Cineplex Inc

Good morning or good afternoon all and welcome to today's Cineplex Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Adam and I'll be your operator for today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. I will now hand the floor to Martha Rajali, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning everyone. I would like to welcome you to Cineplex's second quarter 2024 earnings release conference call hosted by Ellis Jacob, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Gordon Elson, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me remind you that certain statements being made are forward-looking and subject to various risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are based on managers' beliefs and assumptions regarding the information currently available. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements. information regarding factors that could cause results to vary can be found in the company's most recently filed annual information form and management discussion and analysis. Following today's remarks, we will close the call with our customary question and answer period. I will now turn the call over to Ellis Jacob.

Thank you, Masha. Good morning and welcome to our Q2 2024 conference call. As Gordon and I share highlights from the second quarter today, I wanted to start off by echoing my peer sentiment as we all felt the extended impact of the Hollywood strikes in the first half of 2024. While we anticipated the film slate would have a slow start this quarter, the month of June also signaled a pivotal change towards a more positive outlook for the rest of the year. We saw record-breaking results from recent titles, including Inside Out 2 in June and Deadpool and Wolverine's massive $211 million domestic opening weekend in late July. The success of these titles, in addition to stellar performances by Despicable Me 4 and Twisters, led to two strong consecutive box office months for Cineplex, with June and July reaching over 90% of 2019 levels. In the month of July, we entertained 5.5 million guests, representing our largest attendance of the year. These results clearly show that supply, not demand, depressed the global grosses of the early summer. Having been in this industry for over 35 years, I've seen the ebbs and flows of the film slate. But what always rings true is when compelling content is there, moviegoers head to their local theater to escape and immerse themselves in films of all genres. This past quarter, as we managed through the fluctuating film slate, our diversification strategy continued to serve us well. During the second quarter, we entertained 8.7 million moviegoers and generated total revenues of $277.3 million. We delivered box office per patron of $13.11 and concession per patron of $9.56, both all-time quarterly records. Inside Out 2 stole the show as it became the top animated film of all time with over $1.5 billion at the global box office, even outperforming last year's Super Mario Bros. Other top performing titles from the quarter included Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Fall Guy, Godzilla vs. Kong, The New Empire, and Bad Boys Ride or Die. This quarter continued to see consumer interest in premium experiences with 41.4% of the box office coming from offerings like IMAX, Ultra AVX, 3D, and VIP. We are very pleased with our cinema media results as revenue increased 4% over prior despite the attendance decline in the quarter. Fully owning our media business allows us to retain all our revenues and drive higher margins. By offering a portfolio of media products, we attract advertising customers of all sizes across a wide range of categories, driving our revenue per patron to industry-leading levels, reaching over 3.5 times the revenue per patron of our U.S. peers for the past quarter. Recent Canadian research reinforced the power of cinema advertising as virtually unmissable with 100% of cinema audiences viewing ads on the big screen. High attention scores in cinema deliver strong impact for brands with 75% average brand recall and a 35% uplift in brand choice. Our digital place-based media revenue also increased by 28.1%, primarily due to the addition of Cadillac Fairview, which significantly expanded our digital out-of-home shopping network. In addition to the recently announced operating and media sales agreement with Cadillac Fairview, CDM also signed a deal with them to sell, install, and manage directories at 14 properties across Canada starting in Q3. Cadillac Fairview is one of the largest owners, operators, investors, and developers of office, retail, residential, and mixed-use properties in North America. Our LBE business continues to perform well, generating second quarter record revenues of $29.4 million. Building on the momentum of our LBE business, we are gearing up to open three new locations in the fourth quarter in key markets across the country. Montreal will get its first rec room within the Royal Mount Eco community, which is a mixed-use residential and retail area that will be 100% carbon neutral. It is anticipated to become one of the leading retail developments in Canada. We're also opening a cineplex theater at Royal Mount with five auditoriums offering full recliners and laser projectors. Vancouver will also get a flagship rec room location on Granville Street in the downtown entertainment district. This is sure to be one of our top performing LBE locations. Located on three floors in a prime location, this premium venue will drive significant revenue from both corporate events and consumer visits. Lastly, situated adjacent to our Cineplex Cinema Fairview Mall in Toronto, we are opening a new Palladium. This high traffic location is near a residential area and easy to get to by transit. This creates a go-to one-stop entertainment destination for family and friends to come together for movies, gaming, and delicious food. While we are building new LBE locations, we are also exploring opportunities to maximize our revenue per square footage at our theaters. Examples include using excess space to add additional amusement gaming or other high ROI-generating entertainment concepts similar to our junction locations. Our real estate team has had success negotiating both rent reductions and reducing the total rentable square footage in addition to obtaining landlord funding for theater upgrades. We have also exited three theaters this year as part of our ongoing strategy to optimize our portfolio. Our pursuit of operational excellence and creating a seamless experience for guests led us to launch our online and mobile concession ordering earlier this year, where we've seen a significant increase in adoption among our guests. The average per patron spend is notably higher compared to in-person transactions, helping to increase our overall concession revenue. We are continuing to enhance our mobile app functionality, reducing customer friction, and elevating overall consumer satisfaction. While our mission is to create an exceptional experience for our guests, we also want to ensure we are offering a wide array of content to keep them coming back to our theaters. Outside of the Hollywood movie slate, we are leading the charge when it comes to alternative content like the opera, sporting events, concerts, and classic films. This past June was our best ever for event cinema programming. The Met Opera's Madam Butterfly was the strongest opera title since 2019, and Ghost Right Here Right Now was the biggest new concert so far this year. We also welcome Canadian cricket fans into our theatres to cheer on their favourite teams in the ICC Men's T20 Cricket World Cup. The India versus Pakistan game in June was the highest attended sporting event we've done since 2016. Our international programming contributed 9.2% to the second quarter box office, once again outperforming the North American box office at 3.1%. Jack and Juliet 3, which released in June, is our highest grossing Punjabi film of all time with Cineplex delivering 74% of the North American box office. Our distribution arm, Cineplex Pictures, released the Amazon MGM studio film I Am Celine Dion in select theaters this past quarter, reinforcing the importance of the cinematic experience for key streaming releases. They also successfully relaunched the horror film franchise The Strangers Chapter One and the Hindi action film Kill. Up next is Borderlands with an all-star cast, including Clay Palanchette, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis. We have no update on the Competition Bureau's allegations regarding our online booking fee. As a reminder, we presented our case before the Competition Tribunal in February. We note that the Competition Bureau is not contesting our right to charge the online booking fee It is only contesting the manner in which we presented the fee to consumers. We strongly believe we have complied with both the letter and spirit of the law and that the Competition Bureau's allegations are unfounded. We await the Competition Tribunal's decision in the coming months. Before I pass it on to Gord, I want to reinforce that the future film slate is looking bright. The third quarter is off to a great start and strong content has kicked off the back half of 2024. Despicable Me 4 led the charge in July, becoming the second highest grossing film domestically within the Despicable Me franchise and is still going strong. Twisters took audiences by storm with its opening weekend doubling that of its predecessor, Twister, which is the second highest grossing film of the year when it was released back in 1996. Of course, the film capturing everyone's attention around the globe is Deadpool and Wolverine, smashing its opening North American weekend box office, becoming the biggest opening R-rated film of all time. The film gave us the biggest opening weekend since 2021, which had Spider-Man No Way Home, the third highest grossing film of all time domestically. These films are just the beginning of what we are seeing as a stable stream of notable titles coming in 2024, with It Ends With Us, Alien Romulus, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Transformers 1, Joker, Foliadu, Venom, The Last Dance, Gladiator 2, Wicked, Moana 2, Mufasa, The Lion King, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Looking ahead to 2025, we are very excited by the robust home slate on the horizon, including another Jurassic World, Superman Legacy, the next installment of Mission Impossible, Helio, Captain America, Brave New World, Wicked Part 2, How to Train Your Dragon live action, Fantastic Four, Zootopia 2, Thunderbolts, Snow White, Avatar 3, and many, many more. We believe we've reached a pivotal point in the post-strike rebound, with a variety of content hitting the big screen on a consistent basis to keep moviegoers on the edge of their seats. The pipeline of blockbusters over the next several years is truly remarkable. This is a promising moment for our business and shareholders, which leads me to my next point, capital return. As you know, we addressed the balance sheet in the first quarter through the sale of our amusement solutions business, as well as a comprehensive refinancing plan, which included extending maturities and increasing financial flexibility. With the strength of our balance sheet and the confidence we have in our business plan, our board approved a normal course issuer bid to acquire up to 6.3 million common shares of Cineplex, subject to TSX approval. We, along with our board, are focused on driving long-term shareholder value. We firmly believe our share price is currently trading well below the intrinsic value of our business. We see tremendous value in opportunistically repurchasing our shares in an accretive manner with excess free cash flow while balancing our target debt leverage ratio and investment opportunities in high ROI generating initiatives. As we look ahead, we have a lot to be excited about. As the film slate strengthens, so does our market leadership as Canada's entertainment destination. With 156 theaters across Canada, Cineplex is the largest exhibitor in Canada with an industry-leading market share. Our leadership in alternative content and international programming will continue to ensure Canadians have even more reasons to come together and visit their local Cineplex bringing content from around the world to their neighborhood. Our LBE business is set to grow on the back half as we build new locations as a leading Canadian player, delivering attractive store-level margins. This diversification of our business allows us to profitably deliver on our position as the destination for escape, play, and fun. With a wide range of attractive media channels, we offer a compelling place for advertisers to invest their dollars and capture our guests' undivided attention. We will continue to leverage Canada's most robust lifestyle loyalty program, ScenePlus. This award-winning program has over 15 million members, and we are strategically engaging them through personalized offers and value-driven promotions. To close, I know you've all been watching the rebound of our industry as closely as we have, and I hope you are as excited for what's to come. Over the last several years, our team has been working hard to strengthen our position, optimize the balance sheet, fine-tune operations, and differentiate us in the market. We are looking ahead towards a new horizon, and we are more confident than ever about Cineplex's ability to sustain its leadership within entertainment and media across North America. With that, I will turn things over to Gloria.

Thank you, Alice, and I am pleased to present a condensed summary of the second quarter 2024 results for Cineplex Inc. Further reference or financial statements and MD&A have been filed on CDAR Plus and are also available in our investor relations website at cineplex.com. Our MD&A and earnings press release include a complete narrative on the operational results, so I will focus on highlighting select items in addition to providing commentary on our liquidity, capital allocation priorities, and outlook. For my comments on operations, all amounts following will be from continuing operations unless otherwise stated. As you are all aware, our second quarter results continued to be impacted by the actors' and writers' strikes, which delayed the release dates of a number of key titles, particularly impacting April and May. Our April and May box office was at 46% and 49% of 2019's pre-pandemic levels respectively. But in June and July, this box office percentage almost doubled to 90% and 94% respectively. As a result of the April and May attendance impacts on our second quarter results, our total revenue decreased 24.6% to $277 million, and our adjusted EBITDA decreased to $0.9 million in 2024 as compared to $47.2 million in 2023, primarily due to the reduced supply of product as a result of the industry strikes. Now let's take a closer look at our segments. In the film exhibition and content segment, attendance declined 4.1 million or 31.8% to approximately 8.7 million. Total revenue decreased 30% and segment-adjusted EBITDA decreased to $2.9 million, primarily as a result of the attendance decline. On a positive note, we achieved BPP and CBP records of $13.11 and $9.56, respectively. As part of our portfolio optimization and rationalization strategy, we closed two locations during the quarter and a third subsequent to quarter end. We also monetize some underutilized land and overflow parking lots for cash proceeds of $11.9 million. Pairing Q2 2024 to the pre-pandemic Q2 2019 period, our theatre portfolio has decreased to 156 locations from 165 locations, and our theatre cash rent paid and payable has decreased 7.7% to $35.9 million from $38.9 million. In the media segment, as we've mentioned previously, the cinema media business model post-pandemic has shifted to a CPM-based model. Encouragingly, despite the attendance challenges, the media segment revenue increased 11.6% to $28.9 million and segment-adjusted EBITDA increased slightly to $13.8 million. Segment-adjusted EBITDA was negatively impacted by conversion costs related to the new digital media networks. Cinema media revenue increased 4% to $18.5 million, and cinema media revenue per patron, or CMPP, increased a very impressive 52.5% to $2.12 per patron from $1.39 in the prior year. Given the change to a CPM-based model and the transition to a regular product supply, we are introducing the CMPP metric in our public disclosures. Our digital place-based media revenue had strong results with total revenues up 28.1% to $10.6 million primarily as a result of the addition of Cadillac Fairview to our shopping mall network beginning in 2024. And lastly, in our LBE segment, segment revenues increased 1% to $29.4 million. The second quarter is typically the seasonally weakest quarter for the LBE business, and year-over-year comparisons are impacted by Easter falling in Q1 in 2024 versus in Q2 in 2023. Store-level adjusted EBITDA margins were 16.2% versus 21.8% in the prior year, primarily as a result of increased minimum wages, costs related to flooding remediation in a number of locations, and timing of spend on new marketing initiatives. We continue to expect that store-level margins for the year will exceed our 25% target. I would now like to move on and speak to our balance sheets and, in particular, our liquidity position. At quarter end, we had $57 million in cash and nothing drawn under the covenant-like credit facilities which have a capacity of $100 million. With the comprehensive refinancing plan, we have meaningfully pushed out near-term maturities and removed restrictions related to covenant testing and no testing was required under the credit facilities at quarter end. As we have mentioned previously, our capital allocation priorities include maintenance capital expenditures, continuing to strengthen the balance sheet to achieve our target leverage ratios, investing in growth opportunities, and providing shareholder returns in the form of dividends and or share buybacks. As we reflect at this juncture, we see a strong product pipeline going forward, driving the potential for significant free cash flow generation. We see limited current commitments on growth capex, and we see a current share price which we believe does not reflect the intrinsic value of the company. As such, we believe that it is appropriate at this time to introduce a normal course issuer bid to deliver current and long-term shareholder value. The Board has approved the filing of an NCIB with the Toronto Stock Exchange to purchase up to 10% of the outstanding float or approximately 6.3 million shares. Once approved, we will take a prudent and opportunistic approach to acquire shares using excess cash while balancing all our capital allocation priorities. We will press release once all approvals have been obtained. Now I'd like to take a few moments to consider the future. I want to revisit the very real scenario I've described during our past analyst calls. This is where we achieve or exceed pre-pandemic adjusted EBITDA levels on 75 to 80% of pre-pandemic attendance levels. no near-term cash taxes due to the NOLs. In this scenario, we could generate in excess of $100 million of free cash flow and use this free cash flow to invest, de-lever, and provide additional shareholder returns. June attendance was 72% of pre-pandemic levels. Our July attendance was 76% of pre-pandemic levels. and early August results suggest this percentage will continue to grow into August. We are taking action today with the planned NCIB and we will continue to build back this business stronger than it was before the pandemic. In summary, we believe there's a lot to be excited about. With our long history of a disciplined operations and capital management approach, We remain highly focused on creating long-term shareholder value. And with that, I would like to turn things over to the conference operator for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Now turn to the queue. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure you are unmuted locally. And our first question today comes from Drew McReynolds from RBC. Drew, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much, and good morning. Two for me. First, on the cost side, Gord, I think you commented on just the higher cost on LBE, but I missed within Cineplex digital media conversion costs, if you could just kind of elaborate on those. And then the second question with respect to the Cineplex media business, obviously great to see the year-over-year growth given kind of the lower attendance wondering kind of the reasons for your ability to do that just given you know obviously uh um revenues being more tied to attendance i know there's some moving parts underneath there and most importantly do you think you can kind of uh continue that kind of kind of performance relative to attendance in the back half of 2024. thank you

Thanks, Drew. So let me just kind of step back and talk about sort of the media business and the overall margins and then talk about kind of costs and where we see things going. So, you know, as we've kind of described on previous calls, you know, once we're ramped up is the cinema media business would typically operate around, you know, an 80% EBITDA margin and the CDM business would be in that sort of low to mid-teens type margin. You know, as we look into the first and the second quarter, you know, I'm pleased to say that, you know, the cinema media business with its, you know, it continues to ramp up and continues to deliver at those margin levels. But as we look at the digital media business with respect to the kind of transition and the takeover of the Cadillac Fairview and now the Common Air Networks, is there some additional costs from our perspective in terms of converting over the networks and ensuring that everything will operate smoothly as we kind of ramp up and build the media networks across with Cadillac Fairview. So with that said, I would suggest that the margins of the cinema digital media business have been depressed during the first two quarters, but as I look at the back half of the year, with the integration initiatives that have been put in place, we should be operating at that mid-teen margin. As far as the ramp up of the businesses go then, so with respect to the media business is, you know, I think what we're seeing is and what you have, what you may not have noticed is we put out a women's study or initiated a women's study in our media business to really show the effectiveness in the spend and that was just recently deployed in the first half of this year. Advertisers recognize and are evaluating their spend, and as they look at what the spend is in the digital categories, sometimes they're looking to question the effectiveness of that spend. And our Lumen study being out there at the right time has now attracted more media people to engage and look with us in terms of advertising in the cinema space. And the attractiveness of the film titles and the reemergence of product on a recurring basis is all helpful. So we're very encouraged about the outlook for the back half of the year in the media space.

Andrew, the recall on the screen advertising is huge and it's very beneficial and we can even have ROIs for our advertisers which really add significant value compared to other ways of reaching your guests.

Okay, that's great. It's a great rundown. Thank you.

Thanks, Drew.

The next question comes from Derek from TV Cowan. Derek, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, everybody. Happy to see the buyback announcement, and hopefully we never have to speak about COVID and strikes ever again. That was I just want to talk to you about the slate for a second. Obviously, we're expecting a much better second half and into 2025, but how should we look or how should we think about it from a quarterly cadence? Is Q4 expected to be the strongest of the year? And maybe a follow-up to that is with that film slate coming back strong, how do you balance your international and alternative content, which has been really successful for you guys?

Yeah, great question and the first part of it on Q4, the coming Q4 of 2024 is going to be one of the strongest Q4s and significantly better than 2023. There are a lot of large movies and they are well spaced out through October, November and December. And on your question relating to international, We basically, with the help of AI and intelligence, are basically able to select specific movies for playing in our theaters and also looking at opportunities in different markets across the country. So it is going to be, to me, a high-class problem when you've got more movies than you have screens to put them in. and hopefully will increase our overall box office and penetration right across the ecosystem.

Okay, thanks for that. And maybe just one last one for me. You know, consumer weakness has been sort of the trending narrative this quarter. Maybe talk about what you're seeing on that front, whether it's at the box office or any weakness maybe in the rec room attendance.

Derek, it's Gord. I'll take the first half of that question then. You know, as we see and as you look at historically too, and we have this in our investor PowerPoint, when consumers are facing kind of tougher economic times is what they tend to do is downsize their out of home experiences. And so theatrical exhibition has tended to benefit during those periods. You know seven out of the last nine recessionary periods Industry box office has actually gone up and so we're encouraged because as you as we've mentioned we continue to report Record results in our spending metrics of BPP and CPP. So those trends are continuing with us in tougher economic environments spending continues to increase and they're looking to indulge and downsize their at-home entertainment experiences from things like concerts and professional sporting events to movie going.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Mayor Yaki from Scotiabank. Mayor, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. It's very encouraging to see you guys embark on this NCIB. Maybe I wanted to ask you, how does this affect or should we interpret this announcement versus a discussion about implementing a dividend? Eventually, you guys talked about that in the past, trying to figure out the priority that you guys will allocate capital to in terms of dividend payment and stock buyback. And related to the stock buyback, how should we expect your free cash flow to evolve so that we can maybe better forecast the buyback how it will evolve over time, i.e., is it earlier in the year that you think you're going to be active or after seeing Q3, Q4 results and how they pan out, then you would have enough visibility to undertake more aggressively the buyback?

So Mayor, thanks for those questions. It's Gord. I think the first half of your question was on buyback versus dividend. And we made some commentary about, you know, we're in a position right now where we, over the near term, it's almost like a switch has been flipped and we're going to be creating significant excess cash flow with, and as we also mentioned, not a significant number of new build commitments. So we have a window where we have significant excess cash flow, and we believe that the current share price does not reflect the intrinsic value of the shares. So with those factors, it weights our decision more into a share buyback versus a dividend. The other thing is, as we mentioned, I think, we've described is that you know once we're hit our target leverage ratio of two and a half to three times you know on a in a look back basis or trailing LTM basis is I think that you will see will be the catalyst for you know introducing a dividend we are committed to our shareholders and we're committed to return through both of those vehicles there's our position that the share buyback is is more of a priority given where everything is in the short term. With respect to timing, I'm not going to make any comment on timing. You know, as we mentioned, we will opportunistically look and engage at those times, and I don't think it's appropriate for us to commit on timing.

That's fair. I was trying my luck. So in terms of the agency, You can't blame me. So in terms of the cadence when it comes to the financial results in the back half of the year, maybe you can, as we look through Q3 and Q4, how does 2025 look like when it comes to the cadence of movie releases that you see? And on an annual basis, how should we think about rolling forward on a 12-month basis that we should be forecasting in terms of revenue and EBITDA. And just a follow-up to that, as you continue to increase the number of, you know, sorry, the entertainment business footprint, so how should we think about your EBITDA margin moving as you expand that investment over time?

Now, when we talk about the movie business moving into 2025, we see a really strong slate of films distributed all through the year. And, you know, I mentioned some of the large ones like Jurassic World, Superman Legacy. I expect that in July is going to be massive. The Mission Impossible, Helio, Captain America, Wicked Part II. How to Train Your Dragon, Fantastic Four, Zootopia, Snow White, Avatar 3, and there are many, many more movies that are in the year for 2025. And that, to me, is all about giving our guests the best experience. And we will continue to increase our penetration on premium offerings for our guests. because they do enjoy that. And it's something that has done very well for us in driving our overall box per patron and revenue. And on the concession side, we will continue to see growth. And I'm optimistic that we will cross the $10 mark in 2025 as we move forward. So I think there's a lot of opportunities in the theatrical side. And then when we look at LB in 2025, we would have had three new openings at the end of this year, which will provide us with relatively strong numbers into 2025 and into the future. And we will continue to focus on the two major businesses, which is the theatrical exhibition business and the leisure business and not forgetting media is also an important part of our overall EBITDA contributions. And as you know, we are one of the few companies in the world that basically own our media business, which allows us to retain a significant amount of the incremental dollars that we get from media sales.

And just two other quick comments here then.

On the back half of the year... Yeah, Gord, I'm just trying to figure out, as you open more rec rooms and palladiums, how is the margin initially going to get affected?

Yeah. But I want to make one other quick comment, too. So the back half of the year, last year we delivered $99 million of EBITDA in the last half of the year, and that's in a strike-impacted fourth quarter. So, again, we have... renewed confidence in our ability to deliver at those pre-pandemic levels going forward. On your question on the LBEs, as we add new LBEs, they come in at roughly a 25% store-level margin, as I communicated. So as those expand and we bring them in, you should expect the overall EBITDA margin to increase all things equal.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, that's star followed by one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Aravinda Galapadigo from Canaccord Genuity. Aravinda, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to focus a little bit on media. You know, just going back to some of the comments Gord made about, you know, returning to pre-pandemic levels of EBITDA. with Jessica Bedell, what does media have to do in that context? I mean, obviously, a decent quarter considering where your attendance was, but you're still 30% to 40% below pre-pandemic levels. Maybe, Alice or Gord, you can talk to some of the initiatives to try and lift media up. Is it a case of getting newer accounts in? Is it getting larger campaigns with the existing accounts? I wanted to get a sense of what your plans are to sort of lift that back up towards, you know, over $100 million in revenue, which you used to do in cinema media. And, you know, I think even the reported EBITDA pre-pandemic was over $100 million. I think it was in 2018. So any kind of longer-term color on that?

Thanks. Thank you for your question. And the main focus there as compared to pre-pandemic is we have some great data And we will be able to leverage that and give our advertisers a great return on their investment with the movies on the screen. Because the recall for some of the advertisers are huge. And they're seeing it. And I know there's some comments being made where sometimes they remember the ad more than the movie, which is good and bad. but that's something that we continue to see, and we are also seeing a strong return of the automotive back onto the screen. So as the attendance continues to increase and as we move forward, we see a great positive impact on our immediate side of the business. And Gord, do you want to make any comments? No, I think that's a fair comment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Adam Shine from National Bank Financial. Adam, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks a lot. Good morning. Lots of questions, obviously, on the recovery at the box office, which you guys are very enthusiastic about, and we certainly agree with that. Maybe, Gord, you could talk a little about the filmed entertainment content margins, the context being that last year, obviously, a depressed year, 11.5% margin. Going back to 2019, just shy of 15%. Can you maybe speak to some of the efficiencies that you have put in place, that you're continuing to put in place, notwithstanding minimum wage increases that could help frame the prospect of further margin expansion as a further kicker to the recovery story?

Yeah, so Adam, great question. And I tried to hint on a few of those in my call scripts today. You know, when you think about the category, you know, our overall cost categories, our rent and rent-related items or occupancy-related items represent about 25% of our overall costs. And, you know, as I highlighted, our theater rent cash paid and payable decreased over 7%. from the pre-pandemic period. So we've continued to describe, you know, describe that our focus for us is rent reductions and rationalizations as we go forward. And so, you know, and we see that as a continuing opportunity going forward. So you have a 25% cost category, which tends to be either flat and or potentially declining. And then as you look at your other cost categories, so payroll is one, as you mentioned, And as Ellis described, we look to continue to deploy our digital products, our connections with our consumers to ease the journey through our environment. And the two components of that is one is it allows us to kind of personalize and increase revenue per patron, but also gives us the ability to optimize our payroll costs as we have better ideas about volumes and requirements from a staffing perspective. So we continue to feel confident that we're going to see continued kind of enhancements in the overall film entertainment and content margin as we go forward. Super. Thanks a lot.

And Adam, we are creating a seamless experience for our guests, and that's what we've been focused on. And that helps us overall for increasing our revenue per patron and also, you know, minimizing the impact of the minimum wage increases.

Can I maybe just follow up? I mean, one thing in the past when you were building up all these diversification elements was the whole overall other theatre op-ex element that tended to be very difficult to forecast and tended to surprise to the upside. We certainly, you know, saw less than expected spend in this Q2. Is that a particular area where, I know there are a bunch of expenses lumped in there, but an area where, you know, there should not necessarily be a surprise to the upside going forward as in years past with further efficiencies to be gained there?

Yeah, Adam, look, part of, you know, there's two items in that cost category that tend to kind of, go up or down the rest of the cost categories are relatively flat and that would be if there's initiatives and costs related to bringing in new partners related to the scene program would be one component and the second would be our distribution business so there's revenue that goes into other revenue and then there's this cost related to the distribution business So in a quarter, like the comparator quarter, as an example for Q2, we had John Wick 4 driving up the other revenue a little bit and then driving up the other operating expenses a little bit. And when I say a little bit, about $3 million or so. So in quarters where we have strong films being released through Cineplex Pictures, there would be an anomaly. But otherwise, it should be relatively consistent.

Perfect. Thank you. As a final reminder, that's star followed by one on the telephone keypad to ask a question today. We have no further questions, so I'll hand the call back to Ellis Jacob for any concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, and thank you again for joining the call this morning. We are excited about the strong film slate for the balance of 2024 and into 2025. As our business continues to ramp up, we look forward to sharing our strong results during our third quarter 2024 earnings call in November. Have a wonderful day.

This concludes today's call. Thank you very much for your attendance. You may now disconnect your lines.