Real money: NCM does almost $93M in Q2
August 7, 2009 by Dave Haynes
MediaWeek has a piece up about movie screen advertising giant National CineMedia renewing some content partnerships, but the more interesting and meat of the story is about the kind of money these guys are making, based on earnings released on a Thursday call.
NCM reported a 7 percent revenue increase in second quarter to $92.9 million, beating most analysts expectations. Advertising was up 11.6 percent to $74.8 million. National advertising revenue was up 21.5 percent, but meetings and events revenue declined 21 percent.
Despite the strong performance, NCM was somewhat cautious about the second half of the year, citing low visibility, a difficult pricing environment and tough financial comparisons with last year. One of NCM’s largest advertisers, the military, has decided to push its second quarter spending to 2010. In addition, the company was unsure how the TV upfront, creating a stronger scatter market, might effect cinema advertising.
The story also mentions NCM’s interest in basically owning the space, through partial acquisition of competitor Screenvision.
NCM also said it was not allowed to participate in the sale of the 50 percent of Screenvision that Thomson put on the block earlier this year.
“While we have so far not been included in the Screenvision sales process, we continue to believe that a transaction would provide attractive synergies and a national advertising network that is more competitive in the national TV marketplace,” said Hall. “This is especially true in the packaged goods, retail and QSR (quick service restaurant categories where we are significantly under representing from a spending standpoint.”
The content deals announced for its pre-show product are with NBC Universal, Warner Bros., A & E, and the History Channel, and are nice ones, because they include advertising commitments.
NCM is the company at the center of all the hoohah last month about its partnership with Danoo, and the latter’s acquition of IdeaCast.
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