Quickflix to buy Chinese streaming company as Presto agreement magically disappears

Quickflix buying Chinese content producer

Quickflix this morning announced to the Australian Securities Exchange that it plans to acquire a Shanghai based Chinese film and TV streaming company to form a 'global streaming platform'.

The transaction is yet to be finalised, but the ASX announcement claims the unnamed Shanghai based company is profitable in producing and distributing original Chinese language film and TV content.

Quickflix brings its extensive streaming infrastructure to the takeover, and the combination of an original content production company and should help Quickflix reposition itself as a profitable player in the rapidly developing SVOD market. Especially given that global streaming behemoth Netflix is yet to tackle China.

Poof! And the reseller agreement disappears...

Quickflix stocks have been on a trading halt since Thursday, in anticipation of a reselling agreement with local streaming competitor Presto, but as of this morning that offer is no longer on the table.

Quickflix announced to shareholders that it will no longer be entering a reseller agreement with the streaming service Presto due to its acquisition of the Shanghai based content producer.

The reseller agreement would have allowed Presto to rapidly scale out its streaming service to a number of games consoles, Smart TVs and other connected devices, although the recent announcement of the Telstra TV streaming box will help mitigate the loss of this deal.

In any case, the Chinese acquisition is yet to be finalised and is subject to both due diligence and price negotiations. The company is expected to announce further details before the 20th of August.

Joel Burgess
Staff Writer

Joel has been the in-house benchmark monkey for the Australian TechRadar team and Australia’s two biggest tech magazines (APC and TechLife) since 2014.