As an alternative to falling sales and the possibility that BTS members will join the military, HYBE has said that it will introduce four new groups.
On October 17, the CEO of HYBE, Park Ji Won, sent a letter to shareholders in which he said, "We have been getting ready for this for a long time, just in case something like this ever happened. We want to make it possible for BTS and their fans to be together."
He said, "We fully understand that investors are worried about whether HYBE will be able to keep growing at the same rate it has because BTS isn't doing as much".
He added, "We are setting up a structure that can make them, and we are taking on different challenges by combining new technologies like platform business and game business."
HYBE has a plan for how to do this:
- The debut of four or more groups next year with a K-pop production method including Japan and the US
- Live streaming on the fan platform Weverse
- New subscription service
- Continuous update of the BTS game and expansion of publishing
- Incorporation of AI-based voice and singing synthesis technology of Supertone was presented.
Aside from BTS, the sales of established artists like SEVENTEEN, TXT, ENHYPHEN, LE SSERAFIM, NewJeans, Zico, Fromis9, Justin Bieber, and Ariana Grande grew by more than three times last year on average. It is said to make nine independent labels work together and compete.
It has been studied and found that the confirmation of BTS's membership will hurt HYBE's stock price.
By doing things like getting into the game business, HYBE is making BTS less dependent on sales, but it is still high. HYBE was able to cut its reliance on BTS from 80% when it went public to 60%.
As long as there was doubt about BTS joining, the securities industry kept lowering HYBE's target price. It was changed to 250,000 won for NH Investment & Securities, 210,000 won for Samsung Securities, and 210,000 won for Hyundai Motor Securities.
Source[1]