BTS agency Big Hit Entertainment experienced a 36 percent year-over-year earnings hike in 2020, according to a newly released financial report, for total income of $717.37 million.
The 16-year-old company’s 2020 financial performance encompassed a noteworthy year-over-year revenue uptick in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that Big Hit earned north of $500 million in 2019. To be sure, the Seoul-headquartered business’s Q4 2020 income exceeded $281.34 million (₩312.29 billion), based upon the exchange rate at the time of this piece’s publishing, against $129.73 million (₩144 billion) in Q4 2019, per the document.
Albums – specifically BTS’s Be, which released on November 20th, 2020 – generated the lion’s share of the quarterly income, at $126.86 million or so (₩140.82 billion). Concert revenue fell to zero, as the capital generated by the seven-piece group’s record-setting Map of the Soul ON:E pay-per-view show, which occurred in October, seems to have been classified under “content.”
Specifically, Big Hit’s content earnings totaled $72.88 million (₩80.89 billion) on the quarter, whereas “fees for advertisement and appearance” brought in some $12.4 million (₩13.76 billion). Merchandise and licensing revenue grew year over year but dipped from Q3 2020, at $60.61 million (₩67.28 billion), with income from “fan club and others” having finished at $8.59 million (₩9.54 billion).
As a whole, Big Hit’s quarterly earnings surpassed $281.34 million, once again, while net profit rested at about $23.22 million (₩25.78 billion) – a 117 percent year-over-year jump and a 64 percent quarter-over-quarter increase, for the former figure. Needless to say, yearly revenue would surpass $1 billion in 2021 if Big Hit maintained the earnings pace it set in Q4 2020.
Factoring for all of 2020, the previously noted Be as well as February’s Map of the Soul: 7 propelled Big Hit’s album earnings to $288.83 million (₩320.60 billion), 36 percent more than in 2019. As was also the case during Q4, concert income declined substantially, of course – underscoring BTS’s growing popularity, given that overall revenue continued its upward ascent.
Big Hit made $233.38 million (₩259.05 billion) on merchandise and licensing fees in all of 2020, to $120.24 million (₩133.47 billion) on content and $29.68 million (₩32.95 billion) on fan club and other sources. The BTS agency’s entire 2020 earnings skyrocketed to upwards of $717.37 million (₩796.28 billion).
Lastly, in terms of noteworthy takeaways from the report, just 30 percent of Big Hit’s 2020 revenue derived from fans in South Korea, compared to 24 percent from other Asian nations, 17 percent from North American ARMY members, and two percent from fans throughout the rest of the world. The Weverse artist-fan interaction app was responsible for the remaining 27 percent of Big Hit’s 2020 income, though the corresponding earnings weren’t further classified by geography.
With about 4.5 million monthly active users (MAUs) to its credit, Weverse – which UMG artists are set to begin using as part of the Big Three label’s Big Hit partnership – raked in nearly $95.95 million (₩106.50 billion) in Q4 2020, up from just $29.82 million (₩33.10 billion) in the first quarter.
Big Hit stock (352820 on the Korea Exchange) had spiked slightly from its previous close at the time of writing, for a per-share price of $209.46 (₩232,500) at 10 AM local time.