Two shoppers walk past a Regal move theater in Irvine, Calif., Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020.
Shares in the company that owns the Regal, Cineworld, and Picturehouse movie theaters fell as much as 58% after it said it will temporarily close the venues because delays to the latest James Bond film left it with few blockbusters to attract customers during the pandemic.
Cineworld Group Plc said Monday that 536 Regal cinemas in the U.S. and 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse venues in the U.K. would close on Thursday. Some 45,000 employees are affected.
The company has high debts and is, like the wider industry, struggling with the effects of the pandemic. It said that with major markets such as New York closed and no guidance on when they will reopen, "studios have been reluctant to release their pipeline of new films."
Without these releases, the company can't give customers "the breadth of strong commercial films necessary for them to consider coming back to theaters against the backdrop of COVID-19.''
"This is not a decision we made lightly, and we did everything in our power to support safe and sustainable reopenings in all of our markets - including meeting, and often exceeding, local health and safety guidelines in our theaters and working constructively with regulators and industry bodies to restore public confidence in our industry,″ said Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld.
Cineworld shares fell as low as 15.64 pounds in London and were down 31% at 27.41 in morning trading.
The industry had been rocked by the pandemic - first being closed for months and then operating at a fraction of previous capacity, said David Madden, analyst at CMC Markets. Cineworld had also been highly leveraged, having largely funded its acquisition of Regal Entertainment in 2018 through debt.
"Today the company confirmed they will be assessing their liquidity options, and it plans to update the market on the resumption of business in due course,'' he said. "It seems that Cineworld is hunkering down and they are holding onto their current liquidity position, with the view to probably having a reduced service when they re-open.''
Nvidia on Wednesday became the first public company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion. The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.
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Boeing workers at three Midwest plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed have voted to reject the company’s latest contract offer and to continue a strike that started almost three months ago. The strike by about 3,200 machinists at the plants in the Missouri cities of St. Louis and St. Charles, and in Mascoutah, Illinois, is smaller in scale than a walkout last year by 33,000 Boeing workers who assemble commercial jetliners. The president of the International Association of Machinists says Sunday's outcome shows Boeing hasn't adequately addressed wages and retirement benefits. Boeing says Sunday's vote was close with 51% of union members opposing the revised offer.
The stunning indictment that led to the arrest of more than 30 people — including Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and other NBA figures — has drawn new scrutiny of the booming business of sports betting in the U.S. The multibillion-dollar industry has made it easy for sports fans — and even some players — to wager on everything from the outcome of games to that of a single play with just a few taps of a cellphone. But regulating the rapidly-growing industry has proven to be a challenge. Professional sports leagues’ own role in promoting gambling has also raised eyebrows.
