The concert craze has driven DAMAI ENT's net profit nearly to double last year, but the ambition of this largest ticketing platform in China goes beyond that, as its reach has extended to IP commercialization, AI creation, and a larger entertainment consumption ecosystem.
<h4>Key Points:</h4>
<ul>
<li>DAMAI ENT forecasts a net profit increase of over 90% for the year, with the concert craze continuing to drive performance.</li>
<li>The company is extending from a ticketing platform to IP commercialization, AI trendy toys, and the entertainment consumption ecosystem.</li>
</ul>
Li Shida
In the past two years, China's concert market has remained hot. From Jay Chou, Mayday to Zhang Jie, many large-scale tours have made tickets hard to come by, and the concert economy has become an important consumption engine for many cities. Amid this craze, as one of China's largest ticketing platforms, DAMAI ENT Holdings Limited (1060.HK) is naturally one of the biggest beneficiaries.
The company's latest profit forecast shows that for the fiscal year ending March 2026, the net profit attributable to shareholders is expected to be no less than 700 million yuan (USD 103 million), an increase of over 92% compared to approximately 364 million yuan in the previous year. The company attributes its profit growth mainly to a stabilized asset structure, reduced risk exposure in its investment portfolio, and a narrowing of investment losses year-on-year. In recent years, the company has gradually reduced its investment in films and content projects, shifting towards more operational businesses such as live entertainment, ticketing, and IP commercialization, thereby reducing the drag on profits from high-volatility film investments.
According to data from the China Performance Industry Association, the box office for large concerts in China is expected to reach 29.558 billion yuan by 2025, a year-on-year growth of 13.7%. Including surrounding consumption, the concert economy is expected to drive consumption exceeding 220 billion yuan. As one of the market leaders, DAMAI's performance has also significantly benefited in recent years. The company's interim report last year showed that for the six months ending September 2025, revenue reached 4.047 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33%, with revenue from performance content and technology business at 1.339 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15%, still the largest source of revenue for the company.
A closer look at its revenue structure reveals that the fastest-growing segment is not ticket sales, but IP derivative businesses. In the first half of last year, DAMAI's IP derivative business revenue reached 1.16 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 105%, with segment performance also growing 44% to 235 million yuan. This reflects the rapidly warming &#34;guzi&#34; economy in China, where young consumers are increasingly willing to pay for character IP, co-branded products, and emotional value. This allows DAMAI to extend one-time entertainment consumption into longer-cycle product and offline experience revenue.
<h4>AI Trendy Toy Design Platform</h4>
Currently, DAMAI's IP commercialization platform &#34;Aliyu&#34; has collaborated with several well-known IPs such as Sanrio, Gigi Kawa, Pokémon, and Crayon Shin-chan, and has launched co-branded collaborations with brands like Miniso and Pop Mart, actively participating in the IP commercialization and entertainment consumption chain.
Moreover, DAMAI has recently begun to incorporate AI into its IP commercialization chain. In April of this year, the company, together with the Alibaba Tongyi large model team, launched the AI trendy toy design platform &#34;Miaoya,&#34; aimed at using AI to lower the barriers to trendy toy design and 3D modeling, hoping to attract more creators to participate in IP design and trendy toy development
In the past, the development of trendy toys and IP products heavily relied on professional design and long development cycles, with the speed of commercialization often constrained by efficiency and cost. With the intervention of AI, there is an opportunity to lower the creative threshold and accelerate the speed of IP commercialization from concept to product. If future related tools can integrate Alibaba's licensing resources, Taobao and Tmall channels, and DAMAI's offline events, what the company participates in may no longer be just traditional IP licensing, but a more complete entertainment consumption chain.
At the same time, DAMAI has also begun to extend into the more mainstream ticketing market. Recently, the market discovered that the company is testing a low-priced movie ticket platform called TixGenie. Although it is still in a small-scale testing phase with limited coverage of cities and cinemas, it reflects the company's desire to further expand the entry points for entertainment consumption.
Compared to the past era of Alibaba Pictures, which focused more on film investment and content promotion, today's DAMAI Entertainment clearly hopes to position itself as a comprehensive platform covering concerts, movies, IP, trendy toys, and offline entertainment consumption.
However, although the commercialization of IP has rapidly gained momentum in recent years, the lifecycle of popular IPs is often limited, and market enthusiasm can change quite rapidly. While AI has the potential to lower the threshold for trendy toy and IP development and accelerate commercialization efficiency, as content generation and design tools become increasingly widespread, it may also further intensify the homogenization competition of IPs, even weakening the scarcity of popular IPs themselves.
Currently, DAMAI Entertainment's extended price-to-earnings ratio is about 30.5 times, significantly higher than Maoyan Entertainment (1896.HK) at 10.6 times, indicating that the market gives DAMAI a higher platform valuation premium. Goldman Sachs published a report indicating that DAMAI's live entertainment and IP commercialization business is expected to maintain an average annual growth of about 25% over the next two years, and believes that its leading position in the live entertainment market and IP commercialization capabilities will become the core of medium to long-term growth. The firm also believes that compared to purely online entertainment platforms, DAMAI's business is less susceptible to the impact of AI-generated content.
However, Goldman Sachs simultaneously lowered the company's target price from HKD 1.07 to HKD 0.92, reflecting that after the stock price has significantly risen in recent years, the market's optimistic expectations have to some extent already been reflected in the valuation. For investors, whether DAMAI can truly convert one-time ticketing traffic into a sustainable monetization of IP and entertainment consumption ecosystem during this wave of enthusiasm is the key to whether its high valuation can hold up

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DAMAI ENT's net profit nearly doubled last year, and it is expected that the net profit will reach 700 million yuan in 2026, an increase of 92%. The company is shifting its focus to live entertainment, ticketing, and IP commercialization, while reducing investments in film and television. The concert economy continues to thrive, with box office revenue expected to reach 29.558 billion yuan in 2025, driving consumption over 220 billion yuan. Revenue from IP derivative businesses surged by 105%, reflecting young consumers' enthusiasm for character IP

Last year's profit doubled, DAMAI aims at IP and AI ecosystem