Hoyts Group is reported to be bringing forward its long-touted IPO after a successful international roadshow last week.
Media speculation suggests that the cinema chain and Australia’s largest owner of big screen media space, via Val Morgan, will aim for flotation – somewhere in the $900 million mark – on the ASX before Christmas.
Hoyts chief executive Damian Keogh and chief financial officer Vincent Lloyd made a whistlestop tour last week, discussing opportunities around a potential float with fund managers in leading financial centres such as New York, Hong Kong and London.
It is also believed that interest sparked by last week’s roadshow could lead to Hoyts’ major stakeholders Pacific Equity Partners slashing its shares in the firm to 20-40 per cent.
A series of blockbuster films are due for release in coming months with the next instalments of Star Wars, Avengers, Batman and Superman on their way. The increased footfall around this period could prove a key moment for Hoyts to instigate the IPO.
Back in June Hoyts put its video-on-demand service Stream on hold "to assess this initiative in the context of our forward growth strategy, our investment priorities and the current competitive market dynamics.” It is not clear whether the plan will be resurrected.
According to a report issued by Swinburne University of Technology last year, Australian cinema admissions trebled to a little over 90 million in the early 2000s and have ranged between 82 and 93 million each year since. Furthermore, where the proportion of 14-24 year-olds going to the cinema, and the number of movies they see, have both declined slightly in the 2000s, cinema-going among people aged 50 and above has grown strongly and continuously.
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