A capital and business alliance deal between Production I.G owner IG Port and Hello Kitty owner Sanrio will see the latter becoming IG Port’s fourth-largest stakeholder with a stake of 4.98％. It will share this position with NTT Docomo, which holds 5.22％ of IG Port’s stakes pre-deal.
IG Port will gain 1,625,925,000 yen (~US$11.2 million) via third-party allotment, with the payment to be made on July 3 JST. After deducting expenses, 1.006 billion yen will be used as working capital, while 605 million yen will be used as capital investment.
The planned initiatives that the business partnership between IG Port and Sanrio will bring about include the creation of works based on Sanrio’s IP character, the production of which will also be used to train creatives.
Also mentioned are cooperation on business opportunities involving characters related to works from the IG Port family, such as media-mix expansion, as well as co-development of new IP. The “re-design” of existing IP is also on the table.
The capital and business alliance deal was made and announced on June 17 JST. It comes about a month before the July 24 Netflix release of the My Melody & Kuromi animated series, which is produced by IG Port’s WIT STUDIO via the latter’s new TORUKU from WIT STUDIO stop motion studio/line.
