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Cineplex IncCGX.TODON'T BUYAug 30, 2017Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jun 19, 2026. Market Open.
Revenue growth is coming back a bit, with lower comparables from last year helping the year-over-year figures. Its debt levels are high, with net debt of $1.9B, and a net debt/EBITDA of 6.8X. Interest costs are $137M (last 12 months) and these will likely rise a bit with higher rates. 12-month cash flow was $116M and therein lies the problem. The debt is mostly due in the next five years. With attendance back, and a decent film slate, bankruptcy is becoming less of a concern, but it is still hard to paint a really positive picture here because of the leverage.
It is somewhat cheap (0.4X forward sales), but also has a fairly high forward P/E of 20.2X. It could become a takeover target, however, we would not place a high level of probability on that at these current levels.
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Cineplex remains a recovery story, and its beta of 2.88 signals more risk than usual. It rose 10% in Q1, but the chart was choppy. So, consider Cineplex a partial buy. After all, Covid didn’t kill cinema-going, as some expected, but deferred it. We still love the big screen. Read Dark horses: Nuvei, Cineplex, Boralex for our full analysis.
The market darling for quite a long time. It did very well from about 2011 through to earlier this year. In the course of thriving and prospering, the stock got very richly priced. Trading at about 30X earnings. When you have a company trading at that multiple, and not really growing their earnings at a commensurate rate, it is very vulnerable to any short-term swing in sentiment. Hollywood has not come out with a good slate of movies this summer, which has really impacted them. He would be wary of the stock until things started to improve.