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Yep, Operation Mincemeat definitely has a cinematic release in this country - at least I hope so or else I’ll be staring at a blank screen later tonight.

Also the showing is practically full already - not bad for such a “small” film - and I’m sure plenty enough to cover the overheads…

Cheers Pig,

In terms of metrics, in brief:

- Admission figures that CINE refer to (and were a record breaking year in 2019) are simply bums on seats so yes you are correct that it is just the number who attend

- The US box office revenues I've been referring to, and as reported by Box Office Mojo, includes as far as I understand it just the revenue from ticket sales. This will go up faster than admission figures all else being equal as generally ticket prices rise

- The total revenue for CINE includes other things most notably, as you mention, from concessions. This has actually been increasing per person, presumably in part due to people eating and drinking to avoid wearing a mask but hopefully will still remain higher with restrictions lifted. Their other main source of income is I believe from advertising.

Out of all these things the only one we can see daily is the US Box Office figures (and to lesser extend, internatioanal figures) hence why I and some others focus on this for a proxy measure for CINE's performance (as it appears to work quite well).

All the above metrics though should increase as the film slate becomes more crowded - it is just a case of how soon and by how much.

Pig,

I don't disagree with you at all and at no point have I suggested that CINE should be at 2019 Box Office levels - that would be unreasonable and it certainly isn't a failure that they are not. This is down to primarily to the lack in depth of films at the moment which is outside of their control.

However, as I have said, in US Box Office revenue terms 2019 was not an exceptional year and so not unreasonable to compare with in my view. 2018 and 2016 revenues were both higher (although as you correctly pointed out admission numbers were a record in 2019). The main thing though, as Fun has also said, the benchmark which CINE is using to judge themselves is 2019 and so it is natural I think that we should follow this.

One interesting question is what level of box office do they need to achieve in 2022 to show a profit? A very rough calculation using performance in the second half of 2021 (where they made an adjusted loss before tax of $164m on the back of US Box figures of just $3.5bn) suggests perhaps somewhere around $7.5bn to $8bn for 2022 might see them breakeven. This is only around 70% of 2019 box office and in terms of admission numbers will be even less.

These are rough numbers that will be influenced by many factors (what happens to costs, average spend per person, relative performance in other territories etc. etc.) but should be in the right sort of ballpark and is supported by CINE stating it made a profit in Q4 - with just over $2bn US Box Office. To me this is all very encouraging as I think $7.5bn to $8bn is achievable. Therefore I'm very optimistic we will show a profit for 2022 despite the poor start to the year. Of course we need more than this to address the debt and provide a better cushion against any adverse appeal but I find this very promising as a start and 2023 and beyond should see a return much closer to pre-pandemic numbers.

@Pig

Mooky was talking about US admissions whereas I was talking about US box office (using figures from Box Office Mojo and listed earlier). So I agree that 2019 looks like a record breaking year for admissions but we can only see daily box office figures (not admissions as far as I know) and so can only judge current performance from this and on this basis 2018 was the record year. The key thing is that 2019 was not an exceptional year and it is also the year CINE themselves compare figures to in both their actuals and their forecasts so to me it is the appropriate year to measure against.

2019 was NOT a record year - at the US Box Office anyway. It was a record year for CINE but that's not surprising as it is the only full pre-pandemic year where we owned Regal.

"Wouldn't it be more sensible to compare to a regular pre-pandemic year?"

2019 was a regular pre-pandemic year. US Box Office:

2019 - $11.3bn
2018 - $11.9bn
2017 - $11.1bn
2016 - $11.4bn
2015 - $11.1bn

So 2019 I think is an appropriate year to compare to but agree that "we don’t need the box office to be back at 2019 levels". Just closer than we are at the moment.

@LTHamigo - You'll also get an idea from page 125 of the report and accounts where additions to PPE totaled $135.7m and page 162 which gives an additional $153m of outstanding capital commitments which it describes as relating to "new sites and refurbishment projects which have commenced or have been committed to through an executed lease agreement or lease amendment". There was also $86.7m under addition to right-of-use assets (i.e. leased properties).

Not a perfect match up to what you were asking for (and will certainly be an overstatement) but hopefully a useful indicator.

@RS2022 - The numbers you quoted are only for the top 10. For total revenues the figures are:

2019 - $146.9m
2022 - $117.6m

So about 80% of 2019 rather than 85%. Still, that's pretty decent but as you say only 1 weekend and April as a whole will struggle to keep this percentage as 2019 saw Endgame released at the end of the month.

Hopefully though beyond that, with the films coming up, these kind of figures can be repeated and even improved upon but much over $8bn for 2022 as a whole still seems challenging to me. Happy to be pleasantly surprised though!

Why was going down the ADS route bad? Personally I was unhappy with the level of discount but can't see the problem with the ADS approach itself - this is the typical method for foreign companies listing and raising on nasdaq and I'm not sure how any other approach would have been better (though they could have gone 5 to 1 instead of 10 to 1).

I believe also Texas is still on for completion in Q2 so I'm not sure how that promise has been broken (yet). This is only for phase 1 but I don't remember anything beyond this ever being promised by the end of June?

I'm not a huge fan of PW but like Nat I feel most of any shortcomings are down to his greenness - not incompetence, and certainly not fraudulence - in my view anyway.

@beta - I'm not trying to scare off anybody. I try not to ramp or de-ramp any share, just try to keep it as factual as possible. As to CINE I'm invested and reasonably confident of its longer term future but just feel that the article that Fun posted suggests it may take a little longer to get there.

I agree that spend per customer is up and they have cost savings coming through but this should not affect the level of admissions assumed in their base case scenario. This should be their best guess on expectations, its what base case means, and if they get higher margins than previously expected it just means this best guess on admissions will generate higher profits (or lower losses). So I do think they have lowered this scenario because they have lower expectations - not least because Omicron set everything back after they made their previous estimates, so hardly surprising.

I also agree that April 2019 is a tough month to compete against because of Endgame but having said that there were 4 other months in 2019 that had higher numbers. I try not to look at individual months as they can vary so much but instead trends and numbers overall and it is difficult to see where much more than $8bn is going to come from in 2022 - which will be well down on every year from 2015 to 2019 which all did over $11bn in the US - 2018 actually being the highest, not 2019.

There are lots of encouraging signs that you rightly refer to (like UK Box Office recovering quicker and the higher spend per person) plus the performance of the big movies that have been released like Spidey and Batman as well as some of the second tier ones like Uncharted.

I just feel it's too easy though to get excited about what an individual movie is grossing when the bigger picture is that there simply isn't enough of them yet to get the box office closer to pre-pandemic levels. This will take time but I believe it is improving (especially with the number of films now increasing) and will get there but will just take a little longer than I (and it seems CINE) had hoped for.

"Another release... Another big opening weekend, even with the Cineplex case looming someone explain to me how the SP is at similar levels to prime Covid times?"

Probably because there just aren't enough films yet as the article in the link posted by @Funinvestor at 23.53 last night highlighted.

Even if you take the optimistic end of the projections in that article ($8bn US Box Office for 2022) it would still leave CINE well short of its base case scenario which has already been lowered from its previous level.

It's been said many times already but, whilst there are big films doing well, until the studios put out many more films on wide release CINE will struggle to hit its own targets and reach profitability.

The audience is coming back but the number of films for them to see is not quite there yet.

Yes FP, plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the near future but anybody who thinks ARB mining numbers were good in March really doesn’t understand the industry and perhaps should invest in a different one - or maybe do some better research rather than just spend their time having a dig at others. If they think ARB’s numbers were good then they’d probably explode looking at Bitfarms, Hive, CLSK or Hut. All around 40% better per EH than ARB. Even MARA were better!

As the new machines are installed and when Texas is up and running with immersion there should be a dramatic improvement in ARB’s figures which will hopefully leave the rest trailing. In the meantime though we probably have another month or two of poor numbers no matter how they are dressed up or fawned over.

Agree Lotto - I think the worst is behind us (well maybe after April/May). Argo were not on the link you posted but we come as 102 BTC mined per 1EH so well behind most other miners. But we have a relatively old suite of machines and some may be being moved or be offline for testing. Once the new machines are installed, Texas is online and immersion benefits are realised then I would expect us to be at the top of that table, not the bottom.

"So if your the only one not happy maybe you should change your negative attitude or keep your opinions to yourself"

I thought I was quite positive overall? The fact that Argo has appalling productivity at the moment is a fact, not an opinion. If you want to hide facts and only want to hear good news then suggest you join Discord or don't read this board.

Any investor should want to know everything about the company - whether good or bad - so long as it is well reasoned and based on fact. If not then you may be happier short term but putting yourself at a disadvantage longer term by only hearing one side of the story. But each to their own.

Sorry but I'm not happy with Argo being the worst (or at least one of the worst) miners in terms of productivity. If everybody else is then fine, that's their call.

I'm very hopeful Texas will address this so not too concerned but the current levels of mining are nothing to write home about - in fact quite the opposite.

Another disappointing month for BTC production. Up on last month but still way behind what it should be with 1.6EH - by around 25%.

Hopefully part of the reason is due to machines being moved to Texas (presumably bad weather was no longer much of a factor).

Looks like they sold another 150 or so BTC in March which seems good policy to me i.e. sell roughly what you mine to pay operational costs and contribute a bit towards funding growth.

Most encouraging thing in RNS is that Helios is still on track so hopefully Argo's relatively poor productivity will be a thing of the past and boosted further by the benefits of immersion.

I think it (very) unlikely too. I also think it might require a full takeover anyway if similar rules apply in Canada as they do here where I think if an individual or company gains more than a certain percentage of voting rights (30%?) then a cash offer must be made for the rest of the shares. Even if this doesn't apply it still seems highly implausible for all sorts of reasons.

Yes, there have been 3 big films but overall revenues have been poor because of the relative lack of depth in other movies. The exception was December when Spiderman was so huge it made up for this - and to a lesser extent with Bond and Batman in October and March.

April onwards looks much better though so I feel the real test for revenues, and any impact on sp, will come pretty soon.

"Watch the latest Helios video, from the thread above. “They are getting ready to power on the substation”. So they are ready to go when it comes to power. So this thread isn’t relevant to Argo."

It may not be but I don't think you can infer that from the video. When the situation is made clearer by an RNS, other more concrete news or by the actual powering up of Helios above 25mW then I'll rest easy but at the moment for me this is just another uncertainty, to add to the others, that may turn out to be something major, nothing at all or more likely something in between.

It would be foolish to panic over this but also foolish to just sweep it under the carpet and pretend it isn't there.

@MNS - So you're saying the discord group thinks the news about the grid in Texas will not have any impact on Argo and so they are in no way concerned about it? That would put paid to the 'other narrative' - no one is claiming that 'the collective opinion is the stock is seriously undervalued' on Discord or that Argo doesn't have its full support (although I do recall one of them calling the management of the company "shambolic").

Must admit I'm concerned about this news and have seen no persuasive argument not to be. Equally though I think it is early days and am hopeful it's just another storm that will blow over. I also take some comfort in the fact that the market hasn't reacted significantly to this news yet.