BEIJING, Sept. 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Glory Star New Media Group Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: GSMG)  (“Glory Star” or the “Company”), a leading mobile and online digital media and entertainment company in China, today announced that it has won the award for Best Chinese Internet Media Service Stock at the 2020 Zhitongcaijing Chinese ADRs Summit Forum held in Hangzhou China.

Resilient business model and explosive user growth

Glory Star's business model is designed to empower the Internet’s new consumption model through the provision of premium lifestyle content. Glory Star produces premium content to attract users and enhance user stickiness and provides e-commerce offerings to augment its platform monetization efficiency. By expanding its content offerings to include short videos, online variety shows, online dramas, TV series, live streaming, games, and more, Glory Star has built a quality content ecosystem. Users can access all of Glory Star's services and content on its CHEERS App, and the information that Glory Star receives from its CHEERS customers, products, and content can help to further enrich its CHEERS e-Mall content offerings.

The epidemic has not significantly affected Glory Star’s closed loop model of content-to-consumption conversion. On the contrary, the ecosystem has prospered and user growth has exploded as a result of the outbreak. As of June 30, 2020, downloads of the CHEERS App had increased by 241% year over year to reach 121.0 million downloads. Meanwhile, Glory Star’s total video playback volume exceeded 17.1 billion as of June 30, 2020, representing a year-over-year increase of 308%. DAUs of the CHEERS App in the second quarter 2020 also increased by 522% year over year to reach 4.9 million in the period.

Multiple strategic partnerships

Glory Star continues to expand its collaborations with strategic partners to improve its shopping experience and work towards laying the foundation for the explosive growth of its user groups. Since the beginning of 2020, Glory Star has also established strategic partnerships with a number of reputable external partners, including JD.com, Nanfang Daily Media Group, CNLive.com, Beijing Ultrapower Software Co., Ltd., and E-Surfing Media.

In order to meet the diverse product needs of its users, Glory Star has increased the number of SKUs on its Cheers e-Mall platform, recording 19,984 as of June 30, 2020, as compared to 3,000 as of June 30, 2019. At the same time, partner brands and merchants has exceeded 1,200 and 460 respectively since 2020. For the three months ended June 30, 2020, Cheers e-Mall recorded US$14.1 million in GMV, while also achieving an impressive monthly GMV of $7.7 million in June 2020, growing from just $0.5 million in the same period of 2019.

Robust performance despite a challenging period

Glory Star has achieved a strong recovery in its overall performance despite the prolonged impact of the epidemic. Glory Star generated US$19.7 million in total revenues in the second quarter of 2020, representing a year-over-year increase of 6.3% and a quarter-over-quarter increase of 100%. Additionally, during the second quarter of 2020, advertising revenues increased by 13.7% year over year, while cost of revenues was just US$5.4 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 46.5%. As a result, Glory Star recognized US$11.6 million in non-GAAP net income attributable to ordinary shareholders in the second quarter of 2020, representing a year-over-year increase of 75.4%.

Mr. Bing Zhang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Glory Star, commented, “Our explosive growth in user base and GMV continues to display our unique market position and formidable competitive advantages in the industry. At the same time, this success also underscores the foresight of our decision to focus on high-quality content as a method of empowering new consumption on the Internet, which is in line with the trend of current industry development and has thus enabled us to build an increasingly vibrant content ecosystem. As we continue to expand our closed loop model of content-to-consumption conversion, grow our strategic partner collaborations, and augment our economies of scale, we remain confident that our core business will achieve significant growth going forward.”