Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group Co, talks at a meeting in Nanning, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Sunday. Photo: Courtesy of Wanda Group

On Wednesday, Dalian Wanda Group, one of the leading property developers in China, declared that its theater group, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc, had listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

AMC raised $332 million by selling 18.4 million shares at $18 a share on its debut on Wednesday.

The listing came less than two years after Wanda spent $2.6 billion to buy AMC, a deal that made Wanda the largest cinema operator in the world.

The purchase of AMC was one of a series of recent moves by Wanda to expand overseas.

On Sunday, the company signed a cooperation agreement in Nanning with the local government of Guilin, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Wanda will invest 24 billion yuan to build a new Wanda Plaza in Guilin, featuring cultural and tourism aspects. Construction is expected to start in the second half of 2014, and finish in 2017.

"What Wanda wants is to become a company lasting for hundreds of years. The property market cannot produce a long-term, continuous and stable cash flow. So it is a must to diversify into the culture and tourism sector," Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda, said in Nanning on Sunday.

New focus

According to Wang's blueprint, the company will continue to be involved with commercial real estate, but will also seek opportunities in cultural and tourism projects, an area from which he expects to make an annual income of 80 billion yuan by 2020.

According to the latest financial information posted on the company's website, the group realized an income of 74.51 billion yuan in the first half of this year, of which 56.72 billion yuan, or more than 70 percent, came from the commercial property sector.

However, the prosperity offered by China's growing property market will not last forever, Wang cautioned. The company must develop to offer "services and retailing" as well, he said.

At a forum held by China Entrepreneur magazine on December 7, Wang said the housing sector in China will continue to grow quickly for another 10 years, but in 15 to 20 years it is likely to start slowing down. 

Moving online

At the end of 2012, in a widely publicized wager, Ma Yun, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, bet Wang 100 million yuan that e-commerce would account for 50 percent of China's retail market by 2020.

Earlier this month, Wang said at the 2013 CCTV Financial Forum that the gamble was just a joke between them, and that both e-commerce and the rest of the economy are set to continue growing.

Actually, cooperation between the two giants has already started.

On Wednesday, Alipay confirmed that users could use its wallet app to buy tickets in Wanda's cinemas.

Further, Dalian Wanda Group is about to launch its own move online, by launching a new platform offering information about events and promotions at Wanda plazas around the country. The new website will be called www.wanhui.cn.

Wang said he hopes to increase membership of the new website to more than 100 million within five years, and the company will collect data on people's consumption habits.

Challenges ahead

Wang recalled that his hardest time was around 1992 when the company was in desperate need of financing. He went to the banks many times to seek loans and would wait there for hours on end, but usually in vain.

Now Wang has become the richest man in the Chinese mainland, with a fortune of 86 billion yuan, according to a report by Forbes magazine in October this year.

As his business has expanded to become one of the largest in the country, he finds himself turning down people who go to him seeking investment. But he remains concerned about how to secure the company's future.

According to information posted on its website, the company predicts that it will realize a total asset value of 400 billion yuan this year, with an income of 200 billion yuan and a net profit of 14 to 15 billion yuan. Wang said he hopes the group can become one of the world's top 100 most profitable firms by 2020, with a net profit of around 60 billion yuan.

As for considerations of retirement, 59-year-old Wang said he might consider leaving if the company's asset value reaches 1 trillion yuan.

Wang said that in the last five years, he has not been responsible for the day-to-day running of the company. He is concentrating on the move to diversify into culture and tourism instead.

However, Wang confessed that deciding on who should take over from him is a growing concern. Wang has a son named Wang Sicong, who runs a private investment company.

Wang said he gave his son 500 million yuan to help him "learn some lessons" about investing.

Compared with the low-profile of his father, Wang Sicong is very active on Weibo, and has more than 800,000 followers. He has offered sharp criticism in the past of prominent figures like Zhang Lan, founder of the South Beauty restaurant chain, and her son Wang Xiaofei.

Wang Jianlin said the decision about whether to hand over the reins of the company to his son will depend on Wang Sicong's business performance. There are a lot of contenders currently working in the group, Wang noted, so the decision will not be easy.

Another area of uncertainty is how to maximize profits from the company's overseas investments.

 Besides the deal with AMC in May last year, the group announced two major investments in the UK in June this year.

One was the purchase of Sunseeker, Britain's largest luxury yacht maker, for 320 million pounds ($523.55 million), and the other was an investment of 700 million pounds to develop a new hotel in the UK.

Wang said the overseas projects have been successful so far, but guaranteeing strong income from the projects is not easy.