The company announced an expansion plan envisaging the development of 22 cinemas by 2016, but such an objective is hard to reach considering the currently slow growth pace of the domestic shopping center market.
“Not all of these 22 cinemas will be opened probably, but we will reach 25-30 cinemas in Romania by the end of 2016,” stated the chief executive officer of the company, Moshe Greidinger. He underlined Romania is the market where the company will grow the most.
Romania boasts the best cinemas of the Cinema City network, considering their average age does not go beyond 3-4 years and they are equipped with state-of-the-art technology, the CEO said.
Cinema City sold 10 million tickets in Romania last year, up 25% from 2012 and five times more than in 2007, the year when the company entered Romania.
Cinema City Romania generated revenue of EUR25.3 million and net profit of around EUR768,000 in 2012, according to Finance Ministry data.
Cinema City network is present in Israel, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, and by the number of cinemas, Romania is the third largest market in CEE for Cinema City.
As regards a possible expansion in Romania through the acquisition of old cinemas, Greidinger says Cinema City prefers to grow in mall projects. “We need new buildings for last generation cinemas,” explained Greidinger.
The AFI Palace Ploiesti cinema has six cinema halls with a total capacity of around 1,300 seats. Cinema City entered the Romanian market in 2007 by opening several multiplexes, and two years later brought the IMAX technology in AFI Palace Cotroceni mall of Bucharest.
In March, Cineworld, one of the biggest players on the British cinema market, bought the entire cinema unit of Cinema City in a deal worth around EUR500 million. In the wake of the deal, Cinema City International was renamed Global City Holdings.
The new company also became Europe’s second largest operator, after Odeon UCI, and is present in eight countries.
Cinema City International generated EUR300 million in revenue in 2013, slightly up on the year, according to Greidinger. He underscored the newly created entity would not change its strategy and plans to open 500 new cinema halls in the next 3-5 years.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)