High-Grossers To Help Multiplexes Beat Seasonal Blues
A string of high-grossing Hindi, Tamil and Telugu films is expected to help multiplexes boost sales in a seasonally slow period.
The industry had a good start since January with more than half a dozen films doing well at the box office. These include Vicky Kaushal-starrer Uri, a fictional account of Indian Army's covert anti-terror surgical strikes, and Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt's Gully Boy, loosely based on the life of Mumbai rappers Naezy and Divine. And Simmba, starring Ranveer Singh and Sarah Ali Khan, also garnered most of its collections during the quarter since it was released in December-end.
High-grossers will shore up revenue for multiplex chains like market leader PVR Ltd. and second-placed Inox Leisure Ltd. during a quarter that usually sees reduced footfalls because of school and college examinations. And that comes after big-budget movies such as Thugs of Hindostan and Zero failed to draw moviegoers in the previous quarter.
Goldman Sachs analyst Manish Adukia said multiplexes will report good performance in the fourth quarter due to the strong start provided by the releases of Simmba and Uri.
The goods and services tax rate cuts on movie tickets, which were effective from Jan. 1, helped. GST reduction, according to Girish Pai, head of research at Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities, will aid footfalls at multiplexes.
Pai even expects the multiplex industry's performance to scale records. The quarter will not only be the best fourth quarter in the industry's history, but can also rival the first and third quarters, Pai said.
His view is based on the fact that while the Hindi releases Simmba, Uri, Manikarnika and Gully Boy have hit the right chords, the Tamil movies Petta and Viswasam and the Telugu flick F2, too, are doing extremely well. There is yet a month to go for the quarter to close and a slew of releases are yet to hit the screens, Pai said.
Agreed Nitin Sood, chief financial officer at, PVR. The fourth quarter as of now looks like a strong quarter, he told BloombergQuint. “Small-budget content-driven movies are doing extremely well and a reversal of trend is witnessed at the box office.”
PVR, Inox Leisure, Cinepolis and Carnival are the four leading multiplex chains in India, accounting for 70-75 percent of the 2,800-odd screens in India, according to Pai.
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