Friday, April 08, 2011

Cineworld announces international expansion

UK’s leading cinema chain acquires major Spanish cinema operator

Cineworld Group plc today announces its first continental acquisition, of Cinesur Circuito Sánchez-Ramade, S.L. (‘Cinesur’), a Spanish cinema operator.

Cinesur is the fifth largest operator in Spain and the largest in the Andalucia region. The acquisition will make Cineworld the largest multiplex operator in Andalucia with eleven multiplexes and a total of 136 screens.

Spain, with its population of 47 million, is the fifth largest cinema market in Europe with annual revenues of circa €800m in 2009 and average cinema attendance per person of circa 2.38 times per year compared to 2.81 times per year in the UK (source: Dodona Research).

Commenting on the acquisition, Steve Wiener, Chief Executive Officer of Cineworld, said:

"We are delighted to be making our first continental acquisition, taking us into a market which we believe has good growth prospects. Cinesur is an attractive platform for growing market share in a country that is serviced by many smaller cinema operators.

“We look forward to developing Cinesur to bring it in line with our market-leading UK operations, where a wide range of programming, excellent customer service and creative marketing saw us take the position of no. 1 at the box office in the UK for 2010”.

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