Is Wanda selling its AMC memestocks?
Is Wanda planning to offload its AMC shares before the Reddit-driven investment frenzy completely dies down?
Along with GameStop, the American movie theater chain AMC is one of the companies whose shares rose dramatically after grassroots investors on Reddit heavily promoted and bought the stock.
- AMC’s shares were trading at $2.20 when the New York Stock Exchange opened on January 4, and rose to more than $17 by February 1. Today, they’re back to about $6.
China’s Wanda real estate conglomerate became a major investor in American movie theater chain AMC in 2012 at the height of a global spending spree that has come to a whimpering end.
- Wanda, at least until recently, still owned “more than 58.8 percent of the voting power of AMC’s stock, despite owning much less than 50 percent of the company.”
Now comes the news that Wanda is following the lead of other shareholders and converting its Class B shares into Class A shares “in order to permit sales of its common stock,” according to a February 5 filing.
- The filing did not indicate how many stocks were converted, and if Wanda has sold any shares.
- Wanda is not the only investor making moves to sell AMC stock. Private Equity firm Silver Lake sold its stake in AMC on January 29, cashing out at $713 million.
In China, Wanda is a major cinema operator and film producer, with 187 theaters across the country, and this is unlikely to change no matter what happens with AMC.
- The latest flick from Wanda, Detective Chinatown 3, will premiere in China this Friday, February 12 (almost a year after its original opening date, postponed due to COVID-19), catering to the Lunar New Year vacation crowd.
