IMAX exceeded Wall Street’s revenue forecast for the third quarter of 2016, when it hit analysts’ actual earnings expectation right on the nose. The giant movie display corporation’s domestic per-screen sales average ($174,200) rose 8 percent from the comparable quarter last year.
Wall Street had forecast earnings per share (EPS) of 12 cents, which is precisely what IMAX reported early on Thursday before the U.S. stock markets opened. The company ended the measured 90 days with $86.6 million in revenue, comfortably topping the Yahoo Finance-compiled consensus of $73.25 million.
Last Q3, IMAX made 17 cents per share. Boss Richard L. Gelfond took some space in this morning’s media release to remind everyone that this box office stuff is cyclical — and occasionally random, like the stronger-than-anticipated start to 2016.
“We anticipate box office will pick up again in the fourth quarter with titles such as Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange,’ which includes more than an hour of footage specially formatted exclusively for IMAX, the ‘Harry Potter’ spin-off ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,’ and of course ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,’” the chief executive officer said. “With the anticipated strength of the tentpole-heavy film slate over the next 24 months coupled with the heightened demand from filmmakers to differentiate their movies using IMAX cameras and the ideal content spacing, we believe we are well-positioned to take advantage of the years ahead.”
And, of course, there are the possibilities offered by virtual reality.
“While we remain focused on our core business, in the third quarter we expanded our efforts to deliver differentiated entertainment experiences with the coming launch of our premium location-based VR offering, IMAX VR,” Gelfond added. “I am pleased to report that we have already made significant progress on this initiative and have received strong interest for centre partnerships, content deals and many other opportunities that we hope to begin announcing over the coming months. While we are still in the early test phase of this effort, we are optimistic about VR and the potential sizeable opportunity that it presents our business.”
IMAX bought-back 500,000 shares of
IMAX closed Wednesday’s U.S. stock market trading at $30.44 per share, which was flat from the prior day.
Gelfond and his gang of executives will host a conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET to discuss the financial performance more in detail.