As part of its plan to restructure, the Cineworld cinema chain will put a quarter of its UK cinemas up for sale.
It’s no secret that things aren’t running too smoothly for Cineworld at the moment. We learned a month ago that the Cineworld Group, the UK arm’s parent company, was exploring the possibility of selling off part of its British holdings and thanks to Sky News, we now have a better idea of what that actually looks like.
According to the outlet, 25 of Cineworld’s lowest-performing sites will be placed up for sale. That represents around a quarter of the company’s 100 sites around the UK. Furthermore, Cineworld will look to renegotiate lower rents for another 50 or so venues as well. The top-performing quarter of the company’s venues are said to be ‘ring-fenced’ and not up for sale as the Cineworld Group looks to restructure itself.
That restructuring process has been going on for quite some time now.
The company entered voluntary bankruptcy proceedings back in 2022 and attempted to sell off some parts of its business last year before announcing that it had received no satisfactory bids. When it did finally emerge from bankruptcy proceedings after restructuring to unburden itself of around $4bn worth of debt, shareholders lost out as the company diluted their stock to the point where it was worth virtually nothing.
That planned restructuring now seems to have cast its eye on the company’s UK sites and this time, it looks like it ‘s employees and patrons who will be the ones to suffer. We don’t yet know which venues will be put up for sale but we dare say that information will come to light fairly quickly.
As for the fate of thse 25 sites, the best hope is that they are acquired by a different operator. Screen Daily has reported that Tim Richards, CEO of cinema outfit Vue, was questioned this week whether his company might look to take over cinemas from rival operators and he replied: “Absolutely. They would need to be qualitatively complimentary with our circuit but I think we’ve already demonstrated over the last 20 years that M&A and purchasing cinemas is part of our DNA.”
We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it, but the story continues the downbeat trend that we’ve seen over the last few years of UK cinemas closing as the country’s economy continues to struggle.
