Wang Jianlin returned to the blood, and Confucianism picked up the leaks
Wanda Movies changed its surname, and film, television, and games shook each other's left and right hands
Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Tao Tao
Editor|Li Wei
Header image source: Attempt library
The card in Wang Jianlin's hand is one less card.
On April 17, the official website of Wanda Film Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wanda Film") issued the "Announcement on the Completion of the Equity Transfer of Indirect Controlling Shareholders and the Change of Control of the Company". According to the announcement, Beijing Wanda Cultural Industry Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wanda Culture Group") and Wang Jianlin respectively transferred 20% and 1.2% of the shares of Beijing Wanda Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wanda Investment"), and completed the industrial and commercial change registration procedures on April 15.
So far, China Ruyi and Ruyi Investment, under the "Confucian Department", hold a total of 100% of the shares of Wanda Investment, Wang Jianlin and Wanda Investment have been completely separated, Wanda Film has officially changed hands, and the actual controller of the company has been changed to Ke Liming.
Back in 2005, Wang Jianlin, the richest man at the time, was still shouting "the film industry is my dream" under the opposition of 99% of Wanda shareholders, and established Beijing Wanda Cinema Line Co., Ltd. (the former name of Wanda Film), entering the film and television industry in a high-profile manner, determined to "die" in the film and television industry. Ten years later, Wanda Cinema Line, the "first share of the A-share cinema chain", was officially listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
But after 18 years of chasing his dream, Wang Jianlin's "movie dream" came to an abrupt end - in order to lift the listing gambling crisis, Wanda will embark on the "sell, sell, sell" mode in 2023, and since July 2023, Wanda Films will gradually be abandoned by Wang Jianlin.
On July 11, 2023, Wanda Investment intends to transfer its 180 million shares to Lu Lili, with a total consideration of about 2.173 billion yuan, on July 18, Wanda Investment intends to transfer 177 million shares of unrestricted tradable shares held by Wanda Investment to Shen County Rongzhi Xingye Management Consulting Center, accounting for 8.14% of the company's total share capital, at a transfer price of about 2.336 billion yuan, and on July 23, Wang Jianlin transferred 49% of the equity of Beijing Wanda Investment to Shanghai Ruyi Film and Television.
On January 12, 2024, Beijing Hengrun (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wanda Investment) transferred its 29.8% stake in Wanda Investment to Ruyi Investment and completed the industrial and commercial change registration procedures. Wang Jianlin only holds about 10% of Wanda Film's shares through Wanda Culture Group and its concerted actors, while Ke Liming indirectly controls 20% of Wanda Film's shares through Wanda Investment, becoming the actual controller of the company. Chen Zhixi, a former Confucian executive, was appointed as the new president of Wanda Film on January 29 this year.
Wanda Film Equity Penetration Chart. Source: Wanda Film Financial Report
Wanda Films, no longer surnamed "Wang". However, for this veteran film giant, which once had a market value of 140 billion yuan and has now shrunk to a market value of more than 30 billion yuan, it may be better off after the sale.
The new helmsmen of Wanda Films, Ke Liming and Chen Zhixi, have successively produced popular movies such as "Hello, Li Huanying", "Send You a Little Red Flower", "Detective Chinatown" and "Hot and Hot" in recent years.
Ke Liming, who used to be an investment banker, was evaluated as "good at analyzing with rational thinking", and Chen Zhixi, who was born in acting, has a perceptual insight into film and television on top of rationality, so these two are considered to be excellent partners in the industry.
In addition, Tencent, one of the investment institutions behind Wanda Films, can also help Wanda Films.
At present, Tencent holds a 21.97% stake in China Ruyi, second only to Chairman Ke Liming. China Ruyi also holds 49% of Wanda Investment through Shanghai Ruyi Film and Television Production Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ruyi Film and Television"), that is, Tencent currently indirectly holds about 2% of Wanda Film.
As far as Ruyi is concerned, in the first half of 2022, the game business was launched, and the revenue reached 41 million yuan, of which 39.5 million yuan came from Tencent's game promotion business.
At the same time, although the proportion of Tencent's stake in Wanda Film is not high, for the company, which originally included games in the operation sector but mainly bets on movies, with more Confucianism and Tencent's blessing, the IP ecology of cinemas, film and television, and games will be further opened up, which is of great strategic significance.
Wang Jianlin returned to the blood, and Confucianism picked up the leaks
After receiving a strategic investment of 60 billion yuan, after selling the equity of Wanda Capital, Wang Jianlin once again returned more than 10 billion yuan and settled in the bag.
Wanda Movies has had its glory days.
Photo: Deng Pan
In 2005, Wanda Film Co., Ltd. was established, and Wang Jianlin started from a familiar real estate perspective, mainly engaged in the business of cinemas at home and abroad, and opened the road of "buying, buying, buying".
In terms of downstream, in 2012, Wanda Film's first overseas acquisition project was the American cinema chain AMC Cinemas. Subsequently, Hoyts, the second largest cinema chain in Australia, and Carmichael Cinema in the United States were gradually acquired by Wanda Films.
Since 2015~2016, Wanda Film's acquisition has expanded to the upstream and midstream of film and television. Muwei Fashion and the American film and television production company Legendary Pictures were all acquired by Wanda Films at this time. In 2019, Wanda Film also completed the merger and acquisition of Wanda Film and Television, an internal subsidiary of Wanda Group, at a price of 10.5 billion yuan.
Since then, Wanda Film has become the only industry giant in the world that integrates film and television drama investment, production, publicity, marketing and screening.
However, blind expansion is also a double-edged sword. It is precisely because of the large-scale involvement in the content that Wanda Film has not been able to avoid the yin and yang contract turmoil in 2018, and because the offline assets are too heavy, Wanda Film has been hit hard during the downturn in the cinema business in the past few years.
After reaching a peak of 16.287 billion yuan in 2018, Wanda Film's revenue began to decline in 2019. In 2019, Wanda's film revenue dropped to 15.435 billion yuan, and in 2020, it dropped to 6.295 billion yuan. In 2021, although Wanda's film revenue rebounded to 12.49 billion yuan, it fell below 10 billion yuan the following year.
After realizing the need for asset lightweighting, Wanda Film will successively divest non-performing assets such as AMC cinemas in 2021~2023. Last year, Wanda Film said that its goal was to "pursue the maximization of operating efficiency" and reduce the number of newly opened directly operated stores to 10~20.
Under the reduction of costs and efficiency increase and the recovery of the vitality of the film industry, the 2023 annual performance forecast released by Wanda Film shows that the company's net profit during the reporting period was 900 million yuan ~ 1.2 billion yuan, with a loss of about 1.923 billion yuan in the same period of 2022, and the net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses was 700 million yuan ~ 1 billion yuan, with a loss of about 2.08 billion yuan in the same period of 2022.
Despite five years of ups and downs, after a few years of "selling, selling, selling", Wanda Films is finally on the right track. At this time, Wang Jianlin had to sell Wanda Films, and Confucian Film and Television entered the game at a low price, which can be described as "picking up the leak".
As of December 31, 2023, Wanda Film has 905 theaters and 7,546 screens in China, with a market share of 16.7%, ranking first in the domestic cinema market.
At the same time, according to the announcement issued by Wanda Film in December 2023, after the signing of the latest transfer agreement, the transferor undertakes that the remaining term of the lease contract between Dalian Wanda Commercial Management Group and Wanda Film (including branches and subsidiaries) shall not be less than 10 years (from January 1, 2024), and the 10-year lease period can be extended for another 10 years after expiration;
For the film and television production company Ruyi Film and Television, the downstream layout of Wanda Film undoubtedly adds a wing to the distribution of Ruyi cinema films.
Left-handed film, right-handed game
Despite the pain of cutting love, Wang Jianlin still gave Wanda Movies a good home.
According to public information, Shanghai Ruyi Film and Television Production Co., Ltd. was established in 2013 and is mainly engaged in the production and operation of radio and television programs and film distribution business, and is a controlled entity with 100% actual interest in China Ruyi.
Ke Liming Source: Visual China
The founder of Ruyi is Ke Liming. After graduating from Griffith University in Australia with a bachelor's degree in risk management and a master's degree in money banking, he joined a hedge fund management company as a senior analyst. A financial crisis in 2009 prompted him to leave the financial industry and try to explore his passion for literature, film and television.
In the early days of Confucianism, under the leadership of Ke Liming's team, he successfully produced popular and popular works such as "Langya Bang", "To Youth" and "The Biography of Miyue".
However, Ke Liming, who worked in investment banking in the early days, has always felt that he is better at collecting data and analyzing the ROI of projects, but he still lacks a little emotional understanding of the content. He needed to find someone who knew more about movies.
So, in 2015, Ke Liming invited Chen Zhixi, a producer who was already well-known in the industry at that time, to serve as the producer of Confucian Film and Television. Prior to that, Chen Zhixi's films included Xu Zheng's Virgo "Thai Embarrassment" (2012, 1.267 billion yuan box office), Deng Chao's Virgo "Breakup Master" (2014, 665 million yuan box office) and Dapeng's Virgo "Pancake Man" (2015, 1.159 billion yuan box office).
Chen Zhixi is evaluated in the industry as "bold, careful, and sensitive". Born as an actress, she has a deeper understanding of the film industry and a keen sense of smell for excellent works, and at the same time, she is young and has a spirit that is not afraid of losing money, so she has tapped many newcomers who have turned actors to become directors.
The team led by Ke Liming and Chen Zhixi produced "Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms", "Sewing Machine Band", "Animal World", "Send You a Little Red Flower", "Hello, Li Huanying", etc., making Confucian Film and Television gradually rank among the first echelon of domestic film companies.
Ke Liming attributed the success of these years to the logic of "forced filmmaker + audience + director", and regarded the producer-centered system as the company's core competitiveness, so it has a relatively stable content output.
For today's Wanda Films, Chen Zhixi is the president, Ke Liming has become the actual controller, and the old film company has injected more pioneering, more adaptable and industrialized talents, bringing fresh blood to Wanda Film's content production business.
At the same time, Tencent, as the largest holding institution of China's Ruyi, is expected to have a far-reaching impact on Wanda Films.
In the first half of 2022, China Ruyi entered the game, established the "Jingxiu" brand, and did publishing and marketing. In 2022, the revenue of the game business will be 55 million yuan, and in 2023, it will be 446 million yuan, an increase of as much as 7 times.
In February 2023, Ruyi and Tencent entered into a three-year strategic agreement based on game publishing, operation and marketing cooperation. From June to the end of October 2023, Ruyi received 501 million yuan from Tencent Games in just 5 months, with an average monthly income of 100 million yuan. Tencent's influence on Ruyi's game business can be seen.
In 2022, the revenue of Wanda's movie and game business will be about 387 million yuan, accounting for 3.99% of revenue, a year-on-year decrease of 12.81%. But as early as 2016, Wanda Film acquired the game publishing company Huai Interactive for 2.6 billion yuan, and began to get involved in the game industry, and planned to become the top three in the industry within 2~3 years.
Now, Wanda Films is no longer surnamed Wang, and with the blessing of Tencent, it remains to be seen whether it can open up a new situation through cinemas + film and television content + games.