I've stopped engaging in discussions when people talk about loans, debts, or finances here in kpop spaces because there's just so much misinformation spreading around. I'm actually convinced we have a lot of minors who have no real life experience about how money works or how money circulates in this economy.
Thankfully, I'm also seeing a lot of actual adults who are jumping in and trying to correct them. So at least there's that.
To start, for regular people like us, debts or loans are a bad thing. It usually has a negative connotation. For conglomerates and chaebols, loans are just tools to build more wealth and more businessnes. It's literally a sign of wealth to be continously granted millions of dollars to expand your company. It's practically a flex for rich people.
It is also not a sign that HYBE is crumbling and failing like some kpop fans think. HYBE is neither going bankrupt from the legal battles with MHJ nor from the creation of the Latin office. They're also not going broke if they lose NewJeans or MHJ. They'll face some problems but going broke is not one of them. They're also not on the verge of financial failure just because BTS enlisted (and I say that as an Army) resulting in them having to take on loans.
There are also people's incorrect study of the daily stock industry fluctuations whenever a kpop scandal happens or the way they think HYBE is crumbling because they're expanding too fast or something. As someone who works behind the scenes in a fast-growing conglomerate, this is literally so normal and basic.
I can't imagine thinking I have better company sense just because I buy a enterprise's products but kpop fans will say it with their chest that a conglomerate taking on loans is a sign of financial failure and failure.
Edit: You guys, I don't actually care to debate if HYBE is going bankrupt. They're really not. They're really not x10 since BTS is also coming back soon. Thanks.
LOL there was a thread like this yesterday where OP was insistent that HYBE is in deep trouble and when they got called out they got soooooo salty.
> I’m actually convinced we have a lot of minors who have no real life experience
This is just a fundamental fact that you should keep in mind when engaging with kpop spaces. Wherever I see someone say something questionable, I remind myself: there’s a decent chance that this person is 12 years old. And that definitely helps me approach the conversation a lot better.
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If you’re saying a negative FCF is not an alarming sign of liquidity risk then I think you shouldnt call others dumb… Their valuation for Ithaca is way too high and that loan is biting their asses without BTS activities. There is no risk for bankruptcy yet obviously but they are not financially sound either
We got loan talks in kpop reddit before gta 6. That was a REALLY wierd sentence to type.
You just have to laugh when some group fans want to make a point against the company of said group and go to google to take a screenshot of the last hours stocks and say “the company is crumbling because of this. 🤓☝🏼”
I agree. Which is why I take time to engage if it’s something that I can understand or explain.
My main profession is not in corporate or finance, but I am a former financial advisor/agent, so I have enough idea how to explain basic business, finance and investment concepts in layman’s terms.
And to be fair, the average adult who isn’t even a K-pop stan can hardly explain such business and finance situations, either haha, especially if they themselves don’t have personal investments.
K-pop stans mostly bring it up as fodder for fan wars or to throw shade at whoever that’s why they end up being way over their head on such discussions.
The stock market thing is what I find truly hilarious. As someone with no horse in the game, I’d rather wait for a few more days and actually observe if it’s falling before I judge business decisions that I don’t have full visibility into.
Yeah I also like the finance and business aspect of K-pop. I have been trying to search for the post talking about HYBE’s cash flow problem but it seemed deleted.
Summary: Company money go to expansion. Lesser money for dividends. People not like. Stock price go down.
THANK GOD someone is talking about it. i dont work on a conglomorate but i have studied it on university, so many people talking about it that they have no idea on how business work really. like so many people trying to just screenshot a picture just to make it have just a proof when it so funny to me. that if hybe is on bankruptcy or even a verge of it, it will be a big deal. not even economic news talked about it.
That’s why fans keep complaining that Kpop is boring !!
What do you expect when you poke your nose behind why you got into kpop
I mean let’s be real, even most adults with real life experience still know jack and shit about how big companies like the ones in Kpop work on a purely economic level. Even if you know stuff about stock or how the company you work at is structured… it’s incomparable.
Like most people in western kpop spaces have zero experiences of working in korea, let alone working at k-pop agencies, yet they speak so confidently on corporate issues you’d think they were Bang Si-hyuk or JYP themselves. We can all speculate to our hearts content, but I feel like it’s kind of embarrassing how often people whose only relation to a kpop company is being a fan of a group start to yap about stock, restructuring etc etc as if they have any insight the rest of us don’t.
People just need to understand that Hybe is now a public listed conglomerate, they are too big to fail and almost zero chance of bankrupt. Look at Kakao, their executives got arrested and they are selling a lot of their companies (including SM), but they are nowhere close to bankrupt. Hybe will just continue to grow and they have so many options to get more cash if needed that this narrative they are going bankrupt is laughable.
Also not being a company lover here but only Kpop fans will wished bankruptcy on a large company when it will make hundreds of employees jobless and no new work for contractors such as choreographer and video production companies. Like Hybe being gone will literally bring negative impact to Kpop industry because how big and influential Hybe currently is.
Imagine how it feels being a practising lawyer reading some of these takes 😅 I never even bothered engaging in the discourse
Even my adult ass doesn’t engage in finance discussions because it’s beyond my scope of understanding when it goes beyond basic summery. The youths taking screenshots of stocks to prove a point is hilarious, as if stocks don’t change by the day.
Oh OP I just saw a tweet from a Vietnamese fanbase for a certain group and that really made me lol-ed. Stock markets are down in the markets across Asia today, Nikkei has seen its worst day since early August – HYBE’s stocks are down not because of your faves’ videos got deleted, people. Almost every company’s stocks are down due to the Nividia sell off.
Imma be real, traders and investors have way more shit to worry about now than the deletion of videos from a youtube channel (can’t believe i typed that out).
Oh yes, financial insight from people who don’t even know the difference between profit and revenue.
It always drove me crazy when the financial reports were published and kpop fans bragged about their faves bringing companies all their money. And like yes, they obiviously contribute but by now the biggest companies own tons of business.
If anything the biggest danger to Hybe is investing in too many avenues and them
flop.
Does this only apply to HYBE, except ADOR? How about Kpop stans’ business takes on other companies, especially Kakao, SM and YG?
It becomes very obvious which of these people are quickly googling words and trying to piece them all together. I’ve said this over and over…you do not cherry pick financial statements. You can’t really look at a quarters results and say they’re crumbling. Financial analysis is comparing year over year, understanding trends in the economy, etc. you can’t look at a bad week in the stock market and say a company is a failure. Again, trends and understanding the bigger picture is a key point of financial analysis
Louder for the people in the back!
Also a related subject but not exactly the same, K-pop stans complaining about groups being mismanaged. Even though there are cases where people are right, there are plenty of cases where fans are just mad they don’t get the amount of content they want.
Like I saw someone recently complaining that Dreamcatcher should stop touring that much internationally and focus more on their promotions in Korea and make them longer because it will hurt their bottom line. Like bro, their company literally has only them, they probably have analysts that work everyday to ensure the actions they take with the group maximize their potential and profitability, you don’t know better than them.
Every time someone uses the word ‘re-sign’ instead of ‘renew’, my life expectancy goes down by one year.
Hybe got 2 trillions in liquidation assets, they ain’t going no where anytime soon. If anything, MHJ scandal really show who is a mature fan who got life experience and have basic business knowledge and who is not.
yes some people really should stick to regular fanwars because they try to make it seem like they are super smart using business words and its just embarassing for everyone.
I was just going through twitter like literally a second ago and [came across this one](https://twitter.com/iseauseamee/status/1831183909742313959?t=7HY4c8S6QSW61BC3WGy-gQ&s=19) lmaoooo
There’s people telling them “all asian markets experienced drops” and they’re rebutting with the same screenshot from BILLBOARD which is “business news” but like c’mon I’m not a Hybe stan but please people we cannot keep being this dumb
People in the comments riding for hybe and flexing like its their company is funny af 🤣
When it’s about HYBE, suddenly everyone has business degrees and 10+ years of work experience in finance or law. Both the defenders and the haters (but especially hybe stans if we are being real), and it’s incredibly funny.
Any time you see kpop stans talk about finance you know that what you’re about to read/hear is the dumbest take imaginable. There are only 2 classes that should be mandatory in school that aren’t, and it’s Econ and Psychology. If people had just a baseline level of knowledge about both all online discourse would massively improve.
As a new kpop fan, what really surprised me is how these companies set up their websites. They post all their numbers upfront and pretty much screams at VC’s. If any of these other fans just took 5 seconds to look at their website, they can easily deduce that HYBE is not going anywhere anytime soon unless something like the collapses in 2000 happen where quite literally 1.5 TRILLION USD disappeared over night, crippling the entire world.
What do you think about [this analysis](https://x.com/yuijeans/status/1830955590639853811)? Leaving aside that the poster is obviously a NJ fan.
It’s not just Kpop fans who are like this lol.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/28/hybe-ador-ceo-min-hee-jin-steps-down.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/28/hybe-ador-ceo-min-hee-jin-steps-down.html)
I work for a big 4 accounting firm and I want to pull my hair out everytime I see those type of posts on twt and tiktok. You can’t even educate or reason with them either so I just laugh and shake my head at the insane amount of misinfo that circulates in Kpop community.
“It’s literally a sign of wealth to be continously granted millions of dollars to expand your business.”
this is true, and it’s why us commoners who don’t pay out phone bills on top, get assigned “Bad Credit” status by the loan companies.
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Oh my god absolutely. I completely noped out of most of the controversy discussions because of this (and the immaturity of opinions in general as nuanced takes seem impossible to find).
The most recent thing I’ve seen which is a little more legal than finance (as I won’t touch the Newjeans or HYBE drama with a 10 foot pole) is the Fifty Fifty counter suing issue. There was legit someone saying “you can’t sue for the same thing twice without new evidence”, implying the girls were gonna drop a bombshell and win their previous case when they aren’t even suing for the same thing as before! Truly baffling how many people feel the need to input their opinion despite having no idea what they’re talking about.
I’d like to believe everyone when they say it’s likely minors but I remember seeing a poll a while back that showed the vast majority of kpop fans on reddit are adults.
I will say with the way hybe is expanding, they need to make sure they can sustain it or it could be the beginning of the end
Whenever there are business discussions in kpop spaces, you can tell who the actual adult professionals are. I like those comments. They break down topic well and are clear about the subject matter without being biased.
Then you can easily tell who the uneducated ones are making comments under those topics about this company being better for no real business reason. I can just imagine the prepubescent child behind the screen angrily typing away as a business graduate has debunked their deluded company love.
Hybe is not going to cease operations or file for bankruptcy anytime soon. However it doesn’t mean they don’t have current fiscal issues. They don’t have the liquid capital following their deal with scooter for gybe America. It caused them to take out a bunch of loans to cover this last year for some liquidity.
A bad year of higher than expected expenses and lower revenue exacerbated this issues. Which is why they brought this mhj issue public to try and get out of paying her stock options. As ador was the only company to be in the green so far through Q2 of 24′. So the idea of NJ and ador as a result falling apart it leads to investor concerns and kpop fans ammo to jump on
All this combined with BSH’s personal financial issues it paints a bad picture.
However as you know bts is coming back in late 25′ with a tour to follow in 26′ they’ll be more than fine especially as hybe America starts bringing in profit. It’ll just be a year of belt tightening and maybe BSH has to rearrange his corporate pay/sell some stocks to cover the liquidity.
Yep, [here’s a video about loans not being a bad thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0pTLNgikvM) and Hybe not going bankrupt.
See, this is why I’ve largely stayed out of any discussion about the Hybe/Ador dispute and their finances in general. I don’t know a damn thing about any of this! Lmao. Good for those who do and are able to chime in
The funniest part is when you ask them for sources to back up the points they so strongly post, they send you to some random account on Twitter. Like, I can’t even.
Say that to all the redditors with their google translated legal documents
Teenagers and children make up a decent amount in the online presence of kpop, just a bunch of people trying to sound smart
Taking into account the average person’s understanding of these complex topics (which is already quite low) and on top of that, it being in the context of a whole different country most of us are probably not even from, it’s crazy to me how loud and wrong some people can be.
Im loling at this! This is so true. Not just finance, but even the marketing/branding aspect of things. Sometimes, i get surprised that some do not even get to catch obvious media plays.
While i definitely feel bad for the NJ girls that they’re caught in the middle of everything. I honestly don’t get why people are hating on HYBE, because in a business perspective, any sane company would do the same thing.