Kakao Entertainment will integrate its subsidiaries Samyang C&C, Intime, and Feelyeon Management to strengthen competitiveness in its story intellectual property (IP) business.
Kakao Entertainment's webtoon and web novel CPs (content providers) Samyang C&C, Intime, and Feelyeon Management held board meetings on the 12th and approved a merger of the three companies, it said on the 14th. The merger process is expected to be completed within the year.
It is a merger between wholly owned subsidiaries in which Kakao Entertainment holds 100% equity, and the integrated corporation will retain the existing corporate name "Samyang C&C," with Cha Seong-taek, the head of Samyang C&C, set to lead the new integrated entity.
A Kakao Entertainment official said, "We decided to merge the three companies to strengthen the competitiveness of story IP and improve management efficiency." The plan is to combine each company's planning and production capabilities for webtoons and web novels, and to upgrade Noble Comics capabilities that expand web novels into webtoons to strengthen the story IP business.
The goal is to secure "mega IP" with powerful fandoms by focusing on planning and discovering high-quality IP across various genres such as romance, fantasy, and martial arts. Through this, the company intends to further reinforce its story IP pipeline.
Kakao Entertainment cited the three companies' strengths in IP diversification, from discovering new writers to planning and producing webtoon and web novel works, as well as expanding into secondary creations such as drama and animation. Notably, Samyang C&C's fantasy title "Spirit King Elquines" is a successful Noble Comics case that expanded from a web novel into a webtoon. Since its serialization on KakaoPage and Kakao Webtoon, combined views of the webtoon and web novel have accumulated to 340 million, and it also gained popularity after being released on Japan's Piccoma, operated by Kakao piccoma Corp.
A Kakao Entertainment official said, "Through this merger of the three companies, we will plan and discover competitive IP across diverse genres to strengthen the substance of the story business, and we will keep reinforcing an IP pipeline with global competitiveness."