On the evening of December 4th, Meitu announced that it had liquidated its cryptocurrency holdings, making a profit of approximately 571 million yuan. This income has exceeded the company’s net profit for the entire year last year of 378 million yuan, with sideline income overshadowing its main business.
The company, which started out with photo editing software, had purchased a total of about 31,000 units of Ether and 940 units of Bitcoin in 2021, with total cash consideration at the time being around $50.5 million and $49.5 million respectively.
Meitu thus became the first Hong Kong-listed public company to allocate cryptocurrency assets publicly. At that time, Meitu’s Chairman Mike Cai posted on his social media: ‘Someone has to be the first one to eat crab. This should be considered as Hong Kong’s first listed company to purchase BTC digital currency and also globally as the first listed company to use ETH Ethereum as a currency value reserve.’
Currently, Meitu has sold all its purchased cryptocurrencies held before; with total cash consideration for Ether and Bitcoin increasing to approximately $100 million and $80 million respectively.
‘After selling off cryptocurrencies, this group no longer holds any Ether or Bitcoin,’ said Meitu.
Meitu’s cryptocurrency business has not been smooth sailing. In 2022, the global cryptocurrency market experienced a significant downturn, with prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum both seeing notable decreases.
Meitu’s mid-year report for 2022 showed that the fair value of its held cryptocurrencies decreased by approximately 112 million yuan. Throughout the entire year of 2022, the company’s cryptocurrencies saw a substantial decrease in value compared to their purchase prices, with losses from devaluation of Ether and Bitcoin totaling around 86.6 million yuan and 198.2 million yuan respectively. It wasn’t until the first half of 2023 that Meitu was able to recover about 185 million yuan from the devaluation losses on its held cryptocurrencies.
Approaching the end of 2024, benefiting from Trump’s re-election and a friendly attitude towards cryptocurrencies, prices surged crazily led by Bitcoin as representative. On November 6th, Bitcoin soared past $70,000; on November 10th it broke through $80,000 for the first time; on November16th it reached $90,000; then successfully hit nearly $99,000 on November22nd.
Just one day after Meitu decided to sell off its held cryptocurrencies on December5th , Bitcoin broke through $103k USD skyrocketing over five percent within a single day.
For Meitu, selling off at the peak value of their cryptocurrencies and investing funds into stable growth pillar businesses is considered a wise choice.
Regarding where profits will go next，the company announced that Meitu’s board plans to use approximately eighty percent (80%)of net proceeds from sales for special dividends payment while remaining net profit will be used as general operating funds to further expand image & design products business primarily based on subscription model
Financial reports show that revenue from these businesses had reached ¥13 billion in FY23，a YoY increase rate at52.8% . This year continues strong momentum with H1 revenue reaching ¥9.3 billion ，up54.5% YoY accounting for57.% total income.
Meanwhile，R&D investment costs and AI computing power have also risen sharply。In H1FY24，Meitu’s R&D investment amounted to¥425million ，an increase rate at44..52%. The announcement shows that millions images&videos are processed daily by users via Meitupic app ,with roughly83% utilizing pan-AI functions.
As of June 30, 2024, the number of paid subscribers for Meitu has exceeded 10.81 million, reaching a historical high with a penetration rate of about 4.2%; the monthly active users have reached 258 million, an increase of 4.3% compared to the same period last year.
Meitu is trying to seize the opportunity brought by large models. Meitu’s founder, chairman and CEO Wu Xinhong previously stated in an interview with media: “Engaging in a model arms race is not Meitu’s core strategy. We will control our investment in models while ensuring application competitiveness.”
SEE ALSO: Meitu’s Stock Price Fluctuates Throughout the Year
He emphasized that Meitu will not engage in ‘hard competition’ in the field of video large models, as competitors would include all global giants.
“Models serving applications is a major trend,” Wu Xinhong noted that many domestic large model companies are moving towards applications at different speeds; he believes that applications will have market space ten times larger than the models themselves.
Driven by news of selling cryptocurrencies, Meitu’s stock price rose on the 5th day with a closing price of HK$3.04, up by 6.29%, giving it a total market value of HK$13.787 billion.
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