Le.com (), known legally as Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp., Beijing, is a Chinese technology company, and one of the largest online video companies in China. It is headquartered in
Chaoyang District,
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
.
Leshi Internet formerly did business as LeTV in English instead of Le.com. However, Leshi Internet still operates the brand Leshi Video in Chinese ().
History
Jia Yueting
Jia Yueting (; born 15 December 1973, YT Jia) is a Chinese businessman who is the founder of Leshi Holding Group and the former CEO of Faraday Future. He previously founded LeEco and the Le.com subsidiary LeSports, and is the former chairman and ...
founded Letv.com in 2004. It was subsequently listed as a
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
national high-tech enterprise and went public on the
Shenzhen Stock Exchange
The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE; ) is a stock exchange based in the city of Shenzhen, in the People's Republic of China. It is one of three stock exchanges operating independently in Mainland China, the others being the Beijing Stock Excha ...
on August 12, 2010.
Le.com claims to be the world's first
IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
company in its sector. As of 2015, the listed company claimed the market capitalization of itself was US$12 billion.
On 5 December 2015, Le.com announced that the listed company would acquire
Le Vision Pictures from
LeEco
LeEco () is a Chinese company founded by Jia Yueting, the founder of Le.com (formerly LeTV). The group maintains businesses in video streaming, cloud services, software development, consumer electronics, such as smartphones, smart TVs, VR, elect ...
, a holding company majority owned by the largest shareholder, founder and chairman of Le.com, Jia Yueting, subject to the approval of the shareholders of the listed company. As at 8 November 2016, the deal has not been completed.
As at 31 December 2015, chairman
Jia Yueting
Jia Yueting (; born 15 December 1973, YT Jia) is a Chinese businessman who is the founder of Leshi Holding Group and the former CEO of Faraday Future. He previously founded LeEco and the Le.com subsidiary LeSports, and is the former chairman and ...
and his elder sister Jia Yuefang () had pledged 630,994,920 number of shares of Le.com, which they owned just 782,545,454 number of shares in total (including shares held by LeEco). By percentage, they owned approx. 42.2% of the total share capital, but 80.6% of them were pledged. At the same time, Le.com borrowed from Jia family. (although Le.com also had receivable from LeEco, and payable to
Le Vision Pictures)
The leverage of Le.com had made some media worried the financial health of both Le.com and Jia's privately owned LeEco. During 2016, Le.com also recapitalized by some private equity funds; former subsidiary
LeSports LeSports () is a company that Le.com owned 10.34% stake. Established in 2014, Letv Sports Culture Develop Ltd. has raised in tranche A funding, valuing the video-streaming business at , setting some new records in funding capital and expected mark ...
was also recapitalized in 2015, making the stake held by Le.com, was diluted to just 10.34% stake.
[
On 13 January 2017 ]Sunac China
Sunac China Holdings Limited, or Sunac (), is a major property developer headquartered in Tianjin, China. The company focuses on large-scale, medium to high-end property developments. It does not only focus on its home market of Tianjin, but als ...
, via a China-incorporated company Tianjin Jiarui Huixi () as a proxy for the Caymans-incorporated listed company, bought 8.61% stake of Le.com from Jia Yueting, for an approx. ( per share). After the deal, Jia Yueting owned 25.84% shares of Le.com (additional 0.6% was owned via LeEco), while Tianjin Jiarui owned 8.61% stake as the second-largest shareholder.[ In a separate deal, Tianjin Jiarui bought 15% stake of Le Vision Pictures from LeEco. In a third deal, Tianjin Jiarui acquired part of the stake of Leshi Zhixin from Le.com and a minority shareholder, for and respectively.] After the deals, Le.com would still be the largest shareholder of Leshi Zhixin, but for 40.31% only, followed by Tianjin Jiarui for 33.50% and LeEco for 18.38%.[ In September 2018, Tianjin Jiarui also acquired additional stakes of Le Vision Pictures and Lerong Zhixin (; former Leshi Zhixin) from Jia's private company ]LeEco
LeEco () is a Chinese company founded by Jia Yueting, the founder of Le.com (formerly LeTV). The group maintains businesses in video streaming, cloud services, software development, consumer electronics, such as smartphones, smart TVs, VR, elect ...
. The stakes were auctioned by the liquidator of LeEco. Despite the stake that held by Le.com was unchanged at 36.4046%, Tianjin Jiarui suppressed Le.com as the largest shareholder (46.0507%) of Lerong Zhixin.
In February 2017 Le.com formed an agreement with a supplier Truly International Holdings for capital increase. Truly would own 2.3438% stake in Leshi Zhixin for . However, in August Truly sued Leshi Zhixin in civil court in order to recover a paid-in investment of , claiming the terms of the investment agreement had been breached.
In July 2017 Jia Yueting resigned as the chairman and CEO.
In July 2018, Leshi announced that it was at risk of being suspended from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange due to negative net assets. In April 2019, the company announced that they received a legal notice from a local arbitration chamber that requesting the company and sister companies such as LeSports LeSports () is a company that Le.com owned 10.34% stake. Established in 2014, Letv Sports Culture Develop Ltd. has raised in tranche A funding, valuing the video-streaming business at , setting some new records in funding capital and expected mark ...
, etc., to refund in total to two investment managers: a limited company for and a limited partnership for respectively.
On 14 May 2020, Le.com was delisted by the exchange.
On 28 January 2021, The former CEO of LeTV posted that he will be ready to return to China.
Products and services
Video streaming service
Le.com's video streaming service
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
currently offers over 100,000 episodes of TV dramas and over 5,000 movie titles. The site draws an estimated 250 million pageviews per day, 350 million users per month, 100 million daily content viewers on mobile device
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
s, and 10 million daily content viewers on large-screen TVs.
One of the most popular shows on Le.com's service has been the Go Princess Go
''Go Princess Go'' () is a 2015 Chinese web series produced by LeTV and adapted from the novel of the same name by Xian Chen. The series stars Zhang Tianai, Sheng Yilun, Yu Menglong, Jiang Qilin and Guo Junchen in the lead roles. It premiered in ...
series.
Le.com's online video streaming
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
service has been receiving positive response in China. While Le.com mainly focuses on TV and movie streaming, its LIVE and LeVidi services focus on live broadcasting and short videos from YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
and other content providers, respectively.
For its streaming service in the United States, Le.com partners with content providers Machinima Inc.
Machinima, Inc. was an American multiplatform online entertainment network owned by WarnerMedia. The company was founded in January 2000 by Hugh Hancock and was headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
It originated as a hub for its namesake, m ...
, Tastemade
Tastemade, Inc. a video network that offers food- and travel-related programming for online audiences.Spangler, TodYouTube Network Tastemade Raises $25 Million Led by Scripps, Liberty Media''Variety''. September 15, 2016.Spangler, TodApple TV Adds ...
, Seeso
Seeso was an over-the-top subscription streaming service owned by Comcast through NBCUniversal, launched on January 7, 2016, and closed on November 8, 2017. It provided comedy content such as original and broadcast television shows.
History
O ...
, and Indieflix, among others. Its services Le, LeVidi, and LIVE are often marketed collectively as EcoPass.
Flat screen TV
Le.com produced flat screen smart TV via a non wholly owned subsidiary Leshi Zhixin (). The subsidiary also owned a minor stake (20.09%) in TCL Multimedia
TCL Electronics Holdings Limited is a Chinese company headquartered and listed in Hong Kong, but incorporated in the Grand Cayman, the Cayman Islands. It manufactures televisions and other consumer electronics. It is a subsidiary of TCL Industrie ...
, a subsidiary of TCL Corporation
TCL Technology (originally an abbreviation for Telephone Communication Limited) is a Chinese electronics company headquartered in Huizhou, Guangdong Province. It designs, develops, manufactures, and sells consumer products including televisi ...
for 52.10% stake.
LeCloud
LeCloud, previously Letv Cloud, invented the VaaS (Video-as-a-Service) model in 2014, similar to other "as a service" technologies like IaaS
The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...
, PaaS, and SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software.
SaaS is cons ...
. VaaS model is based on cloud computing, big data, and video technologies. It is founded on Internet-wide content aggregation, combining aggregation, distribution and derivative capabilities.
The LeCloud team and Microsoft jointly held a press conference in Beijing in May 2015 and announced that the two parties have agreed to a deal for solution compatibility with Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...
.
See also
* List of Le original programming
le.com, formerly known as LeTV, is Chinese video hosting website started in 2004.In 2012, LeTV produced the first web series, ''Once Upon a Time in Northwest:20 Years in Gangs,''which later is banned by the country due to its violent content. ...
References
External links
*
{{Electronics industry in China
Chinese entertainment websites
Companies listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange
Companies in the CSI 100 Index
Entertainment companies of China
Video on demand services
Companies based in Beijing
Civilian-run enterprises of China
Chinese brands
Internet properties established in 2004
2004 establishments in China
Chinese companies established in 2004