Pub­licly-list­ed Cin­e­maOne Ltd record­ed an af­ter-tax loss of $285,962, for the three months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, due to the Hol­ly­wood strike last year and the re­duced movie con­tent.

For the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od last year, the com­pa­ny made an af­ter-tax loss of $29,913.

Chair­man Bri­an Jahra said in its unau­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cials on Thurs­day that Cin­e­maOne Lim­it­ed was sim­i­lar­ly im­pact­ed in the first quar­ter of its fi­nan­cial year 2024 with the post­pone­ment of no­table movie re­leas­es such as Sony’s ‘Kraven the Hunter’ from Oc­to­ber 2023 to Au­gust 2024, Warn­er Broth­ers’ ‘Dune II’ from Oc­to­ber 2023 to March 2024 and Sony’s ‘Ghost­busters’ from De­cem­ber 2023 to March 2024.

Ja­hara out­lined that Cin­e­maOne which op­er­ates IMAX and Gem­stone man­aged to mit­i­gate the re­duc­tion in movie con­tent through off­set­ting growth via the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic open­ing of its new CINE­Cen­tral lo­ca­tion in Price Plaza, Ch­agua­nas. CINE­Cen­tral com­menced of­fer­ing dai­ly show sched­ules in mid-Oc­to­ber 2023.

In the con­text of re­duced movie con­tent, the chair­man said the vol­ume for the Q1 FY 2024 pe­ri­od, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the com­par­i­son to last year’s true block­buster per­for­mance in Q1 FY 2023 of both Dis­ney’s ‘Avatar-the Way of Wa­ter’ and ‘Black Pan­ther Wakan­da For­ev­er,’ the Cin­e­maONE Group’s Q1 FY 2024 re­sults were as fol­lows:

* Gross rev­enue was on par with the pri­or-year per­for­mance at $4.54 mil­lion (FY 2023: $4.59 mil­lion);

* Gross prof­it in­creased by 12 per cent to $2.9 mil­lion (FY 2023: $2.5 mil­lion) and

* The group main­tained its op­er­at­ing prof­it with $.5 mil­lion (FY 2023: $.5 mil­lion).

How­ev­er, Jahra high­light­ed that net loss­es in­creased to -$.3 mil­lion ver­sus the pri­or-year per­for­mance (FY 2023: $.03 mil­lion).

He not­ed that the 2023 glob­al box of­fice marked a mile­stone in the in­dus­try’s re­cov­ery from COVID-19 and in­creased to US$33.9 bil­lion up 31 per cent over 2022’s US$25.9 bil­lion, but was still 15 per cent be­low the pre-COVID-19 glob­al box of­fice.

Af­ter a strong first eight months with a few ti­tles ex­ceed­ing US $1 Bil­lion such as Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures’ ‘The Su­per Mario Bros.Movie’ (US $1.4 bil­lion) and Warn­er Broth­ers’ cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non ‘Bar­bie’ (US $1.4 bil­lion), the com­bined Writ­ers and Ac­tors’ Strikes be­gan to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact the last quar­ter of 2023, re­duc­ing ti­tles on of­fer and re­strict­ing mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, Jahra said.

He said the strikes, which last­ed over six months com­bined, end­ed in De­cem­ber, but on­ly af­ter trig­ger­ing a lag in re­lease dates of many an­tic­i­pat­ed ti­tles.

Fu­ture out­look

Jahra said that man­age­ment still ex­pects that the sup­ply chain im­pact of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Hol­ly­wood strikes will some­what re­tard growth and re­cov­ery ex­pec­ta­tions this fi­nan­cial year.

How­ev­er, he iden­ti­fied that the Com­pa­ny’s strate­gic po­si­tion­ing and growth ini­tia­tives will as­sist the com­pa­ny in off­set­ting this im­pact.

“As the movie slate steadi­ly im­proves and ac­tors re­turn to their im­por­tant roles in glob­al mar­ket­ing pro­mo­tions, the com­pa­ny looks for­ward to the up­com­ing re­leas­es of Bob Mar­ley’s sto­ry in Uni­ver­sal’s ‘One Love,’ Sony’s ‘Madame Web,’ Warn­er Broth­ers’ high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed ‘Dune II’ and ‘Godzil­la x Kong the New Em­pire’,” the chair­man added.