Left-handed popular skits, right-handed comics break through: Reading (00772) IP Ecology Begins a New Cycle of Value Revaluation

As the “electronic mustard” of contemporary adults upgraded from short videos to “spicy skit strips” in the form of a serial drama, the short drama market will also usher in the “golden year” in 2025.

According to the latest research on Hongguo skits, the domestic skit market is expected to approach 100 billion yuan in 2025. This also means that compared to a production value of 50 billion dollars in 2024, the short drama market has doubled again in just one year.

Of course, the reason behind the popularity of short dramas is probably not unrelated to “blockbuster manufacturing machines” that accurately hit the cool and urgent points of the times.

On December 11, Reading Text (00772) released the 2025 short drama report card. In 2025, reading skits produced over 120 skits, and production capacity increased significantly. Among them, many works have been certified by the leading platform “Pop Drama”, and have blossomed on various tracks such as current stories, costumes, period dramas, and male music.

For example, the female drama “The Good Pregnant Sweet Wife” launched by Reading Wen was a phenomenal hit. It was the top 2 on the Yunhe broadcast list, with a total broadcast volume of over 3 billion, breaking 80 million, and TOP1 in the monthly paid list; the male drama “This Bodyguard Is Too Invincible” ranked first on the paid side for five consecutive days, reaching 7686w in popularity on the leading free skit platform for 3 days, and was also the only male drama to break into the weekly TOP4 list during the same period.

With impressive data, it is also clearly further verified that the “production” and “quality” of short screenwriting have ushered in a two-way increase, demonstrating its strong influence in the field of skits.

Currently, the boom in short dramas is sweeping the global entertainment industry with unprecedented intensity, and the growth of the industry is impressive. And along with the shift in “quantity” and “quality” of the company's skits, Reading Wen, an online writing giant, is also expected to usher in opportunities for value reshaping. After all, what investors actually bought was never a stock code or financial statement, but a definitive, moving, and believable story about the future.

High quality IP+ excellent creators = holding two “core value sets”

The short story layout for reading the article began in 2023, when the industry was transitioning from barbaric growth to standardization. On the one hand, the market ushered in explosive growth, capital and giants entered the market one after another, and on the other hand, regulatory frameworks began to be prepared, and “boutiquization” became the key to the development of the industry.

Since he came from a leading online writing company, he is good at content, and has a natural advantage in doing short dramas. Therefore, since entering the market, Reading Wen has successively launched a variety of popular skit works, famous for their quality characteristics.

For example, in 2024, the boutique short drama “Mandao Dragon Emperor” launched by Reading Wen Group sold over 10 million people within 72 hours, and the boutique skit “Ding!” “My Richest Husband Is Online” surpassed 12 million in 48 hours. Furthermore, in 2025, Reading Wen also launched blockbusters with diverse themes, such as “The Good Pregnant and Sweet Wife”, “He's Wild”, “Sweet Wife Is Hot, Grandpa Huo Loves Her”, “An Innocent Girl Enters the Game”, and “I Reborn with My Daughter Nirvana After Leaving Home”.

Of course, in addition to having an innate advantage in doing skits, Reading Group also has two core “value markets.”

First, there are abundant IP reserves, which can provide high-quality story sources that are large-scale, sustainable, and have low trial and error costs.

On March 31, 2025, the short drama label Reading Text Short Drama Group announced that it will upgrade its business, open more than 2,000 online text IPs to create high-quality skits, and release the first batch of 300 Internet text IP lists. This is also another upgrade and expansion of the number and topics of cooperative IPs with the entire industry, following the announcement of the opening of 150 online text IPs for co-creation at the Reading Text Creation Conference last year.

This massive IP library can be described as a well-read “story database” that has been verified by the market. Every successful IP comes with a complete worldview, strong conflicting character relationships, and a “cool” module that has proven to be popular. This is equivalent to providing “pre-screened, high-specification, and standardized” core raw materials for skit production lines.

Second, outstanding authors are directly empowered to create “creative ecological barriers” that cannot be quickly replicated.

As a domestic online writing giant, Reading Text Group is inherently endowed with a huge ecosystem of creators. Among them, outstanding online writers are the ones who understand “narrative rhythm” and “user refreshment” the most. They can ensure that the adaptation does not “taste bad” and accurately transform the “payment hook” in the text into a “payment node” for a skit. This is a core ability that is difficult for external screenwriters to replicate.

For example, the original screenplay “The Good Pregnant Sweet Wife”, which was jointly developed by Yuewen's skit and Gong Ziyan, repeatedly mobilized the audience's expectations for the development of the plot with a precise and ingenious “marriage recognition” design. It became a phenomenal hit in the skit industry in 2025, and also ranked in the top 3 in the overseas skit popularity rankings. Meanwhile, the short drama “Other Wild”, which was adapted from Reading IP by writer Baixiang Mi, surpassed 60 million in popularity on the platform with a solid story base and accurate emotional expression.

As can be seen, it is precisely because it has firmly grasped these two core value markets, which also contributed to the high success rate of readers' skit adaptations, leading the industry in popularity rate — as of the first half of 2025, the overall popularity rate of reading skits reached 60%, far exceeding the average of the skit industry.

In addition to this, reading short dramas far surpass the industry average, and is also inseparable from the company's forward-looking and efficient platform layout.

On the one hand, Reading Text has the advantage of a mature and complete industrial chain from upstream content production, including IP incubation and script writing, to midstream artist brokerage, skit production, content distribution, and short drama distribution, to downstream ecological support such as media and traffic distribution. This also provides a deep moat for the short drama business. On the other hand, at the channel level, in addition to some of Reading's existing online article distribution channels that can be directly reused for short dramas, Reading Text continues to increase cooperation with WeChat Ecosystem, Tencent Video, etc., to explore more effective ways to combine skits with their platform scenarios to achieve a strategic synergy effect of 1+1>2.

All in all, by holding the two core value markets of high-quality IP+ outstanding creators, and supplementing a forward-looking and efficient platform layout, reading skits have gradually been transformed into an “ecological hub using skits as a new transformation tool to systematically release the value of literary IP”, and the growth momentum is very impressive.

From skits to comics, it's tactical copying and strategic upgrading

If entering skits is a key strategic layout for Reading Wen Group to open up a “second growth curve,” then betting on comics is an important business upgrade for the company to continue to gain momentum for growth.

According to massive engine statistics, driven by multiple factors such as AI empowerment and platform support, a total of 3,000 comics were launched in the first half of 2025, and continued to expand at a compound growth rate of 83%; the volume of circulation increased 12 times, and the market size is expected to exceed 20 billion yuan throughout the year, and the overall industry is booming. This means that the comic market is no less than another new level of growth than the skit market.

In response, Reading has also begun to actively lay out the comic market and accurately seize the development opportunities of the industry. On October 16, at the 2025 Reading Text Creation Conference, Hou Xiaonan, CEO and CEO of Reading Text Group, announced that on the basis of deepening skits, the company will comprehensively lay out the comic ecosystem to protect comic creation from the four dimensions of IP, capital, technology, and ecology.

In terms of IP resources, Reading Manga will open 100,000 boutique IPs, including leading works such as “National Forensic Medicine” and various themes; in terms of creative support, Reading Manga will set up a special creation fund of 100 million yuan to support writer transformation and high-quality team development; in terms of technical empowerment, Reading Wen will launch AIGC tools such as “Comic Assistant” to increase the efficiency of comic adaptation; in terms of industry chain collaboration, build a full link support from production and distribution to IP industry chain linkage to build an open, efficient, and win-win comic creation state.

In addition to this, Reading Manga has also established deep partnerships with leading comic production organizations such as Soy Sauce Animation, Fantasy, and Knowledge and Action.

Notably, the strong layout of the comic book business is not only about reaping industry dividends and opening up more incremental space, but also because it will join forces with the skit business to become the “perfect two wings” that drive IP visualization on two wheels.

On the one hand, comic user portraits will complement skit user portraits to reach more incremental users. Specifically, skits cover a wider range of declining markets and public sentiment, while comics are a direct channel to Gen Z and two-dimensional core users. Therefore, the comic book reading layout business will help the company open up a “second front” of IP visualization and improve the coverage of IP audiences of all ages.

On the other hand, participating in the comic field can further amplify the company's IP value and promote the rapid development of IP visualization. Today, the value of visualization has long become the consensus of the IP industry, but after all, the coverage of works developed by visualization is limited. Therefore, setting up the comic business is also another “powerful tool” to promote the company's IP visualization development in addition to the short drama business. According to reports, the production cost and cycle of a comic is between online articles and animation/live-action dramas. It is an “intermediate test product” that is lighter than a short drama and faster than a long-term animation. It can achieve visual development of an IP at a lower cost and faster speed.

Also, AIGC tools such as “Comic Assistant” launched by Reading Text can also be described as coming in due course. It can not only greatly reduce the production threshold and time costs of high-quality comics, and achieve revolutionary breakthroughs in cost and speed; it can also enable reading to take the lead in establishing a deeper ecological barrier centered on the “IP data+AI model” in the next generation of AI-driven visual content competition.

Judging from the various actions described above, the Yuewen Group's layout comic is an essential extension and deepening of its IP ecosystem strategy. The strategic practice of skits provides a clear development path and growth paradigm for the comic layout. In the future, as AI technology gradually matures and the comic industry continues to unleash high prosperity, Reading Text Group is expected to further open up a new growth curve.

epilogue

Based on the above, it is easy to see that for Reading Text Group, the business layout of skits and comics is not only a key factor for the company to quickly release IP value, but also a core driving force for the company to revalue from a “traditional digital reading provider” to an “IP ecological company.”

That is, reading the text promotes the revaluation of the company's value through a clear transmission chain — from the successful implementation of the short drama and comic business, to the two-way increase in revenue and profit brought about by the new business, to the proven transformation of the company's IP industrialization capabilities into an IP ecosystem company. This also encourages the secondary market to be willing to view it with a higher multiple and more optimistic model.

Therefore, even though the performance of the online reading business and copyright operation business was weak in the first half of the year, based on the company's strong IP monetization capabilities and the growth potential of skits and comics, mainstream institutions in the market still have a positive view of Reading Articles. Apart from the target price of HK$40 given by Lyon Securities and UBS Group, China Merchants Securities also maintained an “gain” rating, and Shen Wan Hongyuan maintained a “buy” rating.