Shares in Village Roadshow have fell yesterday after the company surprised with yet another earnings downgrade.
The shares fell more than 15% to $2.67, a six year low.
The company owns the Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World and Wet’n’Wild theme parks on the Gold Coast.
Village blamed a wet March and competition from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games that undermined the already weak visitor numbers down across the three parks, the company said. But its movie theatres are also doing poorly as well.
“As previously reported, Cinema Exhibition experienced a slow start to the financial year which, together with a softer than expected March 2018 result,” the company told the ASX in a trading update for the nine months to March.
“VRL continues to expect this division will realise a partial recovery in the remainder of FY18 as major releases such as Avengers: Infinity War, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Deadpool 2 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom are all scheduled to be released in the last quarter of the financial year.”
In its half year results released in February, the company called out streaming media competitors Netflix and Stan affecting its business.
And its theme parks on the Gold Coast are still being hurt by the impact of the Dreamworld tragedy which saw four people die in October 2016 on the Thunder River rapids ride at the Ardent Leisure-owned Dreamworld.
The company is now predicting its full year net profit to be somewhere between break even and a $10 million loss. Previously, it expected a profit of between $12 and $17 million.
Net profit before one off items ($171.9 million profit) for the six months to the end of December was a profit of $400,000 against a profit of $19.2 million for the same period of 2016-17. That’s gone, now for a big loss excluding that big one off item.
