Cinesa revenue jumps 56% but posts €26.3m loss

Cinesa loses €26.3m despite revenue exceeding €100m

Losing €26.3 million on revenue exceeding €100 million is not a blip: it is an open hemorrhage. Cinesa, Spain's largest cinema chain and subsidiary of the European Odeon Cinemas Group, closed 2022 with income 56% higher than the previous year, yet still posted €26.3 million in losses, according to accounts cited by Expansión. Three years prior, in 2019, the same company turned €169 million. The gap between these two years explains the problem better than any speech.

The hole isn't closed by higher sales

Business grew once pandemic restrictions were lifted, but remained far below pre-Elbichito levels. The result was another red year: €26.3 million lost, nearly identical to the €26.7 million from the previous exercise. The company blames the setback on rising expense items, with electricity and rents cited as the main culprits.

Since the start of the pandemic, the sum of red numbers exceeds €100 million. To restore financial health, the company executed a 65% capital reduction, and its partners injected an additional €20 million. In short: it is not just that money is lost, but that the structure had to be rebuilt to survive.

Why higher revenue doesn't prevent losses?

Because most income depends on an activity with high fixed costs and margins that cannot withstand pressure. Over two-thirds of revenue came from box office; 30% from consumables — popcorn and drinks — and the rest from advertising. With this mix, any increase in electricity or rent directly eats into the margin. The paradox is uncomfortable: the fuller the theater, the more is spent on climate control, staff, and utilities.

There is another reading circulating in the sector, rarely aired: these same companies protested cultural VAT, and when it was reduced, they kept ticket prices. If so, the tax cut never reached the viewer.

The €16 flat rate and the rival that doesn't sleep

The most recent move to stop the bleeding was launching monthly flat rates of €16 to watch movies, an attempt to replicate platform logic. The measure is rightly read as a last cartridge. The competitor is not just Netflix: it is HBO, Prime Video, and any living room TV connected to a shared account.

The argument repeats insistently: people have excellent devices at home, choose language and subtitles, decide who to watch with, and pay a fixed fee. This is exactly what peine to video rental stores. Obsolete business models are not rescued by discounts.

Cinesa disposes of cinemas in Catalonia

The company, headquartered in Barcelona, manages a network of 35 cinemas in Spain, over 400 screens, and a staff of over 800 people. But this network is shrinking through transfers. The company has divested properties from the La Maquinista shopping center in Barcelona and Cancelar Parc, and in Catalonia it now only maintains six cinemas.

Is it price or the lineup?

Both, depending on who looks at the glass. A ticket costs around €10, and popcorn another €10: €50 for a family before the projection starts. Against that, living room arithmetic wins — according to a calculation circulating in forums, a 55-inch TV for €600 pays off in a dozen weekends.

The other half of the complaint points to the product. It is argued that lineups are filled with exhausted superhero franchises, 80s remakes, and ideological content — what is called proge — which has alienated adult viewers. Against this thesis, some defend that cinema works when it offers something concrete: a good film in original version, large screen, and sound that cannot be replicated at home.

The in-theater experience as an added problem

Phones on, loud comments, people coming and going with popcorn. For part of the audience, paying for this is paying for annoyance, and many responses describe an abandonment that began before the pandemic and has not reversed: those who went every week simply stopped going.

Some also point to 30 minutes of ads before the projection, the deterioration of the experience, and, in the background, a change in habits that seems irreversible. That the business needs to fill over 400 screens to make no profit says much about the remaining margin.

The reasonable forecast is that theaters will survive as a premium experience — original version, careful sound, comfortable seat — and that cheap cinema at €10 per ticket will disappear by its own weight. With reservations: it is never wise to declare dead a business we have been reinventing for a century, although this time the living room has the advantage.