Wanda Group continued to sell assets and also relinquished its controlling stake in Wanda Films at the end of last year. At present, Wanda Group manages nearly 500 Wanda Plazas across the country, and the proportion of sales or exits is still within the normal range. From the perspective of long-term planning, Wanda's asset-light model has withstood the test during the special period.
At the end of March this year, Wanda commercial management sector newly established light asset management platform - Xinda League received 60 billion yuan of war investment from PAG, CITIC Capital and Middle East Capital, the investment created the largest single in China's private equity market in the past five years, recently, Beijing Wanda Plaza Industrial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Wanda Industrial") has undergone industrial and commercial changes, the reason for widespread concern in the industry is that its sale of Beijing Wanda Industrial has developed Wanda's first CBD project - Beijing Wanda Plaza, about"Wanda sells its Beijing headquarters" is constantly in the market, but it is consistent with the previous sale of Wanda Plaza in other cities, and this sale is still to ease the group's liquidity pressure.
According to the data, after the sale of most of the cultural tourism and hotel assets in 2017, the core assets of Wanda Group are mainly business management business and Wanda Film. Since last year, Wanda has sold 11 self-owned Wanda Plazas and exited the light asset management of 4 Wanda Plazas. Earlier this year, New China Insurance and CICC Capital made their first investment in a real estate fund, namely Beijing Wanda Industrial. In May last year, we took over Shanghai Songjiang Wanda Plaza, Xining Haihu Wanda Plaza and Jiangmen Taishan Wanda Plaza, and in October of the same year, we took over Shanghai Zhoupu Wanda Plaza. For the management of selling or withdrawing part of Wanda Plaza, according to the data, Wanda Plaza is not standardized, but is constantly innovating and iteratively upgrading, and some traditional Wanda Plazas need to be adjusted.
At the same time, from the perspective of Wanda's long-term plan to transform to asset-light, reducing asset-heavy projects will be an ongoing process, Wanda manages nearly 500 Wanda Plazas, and the current ratio of sales and exits is still within the normal range. In mid-December last year, when the "VAM" deadline was approaching, one of the previous investors, PAG, signed a new investment agreement with Wanda Group, at that time, about 38 billion yuan of debt involved in the VAM agreement of Wanda Group's listing was temporarily resolved, but at the cost of the group's shareholding in the light asset management platform of the commercial management sector from more than 78% to 40%, and the total shareholding of several existing and new investor shareholders such as PAG rose to 60%.
As early as 2015, Wang Jianlin had proposed to transform to an asset-light development model within the group. From 2020 to 2022, the development of domestic commercial real estate has been greatly impacted, but Wanda Plaza still achieved an average annual rapid growth of about 15% with its asset-light model.