The Belgian owner of cinemas Kinepolis saw a sharp decline in the number of visitors in year 2020. As a result of the pandemic, the cinema group received only 12.1 million visitors, compared to more than 45 million a year before. That was due to the repeated lockdowns in various countries that forced cinemas to close, the imposed security measures and the postponement of blockbuster movies, such as the new James Bond movie.
As a result, the cinema group suffered a loss of 69.1 million euros. This was mainly caused by high depreciation on real estate. In 2019, the profit was 54.4 million euros. Revenues decreased by 68 percent to 176.3 million euros. The net debt rose from 417 million euros to over 513 million euros compared to the previous year. This was partly due to investments in the construction of new cinema complexes.
Kinepolis continued to build new cinemas during the coronavirus year, including in Haarlem and Leidschendam and in France and the United States. With this, the company expects to emerge further from the crisis in 2022 as soon as all cinemas are open again.
Despite the impact of the coronavirus crisis, the cinema group thinks it will be able to make it through the coming time and have enough money in cash for that. At the beginning of this year, the company took out a three-year loan of 80 million euros. Kinepolis has already cut costs by having management pay in and postponing the payment of top wages and bonuses. Kinepolis will not pay dividends over 2020 either.
