Coronavirus lockdown | PVR narrows loss after seven quarters

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Coronavirus lockdown | PVR narrows loss after seven quarters

After being shut down for six to seven consecutive quarters, India's largest multiplex operator reported a narrowing of its consolidated loss on Friday after tax of Rs 10.2 crore for the third quarter ended December 2021 due to the easing of COVID 19 related restrictions.

The company reported a consolidated loss of Rs 49.21 crore in the same period last year, the company said in a regulatory filing.

It was a great quarter for us. We finally got to open cinemas and have at least a few months of operation. There will be a challenge going forward. We were shut down for almost eight months in the first wave and four months in the second wave. This time we are not shut except for two states, Delhi and Haryana, and we expect them to reopen in a couple of weeks, as cases have gone down in both of these markets, Nitin Sood, CFO, PVR told Business Today.

He stated that January and February will be tough as new content releases have stopped. We'll bounce back quickly. He said that some of the regional markets are open and films will start releasing in other markets in March.

The company's consolidated revenue stood at Rs 709.7 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2021, compared to Rs 320.1 crore for the same quarter last year.

The quarter gone by was the best for the company since March 2020, when the business was adversely impacted on account of the Pandemic, according to the company.

Our December numbers were almost close to pre-pandemic despite partial recovery. March could be a better month than December given the pipeline of big films we have from now on. It will take a full quarter to normalise footfalls. Sood said that in Q 1 of next year we'll be closer to pre-pandemic levels as well as when we're closer to pre-pandemic levels.

He added that because of the pricing tends to be higher for big films, the momentum is likely to continue since there are new releases coming up.

He said that full recovery of admission may take 3 -- 4 months but revenue and profitability recovery will happen much faster. New releases like Jersey, RRR, Prithviraj, etc. The PVR clock is expected to make a faster recovery.

PVR has reported a strong quarter with beat on revenue due to compelling growth in metrics like average ticket price and spend per head, which may not be sustainable as we approach normalcy, and we believe large budget films and Hollywood content tend to report higher growth in these operating metrics, as reported by Karan Taurani, Senior Vice President-Research Analyst, Elara Capital.

This includes four screens in Narsipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, seven screens in Jio World Drive including one drive-in theatre Mumbai, four Director's Cut screens in Ambience Mall, Gurgaon and three screens in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

There are a lot of screens scheduled to open and ready for handover. We should go back to what we were doing pre-pandemic which was 80-100 screens, but we'll get a better sense once we have 1 or 2 months of full operations, Sood said.