'Kinolights', Which Participated in the Watcha Acquisition Race, Surpasses KRW 2.8 Billion in Revenue in 2025, Turning a Profit for the First Time Since Its Foundation

As the sale of Watcha, Korea's first-generation online video service (OTT) platform, goes into full swing, the moves of 'Kinolights', a video content community company that had participated in the acquisition race, are drawing the industry's attention. Kinolights has solidified its business fundamentals through investment attraction, while achieving a meaningful turnaround by proving a dazzling financial performance of reaching the highest revenue and turning a profit for the first time since its foundation in 2025.

Emerging as a Dark Horse in the Watcha Acquisition Race… A Fierce 'Three-way Battle' with CJ ENM and Bigstone Pictures

With the recent deadline for letters of intent (LOI) to acquire Watcha, the acquisition race has narrowed down to a three-way battle between CJ ENM, the Kinolights consortium, and Bigstone Pictures. Earlier, Kinolights formed a consortium with financial investors (FI) such as private equity funds and jumped into the Watcha sale process early on.

However, it was confirmed that they did not participate in the Watcha M&A public bidding that closed on the 22nd. The industry expected that business synergy would be generated if Kinolights embraced Watcha. This is because the vast user data assets held by Watcha's content recommendation and evaluation platform, 'Watcha Pedia', could be combined with the existing Kinolights platform. Furthermore, the moves of Kinolights, which has recently expanded its film distribution business by preemptively securing intellectual property (IP) for older films and copyrights for new releases, and operating the offline theater 'Sangsangmadang Cinema', were also evaluated to have great explosive power when combined with Watcha's existing platform competitiveness.

[Source: Kinolights Website]

From KRW 750,000 to KRW 2.8 Billion… 'Turnaround to Profit' Driven by Revenue Growth

(Although they withdrew from the main bidding) Behind the bold bet to acquire Watcha, confidence stemming from Kinolights' explosive earnings improvement seems to have played a part. Revenue, which was a mere KRW 750,000 in 2019 during its early days of establishment, reached KRW 110 million the following year in 2020, recorded about KRW 1 billion in 2022, and surged nearly twofold in 2025 (approx. KRW 2.81 billion) compared to 2024 (approx. KRW 1.42 billion).

What is meaningful is that not only the superficial growth but also the profitability indicators have improved. Despite the revenue in 2025 greatly increasing by nearly twofold, selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses (approx. KRW 2.72 billion) actually decreased compared to 2024 (approx. KRW 3.06 billion). Amidst such rapid revenue growth, thorough cost control was executed, finally creating a profitable structure with an operating profit of approx. KRW 77 million and a net profit of approx. KRW 75 million. Although it is not a massive surplus, considering that Kinolights had posted deficits of KRW 2 billion (in 2023) and KRW 1.8 billion (in 2024) in the past, it is a number to which significance can be attached.

Overcoming Capital Impairment Crisis with Preemptive External Investments… In 2025, the Fruits of Growth Appear in Numbers

This successful turnaround is the result of previously executed successful investment attractions intertwining with business diversification strategies.

Kinolights had successfully attracted a Series A investment of KRW 2 billion from Kakao Ventures, Z Venture Capital (ZVC), and others at an estimated enterprise value reaching about KRW 19.5 billion. Based on the funds attracted at that time, a vision was established to discover and invest in high-quality content, and to expand the video content business in earnest.

Through the preemptive external investment attraction at the time, Kinolights was able to wisely overcome the capital impairment crisis it could have faced financially in the past. And finally in 2025, the fundamentals and fruits of growth that had been silently strengthened over time began to appear as clear numbers.

Market expectations are rising on how Kinolights, which has completed a profitable structure based on solid earnings growth, will expand its content business in the future.