Orange Sky Golden Harvest, the predecessor of East Asia’s once-dominant movie studio Golden Harvest and credited because the creator of Bruce Lee, has warned buyers of deepening losses. That is the fourth time the corporate has issued a revenue warning prior to now two years.
The corporate has emerged from Lee’s legacy and now owns the most important cinema chain in Singapore in addition to Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Administration warned that losses may rise from HK$25 million ($3.2 million) to as a lot as HK$100 million within the six months to June. It blamed impairment losses and decrease working revenue. This can be an extra signal that film field workplace is struggling to get well within the extra mature economies of East Asia, which OSGH focuses on.
On Friday, the corporate’s shares have been buying and selling at HK$0.051 per share, with its market worth falling to HK$151 million (US$19.3 million).
It was once so completely different. In 1993, earlier than the golden age of Hong Kong’s movie business ended and Hong Kong returned to China from Britain, Golden Harvest offered its complete movie library to satellite tv for pc TV and raised $29 million in an preliminary public providing the next 12 months. (The library is now owned by Fortune Star.)
Golden Harvest expanded from Hong Kong to Singapore (initially as a three way partnership with VieShow), with two chains in Malaysia, and into Taiwan (now a minority accomplice in VieShow, Taiwan’s main chain).
In 2004, Golden Harvest was offered to mainland Chinese language businessman Wu Kebo, who later merged Golden Harvest together with his Orange Sky Company to create Orange Sky Golden Harvest.
Wu’s choice to determine a significant theater chain in China seems well-timed given the fast growth of China’s movie business. The corporate operates a pioneering and worthwhile multiplex cinema in Shenzhen. However income have been low, and China Cinemas was offered to Dadi for $575 million in 2017.
OSGH has since rejected a proposal for its 50% stake in Singapore’s Golden Village, opting as an alternative to amass all of its Singaporean accomplice’s shares in 2017 for US$129 million.
Wu additionally tried to carry the band again to China, this time to construct a dwell leisure venue. The primary one opened in Suzhou in 2023 through the epidemic. OSGH’s 2023 annual report exhibits that the China enterprise is the group’s worst-performing division, with a lack of HK$37 million, dwarfing income of HK$12 million.
In March this 12 months, OSGH felt it essential to situation an announcement denying an nameless report from Bloomberg that OSGH administration was negotiating to promote its theater chain in Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan.
“The board needs to make clear that, whereas it repeatedly evaluates numerous strategic alternatives which will profit the group, it presently has no plans to contemplate promoting the group’s enterprise,” it stated on the time.
Though OSGH’s income grew 15% because the field workplace started to get well from its COVID-era lows, losses deepened in 2023, to HK$90 million (US$11.5 million).