Gadar 2, Jailer, OMG2 to boost PVR Inox earnings in second quarter

PVR Inox achieved the feat of highest ever admissions and box office in a single day across on August 13, 2023, the company said in a regulatory filing earlier this week. 

“We entertained 12.8 lakh guests and earned gross box office revenue of Rs 39.5 crore. The weekend of 11-13th Aug’23 was also the biggest weekend ever in Company’s history. We welcomed 33.6 lakh guests at our cinemas and earned gross box office revenue of Rs 100+ crore during the weekend,” PVR said in a press release earlier this week.

Strong start to Q2

The remarkable milestone achieved by PVR occurred on the back of solid box office performances from the stellar content released last week including ‘Gadar 2’ (Hindi), ‘Jailer’ (Tamil) and ‘OMG2’ (Hindi) and continued success of content released in earlier weeks including ‘Rocky aur Rani ki Prem Kahani’ (Hindi) and ‘Oppenheimer’ (English) which continued their steady performance. 

Analysts say that with current releases and slew of new releases during the second quarter of current financial year will boost PVR Inox’s earnings in second quarter and the company can post ever quarterly earnings in September quarter.

“After the recent success of “Barbenheimer” and MI-7, Bollywood has an interesting pipeline with movies like Oh My God-2, Gadar-2, Jawan and Dream Girl-2 lined up for release in next two months. Even regional pipeline is healthy with movies like Jailer, Bhola Shankar and Salaar gearing up for release in 2QFY24,” Prabhudas Lilladher’s Jinesh Joshi said in a report.

Meanwhile, the company in its conference call said that Hollywood strike is unlikely to have any near-term impact on content flow and resolution is expected over next 4-6 weeks. Spending per head (SPH) was up 9 per cent (QoQ) as menus have been redesigned and lot of Inox properties have now started selling non-vegetarian food. 

The company’s convenience fee revenue declined 23 per cent as a new contract with BookMyShow (BMS) has been drawn on revenue-share-basis.  There was also drop in admissions due to weak content. 

PVR will screen select cricket world cup matches in cinemas and is likely to enter a contract with ICC soon.

PVR Inox's loss narrowed to Rs 81.6 crore from loss of Rs 333 crore in the previous quarter. Its revenue from operations rose 14 per cent to Rs 1,305 crore from Rs 1,143 crore in March quarter.

PVR shares have rallied a whopping 13 per cent to Rs 1,735 in since it announced its June quarter earnings, outperforming the Sensex which has declined 1.4 per cent during the same course of time.