The Palace Museum VR Cultural and Intelligent Glasses Experience, engaging in a virtual dialogue with historical figures... As an important part of the Beijing Cultural Forum, on September 21st, at the "Cultural Industry Investors Conference" (hereinafter referred to as "the Conference"), the reporter from China Business News saw a variety of cultural and creative scientific and technological achievements making their debut, with technological innovation becoming a new driving force for industry development.
The "Cultural Industry Investment and Financing Research Report" (hereinafter referred to as "the Report") released by the Cultural and Creative Finance Research Center of Tsinghua University's PBC School of Finance at the aforementioned conference shows that since the second half of 2023, the financing amount of the cultural industry in major capital markets has continued to grow.
In the first half of 2024, there were 35 merger and acquisition (M&A) events in the cultural industry M&A market, with 208 financing projects in major capital markets, totaling 30.23 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.3%.
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Liang Junjian, the deputy editor of the Report and the deputy director of the Cultural and Creative Finance Research Center at Tsinghua University's PBC School of Finance, said in an interview with reporters that an important phenomenon in the current development of the cultural industry is the close relationship between the development of new cultural forms and the trend of deep integration of cultural technology.
Technological innovation has been rapidly applied to various links in the cultural industry chain, activating new momentum for industrial development, such as AI large models and AI vertical models comprehensively improving content generation efficiency.
The new cultural forms lead growth, and technology efficiency is obvious.
According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, large-scale cultural enterprises continue to show strong growth momentum.
In the second half of 2023, large-scale cultural and related industrial enterprises nationwide achieved operating income of 701.58 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%.
Among them, the cultural entertainment and leisure services, cultural investment operations, and news information services achieved faster growth, with year-on-year growth rates of 43.5%, 30.4%, and 19.8%, respectively.
The Report shows that in the first half of 2024, large-scale cultural and related industrial enterprises nationwide achieved operating income of 649.61 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.5%.
Among them, new cultural forms maintained rapid growth.
In the first half of 2024, 16 sub-industries with more obvious characteristics of new cultural forms achieved operating income of 270.24 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.2%, accounting for 41.6% of the total operating income of the cultural and related industries.
It is worth noting that with the acceleration of new generation information technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain into the cultural industry, it is bound to bring a new round of industrial upgrading.
The Report shows that technological innovation has been rapidly applied to various links in the cultural industry chain.
For example, marketing companies use Internet of Things technology to achieve remote marketing monitoring, improve the accuracy of advertising placement through digital and intelligent technology, increase sales conversion rates, and apply artificial intelligence technology to the creative design process, comprehensively improving content generation efficiency.
In internet platform companies providing image and design services, more than 80% of business processing has used general artificial intelligence technology.
In addition, the R&D investment of listed cultural enterprises has significantly increased, and digitalization and intelligence have become new core competencies.
The R&D expenses of listed cultural enterprises in the first half of 2024 accounted for 7.5% of the main business income, and the proportion of R&D expenditure is higher than the average level of the entire capital market industry.
The reporter noticed that at the scene of this conference, there were several projects in the cultural industry chain, such as cultural content generation, cultural heritage revitalization, high-end equipment, information dissemination, and cultural experience consumption, including the "Multimodal AI to Create Immersive Interactive Content" launched by Beijing Shengshu Technology Co., Ltd., the "Terracotta Warriors and Horses VR Cinema" built by Xi'an Visible Network Technology Co., Ltd., and the "Hua Cui AI Cultural Guidance Super Assistant" launched by Hua Cui Starlight (Beijing) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., all of which attracted the attention of the participants at the scene.
Artificial intelligence and other emerging tracks have become the focus of investment and financing.
With the acceleration of the cultural industry development, the financing amount in the investment and financing market is also steadily increasing.
The Report shows that in the second half of 2023, there were 216 financing projects in the cultural industry in major capital markets, with a financing amount of 41.92 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.1%.
In the first half of 2024, there were 208 financing projects in the cultural industry in major capital markets, with a financing amount of 30.23 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.3%.
In the first half of 2024, the number of cultural projects or enterprises in the country through domestic private equity financing was the highest, reaching 131 times; the amount of financing through the domestic bond market was the highest, with short-term and long-term bonds totaling 21.2 billion yuan.
At present, China's cultural industry investment and financing market system is continuously improving.
The Report discloses that in the first half of 2024, the number of short-term and long-term bond financing events in the cultural industry increased by 66.7% and 150.0% year-on-year, respectively; the financing amount of short-term and long-term bonds in the cultural industry increased by 63.5% and 187.8% year-on-year, respectively.
In the first half of 2024, there were 35 M&A events in the cultural industry M&A market.
Among them, 24 M&A projects involved listed and listed companies, and the M&A amount accounted for 76.5% of the total amount of the M&A market that can be calculated.
Beijing's M&A event quantity and amount are leading in the country.
It is worth mentioning that according to the Report, in the first half of 2024, there were 72 private equity financing projects in emerging tracks such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, metaverse and digital assets, and cloud computing, accounting for 55.0% of the total number of private equity market financing projects.
The multi-scenario vertical application innovation of the cultural industry is accelerating the landing, promoting the intelligent upgrading of the upstream and downstream industry chain.
Li Jianguang, a partner of IDG Capital and a partner of Harmony Far-reaching Cultural Industry Investment Fund, summarized three investment methodologies for the cultural tourism industry: first, deeply bind flagship talents, golden partners, and serial successful entrepreneurs; second, keenly perceive the commercial opportunities of pioneering models; third, continuously refresh cognition, and promote product iteration and upgrading.
Liang Junjian also said that the high-quality development of the cultural industry is facing new opportunities, and the next step in the cooperation between culture and finance can help cultivate new quality productive forces in the industry from three aspects: first, cultivate patient capital, and expand effective investment.
Encourage venture capital and equity investment in the cultural field, play the role of industry funds, and provide long-term sustainable market-based funding sources for new quality productive forces in the cultural industry.
Second, strengthen the linkage between fiscal and financial policies, and enhance the support for key areas.
Third, play the role of multi-level capital markets, and enhance the vitality of market entities.
Encourage listed companies to focus on their main business, inject high-quality assets into listed companies through mergers and acquisitions, asset restructuring, and refinancing, and enhance core competitiveness.