RE: Tomorrow11 Aug 2021 21:51
I can't see tomorrow as a massive inflection point and still expect the share price to be highly volatile without a clear direction until (say) October when the "Mega" slate kicks in and peoples' perception of Covid is that it's a chronic disease we are going to have to live with without shutting down the economy.
Why?
Well, one of the key overhangs is the Cineplex case, and although I expect bullish and comforting words, I doubt that there will be much of substance, since it takes two to tango and if there had been a material development, then since Cineplex is a listed security, it would also have to disclose any developments so as to prevent a false market in its own shares. Also, for those of us who have been involved in such things, it is normal to try and manage the other side's expectations of a settlement by briefing to the most advantageous end of the permissible envelope.
Also, there can't have been any massively helpful numbers on trading, since the Box Office is already widely disclosed and market share is more closely tied to geography than the quality of the experience, so I expect that Cine will have performed in line with the wider market.
Short term, my main concern is with the losses that have been built up during lockdown, and, after re-opening, with Opex up but without the concomitant substantial bump in revenue.
Previous guidance was on a (IIRC) USD60m per month cash burn, but to anyone who is an accountant they will know that this is a baby number to allow investment bankers to take cash and liquidity facilities and divide them by the 'burn rate' and come up with a period of time that the company has to 'survive' without a further equity raise. It was always likely that that USD60m was an optimistic assessment based on the best of all worlds (e.g. landlords forgiving rent) whereas life can be much more complex and spikey.
On the plus side, the fall from £1.20 to c60p probably has a lot of the above (and more) baked in, although the raising of an additional credit facility is worrisome. Om the one hand, you raise finance when you can, not when you need to, but this is likely to be pretty expensive money and since most of the trading upside already goes to debt rather than equity, I would view that as a further shift in that direction.
To those who think this is overly negative on Cineworld as a business, it isn’t – I strongly believe that Cineworld’s cinemas will recover and be very profitable long term. What concerns me is how that value is split between the debt and equity slices of the capital structure, and having management so strongly aligned to the Greidinger Family Trust and the desire to prevent it being diluted at any cost, I worry that they have bet the farm and that that bet may not come off.