(THR) It is official: Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group has given up its majority stake in movie theater giant AMC Entertainment, doing business as AMC Theatres.
AMC in its annual report, filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Wanda had reduced its stake to 23.08 percent of the company's outstanding common stock and 47.37 percent of the combined voting power of common stock as of Dec. 31. It then further cut its ownership to bring both its economic and voting stake to 9.8 percent as of March 3.
On Feb. 1, 2021, Wanda exercised a right to convert its Class B common stock, each share of which carried three votes, to regular Class A common stock, which have one vote per share.
"Even after conversion, Wanda may have significant influence over our corporate management and affairs, due to their representation on the board of directors and their 9.8 percent stock ownership as of March 3, 2021, based on our records and information from Wanda," Friday's regulatory filing said.
Previous regulatory filings had shown that Wanda held approximately 58.8 percent of the voting power of AMC's stock, despite owning less than a 50 percent economic stake in the company. In a June filing, AMC had said that Wanda back then owned 51,769,784 shares of Class B common stock and no Class A stock.
Wanda had owned a controlling stake in AMC since 2012 when it bought majority control of the exhibition giant for $2.6 billion, which at the time was the largest international acquisition ever by a private Chinese company. The Beijing-based firm pared its stake in AMC in 2018 through a deal with private equity firm Silver Lake, but it maintained control of the theater chain through the dual share structure.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter by Georg Szalai, Patrick Brzeski