"What is this? It's this solid?"

Isabella looked at the financial material on Korea's DM Group, sent up by the boutique's intelligence team, and she frowned. The group's annual revenue is over forty trillion won.

Operating profit comfortably passed two trillion won as well. The debt ratio, too, is somewhere around a hundred percent.

Its cash generation is not bad either.

And the business portfolio — food, bio, logistics, media — was spread with exquisite care. A solid structure that no ordinary shock would shake.

It is not a group that will easily yield the picture her partner Bear wants.

"But then……"

Isabella's hand stopped as it turned the pages.

"DMC. This one……"

The baffled look in Isabella's eyes changed.

Revenue rose explosively over one particular stretch.

It went comfortably past four trillion won. On the surface it is growth at a frightening rate.

And it rode on the back of the global content fever — K-pop, drama, film, OTT.

But then…….

"It isn't making money?"

The growth rate in revenue and the growth rate in operating profit did not match at all. If anything, operating profit was down heavily on the year before. The operating margin, a bare few percent. And on top of that, a net loss for the period.

But what caught Isabella's eye was something else.

Debt.

"……Insane."

Set against the previous year, the number jumped out.

DMC had grown its bulk over the last few years to a degree that is hard to believe.

Production houses and labels, platforms and overseas content companies.

Indiscriminately, it had swallowed up the assets in every field the global content market might consume.

The problem is. That every step of the swallowing needs money to grow on.

It is work that cannot be done on DMC's own funds alone.

The large flows of money that followed went forward in stages — borrowing, corporate bonds, acquisition finance, and then more borrowing.

"Hmmm……"

The corner of Isabella's bewitching mouth went up, and there was meaning in it.

DM Group is extremely solid. Nor is DMC a company that can be touched…