Maintaining a “buy” rating, the target price is HK$13.17. We use relative valuations based on price-earnings ratios. We selected 10 Hong Kong-listed film and IP operating companies as our peers. We estimated the company's price-earnings ratio of 15.6 times for 2024, with an estimated market value of approximately HK$15.1 billion.
According to Maogan Professional Edition data, as of December 26, 2023, the total box office of Chinese movies in 2023 (including online ticketing service fees) was RMB 53.6 billion. Compared with the record high of RMB 64.1 billion in 2019, there is still huge room for improvement. It is worth mentioning that the total number of movies screened in 2023 is basically the same as in 2019, indicating that offline movie viewing activities have basically returned to the level of 2019. However, the total number of movie viewers in 2023 was only 73.6% of 2019. We think this is due to the fact that in the first year after the epidemic is lifted, people will give priority to offline activities such as travel and travel over activities such as going to the cinema. On the other hand, the average ticket price for movies has risen sharply, from RMB 36.6 in 2019 to RMB 41.4 in 2023. We believe that there is still huge room for improvement in the box office performance of Chinese movies in 2024, mainly driven by the increase in the total number of movie viewers.
Referring to the latest domestic cinema operation data, we slightly raised our revenue forecast for Maoyan Entertainment. We have mainly adjusted revenue forecasts for online entertainment ticketing services and entertainment content services. In terms of online entertainment ticketing services, as of December 26, the total number of movie viewers in 2023 was 1.27 billion, in line with our previous forecast of 1,300 million.
We assume that Maoyan Entertainment's share of the Chinese movie ticketing service market remains at 60%. Taking into account that the average ticket price in 2023 increased by 13.0% compared to 2019, we have increased the single ticket revenue of the ticketing service. As a result, we raised our 2023-2025 online entertainment ticketing service revenue forecasts by 1.2%, 1.1%, and 1.1%, respectively.
We raised our 2023-2025 revenue forecasts for entertainment content services by 2.5%, 2.4%, and 3.4%, respectively.
The number of films participating in the distribution and production of Ma'Eye's subsidiary in 2023 was 56 (the number of films released as the main distributor was 24), a significant increase from 2022 (32 films released and produced in 2022). After adjustments, we raised Maoyan Entertainment's earnings per share forecast of 4.2%, 4.4%, and 5.7% respectively for 2023-2025. Therefore, our final predictions for earnings per share for 2023-2025 are RMB 0.662, RMB 0.846 and RMB 1.077, respectively.