 reported its full year results on Wednesday, alongside the announcement of a £1.7 billion fully underwritten rights issue to help with its upcoming takeover of Regal Entertainment Group.){kind=link}
Cineworld (LON:CINE) reported its full year results on Wednesday, alongside the announcement of a £1.7 billion fully underwritten rights issue to help with its upcoming takeover of Regal Entertainment Group.
A list of blockbusters released over the course of 2017, including Beauty and the Beast and the latest Star Wars film, helped boost the cinema group’s results, with revenues rising 11.6 percent in the year to 31 December.
The UK and Ireland region delivered a 5.9 percent increase in revenue, with box office revenue rising 10.3 percent over the period, or 6.9 percent at constant currency.
Alongside the strong results the cinema operator gave an update on the progress of its deal to buy US cinema chain Regal, in a deal worth in $3.6 billion. In a bid to fund the deal, Cineworld announced on Wednesday that it will be launching a rights issue, issuing 1,095,662,872 new ordinary shares at 157p each – a discount of 34 percent on Tuesday’s closing price.
The company attributed part of the strong results to an “expansion of the group’s retail offerings”, including “five Starbucks sites and three VIP sites in 2017″.
Looking forward, the group said it “is positioned well for another year of progress in 2018”.
Shares in Cineworld fell nearly 5 percent on the news, and are currently trading down 4.35 percent at 539.00 (0907GMT).