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Cheers MoneyP1t.
Always good to look at all sources for information we can gather and some will add more than others.
As you rightly say regional variations etc I think make the online booking method weaker than Box Office Mojo industry numbers (even if we need wait a couple days sometimes).
As I have previously said and will always repeat the online booking method is inaccurate.
As latest example I have just booked at local 3d afternoon screening.
Other than myself it currently shows 12 people and these are in 3 blocks of 4 seating.
I all but guarantee there are not 3 blocks of 4 booked in.
Not sure how or why it happens but it regularly does show more booked than reality.
Evening/weekend screenings fully or near fully booked out is no more than we would expect on big release days/weeks.
It's the other hundreds of screenings per week also needs monitored and that just can't reasonably be done by someone choosing a few locations to randomly gauge box office.
Sticking with box office mojo as my preferred method.
Dune take 2 in couple hours time. Unlimited viewing got cancelled after cinema unfortunately had technical issues on Monday.
Free combo deal offered to us all jist have to mention cancelled screening at next visit.
Not sure what's in that and won't be such a cheap skate as to claim it.
Enjoy rest of your day all :-)
Box Office Mojo is behind in certain countries like the UK. But as FI pointed out, given c70% of our business is in North America, it makes sense to mainly focus on that area and for the purposes of what I am interested in, it does the job. That isn't to say dismiss the other countries, but it is by far the biggest chunk of our revenue, and so most important.
I do also disagree with looking at online bookings, but not for the same reason - I disagree with it because you can't look at them all, so you will never have the full wider picture, just an idea of how a small number of cinemas are doing, if the recent court case taught us anything it is just how varied the revenue is from site to site. It does have it's merits - you can get an idea of pre-bookings, but still not a full picture, and you can obviously focus in Cineworld only - which you can't do with Box Office Mojo.
Box Office Mojo does give you a wider view of the industry though - and with a fair degree of accuracy for that wider picture, and certainly more accurate that a handful of random cinemas in my opinion.
But to be fair, Box Office Mojo isn't without it's negatives (as LPD points out for other countries it can be behind), but for where c70% of our business is - it's pretty spot on and the best tool we have, and it obviously isn't split by cinema chain.
But I say each to their own, the above is my personal view. And maybe both pictures add something to the wider understanding of performance for those reading these posts.
Good evening lpd, thanks for your response.
What you have said is spot on. My preferred method is to see the advance bookings, just as you suggested earlier this afternoon. I have no idea how what is shown online can be less than what actually turns up on the day in total.
I believe we are well on the right path, we just need to wait for the trading update and then we will take it from there :)
Good post mountainous. Dune is our next cash generator in the UK and it is selling a lot of seats and with them coming along almost weekly or fortnightly at the moment and that continues through to Christmas.
But this isn't just about Dune's opening weekend, it is about it's whole cumulative audience that it generates for say a 45 day theatrical window and then those overlapping with cumulative audiences of other popular films and lesser releases. At the minute with Dune you will have Venom Let there be Carnage, Halloween Kills, No Time To Die still and now there are 3 new kiddie films in the UK to add to all our other offerings. Adams Family 2, Last Duel, French Despatch etc etc. Never have we had it so good and just going into half term as well.
By way of an example the Bond film actually took more in the next week (7 days) than it did in its opening weekend and that all cumulates with everything else that is showing. Those who actually go to the cinema at popular times know how busy things are.
Yes US Box Office is by far our bigger market place and revenue generator but until we list in the US, this share moves to the UK market. If it did otherwise we shouldn't probably have fallen at all today as about 82% to 84% of our business is non-UK and unaffected. As is the UK tbf.
Now I want to point out a misgiving that I have about any one on here who places an over-reliance on Box Office Mojo figures and that is that these figures are not up to date and can be many days out with its updating. E.g. If you look at the International Figures for No Time To Die in the link below it is presently showing a UK total gross for James Bond of just over $71M. I know that that is the sum total of the first 10 days. I also know that last Wednesday NTTD had passed $80M and you now have another week to add to that as of tomorrow. So for the UK its gross numbers are nearly 10 days out. I have no idea if that is the same for other international countries like France, Germany, Russia etc. So you need to be very wary of its shortcomings.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/releasegroup/gr1812943365/?ref_=bo_rl_su
So although BoxOfficeMojo can be good for North American opening weekends I don't personally rely on it and particularly for how the UK is doing I use a selected 3 or 4 Cineworld cinemas and have one barometer cinema that is normally on the money. Appreciate also that Mojo reports after the fact and the online system lets you see in advance.
Each finds their own method that they are comfortable with. If the tools are there and free and there to let you have a look in advance then it would be rude not to.
Great posting. Well all need a little positivity atm.hold tight.
All I know is that the posters on this forum are experts in everything, from Covid to Fool articles, law degrees, medicine, advanced chart reading and accounting. I am truly humbled to be surrounded by all this talent.
FI
You sure are mellow tonight is it a red or white you are drinking
Mountainous
End goal is for us to make money on investments we make and most here are invested in this company to do just that.
As I said I feel box office mojo numbers give us a far better idea of current picture than online booking system for a movie a theatre.
As you say we disagree, but thankfully you and I "mostly" show each other respect and accept each entitled to differing view.
You too have a pleasant evening and tomorrow is hopefully a day closer to giving us all returns worthy of the risks we each have taken.
Basilius, as you can see the trend is the exact same for every single film. When one large film comes out there is a temporary spike in admissions and then it shortly returns back to its normal level.
DATA SOURCE: BOX OFFICE MOJO. CHART BY AUTHOR is written below the chart
https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/30/bad-news-amc-theater-chains-movie-going-fell/
if you open this link you will see an article by Fool... i know.... but scroll down a bit, there you will see a graph of US movie theater ticket sales. I already posted it once. no idea where they get the chart from. I have dug deeper, without being able to find the origin. If I look at this, then it's not as good as we think.
I respectfully disagree with your statement that online pre-bookings are not accurate.
If people book online, it is a confirmed ticket. If anything, it is the MINIMUM number of people that will be in the cinema that day, remembering the fact that most people book on the day. In my experience, there have always been more people in the screen than what it shown online.
Regardless, let’s agree to disagree. I can see we have different opinions over the box office and attendance, but that’s ok. At the end of the day, we have a mutual goal of achieving profit on our investments, and I see we both agree that the trajectory of the business so far is upwards.
Have yourself a pleasant evening, and thanks for your response once again :)
Basilius
More relevant to this business is same details for USA (c.70% of our business)
UK 15%!? Can't remember off top head exactly.
Even UK though shows other than a few weeks we are still behind.
British Box Office Weekends For 2021 https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/by-year/2021/?area=GB
British Box Office Weekends For 2019 https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/by-year/2019/?area=GB
Mountainous
"Put aside" means nothing. It will still be cash out this half.
Cineworld/Regal in half one pretty much copied the wider market and no reason to expect any significant divergence from that in H2.
So I think best "guesstimate" we can have now is to use the box office numbers we see in box office mojo (they reflected what we ended up with h1).
Doing pretend bookings looking at cinemas online is deeply flawed.
Have covered it few times but it often shows far more booked than when you end up sat in that screening (experience of hundreds of such personal visits).
As I say box office has been and is improving.
I would just rather we didn't try to fool ourselves into believing it is much better than industry numbers clearly show us.
Something also often missed when we go down this path of looking at how busy Bond is or Venom or Black Widow (insert the biggest movie of that week).
There is a half dozen - ten other movies and screens to be utilised and they may well be running at much lower occupancy.
Both our major areas are moving right direction though and recent movies gathering some decent box office which will hopefully assist the spiral to more movie releases, more audience's, more box office take, more......
lol Sammy XD
In response to FunInvestor,
Money for dissenting shareholders was put aside beforehand.
With regard to the US admissions and your continual concerns about not achieving 80-90%, I’d suggest you go and see for yourself, go on the Regal website and do a practice booking like you would do with the cineworld site here, and you will see quite a good amount of pre-bookings. One for Dune tomorrow was quite full when I checked.
Hope that puts your fears to rest.
The egg that floats to top in water eh ;-)
Yep, you're a bad un...
;-)
Sorry, me bad :-(
Well, that killed you're pig Mountainous ...
Hi Mountainous
I agree with your sentiment of not panicking and things starting to look up.
However it is still a stretch to say the business is back better than pre pandemic or "booming".
Yes in the UK we have seen a few short weeks that would fit with that.
However it's not months and more MUCH more importantly the US which will make or break us wasn't even hitting 60% of pre covid business upto and including last month.
This month has started better, but it's 2 WEEKS and that is still less than pre covid levels.
I appreciate there has been improved concessions sales and there was major work done on cost savings.
HOWEVER since H1 we have had a major sum of money out to cover dissenting shareholders from Regal deal.
In last 18 months we took on a lot of extra debt at higher servicing costs so as the business itself has stated it wants/needs to be doing better than it has upto last couple weeks.
I for one wouldn't expect to see any profits yet (reduced, significantly reduced cash out but I don't see us YET doing numbers we will need long term).
It's improving (it needed to), but I don't believe it's near as "amazing' as some suggest as we stand right now.
If we were to assume for a moment that the court case is "in the bag" then as we seem to approach request red levels to make us a viable business again then the MM/shorters/hedge funds wanting to drag price down to play with it are on borrowed time.
By time case result is announced (we all hope favourably) then the box office will hopefully be at or near that 90% of pre covid Mooky and board want at this time in recovery.
Then little to nothing left to play with the share price negatively.
Great post mate
Very encouraging
Good evening everyone, hope you’re doing well.
Today’s atmosphere here during the market hours was unfortunately quite bleak and discouraging. Of course, it is to be expected, after so many months of constant downfall we finally saw a rise to over 80p, many of us were over the moon to finally see green on our investments, and after all of that we are back to square one.
Many of us here are down by hundreds, some thousands, perhaps Bc with his massive shareholding is down tens of thousands, but here’s what we’ve got to remember:
The cinema doors are OPEN and people are coming in their masses. Honestly and seriously, check out Leicester Square showings for Dune as suggested by lpd, it will show you just how in demand we are. We are busier than pre-pandemic!
Everyone here can agree that as a business we are back and booming, all we need to wait for now is a trading update from IR, which will hopefully be coming in November. Once that is out, the market will have solid, black and white evidence to begin to increase the price. It is all a matter of when, not if.
Those amongst us who watched the court case, I also believe that we are all in agreement that we have set our case out well. The KPMG witness sealed the envelope for us.
Someone also pointed out how the volume increased rapidly towards the end of the trading session with no change in price. What we must understand is that those who are shorting are in a very unfavourable position. I have said quite a lot that fundamentals always prevail. Once the court case is over (hopefully with a victory), once the Trading Update is out as well, this price will begin to rise significantly. They must close now to avoid significant losses, but daily volume is too low to allow them to do so. So, they are in a much worse position than all of us here who are holding heavy losses.
Stay strong and hold tight all, no institutional investor is selling and neither is Mooky. We saw during the court case that big institutional investors have direct contact to executives at the top, so if anything is to happen we will see moves from them first. I understand how hard it is to wake up and see red every time, I’m currently down 18.4% myself and it isn’t easy to look at, but at the end we will prevail :)
All imo and not financial advice.
Have a great evening all and rest easy. CINE will once again rise from the ashes very soon.