US IPO analysis | Co-productions open a new growth path: Global Fashion (INHI.US)'s content pivot and profitability test

The US IPO journey of Global Fashion (INHI.US) is a history of progressively escalating fundraising scale. On January 8, 2024, Global Fashion confidentially filed (submitting its first DRS document), and on June 17 of the same year it submitted its first public version of the prospectus (F-1 filing), initially planning to offer 1.25 million shares, with fundraising capped at approximately US$6.25 million based on a price range of US$4-5. After 8 rounds of F-1/A amendments, the fundraising amount expanded in stages to US$15 million before contracting. By January 21, 2026, the company withdrew its old application via Form RW and resubmitted an F-1 filing the next day, first raising the offering size to 3.75 million shares, then further expanding it to 6.25 million shares in March (approximately 7.1875 million shares including the greenshoe). On October 23, Global Fashion disclosed its fifth amended draft after resubmission, with the offering terms unchanged. Based on the US$4-5 price range, the fundraising scale has been substantially raised to US$25 million-31.25 million, 4-5 times the initial scale of approximately US$6.25 million, which already meets Nasdaq's requirement that China-related companies raise no less than US$25 million in IPOs. According to the prospectus, Global Fashion is a domestic mid-sized film and television content intermediary that started with "series distribution + advertising agency" and is extending toward "co-production." A-share listed company Beijing Jetsen Technology holds 13.14 million Class A ordinary shares, representing 32.85% of total shares outstanding before the offering, making it the largest single shareholder of Global Fashion. In terms of performance, Global Fashion's revenue in 2024 and 2025 was US$20.6313 million and US$36.9548 million, respectively, with net profit of US$4.1882 million and US$4.5175 million during the periods, achieving dual growth in revenue and profit. However, as the company's expanding fundraising scale continues to lift valuation levels, market doubts have emerged as to whether Global Fashion's solid fundamentals can match pricing expectations under the new valuation framework. Content-related revenue accounts for over 90%, with co-production becoming a new growth engine Global Fashion's domestic operating entity is Beijing Zhongxi Heli Culture Media Co., Ltd., founded in 2010. It initially entered the market by acting as an agent for TV advertising time slots, acquiring resources in bulk from TV stations and reselling them to brands and 4A companies, earning media rebates and account-period spreads through an asset-light model. Around 2016, Zhongxi Heli introduced Jetsen-affiliated capital, and the company extended its capability boundary from "selling ad slots" to "selling content," participating in variety show production, series investment and copyright procurement, binding TV stations and platform resources through content scheduling, and then using advertising agency as an attached monetization layer, forming a "content + advertising" dual-wheel structure. As the film and television industry entered a stage of reduction and quality improvement, Zhongxi Heli further shifted its focus toward distribution. It acquires series distribution rights from producers and distributes them to satellite TV and long-form video platforms, with revenue mainly from distribution commissions, copyright spreads and revenue sharing. Content asset revenue gradually became the company's core, with advertising agency as a supplementary business. After launching its US IPO, Zhongxi Culture gradually shifted from a "distributor" to a "content rights platform." Beyond pure distribution, the company attempts co-production and copyright share investment, using small capital contributions to exchange for deeper series revenue sharing, while also acting as an agent for smart-screen advertising slots such as Lebocast to capture potential opportunities in digital media. After continuous business adjustments and extensions, Global Fashion's current revenue structure is mainly divided into three major segments: advertising agency service revenue, content asset revenue, and co-production content revenue. In 2025, these three segments accounted for 3.46%, 48.34%, and 48.20% of revenue, respectively. Clearly, content-related revenue (content assets + co-production content) already accounts for over 95% of the company's total revenue. Among them, content asset revenue includes self-produced content and licensed content. In 2025, self-produced content accounted for 12.43% of total revenue, and licensed content revenue accounted for 35.91% of total revenue. From this perspective, among content-related revenue, licensed content and co-production content already account for over 80% of the company's total revenue. In 2025, Global Fashion's total revenue surged 79.12% to US$36.9548 million, mainly benefiting from the company's proactive contraction of traditional businesses with low share and low elasticity while achieving substantive implementation of its "content rights platform" transformation, which made co-production content a new driving engine and also saw steady development of licensed content. During the reporting period, co-production content achieved a breakthrough from zero, recording revenue of US$17.8111 million, accounting for 48.20% of total revenue, directly confirming the feasibility of the company's strategy of "small capital contributions in exchange for deep series revenue sharing." While pushing new businesses, the company's existing foundation, the licensed content business, maintained steady development. During the reporting period, revenue from this business was US$13.2691 million, up 18.19% year-on-year, indicating that the company's traditional "buyout/distribution" distribution network remains effective, with solid monetization capability in series selection and channel scheduling. However, the high growth of nearly 80% in revenue did not transmit synchronously to the profit side. In 2025, net profit grew only 7.86% to US$4.5175 million, and the scissors gap between revenue and profit growth widened significantly. The main reason behind this lies in the shift in revenue structure. As the share of high-margin advertising agency and pure licensed distribution businesses declined, while low-margin co-production revenue surged to nearly half, the overall gross margin was dragged down from 32.5% to 24.9%, a decline of nearly 8 percentage points. At the same time, to expand the scale of co-production, the company bore higher project operation expenses, US IPO compliance costs and potential bad debt provisions, with the total operating expense ratio rising from 8.5% to 8.79%, further squeezing profit space. Clearly, Global Fashion's 2025 growth stemmed from revenue expansion brought by a business model shift. Although revenue and profit rose in tandem, the transition-period characteristics of "high revenue, low gross margin, high expenses, low net profit elasticity" have clearly emerged. Sustainability of co-production needs verification; AI platform and large-screen advertising become auxiliary lines for profit improvement By reviewing the trend of changes in Global Fashion's past performance, it can be seen that in the short to medium term, content-related business will remain the company's absolute main line. Among them, although the co-production business became the company's new growth engine in 2025 with revenue of US$17.8111 million, revenue from this business is currently still concentrated in three projects"Pearl Girl," "Exploring Nature III," and "Water Dragon Chant"and the company does not deeply participate in development, production or distribution. In essence, it obtains content revenue sharing and cost recovery based on its capital contribution ratio, and its sustainability and project hit rate still need market verification. If co-production can move from "single-series participation" to "scaled + optimized selection," turning the phased success of three series into the ability to continuously acquire quality content shares, this business is expected to upgrade from simple capital contribution and profit sharing to a portfolio-based content rights pool, hedging single-series volatility with multiple projects, and gradually repairing the net margin suppressed by the low-margin structure as scale effects and selection capabilities improve. Meanwhile, the distribution side remains the company's development foundation. Global Fashion stated in its prospectus that approximately 40% of the net proceeds will be used for TV series distribution, indicating that the company will not abandon its high-margin licensing business. Instead, it will use funds to deepen scheduling ties with producers, satellite TV and streaming media, maintain steady licensed revenue through top-content selection amid the industry's "reduction and quality improvement" environment, and provide ready-made exit and distribution channels for co-production projects and self-produced content. Beyond the content main line, the AI platform and large-screen advertising are two auxiliary lines Global Fashion has laid for improving its profit structure. The company stated it will invest approximately 20% of net proceeds in building an AI-enhanced online trading platform, aiming to shift distribution matching, advertising slot matching, and copyright share circulation from "people and channels" to online operations. If implemented, this is expected to lower the expense ratio and improve profit elasticity. In the large-screen casting business, the company acts as an agent for advertising space sales on the Lebocast screen mirroring application. According to the prospectus, through SDK-level solutions on the receiving and sending ends, Lebocast has covered more than 400 million large-screen terminals and connected to reach 1.3 billion mobile phones, becoming an important channel for the company's digital advertising placement. The company plans to invest approximately 10% of net proceeds in the advertising business, leveraging large-screen castingan existing stock replacement scenarioto package "series distribution + large-screen advertising slots" for sale to brands. Marginal costs are relatively low, and the advertising business itself has a higher gross margin, so an increased share is expected to supplement profitability. Overall, Global Fashion's growth logic still revolves around its content business: in the short term, it relies on continued investment in co-production and distribution as a backstop to expand revenue, while the AI platform and large-screen advertising serve as auxiliary means to reduce costs and improve efficiency, gradually releasing expense optimization and gross margin supplementation effects in the medium to long term. 2025, as the first year of the shift, verified the feasibility of the co-production model; the next several project cycles will be the real window to test whether "sustained profitability can follow scale expansion."