Hanyi Co., Ltd., the leading font concept stock, is listed on the market, and the value of fonts has created a huge market space

On August 31, Beijing Hanyi Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hanyi Shares") was listed on the GEM of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. As of the close of the day, Hanyi Shares rose 53.86% to close at 39.51 yuan/share, with a market value of more than 3.9 billion yuan. As a company that specializes in font design and font licensing, the listing of Hanyi Co., Ltd. has not only become the “leader” in the concept of A-share fonts, but also demonstrated the rich value contained in fonts, a creative product, through the capital market.

Hanyi's revenue in 2021 is 220 million yuan, of which the font software licensing business accounts for about 67%, mainly licensing the copyright of the fonts designed by the company to commercial users for use in various scenarios; the Internet platform licensing business accounts for about 25% , mainly cooperates with Internet and terminal equipment companies to meet the personalized font visual needs of their customers. Hanyi's customers include Tencent, Taobao, JD.com, Baidu, Huawei, Midea, Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Kingsoft Office, China Literature Group and many other well-known domestic and foreign companies.

In recent years, as the application scenarios of fonts have gradually expanded from the traditional publishing and printing fields to digital printing, film and television advertising, e-commerce websites, games, mobile terminal operating systems, APP applications, etc., the commercial value of fonts has increased significantly. At the same time, as the domestic copyright environment improves and Chinese people’s awareness and ability to pay for intellectual property rights increases, the comprehensive value of the fonts will continue to be released in the future.

Font "originality" meets diverse needs

Founded in 1993, Hanyi Co., Ltd. has a history of nearly 30 years of font design and font product development. The company has designed many classic Chinese fonts such as Hanyi Lingxin font in the past, all of which are instant choices in the industry. With the advent of the digital intelligence era, Hanyi Co., Ltd., which closely follows the market demand, has further released the commercial value of fonts.

The two major business sectors that account for the highest proportion of Hanyi's revenue are font software licensing business and Internet platform licensing business. In short, the former is mainly used by authorized companies to promote brands and products, and to embed fonts into mobile and tablet operating systems; the latter is mainly used to provide font value-added services to Internet users.

Industry insiders pointed out that fonts embody the creative efforts and intellectual labor of creators. According to the Copyright Law, fonts are works of art and are protected by law just like software, novels, film and television dramas, music and other copyrights. "Originality" is the key to designing fonts. Important features are also the value of fonts, a creative product.

“From the perspective of the creation process and use value, a font library usually needs to go through many steps from creativity, development to completion, such as font creativity, font design, scanning and curve synthesis, extended creation, symbol creation, font approval, format conversion, testing and proofreading, etc. process, which condenses a lot of intellectual labor, time and cost on the part of the creator. A font with originality, aesthetic significance and practicality can complete the corresponding visual presentation in different use occasions, thus promoting the publicity effect. It has a good promotion effect on brand image and product promotion,” said the aforementioned industry insiders.

In recent years, Hanyi Co., Ltd.’s font products have been widely used in various downstream market segments such as corporate promotion, printing and publishing, commercial advertising, Internet platforms, and embedded businesses, such as Hanyi Qihei, Hanyi Wheatbody, and Hanyi Yakuhei. and other fonts, which are widely used by authorized companies in various industries. In 2013, Hanyi Co., Ltd. also took the lead in the industry to develop Internet platform licensing business, and further expanded its business model through cooperation with companies such as Tencent and Huawei.

For example, Hanyi cooperates with Tencent to provide interactive fonts on Tencent mobile platforms such as QQ and QQ Space. When users use relevant fonts, they and their interactive partners can see dazzling fonts, explosive fonts, artist handwritten fonts, and entertainment fonts. IP fonts, etc., meet users’ personalized chat and social needs. In Hanyi's cooperation with smart terminal manufacturers such as Huawei, OPPO, VIVO, Xiaomi, etc., end users can directly pay, download, and install Hanyi's fonts through the personalized theme platform in the mobile phone system and use them to decorate the interface of the mobile phone.

At the same time, Hanyi Co., Ltd. also uses its rich technical reserves and R&D capabilities to provide customers with solutions based on font technology. In 2020, the company created a mobile phone for Huawei's Hongmeng operating system and ecosystem that can be adapted to multiple devices, used in all scenarios, and supports six major language families: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic, covering 100 Hongmeng customizes variable fonts in multiple languages ​​and achieves a balanced and unified style in multiple languages, making the fonts have a good multi-language mixed layout effect. In the same year, Hanyi also reached a cooperation with JD.com to provide new genuine font services to hundreds of thousands of JD.com merchants and JD.com platform experts through the JD.com Copyright Material Center.

As of December 31, 2021, Hanyi Co., Ltd. has launched more than 700 B-end fonts with copyrights and developed more than 1,700 sets of fonts. Under the good development momentum of various business sectors, Hanyi Share's revenue and net profit have shown an overall upward trend. From 2019 to 2021, Hanyi Share achieved revenue of 212 million yuan, 197 million yuan and 220 million yuan respectively. During the same period Net profits were 61.3 million yuan, 47.59 million yuan, and 66.69 million yuan respectively.

In the first half of 2022, benefiting from the continued growth in the scale of the font software licensing business and the completion and acceptance of some font customization projects, Hanyi Co., Ltd.'s overall operations and profitability were stable and improving, achieving operating income of 98.085 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.63%, achieving return to the parent company Net profit was 26.113 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.71%.

Font library as the core "creativity + technology + model" to expand growth space

Hanyi Co., Ltd. has always focused on the font software licensing business. After continuous attempts and accumulation in the font industry, it has gradually developed a business system with the cultural creativity of fonts as the core, highlighting the sense of design, fashion and aesthetic value, and expanded its business to font technology services, visual design services and IP productization business.

Among them, "brand fonts" fully reflect the creative value of font design, and also have huge market potential. An exclusive font that accurately conveys the brand concept can not only strengthen the uniqueness of the brand and leave a deep impression on users, but can also further shape the brand image and enhance brand value by optimizing product functions and enriching product experience. In this field, Hanyi Co., Ltd. has designed custom fonts such as Alibaba Pratt & Whitney, OPPO Sans, VIVO custom numbers, Cadillac Hanyi Jun Hei, Xiaomi Hei, etc. based on customer needs in recent years.

For example, Alibaba Puhui is a family font customized by Hanyi Font Library for Alibaba brand upgrade. This font takes modernity as the core design concept, reliability and crispness as the design entry point, and integrates the Ali spirit into the font. It is a font that has a modern feel and can be used in all scenarios.

In terms of fonts assisting brand marketing and highlighting cultural and public welfare values, Hanyi has also had many classic cases in recent years. Hanyi once independently created the "Guofeng Meteorological Bureau" with Chinese characters as the theme elements. Through cross-border cooperation with brands such as Heytea, Super Wenheyou, and Li Ning, Hanyi expressed the aspirations of Generation Z young people through the design of cultural and creative products with Chinese characters. The recognition of national style helps the brand image to be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

"The Fading Font", which won the Silver Lion Award in the Health Category at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, is the "Hanyi Alzheimer's Disease Font" jointly created by Hanyi Font and Maili Bowen, integrating fragmented creativity into the font. The style intuitively reflects the cognitive decline and memory loss of Alzheimer's disease patients, arousing users' empathy and care for Alzheimer's disease patients.

Beginning in 2017, Hanyi also began to explore the market sinking and the layout of the designer population, and developed the "Ziyou" client, which integrates traditional font downloading, installation, preview, and calling functions in design software to customers. Duanzhong has greatly improved users' operating efficiency and font experience. In 2019, it launched a new member subscription model for font authorization, and achieved rapid growth in related revenue.

In addition, Hanyi Co., Ltd. independently developed text detection and recognition system technology based on deep networks. In the test, it can achieve a recognition accuracy of more than 99% for text in paper forms under complex conditions, and detect multiple texts. and top-ranked in text line recognition competitions. This has also further expanded the application scenarios of fonts, and Hanyi's related technologies may gradually play a major role in the large-scale electronic processing of tickets, documents, and forms.

Hanyi's listing in the capital market has allowed more people to understand the rich value contained in fonts that combine creativity and technology. From the perspective of policy, market potential, copyright environment, business model, etc., the fonts derived from design fonts The huge market will also continue to expand. The "Outline for Building a Powerful Nation on Intellectual Property (2021-2035)" and the "14th Five-Year Plan" National Intellectual Property Protection and Utilization Plan promulgated by the State Council will further curb infringement; the rising demand for font use by enterprises and netizens, the increase in corporate and personal copyright The increase in payment awareness has provided guarantee for the healthy development of the font industry; large font companies including Hanyi have actively explored new business models for different needs and greatly expanded their business territories.

Focusing on the future, Hanyi Co., Ltd. will continue to be based on the font industry, actively seize the trends and opportunities in China's intellectual property development, increase the development of font copyrights, improve the reserve of font resources and products, strengthen brand and marketing channel strategies, and at the same time, strengthen the development of font copyrights. We have invested heavily in research and development in the direction of artificial intelligence, improved our research and development capabilities, and accelerated the transformation of research and development results, becoming a leading domestic high-tech company based on font products and equipped with cultural and creative capabilities and artificial intelligence innovation capabilities.

Du Yuan/Text