Tencent Music Postpones $2 Billion US IPO Due To Market Conditions
Due to global market sell-off, Tencent Music will delay its $2 billion US IPO, one of the largest US IPOs this year, for at least 9 months. According to sources familiar with the matter, Tencent Music originally planned to start roadshows next week and start trading on October 22. However, the stock markets dropped sharply this Wednesday morning and made many start worrying about the future of the global economy. Tencent Music is the music division of Chinese tech giant Tencent. Tencent Music is the largest online music firm in China with four music streaming services. The company is profitable and reported a $263 million profit in the first half of 2018. Read more on TMT Post
Beijing Joy Pictures Acquires China Rights to ‘Roma’ and ‘Campeones’
Joy Pictures, a Beijing-based film distribution and promotion firm, has acquired China rights to Mexican film Roma and Spanish film Campeones. Both films are their respective countries’ submissions to this year’s Oscars foreign-language film category. As Chinese moviegoers have been demonstrating increasingly diversified tastes, the market for indie and arthouse movies is also growing in China. This year, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda’s award-winning Shoplifters made 96 million yuan ($13.8 million) in China. Read more on Mtime
Trends in Chinese Theme Park Market
China is projected to become the world’s largest theme park market by 2020. While the market size continues to grow, the average profitability of Chinese theme parks is not growing. In the first half of 2018, total revenues of the four listed Chinese theme park companies went down by 18.79% year-over-year. According to an industry expert, local theme parks face two major challenges: first, due to the quality of their products and services and Chinese people’s spending habits, most Chinese theme parks make money from admissions and have a hard time selling product and services within the parks. Second, major international theme park companies have been expanding in China quite aggressively. Shanghai Disneyland currently is expanding. In addition, Merlin Entertainment recently revealed plans to build 20 new LEGOLAND resorts around the world with at least 5 of them in China. A few other international entertainment firms have also expressed interest in building theme parks in China. The competition between theme parks will only become fiercer in the future. Read more on entgroup.cn
