Wanda Cinemas buys stake in VC-backed online ticketing site
China’s largest cinema operator Wanda Cinemas has acquired a 20% stake in Mtime Holdings, a Chinese online movie ticketing platform backed by several VC investors.
This comes after the two parties agreed in July to build movie merchandising centers in all of Wanda's top theaters. Wanda said in a filing that it will collaborate with Mtime to penetrate the online-to-offline (O2O) market, driving more online customers to physical stores and providing better marketing solutions to movie makers.
Beijing-based Mtime was founded in 2005 by Kelvin Hou, a former Microsoft executive. It was originally an movie listings site but subsequently expanded to incorporate movie news, aggregation of user-submitted reviews and online ticket sales.
AVCJ Research records show that Mtime raised three rounds of funding between 2007 and 2013. Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) invested an undisclosed sum in 2007 and then Tiger Global Managment provided $10 million in 2009. Two years ago, the company received about $10 million from Fidelity Growth Partners and existing investors.
Wanda Cinemas, a subsidiary of Chinese property developer Dalian Wanda Group, accounts for 15% of total box office sales in the country. It filed for a Shenzhen IPO last October, targeting up to RMB2 billion ($326 million), although the offering was ultimately scaled back to RMB1.28 billion. The stock debuted in late January and is currently trading at a more than 1,000% premium to its IPO price.
Early in June, the company announced the acquisition of Australian cinema operator Hoyts Group from Pacific Equity Partners. Wanda Group, controlled by Chinese billionaire Jianlin Wang, bought US-based cinema chain AMC Entertainment from several PE firms for $2.6 billion in 2012. AMC went public in the US in 2013.
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