[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] Hana Financial Investment analyzed on the 12th that Kidari Studio is the company that owns the most female-oriented adult intellectual property (IP) and has a definite overseas growth momentum this year.

Kidari Studio is a company that has secured the female-oriented adult webtoon market in the domestic webtoon market, which is divided between Naver and Kakao. Although BL code works are serialized on Naver Series and Kakao Page, most of them are rated for ages under 15.

Yoon Yeji, a researcher at Hana Financial Investment, said, "The platforms where you can exclusively enjoy BL code adult content rated 19+ in Korea are almost only Kidari Studio's webtoon platforms, Bomtoon and Lezhin," and analyzed, "Despite being a niche genre, the number of new subscribers to Bomtoon and Lezhin last year increased by 1.12 million and 5.9 million respectively, up 60% and 37.5% compared to the same period last year."

In particular, Kidari Studio is evaluated to have secured competitiveness in the global webtoon market by signing a webtoon supply contract with ByteDance and making an equity investment. ByteDance launched a web novel platform in North America last year based on China's number one free web novel platform, and launched webtoon platforms in Japan and Indonesia in February.

Kidari Studio expects that global webtoon sales will grow by more than 30% after this year through this contract. As of last year, Kidari Studio's global sales scale was about 60 billion KRW.

Researcher Yoon said, "There is a momentum for new overseas platform launches and IP supply this year, and the webtoon IP supply to ByteDance starting from March this year is expected to contribute about 15 billion KRW in annual sales," and forecasted, "Overseas sales, which recorded 60 billion KRW last year, will grow to over 100 billion KRW."