Regal Cineworld Group has refinanced its loan facility following a record Thanksgiving box office weekend, anticipating a continued rebound in moviegoing in 2025 after the theater chain emerged from bankruptcy last year.
The refinancing included a $350 million Revolving Credit Facility that replaced the company’s existing revolving credit facility and matures on Dec. 1, 2029, as well as a $1.9 billion Term Loan B facility that matures on Dec. 1, 2031. Barclays, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Texas Capital served as arrangers and bookrunners for the loan.
The deal came after the most lucrative Thanksgiving box office weekend in industry history, with $426 million grossed between Wednesday and Sunday in North America. That is more than $100 million above the previous record of $315 million set on Thanksgiving weekend in 2018.
With a trio of films in Disney’s “Moana 2,” Universal’s “Wicked” and Paramount’s “Gladiator II” fueling the box office boom and films like Disney’s “Mufasa” and Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” set to keep the momentum going at Christmas, Regal and other theater chains are expecting box office grosses to keep improving in the months and years ahead.
“The overwhelmingly positive market reception for this transaction is a
signal of the momentum we are seeing in our business,” Regal Cineworld CEO Eduardo Acuna said in a statement. “In Q3, Regal Cineworld welcomed over
49 million guests to our theatres and generated total revenue of over $1
billion with record-high levels of spend per person on concessions.
With the refinancing transaction, we will save $60 million per year in
interest expense, which puts our successful restructuring squarely in the
past.”
