Maoyan Entertainment Announces 2024 Interim Results

BEIJING, Aug. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Maoyan Entertainment ("Maoyan" or the "Company", 1896.HK), a leading platform providing innovative Internet empowered entertainment services in China, today announced its audited consolidated results for the six months ended June 30, 2024.

First Half 2024 Financial Highlights

• Revenue was RMB2,170.9 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 1.2%, compared with RMB2,196.9 million in the first half year of 2023.
• Gross profit was RMB1,156.2 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 5.0%, compared with RMB1,101.2 million in the first half year of 2023.
• Profit was RMB284.8 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 29.7%, compared with RMB405.2 million in the first half year of 2023.
• Adjusted EBITDA was RMB489.7 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 16.2%, compared with RMB584.4 million in the first half year of 2023.
• Adjusted net profit^[1]was RMB351.8 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 22.8%, compared with RMB455.7 million in the first half year of 2023.

BUSINESS REVIEW

According to the data of Maoyan Pro (猫眼专业版), the Chinese Mainland's total box office (including service fees) in the first half of 2024 was RMB23.903 billion, representing a year-over-year decrease of 9.02%. Among the year's various promotional seasons, box office performance during some periods such as New Year's Day season, Spring Festival season and Qingming Festival season, exceeded that of the same periods last year. According to the National Performance Market Development Briefing for the First Half of 2024 (《2024年上半年全国演出市场发展简报》) released by the China Association of Performing Arts (中国演出行业协会), the box office revenue of commercial performances nationwide in the first half of 2024 was RMB19.016 billion, representing a year-over-year increase of 13.24%, and audience size increased by 27.10% year-over-year.

During the Reporting Period, the number of released movies in which the Company was involved and their box office performance remained at the forefront of the industry. The Company also maintained its leading edge in terms of its distribution and promotion service capacities and market coverage. Project reserves were abundant, and the Company continued to optimize its revenue structure and record profits.

Entertainment Content Services

As a leading film promoter and distributor in China, we continued to actively participate in the distribution/production of domestic movies, providing a wide range of services for an increasing number of movies. During the Reporting Period, we participated in the distribution/production of 32 domestic movies, with the number of movies increasing compared to the corresponding period in the previous years. Among the top five domestic movies in terms of box office in the first half of the year, we were involved in the distribution/production of four.

In the first half of 2024, we continued to iterate promotion and distribution products, enhance industry awareness, grasp market trends, and optimize our promotion and distribution strategies and organizational capabilities, thereby maintaining our competitive advantages and enhancing our capabilities in promotion and distribution. During the Reporting Period, we participated in the promotion and distribution of 31 domestic movies, and we acted as a lead distributor for 15 movies, exceeding our historical records in terms of quantity. Many of these movies achieved a top-tier box office performance during their respective release period. For example, Shining For One Thing (一闪一闪亮星星), Johnny Keep Walking! (年会不能停!) and The Goldfinger (金手指), for which we acted as a distributor and producer, ranked among the top three movies in terms of box office performance during the New Year's Day season. Pegasus 2 (飞驰人生2), for which we acted as a lead distributor/producer, performed well in terms of box office and reputation, ranking second in the box office in the Spring Festival season with a box office of RMB3.398 billion. Over the past four years, the movies in which we served as the lead distributor have consistently ranked among the top two in box office performance during the Spring Festival season. The Last Frenzy (末路狂花钱) and Be My Friend (我才不要和你做朋友呢), for which we acted as a lead distributor, became box office champions during the Labor Day season and the Dragon Boat Festival season, respectively.

Based on our strong data analysis and iterative industry cognition capabilities, we continued to promote movie content development and production. We participated in the development of more than 20 movie projects, among which A Place Called Silence (默杀) began filming earlier this year and was already released in the summer season, quickly achieving a box office of more than RMB1.3 billion. Several other movies, such as Honey Money Phony ("骗骗"喜欢你), Life Party (人生会议), Endless Journey of Love (时间之子), Casual Revenge (即兴谋杀) and Running In The Rain (千金不换), are underway and progressing steadily.

During the summer movie season, we distributed/produced a number of movies which were released successively, such as A Place Called Silence (默杀), Successor (抓娃娃), Decoded (解密), Go For Broke (重生) and White Snake: Afloat (白蛇：浮生), many of which performed well. Another series of movies for which we participated in distribution and production, including High Forces (危机航线), Give You A Candy (出入平安), Project P (P计划) and Honey Money Phony ("骗骗"喜欢你), are scheduled for successive release in the second half of this year. In addition, the Company has a large reserve of movie content across a wide range of types and themes. The movies in which we participated as a distributor/producer include SHE'S GOT NO NAME (酱园弄), To Gather Around (胜券在握), Dumpling Queen (水饺皇后) and Hot Pot Artist (火锅艺术家), will also be released in due course.

Online Entertainment Ticketing Business

Since 2024, the performance market has remained prosperous. We continued to increase our investment and develop live performance services, including online performance ticketing services, while deeply cultivating local entertainment sub-categories and innovative marketing. At the same time, we consistently improved our comprehensive service capabilities, enriched industry marketing scenarios, upgraded our on-site support and service capabilities for large-scale performances, and enhanced brand awareness and industry influence. During the Reporting Period, our business performance was highly effective. In terms of large-scale concerts, we provided services for more than 3,000 concerts, including a number of concerts featuring leading artists such as Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau and Jay Chou, and the GMV of concerts and music festivals increased by approximately 3 times year-over-year. At the local performance level, our local performance coverage rate exceeds 95%. We also supported cultural benefit activities held by various provincial and municipal governments, such as those in Shaanxi, Zhejiang, and Sichuan, which boosted local cultural tourism consumption. In overseas regions, in addition to providing support services for various performances in Hong Kong, we have also expanded businesses in new countries and regions such as Macao, and served many activities such as Time Concert-"Time Music". We also continued to actively explore cooperation scenarios in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and other regions. At present, we have established in-depth cooperative relations with several super APPs, and will continue to strengthen these cooperations across performances and other businesses in the future.

During the Reporting Period, we continued to actively provide quality movie ticketing services for the industry. Our online movie ticketing business remained stable and its competitiveness in the industry continued to rise. At the same time, we continued to strengthen in-depth cooperation with cinemas across all aspects of the industry chain, explore new business scenarios, improve platform service capabilities, enhance multi-platform collaboration effects, and jointly provide SaaS services for ticketing systems with partners, in order for us to deliver better services for customers, cinemas and industry. Concurrently, we continued to serve as the official ticketing platform for the 14th Beijing International Film Festival, marking our fourth consecutive year as a service provider for the Beijing International Film Festival. With our mature ticketing experience and technical capabilities, we provided full support for the film festival in terms of ticketing, special promotion and other aspects. We also provided service support for cultural benefit activities launched by various provincial and municipal governments, such as those in Beijing, Guangxi, Xi'an, and Hangzhou.

Advertising Services and Others

During the Reporting Period, we continued to integrate industry resources, expanded and extended scenarios for reaching audiences, and deeply embraced the diverse ecology and multiple scenarios we covered. For example, we successfully constructed an integrated, all-media matrix across movies, cultural tourism and business brands. We also created a live-streaming marketing model for box office periods, comprehensively upgrading the product marketing infrastructure and user experience on Douyin. Meanwhile, we initiated cooperation with Baidu's digital humans on film promotion projects to explore new ideas for the intelligent development of the film industry. To date, we have become one of the top film and television accounts on platforms such as Douyin, Weixin Channels and Xiaohongshu. The cumulative number of our new media fans exceeds 80 million, with average daily views surpassing 120 million.

We continued to serve the industry with "technology + big data" solutions and consistently emphasized the integration of AI technology and the film and television industry. During the Reporting Period, we independently developed AI-related movie & TV creation software and remained committed to enhancing production capabilities through intelligent script analysis and intelligent character creation, etc., effectively improving the efficiency of the early script creation and communication process. At the same time, we also carried out multi-level cooperation across business and technologies with many AI companies in the industry, to jointly explore the application and iteration of AI technology in animation production, visual storytelling, promotion and distribution products and other fields.

Our Maoyan Pro (猫眼专业版) continued to provide the industry with comprehensive, accurate and real-time data services and various refined data operation tools to promote the sharing of film data across the industry. During the Reporting Period, Maoyan Pro (猫眼专业版) further improved the industry's film data system and enhanced data visualization capabilities. For example, our film publicity campaign report launched during the Spring Festival visually depicts the event's progress by showcasing the data performance of distribution materials of films on mainstream promotional platforms. At the same time, Maoyan Pro (猫眼专业版) was officially launched on the PC side, helping industry partners to better formulate publicity strategies through basic data combination queries in more dimensions and scenarios, as well as user portrait exposure from multiple angles.

During the Reporting Period, our Maoyan Research Institute (猫眼研究院) released a number of seasonal insight reports, integrating in-depth analysis on various topics, such as the "Top ten internet entertainment content trend of the year". Additionally, Maoyan Research Institute (猫眼研究院) provided early development and research services to a growing number of film and television companies in the industry and further enhanced its data analysis and industry integration capabilities, as well as commercialization opportunities, to continuously help industry partners conduct business in a more efficient way.

OUTLOOK

During the summer movie season, various types of movies with diverse themes were released successively and audience enthusiasm and market activity continued to improve. According to the data of Maoyan Pro, as of August 25, 2024, the box office for the summer movie season movies had surpassed RMB11.1 billion and the accumulated box office of 2024 had reached RMB32.8 billion.

We will adhere to the core development strategy of "Technology + Pan-entertainment" by continuing to deepen our presence in the pan-entertainment industry while maintaining and improving our core competitiveness and profitability, remaining true to our original intention of being a dedicated "service provider" for the entire industry and working with the entire industry to create and promote high-quality movie content. In addition, we will capture the market's development trends and continuously enhance the market engagement and competitiveness of offline performance. Meanwhile, we will further explore the application of AI technology and overseas business prospects to identify new growth opportunities.

Last but not least, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of our colleagues, shareholders, and industry partners for their trust and support. Let us forge ahead together and propel the high-quality development of the film industry and the establishment of China as a major cinematic player.

About Maoyan Entertainment

Maoyan Entertainment (1896.HK) is a leading technology-driven entertainment company providing diversified services and valuable industry insights in China's pan-entertainment industry. The Company's mission is to make it easy to create, deliver, and enjoy great entertainment. Based on its core development strategy of "Technology + Pan-Entertainment", the Company has grown from an online movie ticketing service provider into an innovative one-stop platform with comprehensive entertainment services. For more information, please visit https://ir.maoyan.com/^[1].

Investor Relations Contact

Maoyan EntertainmentEmail: ir@maoyan.com^[2]

Piacente Financial CommunicationsHelen WuEmail: maoyan@tpg-ir.com^[3] Tel: +86-10-6508-0677

Non-IFRS Financial Measures

To supplement the consolidated results of the Company prepared in accordance with IFRS, certain additional non-IFRS financial measures (in terms of, operating profit, operating margin, profit for the period, net margin, profit attributable to equity holders of the Company, basic EPS and diluted EPS), have been presented in this press release. These unaudited non-IFRS financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, measures of the Company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. In addition, these non-IFRS financial measures may be defined differently from similar terms used by other companies.

The Company's management believes that the non-IFRS financial measures provide investors with useful supplementary information to assess the performance of the Company's core operations by excluding certain noncash items and certain impact of M&A transactions. In addition, non-IFRS adjustments include relevant non-IFRS adjustments for the Company's material associates based on available published financials of the relevant material associates, or estimates made by the Company's management based on available information, certain expectations, assumptions and premises.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to the business outlook, forecast business plans and growth strategies of the Company. These forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to the Company and are stated herein on the basis of the outlook at the time of this press release. They are based on certain expectations, assumptions and premises, some of which are subjective or beyond our control. These forward-looking statements may prove to be incorrect and may not be realized in future. Underlying the forward-looking statements is a large number of risks and uncertainties. Further information regarding these risks and uncertainties is included in our other public disclosure documents on our corporate website.

References

1. ^{^} https://ir.maoyan.com/ (ir.maoyan.com)
2. ^{^} ir@maoyan.com (www.prnasia.com)
3. ^{^} maoyan@tpg-ir.com (www.prnasia.com)