequent catalysts, as AI infra has entered the sprint stage and is expected to launch in October. The usage ratio of GPUs in the new architecture has significantly increased and is used for model training. The original CPU-based training architecture's data foundation could not train complex user behavior data, while the new architecture adds time-series features, which is conducive to training complex models and can greatly shorten the time for IAP model data accumulation.
Office AI Agents: in 2026, China's desktop AI-native office agent industry entered a stage of explosive scale expansion, with leading major companies initially breaking out by relying on traffic and large-model advantages. 1) Tencent system: a 2026Q2 report released by Analysys showed that in June, WorkBuddy's monthly visits reached 20.97 million, ranking first in the industry. 2) Alibaba system: on July 27, 2026, Alibaba fully integrated three products, QoderWork, MuleRun, and Wukong, and launched a new Agent office product, "Qianwen Office." One full month after its launch, Qianwen Office's user count exceeded 30 million, with enterprise users accounting for more than half. 3) ByteDance system: the product teams of the AI Agent tool "Coze" and the AI Coding tool "Trae" were integrated into the "Doubao" system, and the enterprise office collaboration tool "Feishu" was also merged into the Doubao team.
Gaming: license approvals continued their growth trend. From January to July, a total of 1,110 domestic online game licenses and 36 imported licenses were issued, totaling 1,146; among them, 193 domestic licenses were issued in July alone, a monthly high since 2024. High-quality content and strong IP drivers empower the steady development of the gaming industry. In the first half of 2026, the actual sales revenue of China's gaming market was 188.450 billion yuan, up 12.17% year-on-year, with a user base of 684 million, up 0.82% year-on-year. In the first half of 2026, overseas sales revenue of self-developed games was 12.372 billion US dollars, up 30.22% year-on-year. Attention should be paid to the release of new game revenue and expectations for new game launches: for NetEase, watch "Sea of Oblivion," "Infinity Nikki" (January 15, 2027), and "Guiying Cangfeng"; for Tencent, watch "Roco Kingdom: World" and "Honor of Kings: All Heroes Chess"; for Perfect World, "Yihuan" achieved 1.4 billion yuan in revenue in the first half, and attention should be paid to subsequent performance release.
Investment Recommendations
For 2026, the firm is mainly bullish on three directions: 1) AI film and television: with the releases of the seedance2.5, minimaxH3, and Kling 3.0 models, model performance has achieved major breakthroughs in duration and picture quality, and AI animated dramas and AI short dramas are gradually expanding into AI medium-to-long dramas and AI films. Relevant targets include Mango Excellent Media (300413.SZ) for AI medium-to-long dramas and Bona Film Group (001330.SZ) for AI films. 2) AI marketing: attention should be paid to the catalyst from the launch of MOBVISTA's (01860) AI Infra. 3) Gaming: in the gaming sector, the report highlights Kingnet Network (002517.SZ) and Giant Network (002558.SZ), with other targets including NetEase (09999), whose future self-developed new game launches are expected to contribute incremental growth.
Risk Warnings
Risks include stricter industry policies, R&D of multimodal large models falling short of expectations, new game performance falling short of expectations, box office performance falling short of expectations, and intensifying market competition.
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