HONG KONG, October 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — To October 19thNewborn Town Inc., a global social media company (9911.HK), reported its unaudited operating figures for the first three quarters of 2022.
Founded in 2009, Newborn Town has been focusing on global markets for almost ten years. With social networking as its core business, the company has built a portfolio that includes MICO, an open social app, YoHo, a voice-based social app, and Yumy, a video matching social app.
The company’s sales are expected to achieve Renminbi 2.06 to 2.11 billion (approx. $290 million) up about 25% year over year for the first three quarters. Including the income from the business with social networks should be enough RMB1.91 to 1.94 billion, an increase of around 36% over the same period in 2021. Led by refined games, revenues from the innovation business are expected to be sufficient RMB150 to 170 million. Revenue contribution fell about 36% from the prior-year period due to a focus on the innovation business, but the fact that this decline has moderated suggests the transformation is promising.
Following the strategy of building a portfolio of diversified social products, the company’s success in gaining favorable market share in key areas and strong growth in new markets has contributed to the continued development of its social networking business.
away 09/30 In 2022, Newborn Town’s social networking products were downloaded a total of 456 million times, up 9% from the figure June 30th. Monthly active users (MAUs) of its social networking business grew steadily to 23.5 million in the third quarter, up 15% year over year.
Social MAUs up for 11 straight quarters amid success of Replication in Markets
Newborn Town continued its steady upward scaling under the Quality Growth strategy in the third quarter, with social networking product MAUs growing for 11 consecutive quarters. Based on its efficient middle platform system and localized operational capabilities, the company’s “replication in markets” tactic has matured and been put into practice efficiently. In addition, by combining successful experience with local characteristics, Newborn Town has managed to break into local markets with less time and expense.
Earlier this year, MICO released its theme song for the Thai market. The song became an instant hit on local social media, racking up over 100 million views. This greatly increased the brand influence of the product. In the third quarter, MICO similarly repeated this success in Malaysia, Vietnamand other Southeast Asian countries, which once again attracted local netizens.
The Vietnamese theme song MICO SI MÊ was written, produced and performed by renowned Vietnamese musicians and the music video was shot by a well-known local music production team called FILMCITI. Content creators from MICO also performed the music video. The song’s widespread exposure on TikTok, YouTube and other social media has not only made MICO more popular among users, but also attracted many content creators to the platform, further accelerating the growth in the Vietnamese market.
In higher value markets such as Europe, North America, Japanand South Korea, users are more mature and their needs more sophisticated. Newborn Town’s localization operations met such needs while studying local market demand. These efforts have successfully fueled product growth and established effective, sustainable and long-term penetration approaches.
For example, after recognizing the influence of sports culture in Japan, the local team achieved consecutive successes in cooperation with Japanese football clubs late last year. Based on these experiences, Newborn Town has further incorporated such activities into its product features. During the third quarter, the Company organized online and offline joint activities with baseball teams in osaka and Fukuoka, gather a lot of support. The local team even hosted an exclusive behind-the-scenes live broadcast of RIZIN – a Japanese fighting event where a popular former RIZIN girl was invited to host to interview professional fighters.
These activities have enhanced user product experience and content ecology, resulting in continued growth in the size and loyalty of the user base. With significantly increased brand impact, the localized operations helped Newborn Town’s products achieve further breakthroughs.
Game Product Receives Global Recommendations from Google Play, Showing Promising Growth
Along with the steady and healthy growth of the social networking business, Newborn Town’s innovation business is also growing in the past three quarters. Although the transformation of the innovation business has resulted in a revenue decline compared to 2021, the YoY difference is narrowing quarter-on-quarter. This suggests that sophisticated games lead the innovation business to smooth progress, where the impact of business transformation quickly wears off. With a more sustainable model, the innovation business is about to return to the path of growth.
At the forefront of the company’s innovation business are two Mergeland games, Mergeland-Animal Adventure and Mergeland-Alice’s Adventure. Upon release, the games led the genre in terms of key metrics like user retention. Cumulative downloads and revenue have grown significantly since launch. In particular, the sophisticated visual style, innovative game design and gameplay of Mergeland-Alice’s Adventure has been recognized by Google Play. It was promoted worldwide as a “Recommended New Game” in the Google Play Store in August.
The approval of global players and Google reflected the competitiveness and enormous potential of Newborn Town. The company will thereafter continue to improve the product experience and intensify promotional activities to further increase the user volume and commercialization effectiveness of the games. In addition, Newborn Town will continue to pay attention to cutting-edge technologies and new business areas on a global scale, explore a variety of development opportunities, and diversify its innovative business structure for multi-dimensional growth.
