‘Baby Shark Dance’ expected to grab YouTube’s Ruby Button
YouTube channel “Pinkfong Baby Shark — Kid’s Songs & Stories,” standing at 49.7 million subscribers as of Tuesday, is expected to soon surpass 50 million.
If the channel succeeds at receiving the Ruby Button, an award given to channels that reach or surpass 50 million subscribers, it will become only the fourth channel run by Korea-based creators, following Black Pink, HYBE Labels and BANGTANTV. Given that these three channels are all K-pop related, Pinkfong’s global popularity as a kids’ entertainment and education channel is impressive.
Pinkfong channel’s two-minute song, “Baby Shark Dance,” is still the most viewed YouTube video in history, with the number of views reaching 8.8 billion as of Tuesday. This has increased by nearly one billion since February this year. The number of subscribers also rose by another 3.7 million during the past four months. As a result, the channel is expected to receive the Ruby Button pretty soon — the company expects the goal to be achieved by early July.
Pinkfong is among various brands operated by Korea-based education business SmartStudy, whose corporate value has also skyrocketed in line with the exponential growth of Pinkfong. While the value of Pinkfong’s intellectual property alone is expected to exceed one trillion won ($900 million), SmartStudy has stably grown as one of a few unicorns in Korea — a company whose corporate value exceeds one trillion won — since it was founded back in 2010.
SmartStudy’s largest shareholder is its CEO Kim Min-seok, with 19.43 percent of the company’s stock, followed by Samsung Publishing at 16.9 percent and KT at 9.25 percent. The relationship with Samsung Publishing goes beyond the equity investment. The CEO is the son of the local publisher’s founder and CEO Kim Jin-yong, and he also worked at Samsung Publishing as a digital content manager for a couple of years before establishing SmartStudy.
As SmartStudy is still a private company, investors wishing to buy its shares are now turning their eyes to Samsung Publishing instead. The latter’s stock price has more than doubled from 21,650 won, June 22, 2020, to a closing price of 43,800 won, Tuesday.
Samsung Publishing sold 1.8 percent of its shares in January 2019, and another 40,000 shares to a local institution recently. During the two-year time span, SmartStudy’s corporate value has more than quadrupled, from around 200 billion in early January to 805 billion won.
Based on strong licensing contracts with 500 global businesses, including Crayola and Kelloggs, SmartStudy could be targeting a Nasdaq listing in the next few years. The company’s annual revenue stood at 67.7 billion won, with an operating profit of 18.4 billion won.