(Yicai) Dec. 12 -- Shares of China Literature soared after the e-book platform of Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings said it plans to buy the assets of its affiliate firm Tencent Animation and Comics for CNY600 million (USD83.8 million) to enrich its upstream intellectual property reserve and enhance its ability to adapt comics.

China Literature [HKG: 0772] was trading up 12.2 percent at HKD30 (USD3.84) as of 10.30 a.m. today.

The assets China Literature plans to acquire from Tencent Animation are the latter’s animation app, animation projects, film and television projects, as well as a 90 percent stake in its animation production unit Mi Chengzi, the e-book platform announced yesterday.

Mi Chengzi's book assets had a value of CNY442 million (USD61.6 million) as of Sept. 30, China Literature said, noting that the firm logged pre-tax losses of CNY190 million and CNY111 million as of the end of 2021 and last year, respectively.

China Literature will integrate Tencent Animation's IPs, use artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of adapting literary works into animation, and accelerate the visualization process of online literature, the firm added.

China Literature is Tencent Animation's largest content provider, having adapted about half of the latter's top 30 comics from literary works.

Founded in 2012, Tencent Animation owns several leading IPs, including Hitori no Shita: The Outcast and Fox Spirit Matchmaker, and has made cross-cutting adaptions of movies, games, and derivative works.

Moreover, China Literature said that it will further expand its cooperation with Tencent in terms of short drama and cloud services. The pair is expected to increase the number of short dramas co-released between this year and 2025 to 40, 100, and 160, respectively.

Editor: Futura Costaglione