Consumption slowdown has no impact on movie-going behaviour, says Nitin Sood of PVR

He said in the first half of the year operating margins were robust and this quarter EBITDA margins adjusted for IND AS 116 is upwards of 20 percent, which are one of the best-ever margins for the company.

With regards to movie pipeline, he said, “We have started with a fantastic opening in October with WAR and we have big films like Housefull 2 coming up in Diwali followed by releases in November, which include Frozen 2, then Dabaang 3 in December and other big films, so the movie pipeline is very strong.”

“We haven’t seen any impact of consumption slowdown on movie going behaviour at all, which is reflected in strong footfalls at cinemas and strong spending on F&B,” he said.

“The average occupancy in Q2 was 36.5 percent. The overall footfall additions are up 25 percent this quarter including the SPI cinema circuit we bought last year. So strong growth in footfall. We did about 2.93 crore admissions this quarter,” said Sood.

With regards to advertising revenues, he said, “while the general environment has been challenging, our team has managed strong growth of 16 percent on ad revenue front this quarter. We have managed to sustain ad revenue growth with partnerships with long-term advertising clients.”

He confirmed that promoters have not sold any shares, adding that “we just did merger of SPI Cinemas. So the erstwhile promoters of SPI Cinemas held 29 percent equity in SPI and on merger with the company, they got shares of PVR. So all the shareholders of PVR where diluted by about 3.2 percent and that is the reason for reduction for promoter holding".