Diversity pays big dividends for Wanda

A man dressed up as a robot plays around with two kids at a Wanda cinema in Qingdao, Shandong province. [Photo by He Haier/For China Daily]

Property developer turned conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group Co Ltd on Thursday reported that revenues from its diversified operations convincingly outperformed its core property business in the first half of 2017, as the benefits continued to flow from the restructuring of its business portfolio.

Wanda has been diversifying, through buying a slew of assets in various sectors including cinema chains and sports clubs, and has been a high profile buyer of assets internationally.

The group said first-half year total revenue came in at 134.85 billion yuan ($20 billion), up by 12.4 percent year-on-year. Of that, property operations generated 56.83 billion yuan, kicking in 42.1 percent of the total, according to its half year report released on Thursday.

Non-property operations including entertainment, financial and internet technology, contributed 57.9 percent of the total, generating 78.02 billion yuan in sales.

After outperforming the property sector in 2016 for the first time, the latest figures show the growth trajectory of the non-property assets has shown no signs of slowing down.

"This shows Wanda Group is on the right track with its business reshuffle, making it more diversified rather than it just being a property company." said Grant Ji, executive director of capital markets for North China at CBRE Group.

The report found that the relative contribution of Wanda's commercial property operations continued to shrink. That's as its Chairman Wang Jianlin vowed to expand his group into various areas in 2018－from manufacturing and culture to finance－rather than it just relying on being a real estate giant.

Late last year the billionaire cut the group's 2017 revenue target for commercial property by 64 billion yuan last year to 100 billion yuan, highlighting the speed of the transformation of the revenue base.

Wanda Cultural Industry Group contributed 30.8 billion yuan to revenues in the first-half year, up 5.9 percent year-on-year.

Wanda's Financial Group H1 revenue surged 46.8 percent to 20.6 billion yuan, achieving 80 percent of its annual revenue target.

The Financial Group, launched in 2015, has retained strong growth momentum. Last year it recorded 20.9 billion yuan in revenue, well above its full-year target.

Wanda's IT unit posted first half revenue of 2.56 billion yuan, also well above its target. Active users on Ffan.com, Wanda's Internet-plus platform reached 191 million, up by 40 million from 2016.