by Fred Fuld III
Over Christmas weekend, Avatar: the Wave of Water pulled in $64,000,000 in box office gross, and has brought in a total gross of $261,681,686 so far.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish generated $12,420,000, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody sold $4,765,000, and Babylon brought in $3,600,000 over the same weekend.
People are going back in to the movie theaters to see the big screen.
Unfortunately for the theater companies, their performance over the last year has been miserable.
For example, Cinemark (CNK) has dropped by 46% year to date and is down over 20% just in the last week.
However, Texas based Cinemark, operates over 500 theaters with more than 5,800 screens in the United States, and South and Central America.
The stock has a forward price to earnings ratio of 23, and has an earnings per share expected growth rate 0f 127% next year. Quarterly revenue growth was 49.6% year over year.
It also has a very favorable price to sales ratio of 0.45. (Remember, a P/S of less than 1 is good, above 2 is not so good.)
Marcus (MCS), which owns and operates movie theaters, along with hotels and resorts, is down 22% so far year to date.
Marcus has a nosebleed high P/E ratio of 422, but a more reasonable forward P/E of 26. Earnings per share this year were up 70.4%.
The price sales ratio is a great 0.64, and the stock is even selling below book value with a price to book of 0.96.
The stock even pays a dividend with a yield of 1.44%.
There is also Reading International (RDI), the owner of theater chains, which is down 30%, and of course the famous meme stock, AMC Entertainment (AMC) which has tanked by 74% this year.
| Stock | Symbol | YTD Price |
| AMC Entertainment | AMC | -74% |
| Cinemark | CNK | -46% |
| Marcus | MCS | -22% |
| Reading International | RDI | -30% |
| IMAX | IMAX | -22% |
Will any of these stocks bounce after year end tax selling? It is impossible to know, but maybe one of these will win an award for Best Stock.
Disclosure: Author didn’t own any of the above at the time the article was written.