Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin said his Dalian Wanda Group Co will not face any defaults worldwide and will pay off all its foreign debt as he carries out a broad divestiture plan in the face of regulatory scrutiny over the company’s foreign investments.
In July, the group sold most of its domestic theme-park and hotel assets for more than $9bn. The disposals reduced Wanda’s debt by 44bn yuan ($6.8bn) and allowed the company to recoup 67bn yuan in cash, Wang said in the transcript of a speech posted Sunday on Dalian Wanda’s website.
“Wanda has made some investments overseas,” he told employees in the speech on Saturday at Dalian Wanda’s annual meeting in northeast China’s Harbin City. “Now we’ve decided to pay off overseas debt. We only need to sell half of (overseas) assets to pay off all that debt.”
Wanda Group sees revenue picking up in 2018, with a target of 247.9bn yuan, Wang said in the speech. Sales for the closely-held group dropped 10.8% last year to 227.4bn yuan, the company said at its annual meeting.
Wang reversed course in 2017, paring down his empire and exiting planned deals after years of paying up for film studios, exhibitors and building theme parks and luxury hotels in a bid to overtake Walt Disney Co as the world’s largest entertainment company. The property-to-entertainment conglomerate has sped up asset disposals after facing intensified regulatory scrutiny over what authorities called “irrational” overseas investments. 
Only 7% of the company’s assets are overseas, Wang said.
Explaining the July asset sales, Wang said Wanda would have been under a lot of pressure because the group’s total debt would have risen by 100bn yuan every year for the next five to six years if it continued to develop theme parks. Asset sales continued after July, with Wanda agreeing last week to sell a luxury hotel and condo complex in London. The company is also close to selling two high-end real estate projects in Australia according to people familiar with the situation. “Around the world and in China, the trend is deleveraging and debt reduction,” Wang said. “It doesn’t make sense to go against the trend and leverage up.”
Wang didn’t give a time frame for how soon the company would be able to pay down its foreign debt. The group’s flagship Wanda Commercial Properties Co has more than $2bn in loans and bonds coming due this year, with the earliest tranche, a $510mn loan repayment, due by end of March. Going forward, Dalian Wanda will focus on expanding its shopping-mall business and plans to open 52 new malls in 2018, Wang said on in the speech. The company will also set up new property and commercial management units.