BiliBili, China’s biggest streaming platform for Japanese anime, is looking to make an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) early next year. Though the people in the know weren’t willing to be identified due to the sensitivity of the information, Bloomberg cites them as saying the company aims to raise at least 200 million US dollars.

Though often considered to be the Chinese equivalent to Crunchyroll, BiliBili does more than just host anime series – of which it has licensed over 300 in the past three years alone, including classics like Cowboy Bebop and contemporary hits like Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. Instead, it functions as a hub for anime and anime-adjacent media, such a manga and video games and, since its launch in 2009, has become the online center for the mainland’s burgeoning ACG – Anime, Comic and Game – subculture. According to company chairman Chen Rui, the website’s user base is over 100 million strong and almost entirely under 25 years of age, making it one of the most popular websites for Chinese millennials.

Perhaps the biggest draw to shareholders is that BiliBili recently secured the Chinese streaming rights to Your Name, Makoto Shinkai’s incredibly popular 2016 anime which broke records all across the globe, including in China where it made over 81 million US dollars on its way to becoming the country’s most successful 2D animated movie and the most successful Japanese movie ever in the Chinese market. In fact, the movie was so popular globally that JJ Abrams is currently working on an English language live-action remake with Eric Heiserrer, the writer of Arrival.

While it may seem like a guaranteed money maker on the NYSE, BiliBili’s community aspects add a level of uncertainty that is generally missing from Western streaming services. Unlike Crunchyroll, or even non-anime services like Netflix and Hulu, BiliBili aggregates videos from other services as well as providing its own content, meaning that copyright and IP laws can be circumvented – the prevention of which is a current hot button issue between the US and China – and, while membership to the site is free, via ad support, it also allows videos to be streamed by users who aren’t subscribers to the site, allowing for content to be easily pirated for use elsewhere. Likewise, lacking Crunchyroll’s day-and-date subtitles, BiliBili has a feature which allows for users to upload their own subtitles, which are then broadcast to other users and, though this is intended to allow for immediate editing, it often functions as a chatroom for live discussion.

This speculation also comes on the heels of iQiyi hoping for an 8-billion-US-dollar IPO launch, also on the NYSE in 2018. Owned by Baidu, China’s Google equivalent, iQiyi is to Netflix as BiliBili is to Crunchyroll and the larger value is reflected in the mainstream content offered by the service, which includes movies, scripted dramas and reality TV from both mainland China and the rest of the world, including several Netflix Originals such as Black Mirror and David Fincher’s Mindhunter.

This reflects an increase in shareholder confidence in Chinese businesses as Bloomberg reports that, so far, 2017’s total investment in Chinese IPOs has reached 1.3 bullion US dollars, a three-fold increase on the figure from this time last year, suggesting the Chinese government’s ongoing reform of the financial sector, which includes limiting the ability of companies to short sell, is proving to be a success.

(Source: Bloomberg)